A New Dawn In Egypt?

Photo © Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

It's surreal to be at the cusp of starting on a photo~expedition while my country of origin is experiencing an unprecedented massive popular uprising to get rid of the current regime of Mubarak, the Egyptian president....who announced that he would remain as its leader but sack its government.

There are a number of thoughts that come to mind. This is a real organic grassroots popular uprising in Egypt against an extremely unpopular and corrupt regime. The Egyptians participating in the uprising are secular, young, educated and less so, and are technological-savvy. There are no signs of religious ideology, of Islamist influence, in these demonstrations.

I sensed that many of the Western pundits are shocked (and possibly disappointed) that there is no whiff of Islamic extremism in the demonstrations...this pulls the rug from under the Western (and the current Egyptian leadership) interests who would like to characterize the uprising as another Iran.

While Mubarak signaled his decision to stay in power, it's not up to him any longer. It's the Egyptian youth who will decide the course of the nation...as it should be.

It's an unparalleled opportunity for the United States to support the Egyptian people in its quest for democracy, and eliminate all anti-Americanism feelings in the whole region by doing so. Imagine if the US administration unequivocally declares its support for the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt!

Incha' Allah there will be a new dawn for Egypt and its people.

(Posted from Delhi)

An Essay On Photojournalists' Scarves....Or Not

This essay on scarves was written and sent to me by a photographer-photojournalist who wants to remain anonymous. Complaints, thoughts and remarks can be sent to him/her. I've edited, reworded and excised parts to keep it shorter.

"The first reason for photojournalists wearing scarves is that these instantly and with certainty identifies you as a PHOTOJOURNALIST, and removes you from the pool of suckers known simply as "photographers", especially "art" photographers.

The second reason photojournalists love scarves (especially those of ethnic origin) is that it tells non-photojournalists know that we are exotic, and that we do exotic, non 9 to 5, non traditional type things.

The third reason is that wearing the ethnic scarf will make other people instantly assume the photojournalist has a deep connection with, has spent time living with, has created a powerful but yet unseen photographic essay about, the ethnic group that wears that particular scarf.

The most popular, but lacking in credibility is the Keffiyeh. It has become stylish, fashionable, and carries with it a strong hint of activism. It's out of favor except for newbies. It's one thing to wear it around the neck...which is barely passable, and quite another having your picture wearing it as a turban (think Yasir Arafat) on your website bio or Facebook page...this signals the world you're a miserable ass...and that you're prematurely bald.

The second type of scarf is the Cambodian Krama. This particular scarf shows you have worked in the conflict ridden regions of Cambodia (also known as Angkor Wat), and most probably Thailand's southern beach wars as well, and that you suffered from malaria and bouts of sunburn, and dangerous girls on the battlefields of Koh Samui.

The third is the African scarf- the Tagelmust. Worn by Tuareg nomads in the Sahara, these scarves are worn by the old school of photojournalists- those who have covered the north African conflicts, tragedies like Darfur, the Western Sahara, the Polisario, Algeria, even Southern Sudan! This is the Ferrari of scarves."

By the way, if you haven't seen and bookmarked Shit Photojournalists Like, you ought to. I don't think it has mentioned scarves, yet...but it will have to sooner or later. You'll see.

MSNBC's Does Thaipusam

Photo © Stephen Morrison/EPA-All Rights Reserved

MSNBC's Photo blog featured Thaipusam, which was observed a few days ago by thousands of Hindus in both Malaysia and Singapore, and who subjected themselves to painful rituals. These included rituals involving self-piercing with hooks, skewers and small blades. Some devotees pull chariots and heavy objects using hooks attached to their bodies. Others pierce their tongues and cheek to impede speech, while others enter into a trance during the self-mortification as a result of the incessant drumming and chanting.

The Asia Society in New York is also featuring Thaipusam on its Photo of the Day page on its website. I wonder what's keeping The Asia Society from bringing us the very best photojournalism of the continent...it's taking baby steps, and yet seems to have the resources to really make a splash in visually fulfilling its mission. Maybe I expect too much?

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 mainly by the Tamil speaking community settled in Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka and elsewhere.

I seldom follow MSNBC's Photo blog....perhaps I should make it a habit to check it every now and then.

POV: Omid And Why We Will Never Win

Photo © Michael Kamber- Courtesy The New York Times

Michael Kamber is a well known New York City-based freelance writer and photographer for The New York Times. He worked in West Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean, covering conflicts in the Ivory Coast, Congo, Liberia, Haiti, Afghanistan and Iraq. Apart from frequently-published photo essays in The New York Times, he also authors a journal of his Afghanistan experiences. Its entries began in December 2010 and appear on the newspaper's LENS blog.

