ZEKE: Spring 2016

ZEKE 

SPRING 2016 VOL.2/NO.1 $8.00 

THE MAGAZINE OF GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY 

FEATURED ARTICLES 

LAW&ORDER 

Photographs by Jan Banning 

FORGOTTENCAUCASUS 

Photographs by Ara Oshagan, 

Daro Sulakauri, Jan Zychlinski 

CLIMATECHANGE 

Photographs by Jordi Pizarro, 

Probal Rashid, Jamey Stillings 

Published by Social Documentary Network

JUNE 13-19 2016 

one week of artist talks/education/exhibitions/evening projections 

FRANS LANTING / NICK BRANDT / GRACIELA ITURBIDE / YURI KOZYREV 

BINH DANH / SHEILA PREE BRIGHT / MARY F. CALVERT / DOUG DUBOIS / OLIVIA BEE / RADCLIFFE “RUDDY” ROYE 

buy passes online at look3.org 

@look3festival 

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA



Published by Social Documentary Network 

Dear ZEKE readers: 

As I write this letter before sending this third issue of ZEKE 

off to the printer, I am reflecting on what we have accomplished 

in our first year of publishing and want to thank all 

the photographers, writers, subscribers, and others who 

have helped to make this possible. Just the fact that we 

made it into our second year is an accomplishment! This is also the first 

issue available by subscription. We also are now working with Ubiquity 

Distributors to help us get ZEKE into bookstores and magazine stands. 

The first article in this issue of ZEKE, Law & Order, features the 

work of Jan Banning. Jan was the winner of SDN’s last call for entries. 

Elizabeth Krist, National Geographic photo editor and a juror for the 

call for entries, eloquently sums up Jan’s work: 

The range of coverage is impressive--not only the physical contrast in 

facilities from one continent to another, but portraits of the incarcerated 

and administrators alike, both seen with directness and humanity. 

Banning gives us a revealing view of issues that occasionally surface 

in the news but are seldom seen so intimately, and forces us to ask 

what the impact of being a prisoner will have on these lives. 

Our second feature, Forgotten Caucasus, explores three countries 

created by the fall of the Soviet Union: Armenia, Azerbaijan, 

and Georgia. We have received many powerful exhibits on the SDN 

website from this part of the world and we felt that such an important 

and under-reported region deserved our greater attention. A week 

before going to press, conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh (an Armenian 

enclave within Azerbaijan) flared up killing dozens of soldiers and 

civilians, reminding us that these “frozen zones” remain tinder boxes 

of conflict between world super powers. 

The third feature, Climate Change, explores the existential threat 

to human civilization. The photos by Jordi Pizarro and Probal Rashid 

present the human face of climate change by showing us communities 

in India and Bangladesh that are losing their homes and the land 

beneath them due to rising sea levels. The work by Jamey Stillings 

presents stunning black and white photos of the Ivanpah Solar 

Electric Generating System in the Mohave Desert—the world’s largest 

concentrated solar thermal power plant. This facility will contribute to 

diminishing the production of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses. 

We also have an interview with the Russian photojournalist 

Sergey Ponomarev, an article on the innovative social media project 

of Bangladeshi photographer Ismail Ferdous, and other work of 

trending photographers on SDN. 

Glenn Ruga 

Executive Editor 

CONTENTS 

SPRING 2016 VOL.2/NO.1 

$8.00 US 

LAW&ORDER 

Photographs Jan Banning.....................................2 

Text by Lisa Liberty Becker 


Photographs by Ara Oshagan, 

Daro Sulakauri, & Jan Zychlinski........................ 16 

Text by Anne Sahler 

CLIMATECHANGE 

Photographs by Jordi Pizarro, 

Probal Rashid, & Jamey Stillings.........................28 

Text by Margaret Quackenbush 

What’s Hot: 

Trending photographers on SDN...................... 44 

Interview with Sergey Ponomarev...... 46 

After Rana Plaza................................... 48 

Documentary vs. Journalism............... 50 

Award Winners..................................... 52 

Book Reviews........................................ 54 

Featured Photographers 

of the Month.......................................... 56 

Cover photo by Daro Sulakauri. Georgia. Leila fell in love with a 

boy that she met online. She escaped from her home and crossed 

the border from an occupied territory of Georgia to marry. 

ZEKE SPRING 2016/ 1

LAW & ORDER 

Photographs by Jan Banning 

Text by Lisa Liberty Becker 

Worldwide, 144 out of every 100,000 

people are in prison. In the United States, that 

number jumps to 698 per 100,000. Though 

prison populations and the conditions of 

those prisons vary from country to country, 

the world prison system has many common 

problems, including prisoner mistreatment, 

overcrowding, gangs, unsanitary conditions, 

sexual assault, and rampant communicable 

diseases. ZEKE featured photographer Jan 

Banning became interested in criminal justice 

after finishing a project on bureaucracy; the 

photos in his book Bureaucratics examine 

the state civil administrations in eight countries. 

Turning his focus to the judicial pillar 

of society, he decided to focus on prison 

systems worldwide. Banning visited prisons in 

Colombia, France, Uganda, and the United 

States, discovering visual differences in the 

overall affect of the prisons. The photographs 

on the following pages, which also appear 

in his recently-released book Law & Order, 

reflect the daily realities of police, criminal 

justice officials, the courts, guards, prisoners, 

and often-hidden prison conditions. Banning 

leaves it up to us to continue the debate on 

prison reform. 

Jan Banning was the winner of the Social 

Documentary Network’s 2016 Call for Entries 

on Visual Stories Exploring Global Themes. 

2 / ZEKE APRIL SPRING 2015 2016

France, October 2013. Central surveillance 

tower of the Grand Quartier of the Maison 

d’arrêt de Bois-d’Arcy. The prison, holding 

people on remand and those sentenced 

to a maximum of two years, was built as 

a panopticon in 1980 with a capacity of 

500 inmates. It now houses 770 and many 

maisons d’arrêt suffer overcrowding. 

ZEKE ZEKE SPRING APRIL 2015/ 2016/ 3

Uganda, March 2013. Archive of the 

Chief Magistrate’s Court at Buganda Road, 

Kampala: completed cases. 

Photograph by Jan Banning 

4 / ZEKE SPRING 2016

A man fills his plastic buckets with water. 

In Myanmar’s Dala township, where an 

unforgiving dry season evaporates most 

inland natural water sources. A decadelong 

population boom has stressed the few 

resources that remain, so a ration system 

allows people to gather two buckets full of 

water once per day. 



Uganda, May 2010. Kakira 

Police Station in Jinja. Constable 

# 11431, John Ndalira. 

➤ 

US, Georgia, October 2012. 

Warden Carl Humphrey of 

the Georgia Diagnostic & 

Classification Prison in Jackson. It 

is a maximum and high security 

prison, built in 1968, with about 

2,250 inmates and includes a 

Death Row. 

➤ 

Photographs by 

Jan Banning 


France, October 2013. The Maison 

d’arrêt de Bois-d’Arcy. 




US, Georgia, October 2012. The Morgan 

County Public Safety Complex in Madison 

was Georgia’s then-newest jail, situated in 

a former CD warehouse. 192 beds, two 

men per cell. 



What is the cost of the clothes on your back? For most 

consumers the answer is a simple dollar figure, but for 

the millions of low-income workers fueling the global 

garment industry the cost is often much more: education, 

health, safety, and even lives. 

As globalization shrinks the world, consumers become 

increasingly distanced from their goods’ origins and 

subsequently from the woeful realities of garment 

workers, a labor force subjected to long days for 

low pay in hazardous conditions. By capturing their 

deplorable realities, photographers bring consumers 

face-to-face with the beginning of the global assembly 

line, prompting viewers to question their roles 

as conscious consumers. 

As rising demands of the middle class stress the 

garment industry, factory owners compromise 

worker safety for profit. Never were the consequences 

of this trade-off more clear than the 

April 2013 Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh, 

the deadliest accident in the history of the garment 

industry, documented here by K.M. Asad. 

Reflecting on its aftermath, Suvri Kanti Das’s 

poignant images chronicle survivors’ recoveries, 

exposing the true cost of cheap apparel. 



Colombia, August 2011. San Diego 

medium security Women’s Prison in 

Cartagena. When this photo was taken 

Rosa (L) had been sentenced to ten years 

for criminal conspiracy. Eliana (R) was 

under investigation, accused of attempted 

extortion. Rosa and Eliana shared this 

group cell with some ten other women. 



The United States leads 

the way in overall number 

of prisoners with a staggering 

2.2 million, followed by 

China (1.65 million), the 

Russian Federation (640,000), 

Brazil (607,000), and India 

(418,000). 

Researchers at the ICPR, 

have been collecting data on 

prison populations by country 

since 1997. The ICPR’s World 

Prison Brief database now 

includes such statistics from all 

but three countries in the entire 

world (Eritrea, North Korea 

and Somalia). 

According to ICPR Research 

Fellow Helen Fair, governments 

France, March 2012. First President of the Court of Appeal in Douai, Dominique 

Lottin. The painting is of Louis XV. 

use the World Prison Brief to 

see how they compare to the 

rest of the world. Take, for 

example, Kazakhstan, which 

CRIMINALJUSTICE 

IS IT WORKING? A LOOK AT GLOBAL INCARCERATION 

Text by Lisa Liberty 

Becker 

Photographs by 

Jan Banning 

Punishment as a primary 

response to crime, often the 

only response, has created a 

world with over 10.35 

million people in prisons. 

—World Prison Population List 

To be “tough on crime” is 

more than just an expression; 

the United States 

and other countries have 

enforced such policies 

for more than two decades. 

