The pre-Columbian Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, celebrated the lives of the departed with food- and flower-based celebrations that were so popular that the observance spread beyond Mexico to South America, then to Europe and beyond. The holiday also promotes artistic expression in a nice D.I.Y. mould, with elaborate preparations including the building of alters, the sculpting of goddess-like avatars, and even … Read the full Story >>
Selma. Little Rock. Fruitvale Station. The crossroads of Florence & Normandie. These are well known as points on a map and as points of collision where events still carry both cultural and historic resonance. And now Ferguson, Missouri, a tiny suburb of St. Louis, is such a place. It is a modern Rorschach test in America's social fabric. What happened there in 2014 depends on how you … Read the full Story >>
December 16, Mthatha, South Africa The dramatic clouds from the Eastern Cape rolled through the hills this evening, bringing rain to the sparsely-populated village of Qunu, the boyhood home of Nelson Mandela and the place where his body was buried yesterday. Just a day after the service, when thousands arrived in buses, fighter jets flew, and hundreds of journalists filed stories from satellite trucks … Read the full Story >>
Former North Vietnamese Army Lieutenant and photographer, Doan Cong Tinh, 72, grins widely as he describes using his boots as ad hoc developing tanks while processing film in tunnels dug by fellow troops during the war. Speaking through a translator in Vietnamese, he further explains that “the officer’s boots were called ‘Buffalo Boots’, were leather and Russian-made, and thus superior to the Chinese … Read the full Story >>
As I sit down to write this in Tokyo, at this moment, 11:37 at night on April 7, there is the most significant aftershock of the dozens I've felt in the two weeks since I've been here. This one lasted close to a minute. The main national TV channel NHK immediately shows a tsunami warning with a map of Japan and a red area … Read the full Story >>
On October 20, 1991, fine art photographer Richard Misrach was in his Bay Area studio watching television coverage of the largest urban wildfire in United States history destroying thousands of homes in the nearby Oakland and Berkeley hills. A few days later, while driving through some of the affected neighborhoods, he realized the scenes of devastation were perfect examples of the same subject to … Read the full Story >>
Like many foreign photographers, I came to Beijing this spring because of the international attention generated by the upcoming Olympic Games. But when a huge earthquake hit Sichuan province on May 12th, I found myself dealing with challenges and dynamics I had never experienced in previous disasters. During the first couple of days, many flights to Chengdu, the city closest to the epicenter, were … Read the full Story >>
