Durga Puja: The Idol-Makers Of Kumartuli

Photo © Dibyangshu Sarkar—AFP/Getty Images

It's less than a month to my forthcoming photo-expedition/workshop Kolkata's Cult of Durga Photo~Expedition & Workshop™, whose primary aim is to photograph the innumerable rites associated with the Durga festivities, documenting some of the ornate pandals (platforms on which the deities are displayed), and ultimately their immersion in the city's Hooghly river.

Coincidentally, Time's LightBox featured the above photograph of artisans work on semi-finished clay statues of the Hindu goddess Durga in Kumartuli, a neighborhood of Kolkata famed for its clay idols. It seems that ongoing monsoon rains have made it hard for idol makers to finish on schedule.

Also coincidentally, the Photo Blog of MSNBC has a gallery of photographs by AFP photographer Dibyangshu Sarkar , who paid a visit to Kumartuli, the village of the idol-makers in Kolkata.

It seems that in the past, wealthy families would invite the idol-maker artisan to their homes and fashion the idol there, instead of at a workshop. According to the narrator, "the most intriguing part would be the painting of the third eye of the Goddess. The artisan would sit in meditation sometimes for hours and then suddenly in one swift stroke of his paint brush, it would be done."

In April, I posted Chhandak Pradhan's The God Makers, a gallery also documenting the clay artisans of Kumartuli in Kolkata.

POV: Is Leica Making A Micro Four Thirds?

I am not in the prediction business, and I'm not a technophile...I'm just a camera user, who just a few months ago, bought a Leica M9 as a street photography tool, and use a Panasonic GF1 for everyday photography. I'm also a long time Canon cameras user, but those I use for my travel photography business.

Having laid down my iron-clad qualifications for being an "fallible predictor", I read with interest many of what has been written in blogs by people with more industry insight and technological expertise than I, and who predict the advent of a Leica M10 (and possibly a new series of more advanced M lenses AF capability) and others who say that a smaller new mirror-less design is in the offing.

I throw my hat with the latter. The electronic viewfinder interchangeable lenses cameras offer the image shooting quality and flexibility of a digital SLR and the portability of a digital point and shoot....and have been a huge hit with consumers, pro-consumers and professionals. Why wouldn't Leica seek to enter that market?

The current line-up for Leica digital cameras are the S2 DSLR ($23,000), the M9 rangefinder ($7000), the X-1 ($2000), the D-Lux 5 ($800) and the V-Lux 30 ($750). I can see a gap between the X1 and the M9 in terms of price point...a $3500 Micro Four Thirds could fit very well in that gap.

Naturally, it would require a couple of new AF lenses...could they'd be manufactured in Japan? I know. That's the weakest link in my predictive chain.

That being said, I really feel there's an enormous market for such a camera in Leica's line up. It would not cannibalize sales from the range finder crowd, and would induce the buyers of the point and shoot models to spend more to acquire a more versatile tool.

How much would I bet that Leica will announce such a product at Photokina? About $5.

Darkness Visible Afghanistan

I occasionally post on projects that I believe ought to be supported by the public at large, and one such project is Darkness Visible Afghanistan by photojournalist Seamus Murphy, whose aim is to raise $10,000 to create a documentary movie based on his many years traveling and photographing in Afghanistan.

"My mission is to promote an understanding of this mysterious, complex and fascinating culture."

Seamus Murphy has been photographing Afghanistan since 1994. He published a book, also titled A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan, as a chronicle of the country and its people over those tumultuous years. For two decades, Seamus has also worked extensively in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America and most recently, America. He has won 7 World Press Photo Awards and a World Understanding Award (POYi) for his work from Afghanistan.

Of the book Darkness Visible, Afghanistan, Philip Jones Griffiths wrote that "Seamus Murphy was a poet with a camera who captured the essence of life in one of the oldest countries in the world. It is a humanistic view of a misunderstood country and a rare glimpse into the nation's soul."

Many of the documentaries on Afghanistan that I've read about are focused on war, on the Taliban and its excesses...so I'm happy to dedicate a post to Mr Murphy's project...a documentary that hopes to promote its culture, its history and its people.

Charlotte Rush Bailey: Nominee B&W Spider Award

Photo © Charlotte Rush Bailey-All Rights Reserved

I am very pleased to report that Charlotte Rush Bailey was presented with the 6th Annual Black and White Spider Awards Nominee title in the category of "Amateur - Portrait" for her image of Mother India at the Nomination & Winners PhotoShow watched by 40,000 online viewers who logged on live from 154 countries to see the climax of the industry's most important event for black and white photography.

The Black and White Spider Awards is in its 7th year, and is a international award honoring black and white photography. This event shines a spotlight on the best professional and amateur photographers in a annual competition and globally webcast event, reaching photo fans in 154 countries.

The judges reviewed the entries online for eight weeks before making their final nominations and Charlotte's "Mother India," which they described as an exceptional image was honored by nomination of the Jury.

The image was made during my Tribes of South Rajasthan & Kutch Photo~Expedition™ in which Charlotte participated.

For more of Charlotte's talented photography, be sure to visit her website.

Monsoon...

Photo © AP / Manish Swarup

With all the hoopla about Irene and its impact on New York City (this post was written yesterday evening before the big 'hit'), I thought I'd feature another gallery of monsoon photographs as shown on The Sacramento Bee's photo blog, The Frame.

