Global Lens Reflections on life, the universe, and everything
Picture of the Week
Life goes on
I just arrived, after four days of traveling, at the Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya–the world’s largest refugee settlement. I’ll start photographing tomorrow morning. As I think about doing that in the midst of lots of suffering, as many of you have seen in recent weeks as the major media has covered the food […]
Arrow boys
Last Saturday South Sudan became an independent nation. Incredibly good news. Yet the new country faces a variety of challenges, both internal and external. Among the latter is the continuing threat of the Lord’s Resistance Army, which has long served in the area as a proxy militia for Khartoum. Last November I traveled to Yambio, […]
Havana mirror
Mirrors are cool. In this hairdresser's shop in Havana, about the only way I could encompass everything going on in the room, from the barber to the people waiting to the large statue of Mary to the picture of Jesus to all the stuff lying about to the funky chandelier . . .was to shoot […]
A wing and a prayer
Sorry, but I've been away on an assignment and didn't keep up with the calendar. But here is this week's pick. It was taken by me after some very cooperative Congolese duct-taped me to the wing of this plane, then I held on tight to the camera and off we go. It worked well until […]
Literacy is powerful
United Methodist Pastor Leslie Dela Cruz, right, teaches basic literacy, including making vowel sounds, to Janet Tamtan, an Aeta indigenous woman in the Philippine village of Camachile, where the United Methodist Church has a pastoral presence among Aetnas who were displaced by the eruption of Mt Pinatubo. I love the effort she's putting into making […]
Tough assignment
In 2005 the World Council of Churches asked me to photograph two church-related themes in the U.S. as part of a global look at faith expressions called "Keeping the Faith", which produced a coffee-table book and a website. I ended up documenting the Church of Mary Magdalene–a congregation of homeless women in Seattle–and the blessing […]
Getting high
This is the reverse of the image from two weeks ago, where I went low to capture the drama. Here I got high. I was in Java in 2007, part of a shoot for the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance about the impact of world trade policies on rice production in Third World countries, in this case […]
True survivor
In 2006 I was shooting landmine survivors in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and had the privilege of meeting Bobana, a 26-year old woman in Gradiska, Banja Luka, who lost her hands to unexploded ordnance. Dedicated today to photography, she hasn't let her disability stop her, and participates actively in a local cooperative of artists who are […]
Swirling color
This image was taken in 2007 in the Dereig camp for displaced people in Darfur, the western region of Sudan. Left homeless after attacks by government-backed militias, this woman lives crowded with other displaced families in a depressing collection of huts, yet she wears clothing with vibrant colors. I saw her when I was walking […]