ZEKE Magazine: Spring 2022 - Climate Issue

ZEKESPRING 2022 VOL.8/NO.1 $15 US 

THE MAGAZINE OF GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY 

Published by Social Documentary Network 

Sustainable Solutions to the Climate Crisis 

ZEKE SPRING 2022/ 1

SPRING 2022 VOL.8/ NO.1 

$15 US 

Sustainable Solutions to the Climate Crisis 

Photo by Kiliii Yuyan from Indigenous Fire 

Photo by Giacomo d'Orlando from Nemo's 

Garden 

Photo by Sarah Fretwell from Permagarden 

Refugees 

2 | INDIGENOUS FIRE 

Photographs by Kiliii Yuyan 

CO-WINNER OF 2022 ZEKE AWARD FOR SYSTEMIC CHANGE 

16 | NEMO'S GARDEN 

Photographs by Giacomo d'Orlando 

CO-WINNER OF 2022 ZEKE AWARD FOR SYSTEMIC CHANGE 

26 | PERMAGARDEN REFUGEES 

Photographs by Sarah Fretwell 

36 | SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS 

by Antonia Juhasz 

42 | 

52 | 

54 | 

56 | 

ZEKE Award Honorable Mention Winners 

Interview with Kiliii Yuyan 

by Caterina Clerici 

Dispatches from Ukraine 

by Maranie Staab 

Book Reviews 

Edited by Michelle Bogre 

62 | Contributors 

Photo by Andi Rice from Sustainable Solutions to 

the Climate Crisis 

Photo by Maranie Staab from Dispatches from 

Ukraine. 

On the Cover 

Ali Meders-Knight, Master TEK Practitioner 

and Mechoopda tribal member, harvests grass 

stems from deergrass (Ósoko sáwi), that have 

been selectively-managed through the use of 

indigenous prescribed burns at Verbena Fields 

in Chico, California. Photo by Kiliii Yuyan.

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MAGAZINE OF 

GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY 


Dear ZEKE Readers: 

I am incredibly excited to have guest-edited this issue of ZEKE 

magazine dedicated to showcasing sustainable solutions to the 

climate crisis. As image makers, we hold a unique power to confront 

audiences with uncomfortable truths, advance cultural understandings, 

and promote social justice. But the image is only the beginning of the 

conversation. The real work of social transformation lies in the removal 

of barriers – physical, social, economic, and spiritual – that restrain 

us from forging futures that are more equitable, just, and sustainable. 

By way of example, the Earthrise photograph of 1968 radically 

changed our conceptions of ourselves and this incredibly precious 

world that we call home. But it was the legislation that followed – the 

Clean Water Act of 1972, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the 

Superfund Act of 1980 – that created the structural change that the 

new realization of our planet required. 

In the 21 st century, we must move beyond merely documenting the 

consequences of global warming—floods, fires, hurricanes, rising 

seawater, and other environmental anomalies—since this is all now 

known as fact. Rather, we must now shift our focus to stories of hope, 

leadership, and sustainable solutions that communities across the 

planet are pioneering to reduce global warming and prevent climate 

change from causing cataclysmic destruction to the global human 

community. Critically, for a solution to be truly sustainable, it has to 

tackle not only the climate crisis (which is the fire in our house) but 

also the systemic conditions that gave rise to the fire in the first place: 

the broader social-economic paradigm of extraction, colonialism, 

and unchecked consumption. If we support such systemic solutions, 

not only will we put out the fire, but we stand to create a world that is 

more equitable, diverse, inclusive, and beautiful. 

Right now, all over the planet, these innovations are quietly coming 

online, driven by people who I like to call ‘everyday visionaries’: 

compassionate, hardworking, often ordinary folks who are fighting 

for their families and their homelands by molding the political will, 

building the cultural frameworks, and inspiring the imagination that 

we need to make the transition towards a more sustainable world. 

It may not be happening fast enough, and it may not be getting the 

press that it deserves, but a new world is being born. I’ve seen it. 

The fact is, we have a choice in the stories we tell, and the choices 

we make today will give rise to the world we inherit tomorrow. So, let’s 

choose to tell the stories of those who are laboring to bring forth a world 

befit of our children. As a parent myself, I can think of no worthier cause. 

Michael O. Snyder 

Guest Editor 

It has been such an honor to work with guest editor 

Michael O. Snyder and all the photographers and 

writers who have contributed to this issue of ZEKE. I 

also want to thank the Foundation for Systemic Change 

for their generous financial support both for the ZEKE 

Award for Systemic Change and for this issue of the 

magazine. 

When we began planning the theme last 

September, it was clear that climate change was the 

greatest existential threat facing our planet. Now, in 

just the past four weeks as of writing this letter the 

world has been turned upside down, yet again. This 

time by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the threat 

of the first use of nuclear weapons (excluding testing) 

since atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and 

Nagasaki 77 years ago. 

As the war continues unabated, much of the world 

is also reeling from the skyrocketing costs of energy 

and grain. Putin would not have been able to launch 

this war without the wealth afforded to him through 

the extraction and sale of oil and our dependence on 

fossil fuels. Now that the war is underway, the world 

could have been more resilient to the rising price 

of fossil fuels and grains if we had relied more on 

renewable energy from solar, wind, hydro and other 

sources, and had been further along with sustainable 

agricultural practices. 

The solutions to the climate crisis presented in this 

issue of ZEKE largely focus on a recognition of the 

fragile ecology of our planet and a move away from 

extractive mining that ravages the environment. Also 

evident is the understanding that Indigenous cultures 

have always had about the interdependence of homo 

sapiens and other species. While some may quiver at 

the thought of the sacrifices we will need to make in 

order to live in a sustainable world, just the opposite 

may be true. As we learn to embrace a new respect for 

the land that supports all life on this planet, humanity 

will become richer spiritually and in our health and 

well-being. 

Glenn Ruga 

Executive Editor 

Matthew Lomanno 


ZEKE AWARD FOR SYSTEMIC CHANGE 

FIRST-PLACE WINNER 

Indigenous Fire 

Photos by 

Kiliii Yuyan 

United States 

Despite the intense focus on apocalyptic 

wildfires raging across the 

American West, scant attention 

is paid to solutions to climate 

change-exacerbated wildfire. One 

in particular–fire-lighting rather 

than fire-fighting–has proven to be an 

exceptional weapon against a seemingly 

impossible opponent on a landscape-level 

scale. It’s known as cultural fire. People 

like Margo Robbins and Elizabeth Azzuz 

of the Indigenous Peoples’ Burn Network 

are training others in an ancient technique 

of ecological restoration, which is to safely 

light low-intensity fires in wet seasons that 

remove the small fuels on the forest floor. 

Not only does it effectively prevent wildfires 

from spreading, but it also performs a 

13,000-year-old function—the restoration of 

health of the forests of Northern California, 

the most diverse coniferous forests on earth. 

Kiliii Yuyan illuminates stories of the Arctic 

and human communities connected to the 

land and sea. Informed by ancestry that is 

both Nanai/Hèzhé (East Asian Indigenous) 

and Chinese American, he explores the 

human relationship to the natural world from 

different cultural perspectives and extreme 

environments, on land and underwater. Kiliii 

is an award-winning contributor to National 

Geographic, TIME, and other major publications. 

Kiliii is one of PDN’s 30 Photographers 

(2019), a National Geographic 

Explorer, and a member of Indigenous 

Photograph and Diversify Photo. His work 

has been exhibited worldwide and received 

some of photography’s top honors. 

Margo Robbins, of the Cultural Fire 

Management Council, leads firefighters 

as they light an Indigenous-prescribed 

burn with bundles of wormwood in 

ceremony, near Weitchpec, CA. 

2 / ZEKE SPRING 2022


The open view of a Yurok culturally 

burned area in Orleans, CA. The airy, 

open nature of the forest here contrasts 

the tight and fire-prone unburnt forest 

in the background. The continuation 

of ancient cultural burning reminds 

us what is possible in fire-prone 

California. Photo by Kiliii Yuyan. 





Firefighters practice controlled burning, 

coordination, and fire management 

skills while participating in a Yurok-led 

cultural fire training exchange (TREX) 

near Weitchpec, CA, Although the widely 

used practice of burning brush piles is 

not traditional, it is a skillset that supports 

Indigenous burning. Photo by Kiliii Yuyan. 



8 / ZEKE SPRING 2022 

Margo Robbins not only leads Training 

Exchanges, but also weaves her culture’s 

celebrated baskets. “We use TREX 

to ensure the continuance of our culture 

and protect cultural resources. Our 

culture is fire dependent. Our people 

are hunters, gatherers and basket weavers,” 

says Robbins. “Restoration of the 

land, and preservation of our culture, is 

a number one priority for people living 

on the Yurok Reservation. We MUST put 

fire on the ground if we are to continue 

the tradition of basket weaving.” Photo 

by Kiliii Yuyan.

Dr. Frank Lake cracks and 

extracts a beaked hazelnut from 

its shell. The hazelnuts grow 

on his property in Orleans, CA 

where they are carefully managed 

through traditional Yurok 

prescribed burning. Photo by 

Kiliii Yuyan. 



A Yurok firefighter manages the boundary 

of an Indigenous-prescribed burn 

near Weitchpec, CA during a fire 

training exchange, or TREX in October. 

In recent years, Indigenous-prescribed 

fire practices have come to attention as 

wildfires have raged destructively across 

California. Photo by Kiliii Yuyan. 

ZEKE ZEKE SPRING FALL 2021/ 2022/ 11

Firefighters refill their drip torches in 

the midst of a broadcast-prescribed 

burn while participating in a training 

exchange put on by the Cultural Fire 

Management Council near Weitchpec, 

CA. Photo by Kiliii Yuyan. 



An experienced Yurok TREX leader 

lays down fire with his drip torch, 

careful not to get caught behind his 

lines. Photo by Kiliii Yuyan. 



ZEKE AWARD FOR SYSTEMIC CHANGE 

FIRST-PLACE WINNER 

Nemo’s Garden 

Photos by Giacomo d'Orlando 

Italy 

According to the Intergovernmental Panel 

on Climate Change, the desertification 

caused by climate change has extensively 

reduced agricultural productivity in many 

regions of the world. Current population 

projections predict a population of 

10 billion by the end of the century, creating an 

additional two billion mouths to feed. It is urgent, 

then, to find an alternative method of cultivation 

to ensure an ecologically sustainable future. 

Nemo’s Garden—the world’s first underwater 

greenhouses of terrestrial plants—represents an 

alternative farming system dedicated to those 

areas where environmental conditions make the 

growth of plants almost impossible. The microclimate 

and thermal conditions within the biospheres 

are optimal for plant growth and crop yields. The 

encouraging results, where more than 40 different 

species of plants have been successfully cultivated, 

give us hope that we have found a sustainable 

agricultural system that will help us tackle the 

new challenges posed by climate change. 

