John D McHugh | Afghanistan, A Tale of Three Cities

Photo © John D McHugh-Courtesy Al Jazeera

I've gone bored with the repetitiveness and lack of imagination of what passes for photojournalism these days, and I was disinterested in featuring any new work that came across my desktop.

However, I thought Afghanistan: A Tale of Three Cities was different. It's a series that filmmaker John D McHugh has been making for Al Jazeera, looking at Afghanistan through the prism of 2014, when international troops are scheduled to "withdraw" from the country. The photographs are in monochrome, and depict life in the Afghan cities of Herat, Mazar-e Sharif and Jalalabad.

I was especially intrigued by the photograph above, showing currency exchange offices surrounding what appears to be a small mosque (top middle). The Arabic script on its wall reads "this is a noble masjid"... places of mammon surrounding a place of worship? Really? But then I remember that Mecca...the holy epicenter of Islam was and is crowded with trading and mercantile activities, and has been so since time immemorial.

John D McHugh is a multimedia photojournalist and filmmaker based in London. He was a daily press photographer, and worked as a regular stringer for The Associated Press and The Guardian before taking a staff photographer position with Agence-France Presse. Since 2007 he has been freelance again and is represented by Reportage by Getty Images.

Delphine Renou | Ethiopian Donga

Photo © Delphine Renou-All Rights Reserved

"After days of car travel, I enter the territory of the Surma tribe...the small village of Turgit in the south east of Ethiopia..."

This is how Delphine Renou, a French photographer and video editor for a number of  television channels (Canal Plus, Arte, etc) starts her photographic essay in southern Ethiopia where she met with members of the Surma tribe.

Her interest in photography was evidenced on her first trip in Africa as part of a humanitarian mission to Benin, after which she decides to get into photojournalism. She travels to southern Ethiopia to meet the people Surmas, to Mongolia, Vietnam, Norway and Afghanistan.

Her photographic essay with the Surma tribe focused on the donga;  the Surma's stick fighting. Generally, the dongas are held so young men can find wives. The fights are held between Surma villages, and the fights have 20-30 people on each side. Many of these fights end within the first couple of hits, but can be dangerous with people dying from being hit. 

Delphine wanted me to feature The Eyes of A People,. a short film of Afghanistan that she and Remy De Vlieger produced. Here it is:

The eyes of a People - AFGHANISTAN - clip from DIGITAL MILL on Vimeo.

Christophe Legris | Buzkachi

Photo © Christophe Legris-All Rights Reserved

The Taliban banned the popular Afghan sport of buzkashi but it has returned with a vengeance. It is also a popular sport (or game) amongst the south Central Asians such as the Uzbeks, Hazaras, Tajiks, Kyrgyz,Kazakhs, Turkmens and Pashtuns.

The rules are simple but brutal, and are not dissimilar to the game of polo. Two teams on horseback endeavor to carry a slaughtered goat around corner posts, then back into the center circle in which it was first placed, all the while steering their horses away from the whips of the opposing side.

Here's a photo gallery featuring buzkachi by the French photographer Christophe Legris. He's a French and Latin literature teacher, a writer, a media producer and a promoter, living in Kabul after spending 9 years in Istanbul, San Francisco and New York and currently in Thailand.

His website has numerous galleries including Thailand, Afghanistan, New York and India. I also liked his gallery of the Kuchis,  who are nomads and semi-nomads in Afghanistan, who mostly keep sheep and goats.

For further buzkashi coverage, the trailer of Buzkashi Boys makes for compelling viewing.

Elissa Bogos | The Last Jew In Afghanistan

Here's a short video documentary by Elissa Bogos on Zeblon Simontov, the last Jew in Afghanistan while he observes the fifth night of Hanukkah alone in his deserted and dilapidated synagogue.

Simontov was born in 1959 in Turkmenistan, and lives in Kabul working as a carpet dealer. He's believed to be the last Jew in Afghanistan...and consequently is the last caretaker of the only synagogue in Afghanistan.

His wife and daughters emigrated to Israel, and when asked why he didn't, he's said to have replied "Go to Israel? What business do I have there? Why should I leave?"

This reminds me that a few years ago, I thought of photographing the last remaining Jews in Egypt. Starting off by photographing one of the ancient (and now restored) synagogues in Old Cairo, I was faced with obstacles by the policemen guarding it, who were uneasy at my presence taking pictures there, I quickly gave up. The synagogue was open to tourists, but there were some restrictions in photographing...at least, that's what they told me.

For a relatively recent article dealing with the remnants of the Jewish community in Egypt that was once one of the vibrant in the world, take a read of Josh Weil's The Last Jews of Cairo.

Elissa Bogos is a freelance photojournalist and videojournalist currently based in Kabul, Afghanistan.  Her photographs and video have been published in The New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, EurasiaNet, The Huffington Post, The Montreal Gazette, Reuters, New York Daily News and in other media. In Afghanistan, she freelances for a variety of NGOs and private companies and has worked with the Associated Press, Tolo TV and Channel One TV.

2012 National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest Finalists

Photo © Cedric Houin-All Rights Reserved

In Focus, the superlative photo blog of The Atlantic, features the winners of the 2012 National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest in a much more satisfying format than the National Geographic. The finalists' photographs are shown in a 1280 pixel size; a size that will fill the largest monitors.

The winners consist of a group of 10 photos plus one Viewer's Choice winner. These images were chosen from more than 12,000 entries submitted by 6,615 photographers from 152 countries. The winners are from four categories: Travel Portraits, Outdoor Scenes, Sense of Place, and Spontaneous Moments.

First place went to Cedric Houin with the above photograph of the inside of a family yurt in the Kyrgyz lands of the Wakhan Corridor. We are told by the photograph's caption that the tribes living in the area are weeks away from any village by foot, and although located at an altitude of 4,300 meters in one of the most remote areas of Afghanistan, solar panels, satellite dishes and cellphones are prevalent.

It's not often that I agree with results of photography contests, but the judges' choice in this one is spot on. The richness of the reds of the yurt's interior, and the facial expression of the main protagonist along with the smaller details make a story out of that photograph. 

Cedric Houin is a French & Canadian documentary photographer, and a visual storyteller.

As for the Wakhan Corridor, it's an area of far north-eastern Afghanistan which forms a land link between Afghanistan and China. It's a long and slender area, roughly 140 miles long and between 10 and 40 miles wide. It also separates Tajikistan in the north from Pakistan in the south.