I chose this particular photograph because of the man clutching the bag...his expression is just priceless. Enlarge it by clicking.

That's all I have time for...

The Big Picture Does Janmashtami

Photo © Altaf Qadri-All Rights Reserved

The Big Picture featured a gallery of photographs covering the festival of Janmashtami, a Hindu festival celebrating the birth of Krishna, an avatar of the god Vishnu, and is one of the most popular festivals in the Hindu Religion.

Houses are beautifully decorated, and sweets are offered to the deity. Many of the devotees fast for that day and break it after the birth of Krishna at midnight. People also make child footprint marks using some flour mixed with water in the entire house and sing devotional songs.

The Big Picture site tells us that children and adults dress as Krishna and his consort Radha in bright, elaborate costumes and jewelry, while human pyramids form to break a large earthenware pot filled with milk, curds, butter, honey and fruits.

Dark Light: Abbas & Melisa Teo

I'm glad I stumbled on Dark Light, a joint exhibition by Abbas (Magnum) and Melisa Teo, who traveled for 3 years documenting the spiritual traditions of Buddhism, Shamanism and Hinduism.

It's an interesting contrast of styles: the black & white photojournalistic photographs of Abbas and Melisa's more abstract, color-filled and blurry images. The contrast between the sharp black & white imagery by Abbas and the colorful intentional (or not) photographs by Melisa shows that there is ample room for either and both disciplines and styles.

I liked Abbas' relaxed conversational narration, probably honed through years of public speaking, while Melisa's is somewhat stilted and strained. Photographers usually make awful narrators...but Abbas did his very well.

The exhibition is held in Singapore from September 1 to 23rd, 2011. Further details are available here.

A few days ago, I expressed my POV that travel photographers could learn from fashion photographers, and that having such a two-way exchange of ideas, concepts and techniques is a good thing for both types of photography. It's the same for the styles espoused by Abbas and Melisa.

In a part of the narration, Abbas tells us that he would photograph a wide angle documentary image of the Ganges, while Melisa would choose a small flower floating on it...the whole versus the part. Similarly, on some of my photo workshops, I had the experience when shooting alongside photographers who have a fashion or interior design background...they see less in documentary style and more in abstract terms....or the whole versus the part.

POV: A Leica S2 As A Travel Camera?

A recent post on The Luminous Landscape seems to have prompted my good friend Eric Beecroft to suggest I should get one. Perhaps made half seriously half jokingly...but his suggestion got me thinking and now prompted this POV.

I tend to distill all such suggestions by using a return on investment yardstick. Pretty basic, huh? According to B&H, the price of the S2 is $23,000 (the more posh S2-P is $28,000), while a Leica Summarit-S 35 mm f/2.5 ASPH Lens is $6,500 and a Leica Summarit-S 70mm f/2.5 ASPH Lens is $5,000. The grand total for this hardware is $34,500...excluding tax.

So what do I get for a capital investment of over $35,000? Well, The Leica S2 is said to provide imaging quality of digital medium-format, and create 37.5 megapixel files. It produces 72.5 MB RAW or 106.6 MB JPG files, which open to images over 16 x 24" at 300 dpi.

There's no question that the Leica S2 is a phenomenal camera, but in my view its price point and technical specifications are aimed at commercial photographers, not travel photographers. The return on an investment of that magnitude for travel photographers is tough to justify (unless they're one of the celebrity travel photographers), especially in the current industry doldrums.

The most expensive Canon is the EOS-1Ds Mark III SLR Digital Camera with a price tag of ("only") $7,000 and it provides 21.1-megapixel full-frame images. The more modest Canon 5D Mark II, and a favorite of travel photographers, has a comparative paltry price tag of $2,500...half the price of the Leica Summarit-S 70mm lens mentioned above.

"the computer sez no"

A travel photographer would need to sell 10 photographs at $250 each to recoup the investment in a Mark II, and almost a 100 photographs just to recoup the investment in the Leica S2. Would the S2's image quality do that for me?

Simplistic? Sure...there are many other tangible and intangible factors that also enter in this logic. That being said, this is more or less how CFOs and CEOs decide on capital expenditures.

So in reply to Eric's suggestion: "the computer sez no", as the famous line in Little Britain* goes.

* A classic British comedy tv series.

Yuri Kozyrev: On Revolution Road

With the fall of Libya's regime, I thought I'd feature Yuri Kozyrev's On Revolution Road, a reportage on the past months' uprisings in the Middle East against the sclerotic and despotic regimes that governed these countries for decades.

Kozyrev's focus was on the youthfulness of the revolutionaries, their clever use of social media websites, their embrace (for the most part) of nonviolent protests as a political tool.

As an award-winning photojournalist for the past 20 years, Yuri Kozyrev has covered every major conflict in the former Soviet Union, including two Chechen wars. Immediately after September 11, 2001, he was on the scene in Afghanistan, where he documented the fall of the Taliban. He spent much of the past eight years based in Baghdad, as a contract photographer for TIME Magazine. He has traveled all over Iraq, photographing the different sides of the conflict.

AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini

I also thought I'd feature this priceless image of a man, wearing a t-shirt with the design of U.S. flag, taking part on Friday prayers at the main square of the rebel-held town of Benghazi, Libya, on August 12, 2011. It's part of a larger gallery in The Atlantic's In Focus.

