Global Lens Reflections on life, the universe, and everything
Pelecanus occidentalis
I’m not a nature photographer, but I do at times mistakenly drag a camera along when I go on vacation. I was thinking of this while lying around because I just had knee surgery. Rather than remaining in cold and snowy Yakima I’ve been fantasizing about healing instead on a tropical island such as Sandy […]
Spied in Havana
Digital technology has definite advantages over film. I learned about one of them while shooting in Cuba a few years ago. I was interested in capturing images of the iconic old cars that populate the island’s streets, and shot a variety of daytime photos. I thought I’d also try shooting them at night, using a […]
Playing dead
In a rural village in northern India, students from Isabella Thoburn College perform street theater against dowry violence. Dowry is a practice where the bride's family transfers money and objects of value to the groom's family, and it has grown even more prevalent in India in recent years, contributing to horrible violence against many women […]
Olive woman
In this November 2006 image, a Palestinian woman cleans olives during the yearly olive harvest in the West Bank town of Turmus'ayya. She throws the olives in the air and the wind blows the leaves away. Olives play a central role in the traditional Palestinian diet and economy; about 45 percent of agricultural land in […]
Rush to idiocy
Late last Friday night I returned from the Dominican Republic, flying into Seattle. I then had to drive to Portland in the middle of the night, so I sought out some rightwing radio stations to listen to. These usually keep me awake, and this time was no exception. One station I found was a call-in […]
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 […]
Seaside morning
Some images remain with me not so much for what happened in the moment of capture, but what transpired afterward. Here's a photo I took on December 19, 2004. A Sunday morning in the quiet Indian seaside village of Ennore, north of Chennai. I had gone there a few days earlier to document some Methodist […]
Carlos’ body
I am in Honduras currently, and on Sunday morning I was visiting the La Lempira cooperative near Tocoa, in the Aguan Valley of northern Honduras. It’s a region I’ve written about in the past. It boasts very fertile land which has been systematically stolen over the years by the rich. When the poor organize to […]
Daddy’s picture
There's nothing particularly dramatic about this image, but it was an emotional moment for me as a photographer. I was in Beirut in 2008, as part of an assignment in Lebanon and Syria documenting the lives of Iraqi refugees. I was with a translator from the Caritas Lebanon Migrant Center, visiting some refugee families in […]
Haiti: Hatuey’s legacy
They were easy to spot from a distance because they all had on the same red shirts. As they neared my row, I cringed a bit, hoping they would continue on towards the back of the plane that was going to carry us to Miami. But then two women stopped and asked to get past […]
Dying of thirst
No More Deaths is a humanitarian group that organizes volunteers to place water in the desert along the U.S.-Mexico border, water that frequently keeps migrants traversing the desert from dying. They place gallon jugs of water along migrant paths, carefully monitoring what gets used and what doesn't so they can shift water to where it's […]
Himalayan helicopter
In delivering emergency aid, helicopters can be useful, such as getting tents to the remote village of Gantar, high in the Himalayas of northern Pakistan. In the wake of the October 2005 earthquake, when homes in this village had collapsed, and with winter quickly closing in, getting shelter material on the ground was urgent. Yet […]
Sunshine woes
Seems like it would be simple. If farmers are working in a field, you just point the ol’ camera and “click.” Then on to the next task. But it seldom works out that way. Why? Farmers tend to put things in the ground, and thus spend a lot of time looking at the ground. The […]
Handy translator
I've been on assignment in Haiti, and haven't posted for two weeks. I hope you survived in the absence of the PotW. . . Haiti is one of those places where I need a translator most of the time, as my crappy French isn't good enough to understand most Kreyol. Translators are critical players in […]
Casting a big shadow
I love this photo. The technique was simple: I stood on my toes. I often look for a different angle, and love getting high. (yea, yea…) But "high" can often mean just a couple more inches. In this case, it allowed me to isolate the boy against the dirt, without any distractions from people or […]
Tortilla fingers
The rule of thumb in photography is that light is your friend if it's behind you or to the side, but if it's shining at you from behind the subject you want to photograph, then you've got issues. But sometimes it works to your advantage. In 2009, I was photographing Petronila Escalante as she prepared […]
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 […]
Beauty comes to those who wait
This image is a testament to hanging on til the last minute. I was in Zalingei, in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2005. I was sitting with some Sudanese men, and these women came by carrying pots on their heads. (So far there's nothing unusual here: men sitting around talking while women work.) The […]
Water works
I'm just wrapping up a long week at the world's largest refugee camp in northeastern Kenya. The Dadaab refugee complex – it's really three separate camps – has somewhere around 400,000 people, and the numbers are growing daily as new refugees arrive from drought-stricken Somalia. It's a place full of pain and lost dreams, but […]
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 […]
Libya: Urbicide in Misrata
Fred Pavey has a rubber chicken. His wife gave it to him. Fred is a British explosive ordnance disposal technician, and when he gets to a place where he has to deal with landmines or bombs or other things that are just lying around waiting to go bang, he inflates the chicken and leaves its […]