Punishment as a primary 

response to crime, often the only 

response, has created a world 

with over 10.35 million people 

in prisons, according to the latest 

World Prison Population List 

report, released in February by 

the Institute for Criminal Policy 

Research (ICPR) at Birkbeck, 

University of London. While 

conditions in those prisons vary 

from country to country, the 

debate remains: what’s the purpose 

of imprisonment — retribution 

or rehabilitation? 

in 2013 set a goal of getting 

out of the top 50 in terms of 

highest prison population 

rates. “[Kazakhstan] sends us 

regular updates on their prison 

population numbers so we can 

update the World Prison Brief, 

and they have now succeeded 

in their goal,” says Fair, who 

helps maintain the World 

Prison Brief database. The 

prison population numbers for 

Kazakhstan keep falling, and 

the country has gotten itself 

out of that top 50. “The big 

international organizations like 

Amnesty International also use 

it in their campaign work,” Fair 

says. “We are supplying the 

factual information that allows 

other people to apply that and 

PRISON POPULATION 

RATE 

Prisoners per 100,000 

inhabitants 

United States 

Russia 

Brazil 

China 

India 

698 

445 

301 

118 

33 

be able to see the context.” 

Given that the global prison 

population has risen by 20 percent 

since 2000 — more than 

the 18 percent increase in the 

world population during that 

same time period — it appears 

that the system as a whole still 

seeks to make people convicted 

of crimes pay for their 

offenses by locking them in 

prison. America’s prison population 

rate of 698 is second 

only to Seychelles, which has a 

mere 97,000 residents. While 

the number of US prisoners has 

declined slightly since 2010, 

that doesn’t detract from the 

fact that America has imprisoned 

nearly 2 million people 

per year since 2000. 

“We are a very punitive 

system and very harsh in our 

judgments,” says Andrew 

Cohen, commentary editor 

at The Marshall Project, a 

nonprofit think tank focused on 

the American criminal justice 

system. Cohen, also a legal 

analyst for 60 Minutes and 

CBS Radio News and a fellow 

at New York’s Brennan Center 

for Justice, has reflected on 

everything from prison reform 

in Georgia, to mass incarceration, 

to the heroin epidemic. 

“Politics also play a part,” 

Cohen adds. ‘It’s easier for 

politicians to stand up and say, 

‘We need harsher sentences.’ 


In the current mass incarceration 

system, there is little 

evidence that incarceration 

actually changes behavior. 

It’s harder for them to say, ‘We 

need to be more lenient with 

our sentencing.’“ 

Baz Dreisinger visited 

disparate countries to tell a 

story of prisons in her new 

book Incarceration Nations. 

Dreisinger, who teaches at the 

John Jay College of Criminal 

Justice at the City University of 

New York (CUNY), intersperses 

reflections on prison conditions 

in the United States with what 

she saw first-hand in countries 

such as Uganda, Singapore, 

and Norway. “In all countries, 

I found that prisons were … 

echoes of the society that 

created them,” she writes in 

her book. This can be seen 

everywhere from the stainlesssteel 

bar-laden institutional correctional 

facilities in the United 

States to the exemplary Halden 

in Norway, a prison with zero 

bars, a rock climbing wall, and 

private rooms with bathrooms 

and flat screen televisions. 

In the current mass incarceration 

system, there is little 

evidence that incarceration 

actually changes behavior. 

According to a 2014 Bureau 

of Justice Statistics report, 

over 75 percent of prisoners 

released in 30 US states in 

2005 were arrested for a new 

crime within five years. Data 

like this is not perfect, since it 

does not separate violent and 

nonviolent crimes, nor does it 

mention the number of people 

who were actually convicted of 

those crimes. However, it does 

get government officials and 

other policymakers thinking 

about humane treatment of 

prisoners and alternatives to 

prison. “Harsh punishments 

and prison terms aren’t going 

to solve anything,” says ZEKE 

featured photographer Jan 

Banning. “You are going to 

have a few people who are so 

dangerous for society that you 

probably have to lock them up 

forever. Other than that, I think 

we need to focus more on the 

correction aspect, improving 

the situation and living conditions 

in prisons.” 

When it comes to improving 

the system, organizations such 

as Penal Reform International 

and the American Coalition 

for Criminal Justice Reform are 

trying to change the tide, as 

are individuals. Dreisinger also 

created P2CP, the Prison-to- 

College Pipeline, which brings 

college courses to prisoners 

in New York State. “I’m very 

United States, November 2012. Georgia State Prison. This medium security prison 

near Reidsville was opened in 1937. It houses 1,500 inmates. 

United States, November 2012. Inmates of Rogers State Prison near Reidsville, 

Georgia are performing unpaid work for Georgia Correctional Industries which 

manufactures items such as food, garments, office furniture, road signs, etc., 

which are sold to government agencies. Rogers medium security facility opened 

in 1983 and it houses some 1,500 inmates. 

interested in the value of education, 

and the prison system is 

sorely lacking in rehabilitative 

programs,” she says. This 

program, now in its fifth year, 

also guarantees participants a 

spot in the CUNY system upon 

release. Dreisinger adds that 

when she was researching 

Incarceration Nations, she was 

There is a financial cost to 

locking up a lot of people, 

but there’s also a wider 

social cost, the effects on 

society, on families. 

—Helen Fair, 

Institute for Criminal Policy Research 

surprised to find like minds. 

“There’s a global coalition of 

people who really see that the 

system is broken in a number 

of ways.” 

With prison costs in the 

United States alone at $80 billion 

per year, and overcrowding 

problems around the world, 

it is clear that the current system 

is not sustainable in terms of 

finances or ethics. “There is a 

financial cost to locking up a 

lot of people, but there’s also 

a wider social cost, the effects 

on society, on families,” says 

ICPR’s Fair. “Those are the 

kinds of things we will be looking 

at, to see where progress is 

made over the next five years 

or so. We want to see how 

countries will go about doing 

that, to see if there really is a 

way to make changes.” 

On March 30 of this year, 

President Obama commuted 

the sentences of 61 drug 

offenders in federal prisons, 

one-third of them serving life 

sentences. The Foreign Prison 

Improvement Act of 2013, 

which would hold governments 

around the world accountable 

for maintaining humane prison 

conditions, was introduced 

by Vermont Senator Patrick 

Leahy but died in Congress. 

Although each country has its 

own areas for improvement, 

there may be hope yet for a 

less punitive and more rehabilitative 

system overall. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION 

Institute for Criminal Policy 

Research 

www.icpr.org.uk 

Penal Reform International 

www.penalreform.org 

The Marshall Project 

www.themarshallproject.org 


FORGOTTEN 

CAUCASUS 

Photographs by Ara Oshagan, Daro Sulakauri, & Jan Zychlinski 

Text by Ann Sahler 


Ara Oshagan, an Armenian photographer 

born in Lebanon and now living 

in America, is a child of the Diaspora. 

He takes the viewer on a personal 

journey through Nagorno-Karabakh, the 

Armenian homeland in which he has 

never lived. His photo essay, conducted 

with his father, a famous Armenian 

writer, explores the ambiguity of belonging 

and not belonging, the history of 

Armenia and its people, and Ara’s 

relationship to the country. 

The tradition of early marriages in 

Georgia provides Georgian photographer 

Daro Sulakauri the backdrop 

for her powerful images. The custom 

is illegal, yet Georgia has one of the 

highest rates in Europe of marriages 

below the age of 18. These weddings 

occur predominately in the Kvemo Kartli 

and Ajara regions among religious and 

ethnic minorities. Daro’s photographs 

generate a discussion around the issue 

of early marriages, providing insight to 

the outsider. 

Jan Zychlinski, a photographer based 

in Switzerland, travelled from September 

2014 to February 2015 around the 

South Caucasus to document the inhumane 

consequences of armed conflict 

after the collapse of the Soviet Union 

more than 20 years ago. He skillfully 

documents the internally displaced 

people who left their homes to seek 

shelter as refugees in camps, collective 

centers or newly built settlements far 

removed from the rest of society — many 

of them still living under these conditions. 

Overlooking the remnants of Volongo 

wharf where millions of African slaves first 

stepped foot on Brazilian soil, Providencia 

Hill Girl is with of particularly her brothers. significant “My life historical 

always in 

importance. a transition” The says origin the girl. of Afro-Brazilian 

After the war with 

culture, Abkhazia the she area’s was diversity left a refugee, gave way living to rich on the 

musical, border of dance, Georgia, and religious near Abkhazia. traditions. 

Photograph by Dario by Daro De Dominicis Sulakauri 


Georgia, Kakheti Region. Bride showing off 

her wedding dress to her classmates. 


Top: Georgia, Javakheti Region. In the evening the 

shepherd leads the herd to the village. The village 

women stand in front of their houses and wait for 

their sheep to arrive. 

Bottom: Tamro, 14, dancing at her sister’s engagement 

party. Although it is very common for girls to 

get married at a young age in Adjara region of 

Georgia, Tamro says she is not ready to marry and 

plans to finish school. 

Photographs by Daro Sulakauri 


I met some kids in Shushi and one of them, 

for no reason I could fathom, climbed up a 

now-defunct electric pole. He alighted at the 

top almost like a bird about to take flight: 

to find his future, full of hope. Below and 

behind him are the dense, time-weighted 

walls of the Armenian Apostolic church, 

encapsulating 1,700 years of tradition and 

faith. And in front, staring into my camera, is 

the witness—making sure I record this scene 

where the past and future, the land, sky and 

hope have all come together. 

From Father Land by Ara Oshagan 


Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion 

whose origins go back to the first days 

of Brazil’s slave trade, mixes Roman 

Catholic and indigenous African ideologies. 

Meaning “dance in honor of the 

gods,” Candomblé’s customs heavily 

incorporate music and choreographed 

dances. 

Photograph by Dario De Dominicis 



I was photographing a man in a remote 

village in Nagorno-Karabakh when he led 

me into a house. In the living room, this boy 

was being bathed. I had no idea who they 

were and certainly they did not know who 

I was. But the boy stood there like a man, 

not shirking, staring at me, with absolutely 

nothing to hide or fear. And almost daring 

me to take his photo. Not so much take it as 

he was willing to give it to me. 

From Father Land by Ara Oshagan 


Shota (77) and Kolya (65), Etseri, 

Georgia. With a lot of other internally 

displaced people from Abkhazia, they 

live in a former abandoned village in 

the mountains of Svaneti. Meeting us 

at the marketplace they immediately 

started to talk about their escape 

through the rough mountain a long time 

ago. And suddenly they stopped talking 

and seemed to disappear in their minds. 

