Paul Patrick: African Witches

Photo © Paul Patrick-All Rights Reserved

People in eastern, southern, and western Africa generally believe in witches, both male and female, and Paul Patrick, a Norwegian photojournalist, was able to document them in Ghana. He started traveling at the age of 16 in search of stories from Europe, India, Nepal, China, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Morocco.

Frenzy and hysteria about witches still grip the African mind, and witchcraft evokes fear, hatred and suspicion among Africans. Africans believe that any misfortune, whether accidents, deaths, diseases, infertility or child-birth difficulties, business failures to the male and female witches. Those accused of witchcraft are expelled from their homes, and forced to survive in the streets, in the bush, or in makeshift camps...and even killed.

You'll find the captions under each of Patrick's photographs in his gallery Witch Village are descriptive and informative...and provide background on the circumstances that caused for these women to be considered witches.

Gali Tibbon: Jerusalem

Photo © Gali Tibbon-All Rights Reserved

I like Gali Tibbon's work a lot, and her focus on faith-related reportage resonates with me. I found her interview (below) to showcase her images much better than on her website. She's an independent photographer based in Jerusalem, with over a decade of experience in photojournalism in the Middle East. Her work has taken her on assignments in Turkey, Cuba, Egypt, Jordan, Ethiopia, China, Spain and Ukraine.

Her work documents religion, focusing on faith through pilgrimage and rituals, and documenting the various Christian denominations in Jerusalem's Holy Sepulcher, baptism in the Jordan River, the ancient Samaritans, Ethiopian Christianity and pilgrimages across Europe.

It's with pleasure that I watched this interview with Gali on the Canon Professional Network during which she discusses her work.


A must-see!!

Charles Pertwee: The Khumbu

Photo © Charles Pertwee-All Rights Reserved

Charles Pertwee is a photojournalist, known for his reportage in crisis stricken locations such as Banda Aceh and Afghanistan. He graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London with a degree in the History of East Asia, and took up photography soon after graduation. He has since worked for such diverse clients as The New York Times, Wired, CNN Traveller, Marie Claire, Universal Music and Nike. He's currently based in Nantes, France after living in Singapore. 

His galleries are all worthy of praise, but the two that appealed to me the most are of his work of The Khumbu (in black & white) and of Myanmar (Burma).

The Khumbu is located in northeastern Nepal, and the famous Tengboche Buddhist monastery is there. Tengboche is the largest gompa of the region.

Teaser

Yep...we're on a roll. All this will be announced soon on this blog, and via newsletter. Hold your breaths!

Mitchell Kanashkevich: Vanuatu (And More)

Photo © Mitchell Kanashkevich - All Rights Reserved

As promised, here's the updated website of Mitchell Kanashkevich, replete with new inspirational imagery of his recent travels. One of the best travel, documentary and cultural photographers I know, Mitchell describes himself as a tireless wanderer and documentarian. He's also an author, and published several popular ebooks. You'll also agree with me that Mitchell's photographs are gorgeous, and the new website is equally lovely. It's for a good reason that his website is on my blogroll.


On his website, he introduces us to various galleries of his travels in Vanuatu. The first gallery is of South West Bay, a remote enclave on the island of Malekula. It is separated from the rest of the island by mountains and dense forest, and the only way to get there is by sea or air. Until 50 years ago, its tribal inhabitants practiced cannibalism and warfare. Although the introduction of Christianity resulted in the disappearance of these practices, it also caused the erosion of traditional rituals and customs.

Vanuatu is an island nation located in the south Pacific ocean, and includes more than 80 islands, out of which 65 are inhabited. Its population is less than 220,000 and are of Melanesian descent. I came across Vanuatu while involved in the banking industry, as it's an offshore financial center and a tax haven...but I never imagined that it would have such visual beauty.

Dennis Cordell: Buddhist Monks

Photo © Dennis Cordell-All Rights Reserved

383...that's the number of square format black & white portraits of Buddhist monks (and a few sadhus) that Dennis Cordell is exhibiting on his website; all made with a film Hasselblad which he prefers to the 35mm format. These are not photographs made because the subjects are handsome or beautiful...they're are ethnographic in nature. I believe he uses and pushes Tri-X film, then scans the negatives and prints digitally. I've featured Dennis' portraits of Buddhist novices at the Gyudzin Tantric Monastery School in Ladakh before. These were published on Flickr, but he has now acquired a standalone website.

