Varanasi. Was there ever a place better suited to explore an earthbound life through art? To utter this conceit is as infuriating as it is unavoidable. What can the observer of life's injustices and inherent contradictions do but play one's role to the hilt by doing it exceedingly well? Rajesh Singh not only followed his journey to this mysterious place as a young man, but he also continues to bear witness to and rail against those past inequities that have persisted for much too long through the "ancient auras" of a city that never fails to adapt to the damning present. His photographs, which he calls his "physical meditations," are nothing less than portals to a higher calling in a city known for its promise of salvation. From 2017...
Taking his cue from the great Persian poet Nima Yooshij, Ali Agharabi turns his journalist's eye toward a more poetic view of the world, capturing the contemplative moments that exist within nature and in the questions posed by the playful abstractions often missed in the hustle and bustle of everyday living, from the aspiring reach of a mosque's minarets to the solemnity of a cathedral to exchanges of shadow and light, snow and sand, graffiti and inner reflection at the edges of boundaries of unexplored landscapes, or where they meet clearly with sea and sky.
Getting old is never easy, but especially so in places like Romania, still caught between an obsolete Soviet influence and an impotent Western agenda. In an age of austerity and corruption, this could be the future for more and more of us. Nicoleta Gabor captures these stories, faces, and gestures with compassion and tenderness.
September 2014's cynical deal between Cambodia and Australia not only sealed the fate of 1,100 refugees but, for a price of $35 million, brought the concept of human trafficking to a whole new level, one that foreshadowed the subsequent crisis of Syrian refugees still flooding Europe. Powerful photographs of refugees being rendered disposable by competing states.
While it is impossible to predict accurately how many people will be displaced over the next few decades, the best estimates indicate that sea-level rise alone will displace 18 million within this river delta country's borders, which will present Bangladesh with an enormous challenge for coping with the reality of simply caring for its citizens. Probal Rashid takes us there.
Crisis in Bangladesh
Photographs by Probal Rashid
Moscow: the name evokes an aura of poetic and historical connotations. A resident of the great city, photographer Nina Ai-Artyan captures its endless streets full of lingering history. The great filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein stated perhaps accurately: "Language is much closer to film than is painting." Ai-Artyan captures those ineffable moods that the great Russian writers attempted to in words. Alongside her images are the thoughts and ideas of Akhmatova, Dostoevski, Tsvetaeva, Chekhov, Berberova, and Turgenev. From 2016...
As a result of a globalizing world economy, the inter-connectedness of derivatives-driven markets, resource-defined ecologies, rigged trade agreements, and shock-and-awe speculation, the West is once again violently crashing into the East—no thanks to the Western mainstream media for having failed to stir up the dregs of rice bowls now empty of easily discarded truth. Dipu Malakar's finely-honed vision of Dhaka draws upon the joy of everyday living, the mystery, the adversity, the heartache, and the longing, the very essence of a people's life in a city they call home.
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In the face of the New Cold War the planet's northernmost megacity thrives. Designated an "alpha city," Moscow is a crucial nexus in the global economic system; a cosmopolis that has survived a history of invasions that would give a Mongol chieftain pause, it is one of the most densely populated in Europe. Its citizens are also among the most literate on the planet. Perhaps there is something in the light along the banks of the Moskva River that explains it. The great Russian writer Anton Chekhov wrote: "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me..."
A growing number of youths are spending their lives on the streets of Cambodia's cities and towns, trying to survive while desperately attempting to numb the pain of their pasts. The United Nations has estimated that as many as half a million people in Cambodia may be drug users. But rehabilitation often comes in the form of hard labor and military drills.
"As it would be for any nation struggling under the weight of government corruption, as well as the forces of encroaching globalization, "the battle between man vs. man has been compounded exponentially by nature throwing its weight into the fray. "The people of Nepal, now living in tent cities, live in fear of landslides, chronic homelessness, water and food shortages, outbreaks of disease, aftershocks or, even worse, another earthquake."
The tenth largest city on the planet, Dhaka, contains over 12 million people who not only survived a genocide a little more than a generation ago but carved out their own unique identity and independence despite the nonstop forces of globalization around them. Rivers, monsoons, protests, and, of course, salat...
"I believe it is always necessary to remember and never forget the horrors of the Second World War. This war is important for its survivors in order to describe the darkness and the limits of those who were not capable of acceptance."
— Nicoleta Gabor
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“I have never thought of my life as divided between poetry and politics... I am a Chilean who for decades has known the misfortunes and difficulties of our national existence and who has taken part in each sorrow and joy of the people."
— Pablo Neruda
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