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

The following words and photographs are from Zoriah:     During my work documenting the AIDS crisis in Asia, I had the opportunity to meet some truly incredible human beings, some of whom are still alive, most though have already died in the short period of time since the completion of this project. From the groups of urban prostitutes living and working in the slums of Phnom Penh Cambodia, teaching each other safety, survival and financial planning while setting up clinics on the average aid agencies paperclip budget, to the quiet suffering of mothers who have unknowingly passed on a disease to their children via their fathers indiscretion, these stories and these faces linger in my mind.     While aid organizations give total infection rates of about one percent, caregivers, hospice staff and the people on the ground speak of certain regions reaching up to twenty five percent HIV infection rates. With a new heroin epidemic hitting urban slums and a dramatic increase in both hetero and homosexual sex tourism, the problem is expected to reach epic proportions over the next few years.        Numbers and statistics are just that, nothing more than markings on paper or words on a news program, the human side however is truly disturbing. Patients wait to die alone, coated in flies and nursed by family members. Understaffed hospitals are in such disrepair that they have been deemed biohazard and HAZMAT threats and workers refuse to even enter the premises, much less make necessary repairs and provide care to patients.     In several well known hospitals I found myself literally wading through ankle deep piles of disposed needles, catheter bags and soiled linens, as patents navigated hallways with potholes that dropped through to the floors below. The human suffering is quite unreal and the faces of teenage girls, mothers, fathers and small babies wasting away in discomfort still appear vivid in my mind.     This photo story is dedicated to my new friends who sit quietly and wait to die, those who choose not to sit quietly but fight for the lives and the health of their friends, family, and complete strangers. This photo story should also serve as an attack on the organizations, governments, corporations and pharmaceutical giants who quite simply are doing too little.

Technorati Tags: aids, cambodia, death, illness, prostitution, sex workers, zoriah

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.

From Timothy Floyd: I had the privilege of serving during the initial phases of Operation Iraqi Freedom as an orthopedic surgeon in U. S. Army's 934th Forward Surgical Team. We traveled at the front with various brigades treating, not only wounded coalition forces, but Iraqi civilians, soldiers, Republican and Special Republican Guard, as well as Fedayeen terrorists. Initially, we treated the wounded in our canvas surgical tent. As the war progressed, we made unescorted humanitarian missions to homes, villages, hospitals, and camps, including a "black mission" to treat wounded Iranian MEK soldiers. My photographs tell the story of what I saw and felt, and the uncommon empathy, courage and humanity I witnessed. My experience was much different that what is usually portrayed in the American media, but is consistent with most accounts of men and women who have been to Iraq or who are there now. The Iraqi people are just like anyone else worldwide; most of them only want a peaceful life and the freedom to work, study, play and raise a family. (More of Dr. Floyd's photographs can be found here.)

CPT. Bryan Moore attends a post-op wounded Iraqi woman.

A boy wounded near Baghdad by a grenade his brother set off.

CPT Charlotte Lee attends a wounded Iraqi Republican Guard soldier.

An Iraqi man brings a sick child to an American Army doctor near Balad

Zuma Press photographer Bill Putnam has filed new photos in his gallery from Operation Swarmer, a combined US/Iraqi military sweep in the Sunni-dominated areas north of Baghdad. Recent news stories can be found here, here and here. From Putnam: "The operation -- billed as the largest air assault since the March 2003 invasion -- lifted 1,500 Americans and Iraqi soldiers in to extremes of barren desert and lush farm lands. Whatever the terrain, they looked for weapons caches and insurgents. Sometimes, they found them. More often than not, they didn't. While this operation was a sign of the (almost glacially) slow growth of the Iraqi army, it was also a sign the insurgency is still active and will take some time to crack."

Technorati Tags: iraq, iraq army, putnam, swarmer