WP: Tokyo Panoramas

The Washington Post brings us a many faceted mutimedia feature titled Tokyo Stories. It includes videos and panoramic photographs of various Tokyo's cultural and religious sites, including of the Sensō-ji, the ancient Buddhist temple located in Asakusa, and the adjacent Shinto shrine, the Asakusa Jinja.

It's an extremely well done feature, and although perhaps a bit jerky for those who don't have a super-fast internet connection, it's well worth one's time. I haven't been to Japan yet, but this is really a good place to start.

The Washington Post's Tokyo's Panoramics

MSF: Spencer Platt

Image © Spencer Platt/Getty Images -All Rights Reserved
Medecins Sans Frontieres brings us an audio slideshow of photographs by Spencer Platt, a staff photographer with Getty Images, who spent two weeks in December 2007 with MSF in the Central African Republic.

Spencer Platt won last year's World Press Photo of the Year prize for his excellent photograph of a group of five cavalier Beirut residents cruising in a red Mini convertible through a neighborhood that has been reduced to rubble by Israeli bombs.

This MSF slideshow is very well narrated by Spencer. I chose the above photograph because it made me wonder whether this sign prohibiting an automatic rifle makes a difference.

MSF's Through The Lens: Central African Republic

NY Times: "A Genocide In Slow Motion"

Image ©Jan Grarup for NY Times-All Rights Reserved
Jan Grarup is an award-winning Danish photographer who traveled the world documenting many historical events. From the fall of the communist regime in Romania to the current occupation of Iraq, he has covered numerous wars and conflicts, including the genocide in Rwanda. He's a member of the Noor agency-collective.

Here's his latest work out of Africa, which The New York Times chose to title as "A Genocide In Slow Motion". The feature is in slideshow motion, with Jan Grarup narrating.

A Genocide In Slow Motion

1 on 1: Justin Mott

Image © Justin Mott -All Rights Reserved
The Travel Photographer blog will occasionally post interviews with both travel and editorial working photographers. This interview is with Justin Mott, a photojournalist working in South East Asia, currently living in Hanoi. His work is seen in the New York Times and Time magazine, among others, and he recently published photo essays on mysticism in Indonesia and Vietnamese orphanages. He's represented by World Picture News.

1) TTP: When did you decide to become a photographer? Who or what influenced your decision?

A: I used to be a bartender in the financial district of San Francisco for 7 years. I was taking some journalism classes at SF State and I just kind of fell into a photography class when I was registering for classes. I was really into Kerouac at the time and I use to escape the city life with little weekend road trips by myself. I started bringing my camera with me and I never really put it down since.

2) TTP: Do you have any formal training regarding photography?

A: I studied under Ken Kobre at San Francisco State University and participated in a few workshops that have had great influence on my life as a photographer. I didn't learn anything in school about being a freelancer or working in a foreign country: that process is ongoing, and from every assignment I learn something new about myself and about being a working professional.


3) TTP : If you had the choice, where is your favorite place to live and work as a photographer in the world and why?

A: I personally felt I had a choice so I'm living and working exactly where I want to be: Hanoi, Vietnam. I love the smiling faces, the adventures, the landscapes, and the cost of living is helpful.

4) TTP: Describe your own favorite image, and describe how you went about creating it.

A: My favorite image is a really simple image that I took one day wandering near the Red River of Hanoi. I slowly approached a child standing in the frame of his new house being built next to the tiny tent he was currently living in. He was just standing in the doorway of this shell of a house and I had to be stealthy approaching it (needing to get close because I had a fixed 35mm). Most of my personal projects are related to children's issues and about children living in isolation for a variety of reasons. That image represents a lot of my stories and has the lonely feeling to it that my stories have. Not many people compliment the image and some have even suggested that I remove it from my portfolio, but I dig it and I open my web portfolio with it.

5) TTP: Describe a day in your professional life.