Shankar Laxman: The Beedi Factory

Photo © Shankar Laxman-All Rights Reserved

Shankar Laxman describes himself as a "multimedia journalist working towards helping socially conscious organization visually illustrate their causes" but his biography is rather sparse, except for telling us that he seeks to make an impact and foment understanding through the use of new media techniques. He has been traveling throughout India documenting social issues pertaining to the lives of rural and urban population.

I chose to feature Shankar's photo story The Beedi Factory , which was photographed in Mysore, Karnataka. Beedis are thin cigarettes, filled with tobacco flake and tied with a string in one end. They are considered the poor man's cigarettes, and tend to be associated with a lower social standing and account for about half of India's tobacco consumption.

According to Wikipedia, workers in the industry roll an average of 500-1000 beedies per day, handling 225-450 grams of tobacco flake, and inhaling tobacco dust and other volatile components...causing a high degree of respiratory and other ailments.

Libya...Final Throes

Photo © AP/Alexandre Meneghini

In Focus, the photo blog of The Atlantic, is one of the first to feature the Libyan rebels in the Libyan capital. More will follow shortly.

Having Al Jazeera on NYC's cable news line-up is wonderful. No other US cable news comes even close to its coverage. In fact, MSNBC finally woke up from its slumber on Sunday early evening and hastily cobbled some footage, frequently quoting Al Jazeera. CNN tried its best, but there's no room for second place in breaking news coverage.

Heida Helgadóttir: Ethiopia

Photo © Heida Helgadóttir-All Rights Reserved

Heida Helgadóttir is a 35 years old photographer based in Lisbon, Portugal as well as Reykjavík, Iceland. She started out as an apprentice for a portrait studio photographer, and started working as a full time photographer in 2004. She worked as a staff photographer for Fréttablaðið, Iceland’s largest newspaper, from 2004 to 2007 and for Birtíngur the largest magazine publishing company in Iceland, from 2007 to 2010. She recently moved to Portugal as a freelance photographer, and continues to do freelance work in Iceland.

I liked her portraits of South Ethiopians...presumably all from the tribes of Omo Valley, such as the Mursi, Hamer, Daasanach, and the Karo. All are black and white photographs, and are beautifully composed.

The survival and way of life of the tribes of South Ethiopia are under threat by various projects planned for the area, especially a massive hydroelectric dam that affects the Lower Omo River.

Heidah also has a gallery of portraits of Nepalis, which brings me to this little anecdote. A few weeks ago, I pay for a couple of Cokes at the corner store near my building, and I tell the cashier  she could be a Nepali from Katmandu. She smiled and told me she was born in Mustang!!! Mustang!!! She was born in the remote Kingdom of Mustang, now part of Nepal, and not exactly easily accessible. My mind marvels at how someone born in Mustang would now be working in a corner store in New York's West Village. Incredible! I'll have to spend some time with her to find out how that came about.

POV: Can Travel Photogs Learn From Fashion Images?

Not only is there a wonderful feature on Esperenza Spalding, the young jazz singer, in this week's T Magazine (The New York Times' Style Magazine), but there's also a lovely Hermes advertisement of a model pirouetting, showing off what I presume are clothes from its Fall collection.

I frequently leaf through T Magazine to look at the fashion adverts. Not only to admire the beautiful models, but also to study how fashion photographers set up their shoots, the postures and poses adopted by the models, the color schemes and the lighting. I hesitate to say that these photographs inspire me, because I think it would be an exaggeration, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if my leafing through such pages doesn't leave a visual residue which I reach for when I'm photographing in India, Bhutan or Bali...for example.

"Is it uncomfortable for a self-described 'mensch' like me to admit this? Perhaps... a little."

The imagery of the Hermes advert reminded me of my own photo gallery The Dancing Monks of Prakhar, which features Cham dancers in Bhutan. The dancers are generally monks, and wear elaborate costumes and masks. I am certain that looking at fashion spreads must've influenced my aesthetics in some way. Is it uncomfortable for a self-described mensch like me to admit this? A little.

There's absolutely nothing wrong in that...quite the opposite. In fact, fashion photographers set up photo shoots in exotic locales, taking a page or two from travel photographers' handbook. So having a two-way exchange of ideas, concepts and techniques is a good thing for both types of photography.

Some of my photo-expeditions participants have backgrounds in either fashion or design industries, and their photography is consistently different in style and aesthetic from those who don't have that background...they have a whimsy, an airy look to them that the rest don't have.

Raw File: Wired: Assignments

RAW FILE, Wired magazine's blog, has started a new series of posts called Assignment Wired, where the magazine will hand out photo assignments to its readers, and then eventually choose some submissions to publish and critique. I thought it was a brilliant idea, and said so in an earlier post....ignoring the naysayers and the skeptics who commented on RAW FILE.

Its first assignment was The Corner-Store...the goal was to document the place where you buy your Gatorade and clove cigarettes and introduce us to the people who work and hang there. And the first round of submissions for that project have be in, and a few were selected to be shown on RAW FILE, and critiqued.

The three essays chosen to be shown in their entirety are far from being professional, but they clearly show an intent to learn and grow....and for that, they are to be commended. The critiques are light-weight, and are just cursory observations...and should've been deeper, giving tips on storytelling and sequencing as an example.

The next assignment is The Family, which requires participants to profile a family member by following them around on their daily routine, and dig into their history to report the most interesting and relevant info from their background.