Giacomo d’Orlando is an Italian documentary 

photographer focused on environmental and 

social issues. In 2015, he moved to Nepal and 

then Peru to enter the world of photojournalism, 

working alongside local NGOs focusing on social 

issues. His subsequent time in Australia and New 

Zealand inspired him to concentrate on the environment, 

particularly the possible future scenarios 

caused by climate change. His projects have 

appeared in The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, 

Paris Match, El Pais, Geo France, De Volkskrant, 

D-La Repubblica and Mare Magazin, among others. 

Today, his work looks at how the increasing 

pressures brought about by climate change are 

reshaping the planet and how present-day society 

is reacting to the new challenges that will 

characterize our future. 

The dark silhouette of Gabriele 

Cucchia, senior engineer of the Nemo’s 

Garden project, seen from the seabed 

while carrying the upper part of the 

biosphere to the installation site. 






A group of divers admire the Nemo's 

Garden during their immersion. Since 

the Nemo's Garden has been created, 

the fish population of the area 

increased. In fact the Nemo's Garden 

structure acts as a shelter for many 

animals, supporting the repopulation 

of the surrounding area. Photo by 

Giacomo d'Orlando. 


Emilio Mancuso, biologist in charge 

of the seeding and growing process 

of the plants, is placing the coconut 

fiber cones for the hydroponic 

cultivation within the biospheres. Each 

biosphere can host approximately 

120 per cycle, which depending on 

the plants type, can last from one 

to three months. Photo by Giacomo 

d'Orlando. 



The tree of life stands out among the 

biospheres in the middle of the Nemo's 

Garden. Under its platform, the cables 

used for connecting the electronic 

devices are separated and distributed 

to each biosphere. Figuratively it also 

represents the core of the experiment: 

the possibility to grow terrestrial plants 

underwater. Photo by Giacomo 

d'Orlando. 



Basil was chosen as a model plant 

(due to its importance in the Ligurian 

cuisine) to study its phytochemical, 

physiological, and micro-morphological 

characteristics in comparison with 

plants of the same variety grown in 

a terrestrial environment. The aim of 

the study was the evaluation of the 

plant responses to this environment 

where the terrestrial greenhouse 

is substituted by an underwater 

biosphere. Photo by Giacomo 

d'Orlando. 



Inside the Palabek refugee settlement in 

Northern Uganda, with the staff of African 

Women Rising’s (AWR) Permagarden 

Program, I witnessed how this innovative 

approach is disrupting the broken aid 

system by adapting food production to the 

realities of climate change, changing lives and 

futures in the process. 

AWR works with refugees to utilize the 

existing resources—seeds, rainfall, limited 

land, and “waste”—and together build 

an agriculture system designed to help the 

environment regenerate and get stronger 

as it matures. Within two weeks, farmers 

are harvesting microgreens, within a month 

they can start eating from their gardens, and 

beyond that many people are able to make 

money selling their vegetables. Their gardens 

ensure needed vitamins and that mothers can 

produce milk to breastfeed their babies. 

Radical in its simplicity and effectiveness, 

the success of AWR’s permagarden program 

has tremendous implications for refugees and 

humans worldwide. 

Journalist, climate activist, and political scientist, 

Sarah Fretwell, works as a multimedia 

storyteller. Her work focuses on the intersection 

of the environment, people, and business with 

one question: What if the new bottom line 

was love? Her award-winning photojournalism 

explores the lives of everyday people with 

extraordinary stories and creates the human 

connection that engages people on a personal 

level, offering individuals a voice for justice, 

insight for solutions, and the human connection 

needed for international engagement. 

Some of her notable work and clients include 

the BioCarbon Fund, United Nations, USAID, 

The Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, 

World Bank Group, and Tara Oceans 

Foundation. 

Permagarden 

Refugees 

Photos by Sarah Fretwell 

Uganda 


Yaka Lucia, in the beginnings of her 

Permagarden with her baby, Rosa. 

Before she planted her garden, they 

survived on rations from the World 

Food Program—maize, beans, flour, 

oil, and salt. Eating only the food 

rations, her breast milk dried up, and 

she could not feed her baby. Once 

she started eating the greens from 

her garden, her breast milk returned 

within two weeks. Between her 

Permagarden and food rations, she 

can now feed all of her children for 

the entire month. 



Agusti (33) arrived in Palabek 

camp with his family after fleeing 

South Sudan. His garden is 

thriving, and he is one of the most 

successful entrepreneurs in the 

program. He purchased a goat 

and opened another small business 

by selling surplus vegetables, 

increasing his income by approximately 

150%. Since we visited, 

he made enough money to move 

his family out of the camp. Photo 

by Sarah Fretwell. 





Food rations are measured down 

to the ounce at the distribution 

center. Security is so tight that 

some refugees are even retina 

scanned. Allotted rations are 

supposed to feed one person 

for four weeks. However, after 

figuring out a way to transport the 

149.48 lbs of food (rations for 4 

for the month) and selling some 

of their rations to pay to grind the 

maize, most people only have 

enough food to eat one time a 

day for three weeks. Those who 

do not have Permagardens usually 

go without food the last week 

of the month. This family is dining 

on the staple dish of the camp 

maize/soya porridge. Because 

residents have no micronutrients 

due to lack of variety and green 

vegetables in their diet, their 

bodies begin shutting down, leading 

to issues such as brain fog, 

blurred eyesight, and inability 

to produce breast milk. Photo by 

Sarah Fretwell. 



Before planting, project mentors 

conduct a landscape resource walk on 

each family’s plot of land. On these 

walks, everyone discovers the variety 

of valuable and free waste resources 

around them – charcoal dust, dried 

manure, fallen leaves, and nutrition for 

the soil in the rubbish pits. Participants 

“walk the water,” coming to understand 

the flow of rainwater across their 

land as they learn key principles of 

how to manage it to their benefit. This 

thriving garden is several months old. 

Now Lakot Linda’s grandchildren can 

eat for the entire month and get much 

needed micronutrients. She is growing 

kale, kowpiss (spinach), pumpkins, 

okra, and more. Photo by Sarah 

Fretwell. 



The most happening part of 

town inside Palabek is called 

“Jerusalem.” There is a pharmacy, 

restaurants, hotels, a 

tailor, a bicycle-powered lathe 

for sharpening blades, shops, 

and a dance hall. Some of the 

business owners are Ugandans 

who have come to make money. 

Some are Ugandans who have 

come to help, and some, like the 

Sudanese barber, are people 

who arrived here with a trade. 

This barber was fortunate he had 

the foresight to bring his shears 

and shaver with him on the long 

journey from Sudan. He now 

runs the most popular, and only, 

barbershop in town. Photo by 

Sarah Fretwell. 


Nina Morgan grew up in the shadow 

of a coal mine. The four-room shotgun 

home she shared with her twin brother, 

mother, and grandmother is in the 

tiny community of Sipsey, about 30 

miles North of Birmingham, Alabama. 

More precisely, they lived in the “Black 

Camp,” the name still used by locals 

over one hundred years after the 

DeBardeleben Coal Company built 

this company town, segregating workers and 

their families by race. Generations of Morgan’s 

family have worked in the mines. Back behind 

the house, past the old graveyard marked with 

stones where great grandfather Tommy who died 

of Black Lung is buried, she and brother Ishmael 

played in “the spot”—a former blasting site filled 

with rainwater. 

Today, Morgan is the Climate & Environmental 

Justice Organizer for 

Greater Birmingham 

Alliance to Stop 

Pollution, better known 

by the acronym, 

“GASP.” “Coal is killing 

us. It’s breaking down 

our bodies,” Morgan 

told me. She warns of 

a coming reckoning 

bringing an end to the 

“legacy and history of 

extraction, exploitation, 

and violent racism” 

that has devastated 

Sipsey and much of the 

American South. 

Central to her effort is shifting Alabama away 

from all fossil fuels, and she has no shortage 

of plans to accomplish this goal. “The answers 

Sustainable Solutions to 

By Antonia Juhasz 



Nina 

Morgan, not far 

from her grandmother's 

home in Sipsey, Alabama. 

Photograph by Andi Rice, 

2021. 



are already there,” Morgan explains. 

“People in Birmingham have been 

thinking about this for years.” 

The plans start with shutting down 

coal operations in Sipsey and coke 

plants (an industrial byproduct of coal) 

in Birmingham, employing locals to 

clean up the sites and surrounding 

neighborhoods using bioremediation, 

establishing local community-owned 

and operated solar and agricultural 

farms, and passing a local Green 

New Deal. The sustainable solutions 

are clear, the problem is “the political 

will and the money to really scale it,” 

Morgan says. 

Morgan’s experience and analysis is 

repeated in interviews and investigations 

I’ve conducted across decades and continents. 

There is little mystery about how 

to achieve sustainable solutions to the 

climate crisis; to the contrary, people are 

now and have been implementing them 

for millennia. Our planet is increasingly 

inhospitable to us not because we lack 

the resources to provide for our people, 

but rather because a small percentage 

of them have adopted devastatingly 

harmful fossil fuel-led consumption patterns 

which are, in fact, relatively simple 

to adjust. The problem is not one of 

technology. Instead, it mostly boils down 

to power and politics: primarily a few 

governments and companies, and of 

course some consumers, who just refuse 

to let go. 

In many ways, this is a profoundly 

hopeful message. We know the problem, 

have had the means to solve it, 

and we’re even having a great deal of 

success—albeit not nearly enough. 

Fossil Fuels are Obsolete 

Fossil fuels are the leading cause of 

the climate crisis. The fossil fuel industry 

and its products account for 91% 

of global industrial greenhouse gas 

(GHG) emissions and about 70% of all 

human-induced climate emissions. In 

Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar of the Grand Caillou/ 

Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw at her home 

and garden in Chauvin, Louisiana. Photo by Virginia 

Hanusik, June 2021. 

A dead cypress tree off Tide Water Road, Venice, Louisiana. Photo by Virginia Hanusik, June 2021. 

the U.S., fossil fuels account for 94% 

of total carbon dioxide emissions and 

80% of all GHG emissions from human 

activity. As a result, the International 

Energy Agency recently concluded 

that if we are to meet the Paris Climate 

Agreement goal of limiting global 

warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, there 

can be no new investments in fossil fuel 

production anywhere. 

We not only know the “what” of 

the climate crisis, but also the “who.” 

Since 1988, more than half of all global 

industrial GHG emissions can be traced 

to just 25 fossil fuel companies, including 

ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, and 

the national oil companies of Russia, 

China, and Saudi Arabia. The lack of 

progress on international policies to curb 

climate emissions are due in small part 

to the actions of these companies and 

countries (including the corporate host 

nations of the U.S. and Britain). 

