Photojournalism – Page 38

Monsoon Rains

Bonna sang beautifully last night at the launch of the new UNESCO office. ?megher pore megh jomeche?. A haunting song by Tagore. The lilt in her voice and its delicate quiver, like the changing light in the wet leaves in the rain. The monsoons are here. It is my birthday today, and my treat to myself was to tear myself away from my laptop and take a walk in the rain in the morning, camera in hand. I came across this working mother carrying her child, delivering food to wealthy homes. The land she walked on would fetch well over three million dollars an acre in current market prices. About the cost of the diamonds in Prince Moosa?s shoes.

working mother in rain ? Shahidul Alam/Drik

It is also Nasreen?s chollisha (forty days after death, significant to Muslims). Rahnuma and the others have joined her family at the family graveyard at Ghazipur. The sky is still crying.

And then there is happy news. The National Geographic just informed us that Omi (Saiful Huq, my research assistant at Drik and a Pathshala alumni) is one of the four awardees of their All Roads Project. Sucheta Das, who works closely with Drik India won an honourable mention. Omi will be feted in Hollywood and the National Geographic Office in Washington DC. They are both over the moon, as indeed I am, having nominated them. It was Pathshala alumni Neo Ntsoma last year. Pressure is on for the hat-trick. Unless they arrest me for nepotism.

Here is an introduction to the photographers:

Saiful Huq

Saiful Huq is a thinking photographer. While his power of visualisation has never been in doubt, it is the reason that he photographs that is more compelling. The trappings of conventional photojournalism lay heavy on all of us. The play of light, the use of lines, the geometry of the image are all seductive. But Huq takes us beyond the dynamics of image construction. It is his concerns as an individual that his photographs give us an insight to. The urge to show the helpless victim, the tearjerker image that looms large on billboards, are often the first choice of photojournalists trying to make their mark. That a young photographer has been able to resist those easy options says a lot about Huq.

? Saiful Huq

His is a reflective stance, not a judgemental one. And in showing the plight of victims of meaningless violence, he chooses not to show them as victims, but as people who find themselves in a strange unfamiliar land. One they have never had to deal with before. It is the humanity of his images rather than the power of their construction that is central to his images. The visual strength is a bonus.

Sucheta Das

It is not often that a woman in a majority world country gets a job in a wire agency. It is even more rare to find a woman who gives it up to take the risk of going freelance. Shortly after winning an award at World Press Photo, when she was riding high, this young woman decided to give up the glamour and the pay, to return to her native Kolkata and try to find her own way to work. No guarantees, no press pass. Just she and her camera. It was a brave decision to take, but I believe the right one. If success can be predicted, then talent, guts, and sensitivity make up the right mix for a photographer to evolve into more than being a chronicler of moments of passing interest.

Sucheta works with an intimacy and an intensity that gets her close to her subjects, but keeps her from getting sentimental. She photographs people when they are most vulnerable, in situations they least want to be known for, but has developed a trust that not only allows her access, but a shared ownership of images that speak of their dignity despite their situation. It is a rare gift, especially in one so young.

Tarubala Bibi, 30, poisoned by drinking arsenic-contaminated water, lies on bed at Chhayghari Pitala village in Baharampur block in Murshidabad, 265 km north of the eastern Indian city of Kolkata May 18, 2005 ? Sucheta Das

