ZEKE Magazine: Spring 2024

ZEKE

THE MAGAZINE OF GLOBAL

SPRING 2024 VOL.10/NO.1 $15 US

DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY

Published by Social Documentary Network

SPRING 2024 VOL.10/ NO.1

$15 US

Photo by Natalya Saprunova from The Evenki

People

Photo by Sara Fretwell from Guardian of the

Forest

Photo by Małgorzata Smieszek from The Price

of Patriotism

Photo by Lola Flash from Women Changing the

Face of Documentary Photography

Photo by Samar Abu Elouf in Gaza

2 | THE EVENKI PEOPLE

Custodians of the Resources of Yakutia

By Natalya Saprunova

16 | GUARDIAN OF THE FOREST

Environmental Defenders Risk Their Lives to Protect

Ancestral Lands in the Peruvian Amazon

By Sarah Fretwell

40 | THE PRICE OF PATRIOTISM

Ukraine at War

By Małgorzata Smieszek

26 | Carbon, Cartels, and Corruption

by Sarah Fretwell

30 | ZEKE Awards: Honorable Mention Winners

William Daniels

Max Cabello Orcasitas

Maurizio Di Pietro

Isabella Franceschini

Rohingyatographer Collective

52 | Women Changing the Face of

Documentary Photography

J. Sybylla Smith

58 | Interview with Adriana Zehbrauskas

by Daniela Cohen

60 | A Photojournalist’s Work in Gaza

Photos by Samar Abu Elouf. Text by Lauren Walsh

62 | AI and the Future of Visual Storytelling

by Barbara Ayotte

64 | Book Reviews

On the Cover: Photograph

by William Daniels

Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

A member of the Rohingya

refugee community who has

been living on this tree-lined

beach for about 15 years.

ZEKE

THE

MAGAZINE OF

GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY

PHOTOGRAPHY


Dear ZEKE Readers:

Writing this column is always the last thing to do before sending ZEKE to print. It is stream

of consciousness as I reflect on what is in this issue, what is going on in the world, and

what is going on with SDN and ZEKE. Hopefully all those are in sync and usually that

means that the world is full of challenges and ZEKE is providing insightful visual and

written stories to bring greater awareness to these issues.

The Spring issue gives us the opportunity to present the winners of the ZEKE Awards

and in this issue we have two extraordinary first-place winners—Natalya Saprunova’s

“The Evenki People” and Sarah Fretwell’s “Guardian of the Forest.” Each of these

projects focuses on Indigenous people struggling with the environmental wreckage

caused by unregulated industrialization and extraction compounded by the problems of

climate change caused by both.

The third featured photo story, “The Price of Patriotism” by Małgorzata Smieszek,

reminds us of the devasting toll in Ukraine caused by Putin’s unmitigated war of

aggression against this nation and, too frequently, against its civilian population and

infrastructure.

Who said AI? Not since the founding of the internet has a technology transformed

our assumptions about information, truth, authorship, and communications so rapidly.

Barbara Ayotte writes an insightful essay titled “Reflections on Michael Christopher

Brown’s 90 Miles.” Brown, a photojournalist, has produced a reporting illustration

experiment about the exodus from Cuba, except that all the images are AI-generated,

have no grounding in real people or places, and no lens or camera were used in

creating the images—just word prompts into an AI engine.

What began as the worst assault on Israel since its founding with 1,200 people

killed and hundreds taken hostage, the Israel/Hamas war has now become an Israeli

assault—some say a genocide—against the civilian population of Gaza with nearly

34,000 deaths, over a million people on the brink of starvation, and the massive

destruction of civilian infrastructure. This entire issue of ZEKE could be devoted to the

repercussions around the world resulting from these events, but we will leave it to this

paragraph and the sobering article by Lauren Walsh with photographs from Gaza by

Samar Abu Elouf titled “A Photojournalists Work in Gaza.”

This spring, SDN launched its first in-person and virtual Visual Storytelling Festival

and I am thrilled and excited about the amazing programming we have brought to

the documentary photography community including seven panel discussions, five

workshops, two exhibitions, and the SDN Portfolio Reviews! I want to thank everyone

who has participated in the festival.

Lastly, I want to thank all of our generous donors—you can see the full list on page 71.

None of what we do would be possible without your generous support.

Glenn Ruga

2024 ZEKE Award Jurors

Barbara Ayotte

Communications Director for Social

Documentary Network and Editor of ZEKE

Magazine, Senior Director of Strategic

Communications at GBH.

Dudley M. Brooks

Deputy Director of Photography for The

Washington Post

Greig Cranna

Professional photographer and the founder

and director of the BRIDGE Gallery in

Cambridge, MA.

Lisa DuBois

New York-based ethnographic

photojournalist and curator and Diversity

Advisor for the Social Documentary

Network.

John Heffernan

President of the Foundation for Systemic

Change.

Michael Itkoff

Publisher, creative consultant, and co-founder

of Daylight books.