His latest entry -along with over a dozen of his excellent photographs- is on yesterday's LENS blog under the title of Deeper Into Fathomless Afghanistan, and reading Michael's journal entries, I was compelled to leave a comment on the blog.

Here's one of the entries in Michael's journal that prompted my comment:

He writes:

Beside me, an Afghan, clearly an interpreter, introduces himself in accented English as Bob.

“What’s your real name?” I ask him.

“My name’s Omid. But on the first day at this job, the sergeant asked me my ‘terp’ name. I told him: ‘I don’t have a terp name. My name is Omid.’

”Omid is too complicated for us to remember,’ he told me. ‘From now on, your name is Bob.”

My comment on the LENS blog:

"It's too bad that the guy who uttered this insulting and ignorant nonsense to the interpreter hasn't realized that he's insulting Omid by his stupidity and arrogance. What if the roles were reversed, and the Afghan was to tell a Robert that this name didn't roll off his tongue easily, and he'd be called Mohammed from now on? How would Robert feel?

Omid's is entitled to be proud of his name...it probably has a long lineage...and since we are occupying his country, we ought to show immense respect to those who risk their lives for a few dollars a day and work with the US army. Learning how to pronounce their names is the civil and respectful thing to do. Omid is not a stray pet adopted by the sergeant.

My hat's off to Mr Kamber for quoting this and other statements in this piece...i'm sure he's as dismayed as I am by them."

Reading the other entries added to my long standing pessimism; we will never win. When we are unable (or unwilling) to respect people who help us by risking their lives, we will gain no allies unless we abet their corruption. They, in turn, view our presence in Afghanistan as a cow to be milked, and eventually will stab us in the back.

Another thing. Just look at the expression of the Afghan in Kamber's photograph above this post. He's holding a copy of a Chicken Soup For The Soul given to him by a well-meaning US charity. Who dreamed of sending a collection of "inspirational" platitudes (and in English) to Afghanistan? I obviously can't speak for this Afghan, but I bet he looked at the book with amusement, and eventually guffawed with his friends at the naivete of the Americans.

Chicken Soup For The Soul to change Afghanistan? The mind boggles.

Addendum:  I've received a few emailed comments on this post.

One from a frequent reader of this blog who suggests that my post came across as anti-military. That's incorrect. I am anti-war...especially wars that are unnecessary like the Iraq war, and those wars that devolved into aimless havoc and propping an unsupportable government, like the war in Afghanistan...and the least we -and our military- can do is respect those Afghans or Iraqis who work for us, at the risk of their lives.  I'm hopeful the individuals depicted in Mr Kamber's journal are the exception.

The other email comments from a handful of readers agreed with my point of view.

The Coptic Man on "Tiananmen Square"?

Photo © Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

A photograph by Amr Abdallah Dalsh, a Reuters photographer, stopped me in my tracks. It shows an Egyptian young man (presumably a Christian Copt) menacing or hurling a piece of iron at the cowering Egyptian police. This came about as a consequence of the heinous bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria on New Year's Eve which killed 23 and injured 100.

Egypt is still reeling from the violence, and its government has quickly blamed external Islamist terrorism, promising to bring the perpetrators to justice.  I'm not holding my breath on that eventuality, and neither are the Copts, who have been subject to discrimination at all levels in their very own country.

High on the Copts' grievance list is Egypt's policy to make it extremely difficult for them to build churches.  The country's prime minister recently rejected demands for Copts to be free to build churches, claiming that the government will make sure that there are enough worship places for both Muslims and Christians. A joke.

And this is one of our so-called stalwart allies in the Middle East. Another joke.

But let's go back to the photograph for a minute. A half-naked man confronting a phalanx of well armed, well protected security forces...and seemingly single-highhandedly making them cower like rats. This is truly an example of a picture being worth a thousand words.

Photograph courtesy Reuters Full Focus Blog

NYT's Week In Review Section

The snow storm may have something to do with it, but I read The New York Times' Sunday edition from cover to cover yesterday, and saw its Week In Review section carried the above photograph.

Hurray! I chose this photograph as my favorite in my post on the 55 photographs featured by Reuters on its Best of The Year Photojournalism, and is by Adrees Latif who made it during relief supplies being delivered to flooded villages in the Muzaffargarh district of Punjab in Pakistan.

