Photographers Blog

Kyar Chaung village, Myanmar

By Minzayar

It was a fine winter evening and the first frame I took was a silhouette of a farmer and his wife wearing ta-na-ka, riding on their cow carts, so at once, I thought this is a very nice village. But in fact, its people have been living in fear for several years.

Kyar Chaung village is 64 miles north of Yangon, Myanmar. Most villagers have two houses. One on the ground to stay during the daytime and one in a tree to protect themselves from a wild elephant’s attack.

As I went to see the head of the village, people were already gathering in front of his house and chattering about a man who had to run for his life as he was chased by an elephant just a day ago.

“One night, while we were sleeping, we heard a loud crashing sound. I knew it was a ‘Bo-Taw’ (meaning elephant as if it is a powerful spirit). I was shocked when I found its trunk already lifting our rice bag. I just ran and ran and ran!”, the wife of the village’s head recalled her most terrifying memory with an elephant searching for meal. Luckily none of her family was hurt that night. “They can get a smell from within 5 miles and they can run more than 10 times faster than us!”

Five other neighboring villages within a 7 miles radius have been terrorized for 16 years. Villagers plant paddies, corns, sugar-canes, bananas and other crops for a living. Their houses are scattered, a few in the paddy fields, a few near the banana fields, some at the edge of the corn fields but all these fields are what an elephant loves to eat. It was not a problem when there was one or two elephants here. But villagers say there are about 30 to 40 elephants who eat in these fields that the villagers have been planting all their life. I knew there must be a reason for the increase over the last few years. Later, I found out why.

Santa Maria, Brazil

By Ricardo Moraes

It was an unforgettable end to enormous pain and a ravaged mind. The last day of coverage of one of Brazil’s greatest tragedies touched me so much that I’m only going to tell how the story ended.

The morning of January 30, 2013, I met a woman who was devastated, confused, and completely lost inside of herself – wounded to the heart.

The first contact with her was moving. We arrived at a building on the outskirts of Santa Maria and knocked on the door of apartment 121, on which there was a message left by children offering help and consolation for a woman named Gelsa. In spite of the obvious clue that inside lived the mother of a disaster victim, we hadn’t reached that place by chance; we were led there by Carlos, a friend of Gelsa, the woman whose small family had now been reduced to just one, herself.

Santa Maria, Brazil

By Edison Vara

It was early Sunday when my cell phone began ringing nonstop. Reuters called to inform me of a tragedy that was happening in the Kiss nightclub in the city of Santa Maria, with more than 70 known dead initially. That number would soon rise past 230. After more than 30 years as a photojournalist I was still jolted by the news, grabbed my equipment, and left for the site three hours away.

When I reached the gymnasium in Santa Maria where the bodies were being taken for identification, I was shocked to see the parents, children, brothers and sisters of victims searching for information, but I had to photograph all these moments of desperation, with respect for those who didn’t want me to.

The gym’s courtyard was soon transformed into a two-way street of coffins entering and leaving, difficult scenes to photograph. Four soldiers passed by carrying a body barely covered with a white sheet, without a coffin, to a waiting hearse.

Gammesfeld, Germany

By Lisi Niesner, editing by Victoria Bryan

Peter Breiter, 41, is not your typical bank manager. He wears jeans and a jumper to work, he writes everything out by hand, and he’s also not afraid to use a mop to clean the floor. But neither is this a standard bank, staffed by a row of anonymous employees behind glass screens. The Raiffeisen Gammesfeld eG cooperative bank in southern Germany is one of the smallest in Germany and a visit here is like stepping back in time.

From the waiting area with ladies sharing local gossip to the office, where Breiter still uses a typewriter and an adding machine, the surface enamel worn away by years of use, things do not seem to have changed much since the bank was founded in 1890. Even the price list is shown in deutschmarks, with the euro equivalent hand written on.

The bank nearly didn’t make it this far though. At the end of the 1980s, Germany’s bank supervisory authority withdrew Gammesfeld’s operating licence as it didn’t have the requisite number of staff to meet the ‘second pair of eyes’ principle to double check transactions.