Ed Kashi

Photojournalist, filmmaker, and educator

Maria Monteleone

Enterprise Assignment Photo Editor for

Bloomberg News

Maggie Soladay

Senior Photography Editor at the Open

Society Foundations, New York.

Barbara Ayotte

Best regards,

Glenn Ruga

Executive Editor

ZEKE SPRING 2024 / 1

The Evenki

People

Custodians of the

Resources of Yakutia

by Natalya Saprunova

The north of Russia conceals countless

riches such as gold and diamonds,

but also Indigenous cultures. The

Evenks, in Yakutia, survive as best

they can alongside mining companies

who exploit their lands, sacrificed

on the altar of economic growth.

An Indigenous people of reindeer

herders, they were the ones who guided

Russian explorers to the deposits, enabling

the industrial development of the Soviet

Union. Today, the taiga is massively felled,

river beds are ravaged, and groundwater

is polluted, threatening entire ecosystems.

Deforestation favors the appearance of

hot winds and subsequently more than

local climate change. Indeed, the permafrost

contained in Siberian soils is melting

more and more, releasing large quantities

of greenhouse gases amplifying global

warming. In addition, ancient bacteria and

viruses dangerous to humans and animals

may arise.

Today, the Evenki hope to bring their

culture to life and to interest a younger

generation who suffers from the problems

of sedentarization and difficulties in

carrying out traditional activities linked to

reindeer herding, hunting, gathering, and

crafts. The Evenki people regret it all the

more as they hoped for a better tomorrow

for their children by working for Russian

geologists.

2 / ZEKE SPRING 2024

Galina Lazareva, 80, now lives

alone in her wooden house

in Iengra. In the late 1960s,

she worked with her husband

alongside the mining company

geologists in the taiga.

ZEKE SPRING 2024 3

Alla Kourbaltinova, 64, has spent her

entire life camping near the village

of Iengra, in the Neryungri region, in

the taiga of southern Yakutia. Despite

the death of her husband 3 years

ago, she continues to raise her herd

of 215 reindeer, with her son Aleksei

and 3 employees. This creates a

monthly salary of 35,000 rubles

(around 385 euros in 2023). Every

year, the reindeer are vaccinated

against brucellosis, piroplasmosis,

and anthrax, which risks resurfacing

with the melting of the permafrost.


ZEKE Fall 2023/ 5

Three 14-year-old cousins spend their

vacation in the reindeer herd of their

grandmother Alla Kourbaltinova.

Young Evenks ask themselves a lot of

questions about their future. While

some people like to spend time in the

taiga at the family reindeer camp,

they still don’t see themselves devoting

their entire lives to it.


ZEKE SPRING 2024 7

Vladimir is of Yakut

origin, but he has lived

self-sufficiently for 30 years

in the forest 20 km from

Syuldyukar near the Evenks.

Diamond mining is happening

all around his cabin.

For several years, they have

been breeding horses which

even give him milk. Seasonal

workers come to his house to

buy manure before returning

home to the garden.


ZEKE SPRING 2024 9

In the courtyard of

Margarita, an Evenki

language teacher, a man

who participated in the construction

of the Baikal-Amur

Magistral (BAM) railway line

in the 1970s, left a wagon

behind as a legacy.


ZEKE SPRING 2024 11


On the Iengra fur farm, the

Evenks breed sables and

foxes. If a sable skin is sold

for 3000 rubles, then white

fox skin can fetch up to

8000 rubles.

ZEKE SPRING 2024 13

Eduard Romanov, a construction worker

and activist from Yakutsk, was the initiator

of the draft law ‘On the protection

of permafrost in the Republic of Sakha

(Yakutia)’, and is visiting Oymyakon, the

coldest village in the world. Considering

himself to have shamanic gifts, he

asks the spirits to keep this place cold,

because it is the anticyclones of Yakutia

that regulate the planet’s climate.


ZEKE SPRING 2024 15

Guardian

of the Forest

Environmental defenders risk

their lives to protect ancestral

lands in the Peruvian Amazon.

by Sarah Fretwell

Apu Quinto Inuma was a former

lumber trafficker turned park ranger

turned rogue Forest Guardian. He

became a tireless international advocate

for the environment and Native

rights and his community of Santa

Rosillo in the Amazon of Peru.

To prevent the devastation of land, logging,

and drug cartels operating in neighboring

communities, Quinto organized other

Natives to patrol the forest even after the

government denied their ancestral rights to

the territory. They worked to protect their children’s

future and “their brothers who could

not speak” — the trees of the forest.

With old guns, machetes, and rubber

boots, they volunteer beside their village in

San Martin. On patrols, they look for new

burn and grow areas, document it with cell

phones, and send the notes back to local

officials. Struggling to survive in this remote

region, many people here work for illegal

logging and drug cartels.

In November of 2023, Quinto was shot

and killed in retaliation for his environmental

work.

His spirit still lives on in the forest.


At the end of a sweltering

day, bathing and playtime

are a highlight for the children.

The community is still

applying for the title to all

of their ancestral forests and

fighting for their children’s

future. Santa Rosillo, San

Martin, Peru. December

2022.

