Jehad Nga's Turkana in NYC

Photo © Jehad Nga -All Rights Reserved
The beautiful work of Jehad Nga, one of my favorite photographers, is on show at the Bonni Benrubi Gallery on the Upper East Side in New York. The exhibition runs from May 13 to June 16, 2010, and is timed to coincide with the New York Photo Festival. Limited edition prints are priced from $2,800-$10,000.

The UK's Daily Telegraph also featured Jehad's Turkana work. I scratch my head in puzzlement that a UK daily would feature news of a photographic event (and images), while our own newspapers have not. Perhaps I've missed it...?

For background on Jehad Nga and the Turkana images, check my earlier post here.

The Travel Photographer's Photo-Expeditions™ 2011

Although I haven't firmed up any decisions yet, I am starting to mull over two (of the possible 3) Photo-Expeditions™ for 2011 that will be non-Arab Islam-centric. The two expeditions' underlying themes will be documenting the existing syncretism between Islam, its Sufi offshoot and another major tradition. The itineraries will include photographing certain rituals at obscure religious sites, as well as at other locations...I can't be more specific at this stage without letting the cat out of the bag.

As followers of my Photo-Expeditions™ news and of this blog know, I've decided to further accentuate the travel-documentary thrust of my photo~expeditions, and reduce the maximum number of participants to only 5 (excluding myself) on each trip.

My recent expeditions have become so popular that they've swelled up to 9-10 participants, and generated long waiting lists. As of 2011, participation will no longer be based on "first registered first in", but will be based on a portfolio viewing and other criteria. Details of the 2011 itineraries will be announced to subscribers to my newsletter mailing list.

In the meantime, I'm readying some pre-departure information for the participants in my Bali: Island of Odalan Photo-Expedition™ due to start August 1. Exciting stuff!!!

Steven Greaves: Kashi, City of the Dead

Photo © Steven Greaves-All Rights Reserved
American writer Mark Twain wrote:

"Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together."

Varanasi (Benares) or Kashi is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and probably the oldest of India, and is one of the most sacred pilgrimage places for Hindus of all denominations. More than 1,000,000 pilgrims visit the city annually. For centuries, Hindus have come to Varanasi, the holy city on the Ganges, to attain instant moksha, or "release", at the moment of death.

Steven Greaves's galleries include Kashi, City of the Dead, and Kashi, City of the Living; both which I highly recommend.

Steven is a freelance photographer, who was born in the UK, but considers New York City as his home. With a formal education as a lawyer, Steven interned with VII Photo Agency, and his work was published by a number of international publications and displayed in New York City, Miami, London and New Orleans. His work is currently represented by Lonely Planet Images.

NPR: The Grand Trunk Road

The Grand Trunk Road played an important role in India's history at every step of its way. Some 3500 years ago, with the Aryan invasion of the subcontinent, it served as a corridor starting at the Khyber Pass winding eastward between the Himalayas and the Thar Desert onto the Gangetic plain. Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism spread through it, and Muslim proselytizers traveled on it. Since 1947, Pakistan controls the 300-mile segment between Peshawar and Lahore, while the remaining 1,250 miles link six Indian states, making it lifeline of northern India.

Nowadays, the road used by Alexander the Great, Ibn Battutah, Mughals invaders and other conquerors and the just curious, is ruled by truck drivers roaring through countless tiny villages.

NPR features a hybrid multimedia project in which its journalists travel the route and tell the stories of young people living there, who make up the majority of the populations in India and Pakistan.

FP: Tomas van Houtryve's Maostalgia

Photo © Tomas van Houtryve-All Rights Reserved
When one thinks of Foreign Policy magazine, large photographs and photo essays don't really come to mind...but that would be incorrect. The magazine regularly features photo essays from well-known photojournalist and, contrary to many online newsy magazines, does a nice job showcasing them in a large size.

This month, Foreign Policy published Maostalgia, a photo essay by Tomas van Houtryve, who traveled in the heart of China and found Mao's legacy in the most unexpected places.

For instance, he photographed in the town of Nanjie, where its government provides for all its citizens' needs, supplying them with everything from cough medicine to funerals.

A different take from the recent photo essays on glitzy China we've been accustomed to see, and which for the most part extol the virtues of the Chinese economy.

