A visit to Fukushima Ground Zero
By Issei Kato
“This day finally came.”
That was my first impression when I was chosen as a pool photographer on behalf of foreign media based in Japan to visit the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
We were allowed to enter the plant last Monday, ahead of Japan’s one-year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami, which triggered the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. The media tour was the first to take place since the Japanese government announced in December that reactors at the plant had reached a stage of cold shutdown. We were allowed to cover not just from inside a bus, but from a certain outlying spot close to a reactor building for 15 minutes.
The pictures and TV footage of the explosion at Fukushima Daiichi that followed the disaster had filled me with fear. Although the government and the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) had explained at the time, that it was a “hydrovolcanic explosion” we had witnessed, the blast appeared more like the explosion of the atomic reactor itself. “Can we keep on living in this country?” “Would this incident end up forcing Tokyo and nearby residents to abandon home to escape?” I can easily recall the fears I felt at the time of the explosion.
Through opium fields
By Damir Sagolj
She killed her husband by giving him six daughters. In the land of warriors, drug lords and brutal highlanders – he wanted a son. And then he just died disappointed, Moe Mohm said, leaving her to grow opium and raise girls.
By the fireplace, obviously the central point of a household high in the mountains of the Shan state, Moe sits and talks to us in a frantic combination of laughter and tears. She is an ethnic Pa-O and wears a towel above her pretty face with teeth ruined by betel nut. Only a glance at her hands reveals real age and hard work in fields. The house seems to be okay – humble but well kept and clean.
I take a few pictures just to get her accustomed to the camera. There will be a turn in her story as she talks through her life to the first journalists she has ever met and I want to capture the moment when it comes. It might take a while, but I know how to wait.
Here is another episode to think about, a real one with very real people. Not long ago, in a different country with similar problems, two colleagues, both photographers (it could be me), drove to a refugee center to join genocide survivors watching the TV appearance of one of those accused for the killings at a war crimes court. They knew it would be a strong moment. As they approached the village, one of them says to the other who is driving “stop by a grocery shop, I want to buy onion”. The other one, with a huge question mark above his head asks “why” to get a straight answer – to make a woman cry, to make our picture better. “WHF, what about moral and ethics, are you out of your mind“, argues the driver. The answer is another difficult question and makes you think – is it easier with onion or to ask all the questions, to torture and make the woman go through the horror of her past just to get that tear, only to make a picture better, more real?
How do you feel, I ask my colleague who sits next to me as we interview Moe Mohm, knowing the moment will come if we ask the right questions?
What an eye opener. Thank you very much for this story. I’m preparing for my firs visit to Myanmar and it’s stories like this that make me want to dig deeper, see further, listen harder. Best form Bangkok.
A night at the Grammys
By Mario Anzuoni
This year I was assigned for the first time to cover the show portion of the Grammy awards. I felt privileged to have the opportunity to photograph the most respected music award show in the world. The week preceding the award show (dubbed Grammy week in the entertainment business) builds up the hype with pre-Grammy events and gala nights, including this year’s MusiCares Person of the Year to Paul McCartney and the Clive Davis dinner party. The best of the music industry is in Los Angeles.
Two days prior to the show were filled with rehearsals at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. On Saturday, I was ready to watch a rehearsal when the news broke of Whitney Houston’s death, 24 hours before the Grammy Awards. I immediately started wondering what kind of tribute the Grammy could put together with 24 hours notice to honor the loss of such a high-caliber artist. I realized that no matter what, the 54th Grammy Awards was going to be about the loss of Whitney Houston and in fact, a few hours later news came out that Jennifer Hudson was going to sing during a tribute to Houston.
With that in mind, I decided to approach this 3.5 hour show just like all the other ones I have shot, with the only difference being that we were given two seats in the audience at either stage right or left. This meant using a monopod rather than a tripod. Another challenge was that our seats were on floor level, so whenever the audience would stand up (which is more often than seldom) I had to stand up and re-adjust with a 400mm lens. I had a Canon Mark IV with a 400mm lens on a monopod, a Mark IV with a 70-200mm lens and a 5D Mark II with a 16-35mm lens.
California skateboard dreams
By Mike Blake
Recording how we as a society advance and decline amid a changing world is pretty much what being a journalist is all about. The changes are mostly man made, sometimes nature, but humanity rolls along and each new generation brings with it change. Put a camera in your hand and record the events with images and you have a better idea of my job for the past 26 years as a staff photographer for Reuters.
That may be a strange introduction to a piece about a kid from Canada who follows his dream to be a professional skateboarder in California, but not really.
Skateboarding got started in the 60’s with clay wheels and surfers looking out at a flat ocean. But nothing really happened with skateboarding until polymer technology advanced and created urethane. Then along comes a guy named Frank Nasworthy and the skateboard wheel clicks in his head. From that point on technology has advanced, and along with it, skateboarding. To the point where you have a little story about Jordan Hoffart, who follows his dream.
