NY Times: "A Genocide In Slow Motion"

Image ©Jan Grarup for NY Times-All Rights Reserved
Jan Grarup is an award-winning Danish photographer who traveled the world documenting many historical events. From the fall of the communist regime in Romania to the current occupation of Iraq, he has covered numerous wars and conflicts, including the genocide in Rwanda. He's a member of the Noor agency-collective.

Here's his latest work out of Africa, which The New York Times chose to title as "A Genocide In Slow Motion". The feature is in slideshow motion, with Jan Grarup narrating.

A Genocide In Slow Motion

Shane Bauer: Darfur

Image © Shane Bauer-All Rights Reserved
Shane Bauer is a freelance journalist who aims to expose social, political, and economic issues around the world. Fluent in Arabic, his work has largely focused on the Middle East and North Africa, where he has spent much of the past five years. He has also worked in Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Cuba, and throughout the former Yugoslavia. His writing and photography has been published in the US, UK, Middle East, and Canada including publications such as the San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, Aljazeera.net, and E: The Environmental Magazine.

His website features a very well done multimedia slideshow titled Darfur Rising. I especially commend his ability with ambient sound and narrative.

Darfur Rising

Lynsey Addario: Darfur

Image Copyright © Lynsey Addario-All Rights Reserved
Lynsey Addario is a photojournalist based in Istanbul, Turkey, where she works for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Fortune and National Geographic among others. With no professional training or studies, she began photographing in 1996 for The Buenos Aires Herald in Argentina, where she worked for one year before returning to New York. In 1997, she began freelancing for the The Associated Press and has since covered many international stories for a variety of the world's top publications.

She works in natural light with digital cameras (Nikon D200 ) and frequently uses a Widelux, a panoramic camera. Lynsey believes that working in the Muslim world as a woman is much easier than for a man. She tells us "Muslims for the most part are incredibly warm and hospitable and often families will invite you into their homes to meet their wives and children and to share a meal. I think this gets a little tricky for male photographers and the more religious families, where men outside of the family shouldn't see women uncovered. "

Her website is replete with a wide range of photo essays...including Darfur, the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and intriguingly Saudi Arabia. For TTP, I feature Lynsey's excellent work on Darfur...it's hard-hitting and graphic...but it's this type of photographic reportage that will continue to prod hypocritical governments, lethargic world bodies and reptilian politicians into action.

Lynsey Addario

Crisis in Darfur

Image Courtesy CFR On our main street, I recently saw a young shoolgirl setting up a small stand with a sign saying 'save Darfur' hoping to collect donations for the unfortunate victims of this relentless genocide. This prompted me to look for the best guide on this atrocious situation, and found it to be the excellent multimedia presentation published by Council on Foreign Relations in collaboration with MediaStorm.

The Darfur guide is the second in a series of interactive guides to the most complex issues and conflicts on the planet. The six-chapter project includes a multimedia narrative, interactive maps and timelines, and extensive information on the situation in Darfur.

Featured in Chapter 1: The Grim Reality is the work of photojournalists Lynsey Addario, Marcus Bleasdale, Stanley Greene, Olivier Jobard, Benjamin Lowy, Kadir van Lohuizen, and Paolo Pellegrin. There is an introductory narrative by Mr Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the UN.

Crisis in Darfur

Candace Feit: Darfur

Image © Candace Feit
I hesitate to describe Candace Feit as an emerging photojournalist, since her remarkably striking photographs are as powerful as those I've seen from many more experienced photojournalists.

I read that she only took up photography seriously 2-3 years ago, and took the opportunity of traveling to Dakar in the Senegal to photograph its streets on a daily basis. She then hooked up with a couple of photo agencies, and suddenly was covering the Darfur conflict, Togo, Liberia and Ghana. Her photographs appeared in the The New York Times, Le Monde, Le Figaro, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and Time magazine, among others.

For this post, I've chosen one of her striking photographs in which the contrast between the starkness of the landscape, the darkening sky, and the colors of the woman's clothes (just look at her flip-flops!) is testament to Candace's skill for composition and her color sense.

Except for countries of Northern Africa, the Sudan and Ethiopia, I haven't traveled in Africa...and it's talented photography like Candace's which tells me if it's high time to start. In the meantime, keep an eye out for Candace Feit...she'll keep impressing us.

Candace Feit

Darfur: Travis Fox/Washington Post

Image Copyright Travis Fox/Washington Post
The Washington Post has a brilliantly-produced multimedia piece on Darfur by Travis Fox.

The government of Sudan is accused of arming and supporting the Janjaweed, an Arab militia in Darfur, who are accused of being guilty of brutal attacks on civilians. More than 450,000 people have been killed by violence and disease. Millions more have been forced off their land in what the US government calls genocide. Recently, attacks have spread to eastern Chad, where the ethnic make up is the same and the border porous.

I find that the panoramics in the piece were extremely well chosen, and give the viewers/readers the sense of actually being there. The more I see panos of that kind, the more I think that they will become an integral part of future photojournalism productions, since they impart such a sense of effective immediacy in the storytelling. Certainly, travel photographers would be well advised to learn the technique as well.

I also watched the movie, and it's as effective as anything I've seen on this on television. Watch the emotional recounting of the unfortunate woman who was raped by the Janjaweed. I could understand enough of what was said that I can confirm that the translation in the subtitles is accurate.

The Washington Post multimedia features are really terrific, and are probably among the best on the web.

Crisis In Darfur Expands