ZEKE SPRING 2024 17

At the end of their patrol,

the Santa Rosillo Forest

Guardians strip down,

put on a few accents, and

excitedly ask for a portrait.

They are proud of what they

do and the status their work

is given in the community.

Since being recognized by

local officials, it has forced

the campesinos to treat them

and the land with more

respect but has upset the

land and lumber mafia working

with many people in this

region. With so much out

of the Native community’s

control, the patrol has been

an opportunity for empowerment

and self-determination.

This image was taken in the

buffer zone of Cordillera

Azul National Park outside

of Santa Rosillo, San Martin,

Peru. December 2022.


ZEKE SPRING 2024 19


The Forest Guardians of

Santa Rosillo inspect a

recently discovered burn

area in the Cordillera

Azul National Park buffer

zone. When you walk into

these areas, it always feels

like you are witnessing a

massacre. Quinto Inuma

Alvarado (left) estimated

this area had been burning

for over a month. Typically,

the high-value timber is

removed and sold, then

the area is burned, and

now crops will be planted

by settlers or coca will be

planted for sale to the drug

cartel. Santa Rosillo, San

Martin, Peru, December

2022.

ZEKE SPRING 2024 21


Breakfast time in the dining

area of Forest Guardian

founder Quinto Inuma

Alvarado’s home with his

wife Marlith Mandruma

Florès, daughter Raquel

Inuma Mandruma, and

neighbor. Quinto’s biggest

wish is for the community

to live in peace someday.

Santa Rosillo, San Martin,

Peru, December 2022.

ZEKE SPRING 2024 23

A burn scar deep in the

jungle of San Martin on

the border of the drug

cartel region of Loredo.

In the modern-day Wild

West, some land is sold

illegally without a proper

title, and some land is just

taken. There is rampant

corruption, with few officials

enforcing forest and land

laws. Attempts at Peruvian

government regulation have

fallen short, and Natives

point to the rampant corruption

of regional officials.

Native activists say the

forest is suffering and cannot

speak for itself. Although

the communities surrounding

Cordillera Azul National

Park have repeatedly been

denied the title to their land,

they believe it is their duty to

fight for the rights of nature.

They also believe that in

doing so, they are working

for the planet’s survival, an

obligation they take as a

sacred duty. Santa Rosillo,

San Martin, Peru, December

2022.


ZEKE SPRING 2024 25

On November 29, 2023,

I received a message

from my friend in Peru,

“Sarah, I have some

very sad and horrible

news…Today, they

killed Quinto Inuma.”

What you should know about

Apu Quinto Inuma (Quinto)

is that he was a husband and

father deeply loved by his wife,

his four- and sixteen-year-old

daughters, and his 21-year-old son.

He was a jovial visionary who worked

against all odds at all hours of the day.

He would spend the little money he had to

travel for hours, go without eating to make

it to an important meeting, and still have a

smile on his face. He worked to protect his

tribe’s home, their future—and yours.

CARBON, CARTELS,

& CORRUPTION

The real reason Peru’s Amazon is being lost &

the environmental defenders who can save it.

by Sarah Fretwell

Apu Quinto Inuma and Sarah Fretwell outside of his

home in the village of Santa Rosillo in the Amazon

region of San Martin, Peru, one year before his

assassination. He was a husband, father, the religious

leader of his community, and the 32nd environmental

defender murdered in Peru since 2013. Follow his

case by scanning the QR code at the end of this

article.

He was the founder of the Santa Rosillo

“Forest Guardians.” He was assassinated

in front of his wife Marlith and their son

Kevin while returning from a conference

on ancestrial knowledge and environmental

defense.

Quinto and his family lived in the village

of Santa Rosillo, along the banks

of the Yanayacu River and the northern

Amazon province of San Martin, Peru.

Santa Rosillo is about 12 hours from the

nearest police outpost. If they ever visit,

government officials come to this remote

region by helicopter. The community

struggled to survive amid settlers, illicit

logging, and land and drug cartels with

no rule of law.

A year earlier, I had traveled down the

Yanayacu with Quinto. It became a tumultuous

overnight journey after someone

sabotaged the boat engine in retaliation

for reporting lumber traffickers to the

Peruvian government.

While new “settlers” to the area could

purchase land and secure land titles,

Quinto’s tribe and family were denied these

rights. The one government official who

tried to help Quinto was fired right before

he was going to sign the title. Without the

title the community could do little to combat

the illicit activity in their area.

With hundreds of hectares of remote

land to monitor, even when an illegal

runway built for the drug cartel was

reported, it took over a year

for a government official to

visit and check the reports of

coca fields.

Although Natives’ ancestors

managed the land for

generations, Native groups I

met with told me they did not

receive “prior consultation”

as required by Peruvian law

in the creation of Cordillera

Azul National Park (2001), Cordillera

Escalera (2005), and the resulting $87

million carbon deal (2008). While the

Peruvian government and carbon developers

benefited from the multi millions

of dollars, the project essentially turned

Amazon Natives into trespassers

on their ancestral land,

making it bureaucratically

impossible for them to secure

land titles. Without the title, they

could not receive money from the carbon

deal.

