Global Lens Reflections on life, the universe, and everything
Innocence threatened
It’s the Feast Day of the Holy Innocents, when the church remembers the biblical narrative of infanticide by Herod the Great, who’d been appointed “King of the Jews” by Rome. Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem in order to fend off losing his power to the newborn […]
Waiting in Mursan
In these waning days of Advent, when our practice of waiting is stressed to the breaking point by the violent anti-logic of NRA types who think the solution to violence is more violence, I recall those I've known who wait patiently. In refugee camps and prisons around the world, in homes torn by abuse and […]
Flowers for the police
I’m currently wrapping up a month-long reporting trip with a few days in Cambodia, most of it in the boonies, but including a couple of days in Phnom Penh, in part to photograph some demonstrations on Human Rights Day last Monday. I went to two very different demonstrations that morning. The second was a protest […]
Real photographers
There’s a cartoon I like that shows a photographer who is poorly attired and laden with all sorts of camera gear, thus obviously a true professional, trying to get to the front of a crowd to capture the action. He says, “Excuse me, I’m a photographer,” to which the crowd of people, each equipped with […]
Egypt: Advent in Tahrir Square
It is Advent in Tahrir Square, where people are waiting. They’re not sure for what, but such is the nature of Advent, to wait for freedom and deliverance amid uncertainty. The people gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square are both afraid and hopeful at the same time. That’s Advent in a land where Arab Spring has […]
Boxes from below
One of the things I stress in my photography workshops is that the photographer is challenged to take pictures of things we’ve all seen before, but to do it in such a way that we see it freshly, anew. Take the unloading of boxes of relief goods at a church in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka, following […]
Dancers from above
I don’t like taking pictures of meetings, which are almost always visually boring. One exception I make is the quadrennial gathering of United Methodists called General Conference. It’s a chance to see a lot of friends and work with Mike DuBose, a photographer colleague who actually knows what he’s doing, and so I’m constantly pestering […]
Helicopter boy
Sometimes you just keep following a subject, in case something interesting happens. On this day, I flew on a U.S. Navy Blackhawk helicopter from Port-au-Prince to Jacmel, on Haiti’s southern coast. It was a very ecumenical trip: the U.S. military transporting emergency assistance provided by German churches, which was offloaded by Canadian soldiers and turned […]
It’s just a game
When I posted this image on Facebook a few weeks ago, some people wanted to know if I’d gotten all wet taking it. Not really. It was late in the day and I’d wandered off without a translator or vehicle in the Doro refugee camp in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State. (These are refugees from […]
Uppity girls
Here's an image from a chemistry class at St Peter's College for Women in Lahore, Pakistan. It's a school for poor girls from the countryside, sponsored by the Church of Pakistan. I thought of visiting schools like this in Pakistan when reading about Malala Yousufzai, the courageous 15-year old girl who was shot by the […]
Marked man
This is Henri Aguilar with his one-year old daughter Genesis in the yard of their home in Chamelecon, a poor neighborhood near San Pedro Sula, Honduras. I captured this image on May 2, 2007, during a visit to prepare a story on the church's work with gangs in Cenral America. Five days later, Henri was […]
Not looking away
Homeless people make most of us uncomfortable. When we see them on exit ramps or city sidewalks, we change lanes, avert our gaze, suddenly remember to check for messages on our smart phones. I’m not sure why. Perhaps they remind us of our own vulnerability. Perhaps we’re afraid of the poor. So we look away. […]
Brazil boy
Sometimes there are a lot of people in a scene, and trying to fit them all in gets complicated. I feel the urge to grab people and start moving them around because the light is better over here, the scene is more balanced if you stand there, etc. And then there are times when it […]
Net girl
In response to last week’s photo, I had two people write me to ask why the family of the boy who died didn’t have bed nets to prevent the transmission of malaria. I responded that it’s not that simple. I've had malaria, and it’s no fun. I had a good friend die of malaria. As […]
Selling nets
Zacarias Moses died last night. He was 8 years old. I met him yesterday when I saw his grandmother carry his unconscious body into a hospital in Wau, South Sudan. I followed and photographed Moses, who was suffering from malaria, as the nurses cared for him. After a while, a prolonged series of convulsions stopped […]
Marketing violence
The rants of crazed Republicans in the United States about the legitimacy of rape has reminded me of the struggle of women in India against a blame-the-victim mentality that still plagues both gender relationships and the attitudes of public security officials, as documented in this recent article. Here’s a billboard from Varanasi I found a […]
Roma girls
Pressing the shutter button is the easy part of photography. I’m currently in Macedonia, part of a several-nation journey to write about and photograph Roma communities in Europe. Last week I was in Serbia, and one day went to a collection of containers plunked down in the middle of nowhere outside of Belgrade. The metal […]
Not peddling misery
Images of hungry children are commonly used by all sorts of organizations to touch the heart of the viewer and thus convince them to give money to the cause. Churches are pretty adept at the practice, what I disgustingly call “peddling misery.” The antidote, however, isn’t to not take photos of hungry children, not if […]
Mother’s love
It’s back to school time for many children in North America, so this week I’m thinking about people like Mariolette Souffrant, a woman living in a tent city in the Mais Gate neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Here she is one morning helping her son Lucien get dressed for school. The four-year old is a student […]
Laughing woman
It was one of those interminable hot days in the tropics. I’d eaten a big lunch and was sleepy, yet my local hosts were enthusiastic about showing me another six projects before sunset. I bounced around in the Land Cruiser as they drove me to a couple of projects where people were growing and processing […]
Elbow angles
Photography is about hard work and persistence, but also a bit of luck. Here’s an image from a 2010 assignment in Tamil Nadu, in southern India. I was in the small village of Poonthandalam, photographing some children in a church-sponsored after school tutoring program. It was late in the day, nice light, and interesting subjects. […]
Rain girl
I’ve always admired the great portrait photographers, people who could get someone to sit in front of them and then capture an image which—in the same fraction of a second—also captures some of that person’s character, or soul, or personality. A good portrait is more than just a collection of pixels representing the outline and […]
Positive family
This image wraps up my month-long focus on HIV and AIDS, and I chose it because it shows the face of the epidemic: ordinary people. I was in India in 2010 and spent several days photographing HIV-related work for the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance around Chennai, including support groups, a church-sponsored clinic, and the daily lives […]
Dancing condom
I'm currently covering the XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington, DC, especially the participation of the faith community. I've covered previous IACs in Bangkok, Mexico City, and Vienna. It's always a whirlwind of activity, with more than 20,000 researchers, care givers, people living with the virus, media, activists, pharma reps, and so on. It's exciting […]