Diana Markosian: The Girls of Chechnya

Photo  Diana Markosian-All Rights Reserved An interesting glimpse in an area that a relatively few are really familiar with...Chechnya, was recently featured by TIME Lightbox. Diana Markosian's Goodbye My Chechnya is such a glimpse into the lives of young Chechen women who witnessed the horrors of two wars, and are coming of age in a country that is rapidly rediscovering its Muslim laws and traditions. It's particularly interesting to view Diana's photographs of these Chechen women and their traditions and compare them to Oded Balilty's photographs of the Jewish ultra orthodox communities, which included a series on a traditional Hasidic...

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Dominic Nahr: Travels Through Islam

Photo  Dominic Nahr-Courtesy TIME With good reason, I've become skeptical of mainstream Western magazines abilities or interest to present non-stereotypical (and non-judgmental) features dealing with Islam, but I found TIME International's Travel Through Islam five-part series in its Summer Journey issue, to be interesting and insightful. In this first installment, photographer Dominic Nahr followed the footsteps of famed 14th century explorer and traveler Ibn Battuta into sub-Saharan Africa. In February 1352, Ibn Battuta set off from the city of Sijilmasa at the edge of the Sahara to journey with a camel caravan to lands far to the...

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Angkor Photo Workshops 2011

Now in its 7th year, the free 2011 Angkor Photo Workshops is now officially accepting applications from all young Asian photographers. To get started, photographers can download and read through the application guidelines and the application form below: APWS 2011 Application Guidelines APWS 2011 Application Form The guidelines and form contains all the information needed on how to apply for this years workshops. However for clarifications and or questions, the Angkor Photo Workshops can be contacted email at angkorworkshop [at] gmail.com . The workshop will be held from November 17  23, 2011 in Siem Reap, Cambodia. As per the...

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Magnum In Motion/Abbas: Children Of The Lotus

Magnum In Motion has produced Children Of The Lotus, a multimedia slideshow of Abbas' photographs made during the photographer's travels in 12 Buddhist countries spanning the better part of three years.Abbas' inspiration was the photograph (it's really a poignant mug shot) of a young Khmer girl who was executed by a genocidal regime. He wonders how a Buddhist society, presumably full of compassion, be able to countenance the massacre and starvation of a quarter of its population?Most of the images in the slideshow are in black & white, with a few at the end that are in color. Abbas chose to photograph in black & white because, as he tells...

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Thaipusam: Kevin WY Lee

Here's a well done video of the festival of Thaipusam (some graphic scenes) by Singapore-based Kevin WY Lee. Kevin WY Lee is a street and documentary photographer and founder of Invisible Ph t grapher Asia, which is not only a collective of photographers in Asia specializing in street photography and visual journalism, but is also a platform, blog, showcase and library archive of street photography and visual journalism in that important part of the world.I have already posted work by one of their photographers, and I'm consistently impressed by IPA's features...so bookmark it.It was made using a Panasonic GH2 and Pentax 25mm F/1.4 lens.Thaipusam is an important festival observed by the Hindus of southern India during the Tamil month of Thai (January - February). Outside of India, it is celebrated...

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Thomas Cristofoletti: Day of the Dead

.Here's a movie made of still photographs by Thomas Cristofoletti on the singular tradition in the Philippines which occurs on the Day of the Dead. The stills were made in Tandag, Surigao del Sur and document the tradition of caring for the tombs on November 1. Tombs are cleaned up, repainted and spruced up by relatives. Candles are lit and flowers placed. Many families spend a night or two near their loved ones' tombs in remembrance. Card games, eating, drinking, singing and dancing are common activities at the cemeteries during the holiday. In the Philippines, the day of the dead is known as Araw ng mga Patay; one of the traditions imported from Spain during the country' colonization. Of course, El Dia De los Muertos is a well known tradition in Mexico, as well as in other countries where...

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Angkor Photo Festival 2010

The 2010 Angkor Photo Festival is to be held between November 20 to November 27 in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The event is a unique photo festival in South East Asia,  and it's now in its 6th iteration, having had its inaugural gathering in 2005. In 2010, 110 photographers including 50 Asian photographers are showcasing their work, in keeping with festivals mission of highlighting emerging Southeast Asian photographers. These works are curated by  well-known figures in photography, Yumi Goto, Antoine dAgata, and Franoise Callier . This promises to be a real cornucopia of established and emerging photographic talent, with the participation...