Disregard for Legal Rights

The park and carbon project are being

shared globally as a conservation success

by REDD+, the voluntary mitigation frameworks

created by the UN to reduce carbon

emissions in developing countries through

forest conservation that includes funding

and technical assistance. The plan includes

a theoretical protocol for Indigenous

peoples and community-based monitoring.

All of this would be wonderful if those

conservation decisions and management

had included the first peoples of the

land that was being conserved. In Peru,

as in much of the Global South, the rush

for conservation dollars has been at the

expense of the Indigenous communities.

The Native communities have long


Indigenous activist Marisol Garcia poses for a portrait on an early morning boat ride to the village Caserio Tupac

Amaru in December of 2022. She told me, “We firmly believe the whole Amazon is connected to our spirituality.

The waters of our territory are the blood that flows in our body. The air purified by our trees is our breath of life.

They are like our brothers—the trees, the animals, the water. The only difference is they have no voice.” Caserio

Tupac Amaru, San Martin, Peru. Photograph by Sarah Fretwell.

questioned whether the conservation

areas and offsets are being correctly managed.

They took the government to court

to get a list of which multinational companies

had purchased offsets.

Now, scientists are finding evidence

that the tribes’ concerns are well-founded.

Recent studies report many offset projects

are not achieving what they claim

(Alejandro Guizar-Coutiño et al. 2022),

and some offsets are accelerating carbon

emissions.

Activists here see the fallacy of multinational

corporations declaring themselves

“carbon neutral” simply because

they have purchased carbon offsets from

Cordillera Azul National Park.

I met Quinto when I joined him and

other Indigenous leaders at meetings with

the International Union for Conservation

of Nature (IUCN). The officials did not

even try to hide their annoyance and contempt

as they sat in meetings with Native

federations that were rightfully upset over

this REDD+ endorsement.

A year before, Quinto had reported

the discovery of a coca field—the base

crop for cocaine—while on patrol. As

a result, he was brutally beaten by his

neighbors. Quinto and his family were

evacuated to a town several hours

away. They bravely returned to their

home in Santa Rosillo three months later.

According to his lawyer, Cristina Leon,

Quinto was guaranteed police protection

against three of the men who were eventually

implicated in his murder, but there

was no budget for it.

Meanwhile, the government had millions

of dollars from the the carbon deal

from Cordillera Azul National Park.

An investigation in Quinto’s assassination

linked a gang called “The Jackals of Santa

Rosillo” to his murder, with the accused

including the governor of his region.

Illegal Law Modification

Immediately after his murder, the Peruvian

government amended Peru’s wildlife and

forestry law. The amendment essentially

decriminalized logging and has primed

the Peruvian Amazon for a massive land

grab, more illicit activity, and catastrophic

deforestation.

The recent amendment ultimately

legitimized multinational businesses, illicit

industries, and landowners who have

already carried out illegal land clearing

and deforestation in conservation areas.

Marisol Garcia, President of the Native

federation FEPIKECA, noted the amendment

makes the death of environmental

defenders and everything they were fighting

for feel pointless.

Quinto’s attorney Cristina Leon, in

a statement released by Forest Peoples

Programme, noted, “It should also be

emphasized that local authorities, in this

case the lieutenant governor and municipal

agent, are allegedly implicated in the murder,

and this is highlighted by the fact that

they, together with Mr. Limber Ríos Ruiz,

have at all times led the opposition to the

recognition of the collective territorial rights

of Santa Rosillo de Yanayacu, ...”

Native organizations in the Peruvian

Amazon responded in outrage, mobilizing

Indigenous citizens across the Amazon to

defend against deforestation by “invaders”

and to prevent the further killing of

Native people for the sake of taking more

of their land. They issued a joint statement:

“We call on the international community

to alert all donors and countries that

promote finance conservation activities in

Peru, in order to demand that the Peruvian

Government seriously commit to respecting

the nature and the intangibility of the

forests of the communal territories in order

to avoid the serious consequences that

will come from our Native communities.”

As Native activists work tirelessly to

actively build the future of Peru, they are

denied a legitimate seat at the table as

their ancestral land, their children’s future,

and one of the largest carbon sinks on

the planet is being clear cut for the sake

of profit. No Natives I met felt they had

experienced monetary benefit from the

carbon deal.

What I experienced during my time

with Quinto and other environmental

defenders in the Peruvian Amazon is

their determination to participate in the

conservation of their ancestral land and

their desire to build a sustainable future for

their country.

What I witnessed was them being

blocked at every turn by racism, bureaucracy,

corruption, and the mentality of

profit over people and the planet. Those

blocking them include the Peruvian government,

gangs, cartels, corrupt officials,

researchers, carbon developers, and

foreign organizations diligently working

towards UN climate goals.

Indigenous understanding of the situation

does not advance their success;

rather it is ignored by experts and politicians

with a Western paradigm, thinking

they know better than the people whose

families have managed the forests for

thousands of years.