A: It depends on whether it's an assignment or a personal project. I'll give you an example of a typical day of a personal project I recently finished up in the outskirts of Hanoi. I would get up at my shanty hotel before sunrise and untangle myself out of my mosquito net. I manke sure I have my battery off the charger and my memory cards, then I pack my Domke. Slam a coffee and then wait for my moto taxi to the orphanage. Wave at the random people on the sides of the streets wondering why an American is way out there. I would spend the entire day at the orphanage observing and photographing. In the afternoon I look for any quiet place to take a nap, unused office, tree, etc. I would typically leave when the orphanage closed down for bedtime and head back to my hotel. After dinner I backup my work on my tiny portable hard drive and go through the days take. The following day I will do the same exact thing.

6) TTP: Tell your funniest, scariest, most bizarre, most touching story from a photoshoot!

A: The funniest thing that ever happened to me came in Jamesport, Missouri while attending the University of Missouri Photo Workshop. My story was about an Amish teenager and his coming to age as an adult. His father was quite liberal and had allowed me to follow his 16 year old son for the week. On my last day while exchanging pleasantries with Pops I asked him one final question about his son John. I said "Jacob, what do you want for John" meaning for his future. Jacob glanced over at his son working away building furniture and without a smile on his face said" Justin, I'm not really interested in selling any of my children." I couldn't help but laugh out loud and rephrase my question.

7) TTP: What types of assignments are you most attracted to?

A: The last few weeks I have been to Indonesia and Malaysia for the NY Times working on a variety of stories ranging from palm oil, mysticism, feuding princes, and the death of the former Indonesian president Suharto. Each story fascinated me and each story presented problems that needed to be solved to tell the writers story with visuals. I love the challenge of solving those problems.

8) TTP: How would you describe your photographic style?

A: I shoot very loose and I love empty space. At the Eddie Adams workshop Magnum Photographer Eli Reed cropped my whole portfolio really tight and I got a good laugh out of it watching him mutilating my images. I respect his style and obviously he is a legend, but I like shooting with my fixed 35mm and I struggle with a 50mm.

9) TTP: Who or what would you love to shoot that you haven't already?

A: I want to expand to shoot in a studio more and learn how to work lighting equipment better. I want to learn on my own creative freedom and just have fun with portraits.

10) TTP: Describe the photo gear, as well as (if digital) your computer hardware and software you use.

A: I have a simple setup. One 5D (best purchase I ever made), Macbook Pro, a Canon G9, 35mm 1.4, 24mm 1.4, and a 100 F2, 580 Flash(never really use it because I shoot at 1.4 a lot). I love my fixed lenses even though it can be scary sometimes on one day breaking news assignments.

Sarah Caron: Alliance Française-NYC

Image © Sarah Caron-All Rights Reserved
The French Institute in New York City is hosting a couple of events for Sarah Caron's work. An exhibition of her photographs, a documentary film on her by Patrick Chauvel and a panel discussion.

Sarah Caron is a French photographer, who travels the world, working both in journalism and on projects. Her assignments have taken her to Thailand, Cuba, Burma, and Mexico. In 2006, she received a Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography to complete The Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades– The Balata Sentinels, a series exploring the martyrdom culture in Palestine. Her work has been published in international publications, including Le Monde, Le Figaro, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, and Elle.

Sarah Caron has also photographed the Indian widows in Vrindavan, titling her gallery "Les Veuves Blanches" or "The Widows In White". The gallery is of black & white photographs, and seems to have been photographed very recently. In fact, I believe I recognize a few faces amongst the widows which I photographed for my own work White Shadows.