Trekking To Shiva In Kashmir

Global Post featured this short video of a pilgrimage trek performed by devout Hindus to a shrine in Kashmir. It si to one of the most revered pilgrimage sites of India hidden in the Himalayas. Amarnath is only accessible for a few months during the year, and where an ice stalagmite is said to represent a Shiva lingam.

The Amarnath cave is located at a distance of 86 miles north east of Srinagar, at a height of 13000 feet above sea level. Tradition has it that in every lunar month, the icy stalagmite begins to form, on the first day of the bright half of the month, and reaches its fullest size on the full moon day, and then begins to wane and disappear on the new moon day. This process repeats itself each month.

Delhi Photo Festival 2011

The Delhi Photo Festival has now a Facebook page, which is listing all the details of workshops, lectures and exhibitions.  You can read details on the involvement of Raghu Rai, Asim Rafiqui, Sohrab Hura and myself on this Facebook page which is being updated all the time.

I will be participating in the festival, where I will teach a short multimedia module on October 15 aimed at photographers and photojournalists to produce audio-slideshows that rivals in quality and content then the more elaborate multimedia productions. It will focus on how to make a quick slide show production, using photographers' own images and audio generated in the field, and produce a cogent photo story under publishing deadlines.

Rodrigo Abd: The Mayan Queens

Photos © Rodrigo Abd_All Rights Reserved

Here's an interesting project undertaken by Rodrigo Abd, an Argentine photographer with AP currently based in Guatemala. He traveled to Coban to document the indigenous women competing to become this year’s National Indigenous Queen of Guatemala. The event was held during the Rabin Ajau National Folkloric Festival in Coban, Guatemala.

Abd used a 19th century style wooden box camera he had bought in Afghanistan, which required the women to hold still for up to two minutes as Abd exposed the images directly onto photo paper. The photo paper is plunged into the developer then into a fixer liquid inside the camera body. A negative image of his subjects appears. Later on, he photographed these negatives to produce the positive versions.

“It’s about having this connection with people I’m portraying because they have to be totally quiet and spend some time only with me, looking at me with my camera.”

This project certainly attracted the attention of the blogosphere, as it appeared on OregonLive.com (much larger photographs) of The Oregonian, and in The Guardian.

The same process was documented by Frances Schwabenland in her The Photographer of Jaipur.

Carolyn Beller: The Mississippi Delta

Photo © Carolyn Beller-All Rights Reserved

I've featured Carolyn Beller's talented work of Oaxaca on The Travel Photographer blog a few months ago, and she comes back here with an equally impressive body of work from her time spent photographing in The Mississippi Delta, a gallery of 15 photographs.

Carolyn started her photography work in earnest as recently as 2006 with an established background in art, interior design and pottery, as well as in teaching art. She took up photography so it would serve to document the lives and culture of various indigenous people she came in contact with when she worked on pottery projects. She traveled to Nepal, India, Burma, and Rwanda, and will revisit India this coming January.

As in her Oaxaca gallery, I thought her Mississippi Delta gallery had traces of David David Alan Harvey's and Alex Webb's influence, especially in terms of composition and shadow play. Carolyn is a gifted photographer with a keen eye for capturing 'tableaux" which tell stories in themselves.

Speaking of which, I was imagining viewing Carolyn's Mississippi Delta's photographs, with a song by Howlin' Wolf or John Lee Hooker (as only two examples) blaring in the background. Naturally, her already compelling photographs coupled with a sound track by local musicians, and interviews would make a remarkable audio-visual package.

The Leica M9-P

I'm on self-imposed downtime today, but I thought I'd show you Darren Rowse's video review of the new Leica M9-P. Leica's M9-P is priced at $8000, or $1000 more than the price of the standard M9. The changes are purely cosmetic, and I (and others) suggested that a few inches of black electrical tape, and a plastic LCD screen cover, would convert your M9 to a M9-P for pennies.

Unless you're an orthodontist or a hedge fund manager.

Canon Does Holga

Southampton Tomatoes-© 2011 Tewfic El-Sawy

When the heavens open up to a deluge of rain upon a Long Island summer house, what does one do? Well, in my case, I find still life to photograph with my new Holga lens attached to my Canon 7D, which I had the foresight of bringing along just in case.

Whilst in Buenos Aires, my friend Mervyn Leong won one of the Holga lenses during a quiz session at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop. Having seen some of his test photographs with it, I bought one from B&H a few days ago, and I am liking it a lot.

Southampton Fruits-Photo © 2011 Tewfic El-Sawy

The results look as if they were made with a classic analogue toy plastic camera, it has soft-focus properties, produces more Holga-like vignetting, and opens up a new dimension to my photography. In a few weeks, I'll be in Kolkata leading a photo expedition and teaching a workshop, and I intend to take it with me and try it out on its streets. I have a few projects in mind while there, which involve portraits...and having this attachment will add a different style. I'll be interested to explore its video results as well.

This reminds me that John Stanmeyer published a wonderful book Island of Spirits, which he photographed using analogue (ie real) Holgas.

The main drawback with a Holga lens is that it needs a huge amount of light. That being said, I prefer an underexposed look for the images made with it, so a manual setting is preferable.