Azeb Girmai is the climate policy 

lead for LDC Watch International, a 

network of civil society organizations 

advocating on behalf of the 48 Least 

Developed Countries (LDCs) in the 

world. On December 10, 2015, I sat 

across from Girmai on the outskirts 

of Paris at the Le Bourget conference 

center. Girmai made the trek from 

Ethiopia, then-gripped by a deadly and 

crippling drought, its worst in 30 years. 

Around us swirled a polite cacophony 

of activity -- regularly punctuated by the 

shouts of protestors chanting “1.5 to 

stay alive!” or “Keep It In The Ground!” 

-- as thousands gathered to influence 

the outcome of what would emerge two 

days later as the Paris Climate Accord. 

Girmai conveyed both hope and 

urgency as she shared her message to 

negotiators. Africans, who have done 

the least to cause the climate crisis but 

are suffering the worst of its impacts, 

have solutions, but they need support. 

She described local initiatives to allow 

Africans to leapfrog the fossil fuel stage 

of development and overcome the 

increasing hardships of global warming, 

including providing individual 

homes across rural areas with simple 

easy-to-use wind and solar energy kits. 

Localization and democratization of 

energy are key, particularly for women. 

Energy access “is the game changer for 

women in Africa,” Girmai said. 

Funding for climate change efforts is 

not only woefully inadequate, but also 

less than 10% of the $17.4 billion in 

climate finance from leading international 

institutions between 2003 and 

2016 targeted local initiatives such as 

Girmai's. Climate finance, particularly 

the significantly larger sums spent by 


corporations, venture capital, and private 

equity, instead flows to large-scale 

centralized mega-projects frequently 

focused on the “next big technological 

fix” to the climate change problem. 

A few days before I spoke with 

Girmai, Leonardo DiCaprio, then serving 

as the United Nations Messenger 

of Peace, addressed a gathering of 

world leaders at the Paris City Hall. He 

shared a similar message to Girmai’s. 

“Our future will hold greater prosperity 

and justice when we are free from the 

grip of fossil fuels,” he said. 

He cited the work of Stanford 

Professor Mark Jacobson who demonstrated 

in 2009 that fossil fuels are obsolete. 

“We can meet the world’s energy 

demand with 100% clean renewable 

energy using existing technologies by 

2050,” DiCaprio explained, referring 

to all forms of energy consumption 

replaced with wind, water, and solar. 

He urged the gathered elected officials 

to do their part by quickly enacting 

policies to support a transition to low 

carbon transportation, energy efficient 

buildings, better waste management, 

and renewable energy. 

Six years later, COP26 in Scotland 

resulted in disappointment, but also 

some important achievements, including 

the launch of a “Beyond Oil and 

Gas Alliance” by 12 governments to 

“end all oil and gas production and 

exploration” on their territories. 

Professor Jacobson points to 10 

countries (with four on their way) 

with 97.5–100% electricity powered 

exclusively by renewables and laws 

on the books in 61 countries to meet 

that target. Around the world, 180 

cities, including in eight U.S. states, 

have formalized plans to reach 100% 

renewable energy for electricity and 

over 100 already get at least 70% 

exclusively from renewables. 

A recent Oxford University study 

finds that a rapid shift to wind, solar, 

and other zero-carbon technologies 

would save the world $26 trillion in 

energy costs alone (including the cost 

to adapt the electricity grid) while at 

the same time meeting the Paris Climate 

Accord targets. Solar, wind, and other 

zero-carbon technologies have been 

decreasing in cost overtime—with solar 

2,000 times cheaper today than at its 

first commercial use in 1958—while 

fossil fuels are as expensive to produce 

and consume today as they were 150 

years ago. 

Moving energy through renewables 

is also more efficient than fossil fuels. 

Merely electrifying the energy sector 

reduces overall energy demand by 

nearly 60%, Jacobson finds. And the 

closer you place the user to the source 

of energy — i.e. localized wind and 

solar — the less energy is needed. 

Investments in public transportation 

should trump individual cars. To further 

reduce overall resource extraction of 

feedstocks such as lithium for batteries, 

Jacobson stresses the ability and 

necessity to increase both their recycling 

and reuse. 

There are innumerable human health 

and climate benefits to be won when particularly 

the heaviest users shed the shackles 

of unsustainable energy demand. 

Indigenous Communities 

are Living the Alternative 

“Indigenous communities are living the 

alternatives to the climate crisis,” said 

Andrea Isabel Ixchíu Hernández of 

Journalist Andrea Isabel Ixchíu Hernández at work in 

Guatemala. Photo: Federico Zuvire 2021. 

the K’iche de Totonicapán Indigenous 

community of Guatemala in October. 

Hernández is a fierce human rights 

activist, journalist, and community 

leader. Forests, particularly old ones 

such as the Amazon rainforest, provide 

rich carbon sinks and the biodiversity 

humans require to survive. Studies have 

repeatedly confirmed what Indigenous 

peoples have regularly repeated: they 

are the best protectors of both forests 

and the planet’s biodiversity — a task 

they’ve perfected over millennia. 

To survive the climate crisis requires 

that we “stop consuming Indigenous territories 

and defend the people defending 

the land and water,” Hernández 

explains. This means not only an end to 

the racism which has habitually favored 

resource extraction on the lands and 

Mayan Q'eqchi' Indigenous leader, Maria Choc, speaks with women in El Estor, Izabal, Guatemala. From the 

CuraDaTerra Documentary series by Andrea Isabel Ixchíu Hernández and Federico Zuvire, 2021. 




waters of people of color, and the 

protection of Indigenous peoples’ 

knowledge, rights to their land, waters, 

and cultures, but also addressing the 

inequities, injustice, and unsustainability 

of the world’s most abusive energy 

users. Without justice and equity, the 

transition from fossil fuels will fail to 

achieve sustainability. 

The vast majority of the world, including 

its Indigenous peoples, already 

consume energy quite sustainably. 

Following the energy models set out 

by Morgan, Girmai, and Hernández, 

energy justice can be achieved by their 

using even more. It is the over- and abusive 

consumption of the biggest users— 

primarily industrial users and the wealthiest 

people in North America and the 

EU—that are the core of the problem. 

Hernandez cites Oxfam’s findings that if 

the richest 10% of the global population 

continues its current energy consumption 

and the entire rest of the world’s emissions 

dropped to zero tomorrow, we’d 

still deplete our carbon budget within 

just a few years. 

“The alternative to climate crisis are 

already here,” Hernández stresses. 

“It’s found at the intersection of global 

movements of organized women 

dismantling oppressive structures with 

Indigenous cultures in defense of life.” 

It’s Not Rocket Science 

For Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar of the 

Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi- 

Chitimacha-Choctaw, the discussion of 

sustainable solutions to the climate crisis 

is one of survival. 

Last year, we stood at her father’s 

grave in Dulac, Louisiana. Parfait- 

Dardar was making plans for when the 

waters come and wash away his body, 

that of the grandmother who raised her 

and the great grandfather who served 

as Chief before her. Pain gripped at 

Parfait-Dardar’s face as she explained 

that if the encroaching waters of the 

Gulf of Mexico cannot be slowed, in a 

decade not only will her loved-ones and 

their cemetery be long-gone, but her 

Climate Resources 

350.org 

www.350.org 

Advocates 4 Earth Zimbabwe 

www.advocates4earth.org 

Acción Ecológica 

www.accionecologica.org 

Amazon Watch 

www.amazonwatch.org 

Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance 

www.beyondoilandgasalliance.com 

Climate Action Network 

www.climatenetwork.org 

Deep South Center for Environmental 

Justice 

www.dscej.org 

Earth Justice 

www.earthjustice.org 

EarthRights International 

www.earthrights.org 

Extinction Rebellion 

www.rebellion.global 

Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty 

www.fossilfueltreaty.org 

Futuros Indígenas 

www.futurosindigenas.org 

Indigenous Climate Action 

www.indigenousclimateaction.com 

Indigenous Environmental Network 

www.ienearth.org 

Initiative for Energy Justice 

www.iejusa.org 

Friends of the Earth International 

www.foei.org 

Fridays for the Future 

www.fridaysforfuture.org 

entire tribe may be forced to abandon 

its ancestral lands. 

Her resolve intensifies, however, as 

she discusses both culprits and solutions. 

“Look around you,” she says 

eyeing the skeletal remains of dead 

cypress and oak trees marking the 

landscape, a result of saltwater intrusion 

brought about by the dredging of 

canals for the fossil fuel industry, she 

explains. “Extraction means death.” 

Greater Birmingham Alliance to Stop 

Pollution (GASP) 

www.gaspgroup.org 

Greenpeace 

www.greenpeace.orginternational 

Hip Hop Caucus 

www.hiphopcaucus.org 

LDC Watch International 

www.ldcwatch.org 

Movement Generation 

www.movementgeneration.org 

Movement Rights 

www.movementrights.org 

Oil Change International 

www.priceofoil.org 

Pachamama Alliance 

www.pachamama.org 

PanAfrican Climate Justice Alliance 

www.pacja.org 

Red, Black, and Green New Deal 

www.redblackgreennewdeal.org 

Southeast Climate and Action 

Network 

www.scen-us.org 

StandEarth 

www.stand.earth 

Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) 

www.sei.org 

Sunrise Movement 

www.sunrisemovement.org 

Uproot Project 

www.uprootproject.org 

Women’s Earth and Climate Action 

Network (WECAN) 

www.wecaninternational.org 

Chief Parfait-Dardar knows the solution. 

She wants to see an end to the fossil 

fuel industry, and she’s got a plan to do 

it: replace fossil fuels with green energy 

and clean jobs. She wants job training, 

transition assistance, and programs to get 

information to her tribe about how and 

where to find jobs. She wants the federal 

governments assistance to do it. 

“It’s not rocket science,” she says. 

“It’s just the will to do it.” 


ZEKE AWARD HONORABLE MENTION WINNER 

Carolyn Monastra 

Collecting and cleaning plastic 

bags by the Nairobi River, 

Kenya. This woman regularly 

collects discarded plastic bags 

around her community near 

the Nairobi River. After cleaning 

them, she sells the bags to 

brokers who then sell them to 

artisans who upcycle the bags 

by crocheting products such as 

handbags and hats. Since plastic 

bags are made from petroleum, 

this woman is not only reducing 

her community’s carbon footprint 

by reusing existing bags, but she 

is also cleaning up her neighborhood 

and creating income for 

herself and a chain of others. 


Witness Tree: Climate Solutions from Around the World 

Kenya, Tonga, Thailand, Argentina, United Kingdom, United States 

The Witness Tree documents 

the impacts of climate 

change around the world. 