I described it as "one of these photographs that tells it all...the struggle for survival, the physicality of despair..."

Two questions pop to my mind....Do the photo editors of The New York Times read my blog??? And do I take that as a sign to hang my cameras and become a photo editor?

I think the answer to the first is 'maybe', and the answer to the second is a categorical 'no'.

Ashura: Photos In "The Big Ones"

Photo © REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl (Courtesy Reuters Photo Blog)

Photographs of the Day of Ashura are carried by a number of the newspaper large picture blogs, largely because of its graphic nature, and while I initially thought it might have been because it reinforces the stereotype of Islamic fervor being violent, I've reconsidered and I'm quite certain that this is not the case. I recall seeing lovely peaceful scenes of Muslims celebrating Ramadan on The Big Picture blog.

Photo © Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images (Courtesy WSJ Photo Journal)

Be it what it may, the photographs are graphic because the acts of self mortification and flagellation carried out by the Shias are just that...extremely graphic. Flagellation is not at all exclusive to Shia Islam, but is also practiced by certain elements of the Christian faith.

Photo © REUTERS/ Ali Hashisho (Courtesy Reuters Photo Blog)

The Day of Ashura falls on the 10th day of the Islamic month of Muharram and for the Shias, commemorates a day of mourning for the death of Hussein ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at the battle of Karbala.  Shias consider Hussein the third Imam and the rightful successor to Muhammad, and the grief for his death is demonstrated by the self-flagellation in parades and other venues.

Photo © Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters (Courtesy WSJ Photo Blog)

For Sunni Muslims, Ashura is observed by fasting as the Prophet Muhammad did, to commemorate the day when Moses and his followers were saved from Pharaoh by God by creating a path in the Red Sea. Surprising, huh?

The top photograph is of a girl with a green headband with the words "Hussein" as she attends the Ashura religious festival in Khorramabad, southwest of Tehran.

The second photograph is of a Shia devotee in New Delhi beating his bloodied chest as part of the ten-day mourning period marking the death of Imam Hussein. 

The third photograph is of a Lebanese Shia whose shaven head bleeds after tapping his forehead with a razor during the Ashura ceremony in Nabatiyeh.

The fourth and last photograph is a Shia walking on hot coals during a Ashura ceremony at a mosque in Yangon, Myanmar.

I ought to plan attending Ashura to photograph its ceremonies...it would be fascinating. Yes, bloody and graphic...but I'd attend it given half the chance. I came close years ago to do so when working in Bahrain, but I was advised not to attend it with a camera. Different times, I suppose.

Vincent Prévost: West Papua

Photo © Vincent Prévost-All Rights Reserved

 I occasionally receive emails from photographers such as the one from Vincent Prévost that make the work of maintaining The Travel Photographer blog feel really worthwhile.

Vincent tells me he's been a regular reader of The Travel Photographer blog for about 2 years, and that it has been a source of inspiration to him. He cites my two posts on Grenville Charles and Diego Verges, who documented tribes of West Papua,  as triggering his own photo expedition "Highlands Encounters" to this remote part of the world.

That's what this blog is all about...to inspire photographers to explore other unfamiliar areas, to try new techniques and to document endangered cultures.

He has been teaching French in South Korea since 2002 and is also a freelance editorial photographer who fuses fine art and journalism. While most of his work is in color, he also enjoys black & white photography, and travels with compact audio equipment to add a further dimension to his visual work.

West Papua is an Indonesian province that borders the independent nation of Papua New Guinea and forms the western half of the world's second largest island. The indigenous people of West Papua are of the same ethnic origin as those in the eastern half of the island of New Guinea. Ethnically and culturally, they are also related to other Melanesian peoples of the Pacific.

The Big Picture Blog: Best of 2010

Photo © Goran Tomasevic (Reuters)

Boston Globe's The Big Picture Blog is featuring the first part of three sets of photographs, which define 2010. The first set consists of 40 photographs...with some gems from Emilio Morenatti, Finbarr O'Reilly, while this one from Reuters' Goran Tomasevic is probably my favorite so far.

It shows U.S. Marines from Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, protecting an Afghan and his child after Taliban fighters opened fire in the town of Marjah, in Nad Ali district, Helmand province on February 13, 2010.