I'm not certain where all these impressive portraits were made, but I did notice that some had background information that indicated Bodh Gaya. A religious site and place of pilgrimage in the Indian state of Bihar, Bodh Gaya is famous for being the place of the Buddha's attainment of enlightenment. It is one of the most important of the main four pilgrimage sites related to the life of the Buddha. The other three are Kushinagar, Sarnath (both in India) and Lumbini (Nepal).

Dennis trained as a painter, and his favorite subject matter, either in painting or in photography, has always been portraiture...especially of Buddhist monks and similar. He prefers black & white because, in his own voice: "The greater the range of tonality between black and white, the greater, for me, is the image. A photo can never have too many shades of grey. Greys are the midtones that create the designs and textures woven into the photo."

I agree. This is the case, perhaps not always...but often. As I mentioned in an earlier post about my own photographs of Bali, I got too much color while there...and I found black & white more calming...more soothing and more, in a strange way, realistic.

Fred Canonge: Pehlwan of Benares

Photo © Fred Canonge-All Rights Reserved

Pehlwani (also known as Kushti) is a traditional style of wrestling popular in the sub-continent of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The wrestler is known as pahlawan which, interestingly for those who are etymologists, is the colloquial Arabic word meaning "clown". I wouldn't tell this to these wrestlers, as they would be offended and I'd be on the mat in less than a second.

Based in Paris, Fred Canonge is a French freelance photographer who has extensively travelled in India for the last ten years, and is constantly exploring all the nuances and the diversity of Indian society. His website is replete with galleries of India, including some of images made in Kathputli and Varanasi, but the gallery which I liked the most has his work on the pehlawan.

Varanasi has a number of traditional wrestling training gyms (known as akhara), and one can spot them working with rudimentary weights near Tulsi ghat. The wrestlers' diets consist of milk, almonds, ghee, eggs and chapattis, but have a difficult time making ends meet. Some of them find work as bodyguards to those who need protection or as "enforcers" during political elections.

Story on Unseen Thailand Beautiful Travel Place: Fantastic Scenery of Koh Samui, Thailand

Story on Unseen Thailand Beautiful Travel Place: Fantastic Scenery of Koh Samui, Thailand: "Hello friends, Really bad traffic in Bangkok today. I'm very busy this month and Haven't post new images of beautiful Thailand travel place..."

VII: Franco Pagetti: Afghanistan's Agony

The exciting VII The Magazine features Afghanistan' Agony, the multimedia work of Franco Pagetti which combines movies, stills in both color and black & white.

Although I'm getting tired of war stories and its imagery, Pagetti manages to infuse this work with his own personality as when he says (I paraphrase) in his Italian accent"...the only thing a photographer really wants...more than life, more than sex...more than anything...is to be invisible." Brilliant!

This multimedia piece provides a very realistic of what Afghanistan must be...it merges color stills with black & white images (which, in my view, are the best of the lot), aerial shots and movie footage.

Overall a very well done production, but if I had to point out a niggling issue, I'd say the decision to include the audio introduction of a muezzin's call to prayers is a lazy one. The Taliban, the insurgents, and the rest of the "bad guys" are fighting us because of a bunch of reasons. Take your pick: because we're occupying their country, because we're defending an unrepresentative corrupt regime, because we're getting in the way of various longstanding tribal and/or ethnic power struggles, and because we're tying to eradicate poppy cultivation...subsistence to many Afghan farmers.

It would have been smarter to find another audio clip to give the project the required sense of the place...perhaps a Pashto song, perhaps some ambient audio of Kabul's market chatter. Some readers might see this as nit-picking, but it's not. Avoiding religious cliches is a much more intelligent production effort and in this case, keeps it honest and neutral as it should be.

Franco Pagetti has covered the conflict in Iraq since January 2003. He has been a news photographer since 1994, and most of his recent work has involved conflict situations. His non-conflict news photography has included assignments in India, the Vatican City, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and his native Italy. In his “former life,” he was a fashion photographer for Italian VOGUE and taught chemistry at Milano’s University .

Books By Participants In TTP's Photo~Expeditions™

A few weeks ago, I wished here that more of the participants who join my photo~expeditions would, not only feature their work on their websites as most do already, but also publish their images in book form. It's not an easy task to prep and publish a book, but the eventual satisfaction is just sublime. I know first hand because I self-published Bali: Island of Odalan, and now I'm waiting for the sample proof of my second book Darshan (an announcement will be made shortly).

