Zoriah has updated a series he did on the Northern Pakistan Earthquake, also known as the Kashmir Earthquake. I have posted them below with his earlier write-up. Other previous series by Zoriah concerning AIDS, the tsunami that hit Thiland in 2004 and life in Gaza can be viewed here, here, and here.

From Zoriah:

People often ask me to compare disasters and I find myself struggling to provide them with an answer that feels truthful. In all honesty, after five years of focusing on disasters and humanitarian crisis, I find that everything begins to look the same. Faces, no matter which country or continent they hail from, closely resemble each other when they are framed in rubble and surrounded by smoke. Buildings and trees and landscapes look about the same when they are flattened on the ground, whether the cause was a hijacked airplane, a massive wave or powerful tremor. It is often far too easy for me see a disaster zone as nothing more than a familiar scene, another day of work.
Whenever I get this feeling that I am back in the mundane, I try to look in the eyes of the people I photograph. I try to remember that although this has become a common site for me, this is the extraordinary for those that it affects. I think that the western world , armchair observes of disaster and strife, need to dig deep inside themselves and try to realize that even though the news is their entertainment, it is also quite real. They need to open their eyes to the fact that beyond the now familiar pictures presented to them on their morning paper and on the evening news, there are people struggling with a situation that has turned their lives upside down. I believe that as photographers we need to focus more on documenting emotion in our photos and that editors must make sure that these images, no matter how graphic and painful, reach the eyes of the people that can actually make a difference. In actuality, it is our job to open peoples eyes. To create works of art that touch peoples hearts and open their minds, showing them not only what someone else’s life looks like, but what it feels like.

Technorati Tags: aftermath, earthquake, kashmir, pakistan, zoriah

Wanted to alert everyone to this screening and talk by artist Lynne Sachs:
I AM NOT A WAR PHOTOGRAPHER is a cinematic presentation and talk exploring my decade-long artistic rather than physical immersion in war. From Vietnam to Bosnia to WWII Occupied Rome to the Middle East today, my experimental documentary films push the borders between genres, discourses, radicalized identities, psychic states and nations through the intertwining of abstract and reality based imagery. In my talk, I will introduce precise visual strategies I have discovered in working with these fraught and divisive themes. Often opting for a painterly rather than a photographic articulation of conflict, I struggle with each new project to find a precise language of images and sounds with which to discuss these volatile moments in history, exposing what I see as the limits of a conventional, documentary representation of both the past and the present. Infusions of colored “brush strokes

Tues 14th March - I was fortunate to be introduced to Betty Bigombe, the Museveni/LRA Peace Talks Mediator, yesterday. She told me that she was sad that the talks were not proving to be successful, but that she will remain in contact with the rebels as long as there is hope. I travelled from Gulu to Lira in the evening, just after nightfall. Not the wisest of moves, especially considering that now the rains have started, the vegetation is growing, which always initiates renewed rebel attacks. There have been a number of attacks in the last couple of weeks, always following the same pattern - Vehicle shot at until it stops; driver killed instantly; others robbed of shoes, clothes and possession and then shot. Driving these roads at night requires nerves of steel and a heavy foot on the accelerator.

Wed 15th March - Left Lira this morning after a flying visit to the Rachele Rehabilitation Centre, set up three years ago by Els De Temmerman, a Belgian Journalist.

Sipa photographer Asim Rafiqui produced this series on Haiti in 2005. The images and his words follow. Anyone who wants to see more of his work can also go here, here, here or here.

From Rafiqui: In February 7th 2006 the Haitians elected a new President. On February 17th 2006 the results of their choice was finally announced; René Preval, a close friend of Jean-Bertrad Aristide’s and former President of Haiti from 1996-2001, had won. The Haitians had believed that they had handed Preval a landslide, but in fact it was officially announced that he had only won by a small margin, hence avoiding a run off election, but forcing him to negotiate a government with his opponents. What transpired during that 10 days between voting and results remains anyone’s guess. But Brian Concannon, of the Institute of Justice and Democracy in Haiti, concluded that “...for the fourth time since 1990 [Haitians] handed their chosen candidate a landslide victory. And for the fourth time Haitian elites, with support from the International Community, ...undercut the victory, seeking at the negotiation table what they could not win at the voting boot.” This should not have come as a surprise to anyone who had been following the situation in Haiti since the removal of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Those who had wrested power from the elected leaders were not simply going to hand it back because of another election. I had been working in Haiti in 2005 documenting the ‘interim’ government’s violent campaign against the pro-Aristide and still hugely popular Lavalas movement. This campaign of assassinations and intimidation continued throughout 2005 and even during the elections itself.     These images help us understand the atmosphere of fear and intimidation in which the recent elections were finally carried out. The also provide testimony to the courage of the Haitian people who despite violent coercion remain determined to choose their own future. When this work was exhibited at Visa Pour L’image in 2005 I included a short introduction to Haiti’s political situation. This original introduction is included below the series.

    Haiti today is a land shrouded in social and political myths. These myths plague the analysis and reporting about the country and mislead us about what is taking place there. Frequently repeated by the media and politicians, these myths tell us that Haiti is a country of unending cycles of senseless violence; that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled the country in the face of a ‘popular’ uprising; that the ‘international community’ intervened to help bring ‘democracy’ to Haiti; that the occupation forces continue with their good work of building schools, bridges, clinics and roads. And the most persistent myth; that pro-Aristide ‘gangsters’ remain the principal source of violence and instability in the country.     In 2005 I traveled to Haiti and found a reality that did not reflect what I had been led to believe. I witnessed an ongoing campaign of violence and repression by Haiti’s current leaders, installed by the USA and France, to eliminate the still vastly popular Lavalas (pro-Aristide) movement and its supporters. Hundreds of Lavalas activists lie without charge in jail while hundreds of others have been killed while protesting in the streets or during Haitian National Police (HNP) raids into strongly pro-Aristide neighborhoods1. Entire communities suspected of pro-Aristide leanings have been surrounded by UN (MINUSTAH) and HNP checkpoints and the residents denied services like water and electricity2.     And yet both the USA and France have stood firmly behind the ‘interim’ government. Recently the USA decided to restart economic and military aid to this government. This is in sharp contrast to its attitude towards the democratically elected President Aristide whom it placed under economic sanctions in 1995 and then worked tirelessly to topple by funding and courting his opponents. The sanctions withheld nearly $500 million from one of the poorest nations of in the Western Hemisphere and caused severe social and economic devastation in the country. At the same time the US government provided financial and political support to Aristide’s opponents and even arranged conferences in neighboring Dominican Republic for Aristide's opponents to meet those from Washington who shared similar political views. As Amy Wilentz, a journalist with extensive experience in Haiti, wrote “In a country...where the military has been disbanded for nearly a decade, soldiers don't simply emerge... they have to be reorganized, retrained and resupplied... and someone has to organize [them].3

1 “Haiti Human Rights Investigation” University of Miami School of Law 2004 2 “Keeping the Peace in Haiti?” Harvard Law School, Clinical Advocacy Group 2005 3 Amy Wilentz, The Nation, March 4th & April 9th 2004

Technorati Tags: aristide, death squads, democracy, elections, haiti, minustah, conconnon, lavalas, puppy, rafiqui, sipa, united nations, United States

No News on Jill Carroll's fate as deadline passes. This reminder just in from Bill Putnam. Looks like just about any residential street in Baghdad. Putnam's newly-uploaded work can be seen in his gallery. We will be fronting more of it later this week.

The corner where Jill Carroll was kidnapped in Baghdad Jan. 7, 2006. Carroll, a freelancer for the Christian Science Monitor, is still being held.