posted: Dhaka 2nd June 2006

Boundaries

Chobi Mela IV

She packed her load of firewood onto the crowded train in Pangsha. The morning sun peered through the lazy winter haze. The vendors called ?chai garam, boildeem? and the train slowly chugged out of the station, people still clambering on board, or finishing last minute transactions. Some saying farewell. The scene had probably not been very different a hundred years ago. Maybe then, they carried pan in place of firewood, or some other commodity that people at the other end needed. She would come back the same day, bringing back what was needed here. Only today she was a smuggler. The artificial and somewhat random lines drawn by a British lawyer had made her an outlaw. She was crossing boundaries. There were other boundaries to cross. The job a woman was allowed to do, the class signs on the coaches that she could not read but was constantly made aware of. The changing light and the smells as sheet (winter) went into boshonto (spring). The Ashar clouds that the photographers waited for, which seemed to wait until the light was right.
Rickshaw wallas find circuitous routes to take passengers across the VIP road. Their tenuous existence made more difficult by the fact that permits are difficult to get, and the bribes now higher. Hip hop music in trendy discos in Gulshan and Banani with unwritten but clearly defined dress codes make space for the yuppie elite of Dhaka. The Baul Mela in Kushtia draws a somewhat different crowd. Ecstasy and Ganja breaks down some barriers while music creates the bonding. Lalon talks of other boundaries, of body and soul, the bird and the cage.
Photography creates its own compartments. The photojournalist, the fine artist, the well paid celebrity, the bohemian dreamer, the purist, the pragmatist, the classical, the hypermodern, the uncropped image, the setup shot, the Gettys and the Driks. The majority world. The South. The North. The West. The developing world. Red filters, green filters, high pass filters, layers, masks, feathered edges. No photoshop, yes photoshop. Canonites, Nikonites, Leicaphytes, digital, analogue.
The digital divide. The haves, the have nots. Vegetarians, vegans, carnivores. Heterosexuals, metrosexuals, transsexuals, homosexuals. The straight, the kinky. The visionaries, the mercenaries, the crude the erudite, the pensive the flamboyant. Oil, gas, bombs, immigration officials. WTO, subsidies, sperm banks, kings, tyrants, presidents, prime ministers, revolutionaries, terrorists, anarchists, activists, pacifists, the weak, the meek, the strong, the bully. The good the evil. The hawks the doves. The evolutionists, the creationists. The crusaders the Jihadis. The raised fist, the clasped palms. The defiant, the oppressive, the green, the red. The virgin.
Whether cattle are well fed, or children go hungry, whether bombs are valid for defence, or tools of aggression, boundaries ? seen and unseen ? define our modes of conduct, our freedoms, our values, our very ability to recognise the presence of the boundaries that bind us.
Festival Website

Colliding with the State

Lisa Botos from the Time Magazine office in Hong Kong, had done most of the hard work. Permissions had been obtained and the protocol arrangements had been made. The shoot was on. Having gone through the security hoop at the prime minister?s secretariat, I had settled in at the waiting room along with my colleagues photographer Aminuzzaman from Drik and writer Alex Perry and William Green from Time. That was when the trouble started. Officials rushed to usher me out of my seat. I was wondering what other security alert I had triggered off. My faux pas was somewhat more embarrassing. I had been sitting on the prime minister?s chair.
I had only been allocated a few minutes for the cover shoot, which went well despite one of my lamps blowing on me, but luckily the prime minister had agreed to our suggestion that we follow her on her trip to Pabna. I scurried to change gear for the outdoor shoot. Emptying memory cards, handing over existing images to to take to the library, a quick visit to the loo, were all things that needed to get done, except that I was told ?hurry, she is on her way to the helicopter.? Dumping equipment into my camera bag, handing over my laptop to, I stuck my digital wallet into the pile and made a dash for it. The loo would have to wait. That was when a strong arm jutted out in the corridor. The security guard had prevented me from running into the prime minister! Alex calmly asked me if I had run into other heads of state before. ?Only once? I had said, as I had nearly bumped into Mahathir while running up the stairs at the Mandarin Oriental in Kuala Lumpur. But that was a long time ago.
It was a long and eventful day and one I must write about, but for the moment you?ll need to settle for the cover image of the current Time Magazine (10th April 2006 issue) and Alex?s writeup.