Photograph by Jan Zychlinski 


Cleyde washes her younger sister’s hair. 

Unfortunately, the training program has faced 

financial setbacks: the salon’s rent was two 

months behind when this photograph was 

taken, and no funding had been secured to 

provide students additional training in business 

management. 


Vano (75), Lari-Lari village high in the 

mountains of Svaneti, Georgia. The 

extended family had to flee some 20 years 

ago from Abkhazia. Although it is heated, 

the room appears to be icy because Vano’s 

resignation freezes everything. 

Photograph by Jan Zychlinski 



al map of the Caucasus Region (2008) 

Krasnodar 

Kray 

Sukhumi 

Rostov 

Abkhazia 

Black 

Sea 

Photo by David Verberckt. Ethnically cleansed town of Karvachar, Nagorno- 

Karabakh, South Caucasus, February 2014. 


Karachai- 

Cherkessia 

Batumi 

While topics like the 

Syrian refugee 

crisis, Islamic Statesponsored 

terrorism, 

and the ongoing 

conflict between Israel and 

the Palestinians dominate the 

news, there is another region 

facing tremendous challenges: 

The South Caucasus. A pivotal 

junction located between 

Russia, Turkey, and Iran, it 

straddles the periphery of the 

Middle East encased between 

the shores of the Black and the 

Caspian Seas and crisscrossed 

by the Caucasus mountains. 

With a millennia-long history, 

the Caucasus is one of the 

most diverse regions imaginable. 

Nowhere else can you 

find such a richness of religious, 

ethnic, cultural, linguistic and 

geopolitical identities that feed 

an endless manifold of conflicts. 

The region has historically been 

an area of war and contention 

for centuries. Ruled by the 

Persian, Ottoman and Russian 

Empires at the beginning of the 

19th century, each left behind 

their own political and cultural 

legacy. The daunting web of 

challenges which lies ahead for 

the South Caucasus is no less 

vexing than the complex history 

it strives to leave behind. 

A tinderbox of 

conflicts and 

challenges 

It was just after the dissolution 

of the Soviet Union in 

December 1991 that the states 

of Armenia, Azerbaijan and 

Georgia in the South Caucasus 

became not only independent 

nations, but also areas of 

renewed conflict. Violent ethnoterritorial 

strife in Nagorno- 

Karabakh, South Ossetia and 

Abkhazia divided the region 

providing a tinderbox of 

instability and worsening challenges. 

The clashes between 

Armenia and Azerbaijan over 

Nagorno-Karabakh, coupled 

with the Russian occupation 

of two enclaves in Georgia 

— Abkhazia on the Black Sea 

and South Ossetia — have 

resulted in massive upheaval 

and the suffering of local populations. 

Both conflicts resulted in 

the deaths of tens of thousands, 

as well as trauma, insecurity, 

displacement and seemingly 

insurmountable challenges for 

those who survived. 

Relations between 

Azerbaijan and Armenia over 

Nagarno-Karabakh remain 

tense. Populated by ethnic 

Armenians but lying within 

Azerbaijan, the conflict that 

began in 1988 reached its 

peak between 1992 and 

1994, leaving at least 25,000 

people dead and more than 

a million displaced from their 

homes. 

Tension lingers and the risk 

of a re-escalation of hostilities 

in this landlocked region of 

divided societies remains a 

very real possibility as the latest 

developments in Nagorno- 

Karabakh show. Dozens of 

people have been killed this 

April, including a young boy, 

A KALEIDOSCOPE OF CHALLENGES IN THE WORLD’S MOST DIVERSE REGION 

Astrakhan 

Poti 

Adjara 

Stavropol 

Turkey 

Stavropol Kray 

Elista 

Russian Federation 

Kabardino 

-Balkaria 

North 

Ossetia 

Georgia 

0 

South 

Ossetia 

Kalmykia 

Ingushetia 

Armenia 

Yerevan 

100 kilometre 

Chechnya 

Tbilisi 

Nakhchivan 

Grozny 

(Azer.) 

Astrakhan 

Dagestan 

Azerbaijan 

Nagorno 

-Karabakh 

Iran 

Caspian 

Sea 

0 

100 miles 

Map of South Caucasus. Source: 

Baku 

Jeroenscommons, Wikimedia Commons 

Text by Anne Sahler 

in the worst fighting between 

Armenia and Azerbaijan 

since the 1994 ceasefire. As 

of April 13, when ZEKE went 

to press, a ceasefire has been 

announced ending four days 

of heavy fighting. Still, the 

danger that the often-referred to 

“frozen conflict” may escalate 

into a full-blown war remains 

an ever present threat. 

Abkhazia broke away from 

Georgia in 1992 and the 13 

months-long war that followed 

resulted in the deaths of more 

than 12,000 and the displacement 

of nearly a quarter million 

ethnic Georgian refugees who 

fled their homes in Abkhazia. 

What followed in 2008 was 

a five-day war, involving 

Russian and Georgian forces 


The war between Azerbaijan 

and Armenia over Nagarno- 

Karabakh between 1988 

and 1994 left at least 

25,000 people dead and 

more than a million people 

displaced from their homes. 

in South Ossetia. The Russian 

Federation, recognizing 

Abkhazia and South Ossetia 

as independent nations, 

stationed military forces in the 

region exposing people living 

in frontline areas to future 

escalations of conflict. 

The challenges do not end 

there. Humanitarian concerns 

bedevil the region including 

child marriages, meager living 

conditions of the rural populations, 

and internally displaced 

persons. Refugees who left their 

homes as a consequence of 

the armed conflicts after the collapse 

of the Soviet Union are 

further distressed and hampered 

by the general lack of 

basic human rights. “Freedom” 

in the democratic Western 

European sense is not applicable 

in Georgia, Azerbaijan 

or Armenia. 

“The South Caucasus is 

a quite complex region with 

differing developments in 

Armenia, Azerbaijan and 

Georgia,” Giorgi Kanashvili, 

Executive Director of the 

Caucasian House in Tbilisi, 

Georgia, says. “In a nutshell, 

there is a tangible process in 

Georgia regarding democratization. 

People are quite 

optimistic and have trust in 

the future. The situation in 

Azerbaijan, on the contrary, 

has worsened every year 

concerning the growing 

authoritarianism. Although we 

don’t observe the same type 

of regress in Armenia, there 

are also negative tendencies. 

And the Georgian breakaway 

regions? In South Ossetia it is 

very difficult to talk about any 

type of democracy, as the situation 

is quite depressing and 

we can actually observe an 

ongoing depopulation of this 

region,” Giorgi explains further. 

“But in Abkhazia, though we 

cannot talk about democracy, 

we can talk about a certain 

form of ethnocracy. People 

there are more optimistic than in 

South Ossetia for sure.” 

South Caucasus role 

on the global political 

stage 

The EU, Russia, Turkey and the 

US all have varied interests in 

the South Caucasus countries. 

The European Union and the 

United States interests in the 

Photo by David Verberckt. Most residents have been living for the past 20 

years in collective centers waiting to be re-settled in appropriate housing. Tskaltubo, 

Georgia, July 2014. 

Photo by Ara Oshagan. Kids play inside of a burned out mosque. Shushi, 

Nagorno-Karabakh,1999. 

South Caucasus are similar — 

stability, development, trade, 

and energy as well as democracy 

and human rights. Russia’s 

interest lies in maintaining its 

influence, manageable conflicts, 

and energy infrastructure. 

Turkey, for its part, is focused 

on the interests of energy and 

trade, Nagorno-Karabakh and 

the subsequent relations with 

Azerbaijan and Armenia, as 

well as cultural and ethnic ties 

to the region. As all of these 

countries maintain close ties 

with the Caucasus, they are 

understandably concerned with 

its instability. Recently however 

attention has turned to the issues 

posed by the Arab Spring 

uprisings, the rise of the Islamic 

State and the unfolding Syrian 

refugee crisis, which has led the 

focus away from an engagement 

in the South Caucasus. 

Additionally, diplomatic initiatives 

of the late 2000s that were 

supposed to vitalize regional 

development have broken down 

thereby raising failed expectations 

for the people of the South 

Caucasus and providing fodder 

for further disputes and challenges. 

The instability of the 

South Caucasus due to geopolitical 

rivalries and external 

partners and the kaleidoscope of 

fractious relationships between 

Georgia, Azerbaijan and 

Armenia undoubtedly provide 

negative influence on the economic 

development, governance 

and security of the entire region. 

Challenges as 

opportunities 

One of the main questions the 

South Caucasus now faces 

is how social well-being and 

economic growth on a sustainable 

level can be achieved 

in such an explosive mix of 

challenges given the lack of 

a common identity. In the end 

there won’t be stability in the 

interlinked Caucasus region if 

there is no cultivated culture of 

tolerance and recognition for 

the ethnic diversity the region 

is characterized by. Georgia, 

Azerbaijan and Armenia face 

many challenges — yet every 

challenge provides an opportunity 

for reforms and positive 

steps forward. 


Caucasian House 

www.caucasianhouse.ge/en 

CASCADE 

www.cascade-caucasus.eu 

Conciliation Resources 

www.c-r.org 

Freedom House 

www.freedomhouse.org 

Stockholm International Peace 

Research Institute 

www.sipri.org 


CLIMATECHAN 

Photographs by Jordi Pizzaro, Probal Rashid, 

& Jamey Stillings 

Text by Margaret Quackenbush 


GE 

In October 2012, when Superstorm 

Sandy struck the eastern United States, 

the world watched in awe as New York 

City and the surrounding area was 

forced to confront the realities of climate 

change head on. By the time the 

hurricane passed, New York’s subway 

system had filled with seawater, as had 

Manhattan’s streets and tunnels, thousands 

of homes were damaged and most 

residents went days without electricity. 

Ultimately, the storm’s final economic toll 

on New York reached nearly $18 billion. 

New York recovered, but worlds 

away, inhabitants of islands continue to 

face these troubling realities every day. 