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Hamid Sardar: Mongolia

Hamid Sardar-Afkhami is a photographer and a scholar of Tibetan and Mongol languages with a Ph.D. from Harvard University. After moving to Nepal in the late 1980s and exploring Tibet and the Himalayas for more than a decade, he traveled to Outer Mongolia, and determined to document its nomadic culture by setting a mobile studio ger camp in Mongolia. With his arsenal of cameras and different formats, he mounts yearly expeditions into the Mongolian outback to document her nomadic traditions. Apart from the two movie documentaries (these are not short, and run for almost an hour), take a look at Hamid's photographic gallery titled Dark Heavens,...

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Anton Kusters: The Yakuza

Photo  Anton Kusters-All Rights Reserved Anton Kusters is the well deserved Category Winner, Editorial  Photography Book Now 2010 with his The Yakuza in Tokyo. The Yakuza are members of traditional organized crime syndicates in Japan, and are well known for violence and initiation rites. Many Yakuza have full-body tattoos known as irezumi in Japan, which are still often done by hand using needles of sharpened bamboo or steel. ANother ritual for the Yakuza is yubitsume, or the cutting of one's finger, as a form of penance or apology. It's mind-blowing as to how Anton managed to photograph such a secretive society. Anton Kusters...

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Nicky Loh: Tattoo Girls of Taiwan

Photo  Nicky Loh-All Rights Reserved Nicky Loh is a photographer with Reuters working in Taiwan, whose specialty is news, sports and feature photography, who's interested in documenting traditional art forms such as Chinese opera. On his employer's blog, he writes of having had an assignment to cover the 2010 Taiwan International Tattoo Convention in Taipei which, while not newsworthy per se, offered him a good opportunity to produce colorful photographs. He describes how he decided to set up an impromptu studio in one of the empty booths of the convention, and do portraits of women with fully tattooed backs. Not only beautiful...

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Nicky Loh: Tattoo Girls of Taiwan

Photo  Nicky Loh-All Rights Reserved Nicky Loh is a photographer with Reuters working in Taiwan, whose specialty is news, sports and feature photography, who's interested in documenting traditional art forms such as Chinese opera. On his employer's blog, he writes of having had an assignment to cover the 2010 Taiwan International Tattoo Convention in Taipei which, while not newsworthy per se, offered him a good opportunity to produce colorful photographs. He describes how he decided to set up an impromptu studio in one of the empty booths of the convention, and do portraits of women with fully tattooed backs. Not only beautiful...

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Matt Allard Captures Geishas

Matt Allard is a Team Leader- Cameras for Aljazeera International based out of Kuala Lumpur covering Asia/Pacific and the sub continent, and has produced a movie documenting the changing culture of geishas. Due to the world financial crisis, even well-entrenched traditions have had to adapt in Japan, as elsewhere, and geishas in Kyoto have had to follow suit.Matt used a Canon 7D, 5Dmk2 and 7 lenses to shoot this assignment. The lenses used were a Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS II, 50mm f1.2, 135mm f2, 24-70mm f2.8, 100mm Macro f2.8, 16-35mm f2.8 and a Tokina 11-16mm f2.8. All interviews were shot on the 70-200mm. All the audio was recorded on a Zoom H4N using either Seinnheiser radio or shotgun mics. It was edited using FCP and ran on Aljazeera English on the 19th August 2010 around the world. Also...

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Mongolian Racer

Reading and posting Stan Greene's excellent interview yesterday will probably satisfy my photojournalism interest for this week, so for a change in pace here's a lovely travel multimedia piece titled Mongolian Racer by The Guardian photographer Dan Chung, and narrated by Tania Branigan. (click the arrow).The multimedia piece is on a horse trainer and his 10-year-old jockey who face the biggest day of their year at Mongolia's Naadam festival, which dates back to before Genghis Khan's time and celebrates the 'manly sports' of wrestling, archery and racing.The Mongolian traditional festival of Naadam is also called in the local dialect as "the three games of men". These are Mongolian wrestling, horse racing and archery. The festival is held throughout the country during the midsummer holidays,...

