Abdul Waheed, The Music "Doctor"

Here's a delightful "human interest" audio slideshow featured on CityFM89 (a FM station in Pakistan, which promotes the rich musical heritage of the region while offering a wide variety from pop to world music, from jazz to house music) about Abdul Waheed, the owner of Waheed Music Shop in Karachi.Waheed Music Shop is tiny store full of musical instruments; acoustic guitars, tablas, flutes and banjos are crammed on the floor, waiting to be sold or repaired. The piece tells us that Abdul Waheed has been doing this work for over 40 years, and has had renowned artists visit his shop for all their musical needs. I'm certain that the Pakistani qawwali musicians have found their way to his shop.It can also be viewed on Vimeo.While I can't speak Urdu as such, it...

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Wendy Marijnissen: A Year In Pakistan

Based in Antwerp, Wendy Marijnissen is a freelance documentary photographer from Belgium, who has a career in looking for, and reporting on, stories with a social context. She completed a long term reportage in Israel and Palestine, using music to show a different part of daily life in this stressful and violent region. She's currently working on a new project about childbirth and maternal mortality in Pakistan, of which some of her compelling photographs can be seen in the above movie.Another of Wendy's compelling photo essays is on the dai. A dai (or dayah in Arabic) is a traditional midwife or birth attendant in the Middle East, and Pakistan. Midwifery skills are usually passed on from generation to generation and most practitioners have had no formal training. The unhygienic conditions...

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Reuters: Best of the Year Photojournalism

Photo  Adrees Latif/Reuters It seems that we're at the time of year when many of the news magazines, and large photo-blogs will soon be featuring their "best of the year" photographs. The first of the bunch is Reuters which is showcasing some 55 photographs. Reuters photographers produce over half a million images every year. Some pictures define an event, others capture a moment revealing an aspect of the human condition. What's really neat this time is that each photographer describes the event which he/she photographed along with technical details. My favorite photograph is the one above by Adrees Latif made during relief supplies...

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MediaStorm For CFR: Pakistan

Here's Crisis Guide: Pakistan (click on image), a magisterial multimedia production featured by The Council of Foreign Relations and produced by MediaStorm. As we all know, Pakistan is critical, if not the most critical country, to the national interests of the United States, and yet it's misunderstood and viewed through a prism of apprehension and, from some quarters, of distrust.The concern over its stability with the current escalation of drone attacks on its tribal areas, the horrific human toll following the recent floods and its geographical and ideological positioning underscore its importance. The New York Times reported last night that...

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NYT: Pakistan Floods By Tyler Hicks

Photo  Tyler Hicks/NY Times-All Rights Reserved The catastrophic flooding of the Indus is considered as Pakistan's worst natural calamity, which has ruined almost every infrastructural aspect that connects the country together  roads, bridges, schools, health clinics, electricity and communications. The destruction is also estimated to set Pakistan back decades, will weaken its feeble civilian administration and add to the burdens on its military. The New York Times has recently featured Tyler Hicks' compelling photographs of the disaster in Pakistan's Floods, as the one above of two young girls quenching their thirst at a water...

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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...

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LENS: Tyler Hicks & The Tabligh

Photo  Tyler Hicks/NYT-All Rights Reserved It's been a while since I featured a war-related photojournalism piece, so I thought The New York Times LENS blog brought us a couple of days ago an interesting On Assignment gallery from Tyler Hicks on the Tabligh Jamaat. I like the clever way the photographer framed the above image, as he had to photograph surreptitiously and very quickly because photography was banned from the Tabligh gathering for religious reasons. Wikipedia describes the Tabligh (which means "conveying of message") movement as an apolitical religious movement, whose principal aim is reformation of Muslims, and was...

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WIRED: Kanepari & Ferguson

Photos  Adam Ferguson (L)/Zackary Canepari (R)-Courtesy WIRED "The photojournalist has long been known as the lone wolf, traveling solo to the far-flung corners of the world to document experiences few are capable of seeing. By function, its often a solitary quest, lonely and alienating; rarely as romantic as the photographs make it appear." What a great start for the Raw File article written for WIRED by Bryan Derballa! The article deals with the friendship and healthy competition between Adam Ferguson and Zackary Canepari, two immensely gifted photojournalists working in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. It appears that they helped...

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Tyler Hicks: The Battle For Pakistan

Photo  Tyler Hicks/NYTimes-All Rights Reserved A superb photojournalism feature published by The New York Times of photographs by Tyler Hicks appeared on its website late last night. The title of the multimedia feature is The Battle For Pakistan; a title which I find rather exaggerated, as it really is about South Waziristan. Having said that, the area which may well be the toughest challenge for the Pakistani military in its war against an insurgency. South Waziristan is home to Baitullah Mehsud, who -according to the accompanying article, leads the Taliban in the area and has engineered many suicide bombings in recent years. The...

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Pakistani Cinema: Zackary Canepari

Photo  Zackary Canepari -All Rights Reserved TIME Magazine features a photo essay by Zackary Canepari titled The Last Days of Pakistani Cinema. It's a welcome change from the current run of the mill photojournalism which we normally see in the mainstream media. I've had enough of seeing photographs of frightfully scary Islamic mullahs, with black beards and betel-stained teeth, which seem to delight photo editors, and are standard fare in our newspapers. So I cheer when I see diverse photo reports such as this one. It seems that in its heyday years, during the 1970s, the movie studios of Pakistan churned out around 200 movies a year,...

