Global Lens Reflections on life, the universe, and everything

Food
A year in pictures – 2020
A year in pictures - 2020

2020 started off strangely for me, and then it only grew more weird. In January, I had surgery to swap out an old hip joint for a modern titanium one. That meant two or three months of rehab, and then I had plans to hit the road, starting with a trip to South Sudan. Beyond […]

A year in images – 2019
A year in images - 2019

In her simple home in a Manila slum, 6-year old Clarisa Jugadora touches a photo of her grandparents, who were taken away by police during a assault on a poor community. Their bodies were found the next day. They were killed as part of the Philippines government’s so-called “war on drugs.” The girl believes her […]

Winnowing
Winnowing

Today is International Winnowing Day. Well, not really. I just made that up. But it could be, given how winnowing is such a widespread chore around the world. It is quintessential women’s work in that it’s common, difficult, and underappreciated. I just worked with a client who needed a winnowing image, and when I searched […]

Looking back at 2018
Looking back at 2018

We like to look back. When I photograph someone walking past me, I try to stay focused on them as they walk away. After a moment or two, most often they will turn and look back. Like this woman in a refugee camp in Maban, South Sudan, who I photographed in May. That look back […]

Honduras: A death in the Aguan Valley
Honduras: A death in the Aguan Valley

We found Carlos Martinez’ body lying in several inches of water in a far corner of the La Lempira palm oil cooperative that he and other peasants had seized from a wealthy landowner that they believed stole it from them. I had come to the cooperative early that Sunday morning, sitting for two hours with […]

Horn of Africa: Deadly drought
Horn of Africa: Deadly drought

Fatima Mohammed walked 32 days from her drought-ravaged farm in Somalia to the relative safety of the sprawling Dadaab refugee settlement in northeastern Kenya. There were days, she told me, when they were so thirsty that her children couldn’t walk, and the adults would ferry them ahead, returning to carry two more children at a […]

Malawi: Food questions
Malawi: Food questions

The usual picture the media paint of Africa is one of corruption, violence and hunger, a picture that plays well into the goal of aid groups to bump up revenue. After all, if there’s no crisis, there’s no money. And as humanitarian groups become fixers and access providers more and more frequently for cash-strapped foreign […]