Trances At Sufi Shrine (Denver Post's PBlog)

Photo © Manan Vatsyayana (AFP/Getty)

The Denver Post's Photo Blog of the week 12.10.2010 features an interesting photograph by Manan Vatsyayana (AFP/Getty) of an Indian devotee seemingly going into a trance to rid herself of evil spirits. This happened earlier this month at the Hazrat Shah Dana Wali Dargah in Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh. It's north of Lucknow and about 200 miles from Delhi. Thousand of devotees from all religions visit the 650-year old shrine of Sufi saint each Thursday to seek blessings for their family and ward off evil spirits.

This is topical as I shall soon be traveling to Gujarat to lead In Search of the Sufis of Gujarat Photo Expedition™, during which our small group will photograph at various Sufi shrines in the area, and where trances and exorcisms frequently take place.

While I've seen devotees exhibit mild trances especially during qawalli performances at the shrine of Nizzam Uddin in Delhi, I also witnessed extreme displays of religious trances in Varanasi, the quintessential Hindu religious city. I spent a couple of days photographing at the dargah of the Sufi saint Bahadur Shahid, where trances and loss of consciousness by devotees were the norm. Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims mingled and sought blessings from this Muslim saint, and some of them went into intense trances. I got the lead to the venue from a NY Times article.

To see more of these practices, here's an audio slideshow I produced and a stills gallery of my photographs at Bahadur Shahid.

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 .

Olivier Laban-Mattei: Award Winner Paris Match

Photo © Olivier Laban-Mattei- All Rights Reserved

 Olivier Laban-Mattei was awarded the 2010 Grand Prix Paris Match for his recent coverage of Haiti. This prize was created in 1980 and all French professional photographers can compete. Every two years, the prize is decided by an international jury, with the winner receiving 8,000 euros.The prize recognizes photojournalists who cover current events.

Olivier Laban-Mattei is a photojournalist who worked with AFP for 10 years, and left it a few months ago to start a career as an independent photographer. For the past decade, Olivier criss-crossed the world reporting on the Iraq war, the Haitian earthquake or the Gaza Strip humanitarian disaster.

Olivier's Haiti gallery contains a number of graphic photographs that relay the horror of Haiti's earthquake. I have naturally not seen all of the coverage of the Haiti earthquake, but this is one of the most hard-hitting of those I did see.

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 being delivered to flooded villages in the Muzaffargarh district of Punjab in Pakistan. It's one of these photographs that tells is all...the struggle for survival, the physicality of despair...

By the way, Adrees tells us that the elderly man with a white scarf around his neck, managed to hang on to the hovering helicopter and was pulled to safety.

Eid El-Adha

Photo © Muhammed Muheisen/AP (courtesy Lens Blog New York Times)

Muslims around the world are celebrating the Eid El-Adha or  the"Festival of Sacrifice" in commemoration of the belief that Ibrahim (Abraham) was willing to sacrifice his son Ismail to God. Observant Muslims celebrate it by slaughtering animals to commemorate God's gift of a ram to substitute for Ibrahim's son, and distributing the meat amongst family, friends and the poor.

It's also an occasion for everyone (but mainly children) to wear newly-bought clothes in order to celebrate it in style.  Many young boys wear suits and ties, while young girls show off their fancy dresses as in the above photograph by Muhammed Muheisen of a couple of Yemeni girls dressed as angels, complete with pink diaphanous wings, in the back streets of Sanaa.

The Haj In 1885 And Now

CNN has featured an interesting clip of images and audio dating from 1885 of Mecca and of the Haj ritual. It's accompanying article tells us that Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, a Dutch scholar of Oriental cultures and languages, and an advisor to the colonial government of the Netherlands East Indies, visited Mecca in 1885 taking photos and making sound recordings. He had converted to Islam, and was therefore allowed to gain entry to the city.

The article is an interesting read, especially since it seems Snouck had to leave his camera equipment behind to a local Saudi, who continued making pictures, possibly becoming Mecca's first home-grown photographer. (My thanks to Gul Chotrani who sent the article to me).

Contrast the scenes in the CNN clip (it has an annoying advert at its start) to the following photograph; one of the many posted by The Boston Globe's The Big Picture of Muslim pilgrims circling the Kaaba at the center of the Grand mosque in Mecca during the annual Hajj pilgrimage.  (Click it for larger photograph).

Photo © REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Mohamed Hassan: Photojournalist

Photo © Mohamed Hassan- All Rights Reserved

Mohamed Hassan Abd El Aal (Mikko Hassan) lived and worked in Cairo, and graduated from the Akhbar El-Yom Academy with an honor degree in Journalism. He worked as a press photographer in the daily newspaper El-Shorouk El Gedid. Apart from covering political issues, protests and demonstrations, he was interested in documenting the traditional manufacturing processes in Old Cairo. One of these features gleaned him first prize in the 2009 Annual Press Photography Competition of Egypt.