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Alixandra Fazzina: TIME's Pakistan Essay

Photograph © Alixandra Fazzina-All Rights Reserved A paragraph in the TIME magazine article titled How Pakistan Failed Itself starts off with this: Pakistan is a complicated country, one of religious and political diversity, fractured by class and ethnicity. Pakistanis like to quip that they have a population of 170 million  and as many different opinions. It is accompanied by Pakistan Under The Surface, a slideshow of photographs by Alixandra Fazzina. The thrust of the article and photographs deals with the notion that in reality there are two Pakistans; one that is secular and "Westernized" while the other is under the growing influence...

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Zackary Canepari: The Heart of Punjab

©Zackary Canepari/The New York Times The New York Times featured the work of photographer Zackary Canepari in a slideshow titled The Heart of Punjab. His above photograph is of young students at a seminary school in Dera Ghazi Khan, a gateway both to Taliban-controlled areas and the heart of Punjab.One of the key captions in the slideshow comes from the accompanying article:"The Taliban in south and west Punjab exploit many of the same weaknesses that have allowed them to expand in other areas: an absent or intimidated police force; a lack of attention from national and provincial leaders; a population steadily cowed by threats, or won over by...

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Matthieu Paley: Lal Shabaz Qalander Festival

Here's a multimedia feature by Matthieu Paley titled Pakistan's Love Parade. I initially thought it dealt with a Pakistani gay parade of some sort, but it turned out to be a remarkable (and lengthy, at almost 12 minutes) reportage on the annual festival of Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandar when, as writes Matthieu: "For three days and nights, over one million Sufi pilgrims, devotees and onlookers join an infectious chaos of swirling and dancing; a firework of emotions and sensations; non-stop rhythmic drumbeats echoing through a heady hashish haze." What an incredible way to describe it! I certainly wouldn't need the hashish to be exhilarated by...

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The Big Picture: Scenes From Pakistan

Photo © AP/Emilio Morenatti-All Rights ReservedThe Boston Globe's The Big Picture is consistent in bringing remarkable photographs from various sources and covering interesting current events. It recently featured Scenes From Pakistan following the country's announcement that it would accept Islamic Sharia Law to be implemented in its Swat Valley region, as part of a truce with local Taliban leaders. In this particular feature, it acknowledges the artistry of AP photographer Emilio Morenatti. Emilio was named Newspaper Photographer of the Year by Missouri School of Journalism for its Pictures of the Year International competition.The above photograph...

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New York Times: Talibanistan

Photograph Lynsey Addario-Courtesy NY TimesIt's been a long while since I've seen an intelligent and interesting article published in the New York Times' Sunday magazine, but Talibanistan (Right At The Edge) by Dexter Filkins (accompanied by the black & white photographs of Lynsey Addario) in this week's magazine is really a chilling read. Naturally, I would've liked to see more of Addario's intense photographs (perhaps also in larger format), but this article competes with the best of the British or French photo journalistic magazines. It's quite a lengthy article, which goes into details of the situation in Pakistan and its borders with...

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Kate Orne: Pakistan Brothels

Photograph © Kate Orne-All Rights Reserved To highlight the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop starting in Mexico City this coming Monday, I will focus this week's The Travel Photographer blog posts on various photojournalists and their work. This is the second in the series.Kate Orne is a New York-based photographer who worked amongst the neediest people in Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past seven years. Her mission was to use her craft to fight against indentured slavery and to support the wellbeing of women, children and animals. She worked on several essays on indentured laborers in South East Asia, on victims of domestic abuse, on Kabul...

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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 Br...

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The New York Times : Peshawar

Image © The New York Times-All Rights ReservedThe New York Times brings us a slideshow feature on Peshawar, the frontier town in Pakistan, legendary for its gun markets and home to a community of gunsmiths proud of their ability to make exact copies of weaponry. Peshawar literally means 'High Fort' in Persian, and is known as Pekhawar in Pashto. It's a major Pashtun city. Interestingly, the photographs are not credited to a photographer, but the newspaper has confirmed that the photographer's name was withheld for safety reasons. The accompanying article describes how the Taliban and its cohorts are now concentrating efforts to take the city...

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WPost: Praying for Benazir

The Washington Post has featured a short video by Travis Fox on the gatherings following Benazir Bhutto's assassination in December. Her assassination hasn't only caused enormous havoc on internal Pakistani politics, but it also created considerable resentment between the dominant Punjabis and the remaining tribal and ethnic minorities. Many Sindhis (like Benazir) believe that she wasn't assassinated because she opposed extremism and advocated democracy, but that she was killed because she was a Sindhi.According to the Washington Post: "Few believe the country is in imminent danger of fracturing again. But Bhutto's death has exacerbated ethnic tension in at least two ways: It has angered non-Punjabis because of her status as a member of a minority, and it has eliminated one of the few Pakistani...

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NY Times: Karachi After Bhutto

Image © Tyler Hicks/New York Times-All Rights ReservedThe New York Times brings us this slideshow of Karachi street scenes from one of my favorite photojournalists, Tyler Hicks. The title, Karachi After Bhutto is self-explanatory, and portends an major political upheaval in this critically important country.It's been reconfirmed this morning that our mass media hasn't lost its timidity in reporting on the current political theater in Pakistan. Here's an article in the NY Times reporting on yesterday's meeting of journalists with Pervez Musharraf, the President of Pakistan, who rejected any suggestion that he or any members of the Pakistani military...

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