Ashbourne, central England

By Darren Staples

There are rules – even if there is no referee to enforce them. One of the ancient ones is said to be: ‘committing murder or manslaughter is prohibited’. Royal Shrovetide Football is not for the faint-hearted, either for players or the spectators who can quickly become caught up in the scrum.

On the face of it, the game played in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday each year will sound familiar to anyone who knows what happens at any English Premiership venue on a Saturday afternoon.

There is one ball, two teams – the Up’ards and the Down’ards – and the goal is to score goals. In these parts, it’s like Manchester United playing Manchester City, with all the passion and pride that comes with it.

Nis, Serbia

By Marko Djurica

Although graves are for the dead and not for the living, a man in Serbia’s southern city of Nis has chosen a tomb to live in.

Bratislav Stojanovic, 43, a Nis-born construction worker never had a regular job. He first lived in abandoned houses, but about 15 years ago he settled in the old city cemetery. Stojanovic says homeless life is difficult and that everything he owns and needs he finds in garbage containers and on the streets. He does not have much, but highly values whatever little he has.

“As other homeless people robbed me on several occasions, I’ve decided to find a place where no one would bother me, not even police,” he said.

Mumbai, India

By Vivek Prakash

Where I live is not the India of most people’s imaginations or memories, and it’s hardly the India I once knew as a kid.

My Mumbai has easygoing cafes, organic markets, swish malls, expensive restaurants serving great food and wine, fabulous nightclubs and raucous house parties. The idea that this India is any less “real” than bad infrastructure or the world of Slumdog Millionaire is misguided.

India has many crosses to bear – I acknowledge that. I’ll be the first one to complain about crumbling roads, horrid traffic, corrupt politicians, impossible bureaucracy and the gulf between rich and poor. But you’d better get used to the idea that slowly but surely, generational change is taking place. My Mumbai is probably the India of the future.

Washington, D.C.

By Jonathan Ernst

Police were shutting down intersections. Tensions were high as I begged an officer to let me down a back alley to a secret parking lot I know about – this is Capitol Hill, but it’s also my home. I found my way to the church’s back lot, threw open my trunk, grabbed a pair of bodies and lenses and made sure I had a few memory cards.

The U.S. Capitol was a blur on my right behind the pulsing lights of police cruisers as I hustled over to Pennsylvania Avenue. In the tony northwest quadrant of the city, the White House is this street’s most important landmark, but here in the gritty Southeast is where the real city rubs up against the federal government.

It was brisk, and the wind was really blowing through the breaks in the buildings around me. I was excited. My blood was pumping. This is the city where important people do important things. A city of naked ambition, exposed agendas, bold truths and bald lies.

Boston, Massachusetts

By Brian Snyder

It might not be news that it snows in New England in winter. But the recent snow storm (there seems to be some debate as to whether it met the criteria to be called a blizzard) certainly brought a lot of snow to Boston. Enough so that Governor Patrick banned all driving for the duration of the storm (with exceptions, including for the news media). That’s one way to say that this storm exceeded what’s considered “normal” around here.

I went out around noon on Friday as the snow was just beginning to fall in Boston. The magnitude of the storm had been forecasted for days. With the threat of potentially record-breaking snow fall amounts, the subway system was scheduled to shut down at 3:30pm and a statewide driving ban was announced for 4pm. The wind was already strong — the snow blown sideways stung your face. People seemed intent on just getting home. Pretty early on I made this image:

which proved to be what many newspapers used the next day to lead their coverage of the storm.

Rome, Italy

By Tony Gentile

I have never before seen an electoral campaign based solely on the appearance of the main political leaders on television talk shows.

After disappearing from the national stage for about a year former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi now enters the houses of Italians every day, more than once a day, on the screens broadcast by the biggest TV channels. The same is happening with the others leaders including outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti.

They invade our television sets so much that one of the most important Italian satirical show decided to produce a special edition of the program called “Gli Sgommati, elektion edition”, produced by Palomar and broadcast by Sky.