Canon 7D With A Holga Lens f8

Fifth Annual FCCT Photo Contest 2011

The Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand and OnAsia, one of the leading photo agency in Asia, are soliciting participations in the Fifth Annual FCCT Photo Contest. All photos must be taken in the Asia-Pacific region, and photographic submissions in the following four categories will be accepted:

* Spot news: for the best single image photograph taken at a news event in the Asia-Pacific region. No more than five photographs per photographer may be submitted in this category.

* Feature photography - for the best single-image non-news "feature" photograph taken in the Asia-Pacific region. No more than five photographs per photographer may be submitted in this category.

* Photo essay - for the best collection of up to 12 photos on a single topic taken in the Asia-Pacific region. No more than three photo essays per photographer may be submitted in this category.

* Environmental Issues - A special category, sponsored by Delegation of the European Union to Thailand, for the best single photo or photo essay of up to 12 images focusing on environmental topics, including issues such as natural resources and waste; climate change; nature and biodiversity; and the environment and public health. No more than five single images and/or three photo essays per photographer may be submitted in this category.

* In addition, the judges will select one Photographer of the Year to recognize either the best single image, photo essay or the most impressive collection of work submitted by a single photographer in 2011.

Submissions can be published or unpublished work but MUST have been created between Sept 1st 2010 and the contest submission deadline, Sept 23rd 2011. First-place winners in Spot News, Feature Photography and Photo Essay will each receive: $1,000 cash and one round-trip ticket for economy-class air travel in Asia,

I'm generally not fond of photographic contests, but this one may be more interesting than the others I've seen. I will review its terms and conditions before committing to participate. I think I have a photo essay that would suit this contest perfectly.

CPN: Gary Knight: Advice To Young Photographers

Canon Professional Network has featured five Canon Ambassadors – photographers Michael ‘Nick’ Nichols, Gary Knight, Ziv Koren, Frits van Eldik and Paolo Pellegrin, and asked them what they’ve learnt from their years of experience and what advice they would offer to young photographers starting out on their photographic careers.

I thought I'd feature Gary Knight's interview here...this is purely a personal choice based on what he advocates "keep it simple...and don't think too much"; advice which I always follow and advocate, and since I met Gary in Bali some years ago...I know his advice is not a fluff piece, and that he speaks his mind. So his interview is highly recommended to young photographers.

"...keep it simple...don't think too much..."

Gary Knight began his photographic career in Thailand in 1987 and he lived and worked in the Far East until 1992. In 1993 he moved to the former Yugoslavia and documented the civil war there. In recent years he has covered the invasion of Iraq, the occupation of Afghanistan, the civil war in Kashmir and the Asian Tsunami. One of the founders of the VII Photo agency in 2001 his work has been published by magazines all over the world and he has been a contract photographer for Newsweek since 1998. He is one of the founders of the Angkor Photo Festival, a registered charity in Cambodia; a board member of the Crimes of War Foundation and a trustee of the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation.

Manca Juvan: Sans Papier

Photos © Manca Juvan-All Rights Reserved

Manca Juvan is a freelance photographer having completed her studies at the Slovene School for Photography, and has gleaned many awards and recognitions since then.  She was selected as Photographer of the Year in Slovenia for her reportage work in 2006, 2007 and 2008, and was  commended - in 2005 and 2006 - for her work on Afghanistan by the Slovenian Association of Journalists.

Nominated for the World Press Photo’s Joop Swart Materclass in 2008,  she was chosen in 2011 as one of three recipients of a scholarship for NYU/Magnum Foundation Photography and Human Rights Program. Her work was shown at Photomed festival in France, and selected for its “Hall of Excellence” by The Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation for International Photography.

Her work was published in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Chicago Tribune, National Geographic (Slovenia), Time.com, Marie Claire, The European Voice and Der Standard.

I particularly admired her gallery titled Sans Papier ("Without Documents"), which consists of a series of diptychs pairing the portraits of illegal immigrants in Paris with objects they brought from their native countries. Simple and yet evocative.

The Frame Does Ramadan

Photo © AP/Mohammed Zaatari-All Rights Reserved

The Frame, The Sacramento Bee's photo blog has featured 33 magnificent photographs of Muslims around the world are observing the holy month of Ramadan which runs this year from Aug. 1 to Aug. 30. During that period, observant Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking and having sex from dawn to dusk.

It was a tough choice as there are many images from photographers such as Kevin Frayer in India, Altaf Qadri in Srinagar, and Achmad Ibrahim in Jakarta which captured the many facets of Islam during Ramadan all over the globe.

However for the blog, I chose the photograph of Lebanese "dawn awakener" (known as the "mesaharati", holding a lantern and a drum to awaken observant Muslims for a meal before sunrise in the old souk of the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon.

President Obama In The West Village!!!

Photographs © Tewfic El-Sawy- All Rights Reserved

The West Village's West 12th Street was abuzz a few moments ago with the imminent arrival of President Obama, who was scheduled to attend a fundraiser at the home of a Hollywood celebrity (Harvey Weinstein?).

I was there with my Canon 7D and a 70-200, and managed to capture his motorcade, and his car.  But I preferred to wave like a kid as it passed...and caught a glimpse of him, looking at the crowds and at his Blackberry.

A Dos Pasos Del Corazón: The Photographer Of Seville

I was impressed by this short documentary of Juan, who is a photographer in Seville (or Sevilla) who at the age of 85 years is still taking pictures at weddings, baptisms and communions. He has been practicing this profession since 1944.

