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Entries in photojournalism (176)

Monday
Feb202012

trade sex for security

He sat at an Indonesian warung, a cheap food place offering white virgin rice, spicy chilly, egg, green veggies, tempe, tofu, deep fried crackers, on the other side of the Berlin Wall.

Smokers called it the Berlin Wall because they could smoke away from the inquisitive prying eyes of parents and administration moles. Desk jockeys in green plaid. Hot and sticky tropics. He’d escaped from the tyranny of noisy educational sad robots trapped in their futile expectations of perpetual childhood.

An illiterate village woman piled her trash near a grove of banana trees. She lit a fire. Roosters, hens and chicks scattered. Smoke curled around a man pushing his chipped blue plywood cart loaded with plastic dishes, cheap cloth, simple tools, brushes, mops, bags, hats, and basic household goods. Rolling wheels through neighborhoods.

Cumulus clouds gathered momentum.

Nearby were yelling village people. A tall thin woman teased her 4-year old monkey boy child.

Pregnancy was her ticket out of hell, loneliness and misery.

In world villages you traded sex for security. Father ran away to impregnate new victims. A mother tormented the kid. He cried. She laughed at him. She created a mini-monster. A boy who hated women now and later. He was dependent on them for food and affection.

In the future he’d kill her with a sharp machete. A mother and daughter uttered primal grunt sounds. A mother combed her daughter’s hair scavenging follicles for nits and lice. Protein. Human evolution.

Crying children. Perpetual distractions. Emotional zombies, minus seven. Time=death. Life is a temporary condition.

Wednesday
Feb152012

carve

in a village
a girl carves
a gourd
she creates
children
families
animals
homes
forests
flowers
skies
rivers
stars
planets
delicate
lines
spirals
universes


Thursday
Feb092012

photos of tuberculosis

Misha Friedman worked with Doctors Without Borders or Medecins Sans Frontieres.

While working in Chechnya in 2008 he began making photographs.

He continued to work with N.G.O.’s to pursue stories, “because journalists can’t be trusted,” he said. “These patients, who do they trust? They trust the people who care for them. So credibility comes from showing up with people they trust.” 

“Most of the people you see here are dead,” Mr. Friedman said last week, looking through the photographs. “My images have not really helped them. Maybe they’ll help people in the future. Maybe they’ll help with fund-raising here and there. But to these particular people, they did not help.

“So that part is harder, being kind of just a photographer.”

You may see his slide show at LENS.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/saving-lives-or-photographing-them/

More...

An invisible epidemic

Tuesday
Feb072012

image is everything

once upon a time in cambodia i went to the barber.

i saw some glossy pictures. handsome. beguiling. 

i want to look that man, i told the barber.

do you have any money.

yes. i showed him some paper.

you have to wait.

how long.

years.

ok.

 

Monday
Feb062012

Motivation in China

Please open your creative notebook. Using a simple writing tool like a pen or #2 lead pencil I want you to consider the following questions. Please answer them using your basic English. 

Why am I here? _____ 

Am I a machine, a tool? _______ 

What exactly is a machine? ________ 

What is my motivation to learn English? Money. 

Your supervisor has instructed me to motivate you. She expects me to motivate you to complete the assigned tasks, pass the exams and arrive on time. Her management style instructed me to use fear as a form of discipline with you. We are all well aware how the power and threat of fear motivates humans. 

If I fail to motivate you and pass you I will be executed. Survival is my fear based motivation. 

Fear of starvation. Fear of poverty. Fear of failure. Fear of humiliation or shame. Fear of not meeting social expectations.