According to a 2013 United Nations 

report, the world could see a three-to-sixfoot 

rise in sea level by 2100 due to the 

melting of Earth’s ice caps, a prospect 

that would mean an increase in natural 

disasters like cyclones, flooding, erosion 

and drought. For some, this will mean 

forced migration further inland, away 

from coastlines. For many, it will mean 

abandonment of a way of life that is tied 

to their homeland, of a shared history, 

culture and tradition. 

In this edition of ZEKE Magazine, 

three photographers confront the truths 

of climate change head on: Jordi 

Pizarro, an independent photographer 

based in New Delhi, captured life on 

a sinking island in the Bay of Bengal; 

Probal Rashid, a photojournalist from 

Bangladesh, documented the lands ravaged 

by the rising sea in Bangladesh; 

and Jamey Stillings, a photographer from 

Santa Fe, New Mexico, uncovered the 

global impact of a large-scale renewable 

energy project in the United States. 

Inhabitants from Ghoramara, an Indian 

island south of Kolkata that is disappearing 

due to erosion and rising sea levels. 

Photograph by Jordi Pizarro 



Photographs from Ghoramara. 

Top: A dyke is trying to protect the houses 

in the east of the Island. 

Far left: An entire family building a dyke 

desperately trying to stop the sea water. 

A few hours later, the dyke broke and 

flooded all the rice plantations. 

Left: Girls playing after the storm. 

Photographs by Jordi Pizarro 


A flood-affected man in the Satkhira 

district, Bangladesh stands on high land 

waiting for a boat. Bangladesh is one 

of the countries most vulnerable to the 

effects of climate change. The regular 

and severe natural hazards from which 

Bangladesh already suffers — tropical 

cyclones, river erosion, flood, landslides 

and drought — are all set to increase 

in intensity and frequency as a result of 

climate change. 

Photograph by Probal Rashid 



Satkhira district, Bangladesh. People gather 

to collect drinking water from a reverseosmosis 

plant set up by a local NGO. 

Despite the excess of water, clean drinking 

water can be hard to find. 

Photograph by Probal Rashid 



The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating 

System in the Mojave Desert, California. The 

facility is one of the world’s largest concentrated 

solar thermal power plants, producing 

377 megawatts of electricity — enough to 

power 140,000 American homes. 

Photograph by Jamey Stillings 



The Ivanpah Solar Electric 

Generating System. 

Photograph by Jamey Stillings 



Humanity will not have to 

wait another 30 years to see 

the effects of climate change-- 

it’s happening right now. 

Photo by Astrid Schulz. Vietnam. Cat Thi Hien is indicating the height of 

a flood, which reached record levels. Mrs. Cat needed help restoring her life 

after a storm in 2009 and a flood in 2010. Her home and her belongings were Climate Change is 

destroyed twice. The shock caused her husband to have a stroke; after his death 

Inevitable 

life became very difficult for the remaining family members. 

Today, global warming is 

melting glaciers at a rate three 

CLIMATE CHANGE 

When United States 

Secretary of State John 

Kerry addressed a delegation 

of foreign ministers 

gathered in Alaska 

last August for the Conference 

on Global Leadership in the 

Arctic, the world was in the 

midst of an historic refugee 

crisis. Thousands of Syrians 

were fleeing their homeland for 

Europe, unleashing a crisis the 

world has yet to fully address. 

For Kerry, it was a reminder 

of how ill-prepared we are to 

manage an emergency of that 

magnitude, and a warning that 

the possibility of an even larger 

humanitarian crisis caused 

by the worst effects of climate 

change is looming. 

He called them “climate 

refugees:” people forced to flee 

from the cascading effects of 

global warming -— sea level 

rise and the flooding, erosion, 

landslides, desalination of 

farmlands, drought and famine 

that could ensue. And, with 

urgency, he assured the delegation 

that the seismic effects 

of climate change have already 

been set in motion: 

“The bottom line is that climate 

is not a distant threat for 

our children and their children 

to worry about. It is now.” 

times faster than in the last 

century, and as they melt, the 

level of sea rises. In addition, 

scientists can see that Earth’s 

permafrost — the layer of soil 

that remains frozen throughout 

the year — is also melting, 

releasing methane into the 

atmosphere, a greenhouse gas 

that is significantly more damaging 

than carbon dioxide. As 

these gases increase, temperatures 

will likely go up over land 

surfaces; in fact, 2015 was 

earth’s hottest year on record, 

according to the National 

Oceanic and Atmospheric 

Administration. And as 

temperatures rise, the intensity 

of storms and the instances 

of drought in between storms 

could increase. 

Climate change is inevitable. 

Henry Lee, director 

of the environment and 

natural resources program at 

Harvard’s Kennedy School of 

Government, said researchers 

agree that the changing climate 

cannot be reversed, only its 

repercussions can be mitigated. 

“We’re already on the path. 

We’re already on the slippery 

slope,” he said. “What we can 

do is reduce the severity, but 

we can’t stop it.” 

SEISMIC EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING HAVE ALREADY BEEN SET IN MOTION 

By Margaret 

Quackenbush 

“You think migration is 

a challenge to Europe 

today because of 

extremism, wait until 

you see what happens 

when there’s an absence 

of water, an absence 

of food, or one tribe 

fighting against another 

for mere survival.” 

—John Kerry 

U.S. Secretary of State 

Humanity will not have 

to wait another 30 years 

to see the effects of climate 

change--it’s happening right 

now. On the Marshall Islands 

in the South Pacific and the 

Sundarban Islands in the 

Bay of Bengal, life is literally 

vanishing. The Marshalls, 

which lie just six feet above 

sea level, could disappear by 

the end of the century, forcing 

their 70,000 inhabitants to 

seek refuge elsewhere (likely 

in the United States, where the 

Marshalls have an agreement 

allowing free emigration). And 

in the past 30 years, four of the 

Sundarban islands have sunk 

into the sea, and 18 million 

residents in nearby Bangladesh 

are in danger of being 


Photo by Jordi Pizarro. Ghoramara, India. A dyke is trying to protect the houses in the east of the Island. 

displaced by rising water and 

increasingly intense cyclones. 

For developing nations, the 

problems will be even more 

harshly felt, according to Paul 

Kirshen, a professor of climate 

adaptation at the University of 

Massachusetts Boston. 

“They just don’t have the 

institutions or the wealth to 

deal with these problems. So 

the impact there is going to be 

worse,” he said. 

What does this mean on 

the individual level? It could 

mean human migration on an 

unprecedented scale. 

The Migration Policy 

Institute predicts that more than 

200 million people could be 

displaced by climate change 

by 2050. By that time, some 

scientists predict the world will 

see a sea level rise of about 

three feet, a reality that will 

cause chronic flooding, higher 

tides and bigger storm surges, 

and force millions of people 

away from coastlines and 

out of major cities like New 

York, Miami, London, Venice, 

Sydney and Shanghai. 

Rethinking Urban 

Design 

Now, climate change advocates 

are pushing to both 

reduce emissions and gain buyin 

from the rest of the world. It 

is no easy task, but today these 

advocates have more political 

backing than ever. At a critical 

UN conference in Paris late last 

year, 195 nations reached an 

accord that, for the first time, 

committed nearly every country 

to lowering greenhouse gas 

emissions (previous climate 

change accords exempt developing 

nations like China and 

India, two of the largest greenhouse 

gas emitters). Moreover, 

Photo by Probal Rashid. A stream of villagers on their way to Dhaka, 

Bangladesh, in search of better living conditions. 

the accord pledged to prevent 

global temperatures from rising 

two degrees Celsius, the point 

at which most scientists agree 

will avoid the most disastrous 

effects of climate change. 

That does not mean climate 

change can be stopped 

altogether, but at least the 

worst of it can be avoided. In 

the meantime, most advocates 

and researchers are focusing 

on how to adapt and remain 

resilient in the face of the 

changing climate. That means 

The Migration Policy Institute 

predicts that more than 200 

million people could be 

displaced by climate change 

by 2050. 

creating incentives for renewable 

energies like wind and 

solar power, reducing carbon 

footprint by using fewer fossil 

fuels and developing new farming 

practices to alleviate the 

risk to the food supply. 

Kirshen argues that rethinking 

urban design is key to how 

we accommodate our rising 

seas. In the United States, 

millions of people live in areas 

on the coasts that are vulnerable 

to climate change-related 

flooding. Cities like Boston 

and New York will need to 

divert resources towards flood 

proofing buildings, designing 

infrastructure that can withstand 

spates of seawater and building 

stronger seawalls. 

“The idea is you live with 

the flooding. You have floating 

houses and design urban areas 

to be periodically flooded,” he 

said. 

For Henry Lee, this will be 

an enormous undertaking. It’s 

difficult to convince cities to 

take action to alleviate a future 

pain, especially when there 

are so many more immediate 

pains to deal with daily, Lee 

explained. 

“I don’t have a secret sauce 

as to how we should adapt, 

and will adapt, and how things 

will change,” he said. 

It’s an overwhelming task, 

but a hugely important one, 

Lee said. And it’s one we all 

must commit to if we’re going 

to survive the next 100 years 

and beyond. 


The United Nations website 

on sustainable development: 

www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment 

Climate Action Knowledge 

Exchange: 

www.CAKEx.org 

weADAPT: 

www.weadapt.org 


WHAT’S HOT! 

TRENDING 

PHOTOGRAPHERS 

ON SDN 

Of the hundreds of exhibits submitted to SDN 

each year, these four stand out as exemplary 

and deserving of further attention. 

Margarita Mavromichalis: Lesvos Point Zero (Greece). This exhibit 

exposes refugees’ intense first moments on the shores of Greece 

after a harrowing journey across the Aegean. Dangerous as the 

crossing may be, Mavromichalis reminds us that people only make 

such a journey because the perils at sea pale in comparison to those 

on land. Her project endeavors to change the discourse surrounding 

this humanitarian crisis by making the plight of these refugees 

visible, privileging human experience over political opinion. 

Brian Driscoll: Urban Asylum-Seekers (Thailand). Brian 

Driscoll exposes the plight of urban asylum seekers as they 

await their visa application interviews in the shadows of 

Bangkok’s cityscape. After fleeing violence and persecution in 

their home countries, asylum-seekers exist in a stateless limbo 

for years before these much anticipated appointments come 

to fruition. They live in chronic fear of being discovered with 

expired tourist visas, detained, and deported. 

