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The Significance Of A Personal Project

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My daily stroll through the newly built but already decaying park near my apartment in Hanoi listening to Spotify on a brisk (by SE Asia standards) morning has me in deep thought. We only get this type of weather for a couple months a year here and I absolutely love it. I grew up in New England and this is the temperature I was built for, I truly am a different person. I’m smarter, more motivated, and dare I say a deeper man when I’m able to wear long pants and a sweatshirt.

[Editor’s note: some viewers may find the images in the article disturbing, so please proceed with caution]

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The Power Of Faces: Looking at the global refugee crisis

The United Nations has called the global refugee crisis the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time. According to the UN, 65 million people have been forced to flee their homes due to conflict or persecution. Sixty. Five. Million. People.

Numbers that gigantic can be very hard for most people to visualize or understand. Husband and wife photo team Daniel Farber Huang and Theresa Menders remind us those numbers are human lives – men, women, and children – and not just statistics.

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Film retrieved from a buried capsule shows life in Nazi-controlled ghetto [NSFW]

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How do you feel when you see a major historic document right before your eyes? And what about seeing dozens of images that testify about the past? A series of images by Henryk Ross from the Nazi-occupied Jewish ghetto could make you feel the connection with the past you’ve never felt before. The series of images is very strong and emotional, and it could draw tears to your eyes. Some of them are also very graphical and not easy to digest.

It’s not about the photos of war and destruction; at least these are not the only things you’ll see. Ross managed to document daily lives of these people and smiles on their faces despite the conditions in which they lived. And he did it all secretly, risking his life. According to the Polish laws, the images are under public domain and can be shared. So we are sharing them, along with their incredible story.

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I was in a refugee camp with my cameras when Trump shut the borders. Here’s what I saw

I was documenting the Souda refugee camp in Chios, Greece in January, when President Trump signed the Executive Order to close US borders to immigration from 7 Muslim-majority countries. The conditions in the Souda refugee camp varies from constantly harsh to increasingly inhuman. Here’s what I saw.

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Instagram can help you become full time photographer. Here’s how

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A few people requested an in-depth post on how to grow your instagram. Here’s how I grew my instagram account without using any online services. Before I dive in, this is purely my workflow and there is no secret App that will make you gain thousands of followers over night nor is this going to be about buying followers/likes. So if this is not for you, just ignore this post.

A little about myself (this is important, I promise) I am a freelance photographer from Tanzania. I spent most of my teenage years abroad (in South East Asia) for studies. Whenever I introduced myself to people, I’d get 3 main questions:

  • Where is Tanzania?
  • Is it safe?
  • What do you guys eat?

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10 street photographers worth following

There are a lot of passionate Street Photographers out there that create great free content that help me in very different ways. Some are more on the educational side while others inspire me to improve my images. Here is a list of Photographers I hope will be helpful to you too, together with links to resources that helped me a lot especially early on my way to becoming a better Street Photographer.

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The dangers of getting lost for your photography

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We are starting something new here, a Featured Photographer video series where we talk with famous photographers. Our first installment is a piece by travel photographer Asher Svidensky, who has been published by National Geographic, BBC, Oxford and several others.

Asher travels the world looking for stories. According to Asher, the only way to really get a story is by totally immersing yourself in the surrounding. But with total immersion comes a cost. The more a photographer absorbs, the less of their original self remains.

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‘The Salt of the Earth’ – ‘Shattering’ Documentary on the Life of Photographer Sebastião Salgado

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I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again:  Documentary photography has been one of my foremost artistic influences and fascinations since I was a child.  Telling stories about real people and real moments that can never be recreated.

Sebastião Salgado is a fascinating photographer and has amassed a body of work that would take a whole team of photographers a lifetime to create.  Now, his story is being told in the documentary The Salt of the Earth, a film that Rotten Tomatoes calls “a shattering, thought-provoking testament to Sebastião Salgado’s career.”

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Photographer Shares the Heartbreaking Horrors of Leprosy in Iran

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Leprosy is almost unheard of in Western cultures, or we gloss over it by calling it “Hansen’s Disease.”  While there are an estimated 200 cases per year in the U.S., modern medicine has rendered it no more lethal than the common cold, if properly treated.  But, in some locales around the world, it is still a very real and viable threat.

Photographer Ali Hamed Haghdoust wanted to further explore the legitimate threats of leprosy in the Middle East.  In a project called “The Lost Beauty,” he spent six years in the provinces of East and West Azerbaijan, Iran documenting the social and cultural impact of the horrifying disease.

(Warning:  Graphic images after the jump.)

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10 Years, 74 Prisons: Italian Photographer Documents Inmates’ Lives in the Toughest Conditions

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For ten years, Italian photographer Valerio Bispuri traveled throughout South America, documenting life inside seventy-four of the roughest and most deplorable prisons. Filth, disease, and death was all around him. Wanting to convey the emptiness of color and hope felt within the walls, Bispuri shot his emotive collection in black and white.

“One day, some detainees prepared a siring of infected blood to inject me,” he says. Yet, despite threats to his health and life from inmates and conditions during his travels, when I asked if he had any regrets about the project, he readily replied, “No regrets. I would do absolutely everything as I’ve done!”  (WARNING:  Graphic images after the jump.)

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