In response to the law, Nelsith

Sangama from Interethnic Association

for the Development of the Peruvian

Rainforest (AIDESEP) was quoted by

forestpeople.org, “This amendment of

ZEKE SPRING 2024/ 27

The Forest Guardians of Santa Rosillo take a break from the midday heat in a recently discovered burn area in the Cordillera Azul National Park buffer zone. The Forest

Guardians (Left to Right) Edgar Inuma Mandruma, Quinto Inuma Alvarado (deceased), Clodomiro Dias Olimares, and Manuel Inuma Alvarado. Santa Rosillo, San Martin,

Peru, December 9, 2022. Photograph by Sarah Fretwell.

the Forestry Law is worrying. Companies

are free to follow rules and remain free

from sanctions. And the State is legalizing

deforestation that would cause

terrible damage to our ecosystems. With

the approved law, the risk that property

titles and certificates of possession will be

issued in an irregular manner increases.

We Indigenous peoples and environmental

rights defenders will be affected,

because the risks of illegal activities that

invade our territories and cause deforestation

will increase.”

In standing by the forestry law amendment,

Peru’s government is failing their

people, mocking their international commitments,

and preventing a truly sustainable

future for Peru.

A Sustainable Way Forward

What the global community needs

to understand is that our money and

good intentions are getting lost in Peru’s

“comia” (bribery) system, illicit industries,

and carbon developer jargon. Peru’s

agriculture and forestry departments are

not keeping their commitment to Norway,

Germany, and the UK, and the REDD+

priority actions. It is time to release aid

money only when Peru’s government has

genuinely met its climate commitments.

Multinational corporations cannot simply

buy credits without changing business

practices and declare themselves “carbon

neutral.” As a consumer, the true cost of

ignoring this reality in the global economy

is that Quinto’s children are now growing

up without their father, and our climate

reality is being greenwashed. There is no

offsetting our way out of this. Our habits

have to change. As consumers in the

global market, we vote with our dollars

and habits.

Environmental defenders on the frontlines

are the last line of defense against

land traffickers, illegal loggers, and drug

cartels. What I have also come to understand

is that environmental defenders are

unstoppable because they are working for

an entity more powerful than any multinational

company or Peruvian politician.

They are working on behalf of Mother

Earth, and they will defend her at all costs.

As activist Marisol Garcia put it, “We

Indigenous people are paying a high

price for defending the Amazon. For a

long time, our land was called the lungs

of the world. It is more than that. It is the

heart of the planet.”

Environmental defenders here know

this so deeply that they are risking their

lives to protect it.

I have spent the last few months wondering

how Quinto’s daughters will finish

school, and what quality of life his family

will have in a city under police guard.

I have listened on the other end of the

phone as his wife cries from trauma. I’ve

lamented what will happen to the forest.

I have asked myself what desperation

drives another to kill a father for trying to

make a better future for his community.

Despite all my unanswered questions,

I have started to sense there may

be some cosmic justice at work here. On

November 29, 2023, Quinto’s assassins

illuminated the Forest Guardians’ cause

across the globe and ensured Quinto’s

vision will shape the future of the fight for

the Amazon.

For more information

about Quinto and

the Forest Defenders,

visit this QR code.


Visual Stories About Global Themes

Photo by João Coelho from The Iron Quest

Social Documentary Network

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 print and

digital publication allows us to

present visual stories both in print

and online with in-depth 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:

Online and in-person, 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.

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.

ZEKE Award: The ZEKE Award

for Documentary Photography

and the ZEKE Award for Systemic

Change are juried by a panel of

international media professionals.

Award winners are exhibited

at Photoville in Brooklyn, NY and

featured in ZEKE Magazine.

Join us!



ZEKE AWARD HONORABLE MENTION WINNER

Above: Central Dominican Republic. Haitian

descendant in a Batey (company-owned hostel)

owned by the Central Romana Corporation (the

biggest cane company in DR). Recently the U.S.

banned any sugar coming from Central Romana

for suspicion of forced labor.

Right top: Nepalgunj, Nepal. Sapana Badi (21) belongs to the Badis, a

subgroup of Nepalese untouchables (Dalits), once responsible for entertaining

members of the upper castes of the country with song and dance. The majority of

the women were also formerly involved in the sex trade and this is still the case

of a minority of them today. Without papers, Sapana, who is stateless, could not

escape this vicious circle and prostitutes herself in order to earn her life.


William Daniels

The Stateless | Lebanon, Dominican Republic, Nepal, Ivory Coast, Bangladesh

Right bottom: Western Dominican Republic. Francesca

(not her real name) and her three children, five, four and

eight months, are of Haitian descent but born in Dominican

Republic. Following the Constitutional court decision in

2013, they lost their Dominican citizenship and are now

stateless.

What happens when

a person’s identity

is negated to the

point that they are

deprived of any official existence?

This person becomes stateless:

they do not belong to any country

– not even the one they consider

their own. Most of the world’s

10 million stateless people do

not feature in any census. They

are seldom refugees: many have

never left the land on which their

ancestors were born.