David Horton: Soul Wants to Fly (USA). Paul Rudolph originally 

designed the Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center in Boston to 

reflect his romanticized view of the fragmented mental states of 

those suffering from Alzheimer’s, dementia, and schizophrenia. 

David Horton’s photographs change the narrative by showing 

how Rudolph’s unfinished project is more symbolic of the city’s 

broken and inadequate mental healthcare system than it is of the 

minds of those who inhabit its incomplete structures. 

Sami Siva: India’s Third Gender – Transgender Women in 

Hindu Culture (India). Though both the government and Hindu 

scripture officially recognize a “third gender,” transgender 

women face rampant discrimination in Indian society and are 

limited in their employment options to sex work, performing 

at ceremonies, and begging. Sami Silva follows these women 

into hotels, festivals, and beauty pageants, documenting the 

daily lives of this marginalized community. 


ZEKETHE MAGAZINE OF 

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concern. 

Subscribe today! 

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includes print and digital 

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ZEKE is published by the Social Documentary Network (SDN) 

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Photograph by Daro Sulakauri 

ZEKE is publishing great photography 

about important global issues by both 

established and emerging photographers 

from all corners of the world. 

— Ed Kashi, Photographer 

It's time for a 

new kind of 

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For men who give a damn 

about being better men. 

stand-magazine.com 


Interview 

WITH SERGEY PONOMAREV 

by Caterina Clerici 

Sergey Ponomarev is best known for his 

photojournalism work depicting news 

images from wars and conflicts in the 

Middle East including Syria, Gaza, 

Lebanon, Egypt and Libya. He has won 

many international photography awards. 

Most recently, he won first place in the 

General News category at World Press 

Photo for his work on the European refugee 

crisis and he was a finalist for the Pulitzer 

Prize in 2015. From 2003 until 2012, he 

was a staff photographer at the Associated 

Press. He is now a freelance photographer 

and works frequently for The New York Times. 

Caterina Clerici: How did you get started 

in your career as a photojournalist? 

Sergey Ponomarev: I was always interested 

in journalism, that’s my family tradition. 

My father was a journalist, he was a foreign 

correspondent for a Soviet news agency. 

Somehow later I discovered I’d rather use 

visual language than the narrative text 

language. First, I could express myself better 

with images and when I started working 

with international media, I found that they 

could be understood by anyone in the world. 

Visual storytelling could be understood internationally 

without any translation. 

CC: You started working with AP in Russia 

in 2003 and then you went freelance in 

2012. How was the transition between 

getting assignments from a wire to pitching 

stories as a freelance journalist? 

SP: That was one of the reasons why I 

quit the wire agency. I’m not interested in 

fashion or event photography, because I 

feel like I am sent there and I just press the 

button, I don’t even edit the images. There is 

no challenge. 

Going freelance was a tough decision. In 

the modern world it’s very hard to compete 

and find your way. Also freelancers have 

to take care of their equipment and computers, 

whereas agency photographers are 

provided with everything. After eight years, 

trying to find my own way to become a freelance 

journalist was a big challenge for me. 

In some ways it’s kind of like having a business, 

it’s not a job. You have to find ideas, 

you have to find those who will be interested 

and you have to sell your own product. 

CC: How did you carve your niche in the 

market? Is it geographical (Russia and 

Ukraine) or thematic, according to your 

topics of interest such as conflict photography 

and migration? How did your past 

experience at AP shape your brand as an 

independent photojournalist? 

SP: There are several options to develop 

oneself as a freelance photographer. You 

can be based in a region. So for example, 

I’m a Russian photographer and I will mainly 

shoot stories out of Russia, Ukraine and 

neighboring countries. But I was always 

interested in the Middle East. If you work in 

the Middle East you face more conflict. If you 

work in Africa you face more human rights 

violations. So this is why I had to develop my 

conflict expertise, because in the Middle East 

there are always clashes and war. 

When I started my career, I proposed 

some stories out of Russia, some environmental 

stories, and some political, but my 

career really kicked off more successfully 

after I went to Syria. I came with a unique 

Trying to find my own way to 

become a freelance journalist was a 

big challenge for me. In some ways 

it’s kind of like having a business, 

it’s not a job. You have to find ideas, 

you have to find those who will be 

interested and you have to sell your 

own product. 

—Sergey Ponomarev 

story on how the closed regime of Assad 

lived and the effects of war on ordinary 

people. And this was something very fresh. 

Editors at The New York Times became 

interested and now I work a lot with this 

newspaper. I proposed a story about 

Assad’s Syria to the Visa pour l’image 

festival in Perpignan, and I had a very fresh 

and unique perspective. 

CC: How did your previous experiences 

covering conflict shape the way you 

approached Ukraine? 

SP: Ukraine is a pain in the ass for me. I 

would say it like that. For a photographer 

and a journalist it’s very important to stay 

independent from the context. Even if 

you’re going to cover the ‘wrong’ side of 

the conflict, you’re still going to judge what 

people do and what people claim independently, 

or at least you’re pretending to do 

that. With Ukraine, which is a neighboring 

or brother country [to Russia], it was really 

hard to stay independent. By judging it 

independently, and by being in and out of 

some areas, I’ve been losing friends and 

I’ve been losing my understanding of what’s 

November 16, 2015. Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos. This photo won first prize in the 

2016 World Press Photo Awards for general news, stories. Photo by Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times. 


February 22, 2014. Former Ukranian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko spoke 

from the stage at Independence Square in Kiev following the ouster of President 

Victor F. Yanukovych. Photo by Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times. 

going on because both sides of the conflict 

were just overwhelmed with propaganda. 

The lie was from both sides, even at the 

beginning of this conflict. The main fights 

and the main battles were happening 

around the TV towers, so those who control 

the TV towers control the region. Speaking 

on the ground with the people about the 

annexation of Crimea as a reunion with 

Russia could be difficult because people 

would think differently, and their thoughts 

were shaped by TV propaganda. 

CC: You tend to go for very dramatic 

moments but you mange to depict human 

tragedy with a lot of dignity. How do you 

approach that — and is there a difference 

between working in a more familiar place like 

Ukraine versus a country that you don’t know? 

SP: I come from an understanding that 

photographs right now cannot stop war. 

Imagine Nick Ut’s image of the girl running 

from napalm — the one that won 

the Pulitzer Prize. I’m sure that nowadays 

this image on the majority of news sites 

would be shown with a warning at first, 

that you’re about to see graphic content 

and that you should be aware of that. So 

that image in 2016 will not shock people 

as it shocked them in the 1960s. And that 

shock made them protest against war and 

force decision makers to stop it. And when 

I’m on the ground and I see human flesh or 

something graphic I feel like I’d better turn 

around and photograph live people who 

are seeing that, rather than photographing 

dead bodies. And the emotions of those 

who are still alive, in my opinion, will be 

more powerful. 

CC: You’re talking about graphic content 

warnings and yet how to still surprise readers 

in a time where we seem to have become 

accustomed to images of war. What were 

your thoughts on the 

photo of Alan Kurdi, the 

drowned Syrian boy 

whose image shocked the 

entire world and stands 

pretty much at the other 

end of the spectrum from 

how you have documented 

the refugee crisis? 

SP: First of all, I haven’t 

seen any drowned bodies 

in those five months 

that I documented the 

refugee crisis. I was 

asked about that when 

there was a discussion in 

the French media and I was at Perpignan. 

Most newspapers published this photo on 

the front pages or inside, except the French 

media, who decided not to show it to their 

audiences. I was against that, because I 

understand that modern rules don’t allow 

photography to be shocking, advertisers 

don’t want to see their ads next to shocking 

pictures. We’re just overwhelmed with visual 

information and TV screens and advertising 

screens all around us. But the medium of 

photojournalism is not just a regular digital 

information tool. It’s not that photojournalists 

are like vultures. They’re trying to find the 

most shocking, the ugliest stories happening 

in our world and this is not a bad habit or 

some pathological problem with them — 

they’re just trying to show that the world is 

not that perfect. I think French editors at some 

point just started following the demands of 

society and consumerism. That we just need 

a new shampoo and a new iPhone, and we 

don’t want to know anything about what is 

happening in the world. 

CC: There seems to be a growing ‘poverty 

and war photography fatigue’ and, as 

you’ve said yourself, you’re also trying to 

shift your lens to the reactions of people 

rather than the gruesome. Maybe it’s time to 

reinvent how we are portraying tragedies? 

SP: That is a question for an editor more 

than a photographer, because a photographer’s 

job is to document. From my point of 

view we have to deal with what we have. 

I think this is why we cannot come to an 

exact solution, because if I were there I 

would probably make a different choice for 

what the magazine has to put on the front 

page. If I were there, if I could shoot this 

boy [Alan Kurdi] as a document of what 

happened, possibly I would try to do it in 

a different way. There were two images 

of that boy, one of him alone lying on the 

beach and one of him carried by the coastguard 

out of the sea. Some of them decided 

to use one, some the other, and it’s a very 

different message. 

CC: You were covering the refugee crisis for 

five months, traveling in and out of different 

countries to document this overwhelming 

human experience from all sides. Do you 

agree with the term that has been used to 

described it, a ‘crisis’? 

SP: At first I see that this crisis happened 

as a common epidemic. Some people — 

the refugees — decided that they can go 

to Germany and find a better life there. 

Facebook and the social networks exaggerated 

those ideas. They were constantly 

distributing stories about those who safely 

reached Germany or how they were in the 

process of getting there. The first time that 

I started working on that story, I followed 

a family to Serbia, then I had to leave and 

another photographer followed them to 

Sweden and, you know, they just opened 

me to a different world. There is an Arabic 

Facebook that is just overwhelmed with 

stories and groups about how they reached 

Germany or Sweden or other places, with 

advertisements of smugglers who offer their 

help to go through the Balkan countries. So 

everybody thought they could go, and they 

came to the idea that they must go. Once 

they started they had to reach their final 

destination. All the countries on the road 

weren’t ready for this influx of migrants and 

even the neighboring countries have problems 

and they started building fences. At the 

end they all decided their own country was 

not the destination for migrants, so they just 

had to provide safe passage for them — 

they get in, they get out, and that’s it. 