So I was very pleased to see 4 members of The Travel Photographer's Photo~Expeditions™ have already published their books (and with some, already their second or even third book).

1. Torie Olson joined my Theyyam of Malabar Photo`Expedition™ in 2009, and has just published the wonderful Life In Color (Photographs of Gujarat), a 117 page large hard cover landscape book.

2. Sandy Chandler joined a number of my photo trips; the latest being Bali: Island of Odalan Photo~Expedition™ this past July, and has just published Calling The Soul, an 80 page standard landscape book that promises to be a gem.

3. Charlotte Rush-Bailey joined my Tribes of Rajasthan & Gujarat Photo Expedition™ earlier this year, and quickly published her Kutch Classic, a 98 page large format hard cover landscape with her "specially brewed" photographs.

4) Susan Storm joined my Sikkim & Darjeeling Photo Expedition™ in 2003. A photographer and journalist for over 20 years, she worked for many of the top magazines in most continents. She published Colours In The Dust (On The Sari Trail), a 232 pages standard landscape book of her lovely images of India.

My congratulations to these photographers who took the initiative and featured their work in print form. I'm looking forward to hearing from other participants as to their book publishing efforts. C'mon, guys!

Next Week On The Travel Photographer

For the week starting Monday November 29,  the following posts are in the blog's pipeline:

1. The work of a photographer with a ton of images of India, including one of the wrestlers of Benares. I had planned to post it last week.
2. The work of another photographer with a lot of images of Buddhism. All black & white square format with a Hassleblad. Very impressive.
3. The work of an editorial photographer with a gallery of images from the Khumbu (Northern Nepal).
4. Interesting portraits of "witches" from West Africa.
5. The updated website of one of the best travel photographers will be featured.

Plus other whimsical posts as the week goes on.

NPR: Cairo And The "Disconnected"

This touches on photography/multimedia only tangentially, so unless you're into Middle Eastern-international politics, you may want to skip all the stuff below and just click on the movie.

A number of media outlets are gingerly covering Egypt's political scene due to the imminent parliamentary elections. I say gingerly because Egypt is a so-called major ally in the "war against terror" or whatever it's called these days, so it wouldn't be politic or in our national "interests" to criticize its ossified and corrupt regime. Why the United States aligns itself with despots in the Middle East and elsewhere will always be an anachronism.

NPR has featured a number of short articles and some multimedia for the occasion, and I found this one titled In Cairo Slum, Little Hope For Change to be an exemplar of what the current situation is in Egypt. I say "current" but that's not really correct. It's always been that way, and it'll continue to be that way, perhaps get even wider...a profound disconnect and an immense gap between the poor and the elite. Trust me...I know that for a fact.

An Egyptian investment banker (I'm not sure how he can be one with such an atrocious spoken English) complains that his children are disconnected from the rest of Egypt because they go to American schools, wear Western clothes and barely speak Egyptian Arabic. Well, I've got news for him....the "disconnect" has been prevalent since the Pharaohs.

Every dog has his day as the saying goes...so going back in modern history, it was the Ottomanophiles, then Anglophiles and the Francophiles who were the elite class, and disconnected from the people. Identical to the Tsarist elite in Russian who would only speak in French, the Egyptian elite would live in bubbles of their own making, separated from the "non-elite" and the rest of their compatriots. To a lesser extent, the time for the socialist Nasserites and Sadatites came and went. Now, it's the turn of the Mubarakphiles...the business cronies, the oligarchs, and the corrupt corporate/political alliances who form the recent elite....but these will also vanish when their time comes, only to be replaced by a hungrier demographic. We've been there before, and it's only a matter of time before the cycle repeats itself. A class will just replace another class. And by the way, claiming to have Turkish ancestry (some extremely tenuous and others grossly made up) is currently a de rigueur affectation for many of the newly minted Egyptian wealthy class. Go figure. Having Turkish heritage was once viewed as being regressive, not authentic and even unpatriotic. I know that for a fact as well.

But back to the "disconnected"...which many of the privileged (some would describe them as spoiled) Egyptian youth are. Confused by a brainless embrace of a culture that is not theirs; an embrace made possible because their parents are the current moneyed elite and can buy into an ersatz Americanism; confused by their own dichotomy...seeing no conflict between binge drinking, heavy partying and then fasting Ramadan and claiming religiosity...but unable and unwilling to adopt American meritocratic values, its democratic values and work ethics.

Watch the multimedia piece...then shed a tear for the real people of Egypt who deserve infinitely better than the dismal life they're leading.