The question of who belongs

and who does not, who has

access to resources and who

should be denied them, is a hot

topic in our times of pervasive

identity crises and populism fueled

by social media. The philosopher

Hannah Arendt wrote that citizenship

is “the right to have rights”;

in The Origins of Totalitarianism,

she described the process of

dehumanization of stateless

people: when “others” are created

and differences are exploited,

citizenship becomes an instrument

to deprive rights of those who

could threaten political, ethnic or

economic interests.

This exhibit explores stateless

communities, or “at risk of

statelessness,” in six countries.

Support for this project

provided by the National

Geographic Society.



Above: A woman with her baby poses at the entrance to

the Oronccoy district, shortly before going to work on her

farmland. October 2015.

Right top: A relative of the Aspur Ccaicuri family removes stones

from the wall of an abandoned house in the village of Totora to use

in the construction of the tombs of Sabina Ccaicuri Castro and her

children Mario, Amelia, and Yolanda Azpur Ccaicuri.


Max Cabello Orcasitas

Chungui and Oronccoy: Scenes from the Peruvian Post Conflict

Right bottom: Nelida Valenzuela during her wedding celebrations

in Chungui. The wedding celebrations usually take place

during the main celebrations of the Chungui district, which are

in homage to the Virgin of the Rosary, who is considered the

Patroness of the town.

The Peruvian territories of

Chungui and Oronccoy

were the scenes of

massacres caused by the

Maoist-inspired Sendero Luminoso

(Shining Path) organization and

the Peruvian military and police

forces during the armed conflict

that devastated Peru between

1980 and 1995. Sixteen percent

of its inhabitants were murdered:

almost 1,300 victims; buried in

300 mass graves many of which

have already been exhumed.

These tragedies were not

isolated events. Ayacucho was the

region that had the highest number

of deaths and disappearances

reported to the national Truth and

Reconciliation Commission: of a

total of 69,000 victims throughout

Peru, 26,000 deaths (almost

40%) occurred in this region.

Forty years later, Chungui and

Oronccoy share extreme poverty

and the precariousness of basic

health and electrical services.

Although they have experienced

the restoration of their cultural

rituals, the slow process of exhumations

and search for the bodies

that disappeared during those

brutal years continues, waiting to

be recognized by their relatives,

most of whom are orphans and

survivors of the conflict.



Maurizio Di Pietro

Turkana’s Resilience | Kenya

A fisherman on the shores of Turkana Lake rests after fishing. According

to Kenya’s National Climate Change Action Plan, more than 60% of

Turkana’s inhabitants are pastoralists, while only 10% engage in fishing

in the lake waters. The Turkana people have diversified their livelihood

strategies as a means of reducing vulnerability to endemic conflicts and

drought. May 2017.

Right top: A shepherd from Kakonk’u village, armed

with a rifle, leads the cattle to pasture. Desertification

brings drought and famine but also armed conflict over

grazing areas and water resources. According to a

United Nations report, more than 150 people are killed

annually in cattle raids in Turkana. March 2018.


Right bottom: On the shores of Lake Turkana, a child is fishing.

About 90% of the inhabitants of the county live below the

poverty line and about 80% have never attended school. In Lake

Turkana, fishing is primarily done by individual fishermen on the

first few kilometers of the lake. There are no large fishing vessels

and very few with engines so the fishermen share hand-crafted

and hand-powered boats. March 2018.

Turkana, in northwest

Kenya, is the poorest and

least developed county

in the ASALs (Arid and

Semi-Arid Lands). Almost all of the

inhabitants of the Turkana district

are pastoralists, so their survival

depends entirely on livestock,

natural resources for food, and

daily activities.

In the last few decades, due to

climate change, the air temperature

increased by about three

degrees, while more frequent and

prolonged droughts have reduced

the natural resource base. Pasture

resources for livestock have been

dramatically reduced, encouraging

those closest to Lake Turkana

to turn to fish as an alternative

livelihood.

The area is the fuse of violent

conflict. Indeed the proliferation of

illegal arms from South Sudan and

the reduction of natural resources

has contributed to the escalation

of insecurity along the area’s

shared borders with Ethiopia,

Sudan, Uganda, and other counties

in Kenya such as Pokot and

Marsabit, causing the death of

hundreds of people every year.



Above: Porto Tolle, June 2023. The interior

of the chimney of the decommissioned Enel

thermoelectric power plant located in Polesine

Camerini. A study commissioned by the

University of Padua is assessing whether to

preserve the structure, which could require

extensive maintenance and, above all, safety

issues for guests of the future tourist facility.

Right top: Rosolina, November 2023. Fishermen engage in the ‘Fraìma’: the traditional

fish harvest that occurs near the onset of winter. In autumn, as temperatures

drop, the fish instinctively seek their way back to the sea. However, the enclosed

basins of the valley make this migration virtually impossible. Following the introduction

of new saltwater, the fish are induced to swim into a specific channel where

they are captured and sorted. Fish raised in the valley grow under semi-natural

conditions and require meticulous management based on empirical knowledge

passed down orally by valley dwellers for generations.