The suffering of the people was just 

huge. They all had to deal with either riot 

police or the army. The police were treating 

them like they would treat hooligans, 

it was mostly migrant families or single 

men or those who were momentarily alone 

who faced riot police. That was one of 

the biggest human rights violations from 

my point of view. They were being treated 

very badly. Sometimes they were beating 

them or forcing them to stay out in the rain 

or the open skies for the night. They were 

made to march for several miles to the next 

registration point. And those people just lost 

track of where they were. Every time I met 

people, the first question they were asking 

me was which country we were in and how 

many countries remain until Germany. 


AFTER RANA PLAZA 

Interview with Caterina Clerici 

INNOVATIVE SOCIAL MEDIA PROJECT BY ISMAIL FERDOUS 

DOCUMENTING THE HORRIFIC COLLAPSE OF THE RANA 

PLAZA COMPLEX IN BANGLADESH AND ITS AFTERMATH 

Caterina Clerici: You’ve been working 

on your documentary project After Rana 

Plaza for eight months now (at the time of 

the interview, in December 2015). Tell us 

how the idea came about and how you got 

started. 

Mominul Islam and his wife Sharvanu. Mominul thought his wife died in the Rana Plaza collapse, only to find 

out that she was in critical condition at the Dhaka Medical College hospital. 

Since starting out as a photojournalist in 2011, Bangladeshi photographer 

Ismail Ferdous has become known for using social media to help shed light on 

social issues worldwide in more immediate, powerful and innovative ways. In 

2015, he was named the recipient of the 2015 Getty Images Instagram Grant 

winner. On February 26, 2016, one of his pictures from the massive earthquake 

that struck Nepal in April 2015 was among the ten showed by Instagram’s 

CEO and co-founder Kevin Systrom to Pope Francis when the two discussed the 

power of photography to bring people together. 

A few months into documenting the legacy of 

the Rana Plaza collapse in Dhaka — the world’s 

deadliest industrial accident in recent years — 

with his “After Rana Plaza” project (supported 

by the Dutch Embassy), Ismail talked to SDN. He 

discussed the challenges and rewards of carrying 

out a long-term project in different formats, 

and the advantages of publishing on social 

media versus traditional platforms, in terms of 

audience engagement and impact. 

Mobarak Hossain worked as a volunteer 

for more than a month after the building 

collapsed to rescue victims from the 

rubble and provide relief. 

Ismail Ferdous: I started the After Rana 

Plaza project on the second anniversary of 

the collapse, on April 23, 2015. I had been 

following the story since the Rana Plaza 

tragedy happened and had been documenting 

the garment industry. I had already 

done some work on the topic of the cost of 

fashion in a video for the New York Times, 

as well as a documentary and an article for 

a photo activism website. 

More than 2,500 workers were injured 

in the collapse and more than 1,100 died. 

I thought it would be interesting to followup 

on their stories. It’s easy to forget about 

events like these after a while, with other 

news happening everywhere. But I covered 

the issue right after it happened, so I had 

a personal attachment to it. Furthermore, I 

see these people everyday, they are workers 

in the city I live in. So that’s a constant 

reminder for me of the importance of the 

project, of why their stories should be told 

and we should still remember what the 

tragedy stands for. 

CC: How did you choose what format to 

use for the project and how did you carry 

it out? 

IF: I asked myself what could be an interesting 

way to tell this story and opted for 

social media: everyone can access it and 

you don’t have to wait for traditional media 

to publish the content. Instagram was the 

preferred choice because it’s not only a 

fun tool, it can also be an educational one. 

You’re able to follow it and to hear the 

stories of victims directly. Then I also built a 

stand-alone website for readers who wanted 

to know more about these stories. 

I decided to interview one person a day, 

in detail, choosing not only victims but also 

stakeholders in the industry, like fashion 

designers, producers, et cetera. My aim all 

along has been to act as a commentator on 

the issue — not judging, just letting people 

read and think about it. It’s also meant to 


www.afterranaplaza.com 

afterranaplaza@gmail.com 

@afterranaplaza 

/afterranaplaza 

@after_ranaplaza 

Afroza Akhter Eti was rewarded for her work at Rana 

Plaza and was among the few women who took part in 

relief work despite the dangers involved. 

create a platform for those who want to be 

involved in the industry, to let them know 

more about it and make more informed 

choices. 

CC: Why did you decide to integrate video 

in your work and how has the use of a 

‘mixed format’ (shooting photography and 

video) made your project more successful 

on social media? 

IF: I was always very fascinated by 

Instagram as a platform. When they started 

allowing you to post 15 second videos, I 

thought it could be a very powerful addition 

to the project, as I had never seen anyone 

using short videos like this. 

Plus, as photographers we like to say 

that we are giving voice to the voiceless, 

so I thought this would be a way to actually 

accomplish that: you tap on the photo 

and you can hear the voice of the person I 

interviewed that day. I didn’t want to add 

subtitles to the videos because it would 

become a completely different experience, 

so I just chose to add a short paragraph 

with the subtitles instead. 

CC: Did you ever feel like you were running 

the risk of losing focus by expanding the 

project on so many social media platforms 

(Instagram, Facebook, Twitter..)? 

IF: I never felt that using social media to 

publish, promote and distribute my project 

was making me lose focus. I didn’t have to 

wait for someone (traditional media) to publish 

this project, which is already a good 

thing. Moreover, having different platforms 

makes sense at this moment because you 

keep your options open: someone doesn’t 

like Facebook and they go to Instagram, or 

your website, or Vimeo or Twitter. This way 

it’s accessible to everyone and everyone 

has already seen it, although I still haven’t 

even published it anywhere. I also want to 

do a book and exhibition on it, but that’s 

still in the works. 

CC: How was your work received at home 

and abroad? 

IF: Surprisingly, I had a bigger response 

internationally than locally — probably 

that’s because Instagram is just not that big 

in Bangladesh yet and, after all, the issue of 

garments and fashion is global. 

CC: Are there any changes happening 

thanks to your project? Have you been able 

to assess its impact? 

IF: Every project, every picture has an 

impact – sometimes it’s immediate and more 

visible while other times it happens more 

slowly or you are just creating awareness 

and there are no tangible effects, but 

I believe all projects have some sort of 

impact. 

By doing After Rana Plaza, for instance, 

I found out that a lot of people didn’t even 

know that the place had collapsed and 

found out about it through the project. Many 

people who are working in sustainable fashion 

have contacted me because they want 

to use the work to promote social corporate 

responsibility, and even the International 

Labour Organization reached out saying 

they were interested in using the work to 

raise awareness about the cost of fashion. 

Once some guys in Bolivia saw a 

post on Instagram about a girl who lost 

her mother in the collapse and asked me 

how to get in touch with her directly and I 

redirected them to the Rana Plaza compensation 

fund. It’s great to give people the 

opportunity to contribute if they feel like 

doing something to help out the victims and 

their families after they’ve read their stories. 

I really feel good when I get a response like 

that, on such a personal level. It makes me 

think that this is actually getting to people, 

that they’re touched by these stories. 

Rozina Akhter, 30, was stuck under a beam during the 

Rana Plaza incident. The beam fell down on her waist 

and she fainted. After some time, she woke up to notice 

she could not move. Rozina did not realize then this 

would be a turning point for her life, as she will have 

difficulties doing anything with the same ease as she 

once had before. 

CC: What is the most memorable story 

you’ve encountered and documented, or the 

one that struck you the most? 

IF: It’s hard to say, because all of the stories 

are extremely touching. I remember once 

photographing a man who had lost one of 

his legs in the collapse and was wearing 

a prosthesis to walk. As soon as he started 

talking he burst into tears and it seemed like 

it was still a very heavy story for him. Only 

after a while he told me that he had lost his 

girlfriend in the collapse — and it was obviously 

harder for him to get over that than 

having lost his leg. 

CC: How do you get people to share their 

stores with you? Is it getting more or less 

difficult now that you’ve kept this going for 

a few months, both for you and for them? 

IF: To do a project like this you have to gain 

their trust — they have to open up — so 

you have to build a relationship with them. 

I keep in touch with many of the people I 

interviewed, they still call me sometimes, just 

to chat. Most of their stories are very sad 

and the whole process is very traumatizing, 

for them but also very draining for me 

too. So far though, everyone I talked to has 

been very welcoming to me. Society tends 

to forget things easily, even a catastrophe 

like this, so it’s always good for them to see 

that someone else other than them hasn’t 

forgotten. 

Ismail Ferdous is a Bangladeshi photographer 

based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, whose 

work has been featured in the New York 

Times, New York Times Magazine, MSNBC, 

National Geographic, New Yorker and 

TIME Lightbox, among many others. 


DOCUMENTARY vs. JOURNALISM 

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE? HEAR FROM TWO PHOTOGRAPHERS & ZEKE EDITOR 

by Paula Sokolska 

LORI WASELCHUK first arrived in 

Angola, Louisiana on a magazine 

assignment in 2011. A photographer 

with over 15 years’ experience 

including published work in 

Newsweek, LIFE, and The New York Times, 

she was there to document the Louisiana 

State Penitentiary’s prisoner-run hospice 

program. 

But the “incredible journey” Waselchuk 

saw in the caregivers—the tenderness and 

care demonstrated by what society dubs 

hardened criminals—had her returning 

to Angola again and again for over two 

years. Her study of these “people with 

mostly heart and not a lot of skill making 

life better for others” culminated in the 

award-winning photo documentary series 

Grace Before Dying. 

Even though most viewers would be 

stumped telling the difference between the 

two, a division exists in the world of visual 

reporting between photojournalism and 

documentary photography. The definitions 

of each are broad and the same body of 

work can be considered both, but as we 

see in the evolution of Waselchuk’s work, 

differences between the genres do not 

manifest in the finished product but in the 

photographer’s process and intention. 