Battuta Was Here

Tughlaqabad Fort is a ruined fort in Delhi, stretching across 6.5 km, built by Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlaq, the founder of Tughlaq dynasty, of the Delhi Sultanate of India in 1321, which was later abandoned in 1327. Photo: Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

Shams al-Din Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Abdallah ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Yusuf al-Lawati al-Tanji Ibn Battuta was more commonly known as Ibne Battuta. Born into a family of Islamic judges in the Moroccan town of Tangier, he developed a thirst for travel after going to Makkah on pilgrimage in 1325 at the age of 21. He travelled extensively, going to Anatolia, East Africa, Central Asia, China, up the Volga, down the Niger, even in the tiny Indian Ocean sultanate of the Maldives. He kept meticulous records of what he saw, what he heard and the people he met. 29 years later, he went back home and wrote about his experiences with the help of Ibn Juzay, a young scholar. He was little known when he died in 1368 as his rihlah was not respected as a scholarly piece of work. Continue reading

Having the Eye

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Preface to Drik Calendar 2006

It was a stinker of a letter. Written to an organisation I knew little about. I was angered that World Press Photo (WPP) had little to do with the world and was largely about European and North American photography. Though it featured work from all over the globe, the jury, the photographers who entered the contest and the winners were largely white western males. So in my letter I had suggested that they rename themselves Western Press Photography. The phone call was a surprise. We didn’t get too many overseas calls in those days. The managing director of WPP Marloes Krijnen, politely pointed out that they too had written me a letter, still on its way, which was dated prior to my letter, and hence had not been written in response to my tirade. They had just asked me to be a member of the international jury. My letter had also mentioned that I considered WPP to be a very important contest despite its shortcomings, and should the opportunity arise, I would be interested in hosting the show in Bangladesh . This led to the second part of the conversation. While the exhibition is generally booked way in advance, there had been a cancellation, and should we want it, the show could be made available in three weeks.

Having recovered from the initial excitement of being asked to be on the jury of what is considered the pinnacle of press photography, I tried to compose myself and considered the options. I needed time, and asked Marloes whether she could call back in a couple of hours. The exhibition could only be shown in its entirety, and we had faced considerable problems with our own exhibitions. The major galleries were either state-owned or belonged to foreign cultural centres not prepared to question the government, or be controversial in any way. Our work had always been critical of the government and the elite, the donor community, the patriarchal system and of the self appointed protectors of religious and family values. We didn’t know of a single gallery that would guarantee that no censorship would take place, except for our own gallery. There was just one small problem. Our gallery hadn’t yet been built. We had drawn up the architectural plans for it though, and part of the superstructure was in place, but still no gallery. I was stalling.

Rafique Azam was then not the superstar that he is now. This was his first project, and we had wanted to give these young architects a free hand to interpret our ideas. I rang him up and asked him if he could build us a gallery in seventeen days! Rafique didn’t react as badly as one might have expected. He knew I was crazy enough to have meant it and having told me how ridiculous the idea was, settled down and gave me a list of all the things he would need to make it happen. He needed to work round the clock, a fair bit of money, some of it the following morning, and full freedom. There could be no slip ups in the supply chain. It was going to be a race to the finish as it was.

Osman Chowdhury was a client, but it was as a friend that I rang him up. There was no way he could organise the sort of money we needed at such short notice from his company, but he was able to promise a sum that we could get started with. And he could provide it the next morning.

Marloes rang as she had promised, and I said we would be happy to host the exhibition, in our own gallery. There the polite conversation ended. But that was also the beginning of a wonderful relationship between our two organisations, World Press Photo and Drik. A relationship that has blossomed over the years.

It didn’t take long for the news to spread. Mr. Gajentaan, the Dutch ambassador was a friend who had a strong interest in the arts, and had arranged photo exhibitions in his home in the past. Excitedly he rang me and wanted to come straight over. WPP coming to Bangladesh was big news, and he wanted to be part of the action. He was calm enough when we told him about our plans to have it in three weeks and in our own gallery. It was when we told him he was standing inside the gallery that he flipped. There was no gallery. ?Do you realise this is the most prestigious photo exhibition in the world?? he asked. Yes, we knew. And we would have a good show. A much shaken ambassador went back to Gulshan. To be fair, he didn’t call World Press to tell them that the gallery was only being built.