From the melting ice of 

Antarctica to the wildfires of 

Australia, I am drawn to precious 

and precarious places that mark 

the shifting boundaries between 

nature and the effects of our 

not-so-natural disasters. I have 

photographed the climate crisis on 

every continent. These photographs 

are from the “Solutions” 

chapter which features seemingly 

small measures taken by individuals 

bettering their communities 

to larger mitigating solutions like 

London’s Thames Barrier. 

Although significant carbon 

reduction is primarily the 

responsibility of governments 

and industry, I believe, as these 

images attest, that the actions of 

individuals can give us hope. 

Top: Watering crops, Eco Yoga Park, 

General Rodriguez, Argentina. The 

Eco Yoga Park, an hour outside Buenos 

Aires, doubles as an organic farm. 

Volunteers like Larissa from Stuttgart, 

Germany, not only get to stretch their 

bodies with daily yoga classes, but also 

learn about permaculture as they help 

grow 80-90 percent of the food that is 

consumed there. 

Bottom: Village Chief Samorn 

Khengsamut, Khun Samut Chin, Thailand. 

Chief Khengsamut gives presentations 

to tourists who visit their village 

to educate them about the impacts of 

sea level rise and the resulting erosion 

of their land. Rising seas have forced 

villagers to move their homes further 

inland four or five times in the last few 

decades, but now they are running out 

of space to move. 



Roberto Nistri 

Burkina Faso: The Power of Resilience 


As part of the "Terre Verte" project to combat 

desertification, selected seeds are used to withstand 

conditions of water scarcity. 

In Burkina Faso, an African 

country considered one of 

the poorest on the planet, 

desertification, amplified 

by global climate change, has 

made entire districts unusable for 

agriculture, forcing those who live 

there to migrate to neighboring 

states or to Europe. 

Some projects implemented 

by international and local NGOs 

such as Terre Verte encourage and 

support traditional farming techniques. 

By applying a principle of 

“resilience” to these disastrous 

changes in the environment, 

numerous projects aim to make 

the desertified areas fertile, allowing 

local communities to cultivate 

them again trying to limit the 

phenomenon of “environmental 

migration.” 

In other areas of the country, 

climate change has made the 

duration and intensity of precipitation 

unpredictable, making it often 

disastrous for subsistence farming. 

The radical change in the landscape, 

its flora, and the drought 

in some areas now become 

chronic, have erased the great 

African fauna in most of Burkina 

Faso’s territory. 

Top: Project “Terre Verte.” Once grown, 

the plants continue to be watered individually 

until the development of their 

root system. 

Bottom: Floods,in Burkina Faso due 

to the climate change taking place in 

the country, occur more and more frequently 

even outside the canonical rainy 

season. They block the life of cities, 

including schools, for days. They can 

destroy also an entire crop or, in cities, 

tear down homes and small businesses. 



Lauren Owens Lambert 

Saving the Stranded 




At Padre Island National Seashore in Corpus Christi, Texas, a volunteer 

carries an endangered Kemp’s ridley to the warm waters of the 

Gulf of Mexico for release after months of rehabilitation from almost 

freezing to death on the shores of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. 

Five vans, one plane, two 

states, one thousand 

miles, four organizations, 

two hundred people and 

one… banana box. On average 

this is what it takes to save one 

little life—a Kemp’s ridley sea turtle. 

As the most endangered and 

smallest sea turtle in the world, 

it’s worth every effort. Without 

this monumental conservation 

collaboration across the eastern 

seaboard of North America, this 

turtle might have gone extinct. 

In summer, the waters off Cape 

Cod are warm, calm, and full of 

food, serving as a natural nursery 

for young Kemp’s ridleys. But as 

water temperatures plummet in 

winter, the turtles must migrate 

or perish. Many lose their way 

and wash up, cold-stunned, on 

the beaches. The phenomenon 

is the largest recurring sea turtle 

stranding event in the world. 

Volunteers and biologists from the 

Massachusetts Audubon Society 

and the New England Aquarium 

are rescuing, rehabilitating, and 

flying the turtles to be released in 

warmer waters. 

Top: Boxes of cold-stunned sea turtles 

sit in a cool room at Mass Audubon 

in Wellfleet, Cape Cod after being 

processed. 

Bottom: Hannah Crawford (left) and 

Jessica Cramp (right), both interns with 

the New England Aquarium, hold a 

cold-stunned Kemp’s ridley sea turtle 

up to photograph the condition of their 

underside for record keeping and care 

monitoring. 



Mark Phillips 

Unbroken: Repair is Essential 

The anatomy of a mobile phone. 

Weighing around 160 grams, 

smart phones are made up of 

approximately 30 elements, 

including copper, gold and 

silver for wiring, and lithium and 

cobalt in the battery. The touch 

screen and display use indium, 

boron and rhodium. The circuits 

and chip use silicon, bismuth, 

gallium and gold. The camera 

and microphone use rare earths 

including neodymium, dyprosium 

and praesodymium. The vibration 

motors use tungsten and micro 

capacitors use tantalum. 

A complex mixture that has to 

be extracted from the earth and 

processed to make the materials, 

before being made into components, 

and sub-assemblies that 

are assembled into your phone, 

packaged, transported across the 

globe, and then sold. 


We now create nearly 55 

million tons of electronic 

waste each year—our 

fastest growing waste 

stream. When we no longer want our 

electronic devices, or if we break them, 

the resulting waste creates tremendous 

environmental problems. Even bigger is 

the impact of the materials extraction to 

make all these electronic devices in the 

first place. More than 80% of electronics 

waste is not recycled properly; we do not 

even know where most of it ends up. 

Recycling only recovers a fraction of the 

resources consumed and can potentially 

create even more toxic waste. One solution 

is to make our products last longer, 

through repair, reuse, and refurbishment. 

This requires systemic change—in 

policy, capabilities, and culture—and 

has the potential to make a substantial 

positive impact in the consumption and 

waste of resources and the environmental 

damage caused by both. 

Top: Scavenged washing machine pumps at the 

Kierratysekskus (reuse) facility in Helsinki, Norway. 

The pumps will be used for future repairs. 

Access to economic spares is a major challenge 

for repair. 

Bottom: Electronics repair department at the Kierratysekskus 

(reuse) facility in Helsinki, Norway. 



Chris Trinh 

Black Snake Killers 

Kiley Knowles rides her horse through the Shell River in northern Minnesota 

during a "Women Water Protectors" demonstration against Line 3. According 

to a 2021 report from Indigenous Environmental Network and Oil Change 

International, Indigenous resistance against fossil fuel infrastructure projects 

over the last decade has stopped or delayed greenhouse gas pollution 

equivalent to at least one-quarter of annual U.S. and Canadian emissions 

(1.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide). July 15, 2021. 


Black Snake Killers documents 

the Anishinaabeled 

struggle against 

the Line 3 tar sands oil 

pipeline—referred to by activists 

as the Black Snake—during the 

final three months of Line 3’s 

construction. Line 3 was built by 

Enbridge, a Canadian pipeline 

giant, to carry over 800,000 

barrels of crude oil daily from 

Alberta, Canada, to a port in 

Superior, Wisconsin, USA. Along 

the way it crosses wide swaths 

of Anishinaabe territory, where 

treaty rights grant Indigenous residents 

the ability to live, hunt, fish 

and gather. For almost a decade, 

Anishinaabe land defenders have 

fought Line 3, which has a carbon 

footprint equivalent to 50 coalfired 

power plants, in addition to 

the greenhouse gas emissions of 

the tar sands transported by the 

pipeline. The Anishinaabe and 

many Indigenous environmental 

activists worldwide argue that 

restoring land to Indigenous 

stewardship—and keeping it out of 

the hands of fossil fuel companies—is 

a key means of preserving 

biodiversity and protecting our 

planet. 

Top: Alex Golden Wolf (center), a twospirit 

water protector from White Earth, 

is violently arrested while in ceremony, 

as part of a peaceful blockade of an 

Enbridge drilling site. During the arrest, 

law enforcement ripped open Alex's 

shirt, threw them to the ground, stepped 

on religious artifacts and held arrestees 

in a closed vehicle in almost 90°F 

temperatures. July 23, 2021. 

Bottom: Tasha Martineau (Fond du Lac) 

stands in the Shell River, at a site where 

Enbridge has drilled under the water in 

order to lay pipe. Taysha is the founder 

of Camp Migizi, one of the protest 

camps along the Line 3 pipeline route. 


Interview 

KILIII YUYAN 

Kiliii Yuyan is a photographer whose practice 

illuminates the stories of the Arctic and human 

communities connected to the land. Informed 

by ancestry that is both Nanai/Hèzhé (East 

Asian Indigenous) and Chinese American, he has 

traveled across the polar regions working with 

Indigenous cultures and wildlife. On assignment, 

he has fled collapsing sea ice, chased fin whales in 

Greenland, and found kinship at the edges of the 

world. For National Geographic, Kiliii has produced 

seven stories with a focus on the Arctic. He is currently 

at work on a project covering Indigenous-led 

conservation in Ecuador, Australia and Greenland. 

Kiliii is also an award-winning contributor to 

Vogue, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Guardian, 

and the Nature Conservancy. 

By Caterina Clerici 

Caterina Clerici: Can you tell us about 

your background and how you got 

started in photography? 

Kiliii Yuyan: Well, I’m a late bloomer in 

photography. I didn’t really pick up the 

camera seriously until I was in my early 

or mid-thirties, and I’m 43 now. I was 

a traditional kayak builder. I built my 

culture’s kayaks and also the modernized 

version of them, and that was my 

living for about 20 years. But I did go to 

school for industrial design, so I think that 

informed both the kayak building and the 

photography. 

I was leading a lot of kayak expeditions 

in the North, off of Vancouver island, 

and there were some beaches we would 

go to where we’d be the only people 

who’d have set foot on them in the past 

year — really beautiful, remote places 

Seven-year old Steven Reich examines his father's umiaq, or skinboat, used for whaling. His father Qallu, captain 

of Yugu crew, expresses nervous excitement to bring Steven out whaling on the ice for the first time: "I am proud 

of my son; he's here to learn to be a hunter." Despite the enthusiasm, Qallu is anxious about safely reading the 

changing conditions of the ice. Photo by Kiliii Yuyan. 

that only kayaks could access. We were 

doing a lot of foraging off the land and 

fishing, and I found that when I had a 

camera with me and took pictures, when 

I sent these back to friends and family the 

response was a lot greater than it was 

without it. I started to really just fall in love 

with making pictures, and I remember just 

the power of sharing — people loved the 

pictures from these places and all the fairly 

unusual stuff that we were up to. I think 

that’s what got me excited about it. 

It was one of the only ways I had to 

describe my relationship with the land. 