“Documentary photographers are 

almost always, by definition, personally 

driven by the subject matter and the 

issue,” says Glenn Ruga, ZEKE Executive 

50 / ZEKE SPRING 2016 

Editor and a photographer whose experience 

chronicling issues relating to the 

Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, particularly 

Bosnia, led him to founding the Social 

Documentary Network. 

An ignited interest means documentary 

photographers dedicate themselves to a 

subject indefinitely, with some doing so 

for years. Such intensive commitments are 

less often found in photojournalism. In the 

classic scenario, news breaks and a publication 

dispatches a full-time or freelance 

photojournalist to document the scene for 

hours or days before moving on to the 

next story. Today’s demanding news cycle 

prizes speed over depth. 

Documentary work is much more 

challenging and much closer to the way 

I want my photography to work in the 

world. It’s more of an artist’s life. 

—Lori Waselchuk 

“As soon as I started photographing 

Manenberg…I knew I was in it for the long 

haul,” says Sarah Stacke, a photographer 

who first visited the Cape Town, South 

Africa suburb in 2012. “I hope to be present…for 

milestones and daily moments well 

into the future.” 

Manenberg was established in the 

1960s when “coloured” citizens were 

forcefully relocated there by the apartheid 

government. Most people today know it as 

From Grace Before Dying by Lori Waselchuk. Calvin 

Dumas, left, helps turn George Alexander in his bed. 

Alexander is a hospice patient dying of brain and lung 

cancers. Dumas and Alexander have been very close 

friends for the 30-plus years they have been incarcerated 

at Angola. With permission from security and support 

from his coworkers at his prison job, Dumas is able to stay 

with Alexander continuously for days at a time. “When 

I’m around, he looks like he’s getting better. When I’m not 

here, he looks like he’s going down,” says Dumas. 

one of South Africa’s most violent neighborhoods, 

but Stacke’s series, Love from 

Manenberg, instead explores “relationships 

and how we navigate relationships 

against the backdrop of our circumstances.” 

She continues to visit the Lottering 

family, the subject of her work, to this day. 

The extended time spent on documentary 

assignments results in emotional, intellectual, 

and organizational investments largely 

absent from photojournalism. Even though 

Waselchuk’s active work on Grace Before 

Dying is over, she admits, “I probably think 

about it once a day and put energy into 

it. The conversation the work generates is 

something I work on continuously.” 

But according to Stacke, it also results 

in a deeper understanding of an individual 

which illuminates “the positive and negative 

issues that affect an individual and his 

or her community.” Should a photojournalist 

seek a similar depth of understanding, it 

is likely that issues of bias, reporter sympathy, 

and misrepresentation would arise. 

“Documentary photographers have a

From Love from Manenberg by Sarah Stacke. Naomi Lottering visiting her sister, Debby. 

perspective on the subject,” says Ruga. 

“They’re not expected to have an objective 

position whereas the credo of photojournalism 

is that you’re there to give an 

unbiased presentation of the material with 

no particular agenda.” 

Photojournalism is task-driven, and in 

today’s demanding news cycle the medium’s 

purpose is to catch readers’ eyes and 

expound on a written narrative. For photojournalists, 

the professional challenge, and 

what publication’s pay for, is the ability to 

enter any situation—no matter the culture, 

circumstance, or resources—and come 

away with a captivating image. 

Documentary photography is much 

more a labor of love, according to Ruga, 

who says it has never been a lucrative 

business. Waselchuk, who has worked 

several jobs to support her photography, 

agrees. “No one’s paying me to do this. 

You can’t support yourself as a documentary 

photographer.” 

Fellowships and organizations supporting 

documentary work do exist, but 

unlike photojournalists, documentarians 

lack the support of editorial departments. 

They forego the expectation of earning 

money for the freedom to craft narratives 

and expand their skills. Not just photographers, 

documentarians are researchers, 

writers, and editors. But what marks them 

from photojournalists the most is their role 

as storytellers. Every documentary piece 

communicates the photographer’s personal 

understanding of the subject, and, in voicing 

the story, they become a part of it. 

“Documentary work is much more challenging 

and much closer to the way I want 

my photography to work in the world,” 

says Waselchuk. “It’s more of an artist’s 

life.” 


AWARD WINNERS 

HONORABLE MENTIONS 

FROM SDN’S CALL FOR ENTRIES ON VISUAL 

STORIES EXPLORING GLOBAL THEMES/2016 

Michael Joseph, 

Lost & Found 

Like graffiti on the walls of the 

city streets and the trains they 

ride, the bodies and faces of 

these modern-day hobos become 

the visual storybook of their 

lives. Tattoos are often given to 

one another, and their patchwork 

clothing is a mismatch of 

found items. The high of freedom 

however, does not come without 

consequence. Their lifestyle is 

physically risky and rampant with 

substance abuse. Often unseen 

and misjudged, they are some 

of the kindest people. Their souls 

are open and their gift is time. 

Sadegh Souri, 

Waiting for Capital 

Punishment (Iran) 

According to Iranian laws, the 

age when girls are held accountable 

for criminal punishment is 

nine years old, while international 

conventions have banned 

the death penalty for persons 

under 18. In Iran, the death 

penalty for children is used for 

crimes such as murder, drug 

trafficking, and armed robbery. 

In recent years, the Iranian 

judiciary system detains children 

in juvenile detention centers after 

their death sentence verdicts, 

and a large number of them are 

hanged after reaching 18. 

52 / ZEKE 2015 SPRING 2016

ZEKE presents these four honorable mention winners from SDN’s 

Call for Entries on Visual Stories Exploring Global Themes. From 146 

submissions, the jurors selected Jan Banning as first place winner (see 

Law & Order, page 3), and the four honorable mentions presented here. 

Pierpaolo Mittica, 

The Nuclear Legacy 

Since the use of civilian nuclear 

energy began in the early 

1950s, thousands of serious incidents 

have occurred in nuclear 

reactors scattered around the 

world. Three of these major 

incidents have marked the lives 

of millions of people: Mayak 

and Chernobyl in the former 

Soviet Union and Fukushima in 

Japan. This work focuses on the 

social, economic, healthcare and 

environmental legacy of these 

nuclear accidents. 

Annalisa Natali Murri, 

La Nieve y la Flor 

For about 30 years a “romantic 

diaspora” has brought to Cuba 

a large number of Russian 

women: more than two thousand 

are still living there, though their 

stories have remained largely 

unknown. Some have divorced 

and others still live happily in 

love; some have never accepted 

inwardly the change completely, 

others have faced difficulties 

with great strength of mind and 

determination. 

ZEKE SPRING ZEKE 2015/ 2016/ 53


REVIEWS 

MIRROR 

by Ara Oshagan and 

Gor Mkhitarian 

Oshagan Editions, 2016 

www.araoshagan.net/mirror 

166 pp. 

Mirror is a new kind of photobook 

that draws the reader into a digitally 

enhanced engagement with 

photography and music. Photographer Ara 

Oshagan’s collaborator and muse in this 

multifaceted adventure is Gor Mkhitarian, 

the gifted Armenian songwriter/musician. 

The material in the book was created over 

a period of 11 years as Oshagan followed 

Mkhitarian from concerts to recording 

studios. 

Aurasma is the interactive app available 

from iTunes and other app stores 

that provides the reality augmentation that 

makes the book more than paper. There 

are several pleasurable highlights when 

the software allows viewers to literally 

experience photographs jumping off the 

page to become dynamic music videos. In 

addition to the videos, most of the 20 plus 

pictures with accompanying Aurasma links 

play a related song track. Mkhitarian’s 

music is the ideal accompaniment for 

Oshagan’s mysterious pictures. 

Oshagan’s visual odyssey celebrates 

darkness. Mkhitarian and the other musicians 

are often seen hovering in shadow 

while playing their instruments. Oshagan 

is a conjurer with a camera illustrating the 

creation of Mkhitarian’s music. Oshagan 

generates a cadence of pictures on the 

page that resonates with Mkhitarian’s lyrics 

interspersed throughout the book. When the 

Aurasma app is applied to specific pictures, 

their dark mood transforms to the brighter, 

backlit smart phone screen, and the music 

illuminates fresh moments of clarity. 

In addition to Oshagan’s skilled use of 

chiaroscuro, his pictures reach out beyond 

the parameters of the frame acknowledging 

that the story is more than any one 

picture. The music is the muse that lets the 

pictures dance together. Oshagan invites 

his viewers to penetrate through his Mirror 

with the help of the highly enjoyable digital 

augmentations. The book is a beautifully 

designed package for Oshagan’s and 

Mkhitarian’s brilliant collaboration, and 

the Aurasma technology invites the viewer 

to walk into the Mirror and through the 

looking glass. 

—Frank Ward 

WAR IS BEAUTIFUL 

The New York Times Pictorial Guide to the 

Glamour of Armed Conflict* 

By David Shields 

powerHouse Books, 2015 

111 pp. 

In his book satirically titled War is 

Beautiful, David Shields levels a 

wholesale critique of The New York 

Times’ choice to accompany conflict stories 

with well-composed photographs. He 

argues that the overwhelming majority of 

the Times’ A1 images depicting war are 

too beautiful to accurately represent the 

atrocities of armed conflict. In the book’s 

subtitle, he claims that the glamourizing of 

war is the reason why he “no longer reads 

The New York Times.” 

Shields points out ten “visual tropes” 

which organize the chapters of his book: 

Nature, Playground, Father, God, Pietà, 

Painting, Movie, Beauty, Love, and Death. 

To be sure, Shields’ condemnation of the 

the New York Times’ modus operandi is a 

provocative stance, and one that the paper 

of record itself has attempted to silence. 

The New York Times is currently suing 

Shields’ publisher, powerHouse Books, for 

$19,000 over the fair use of thumbnail 

images decorating the inside back cover 

of the book. But because all of these 

images are fully licensed, powerHouse 

owner Daniel Power believes that this petty 

legal battle is nothing short of a “First 

Amendment fight.” 