Celebrating in the cold
By Petr Josek
It is the first week of February and all of Europe is squeezed in a deep cold. Everybody is tired from freezing temperatures and the forecast for upcoming days is not good. The photo wire is full of suffering homeless people, steaming chimneys, frozen water and so on.
Thinking of how to illustrate this winter differently I remembered that the traditional Shrove festival was taking place around this time. That Shrove site I decided to take pictures of is known for its Shrovetide masks and cultural traditions listed in UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
I came to the Czech village of Vesely Kopec early morning as temperatures were lower then 23 degrees Centigrade. Revellers accompanied by music started to parade, dance and sing through the village dressed in light costumes with white gloves on their hands. Trumpeters had to often stop their music due to their frozen instruments. And everybody needed a warming up drink.
Vesely Kopec means Happy Hill, and it sure looks like it is!
Lucas
http://www.pictobank.com/
Catwalks for all sizes
By Nacho Doce
Three days after photographing the svelte models at the upscale Sao Paulo Fashion Week, I found myself in the crowded backstage of the Miss Brazil Plus-Size beauty pageant, a contrast in every aspect from body size to the organization’s budget and the cost of each dress.
Backstage the overweight models pushed their own dress-filled suitcases with no assistants to help them, very different from the Fashion Week models, each of whom had two or three people dressing, preening, and supervising them.
Television channels filming Miss Plus-Size were offering the stream to reality shows, while at Fashion Week the transmission was to a more serious audience, focusing on present and future stars in the fashion world.
Not once did any of the Plus-Size models react against being photographed, showing no shame for their big dresses. I found their self-esteem wonderful.
Although fascinated by the contrast of the two events, I was also impressed by one similarity. All the women, the slender ones and the overweight ones, paraded with the same nervousness and dignity past the spectators. The morning after the pageant, Miss Brazil Plus-Size was hospitalized for the stress of competing, the demanding rehearsals and lack of a proper diet, all of which sound very familiar in the fashion world.
The view from Auschwitz
By Kacper Pempel
Each year we cover at least two main stories from Auschwitz. The first story is at the end of January when there are ceremonies to commemorate the liberation of the death camp by Soviet troops in 1945, and the second story, which happens around May, is called the “March of Living”.
This year the 27th of January marked the 67th anniversary of the death camp liberation by Soviet troops. The ceremonies were subdued, with fewer officials coming than I was used to. So I decided to cover this time in a different way. Not only as a document from the anniversary but from a more emotional point of view.
My first visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum was 7 years ago. I was overwhelmed with emotion. I tried to hide behind my camera and only focus on pictures but it was impossible. I never expected what I saw there, because it is impossible to be prepared for these kinds of views and imaginations which this place develops. I was walking around the museum in Auschwitz and then in Birkenau the whole day and I remember that I was losing power in batteries because it was minus 20 degrees C (-4 degrees F). My fingers where completely frozen. When I came inside the barracks in Birkenau and saw the bunks for prisoners I couldn’t imagine how anyone survived during winter time.
Russia’s untouchables
By Denis Sinyakov
I don’t remember a time when Moscow hasn’t been flooded with them – migrants from Central Asia.
When I moved here in 1997 they were already here. They had started appearing more than 20 years ago, the time when the Soviet Union was falling apart. Some fled civil wars, but more often they were escaping the awful economic situation in their homelands. Not exactly an escape, but they came to make some money, leaving their families at home. The economic situation in Russia even now isn’t enviable, at the beginning of the 1990’s it was woeful, but none the less better than there.
Muscovites have got used to living with them, used to regarding them as low qualified workers, as street sweepers and lorry loaders, cheap muscle on building sites. People are used to calling them “churki” and “sheep” and not finding those words in any way offensive.
This is our Central Asia migration, is not Caucasian.
Tajikistan is country immigration donor for Russia.
Chaos descends on Occupy Oakland
By Stephen Lam
It all started like a normal day covering Occupy Oakland. But little did I know it was going to be one of the most intense protests I’ve ever covered.
I arrived at Oakland City Hall around 1pm and there was already a sizable crowd gathered in preparation for the march. I was a bit surprised to see people carrying shields, but I didn’t think much of it and proceeded to photograph the protest as I normally would.
The march began as the group announced that they were headed towards their sound truck which was supposedly pulled over by the police. Sensing a bit of tension, I instinctively went back to the car to grab my gas mask and helmet.
As we approached the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Building, we were met with a strong police presence in an effort to block the protesters. The protesters attempted to avoid confrontation with police by maneuvering through Laney College. This is where the first face-off began.
Super Bowl Redux
By Lucy Nicholson
Celtics v Lakers, Borg v McEnroe, India v Pakistan, Ali v Frazier, Red Sox v Yankees
There are sports matches and there are match-ups that up the ante because of a bitter rivalry.
There’s nothing fiercer than a Boston-New York contest.
For decades, Boston played the underdog while the ghost of Babe Ruth conspired with latter day Big Apple legends like Bucky Dent and Mookie Wilson to leave New England in tears.
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