Natela Grigalashvili

A group of Georgian dissidents, the Doukhobors, was founded in the 19th century. But despite their pacifist beliefs, they managed to keep their traditions alive throughout the Soviet era. However, now that many of them have finally returned again, their heritage has almost completely disappeared but for the last of its remaining inhabitants . From 2014...

Photographs and Story by Natela Grigalashvili

In The Brick Kilns

Varanasi. Was there ever a place more suited to the exploration of an earthbound life by way of 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 personal 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 which 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 2016...

Massimiliano Gaglio

Capturing the spirit and traditions of Northern Italy, Massimiliano Gaglio, reveals a world rarely seen anywhere, let alone in the West. Deep in the Valle'd'Aosta in the Coumbra Freida, he gives us a glimpse of a people who still find meaning and joy in their customs and shared celebrations. From 2015...

The Valley of Theater

They carry the world on their small frames: Shafik, Azgar, Jamal, Kalo, Rubel, Sonya, Roni, Liton, Poli, Ridoy, among millions in the third world, are only a handful of the endless stream of child laborers who keep the wheels and cogs of the globalized world greased, supplied, and in working order with a disposable workforce; in garbage dumps, aluminum factories, and brickfields, photographer Md Shahnewaz Khan has befriended them and dedicated himself to telling the story of their plight, whether the world wants to hear it or not.

The World Within

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 reflection—at the edges of boundaries of unexplored landscapes, or where they simply meet with sea and sky.

Fallen Stars

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.

Remembering
Cambodia's Mass Exodus

George Nickels

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 current crisis of Syrian refugees now flooding Europe. Powerful photographs of refugees being rendered disposable by competing states. By George Nickels.

Fabio Sgroi

Not since the work of Josef Koudelka has this part of the world been rendered so intuitively and mysteriously. As the decisions and ramifications of realpolitik come bearing down on the lives of everyday people in Eastern Europe, the poetic reality of life is ignored; however, it flourishes for those like Fabio Sgroi who are brave enough to look into its shadows.

Faranak Rezaee

Khorramshahr, in Southwest Iran, has become a symbol of popular resistance, and bears the left-over signs and scars of a war that took place in a city where the people still live among ruins. Faranak Rezaee, a native of the city, explores her hometown. From 2016...

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 the 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

By Glint of Light On Broken Glass

Nina Ai-Artyan

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 too accurately: "Language is much closer to film than is painting." Ai-Artyan captures those ineffable moods which the great Russian writers attempted to in words; alongside her images are the thoughts and ideas of the voices of the characters of Akhamatova , Dostoevski, Tsvetaeva, Chekhov, Berberova and Turgenev, as well as of the authors themselves.

Faith Is A Bird

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.

Mohd Azlan

As inheritors of a former European colony, one that mainly consists of a mega-diverse tropical rainforest environment (and also one that is straining under the same globalist forces that threaten the entire planet), where are Malaysian inhabitants likely to find traces of their languishing identities, their cultural and ethnic roots? In the forgotten zones outside of the capital city, Kuala Lumpur, Mohd Azlan offers some clues.

The Rohingyas

One of the most persecuted people on the globe, the Rohingyas have resided in Burma for generations. Yet they are still unaccepted, even—or especially—by Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto head of state who has consistently denied their oppression. Having migrated from Bengal in the 1600s, the Rohingya settled in Rakhine (originally Arakan), but were stranded in 1948 upon the nation's independence. Victims of human rights abuses, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, these stateless people are unable to receive basic medical care or access to education for their children, and they are increasingly vulnerable to violent attack by the Burmese military and militant Buddhists.

Ali Agharabi

When they come out of the tunnels, the light stings their eyes and the fatigue and exhaustion are noticeable on their faces and bodies...they can hardly bear to stand in front of the camera, but when they do, their first reaction is to smile…"

Affecting photographs of coal miners in Iran by Ali Agharabi

In the face of the New Cold War thrives the planet's northernmost megacity. 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..."

Photographer Nina Ai-Artyan does just that.

By Glint Of Light On Broken Glass

By Tom McCauley

A gifted photographer, Sam Herron never thought he'd be living in his car. Not at 50. Not after the extraordinary life he'd led.

A polyphony of voices, perspectives, illness, photographs and impermanence, "Live Through This" tackles issues of alienation and communion in the intractable economic dysthymia of America in the throes of permanent recession. A look at the fascinating life of an artist as survivor by Tom McCauley.

George Nickels

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.

Photographs and story by George Nickels.

Mushfiqul Alam

"As it would be for any nation struggling under the weight of government corruption, as well as the forces of an encroaching globalization, "the battle between man vs. man has been compounded exponentially by nature throwing its weight into the situation. "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."

Mushfiqul Alam bears witness to this tragic event.

Nicoleta Gabor

A personal project by Nicoleta Gabor. She has said about herself: "I am a watcher, a looker... not a talker."

Dipu Malakar

The tenth largest city on the planet, Dhaka contains over 12 million people who not only survived a genocide only 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...

Photographs by Dipu Malakar.

Mohd Azlan

When one thinks of photographers who have documented the changing faces of major cities, one usually looks westward to classic examples like Bill Brandt, Ezra Stoller, or Gabriele Basilico. But the father of them all, Eugene Atget, was more than a documentarian. A surrealist, he was determined to capture the essence of Paris before the ravages of modernization erased them. Such is the intention of Mohd Azlan in documenting Kuala Lumpur. A medical imaging specialist by day, he is also a fine art photographer and a surrealist in his own right who has transcended the useful limits of science and seeks those essences that cannot be reproduced, or reduced to mere anatomical notation or societal prognosis.

Nina Ai-Artyan

To make clear the profound difference in the scope of devastation experienced between East and West in WWII: both the Americans and the British lost roughly 420,000 and 450,000 of their citizens, respectively; in the Soviet Union, 27 million lives were lost (not counting the 4 million soldiers who remain unaccounted for). Ai-Artyan, moving with her camera through the crowds of 'Immortal Regiment' marchers last May, captured the most important aspects of the poignant commemoration beyond any notions of official heroism or history: the faces, feelings, and expressions of love of the Russian people themselves.

Anik Rahman

The bitter rivalry that emerges with every election in Dhaka is one in which citizens are dangerously caught. The corruption of the ruling party and the violence perpetrated by the opposition leave ordinary Bangladeshi voters stuck in between. Meet the victims of that violence. From 2015...

Images by Anik Rahman.

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Nicoleta Gabor's penetrating vision reveals a delicate sense and understanding of the physical world around her. A civil engineer by training, she has poetically captured a Romania still fraught with the apparitions of a defeated communism in Eastern Europe. Unmoored from a dominant ideology, its inhabitants float through the gray light as if living in a dream.

Auschwitz-Birkenau

"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

Ignacio Conese

Disruption

Caracas has one of the highest murder rates globally and, since 2008, continues to reel from a flagging economy that is largely dependent on oil revenue. Venezuela is the original home of 19th-century liberator Simón Bolívar but has barely survived the policies of both Presidents Maduro and Chávez. At STREET LEVEL, livable standards are out of reach for far too many Caracans, and cases of violent crimes committed against ordinary people commonly remain unsolved by police.

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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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