I met Mohamed (aka Mikko) at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Istanbul. He wasn't in my class, but approached me, rather shyly, and expressed his pleasure in seeing that one of the instructors was of Egyptian heritage. He told me that although he had seen my name on the roster of instructors, but had taken it for Lebanese. Mohamed participated in Guy Calaf's class, and had been awarded a scholarship.

I reviewed Mohamed's portfolio which, as he wrote in his biography, had photographs of his explorations in the deepest corners of Old Cairo. He did them during his one day week-ends, on his own time, deriving nothing of it except his own pleasure and self-improvement. I sensed his enthusiasm for photography, saw his talent and his eye for composition, and predicted to him that he'd be one of Egypt's best photojournalists.

It was not to be. His trajectory was very sadly cut short because of a fatal freak accident a few days ago. He will be missed by many.

The Foundry Photojournalism Workshop family reacts: Eric Beecroft, the co-founder of the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, announced that a permanent full scholarship in Mikko's name will be made available, and his work is featured on the FPW's front page.

LATimes' Framework: Chhath Festival

Photo © Narendra Shrestha/EPA

 The Los Angeles ' Times large image photoblog Framework has featured a number of lovely photographs from around the world this past week. I liked this one by EPA photographer Narendra Shrestha of a Nepali woman staring while offering fruits and coconuts to the setting sun during the Chhath festival in Kathmandu.

The Chhath festival is observed by Hindus in India and Nepal, and it's performed in order to thank the Sun god Surya for sustaining life on earth, and to ask for the granting of wishes. The rituals include bathing, fasting and abstaining from drinking water, standing in water for long periods of time, and making offerings to the setting and rising sun.

WSJ Photo Journal: The Haj

Photo © Hassan Ammar/Associated Press

The Wall Street Photo Journal is one of the first of the large picture blogs to publish a photograph to commemorate the Haj (or Hajj, as it spells it). The caption reads "Tens of thousands of Muslim pilgrims prayed inside the Grand Mosque, during the annual Hajj in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The Islamic pilgrimage draws three million visitors each year, making it the largest yearly gathering of people in the world."


I think the qualifier that it's the largest yearly gathering of people is appropriate since the religious gatherings of the Kumbh in India surpass it....however the Kumbhs are not yearly pilgrimages.

The Guardian newspaper's website has also featured a fresh slideshow of the Haj rituals. Some lovely images there.

POV: Face Covered, Women Only...Must Be Islamic!

Photo © Gali Tibbon/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

 But it's not. The caption as per the WSJ Photo Journal is this:

"A member of the religious group Women of the Wall wore the traditional Jewish prayer shawl of men called the tallit during a prayer service at the women’s section of the Western Wall in Jerusalem Monday."

So the traditional Jewish prayer procedures at the Western Wall call for the separation of women from the men, and for women to cover their heads and faces?

Huh? You mean like in traditional Islam?

Gosh.

Enrico Martino: Tango Soul

Here's a wonderful multimedia essay by the talented Enrico Martino on the ageless, eternal and graceful dance of Argentina, the tango. Originating in Spain or Morocco, the tango was introduced to the New World by the Spanish settlers, freed African slaves and gauchos in Buenos Aires around the 1880s.

Tango is not a dance, but a particular way of seeing and enjoying life...it's a way of life, where seduction by both sexes is disguised by dance moves and steps. But no one is fooled...in my view, tango is another word for seduction.

This multimedia will be one of  the pieces that I shall use as examples for my future students at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop...in Buenos Aires. I especially liked the man's voice-over...soulful, melancholic...and also virile and passionate. Perhaps the Ken Burns effect is used a little too much for my linking, but the sequencing of the black & white photographs is wonderful all the same.

At one point, the narrator tells us that no foreigner can write tango. Yes, I absolutely agree.

Enrico Martino is an editorial, geographic and documentary photojournalist specialized in travel and cultural assignments requiring in-depth research. He's a contributor to Italian and international magazines, to include Meridiani, "D"-Repubblica, Epoca, Espresso, Panorama, Focus, Gente Viaggi, In Viaggio, Airone, Panorama Travel, Sette, Traveller, Tuttoturismo, Elle, Marie Claire, Merian, Spiegel, Die Zeit, Jeune Afrique, Altair, Rutas del Mundo.