Stephen Dupont: A Tale of Two Slums

Photo © Stephen Dupont-All Rights Reserved

I really liked these two photographic essays of Polaroids made in the Mumbai slum Dharavi and the Senen slum of Jakarta by Stephen Dupont, an Australian photographer.

Dharavi is one of the world's largest slum and lies on prime real estate in the middle of India's financial capital, Mumbai and has a population estimated to be 1 million. Many businesses flourish in this slum, such as traditional pottery and textiles, a recycling industry, which generate an estimated $650 million turnover a year.

As for the Senen slum, it's a trackside slum in central Jakarta. It's also a center for recycling, and its inhabitants live cheek to jowl with the thundering trains.

Stephen Dupont has produced a photographs of fragile cultures and marginalized peoples, which capture the human dignity of his subjects, and do so with great intimacy and often in some of the world’s most dangerous regions. His work has earned him prestigious prizes, including a Robert Capa Gold Medal citation from the Overseas Press Club of America; a Bayeux War Correspondent’s Prize; and first places in the World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year International, the Australian Walkleys, and Leica/CCP Documentary Award.

His work has been featured in The New Yorker, Aperture, Newsweek, Time, GQ, Esquire, French and German GEO, Le Figaro, Liberation, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Independent, The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine, Stern, The Australian Financial Review Magazine, and Vanity Fair.

He has held major exhibitions in London, Paris, New York, Sydney, Canberra, Tokyo, and Shanghai, and at Perpignan’s Visa Pour L’Image, China’s Ping Yao and Holland’s Noorderlicht festivals.

Chico Sanchez: The Dresser

Photo © Chico Sanchez-All Rights Reserved

To break the recent string of India and Asia related posts, here is The Dresser, an audio slideshow by Chico Sanchez, a freelance photographer based in Mexico City.

The Dresser is Cesar Diaz, a professional dresser (el vestidor in Spanish) of religious icons, from Jerez de la Frontera, Cadiz, Spain. In this audio slideshow, Cesar demonstrates how he prepares Our Lady of Sorrows for an Easter Holy Week celebration in the village of Prado del Rey, in Andalusia, Spain.

I've featured the work of Chico Sanchez, a freelance photographer based in Mexico City, on a number of occasions. Chico worked in Venezuela, collaborating with Reuters, European Pressphoto Agency, Agencia EFE, and currently freelances for various newspapers and magazines.

Sacbee's The Frame: Kevin Frayer's Urs Festival

Photo © Kevin Frayer-All Rights Reserved

I've been waiting for coverage of this event! Just look at this flamboyant character!!!

The Sacramento Bee's photo blog The Frame features Kevin Frayer's remarkable photographs made during a major Sufi Muslim Urs festival in Rajasthan.

It starts off the series of these 36 photographs telling us that thousands of Sufi devotees from different parts of India annually travel to the shrine of Sufi Muslim saint Hazrat Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti, in Ajmer, in the Indian state of Rajasthan for the annual Urs festival observed to mark his death anniversary.

Along with other photographers, I've been photographing the Sufi traditions in South Asia for a while, especially trying to underscore the syncretic elements of this tradition with Hindusim, but to my chagrin I haven't been to this festival as yet...although I was in Ajmer a number of times.

Moinuddin Chishti is the more famous and revered Sufi saint of the Chisti order of the Indian Subcontinent. He was born in 1141 and died in 1230 CE, and is believed to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammed. He interpreted religion in terms of human service and exhorted his disciples "to develop river-like generosity, sun-like affection and earth-like hospitality."

I cannot help but to piggyback this feature by adding my own work on The Possessed of Mira Datar; an audio slideshow of black & white photographs made at one of the most famous shrines (or dargahs) in Gujarat. The still photographs of this audio slideshow were presented at the Angkor Photo Festival last November.

And for those who follow my posts for clues to my future photo expeditions-workshops, this may well be one for 2013. It'll be as intense as the Oracles of Kali's festival, the focus of my most recent photo expedition in Kerala this past March.

Elissa Bogos: Afghan Tea House Poets

"Let all the infidels become Muslims"

Here's a wonderful short (too short!) video made by Elissa Bogos in a tea house in Afghanistan on 11.11.11 for One Day on Earth.

I describe it as wonderful, not because of the unfortunate intolerance expressed by the old man towards the end of the clip, but because it's beautifully filmed, because of its ambience and because of the music. I wished the clip had been much longer, and that it tarried longer with the "poets" who recited traditional verses (and expressed their gripes), and that it lingered around the corners of the tea house.

Elissa Bogos is a freelance photojournalist and videojournalist based in Kabul, Afghanistan. She was the editor-in-chief of The Sakhalin Times, an English language weekly in the Russian Far East.

Her photographs and videos were published in The New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, EurasiaNet, The Huffington Post, The Montreal Gazette, Reuters, New York Daily News and in other media. In Afghanistan, she freelances for a variety of NGOs and private companies and has worked with the Associated Press, Tolo TV and Channel One TV.

Diana Markosian: The Girls of Chechnya

Photo © Diana Markosian-All Rights Reserved

An interesting glimpse in an area that a relatively few are really familiar with...Chechnya, was recently featured by TIME Lightbox.

Diana Markosian's Goodbye My Chechnya is such a glimpse into the lives of young Chechen women who witnessed the horrors of two wars, and are coming of age in a country that is rapidly rediscovering its Muslim laws and traditions.

It's particularly interesting to view Diana's photographs of these Chechen women and their traditions and compare them to Oded Balilty's photographs of the Jewish ultra orthodox communities, which included a series on a traditional Hasidic Jewish wedding.

Two separate religious traditions, often at odds with each other....and yet similar in so many ways. And as both photo essays are made of such compelling photographs, that the comparison between the two from an aesthetic point of view bring this point very clearly to the forefront.

According to Diana Markosian,  Chechnya is experiencing a wave of Islamicization since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Religious dress codes are the rule, young (and polygamous) marriages are frequent and gender roles are increasingly conservative.