The videography is by Sergio Caro  and Ernesto Villalba, and is a tribute to simplicity. I always advise simplicity in my multimedia classes, and to let the story be carried by the narrative. This video has all the ingredients of successul storytelling via narrative...it even includes faded old photographs as a way to introduce Juan's personal history. Unfortunately, there's no translation but I guess it's not too difficult to understand what is being said...more or less.

With that minor exception (seen through an English-speaking prism), this is a very well produced documentary.

It brings back my childhood memories of Monsieur Phillipe who walked the beaches in Alexandria, Egypt making pictures of families, children and friends. He used a twin-lens reflex camera, probably a Rolleiflex and would have the prints back in about 2 days.  Possibly Greek or Armenian, Monsieur Phillipe always wore a sweat stained Panama hat, leather sandals and knee-length white shorts. I recall he had extremely hairy legs, and his sandals threw sand whenever he walked on the beaches. He probably remained in Egypt until the late 60s.

What an interesting subject Monsieur Phillipe would make...in the same vein as Juan! I'd be interested to hear from anyone who may have know what happened to him.

POV: Street Photography, An Addiction?

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Yes, it is.

It's been a little more than 5 months since I've acquired the Leica M9 with a couple of lenses; an Elmarit 28mm (which is my mostly-used lens), and a Voigtlander Nokton 40mm. During the first two months, I used it gingerly, almost self-consciously...waiting for it to "grow" on me, and for my instinct to take over. I took it wherever I went, virtually daily...and it slowly became part of me.

I normally walk around with it either dangling from my neck, or from my shoulder...or more recently, in a Domke waist pouch which seems to have been manufactured for it, when I don't need or want to use it. It has come to the point that if I don't have it with me, something is missing...sort of like forgetting my cellphone or my keys.

I've learned to look (as distinct from seeing) for "characters"...I've learned how to look for interesting faces some 30-50 yards from where I stand or walk to anticipate the framing and composition of the images I eventually make of them...I try to pre-visualize scenes (but haven't fully succeeded yet) such as anticipating the faces of construction workers when they see a pretty woman in a short dress walk by...or that of a child seeing his mother when coming out of school..and snapping that moment. I've learned how to pretend to be checking my cellphone whilst clicking the shutter at the same time....and I've learned to frame the image without looking at my subjects.

I am lucky to live in Manhattan...the most street photography "friendly" (or should I say 'interesting'?) city. I have favorite streets. Broadway and Canal Street...14th Street always has interesting characters, and Chinatown is a haven for street photography just because it's heavily touristic, and its residents are used to photographers.

The Leica File is a gallery of my NYC street photographs, 

"I allow myself to be seduced... I grow. I evolve. And I like that...a lot."

But the best is this. I don't look at the images that I shoot from the hip (or from the waist, in my case) until I return home and download them. Heck, that almost brings me back to the exciting good old days of film!

As for my gear, I have to say the M9 is almost the perfect tool for street photography. Nothing new here. I qualify that perfection because while it's inconspicuous, virtually infallible and it's almost silent...the lack of auto-focus is still a pain in the ass. Leica will not like me for saying this...but it is. I've learned to pre-focus or just move my feet until my image is sharp...I've also learned the zone focusing technique (still not very well, it seems)...and manage to muddle through the focus issue. But I still salivate at the improbable idea of a Leica with auto focus capabilities.

Finally, as a side benefit of all this addictive street photography, I am partly ensconced in a black & white phase...I allow myself to be seduced by toning, by special effects, by Instagram-like colorization, and by a multitude of other "sins" that I normally don't indulge in.

I grow. I evolve. And I like that...a lot.

Angkor Photo Festival Program 2011

I take great pleasure in featuring the 7th Angkor Photo Festival Program Preview which is to take place in Siem Reap from November 19 to November 26, 2011. This well established event is the first photography festival held in Southeast Asia and for 2011, will exhibit the work of 110 photographers, out of whom 60 are from Asia.

The 2011 list of exhibiting photographers includes Andrew Biraj, Pep Bonet, Paula Bronstein, Marco Di Lauro, Tewfic El-Sawy, Siddharth Jain, Yuri Koryzev, Liz Loh-Taylor, Wendy Marijnissen, Erica McDonald, Palani Mohan, and many more.

My photographs from the photo essay The Possessed of Hazrat Mira Datar will be screened during the festival.

Angkor Photo Festival will hold 12 exhibitions, 7 evenings of slideshows, free workshops for 30 Asian photographers, and a lot more. It's curated by Francoise Callier in consultation with a 9-member international committee. The program is coordinated by Camille Plante and Jessica Lim.

For the PDF Press Release which also contains sample photographs of the exhibits and screenings, click here.

If you haven't considered attending the Angkor Photo Festival, I encourage you to do so. It's an unmissable photography event.

Andrés Lofiego: Con La Tierra

Andrés Lofiego attended Maggie Steber's class at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Buenos Aires, and chose me to view his portfolio of black & white stills. He also showed its multimedia version of these stark images, with a throbbing sound track. The multimedia is co-produced with Martin Cossarini.

Con La Tierra, Andrés' photo essay examines the injustice committed by various industries and corporations such as the oil & gas industry, the farming and mining industries against the natives peasants who, for generations, were born, lived and worked in, and died on their ancestral lands. The photographs are of the Mapuches who were evicted from their their lands in Neuquen (Southern province of Argentina), the farmers of Santiago del Estero (Northeastern province) and the people in Quebrada de Humahuaca.