There was more to the story. It was 1993 and the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party were fighting each other in the streets, locked in a bitter battle for power. This we felt, could be a chance to unite these warring factions. We knew there was no chance of getting the two leaders of the parties at the same table, but the deputy leader of the BNP was Dr. Badruddoza Chowdhury, a student of my father, and we could probably approach Abdus Samad Azad through a personal friend Kaiser Chowdhury who was then the chief whip of the Awami League. Having been so critical of World Press Photo in my letter to them a week earlier, I was now extolling its virtues to two of the most powerful politicians in the country. Kaiser and my mum did the original groundwork, and I put in a good pitch about how this would demonstrate to the nation that they were forward looking political parties, and how much media coverage the event would have. It worked, and they agreed to jointly open the show. Now I had another tool to play with. While local media didn’t really know much about World Press, the fact that these two sworn enemies were going to open a show together was big news, and we managed to get the media excited. Mahfuz Anam of The Daily Star, the biggest English daily, agreed to do a whole media campaign around the event, and the bits were beginning to fall into place. At the packed press conference on the veranda of my parents’ home (Drik rents the upper floors), we were stalling for time, to let the paint dry in the gallery upstairs!

?rp?d Gerecsey the curator (who later went on to become managing director of WPP) and Bart Nieuwenhuijs, the board member who had come to setup the show, huddled with my colleagues and spoke in agitated whispers. Who was going to bell the cat? Eventually it was Bart who came up to me. They wanted to put in nails on the freshly painted walls! We did put in those nails, and the show was a spectacular success. The two deputy leaders cut the ribbon together, and confessed that they enjoyed sharing a cup of coffee, despite their political differences. The media went gaga. WPP and Drik had together pulled it off.

Since then, the two organisations have continued to work together at many levels. An impromptu seminar for press photographers followed. We arranged for the show to go to Kathmandu and Kolkata. Rabeya Sarkar Rima of the Out of Focus group became the first Asian child jury member. I remember telling Marc Proust when he came to curate yet another WPP exhibition in our gallery, that Nurul Islam, the young man who sold us flowers in Monipuri Para, had also been a former child jury member. We had the WPP retrospective exhibition at the National Museum at the first Chobi Mela, the festival of photography that we launched.

We collaborated on many other things. We started nominating young Asian photographers for the Masterclass, and one year, two photographers from Pathshala, our school of photography, GMB Akash from Bangladesh and Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi from Zimbabwe were amongst the twelve talented photographers in this international pool. Pathshala itself relied heavily on WPP for its existence. With no state or other external funding, it was always going to be difficult to setup and maintain a school of photography in our region. We utilised the first WPP seminar programme to launch the school, and the tutors and the workshops that WPP provided became important anchors for what has now become a degree programme. WPP even provided a grant which was a big help in those early days. Since then we have collaborated on training Asian and African photographers in regional programmes organised in Jakarta and Kenya , and been involved in longer term educational projects in Sri Lanka and Tanzania . I myself worked in the jury another three times, once as chair, and I have spoken at several WPP events.

Interestingly, it was the very issues I had raised in that original letter which the two organisations have worked together to try and solve, and both WPP and Drik are very different organisations today.

It is to celebrate that friendship, on the 50th Anniversary of World Press Photo, that we put together this calendar. The images are by the majority world participants of WPP seminars and their tutors, some of the finest photographers around. It is a protest against the continued use of exclusively white western male photographers to document the majority world that developmental agencies and western media have made their standard practice. It is a direct answer to the superior race argument that they continue to use to justify their actions and to dismiss our work when they say ?they don’t have the eye?.