Isabella Franceschini

The Leap of Fish That Dream of Flying, Italy

Right bottom: Porto Tolle, April 2023. The third boiler tower

of the thermoelectric plant in Polesine Camerini is dismantled.

Following the concept of a circular economy, the

Futur-e project aims to transform 24 industrial sites in Italy

into eco-friendly places dedicated to science, art, culture,

and tourism.

Since 2021, the

UNESCO MaB (Man

and Biosphere) Reserve

in the Po Delta has

been undergoing a significant

transformation with the decommissioning

of the colossal Italian

thermal power plant in Polesine

Camerini. The plant is being

transformed into an innovative

and eco-sustainable tourist hotspot

geared towards environmental

conservation and local employment.

This redevelopment project

spans 300 hectares and it is part

of the Futur-e project, led by

the Enel Group, which aims to

repurpose 23 disused industrial

sites and a former mining area

that have completed their role

in the energy system. Between

2021 and 2023, the work

documented the economic and

social fabric of this fragile area,

historically threatened by hydraulic

dangers such as floods and

subsidence. Here, the complex

relationship between river, land,

and sea has influenced human

settlements, engaged in uncertain

adaptation to the morphology

of an ecosystem in continuous

evolution, further exacerbated by

sudden climate changes. We are

currently experiencing a historical

period of profound transformation

that urges us to reconsider our

way of life, placing increasing

emphasis on renewable energies

and prioritizing pathways towards

a zero-emission energy system.



Saiful displays the bullet scar on his neck, a brutal reminder

of his escape from Myanmar. His physical wound healed,

but the trauma lingers. 2023 © Sahat Zia Hero


Rohingyatographer Collective

Through Rohingya Eyes: A Journey of Resilience | Bangladesh

Rohingyatographer is

more than a photography

project, it is a

platform of narrative

justice for Rohingya refugees.

Through the photographic magazine

Rohingyatographer, refugees

recover parts of their lost identity,

sharing their stories of resilience

and hope amid despair.

Rohingyatographer is distinguished

by empowering Rohingya

people to become narrators, not

just subjects, promoting a level of

authenticity rarely seen. In doing

so, the project challenges existing

stereotypes, provokes meaningful

dialogue, and instills a new

respect for human resilience.

Top: Abdul Ali, aged 36,

captures the tragic fire that

broke out in Camp 5 in March,

2022 © Md Iddris

Bottom: Samiya Sultana Reya

is seven years old. She is looking

at her empty perfume spray

bottle. 2022 © Md Jamal


The Price of

Patriotism

Ukraine at War

by Małgorzata Smieszek

A

nna lives high in the mountains.

Her sons and relatives went to

the front after the war started in

February 2022. Following the

completion of his mandatory

military service, 21-year-old

Ivan decided to stay in the army. He

guards the Ukrainian border. 25-yearold

Jurij returned home after 15 months

of fighting in Bakhmut. He did not

expect that it would be so hard on the

front. While being extremely exhausted

for months, he would repel enemy

attacks and experience betrayal from

residents of the eastern part of Ukraine

while risking his own life. 47-year-old

Volodymyr has been fighting in Donbas

since the beginning of the war. His wife

and daughter are deeply affected by his

involvement. The daily life of stress and

uncertainty has caused serious health

problems for the women. Mykola, 38,

died in Bakhmut. He left behind two

daughters who are convinced that they

lost their father because they did not

manage to give him a hand-made cross

in time.

Right: Katia and Ania’s father died on the

front. The girls are struggling with the loss

and have redirected their anger towards

their mother.



Alexander completed his

mandatory military service

many years ago. His mother,

raised with respect for

tradition and love for the

homeland, still keeps her

sons’ uniforms.



Julia comes from a patriotic

family. From the first days

of the invasion, she has

been fully engaged in the

war efforts along with her

brother, Stefan, who died in

Zaporizhia.



Since the war has

been going on the

villagers have given

up celebrating. They

believe that it is not

appropriate to rejoice

when soldiers are

risking their lives on

the front.


Natalia bids farewell to her

husband. She was waiting for

this moment for a month. The

body of the fallen soldier was

only taken from the battlefield

after repelling the Russian

assault.

ZEKE SPRING 2024 49

Jurij did not expect the front

line to be so difficult. After

returning home, he is struggling

with war trauma and is

trying to rebuild his relationships

with his family.


ZEKE SPRING 2024 51

Photo by Lola Flash: Felli, 2022. From surmise series. Courtesy of Jenkins Johnson Gallery.


WOMEN ARE

CHANGING THE

FACE OF

DOCUMENTARY

PHOTOGRAPHY

by J. Sybylla Smith

“Look at us.

Take your time.

Listen to us.

It’s time.”