"But these people, the men and women of the land, work to get informed, peacefully resist and build a world wide enough to embrace all cultures."

Photo © Andrés Lofiego-All Rights Reserved

Andrés Lofiego is a photographer/photojournalist who lives in Buenos Aires. He began studying  photography about a decade ago, focusing on reality and social issues. He worked of visual projects covering the recovery of factories in Argentina after the crisis of December 2001, and published a book titled "No Trespassing, A Look from the Self-Managed Work" in cooperation with the workers of the print shop "Chilavert". He is currently documenting land disputes between farmers and corporations in Argentina.

Maggie Steber: Photographer, Educator, Speaker...

Two of my favorite (and insightful) moments at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Buenos Aires were when I had the good fortune of having breakfast with Maggie Steber, and then walking with her to the Motivarte school, where we were meeting our respecting classes.

I thought I'd share with my readers what most have missed by not being at the Foundry this year. No, it's not Maggie speaking during that event (I believe this will be coming in the next few weeks), but of her addressing attendees during the 15th Joop Swart Masterclass in which she talks of her career, along with an overview of her work. This is not a talk that you will want to rush through...quite the opposite. Take your time, and absorb as much as possible from a renowned professional in all the senses of the word. Candid, articulate, funny, wise, interesting and perceptive...that's how I'd describe her. So bookmark or save it, because I know you'll enjoy it.

"How can nature or God or the fates or the universe do this to a country that has borne far too much sadness?" 

Maggie Steber worked as a documentary photographer in 60 countries. Her longtime work in Haiti received the prestigious Alicia Patterson Foundation Grant and the Ernst Haas Grant as well as a book publishing support grant from Kodak. A contract photographer for Newsweek Magazine for 4 years, she has worked through several press agencies as well the Associated Press in New York as a photo editor. She served as Assistant Managing Editor of Photography and Features at the Miami Herald from 1999-2003 and guided the photo projects to become Pulitzer Prize finalists twice and a third time as winner. Her work for National Geographic has included articles on Miami, the African slave trade, the Cherokee Nation, soldiers' letters, and Dubai.

In 2007, she received a grant from the Knight Foundation to design a new newspaper prototype through the new Knight Center for International Media at the University of Miami. In 2010, for the 3rd time, she was invited as a Master Teacher at the World Press Photo Foundation’s Joop Swart classes.

Finally, you ought to view Maggie's photo essay on The New York Times' Lens blog entitled No End Of Trouble. Ever , which includes her reflection on Haiti's misery.

World Press Photo At The United Nations

For the 8th consecutive year the United Nations is hosting the World Press Photo Contest winners, the world’s largest contest for photojournalists. This year's exhibition contains 177 photographs related to 2010 news events from all over the world. This year, 5,691 photographers from 125 countries submitted a total of 108,059 images.

The international jury selected an image by South African photographer Jodi Bieber as World Press Photo of the Year 2010. The picture shows Bibi Aisha, 18, who was disfigured as retribution for fleeing her husband's house in Oruzgan province, in the center of Afghanistan.

Admission to the Exhibits is free and the galleries can be viewed daily between the 5 – 28 August, 2011 from 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Visitors’ entrance closes at 4:45 p.m.

PlanetPic Does Ramadan Images

Photo © Daniel Berehulak - AFP/Getty Images

PlanetPic is the new photo blog of GlobalPost, and has impressed me by its variety and the large size of its photographs.

It's one the first large photo blogs that featured images from around the Islamic world on the occasion of Ramadan. Sundown on July 31st marked the beginning of Ramadan, the month when Muslims all over the world are supposed to go without food, drink, smoking and abstain from sex from sunrise to sunset. It is intended for Muslims to purify themselves and concentrate their minds on Islamic teachings.

At sunset each day, Muslims break their fast with a meal known as Iftar, which many start by eating three dates. This holy month, sees a spike in charity, and it is not uncommon to see people marking Ramadan by giving food to the homeless.

As a footnote, I see that the Governor of Texas has backed a prayerapalooza in Houston today, and since he claims he will be fasting all day, I wonder whether he's considering joining the millions of Muslims in their fast. Just sayin'.

The Travel Photographer Is On PhotoVerse

I am pleased that Photoverse will be including The Travel Photographer blog on its application. Photoverse collects information from multiple news sources and blogs related to photography, pools them and presents them to you in an easy to read scrollable list. It enables you to  choose the view you want to see, be it from a single news source or blog or a time-sorted collection from multiple sources that you can select. All pages are rendered locally within a web view so that you never have to leave the application.

Photoverse also allows you to share any interesting article you read via Twitter, Facebook or email. It even allows you to bookmark articles for later perusal.

Photoverse is a utility application developed for the iPad, iPhone by photographers for photographers and is available from iTunes. All i need to do is to get an iPhone!

Omar Mullick: See No Evil

Photo © Omar Mullick-Courtesy Foreign Policy Magazine

Foreign Policy magazine has featured See No Evil,  the work of Omar Mullick in Afghanistan, which was largely made with iPhones and using the Hipstamatic app. When Mullick's embed with the US Army ended, he proceeded to make trips in and outside of Kabul, documenting the lives of ordinary Afghans affected by the grim toll of war. The images in this gallery are from his travels during six weeks from March and April 2011.

