Global Lens Reflections on life, the universe, and everything
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 […]
Pakistan: Mortenson lessons
Greg Mortenson certainly told a good story. When I was on the road for two months last year speaking about my work, I repeatedly encountered people who had read his books and were inspired by what he had experienced and accomplished. Yet there was always something about his story that bothered me, and now we […]
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 […]
Gaza: Life blockaded
It’s like a prison in many ways, surrounded by high walls on three sides, gun towers overseeing the free-fire stretch of scorched earth and rubble warning anyone, including farmers who once tilled the land, from getting close. On the fourth side, the west, the Mediterranean inexorably draws the eye to the horizon, but it, too, […]
Washington: Moms not criminals
No one in the trailer park would have opened their door if I’d been there on my own. People were clearly afraid, so they were either long gone or laying low. After all that had happened, opening their door to one more gabacho wasn’t a great idea. Fortunately I had a Latina with me from […]
Haiti: Rubble Nation
The January 2010 earthquake generated a new word in the vocabulary of Haitians: goudougoudou. That’s the affectionate Kreyol term that Haitians across the board use to name the disaster that ravaged Port-au-Prince and nearby cities. It’s alternately written goudou goudou or goudou-goudou, and is supposedly–if you say it over and over again very fast–the sound […]
Southern Sudan: Before it’s a CNN moment
In Sudanese villages along the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there are homegrown militias that use rather primitive technology–bows and arrows and spears–to fight off attacks from the Lord’s Resistance Army. Yet at the same time, the Arrow Boys take full advantage of modern electronic technology to pass on critical information. Mobile […]
Southern Sudan: Advent waiting
It’s the first Sunday of Advent, and I’m somewhere over the west coast of Africa, sitting in a cramped economy class seat on a 17-hour flight from Johannesburg to Washington. I’m trying to get into the zen of waiting, if for no other reason than I have no choice but to just sit here. And […]
Southern Sudan: voting excitement
I’m in Southern Sudan for a couple of weeks, writing about the work of the church in the lead up to January’s referendum on independence. These are heady times in some ways, as people long oppressed by the government in the north feel their way toward nationhood. There’s a rocky road on the other side […]
Haiti: reconstruction in a time of cholera
In an overwhelmingly tragic landscape, the eye is naturally drawn to any spot of hope. That’s what visiting Haiti was like last week. It’s as if the big picture has been desaturated, all the color removed, and what remains is a stark portrayal in black and white of a population that remains incredibly vulnerable. Yet […]
Cuba: Time to go
Have you wanted to visit Cuba for a while? President Barack Obama is expected to soon announce a loosening of restrictions on the rights of U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba. D’uh. It’s the least we can do. After five decades of blockading Cuba, the U.S. has nothing to show for it but hard feelings […]
The Congo’s Dirty Secret
When President Obama signed the financial reform bill on July 21, the United States took a significant step towards ending violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the most violent war of recent decades continues to rage. It’s a conflict is fueled by a variety of factors, including endemic corruption and the proliferation […]
AIDS Conference in Vienna
I’ve been to some pretty rough places over the years, and I know they’re rough because every once in a while I get to go someplace really pleasant. Like Vienna, where I spent the last week. I didn’t have much time to wander around, but did get out with some colleagues the last night to […]
Sudan: New genocide charges
Judges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague today issued a second arrest warrant against Sudan’s Preident Omar Al Bashir, charging him with three counts of genocide against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups in Darfur. The three specific charges are genocide by killing, genocide by causing serious bodily or mental harm, and […]
Haiti: Six months later
Six months ago the earthquake hit Haiti, and things changed there forever. At this six month’s vantage point, some church relief groups are claiming all is well, so please keep the money and volunteers coming. But that’s a pretty rosy picture that isn’t backed up by facts on the ground. Thomas Johnson, a humanitarian coordinator […]
Honduras: Coup +1
Today marks the one-year anniversary of the coup in Honduras that ousted President Mel Zelaya. It’s been a tortuous year for Hondurans, as well as for U.S. citizens who hoped that the Obama administration was really going to change course after decades of doing the wrong thing in Latin America. Yet the right thing as […]
Zipping through the Arkansas forest
I’m wrapping up two days of shooting in Arkansas, where the heat and humidity makes me wonder if people willingly choose to live here, or if they are forced to remain here by some ominous sub-plot of the infamous Whitewater conspiracy, serving as drones for the evil rulers of our dark age. I have no […]
Size matters
My images get used in a variety of places. Photos I captured in Haiti after the quake, for example, besides showing up in church-related magazines and websites around the world, were also used in secular media like the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, Portland Oregonian, the Guardian, BBC.com, blah, blah, blah. A […]
Sleepless in South Africa
I have acquired some penpals. Let me tell you how that happened. Last year I was in South Africa to work on a couple of stories, one of them on the plight of Zimbabwean refugees who have been exploited, abused and even murdered. In the middle of this depressing story–as are many stories of immigration–I […]
Incredible India
Not long ago a principal purveyor of stigma and discrimination for people living with HIV and AIDS, the Christian church has become in many places around the world a leader in providing both care for people living with the disease as well as advocacy and education to reset the culture’s response to people infected with […]