Shahidul Alam

Tales From A Globalising World: Launch of World Tour

Ten photographers illustrate selected aspects of globalization in Asia, North America, Africa, Europe and Latin America. Their stories express a single subject that can be comprehended only in the light of its constant transformation.
Together they create a whole, which is brought together in the exhibition.

TALES FROM A GLOBALIZING WORLD is a collective project that draws its strength from its individual authors. By uniting diverse photographic perspectives and styles of expression, it combines various aspects of globalization into an image of the new reality that is shaping the world we live in.
Photographed by
Akinbode Akinbiyi, Ziyo Gafic, Philip Jones Griffiths, Tim Hetherington,
Thomas Kern, Bertien van Manen, Shehzad Noorani, Cristina Nu?ez, Andreas
Seibert and Stephan Vanfleteren.
Conceived, curated and produced by
Daniel Schwartz
The show begins its international tour at Drik?s new gallery in Dhanmondi at 5:00 pm today (22nd September 2005) and will be the inaugural show at this exciting new venue. The exhibition will later go on to Cairo and Rome.
The guest of honour for the exhibition will be Professor Muzaffer Ahmad,
Trustee, Transparency International Bangladesh. Dr. Dora Rapold, the
honourable Ambassador of Switzerland in Bangladesh will be present as
the special guest.
The project is an initiative launched in 2002 by the Swiss Agency for
Development and Cooperation (SDC).

At The Mercy Of The River

http://www.newint.org/issue378/exposure.htm  
'We are at the mercy of the river. Sometimes it spares us the agony of
shifting out. Sometimes it doesn't. But almost always it haunts us.'
Zoinuddin is a grizzled 70 years old. He is one of the people who live on
the temporary islands of the River Brahmaputra, which are constantly
flooded. I first met him when I was on an assignment for Outlook magazine. I
came back with enough pictures for my magazine. But I returned to the same
place a year later to photograph independently. It was then that I saw this
sunken boat being pulled out of the water. The immense labour put in by
these people to retrieve the boat struck me as the perfect symbol of their
daily struggle for survival. It was as if through this one picture I had
captured the essence of the lives of the people of the temporary islands of
the Brahmaputra.
Swapan Nayak, India

Imaging Famine and other events

Born Aid 20. The Commission on Africa. Live 8. Make Poverty History. The G8
Summit in Gleneagles. We are witnessing renewed debate about global poverty,
disasters and development, especially in Africa. Coming two decades after
the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980’s the time is ripe for a
reconsideration of the power and purpose of disaster pictures given the way
the images of the Ethiopian famine spawned the original Band Aid/Live Aid
phenomenon.
http://www.imaging-famine.org/
Imaging Famine is one of several intriguing events I’ll be involved with in
September 2005. The event in New York is not public, so I’ve left out the
details, but I will be there in case anyone wants to meet up.
5th and 6th September: Imaging Famine Conference
The Newsroom. Guardian. London. UK
contact: Dave Clark, Bolton University: dj at djclark.com
http://www.imaging-famine.org/
*8th September: Panel Discussion: Imaging Development*
*Open University Campus, **Milton Keynes**. **UK***
*contact: Helen Yanacopulos, Open University: H.Yanacopulos at open.ac.uk *
*http://www.devstud.org.uk/Conference05/abstracts/PED.htm *
10th September: Symposium, A Critical Evaluation of Photographic
Commissions
Sunderland University. Sunderland. UK
contact: Bas Vroege, Paradox: Ebv at paradox.nl
http://www.theiprn.org/temp/media/pdf/folder.pdf
12th ? 14th September: New York
17th and 19th September: 15th Videobrasil International
Electronic Art Festival
Sesc Pomp?ia, S?o Paulo. Brazil
contact: Luciana Gomide, Video Brasil: *fcfcom at uol.com.br*
www.videobrasil.org.br <http://www.videobrasil.org.br>**
**
22nd September: Launch of Internatioanal Touring Exhibition: Tales From a
Globalising World
Drik Gallery, Dhaka, Bangladesh
contact: Rezaur Rahman, Drik: reza at drik.net
http://www.foto8.com/reviews/V2N3/globalizing.html
24th September: National Geographic’s All Roads Film Festival
Egyptian Theatre: Los Angeles. USA
contact: Alexandra Nicholson, National Geographic: anichols at ngs.org
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/allroads/schedules_la.html
26th September: Presentation: “In Search of the Shade of the Banyan Tree”
UCLA. Los Angeles. USA
contact: Angilee Shah: angshah.asiamedia at gmail.com
29th September: Conference: Free Media
The Norwegian Institute of Journalism
contact: Solberg Oona, MFA: oona.solberg at mfa.no
http://www.ij.no/friemedier.htm
It was Drik’s birthday yesterday! Sweet Sixteen!
Best wishes,
Shahidul
ps: we’ve started a data entry unit and are looking for work. So if you have
any ideas…

