SnapperTalk

© Pieter Hugo

Pieter Hugo, who won a World Press Photo Award for this photo of a Nigerian hyena handler, has some new work on the subject of Nigeria’s always-booming film industry known as Nollywood.

Having lived in West Africa for a few years and having spent some time in Nigeria I’m well aware of how wildly popular these films are throughout the region. They’re mostly traded around on worn-out videotapes or VCDs and watched in makeshift cinemas charging a small fee and consisting of a crowd of people gathered around a flickering TV set. For the countless numbers of West Africans living in poverty it’s some of the only entertainment accessible to them.

Pieter apparently adopted a creative approach to this project, rather than pure photojournalism, but it fits the subject well and the photos are just great:

“His first attempt to photograph on film sets documenting these scenes failed to produce pictures that fully mirrored the intensity of the situations. He then decided to bring his interpretation of these staged realities into another realm by assembling a team of forty actors and assistants. He asked them to recreate the stereotypical myths and symbols that characterise Nollywood productions, reproducing the dynamic of movie sets.”

You can see a selection of Pieter’s Nollywood photos here.

And if you want some good Nigerian music to listen to as you view the photos, go here.

[via The Click]

Two photographers I’ve met briefly whose exhibitions I’d like to see….

Luc Delahaye’s panoramic photographs of world events which are currently showing in the J. Paul Getty Museum are the subject of this LA Times article (sorry, registration required) and small photo gallery.
I’ve always loved Delahaye’s work, after being switched on to his Russian road journey book Winterreise by my friend Jeremy (check out his excellent blog btw, and article in this month’s Digital Journalist).
I ran into Luc whilst covering the recent fighting at Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in Lebanon earlier this year. Frankly, I didn’t recognise him and was perplexed as to why someone would be running around a conflict zone with a large format camera - it is somewhat unusual. It was only near the end of the conversation, on a rooftop watching shells land on the camp below, that I realised it was him and I wish I’d had a bit longer to chat. There’s some more pictures here and an exhibition brochure to download here, but of all the work that needs to be seen printed really large on a wall, this is probably it.

Tim Hetherington recently had an exhibition entitled “No Condition Is Permanent: Liberia in Transition” at the The Alice Austen House Museum in Staten Island, NY. Tim and I both covered the Liberian civil war of 2003 although from different sides - he travelled with the LURD rebels throughout whilst I was in the besieged capital Monrovia - and we only had the chance to meet briefly at the end when it was all over. He, James Brabazon, and Jonathan Stack turned their incredible footage into the documentary film “Liberia: An Uncivil War“. So I’d have been very happy to see this exhibition of his photos of Liberia covering the period 2003-2007 - but unfortunately I’ll have to make do with the slideshow.

Good friend and NY Times photographer Michael Kamber has a newly designed website showcasing some of his work from the last few years.

Mike has worked extensively in Africa from east to west, as well as Iraq and Haiti, and has strong material up there well worth a look. Mike is one of a handful of photojournalists I know who also writes news reports on assignment - which is no mean feat when you are filing photos on a daily basis - and some of these reports are readable on the site.

I particularly like his “Children of War” project: (from his description)

“I never set out to photograph children of war, I simply looked at my photos one day and saw how many images showed children caught, often literally, in the crossfire”

Michael Kamber website

As noted in Harts Big Picture, my good friend and colleague Michael Kamber has a nice multimedia piece on the New York Times website about the refugee situation in Chad caused by the Darfur conflict in Sudan. The NYT uses some extremely nice flash work to present their multimedia galleries, but those looking to create a similar (albeit not quite so sophisticated) effect might want to try the SoundSlides software I wrote about previously.

The L.A.Times has a good exposé of Nigerian 419 email scammers entitled “I will eat your dollars” showing what their background is, how they accomplish their work, and the people who actually fall for the scams - in depressingly large numbers. It’s a story that’s been done before many times but this is one of the better ones.

As reported in this Wired article, photojournalist Scott Harrison has made a very interesting photo project entitled “On a Mercy Ship” about the work of Mercy Ships - a fleet of hospital ships staffed by volunteers that provide free surgery to needy people around the world.
Scott served a year onboard the Mercy Ship Anastasis in West Africa as a volunteer photojournalist and his project focuses on the help they give to the disfigured through advanced, life-changing maxillofacial operations. Note that some of the photos are somewhat graphic (in a medical way). Interesting project shedding light on some very worthy work.

Since the switch over to the new Inmarsat-4 F-1 Satellite BGAN satphones can now be used all the way down to South Africa which is good news. But the switch has also left a gaping coverage hole over parts of West Africa (plus northern England and Portugal) that will only be filled once the Inmarsat-4 F-2 satellite becomes operational over the Americas sometime in 2005/2006. Until that happens, it seems that you will not be able to use BGANs in these West African countries:

Western Sahara - Mauritania - Senegal - Mali - Guinea - Gambia - Guinea-Bissau - Sierra Leone - Liberia

One of the nice aspects of Senegal is the friendly, tolerant, attitude of the people living here and the general air of stability. I was reminded of this on the walk to work this morning when I came across a hundred or so men, in a group, running and shouting down the street. My instinct, based on many other countries in this part of the world, was to assess what it could be - a demonstration? part of a riot? running from some incident? … No… just the new recruits for the nearby Customs training centre on their morning exercise run. Nice.

Today I have the musical guest spot over on my friend Matt’s burgeoning audioblog website Benn Loxo du Taccu. It’s a great Sierra Leonian danceclub treasure I found and titled “Tell me if you want me to go”, though the real artist and title remain unknown.

Here is the article