The French Institute's events on Sarah Caron

Sarah Caron's Veuves Blanches

UPDATE: I dropped by the French Institute/Alliance Française today (February 14), and I must say that the exhibit was disappointing. Three of Sarah Caron's photographs were large enough, but the remainder of the exhibit were of photographs not much larger than 8x10 at most. The three large photographs were intelligently chosen. Since there were no captions, I'll describe the photographs as best I can. One was of was I believe is of 3 men and a woman carrying rifles and handguns...probably belonging to some sort of militia in Arizona which patrols the border between the US and Mexico. The middle one was of Pakistani mustachioed bodyguards (possibly those of Benazir Bhutto) holding Kalashnikovs, and the third is of a masked Palestinian insurgent loading a RPG unto a rifle. The juxtaposition of these three photographs was obviously done on purpose.

Joakim Eskildsen: The Roma People

Image © Joakim Eskildsen -All Rights Reserved
Joakim Eskildsen is a Danish photographer who trained with the Royal Court photographer Rigmor Mydtskov. Moving to Finland, he learnt the craft of photographic book making and graduated with an MA degree in photography in 1998.

To complete "The Roma Journeys", a book which he and writer Cia Rinne recently published, they traveled in seven different countries to photograph and document the life of the Roma and their living conditions.

According to Joakim, "these Roma journeys were by no means meticulously planned, and instead the product of a number of coincidences that enabled us to come into contact with the Roma."

Joakim's photographs are wonderful...and give us an insight into the lives of the Roma, or Romani, an ethnic group widely known through folklore and literature. I started off this post by describing them as gypsies, but discovered that it's sometimes considered pejorative, based on a mistaken belief of an origin in Egypt.

The Roma have their origins in India, with genetic studies showing that they came from a small population that emerged from ancestors in India around 1000 years ago. Joakim's photographs of the Indian Roma feature the Sapera who are known to be snake charmers in Rajasthan. I came across a band of wandering Sapera when I traveled in Rajasthan, who were quite distinctive in their dress and demeanor.

I encourage you to explore his web site beyond The Roma People...it's well worth your time.

Joakim Eskildsen's India's Roma

Like Hope, But Different

WP: Pakistan On The Brink

Here's an interesting video compilation by The Washington Post's Travis Fox on the current situation; political, religious and military in Pakistan...a country that is critical and vital to the national interests of the United States.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the upcoming elections, and our media's recent reports on the "Talibanization" of the country, make it a timely feature to watch. Particularly interesting is the chapter on the Pakistani military, and how it controls much of the country's industrial and financial infrastructure.

The Washington Post's Pakistan on the Brink

Music & Slideshows!!!

David Schonauer, Editor of American Photo magazine, hit the jackpot with his recent post of the State of the Art blog. His post "When Music Ruins the Picture Show" is a timely diatribe of how he's had enough of slide shows accompanied by music.

He writes: "Here’s my advice to anyone who wants their photo presentations to stand out: Leave out the music and simply show your images. Let silence work for you: In the absence of Irish harps, digereedoos, and atonal chants, audiences will really gaze at your work. (Especially if you show them one image at a time and offer interesting background information.).

The funniest line (but it's true!) in the post is this: "With photojournalists it’s invariably world music—a sure sign of the international and cultural dimensions of the work."

He's absolutely right. Enough already. Less is more as they say.

David Schonauer's When Music Ruins the Picture Show

Airy Mac Book Air

Just to confirm what everyone knows or heard...the Macbook Air is spectacularly light. I dropped by Apple's West Village store yesterday, and they had Airs all over the place, The first thing everyone does is lift it...it's really a machine of unbelievable (unbearable?) lightness. There was a crowd surrounding the table where the Airs were displayed....however I saw a couple of these people then move over to another table to order MacBook Pros. Does this observation mean anything? No.

Apart from its anorexic features, the Air seemed to me (a user of an older PowerBook) to be flimsy and delicate...but with an enormous sex appeal. I'm certain that the flimsiness is a mistaken perception and that the Air is as sturdy as any other of its siblings, but I would be really nervous packing it in a backpack and using it as a travel laptop....and yet, that's exactly the Air's niche market!

Sunday Update: Having to drop by the Apple store, I was told that the Air was sold out yesterday.