A lot of Indigenous people say that “if 

you’re from a fish people — which we 

are — you’ve got to have your hands in 

the water,” handling the salmon, catching 

the fish and just being part of it. It’s really 

easy for me to connect with the land, but 

for people that weren’t part of the trips 

I was on, that was my way to get their 

hands in the water, for them to have a 

relationship not just with the place, but 

also with what we were doing. 

CC: How did your surroundings growing 

up and your ancestry, which is both 

Nanai/Hèzhé (East Asian Indigenous) 

and Chinese American, influence your 

approach to life as an explorer? 

KY: I grew up in Northeastern China, 

Southern Siberia, and moved to the U.S. 

by the time I was seven. I still attribute my 

love of the outdoors partially to that time, 

and then also to my grandma, cause she 

told me lots of stories about our culture. 

All of those stories involved, you know, 

ripping around on the back of an orca, 

riding sturgeons in the river, avoiding “the 

charms of seal women” and things like 

that. These are really great folk tales that a 

lot of modern Indigenous peoples don’t tell 

in the way of mythological tales anymore, 

but I come from a part of the world where 

that mythology is still really important. We 

have a deep storytelling tradition. 

I was always really fascinated by all 

that stuff. By the time I was a teenager, I 

was dying to go out and fish, hunt and 

do all those kinds of things. That deepened 

my relationship with the land, and 

also took me back to my ancestry — even 

though I don’t think I understood it yet at 

the time. But there are definitely things I 

have done in my life that are almost like a 

replay of the stories that my grandmother 

told me. When I was leading the kayak 

trips, anytime we would go out and there 

was any sighting of orcas, I would sing 

to them. That’s in our culture, that’s in 

our stories. We sing to orcas because 

they are our relatives. We sing to seals 

because we want to lure them up to the 

surface so that we can hunt them. 

CC: Do you see your photographic practice 

as a continuation of your culture’s 

storytelling tradition? 


There are absolutely times when there’s 

a very deliberate move towards that. A lot 

of my favorite images from past projects 

that I’ve done and increasingly a lot of 

the projects that I’m embarking on are 

not pure photojournalism, but a little more 

lyrical and abstract in form. I am very 

drawn to these kinds of stories that have a 

mythological bent to them. There’s a story 

coming out soon on what we call “thin 

places,” essentially pieces of the land or 

landscapes or spaces that exist in nature 

where you walk out and you feel the presence 

of something other than you, but not 

other humans. The place feels really alive. 

Different religions call it different 

things, but everyone has this experience: 

you completely forget you’re you and 

become a part of this universe existing 

outside, and you don’t know why, but 

there’s something that feels really dark 

and evil and terrible about it. I photograph 

those places because I’m interested 

in the cosmology of my people and lots 

of other Indigenous peoples, but also in 

that universal feeling of “I’m not going 

back there because it’s dark and there’s 

something wrong with that place.” It’s still 

documentary, there’s no manipulation of 

anything but, at the same time, the point 

that I’m trying to get across is much more 

mythical and lyrical. 

CC: How do you approach photographing 

communities different from your own, 

and what do you think is the value of having 

an insider’s perspective in a culture 

that has often been misrepresented? 

and it can be really difficult. The easiest 

way to get around some of these issues 

is just to not be interested in the same 

stories that everyone else is interested 

in, which generally I’m not, as a Native 

person. For example, when I did my 

story on whaling in Alaska among the 

Iñupiaq, my thought wasn’t “Oh look at 

these people killing whales, how exotic 

and strange, why are they allowed to do 

it?” but more like “How is it done?” I’m a 

kayak builder, they’re skin boat builders. 

The original reason I went up there in 

the first place was to connect about our 

traditional boats. 

But as soon as I went there, the first 

thing I recognized almost immediately 

was that the story, the real story, was not 

about the killing of the whale. The real 

story is about the relationship between 

the people and the community and the 

whales, you know, and not the throwing 

of the harpoon into the whale. I have a 

great shot of the harpoon thrown into a 

whale, but I rarely run it, it’s never been 

published. That’s not what whaling is. 

Whaling is community, it’s the gift of this 

massive creature to feed these people. 

CC: What is your main audience and 

what is your message to them? 

KY: For me, the most important audience 

is the youth of the culture that I’m 

photographing, and the message is just 

representation. They get a chance to see 

their uncles and aunts inside the pages 

of National Geographic, and that makes 

them a rock star. It gives them the ability 

to see someone who looks like them 

accepted with validity and celebration 

in the world, and that’s a really fantastic 

thing. And it’s also my hope that I’m 

able to show their own people and their 

culture in a way that feels very familiar 

to them. We’ve had the same viewpoint 

from the outside looking in for so long 

that it’s really nice to be able to go the 

other way around. 

CC: How much has climate change influenced 

your work, both in terms of stories 

and in your day-to-day practice? 

KY: Well, climate change is an interesting 

one because, first of all, in the North, 

every story is a climate change story. 

Second, it’s inescapable. It’s everywhere. 

Flooding ice cellars, polar bears coming 

to attack us because they’re starving to 

death, stuff like that. Sometimes I wish 

I had someone there to document the 

behind the scenes of our shoots because, 

in some ways, climate change is a lot 

more obvious in the kinds of challenges I 

face during my shoots than in the stories I 

shoot. It’s not that in the stories I shoot the 

effects are more subtle, but they require a 

lot more knowledge of the way that sea 

ice and things normally are. You need 

to know what the baseline is, in order to 

recognize what’s different. 

KY: All documentarians are interpreters 

and ambassadors between worlds. 

I understand the massive cultural differences 

between people, enough to know 

that almost every Indigenous culture has 

a different sense of freedoms. Whenever 

you interact with another culture, there’s a 

certain protocol that you have to abide by 

— can I photograph this ceremony or that, 

is it inappropriate to ask about certain 

things, or to portray people in a certain 

way? These are all things that are really 

important and you can’t assume anything. 

Usually the most dangerous mistakes 

have to do with stereotypical representations, 

or things that people have just 

gotten oppressed and repressed for over 

a long period of time. So there are things 

that our people are really sensitive about, 

A bowhead whale harvested by Iñupiat finally rests on a thick section of sea ice after being slowly pulled out of 

the water for the past eight hours. Photo by Kiliii Yuyan. 


DISPATCHES FROM 

UKRAINE 

Maranie Staab, a regular contributor to SDN 

and ZEKE, and last featured for her photos 

from the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. 

Capitol, is now reporting from Chisinau, 

Moldova and nearby towns in Ukraine 

documenting the largest refugee migration in 

Europe since WWII. 

Above: A group of Ukrainians eat a dinner 

prepared by World Central Kitchen partner 

Cafeneaua din Gratiesti while staying at Biserica 

Isus Salvatorul, a church in Chisinau, Moldova 

hosting approximately 50 Ukrainian refugees. 

Top Right: “Right before this happened I was shopping 

for my prom dress; it’s my final year of school 

and life was good, life felt normal. Now I’m on 

a bus talking to you with only this small bag and 

we’re running away—we left everything behind.” 

Alioa, 17, fled Mykolaiv, Ukraine with her 

three siblings and mother. They are among the 

now 2.3 million people who have left Ukraine in 

just the past two weeks, a number expected to 

grow as Russia continues its indiscriminate and 

targeted attacks on cities and civilians. 

Middle: Sunshine quickly turned to snow showers 

as hundreds of people stood at the Palanca 

border crossing with their suitcases and pets. 

Moldovans and aid organizations are working 

hard to provide for the ongoing flood of people 

fleeing Ukraine, but the need is overwhelming 

and expected to grow. 

Bottom: Leeza, age 10, offers a smile while waiting 

in freezing temperatures to board a bus that 

will evacuate her and others from the besieged 

city of Mykolaiv, Ukraine on March 10, 2022. 


A Home for Global Documentary 

Photo by Robert Nistri from Burkina Faso: The Power of Resilience. 

Social Documentary Network 

Lori Grinker 

SDN Website: A web portal for 

documentary photographers to 

create online galleries and make 

them available to anyone with an 

internet connection. Since 2008, 

we have presented more than 

4,000 documentary stories from 

all parts of the world. 

www.socialdocumentary.net 

ZEKE Magazine: This bi-annual 

publication allows us to present 

visual stories in print form with indepth 

writing about the themes 

of the photography projects. 

www.zekemagazine.com 

SDN Salon: An informal gathering 

of SDN photographers to 

share and discuss work online. 

Documentary Matters: 

A place for photographers to 

meet with others involved with 

or interested in documentary 

photography and discuss ongoing 

or completed projects. 

SDN Education: Leading 

documentary photographers and 

educators provide online learning 

opportunities for photographers 

interested in advancing their 

knowledge and skills in the field 

of documentary photography. 

ZEKE Award for Documentary 

Photography: A award 

program juried by a distinguished 

panel of international media 

professionals. Award winners are 

exhibited at Photoville in Brooklyn 

and featured in ZEKE. 

SDN Reviews: Started in April 

2021, this annual program brings 

together industry leaders from 

media, publishing, and the fine 

art community to review work of 

documentary photographers. 

Visual Literacy Project: 

This new and exciting program 

provides secondary students 

and educators with critical tools 

for literacy, learning, and civic 

engagement. 

www.visualliteracyproject.org 

Join us! 



BOOK 

REVIEWS 

EDITOR: MICHELLE BOGRE 

AFTER US THE DELUGE: The 

Human Consequences of 

Rising Sea Levels 

Photographs by Kadir van Lohuizen 

Lannoo, 2021 | 288 pages | 45 Euros 

A newly built sea wall is not very effective. Jakarta, Indonesia. 

Kadir van Lohuizen’s massive 

new book After Us The Deluge 

sits on the coffee table in 

front of me, the title a bold, radioactive 

salmon tone. The cover image 

is a muted image of a girl treading 

through water suggesting the book’s 

content—the current and future effects 

of rising sea levels on seven different 

parts of the world. Each chapter is 

split into two sections: an essay by a 

prominent figure in the field, followed 

by van Lohuizen’s stark photographs of 

people in flooded lands, aerial images 

of islands, and landscapes from around 

the globe. Together the images and 

words tell the story of the effects of 

climate change on coasts, and cities 

threatened by an underwater future. 

This book is a call to action, but it isn’t 

always clear to whom it is calling out. 

The title of this book plays on a 

monarchic idea of abandon, of living 

in decadence and pushing the problem 

to another generation. But, who is the 

author speaking to, when he says us? The 

book doesn’t provide a clear answer, but 

it is clear who will be—and are—the first 

to face the consequences. In the chapter 

on Guna Yala (Panama), there is an 

image of a young girl on the beach with 

her hands crossed. Her body language is 

strong but tense, and her gaze is angry. 