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PBS Features "Starved For Attention"

PBS' Need To Know is featuring a Starved For Attention slideshow with 19 large photographs by Marcus Bleasdale, Jessica Dimmock, Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil, Franco Pagetti, Stephanie Sinclair, and John Stanmeyer. It's based on the extremely well produced multimedia campaign by Doctors Without Borders/Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF) and VII Photo which exposes the neglected and largely invisible crisis of childhood malnutrition. As an aside, I also noticed on Need To Know an article by Kavitha Rajagopalan on the buffoonish remarks made by Palin on the plans to erect a mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero. All I have to say is that...

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Photojournalism From SE Asia

For those who are hard-core fans of South East Asian photojournalism, OPEN-i hosted a live webinar a few months ago which featured work from photographers living and working in South East Asia, and who discussed the challenges and rewards of working in that region.The webinar (moderated by Paul Lowe) is unusually long (about 105 minutes), and the acoustics are not great, but it offers insight into the work and working conditions of 4 photographers/photojournalists.Jack Picone - Thailand Justin Mott - Vietnam Veejay Villafranca - Philippines Rony Zakaria - Indonesia OPEN-i is a global online community of practice for the professional photojournalism industry where members can discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the industry in live webinars and online foru...

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Photojournalism From SE Asia

For those who are hard-core fans of South East Asian photojournalism, OPEN-i hosted a live webinar a few months ago which featured work from photographers living and working in South East Asia, and who discussed the challenges and rewards of working in that region.The webinar (moderated by Paul Lowe) is unusually long (about 105 minutes), and the acoustics are not great, but it offers insight into the work and working conditions of 4 photographers/photojournalists.Jack Picone - Thailand Justin Mott - Vietnam Veejay Villafranca - Philippines Rony Zakaria - Indonesia OPEN-i is a global online community of practice for the professional photojournalism industry where members can discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the industry in live webinars and online foru...

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MSF's Starved For Attention

"this year 195,000,000 children will suffer from malnutrition" and so starts Starved for Attention the extremely well produced multimedia campaign by Doctors Without Borders/Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF) and VII Photo which exposes the neglected and largely invisible crisis of childhood malnutrition. The campaign aims to present a series of multimedia documentaries of still photography and video from the well-known photojournalists at the VII Agency, such as Marcus Bleasdale, Jessica Dimmock, Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil, Franco Pagetti, Stephanie Sinclair, and John Stanmeyer. The first multimedia reportage is titled Frustration and...

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A Journey Through Asia: Canon 5D II

a journey through asia from ivan vania on Vimeo.Here's a short movie shot with a Canon 5D Mark II titled "A journey through Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The photography/videography (and editing) is by Ivan Vania, a filmmaker from Italy. The lens was a 24 mm-70mm 2.8, while the software was Final Cut Pro. Simple and effective...and an increasingly important component of travel photography. I think that ambient audio (instead of the current soundtrack) would have strengthened it considerably. And better titling would have been nice too.My thanks to Ralph Childs for sending me th...

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NPR: The Mekong, A River

Here's a wonderful multimedia piece The Mekong: A River And A Region Transformed, which is produced by NPR, as only a sterling institution such NPR would know how. It documents the Mekong through a 3,000-mile journey from the rivers source on the Tibetan plateau to its mouth at the South China Sea, relying on Michael Sullivan and photographer Christopher Brown examine the turbulent history and uncertain future along the Mekong. The Mekong is one of the worlds major rivers, and is its 12th-longest, and the 7th-longest in Asia. According to Wikipedia, its estimated length is 4,350 km or 2,703 miles, running from the Tibetan Plateau through...

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Andy Isaacson: Central Asia

Andy Isaacson is a writer and photojournalist whose work The Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan has just appeared in The New York Times, and was published in Slate and National Geographic Adventure, among others.He seems to have made a specialty of photographing Central Asia after traveling in Asia for over a year. He considers Brooklyn and the San Francisco Bay Area as his home. I visited his photography website WorldWebEyes, and greatly enjoyed his diverse portfolios, and was slack-jawed at the beauty of the uncredited music he added to his web site. It must be Tajik or Uzbek, as many of his photographs are from that region, and there are many...

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