War is Beautiful contains 64 A1 Times 

photographs from around the world, most 

of which juxtapose American soldiers 

clad in desert camouflage against the 

recognizably Middle Eastern backdrops 

of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine. In an 

interview with Rita Banerjee of Electric 

Literature, Shields laments how “remarkably 

hollow and bloodless, composed, 

and abstract” the photographs in the book 

appear. And it would be difficult to argue 

that the images themselves are devoid of 

the beauty he accuses them of possessing 

— from the glowing sunset over the 

Euphrates River to the sparkling green eyes 

of orphaned Iraqi children, the Times has 

been intentional in representing the artistic 

as well as the journalistic. However, it 

would also be a misrepresentation to claim 

that all of the images are bloodless – in 

Pietà alone, four of the five images Shields 

uses are of the dead and maimed, and 

three of these show mortal wounds and 

bloodied clothing. Nevertheless, Shields 

sees the aesthetic qualities of these photographs 

as an injustice to and a sanitizing 

of the horrors of war, arguing that they 

convey the sense that war is “heck” rather 

than “hell.” 

So the question remains: do war 

images have to be uncomfortable to be 

successful, graphic to be moral? Pick up a 

copy of War is Beautiful (or a copy of The 

New York Times) to decide for yourself. 

—Emma Brown 


FACE OF COURAGE 

Intimate Portraits of Women on the Edge 

by Mark Tuschman 

Val de Grace Books, 2015 

344 pp. 

Mark Tuschman uses captivating 

portraits to tell the stories of women 

from all over the world in his new 

book Faces of Courage: Intimate Portraits 

of Women on the Edge. He weaves the 

women’s individual experiences into a 

beautiful tapestry of personal narratives 

that, taken together, evidence the systemic 

nature of the trials and tribulations 

faced by women worldwide. Many of the 

women and girls featured are survivors of 

physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, 

and are limited by the barriers to opportunity 

characteristic of male-dominated 

cultures. Tuschman prefaces each chapter 

with moving accounts of his encounters 

with these women, which he then follows 

with his arresting images. In these portraits, 

some women are stoic, some offer 

a smile, and some seem on the verge of 

tears. Regardless of expression, their eyes 

burn with resolve. Their gazes, like their 

spirits, seem unbreakable. 

To be sure, violence against women is 

a “regular, daily occurrence” according 

to Tuschman. The book shows the myriad 

ways in which women are reconstructing 

ideas about their own self-worth such as 

learning that they are entitled to basic 

human rights including the right to decide 

how many children they have, the right not 

to be beaten or treated like chattel, and 

that they are more than simply “unpaid 

domestic labor, sexual objects, and reproductive 

vessels.” 

Fortunately, many organizations and 

activists like the ones Tuschman features 

in his book are working to combat this 

reality. In the final chapters, he highlights 

what he calls “tools of empowerment”: 

vocational training, microfinance, and 

education. These programs support the 

well-being and endeavors of marginalized 

women, raising them up and helping them 

reach their potential socially, politically, 

and economically. 

—Emma Brown 

IT’S WHAT I DO 

A Photographer’s Life of Love and War 

By Lynsey Addario 

New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2015 

368 pp. 

In It’s What I Do, conflict photographer 

Lynsey Addario turns the lens on her 

own experiences in order to reveal 

the complexities and contradictions of 

her life as a journalist. This identity has 

saved Addario’s life and put her in mortal 

danger, gained her exclusive access and 

limited her mobility, left her mocked and 

ridiculed and earned her the title of genius 

by the MacArthur Foundation. But for 

Addario, photojournalism is much more 

than a profession; it is her calling. This 

passion for photography and humanitarianism 

has helped her maintain a sense 

of self in an endlessly paradoxical world 

where she bears witness to the full spectrum 

of poverty and privilege, occupation 

and freedom, death and birth. 

In the world of journalism, Addario is 

known for her artistic talent but also her 

sincerity — it is her ability to photograph 

aesthetically beautiful images without sacrificing 

candor that has earned her countless 

accolades and global renown. Her book 

is certainly no exception. Addario succeeds 

in telling her own narrative with the 

same authenticity that characterizes her 

photojournalism. She honors her successes 

as well as her failures, her pride and her 

pain, her confidence and her insecurities. 

It is her ability to embrace life’s complexities 

without sugarcoating that makes her 

photography and her writing impossible to 

put down, to turn away from, to forget. 

Like her masterful photography, 

Addario’s book It’s What I Do triumphs 

in navigating the many balancing acts of 

journalism: it is illuminating without being 

exploitative, and it honors her faithfulness 

to honest, empathetic reporting without 

being self-indulgent. The book itself 

represents the best of Addario’s talents as 

both an artist and a storyteller. On page 

after page, her words, complimented by 

interspersed photographs, create crisp 

and vibrant imagery in the reader’s mind. 

Addario recounts scenes from her life with 

careful attention to each intricate detail, 

bringing to her writing the same intriguing 

dynamism that characterizes her awardwinning 

photography. It’s What I Do is 

poignant and compelling — Addario 

successfully mobilizes her personal experiences 

and nuanced approach in order to 

shed light on some greater truths about 

conflict photojournalism, humanitarianism, 

and the human condition. 

—Emma Brown 


SDN FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHERS OF THE MONTH 

August 2015 – January 2016 

AUGUST 

SEPTEMBER 

Maryam Ashrafi: Mourning Kobané [Syria]. Ashrafi documents 

what remains of Kobané, Syria as the city’s residents, 

returning home for the first time since its liberation from the 

Islamic State, survey the destruction and mourn the losses 

incurred in the war. 

Susan Guice: Disappearing Wetlands of the Gulf Coast 

[Louisiana and Mississippi]. 

B. D. Colen: Birth in Haiti – With Midwives for Haiti. 

OCTOBER 

NOVEMBER 

Adriaan Devillé: A Slogdian Wedding [Tajikistan]. In this 

series, Devillé grants us exclusive access to a wedding in the 

Yagnob valley that marries the traditional to the modern, featuring 

embroidered garb as well as denim jeans, iPhones and ceremonial 

rituals. 

Maria Cardamone: Alice Project: The Wonderland at School 

(India). Cardamone shows Alice Project schools creating an 

environment that encourages attentiveness, awareness, and 

tolerance in the classroom by focusing on the student’s inner 

state through activities such as prayer and yoga. 

DECEMBER 

JANUARY 

Kevin Ouma: Using Phones to Help Mothers in Samburu, 

Kenya. Ouma explores how Safaricom is revolutionizing maternal 

healthcare in remote villages by putting patient records 

in the palms of nurses’ hands with an app that makes medical 

histories easily accessible. 

Astrid Schultz: 100 Faces of Viet Nam. In this collection of 

portraits, Schultz captures quotidian yet intimate slices of life in 

Vietnam, giving names and faces to familiar human experiences 

of desire, banality, passion, and uncertainty. 



Spring 


Published by Social Documentary Network 

Photographers and writers featured 

in this issue of ZEKE 

Jan Banning 

The Netherlands 

Caterina Clerici 

New York, United States 

Lisa Liberty Becker 

Massachusetts, United States 

Ara Oshagan 

California, United States 

Jordi Pizarro 

Spain and India 

Margaret Quackenbush 


CHARTER WEEKS 

PHOTOGRAPHY 

Probal Rashid 

Bangladesh 

Anne Sahler 

Germany and Japan 

Paula Sokolska 


Jamey Stillings 

Arizona, United States 

Daro Sulakauri 

Republic of Georgia 

Jan Zychlinski 

Germany 

National & 

International 

Subjects 

Stock or 

Assignment 

2016 Vol. 2/No. 1 

ZEKE is published by Social Documentary Network (SDN), an 

organization promoting visual storytelling about global themes. 

Started as a website in 2008, today SDN works with nearly a 

thousand photographers around the world to tell important stories 

through the visual medium of photography and multimedia. Since 

2008, SDN has featured more than 2,000 exhibits on its website 

and has had gallery exhibitions in major cities around the world. 

All the work featured in ZEKE first appeared on the SDN website, 

www.socialdocumentary.net. 

ZEKE Staff 

Executive Editor: Glenn Ruga 

Editor: Barbara Ayotte 

Copy Editor: John Rak 

Intern: Emma Brown 

Social Documentary 

Network Advisory 

Committee 

Barbara Ayotte, Medford, MA 

Senior Director of Strategic 

Communications 

Management Sciences for Health 

Kristen Bernard, Salem, MA 

Marketing Web Director 

EBSCO Information Services 

Lori Grinker, New York, NY 

Independent Photographer and 

Educator 

Steve Horn, Lopez Island, WA 

Independent Photographer 

Ed Kashi, Monclair, NJ 

Member of VII photo agency 

Photographer, Filmmaker, Educator 

ZEKE is published twice a year by 

Social Documentary Network 

Copyright © 2016 

Social Documentary Network 

ISSN 2381-1390 

ZEKE does not accept unsolicited 

submissions. To be considered for 

publication in ZEKE, submit your 

work to the SDN website either as 

a standard exhibit or a submission 

to a Call for Entries. Contributing 

photographers can choose to pay a 

fee for their work to be exhibted on 

SDN for a year or they can choose 

a free trial. Free trials have the same 

opportunity to be published in ZEKE 

as paid exhibits. 

To subscribe: 


Advertising Inquiries: 

glenn@socialdocumentary.net 

Reza, Paris, France 

Photographer and Humanist 

Jeffrey D. Smith, New York NY 

Director, Contact Press Images 

Steve Walker, New York, NY 

Consultant and educator 

Frank Ward, Williamsburg, MA 

Photographer and Educator 

Jamie Wellford, Brooklyn, NY 

Photo Editor, Curator 

61 Potter Street 

Concord, MA 01742 USA 

617-417-5981 

info@socialdocumentary.net 

www.socialdocumentary.net 


@socdoctweets 

www.charterweeks.com 603 664-7654 


SDN 

social 

documentary 

network 

61 Potter Street 

Concord, MA 01742 

USA 

PUBLISHER OF ZEKE MAGAZINE 

Smoke Break, Camp America (2014) ©Debi Cornwall 2016 

Debi Cornwall is a conceptual documentary photographer. This image is from her unprecedented 

project on Guantánamo Bay titled Gitmo at Home, Gitmo at Play. For more information and more 

images, visit her web site at www.debicornwall.com. 

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