She stands not only for her community 

facing the effects of climate change and 

rising sea levels, but also for her generation 

and generations to come. 

Perhaps us is anyone implicated in the 

future of the girl from Guna Yala, who 

benefits from a lifestyle responsible for the 

deluge to come. Even so, the book seems 

to speak to a more specific audience. The 

structure and tone of After Us The Deluge 

resemble a commission report. Saturated 

in technical terms and figures, the text 

and images provide little room to experience—to 

feel—the implications of climate 

change. Urgency is drowned by formula. 

Although the book is framed as an open 

invitation to participate in saving the 

world, it is evident that the photographer 

and essay authors speak in the language 

of policy makers and industrialists. A 

book can change the world, by imagining 

what it could be, but this book lacks 

imagination. The images are not spectacular, 

though they depict awful truths. 

They are sharp, dull, and laid out in in a 

utilitarian manner. They are there to play 

their role as documents, to relay a dangerous 

situation to powerful people who 

could potentially do something about it. 

The world can be seen differently, and 

so can books, and this book has a new 

world hidden inside of it. A rogue reader 

can read it in an imaginative way: randomly 

flipping the pages. A page drops. 

It is a picture of a man’s head sticking out 

of a flooded street. He seems calm, as if 

all of this had been anticipated. Behind 

him, a palm tree is suspended in the air, 

waiting to collapse. Is this an image from 

the past, or an illustration of the future? 

Another flip reveals a picture of a boy, 

draped in plastic, walking by an eroding 

coast, a panorama of flooded lands and 

heavy clouds. These random images, out 

of time and place, best communicate the 

reality of the crisis we collectively face. 

Flipping chaotically through the pages, 

Greenland becomes The Netherlands and 

Fiji and Miami grow interchangeable. A 

charge is in the air, a storm which leaves 

the book and enters my apartment. A 

drop of water falls and immediately soaks 

into the page. Is it my drink or is it raining 

here too? The water drop leaves behind a 

mark, the threat of a storm to come. 

—Dana Melaver 


RISING AMONG RUINS, 

DANCING AMID BULLETS 

Photographs by Maryam Ashrafi 

Preface by Gary Knight 

Hemeria, 2021 | 252 pages | 65 Euros 

In reading Rising Among Ruins, 

Dancing Amid Bullets, we need 

to ask ourselves what is this book 

about. Is it about the struggle for Kurdish 

autonomy in the Middle East with a 

focus on Kurdish women fighters or 

is it a book of photographs about the 

struggle for Kurdish autonomy in the 

Middle East with a focus on Kurdish 

women fighters? The former puts the 

emphasis on the primacy of the political 

history of the Kurds, while the latter 

puts the emphasis on works of art on 

paper that can touch us in ways that an 

alphabet soup of Kurdish political parties 

never will. 

Ashrafi meets us somewhere in 

between but leans towards the former— 

an extraordinarily powerful book that 

educates us about the complicated, divisive, 

violent, and sometimes inspirational 

recent history of the world’s largest ethnic 

minority without a nation. And to do so, 

she presents us with outstanding and 

important photos of her journeys through 

Kurdistan during the recent wars in Iraq 

and Syria. 

The book’s preface by Gary 

Knight—co-founder of the VII photo 

agency—focuses on the meaning of the 

photographic images and particularly 

the importance of Ashrafi’s images of 

women in conflict. Other essays are more 

focused on Kurdish political aspirations. 

But no one comments on the artfulness 

of Ashrafi’s images and how they can 

provide a deeper understanding of the 

drama of humanity. 

In 352 pages of black and white photographs 

and essays, we are intimately 

brought into the centuries-old struggle for 

Kurdish autonomy in the Middle East. 

More interestingly, Ashrafi focuses on 

the Women’s Protection Unit (YPJ) and 

their adherence to Abdullah Ocalan, 

the leader of the Kurdistan Worker’s 

Party (PKK), who has been imprisoned 

in Turkey since 1999. A former Marxist- 

Leninist, Ocalan now embraces the 

ideas of an obscure American anarchist, 

Murray Bookchin, and his theory of libertarian 

communalism to “build an egalitarian 

ecological, profoundly democratic, 

and tolerant society in which women can 

finally live in fulfillment.” 

At great personal risk, Ashrafi travels 

through the region and makes remarkable 

photos and portraits of Kurdish women 

fighters from the YPJ, soldiers from Syrian 

Democratic Forces (SDF), Yazidi women 

and children who escaped genocide on 

Mt. Sinjar, fighters from Free Women’s 

Units (YJA), Peshmerga fighters, refugees 

from across the region, and others. 

Ashrafi’s work compares to similar 

efforts such as Robert Capa and Gerda 

Taro’s documentation of the Spanish 

Civil War (often compared to the recent 

Kurdish quest for autonomy); or Susan 

Meiselas’s, Nicaragua, about the 

Sandinista revolt in 1979 against the dictatorial 

Somoza dynasty. The significance 

of the work by Capa, Taro, and Meiselas 

is that they are each an equal balance 

between the aesthetic brilliance of the 

images and the context of these images. 

In the case of Ashrafi, her work leans 

more towards the latter—the context. 

It is interesting that in an interview with 

Ashrafi in the book, she seems dismissive 

of one of her seminal photos —an 

extraordinary portrait of a member of the 

Women’s Projection Units mourning at 

the grave of Ageri, a martyred comrade. 

While Ashrafi recognizes that this photo 

could be iconic, she sidelines it because 

she cannot accept that her subject’s 

This Arab woman returned to Tabqa with her family 

after the liberation of the city. In her 40s, and a mother 

of 9 children, she had no choice but to live in an abandoned 

building with her family, as their house was 

destroyed during the war against ISIS. 

beauty may detract from the viewer’s 

understanding of the tragic reality of 

this funeral. Ashrafi cannot quite accept 

the magic of her own images and how 

powerful they can be to communicate a 

very human moment that transcends the 

complex political subtexts described by 

the other essayists in the book. 

The book presents us with a deep 

historical context, but again we are faced 

with the question: are Ashrafi’s photos 

illustrating these essays or are the essays 

providing context that the photographs 

just cannot provide on their own? That is 

the crux of the problem, but perhaps it 

is too much to demand from one book. 

In the end, these are extraordinary 

photographs not seen elsewhere, supported 

by important political history. After 

reading this book, you will walk away 

appreciating the brave accomplishments 

of Ashrafi, the beauty and tragedy of 

the Kurdish people as they continue their 

struggle for freedom, and the uniquely 

misunderstood revolutionary ideology 

of Bookchin, Ocalan, and the Women’s 

Protection Units that are transforming 

gender relations in a part of the world 

that is otherwise known for its harsh and 

inhumane treatment of women. 

—Glenn Ruga 


THE EYES OF EARTH 

Photographs by Solmaz Daryani 

Winner of the 2021 FotoEvidence W Award 

FotoEvidence, 2021 | 128pp | 45 Euros 

English/French/Farsi 

One of the most powerful ways 

to understand climate change 

is through the telling of deeply 

personal stories that reflect on what’s at 

stake. Solmaz Daryani’s powerful book 

about the desiccation of Lake Urmia in 

Iran, once the largest lake in the Middle 

East and the sixth largest saltwater 

lake in the world, does just that. Like 

many Iranian families, Daryani grew 

up spending her summers by the shores 

of Lake Urmia where her grandparents 

ran a thriving tourism business in 

Sharafkhaneh port on the northwest side 

of the lake. But now, it is all gone. 

In an opening essay by Amir 

AghaKouchak, he recounts how he cried 

when seeing the photographs of the dry 

lakebeds. In 1998, the lake was healthy 

and people swam and sailed on it. Due 

to drought and increased water demand 

leading to mismanaged land use and 

the building of dams, Lake Urmia has 

decreased to half its former size, greatly 

reducing the agricultural output of what 

was once a fertile area full of fruit trees 

and flowers. 

Another essay by Manoocher Deghati, 

who also edited the photographs, 

recounts his own childhood memories of 

the joys of floating on the lake with family 

and how each of them used to “carry a 

cucumber for rubbing our eyes when they 

started to burn due to the high concentration 

of salt in the water. Then we would 

eat them. I still keep the memory of that 

incredible taste of those salty cucumbers 

in my mind. At the time, it felt eternal and 

endless.” 

Daryani visually captures the sad 

reckoning of life’s limitations and how 

things can go terribly wrong if we don’t 

pay attention. As she writes, the loss of 

the lake “is much more than an environmental 

tragedy. It is an emotional wound 

in people’s memory… it is part of our 

identity. We can only hope it is not lost 

forever.” 

The salt and mineral-rich mud of Lake Urmia, seen here in 2017, are reputed to have healing properties, 

especially for skin and rheumatic afflictions. 

Book cover 

In this beautiful book, Daryani alternates 

between black and white archival 

snapshots of the lake in its heyday— 

ships coming into the port and families 

swimming and enjoying the beach—with 

current color images of the decaying lake 

with its rusted out boat hulls, litter, and 

dead tree stumps. She devotes an entire 

page to a photo of an abandoned flamingo 

statue, a relic from the tourist days. 

A carcass of a dead bird is one of the 

larger photos. The lake was once a large 

natural habitat for migrating birds. 

The wide white borders around the 

photos evoke fading memory. Sometimes 

there are blank white pages, heightening 

the sense of emptiness and loss. Just 

like the receding sea—there will soon 

be nothingness, she seems to warn. Like 

a child’s diary, the captions are written 

in pencil in Daryani’s neat handwriting. 

The tones of most of the images are cool 

and blue, much like the turquoise of the 

lake, except for warmer spreads in the 

center that show the deep red algae that 

has taken over. Portions of photographs 

are scattered randomly on the corners of 

the pages, like the piecemeal images that 

come and go in dreams. 

A foreboding feeling prevails throughout 

the book as Daryani slowly reveals 

more details from her childhood. Some 

photos do not have captions and their 

context is revealed in a gatefold pull-out 

near the back containing more handwritten 

notes. 

The book is dedicated to her grandmother, 

Narges Qasempoor, who, in 

addition to managing the family’s successful 

tourism business, dedicated herself to 

the environment, planting over 800 trees. 

Narges appears in several powerful 

portraits, the most of any one subject. She 

died from COVID-19 while the book was 

being written. 

In the end, the lake and her grandmother 

are one and they represent 

Mother Nature and how we must heed 

the call to save her. The book ends on a 

hopeful note—a large photo of a bride 

and groom dancing at their wedding. It 

is warmly lit and could be from a fairy 

tale. This lovely, poetic book stayed with 

me for days, just like a dream that I didn’t 

want to end. 