Chobi Mela and Bangladeshi photographers excel at National Geographic

You may be forgiven for thinking that the results of the National Geographic All Roads project had been fixed by me. Two out of the four main awardees and two out of the five
honourable mentions were from my list! Those of you who were here for Chobi
Mela III will recognise the work of three of the photographers listed here.
Shehzad was not involved in the festival, but has been a regular contributor
to Drik for many years. Neo spent a year at Pathshala as a Fredskorpset
participant. I am enclosing my introductions to the photographers that I had
submitted to the National Geographic.
The festival opens at the Egyptian Theater in LA on the 21st September 2005.
Or else you could come to the 2nd part of the festival at the National
Geographic headquarters at Washington D.C. from the 29th September to the 1
st October. There is a morning seminar on the 30th. You will get to meet All
Roads Advisory Board members, photo program awardees, magazine editors,
filmmakers, and artists from around the world.
The blurb from Geographic:
Photographer Panel Discussion
*"Camera and Culture: The myth of objective documentation"*
Is documentary photography inherently objectifying? Can comprehensive
documentation be done through non-native eyes? Is there an unspoken
universal morality in documentary work?
Please join us for a candid and interactive panel discussion exploring
these issues and more at both festival venues. Panelists will include *All**
Roads Photographers Program 2005 Awardees*, world-renowned photographer *
Reza*, and award-winning International Editor & Curator *Shahidul Alam*; the
discussion will be moderated by National Geographic Magazine, Senior Editor
*John Echave*.
Please see below for times at each location:
*L.A.**:*
Saturday September 24, 2-3:15 pm, Egyptian Theater
or
*D.C.:*
Saturday Oct.1, 2-3:15 pm Grosvenor Auditorium
And now the photographers:
Neo Ntsoma:
Neo Ntsoma is a complex person. High strung, energetic, intense,
passionate, laughing, crying, running, leaping, she is in the middle of
everything and everywhere. A spring ready to uncoil. She is also deceptively
perceptive. Having faced racism, in every guise, she has toughened herself
to face life's challenges. But it is her black identity that has emerged as
the soul within her work. She rejoices in her colour and rejoices in colour.
Her search for identity within the black South African youth, is no
nostalgic trip down memory lane, but rather a buoyant leap at the crest of
the wave of youth which captures
the energy, the dynamism, the joy of a youth determined to find its own
expression. It is the raw energy of her work that attracts me.
Sudharak Olwe:
Olwe's photographs have a Dickensian construction that reflect the
complexities of the lives he portrays. Fine detail. Frames crammed with
information. Seemingly superfluous data spilling over the rim of the frame.
Photographs charged with an energy that perhaps talk of the people he
portrays. People who eke out everything they can from a life that has had
the nutrients pulled out a long time ago. With visual elements jostling for
space, Olwe's multilayered images reflect the layered hierarchy of a class
and caste system that have permanently relegated those in the bottom of the
rung. A rung is perhaps a deceptive metaphor, as a ladder suggests the
ability to climb. For Olwe's characters, there is no exit. No happy ending.
Tomorrow is no different from today. So the characters themselves, squeeze
every inch out of life. Ironically, in dealing with a life with very limited
options, they live life to the full. Much as the frames of Olwe's
construction.
Abir Abdullah:
There are few photographers I have come across who have maintained as high
a level of integrity as Abir Abdullah. I have observed him as a student, as
a fellow photographer, as a colleague, a fellow tutor and a friend. At all
stages, he has been exemplary in the way he has upheld the values that
photojournalists live by.
A fine photographer, Abir is also a sensitive individual whose work
reflects the attachment he has for his subjects. Though he is currently
employed as a wire photographer, his approach has never been superficial,
and he has relied on his ability to build relationships with his subjects.
It is this sensitivity, and the respect that he has for people that I feel
comes through in Abir's work, and is eventually the underlying strength of
his photography.
Shehzad Noorani:
Noorani's life has shaped much of what he photographs. A child worker who
got caught raiding a neighbour's kitchen for food, is an unlikely candidate
for a successful career in photography. But statistics are very poor at
predicting life as it unfolds. A need to feed the family led to Shehzad
having to ensure that the money kept flowing in. This he did with consummate
ease by being one of those rare photographers who always deliver on time, to
specification and to highly exacting standards. This thorough professional
however, is also a skilled artist, who has combined his human skills with a
wonderful eye that finds things other eyes may have missed. It is the
subaltern that Shehzad has photographed, but not through pitiful eyes, or
some romantic notion of charity, but through a genuine understanding of what
being poor is. His tenacity, his ability to push himself and his unusual
duality between the disciplined professional and the gifted artist, makes
Shehzad special.
Dear Shahidul:
We would like to thank you for taking the time to send in your nominations
for the 2005 class of the *All** Roads Photographers Program*. On Monday
July 18th four Awardees, and five Honorable Mentions were selected from a
very talented and diverse pool of nominees. As a matter of fact, having five
Honorable mentions is a testimony to the high quality of the photoessays.
The final awardees are: *Marcela Taboado*: Women of Clay (Mexico); *Sudharak
Olwe*: In search of Dignity and justice: the untold story of Mumbai's
conservancy workers* *(India); *Neo Ntsoma* South African Youth ID ? Kwaito
Culture (South Africa); and *Andre Cypriano*: Rocinha, An Orphan Town (
Brazil).
And the honorable mentions are: *Shehzad Noorani:* The Children of Black
Dust ? That child who wants to live (Bangladesh), *Abir Abdullah*: Old Dhaka
(We were born here and will die here?) (Bangladesh) , *Walter
Mesquita:*Viva Favela Project (BrazilMahalla,)
*Rena Effendi:* Faces of Change (Azerbaijan) , *
Gia Chkhatarashvili:* Ushguli, A Village at a Crossroad (Rep. of Georgia)
We were most pleased with the nominations and encourage you to please start
thinking of qualified photographers for next year!
Warm Regards,
Chris Rainier and Eduardo Abreu
All Roads Photographers Program

Masterpieces To Go

Another non-terrorist Pakistani story.

Under the shade of a colossal banyan tree, Karachi truck painter Haider Ali, 22, is putting the finishing touches on his latest creation: a side-panel mural of Hercules subduing a lion, rendered in iridescent, undiluted hues of purple, yellow, red and green. His 10-year-old nephew, Fareed Khalid, applies a preparatory undercoat of white paint to the taj, the wooden prow that juts above the truck?s cab like a crown. Like Ali?s father, who first put a brush into his son?s hand at age eight, Haider is carrying on a master-apprentice tradition with Fareed, who spends his afternoons in the painter?s workshop after mornings in school.