Tomas van Houtryve is a documentary photojournalist who spent much of the past five years photographing the few remaining countries still under Communist Party rule. His 2009 photo essay for FP on North Korea, "The Land of No Smiles," was nominated for a National Magazine Award.

More of his images on China can be seen here.

NPR: Sebastian Junger On 'War'

The arm-chair warriors amongst us will like this post on NPR:

"Five times between June 2007 and June 2008 the writer Sebastian Junger traveled to a remote Army outpost in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. Junger, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, made the trip to embed with a company of soldiers from the Army's 173rd Airborne brigade as they fought to keep the Taliban from controlling a small, treacherous plot of land."

I have yet to read all of the article and listen to the excerpts, but I can easily predict that a book such as this one, and its supporting hoopla, glorifies war.

On my flight back to NYC, I tried to watch "The Hurt Locker"...5 minutes into the movie, I turned it off. Is it eyeball fatigue from all the war coverage since 2001 or is it moral disgust...or is it both?

Kieron Nelson: Vanishing Cultures

Photo © Kieron Nelson-All Rights Reserved
The only introduction from Kieron Nelson to his work is an email with his website's address, so I assumed he was suggesting I took a look at it and, if it passed muster, add it to The Travel Photographer blog.

Well, it easily passed muster and I'm delighted it did as it's a veritable trove of lovely photographs of indigenous people and of tribal cultures. He specializes in off-the-beaten-track destinations, and traveled from the jungles of New Guinea to the tribal regions of northwest Pakistan.

The photograph for this post is of a Changjiao Miao woman wearing the long horns with the traditional decorative hair bun made of linen, wool and small amounts of ancestral hair. Changjiao or "Long Horns", when directly translated, reflects the custom of animal horns being worn as head ornaments by tribe women for special occasions.

Kieron won an impressive number of photographic awards, and because of the spelling of certain words on his website, I guess he's British educated, but that's all I know of him.

I guarantee you'll spend a long time going through his Vanishing Cultures website.

POV: Imitation...Flattery or Buggery?

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
The answer? It depends.

This time, I'm not referring to visual plagiarism but to the imitation of style and copying of unimaginative itineraries in the travel photography tours/workshops industry.

Many travel photographers recently awoke to the fact that tours and workshops can add a little something to their bottom line (actually, big and small name photojournalists are doing it as well), and their offerings are all over the internet. Their target market is made up of working and non-working photographers, who seek to build an inventory of images, either to show friends and neighbors, enter and hopefully win competitions, or to sell as stock and to publications.

All this sounds lovely but regrettably, the disease currently afflicting photojournalism seems to have spread into travel photography as well. It's rather disconcerting to see a lack of imagination in many travel photography tours, a frequent "borrowing" of regular tourist itineraries, and the liberal sprinkling of the sentence "photo-shoot" and "wake up at dawn" and similar verbiage in the marketing blurbs, as if that's enough to give legitimacy to the notion that these trips are really tailored for photo enthusiasts.

As regular readers of this blog know, I've swatted off a number of attempts by established travel photographers to either flagrantly filch my itineraries (inclusive of hotel names) or to get a copy of my mailing list for my photo~expeditions, or to join that mailing list to get advance notice of my itineraries. Oh, yes...corporate espionage is alive and well in the travel photography workshop business, but that's par for the course.

Have I consciously imitated any other travel photographers as far as itineraries are concerned? Sure, I may have been inspired by some, but I always avoided cookie-cutter itineraries (excepting Bhutan, where these are based on annual festivals), and I consistently base my itineraries on what and where I want to photograph...not on what and where others want to photograph. And the formula works...with my expeditions often with long waiting lists.

Speaking of inspiration: 24 months ago, I introduced multimedia storytelling tutoring using Soundslides on my photo-expeditions, so I'm chuffed to see others have just started to offer it as well. Soundslides...not SlideShowPro, Final Cut Express or other software choices.

Dwindling viable opportunities, reduced prices for images, tougher competition and increased costs are the reasons many travel photographers cut corners, and look for guidance, inspiration and successful examples to emulate; and as a result, some cross the invisible line and become unimaginative imitators.

So back to my question. Is imitation flattery or buggery? It depends on how the one being imitated actually views it, and what is being copied. Some will consider it a rip-off...others -as I do- consider it the sincerest form of flattery.

You see, it's not buggery unless one is willing to be buggered...but let's also remember, taking without giving back is bad karma.