—Barbara Ayotte 


AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY 

Photographs by Matt Black 

Thames and Hudson, 2021 

169 pages | $75 

Matt Black’s epic on poverty, 

American Geography—a five 

year, 100,000 mile bus and 

car journey across 46 states only visiting 

towns with a poverty rate exceeding 

20%—is a 21 st century Let Us Now 

Praise Famous Men with Black playing 

the roles of both James Agee and Walker 

Evans. Like the Agee-Evans book, often 

it is Black’s text, pulled from his daily 

travel notebooks, that is the most compelling. 

He writes “The truck stop dining 

room smelled of fungus.” Or “She’s sick, 

sneezes into her hand, and apologizes 

as she bags my lunch.” Or “He finishes 

the bag [of Cheetos] and picks his teeth 

with a plastic fork.” So if you are tempted 

to gloss over the text, don’t. 

As might be expected from Thames 

and Hudson, the book design and printing 

are exquisite. It is printed in duotone on 

extra heavy paper so it’s tactile. You are 

compelled to run your hands over the 

pages to feel the photographs. The matte 

black cover with the title debossed in shiny 

black is not inviting. It is confrontational, 

but then a book about poverty should be. 

The front and back matter list in running 

text every town Black visited. The design 

respects the image: one per page, or one 

panoramic full bleed across two pages, 

with the requisite number of blank white 

left hand pages to give the book some air. 

The volume has four chapters based on 

the four geographic quadrants: South and 

West, South and East, North and East, 

and North and West. Excerpts of Black’s 

notebooks, with entries identified by day, 

date, town and state end each chapter. 

It features 77 photographs and collages 

of found items: crumpled and flattened 

cigarette packs, what could be a television 

antenna fashioned from a wire clothes 

hanger, plastic cutlery, and handwritten 

signs: Army Vet Homeless Humiliated 

Sorry if I Offend Anyone; Hungry; 

Anything Helps; Losing the Game of Life. 

These signs connect us more to the people 

than Black’s images do. 

Allensworth, California. 

El Paso, Texas. 

And that’s the problem with this book. 

Black has said he “documented the 

experiences of those living in poor communities,” 

but his images are snippets of 

places more than experiences of people. 

The images are bleak and empty: empty 

streets, boarded up businesses, barren 

landscapes, detritus, the remnants of 

industry, a shiny balloon on the filthy floor 

of a filthy room. Very few feature people, 

and fewer still faces of people. When 

present at all, people are usually small 

abstracted elements (often silhouetted) of 

composition, oddly often placed dead 

center in the frame. The images give us 

little information about a life lived in precarity. 

We only learn that from the text: 

Irene, 81, says she once walked 30 miles 

to pick up $49 worth of food stamps; 

Jeremiah sells blood to make ends meet; 

Andy, 73, lives in a house with no running 

water or electricity, his $770 month 

Social Security his only income; Ken, 70, 

who because he lives alone in Maine in 

a one room shack heated 

only by an old electric 

heater, will get himself 

arrested when the temperature 

drops, because 

at least in jail he will be 

warm and fed. 

Black’s images are 

dark, literally and metaphorically. 

His characteristic 

aesthetic—from his 

newspaper days shooting 

in bright California sun— 

is contrasty; pushed exposures; 

blown out highlights; and deep, 

dark grays and solid blacks where detail 

should be. Black says, “To me, that’s just 

how photographs look.” 

The problem is this is not how life 

looks, not really, not even for those living 

in poverty. Black and white photography 

abstracts reality for sure, but in these 

images, black and white also strips the 

details of life. 

Even people living in poverty find 

joy and small pleasures in life, just not 

in Black’s America, where people are 

invisible and interchangeable. Maybe 

that is the point and a perfect metaphor 

for the experience of poverty in America, 

which ranks 27 th on the World Economic 

Forum’s Global Social Mobility Index. 

We lost the War on Poverty a long time 

ago. Statistics suggest that if you’re born 

poor here you usually stay poor. But even 

this is not new or surprising. More than 

100 years ago, lyricists Gus Kahn and 

Richard B. Egan wrote in their song Ain’t 

We Got Fun: 

There’s nothing surer 

The rich get rich and the poor get 

children 

In the meantime, in between time 

Ain’t we got fun. 

—Michelle Bogre 


BRIEFLY 

NOTED 

COMPILED BY MARISSA FIORUCCI 

CAMPESINO CUBA 

By Richard Sharum 

Gost Books, 2021 | 208 pages | $60 

to eighty-five who have spent their entire 

lives living, raising families, and toiling 

the land in the most remote regions 

of their country. Campesino Cuba was 

awarded an Honorable Mention for the 

2021 ZEKE Award for Documentary 

Photography. 

THE WEATHER IS FINE 

By Benedikt Partenheimer 

Hatje Cantz, 2021 | 128 pages | $65 

BETWEEN GIRLS 

By Karen Marshall 

Kehrer Verlag, 2021 | 268 pages | $50 

We all know Cuba as that 

land of classic but disintegrating 

American cars, Fidel 

Castro, cigars, colorful architecture, 

and béisbol. Yet all of these stereotypes 

are centered on the nation’s few urban 

centers, even though 85 percent of 

Cuba is rural. Dallas-based documentary 

photographer Richard Sharum 

takes us into this seldom-shown world 

in Campesino Cuba. Over a four-year 

period, Sharum traveled across rural 

Cuba, exploring the lives of these 

isolated farmers and their relationship 

to the land. In 106 duotone images, 

Sharum captures the lush tropical landscapes, 

the rhythms of daily life, and 

the people at work and play. The result 

is a rich document of life in the countryside 

at a time of transition when the 

younger generation is leaving in search 

of wider opportunities in the cities. 

The book includes essays by Cuban 

historian Aldo Daniel Naranjo and writer 

Domingo Cuza Pedrera as well as the 

powerful voices of six Campesino men 

and women ranging in age from nineteen 

Not only do we live in a period 

of rapid, exciting change, but 

we are also in the midst of the 

Anthropocene age. The environment 

and climate are transforming in the 

wake of human-driven turbo-capitalism. 

Benedikt Partenheimer’s work, The 

Weather is Fine, makes it possible to 

imagine—sensorily as well as contextually—the 

close connection and increasing 

imbalance between humans and 

the earth. Photographs of fascinating, 

impressive elegance reveal processes of 

ecological and cultural transformation. 

What makes these pictures so irresistible 

is the human influence factor: the 

painterly mist of air pollution floating 

above urban panoramas, the ambivalence 

of mountain reflections in melted 

glacier water. The price of beauty is 

inscribed into each image, rendering 

Partenheimer’s work aesthetically intriguing—but 

above all, existentially important 

and politically controversial. 

Benedikt Partenheimer studied photography 

at the RMIT University, Melbourne, 

and Parsons School of Design, New York. 

His work has been shown around the 

world and showered with awards. He 

lives in Berlin. 

In 1985, Karen Marshall began 

photographing a group of teenagers 

in New York City. Her intent was 

to look at the emotional bonding that 

happens between teenage girls and 

to document the emblematic relationships 

that often develop at this time in 

their lives. Ten months later, Molly, one 

of the girls in the group, was hit by a 

car and killed. Marshall resolved to 

keep the project going and continued 

to photograph the girls in various ways 

over the years. Although Molly would 

forever remain 17, the other girls would 

become women. Between Girls evolved 

into a thirty-year meditation on women’s 

friendships. 

Karen Marshall is the recipient of 

grants and support from private foundations. 

Her photographs have been 

exhibited internationally and are part 

of several collections. She is the Chair 

of the Documentary Practice and Visual 

Journalism program at The International 

Center of Photography in New York City. 




DADS 

By Bart Heynen 

powerHouse Books, 2021 

152 pages | $50 

Ever since 2015, when same-sex 

marriage became legal across 

the U.S., we've witnessed a baby 

boom in the gay community. Through 

adoption or the help of surrogates and 

egg donors, gay men are able to make 

their dream come true and start a family 

of their own. 

Dads is a journey into gay fatherhood 

in the United States. The daily lives of 

more than 40 families are portrayed by 

Belgian photographer Bart Heynen in 

this beautifully printed collection. As the 

babies grow into adults and the fathers 

grow older throughout the book, we are 

reminded that families come in many 

different sizes, colors, and shapes. To say 

it in the words of Harvey Fierstein: ‘Love, 

commitment, and family are not heterosexual 

experiences, not heterosexual 

words, they are human words and they 

belong to all people.’ 

“A stunning portrait of dads with their 

babies…The looks and gazes on the 

faces of both the babies and dads is spot 

on—a mixture, of curiosity and pride.” 

—Martin Parr 

AS WE RISE: Photography 

from the Black Atlantic 

By The Wedge Collection. Preface by 

Teju Cole. Introduction by Mark Sealy. 

Interviewer Liz Ikiriko. 

Aperture, 2021 | 184 pages | $50 

As We Rise presents an exciting 

compilation of photographs 

from African diasporic culture. 

With over one hundred works by Black 

artists from Canada, the Caribbean, 

Great Britain, the United States, South 

America, as well as throughout the 

African continent, this volume provides 

a timely exploration of Black identity on 

both sides of the Atlantic. 

As Teju Cole describes in his preface, 

“Too often in the larger culture, we see 

images of Black people in attitudes of 

despair, pain, or brutal isolation. As 

We Rise gently refuses that. It is not that 

people are always in an attitude of celebration—no, 

that would be a reverse but 

corresponding falsehood—but rather that 

they are present as human beings, credible, 

fully engaged in their world.” Drawn 

from Dr. Kenneth Montague’s Wedge 

Collection in Toronto—a Black-owned 

collection dedicated to artists of African 

descent—As We Rise looks at the multifaceted 

ideas of Black life through the 

lenses of community, identity, and power. 

Artists such as Stan Douglas, LaToya 

Ruby Frazier, Barkley L. Hendricks, Texas 

Isaiah, Liz Johnson Artur, Seydou Keïta, 

Deana Lawson, Jamel Shabazz, and 

Carrie Mae Weems, touch on themes of 

agency, beauty, joy, belonging, subjectivity, 

and self-representation. Writings by 

Isolde Brielmaier, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. 

Nzewi, Mark Sealy, Teka Selman, and 

Deborah Willis among others provide 

insight and commentary on this monumental 

collection. 

DISCLOSURE – RWANDAN 

CHILDREN BORN OF RAPE 

By Jonathan Torgovnik 

Akaaka Art Publishing, 2020 

114 pages | $50 

There have been studies of the 

effects of conflict based rape on 

women, but no one has studied 

the effects on the children born of that 

type of brutal and violent rape. Jonathan 

Torgovnik’s new book Disclosure: 

Rwandan Children Born of Rape 

attempts that. During the 1994 genocide 

in Rwanda, women were brutalized by 

soldiers using rape as a weapon of war 

and almost 20,000 children were born 

as a result of these rapes, a fact kept 

from them for a long time. 

