Photographer Sam Biddle engages with members of the Uyghur diaspora who are reclaiming their identity and broadening the public’s perception, from the singular narrative of persecution to include the thousands of years of rich Uyghur history and culture. The exhibition starts on 11 March in Coburg, Victoria
Continue reading...When Hazara photographer Muzafar Ali fled, he smuggled a hard drive of 13,000 photos out with him in a sleeping bag. They show an Afghanistan that disappeared when the Taliban took power
Muzafar Ali, who lives in Adelaide, grew up as a refugee in Pakistan after his family fled Afghanistan in the mid-1980s. As a child, the only pictures he saw of his birth country were through Taliban-issued jihadi calendars and the occasional news report.
Ali is Hazara, a long-persecuted ethnic group who faced extreme violence from the Taliban after the Soviet Union left Afghanistan in 1989.
“This man was using a box camera to be photographed, which Afghan people still relied on then. I shot this picture in 2006 when this village was secure and peaceful but later this village fell to the Taliban and it was impossible to visit.”
Continue reading...Vanua Levu is being overrun by invasive vines – and the increasing number of natural disasters, brought on by climate change, is only making things worse
In Vanua Levu, the second largest island of Fiji, every contour drips with green. The landscape is impossibly lush and verdant. But upon closer inspection, it’s evident that nearly everything is shrouded in vines.
There are several vine species in Fiji, one of which is the invasive kudzu, introduced by US troops in the second world war as living camouflage for Allied equipment. But, as botanist Judith Sumner, writes: “under tropical Pacific conditions kudzu quickly became an invasive species with a growth rate that aggressively outpaced native Fijian flora.”
Continue reading...From men in their 60s to boys as young as 10, hundreds of miners work every day in Chinarak for just a few euros
Continue reading...Photographer Olgaç Bozalp talks through a selection of images from his project Leaving One for Another, published by Void. Combining documentary style with constructed imagery he explores the journeys and disparate causes of migration, drawing on his own experience.
‘People’s desire to move from one place to another has always fascinated me, both on a political and personal level. I started this series to explore the reasons why and see how they measure to those of my own’
Continue reading...Many farmers in south-western Bangladesh use floating rafts made from invasive water hyacinths to grow vegetables during the monsoon season – when dry land is scarce – to ensure food security in the low-lying country, which has recently been experiencing prolonged floods and waterlogging as a result of the changing climate
Continue reading...Devastating floods across Pakistan in August and September after several years of high temperatures have left chilli farmers struggling in a country heavily dependent on agriculture, where the flooding is estimated to have caused $40bn worth of damage
Continue reading...Samyukta Lakshmi recalls the first chaotic weeks of India’s Covid lockdown – and the woman and child at the front of the queue for a train out of Bengaluru
The Covid-19 lockdown in India was announced on 25 March 2020 with only 4 hours’ notice, leaving the country in a state of frenzy.
Faced with dwindling savings due to unemployment during the lockdown, millions of migrant workers made the decision to return to their home towns from cities across India, sparking the country’s biggest exodus since partition.
Samyukta Lakshmi is a documentary photographer and photojournalist based in Bengaluru, India. Her work focuses on vulnerable communities, social inequality, the human spirit, resilience and climate change
Continue reading...Photographer Gideon Mendel visited Sindh province in Pakistan after the worst floods in living memory this summer killed more than 1,500 people and left millions homeless.
The portraits, part of his Drowning World project, are a powerful reminder of the impact of the climate crisis on the poorest people on the planet
Continue reading...Photojournalist ‘brotherhood’ answers call to create charity auction of some of country’s most memorable images
There is the haunting 1966 image of King Korokī being carried up the sacred Mt Taupiri in his cloak-covered coffin as the mist descends; Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay doing a spot of shopping in Wellington in 1971; another showing the hole ripped in the side of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985.
They are some of the country’s most storied photographs, depicting influential moments and people in the past 50 years of New Zealand history – and for the first time, a large collection has been pulled together in the name of charity.
Continue reading...Workers have put the finishing touches to towering statues of the elephant god Ganesha in time for one of India’s biggest religious festivals, under way again after Covid lockdowns. The 11-day Ganesh Chaturthi festival, which draws tens of thousands of Hindu devotees on to streets, began on Wednesday
Continue reading...Tim Page, who has died of cancer aged 78, earned a reputation during the Vietnam war as a fearless gonzo combat photographer who would venture where others feared to tread. Dubbed “war groupies” by more conservative correspondents, Tim and his circle of photographer friends paid for their daring with injuries and, in some cases, death.
Tim was hit several times and became known for his narrow escapes. His Vietnam war came to an end during an ill-fated 1969 rescue when his helicopter was diverted to pick up wounded American troops near the Parrots Beak region northwest of Saigon. Viet Cong guerrillas triggered a hidden command-detonated artillery shell that killed the soldier in front of Tim, moments after they had both exited the helicopter to assist soldiers on the ground.
Continue reading...Refugees who have fled Myanmar describe the risks and their sense of duty – as well as joy – in recording life around them in the sprawling camps of Bangladesh
The camera of a budget smartphone has become a way for many of the Rohingya stuck in Bangladesh’s refugee camps to tell their own stories, capturing photos of their lives in the camps, which became the world’s largest when 700,000 people fled the Myanmar military five years ago, joining 300,000 who had already sought refuge across the border.
These photographers, who are all under 30, are building a record of the culture and traditions they fear could be lost so far from home, and have sharpened their skills during floods and fires and other all too frequent moments of crisis.
Zaudha, 40, stares out over the smouldering remains of her home after the largest of the camp fires, in March 2021, when 50,000 lost their homes. The smoke and heat was still too intense for her to go down to the exact spot she lived in.
Continue reading...In the sweltering summer of the Rohingya refugee camp at Cox’s Bazar, Ishrat Fori Imran photographed a young girl planting tiny trees in bottle tops
Nur Asma is 10 years old. She lives in the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, with her family. She has four siblings; she is the third child in the family.
Nur loves creative play – crafting, making horses and utensils out of mud, making a chicken coop from bamboo, that sort of thing, and she loves studying too. She is very shy and introverted. She does everything silently and plays alone. Perhaps she just loves spending time alone. She is a girl who wants to create something new by herself and doesn’t want to copy from others.
Ishrat Fori Imran is a Rohingya refugee photographer who uses a smartphone to document life in the camp. Her work has featured in Rohingyatography magazine
Continue reading...Once considered too low-status for many, peddling wares on the street has made a comeback in Beijing as people who lost their jobs or closed down their businesses seek new ways to make a living and work around the country’s relentless anti-Covid policies
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