I’m currently on assignment with ChildFund in Kenya working on a television spot that will air in the US. The video concerns solar panels that the NGO has placed in schools and dormitories in two separate areas of the country. These photos come from remote Maasai land, north of the Tanzania border – far from any tarmacked road or mobile phone tower. The solar panels, which were of great help to me when charging camera batteries, are even more useful to the girls at Nanin’goi Girls’ Primary and Boarding School in Mosiro, Kenya. Here students can study in class and find their way around the dorms without relying on kerosene lanterns after the sun sets just after 6pm each day. ChildFund continually works with the elders of the community to ensure that the girls of the school are not subjected to early childhood marriage and female circumcision, practices still very[…]
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featured in Marie Claire…
My photographs appear for the third time in this month’s Marie Claire. The magazine does a good job keeping its readers informed about what goes on in the lives of women throughout the world. For this article MC took a look at five different women in different countries on four continents, comparing their salaries and lifestyles. The subject of my photos, Rachel Jama, whom I shadowed for a day in Soroti, Uganda, was the most unique of all the women. Read the article and see if you don’t agree. The January 2011 issue is on stands now.
Read Morea (re)productive year
With assignments in six different countries throughout the world, PSI has filled up at least a terabyte’s worth of hard drive space in RAW and video files for me this year and has kept me busy enough to fall behind on my blogging. While Population Services International has programs in a number of areas in global health, I’ve primarily been documenting their reproductive health and HIV/AIDS prevention programs along with the lives of the women who have been helped. All of the following were taken in Mali, Cameroon, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Above, Kono Cecile receives a hormonal implant in her arm at a clinic in Yaounde, Cameroon. The implant will prevent her from having children in the next five years and allow her to concentrate on better raising the children she already has. Banconi is a crowded suburb in Mali’s capital, Bamako. Mariam Sangare, shown above at her children’s bath[…]
Read MoreSaving Grace
Two weeks ago, Grace seemed like any other nine year old girl in northeastern Uganda’s Amuria District. She was attending school and helping her mother around the house. Suddenly she was unable to hold down food. The medicine her mother bought at the local clinic was of no help. Now Grace hasn’t eaten in over two weeks and weighs just 13 kilos (28 pounds). Sores on her lips and mouth make any ingestion of food far too painful to bear. Grace’s mother, Sarah Kembi (27), found out that her daughter was HIV positive only two years ago. Since that time Grace has been taking Septrin, a stabilizer drug that, while not an ARV, still reduces the chances of opportunistic infections. Sarah’s husband, Grace’s father, succumbed to AIDS around the same time Mrs. Kembi figured she had better get her daughter tested. Though Grace was likely healthy enough to forgo ARV[…]
Read Moregrowing up with One Acre Fund
I’ve recently been impressed with the work of the agricultural NGO One Acre Fund. While on assignment in Kenya for business magazine “FIVE,” I documented the organization’s work with small farmers. These farmers usually cultivate no more than approximately one acre of land and therefore are usually the most in need. While OAF works in both Kenya and Rwanda, these photographs are from western Kenya’s Webuye district. Why is One Acre Fund featured in a business magazine? Its model differs from that of most non-profit organizations. Instead of handing out improved fertilizers and seeds, farmers are given loans for these things and organize in groups under the supervision of a extension worker to learn how to use them. The groups then bring their harvests together at the end of the season when One Acre Fund acts as a bulk selling agent, thus commanding higher prices for the farmers. In 2009,[…]
Read MoreMicro lending, macro change. On the road with BRAC.
I’m currently photographing on a four country assignment with BRAC, an NGO based out of Bangladesh. While I wish I could go there too, I’ve just finished up a leg in Liberia and am heading to Tanzania tonight. I first became familiar with BRAC after spotting their program signs at almost every junction in Tanzania directing highway travelers to nearby projects. They gained more attention last year after an agricultural grant from the Gates Foundation, another organization for whom I regularly photograph. Above, a mangrove swamp on the Sierra Leone River in Port Loko. BRAC works in the areas of microfinance (small loans to individuals), sustainable agriculture, and community health. They primarily work with women and girls in these areas, as women of all ages are more vulnerable in the developing world, more likely to support their families and, as you can see from a past blog entry, doing most[…]
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