Torgovnik wanted to explore the 

multi-generational impact of being 

born of genocidal rape so he returned 

to Rwanda in 2018 during the 25th 

anniversary of the genocide to revisit 

some of the families he had interviewed 

and photographed in 2006 for his first 

book, Intended Consequences: Rwandan 

Children Born of Rape. This time he interviewed 

both mothers and children —now 

young adults who know the circumstances 

of their birth. Together, the interviews 

and pairs of images— portraits of mother 

and child and individual portraits of the 

children, one current and the original 

from 2006—uncover a difficult reality of 

deep trauma and the effects of genocide 

but also a story of hope and forgiveness 

and fragility and strength. 


Contributors 

Barbara Ayotte is the editor of ZEKE magazine 

and the Communications Director of the Social 

Documentary Network. She has served as a 

senior strategic communications strategist, writer 

and activist for leading global health, human 

rights and media nonprofit organizations, including 

the Nobel Peace Prize- winning Physicians for 

Human Rights and International Campaign to Ban 

Landmines. 

Michelle Bogre currently holds the title of 

Professor Emerita from Parsons School of Design 

in New York after a 25-year career teaching 

almost every type of photography class. She 

is also a copyright lawyer, documentary 

photographer and author of four books, with 

work published in various other books. She is 

currently trying to finish a long-term documentary 

project on family farms – @thefarmstories on 

Instagram – among other projects. 

Caterina Clerici is an Italian journalist and producer 

based in New York. She graduated from 

Columbia University’s Journalism School and is a 

grantee of the European Journalism Centre for her 

work in Haiti, Ghana and Rwanda. She worked 

as a photo editor and VR producer at TIME, and 

as an executive producer at Blink.la. 

Daniela Cohen is a freelance journalist and 

non-fiction writer of South African origin currently 

based in Vancouver, Canada. Her work has been 

published in New Canadian Media, Canadian 

Immigrant, The Source Newspaper, and is 

upcoming in Living Hyphen. Daniela’s work 

focuses on themes of displacement and belonging, 

justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. She 

is also the co-founder of Identity Pages, a youth 

writing mentorship program. 

Marissa Fiorucci is a freelance photographer 

in Boston, MA. She is former studio manager 

for photographer Mark Ostow and worked 

on projects including portraits of the Obama 

Cabinet for Politico. She specializes in corporate 

portraits and events, but remains passionate 

about documentary. 

Journalist, climate activist, and political scientist, 

Sarah Fretwell, works as a multimedia 

storyteller. Her work focuses on the intersection 

of the environment, people, and business with 

one question: What if the new bottom line 

was love? Her award-winning photojournalism 

creates the human connection that engages 

people on a personal level. Some of her notable 

work and clients include the BioCarbon Fund, 

United Nations, and USAID. 

Virginia Hanusik is an artist whose projects 

explore the relationship between landscape, 

culture, and the built environment. Her work 

has been exhibited internationally, featured 

in various publications and events. She has 

lectured at institutions including New York 

University about landscape representation 

and the visual narrative of climate change. 

On The Water Collaborative of Greater New 

Orleans board of directors, she coordinates 

multi-disciplinary projects on the climate 

crisis. 

Antonia Juhasz is a New Orleans-based 

author and investigative journalist focused 

on energy and climate. Her writing appears 

in Rolling Stone, National Geographic, The 

Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, The New York 

Times, and many more outlets. She is the author 

of three books, most recently, Black Tide on the 

BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of 

Mexico. She is a Monroe Fellow at the Center 

for the Gulf South at Tulane University, where 

she also teaches. Antonia is a former Bertha 

Investigative Journalism Fellow. 

Dana Melaver is a writer and artist. Her work 

is rooted in the belief that everything is interesting, 

and often acts as a bridge among art, 

thought, and the sciences. Dana's most recent 

projects include an experimental documentary 

about sustainable aquaculture, and an ode to the 

mischievous qualities of light. 

Artist, educator, and environmental activist, 

Carolyn Monastra received a BA from Fordham 

University and an MFA from the Yale School of 

Art. Her awards include various grants and artist 

residencies, including at Skaftfell Visual Arts 

Center in Iceland, which inspired her to focus 

on the climate crisis. Her photographs are in the 

Marguiles and Johnson & Johnson Collection 

and have been exhibited in venues in various 

countries. 

Roberto Nistri is an International Photography 

Awards Winner from Rome who began as 

a “pure and hard” wildlife photographer 

and then extended his focus to travel and 

documentary photography. He has focused on 

the documentation of ethnic groups and peoples 

who are threatened by progress and particular 

political and social conditions in Ethiopia, 

India, North Ireland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 

Burkina Faso and Lebanon, among others. 

An Italian documentary photographer focused 

on environmental and social issues, Giacomo 

d’Orlando moved to Nepal and Peru to enter 

the world of photojournalism and was inspired 

to concentrate on the environment while in 

Australasia. His projects have appeared in 

The Washington Post, among others. Today, 

his work looks at how the increasing pressures 

caused by climate change are reshaping the 

planet and how present-day society is reacting. 

Lauren Owens Lambert is a conservation 

photographer and video journalist based in the 

Boston area focused on documenting the human 

aspect of conservation, climate change and our 

relationship with the natural world during the age 

of the Anthropocene. An International League of 

Conservation Photographer with work published 

in National Wildlife Magazine and others, 

Lauren has also presented at the United Nations 

on the importance of visual storytelling. 

During his PhD at the University of Cambridge. 

Mark Phillips developed multi-perspective 

approaches to understanding emerging and 

complex systems. That research approach informs 

his current photography projects, largely focused 

on ‘constructive’ stories about people and groups 

taking action to address societal problems, 

with current emphasis on the environment and 

sustainability. His work has been featured in 

various major publications and exhibitions in UK, 

USA, and Europe. 

Andi Rice is an award-winning photographer 

based in Birmingham, AL. He began his career at 

a young age photographing live music and events 

and has since pivoted into covering racial and 

social justice issues for various publications and 

producers across the country. He thrives on telling 

the stories of people through portraiture. 

Michael O. Snyder is a photographer and 

filmmaker who uses his combined knowledge 

of visual storytelling and conservation to create 

narratives that drive social impact. Michael is a 

Portrait of Humanity Award Winner, a Climate 

Journalism Fellow at the Bertha Foundation, a 

Blue Earth Alliance Photographer, a National 

Geographic Contributor, and a Resident Artist 

at the McGuffey Art Center in Charlottesville, 

Virginia, among others. 

Maranie Rae Staab is an independent photographer, 

videographer and journalist. Her work 

focuses on human rights and social justice issues, 

displacement, social movements, and the impact 

of conflict on individuals and society. Maranie 

strives for visual intimacy, to establish the trust 

necessary to get close to people and to then 

share their experience with others. A 2020 

Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellowship recipient, 

Maranie is an alumni of the Eddie Adams 

Workshop, and winner of the 2019 Best of 

Photojournalism Emerging Vision prize, among 

others. 

Chris Trinh is a Vietnamese-American 

photojournalist and documentary photographer. 

Their work primarily focuses on migration, social 

justice, and how climate change and colonialism 

impact people of the global majority. Chris' 

photos have been published in Vice, El País, Grist 

and elsewhere. 

Kiliii Yuyan illuminates stories of the Arctic and 

human communities connected to the land and 

sea. Informed by both Nanai/Hèzhé (East Asian 

Indigenous) and Chinese-American ancestry, he 

explores the human relationship to the natural 

world from different cultural perspectives and 

extreme environments, on land and underwater. 

One of PDN’s 30 Photographers (2019), Kiliii 

is an award-winning contributor to National 

Geographic, TIME, and other major publications. 




SPRING 

THE MAGAZINE OF GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY 


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2022 Vol. 8/No. 1 

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PROFILE 

Antonia Juhasz 

Author of "Sustainable Solutions to 


By Daniela Cohen 

New Orleans-based author and investigative 

journalist Antonia Juhasz aims 

to “move readers to see themselves as 

active participants in the events that 

shape their own and other people’s lives,” 

hold bad actors to account, and present 

solutions to pressing problems. 

With a focus on energy and climate, for 

her, reporting has been a tangible way to 

immediately be of service. 

Juhasz’s passion for this work is obvious, 

with early roots including time in 

her 20’s as a legislative assistant in the U.S. 

Congress, where she experienced firsthand 

the harmful and undue influence of certain 

corporations over the country’s policy 

process. Her determination to confront 

this evolved into a focus on oil companies, 

particularly during the Bush administration 

and the Iraq war. Later, she noticed how 

most of the reporting on the oil industry 

was done by finance journalists, many of 

whose coverage was limited by interdependent 

relationships with the companies they 

reported on and did not include investigating 

broader impacts on human health, 

environment, politics, human rights, war 

and peace, and climate. 

“I wanted to apply a holistic approach 

to look at fossil fuels through all of these 

lenses,” says Juhasz. “And in particular, the 

impacts on people on the ground and what 

their experiences were, what their stories 

were, what their struggles were, and to 

report from this full 360-degree lens.” 

As the climate crisis worsened, the scope 

of Juhasz’s reporting widened to focus on 

climate and energy more broadly to address 

the scope of both the problem and the 

various environmental justice movements 

working towards solutions. 

Writing “Sustainable Solutions to the 

Climate Crisis” provided her with a refreshing 

opportunity to focus fully on solutions. 

Although Juhasz includes the perspectives 

of people on the frontlines who are pushing 

back, in her writing there is often limited 

opportunity to include their solutions. 

“I so often feel it is important to 

explain and hold to account things that 

have gone wrong and bad actors and 

bad outcomes,” says Juhasz. “But it really 

behooves us to spend the same amount of 

time and attention, if not more, on all of 

the incredible work that people are doing, 

Antonia Juhasz reporting for Newsweek on local 

Indigenous resistance to Shell's offshore oil plans. 

On the tip of the Alaskan Arctic in Wainwright. 

Photo© 2015 Gary Braasch 

to put forward the solutions and actively 

living the solutions.” 

The interviewees in “Sustainable 

Solutions to the Climate Crisis,” women of 

color on the frontlines of the energy and 

climate crisis, were keen to focus on that. 

Each reiterated that they have solutions 

to the climate crisis, but far too often their 

voices are not heard, or when they are, they 

are not supported with funding or policy to 

make these changes or to keep bad actors from 

interfering with what they are already doing. 

Juhasz hopes to leave readers knowing that 

we have the solutions to confront the climate 

crisis, as well as the inspiration and resources to 

get involved in implementing them. 


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ZEKE Magazine: Spring 2022 - Climate Issue

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