Omar Mullick was born and raised in London, and studied politics, philosophy, and economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in New York. He spent six years in fashion photography and the film industry, shooting music videos and commercials before turning to documentary photography. He has received fellowships and awards from the M100 Foundation, the Western Knight Center for Journalism, and the Annenberg Foundation.

Perhaps I'm old hat, but I'm still ambivalent about the fad of using the iPhone by photojournalists to document conflicts. My ambivalence is for purely aesthetic reasons...I'm still of the view that documenting conflicts (especially) needs to be as "pure" as possible, without being tainted by manipulative processing. An iPhone with Hipstamatic and similar software certainly produce interesting images and that, I suppose, is what counts for many photographers.

PS: I've recently noted that even David Alan Harvey seems to have a lot of fun with Instagram photography...but so far these are personal snaps.

Milongas: The Seduction of Tango

I'm pleased to feature an audio slideshow titled "Milongas! The Seduction of Tango" of my still black & white photographs made in various tango halls and milongas of Buenos Aires during the week I spent there  teaching with the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop.

Note: You have two viewing options: either to view it as a Vimeo movie (above) or as a SoundSlides, which has better resolution images.

I am equally pleased in having broken many of my self-imposed rules which I religiously followed when producing such multimedia pieces. For this piece, I applied panning (Ken Burns effect) on a few occasions to give the semblance of motion, and to bring the eyes of the viewers to a specific part of the still. Rules are made to be broken, and I hope the photographers who attended my class do not take me too much to task for that.

"the silent and imperceptible gesture by men inviting women to dance..."

I chose to photograph the milongas and the tango at these venues for many reasons. Perhaps it was mainly because of my appreciation for international music, but as I observed the people who were at the milongas...I call them 'actors' because they were, wittingly or unwittingly, acting a part in a pre-ordained old fashioned ritual of almost courtship...the silent and imperceptible gesture by men inviting women to dance...I was reminded that their actions mirrored what occurs between men and women in their quotidian life.

I've also used only two audio tracks...one is by the legendary Carlos Gardel singing the beautiful A Media Luz, and a short poetic narration by Paula Acunzo, a Buenos Aires based photographer who attended my class, and is also a terrific tango dancer. She deserves much credit, not only for writing this evocative poem, but also for suffering some of us at the tango halls and milongas.

But back to A Media Luz....which means 'half-light'. I decided I'd use it as main soundtrack for the slideshow because I was humming it in Buenos Aires almost all the time...and because I photographed these images in the penumbra of the tango halls, and accentuated their darkness even further by vignetting some....so it seemed eminently appropriate.

So turn your speakers on...full volume...and enjoy the seduction of tango.

Johannes P. Christo: Tajen; Ritual & Pleasure

Photo © Johannes P. Christo-All Rights Reserved

Johannes P. Christo is an Indonesian self-taught photographer who has been developing his own vision in visual storytelling. Currently based in Bali, Johannes works as a freelance photographer for editorial, documentary and portraiture projects.

His work has been published in The Jakarta Globe, The West Australian, National Geographic Indonesia, National Geographic Traveler (Indonesia), Travel and Leisure Magazine (Thailand), TEMPO Magazine English Edition (Indonesia), Forbes Indonesia Magazine, Wall Street Journal Photo Blog, Agence French Press, Reuters, ZUMA Press, etc. and he has been recognized with various awards.

I met Johannes in Istanbul where he attended the 3rd Foundry Photojournalism Workshop on a scholarship, and subsequently in Bali where he shared with me his projects which are currently shown on his website. I highlight Johannes' well composed black & white photo essay on cockfighting in Bali, which he titled Tajen: Ritual & Pleasure.

An extremely talented photojournalist, with an interesting collection of photo essays, which, while eschewing color, captures Bali's exotic and ancient traditions in edgy black & white photographs.

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 south.

A few years ago, I was fascinated by Ibn Battuta (whose full name is Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Abdullah Al Lawati Al Tanji Ibn Battuta), and read anything I could find about his life and his travels, to the point that I went to the New York Public Library to read some older manuscripts.

Ibn Battuta's journeys took almost thirty years and covered almost the entire known Islamic world and beyond, extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in the West, to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China in the East, a distance far surpassing that of his predecessors and his near-contemporary Marco Polo.

For an interesting book on Ibn Battuta and his exploits, Tim Mackintosh-Smith followed the traveler's footsteps as well, and wrote Travels With A Tangerine. Not to be confused with the fruit, Tangerine is a resident of Tangiers...as Ibn Battuta was.

Egypt's Revolutionaries: Platon Style

Photo © Platon-Courtesy The New Yorker

The month of Ramadan has dawned on the Islamic world, and I thought I'd mark the event by posting Platon's images of the Egyptian revolutionaries, and in so doing wishing the Egyptian people a future they want and certainly deserve.

Be sure to view the accompanying short videos. You'll first have to suffer Goldman Sachs adverts, but just close your eyes while they play.

According to the news, Hosni Mubarak, his two sons, former interior minister Habib el-Adli, six of his aides and businessman Hussein Salem, are all charged with being involved in the killing of protesters during the 18-day revolt.

I'm not optimistic that the trial will be a speedy one, nor thorough. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it's postponed for a myriad of reasons...but the Egyptian people will eventually get justice. They must.