This clarion call

delivered by nineteen

international women

and female-identifying

photographers

from the stage of

Paris Photo in 2019

was a historical event I was grateful to

witness. La Part Des Femmes, a collective

dedicated to the visibility and recognition

of women photographers, repeated the

above refrain while reading their written

manifesto. It was a powerful beginning to

the day-long symposium on gender parity

hosted by Elles x Paris Photo. Inaugurated

in 2018 and partnering with the French

Ministry of Culture and Kering Women In

Motion, this initiative increased the exhibition

of women artists from 20% to 36%

at Paris Photo over the next five years.

Previous statistics on exhibition and acquisition

of work by women artists at major

art organizations are under 10% and as

low as 2% for women of color.

A convergence of scholarship, exhibitions,

and educational events addressing

the current and historical invisibility,

misrepresentation, and overlooked

contributions of women and non-binary

photographers has grown exponentially in

the past decade.

International collaborations dedicated

to research, coalition-building,

data collection, and a critical analysis

of contemporary and past practices

and methodologies in the field are

dismantling the ecosystems of patriarchy.

A global force for change has been

unleashed challenging the dominant

gaze, one informed by privilege and

elitism, offering monolithic perspectives

and reductive generalizations.

Contemporary women and

female-identifying photographers

are activating a new form of documenting

that is led by content and

context. Grounded in extensive

research, they construct a matrix

of intersectional ideas, histories,

realities, and considerations. A

powerful impact of their work is

their intentional approach to lead

with an awareness of power differentials,

to offer a presentation

predicated on inspiring dialogue,

the aim is one of illumination of

our complex and messy world in

pursuit of a deeper understanding

and a hope to provoke informed

change.

What We See

We are at an inflection point spearheaded

by the coordinated efforts of

historically excluded groups. A humanization

of photography is underway interrogating

photography’s role as a source of

harm and its potential as a positive force

for change. Its theory, practice and history

are being challenged to expand beyond

the idolization of sole practitioners and

the canonization of a mostly male visual

perspective.

At the forefront is Fast Forward Women

In Photography, founded in 2014 by Anna

Fox and Karen Knorr of the University for

the Creative Arts in Farnham, England.

Their value-driven manifesto and 2020

Report on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

set a foundation and a path. Their impressive

output has resulted in five international

convenings to dialogue and share

resources in Brazil, the U.S., India, Finland,

Nigeria, and the U.K. Mentorships have

been created in China and Africa. Topics

of investigation include: gender representation,

use of archives, political activism,

recognizing the framing of photographic

practice, conflict, and empowerment.

Putting Ourselves in the Picture, their

collaborative 2022 publication, is a

generous project-based book. It shares

the process and results of empowering

refugee women from Angola, Congo, El

Salvador, Iran, Iraq, Uganda, and Qatar.


Aida Muluneh, “The Rain of Fire - Vietnam,” 2020, commissioned by Nobel Peace Center. courtesy of Jenkin

Johnson Gallery.

Autograph, Impressions Gallery, and

Women for Refugee Women, were active

in this coalition to teach photographic

skills as a means to tell personal stories. By

documenting their lived experiences these

courageous women increased representation,

created community, initiated healing

and restitution.

French photographer and activist

Marie Docher created a blog, Atlantes

et Cariatides, in 2014, aimed at critically

examining systems of representation in

photography. She then took her research

findings and boldly confronted the documentary-focused

festival Les Rencontres

d’Arles in 2018 on their lack of gender

representation. This led to the successful

increase of 51% of exhibitions being by

women in 2019.

I attended the groundbreaking

exhibition, “Who’s Afraid of Women

Photographers? 1839-1945” held concurrently

at Musée L’Orangerie and Musée

d’Orsay in 2016 in partnership with the

National Museum of Women in the Arts,

focusing on contributions by women

photographers in the U.K., Germany,

France, and the U.S. In a Zoom interview,

Paris-based curator and author Clara

Bouveresse shared she considers this

exhibition as a pivotal point in opening

dialogue and instigating data collection

on gender parity in Europe. Bouveresse

authored the three-volume set, Women

Photographers, highlighting 190 international

women photographers over three

centuries for the Photofile series.

New histories are being sourced that

enrich our knowledge of contributions by

women and female-identifying photographers

along with queer and women

of color. As Marie Robert notes in her

essay, A Long Tradition of Being Ignored,

“..women were everywhere and recorded

everything” (pg 21). She and Luce Lebart

prove this in their seminal book, A World

History of Women Photographers. The

500-page publication compiles images

by 300 women photographers from

five continents spanning two centuries,

accompanied by text by 160 female writers.

Photographer Joy Gregory’s recently

released, Shining Lights: Black Women

Photographers in 1980-90 s Britain, is

a critical anthology co-published with

Autograph and Mack Books.

Critical analysis of our field is led by

asking questions with an abiding awareness

of a photograph’s multiplicities. In

spotlighting work by women and substantiating

gender-based inequities, we

inform our current reality. Contemporary

theorist Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, writes

extensively on her concept of civil

imagination. By investigating the layered

dynamics between the image maker,

the viewer, and the subject, she illuminates

power differentials inherent in our

medium. Her hope for photography lies

in our ability to see beyond oppressive

systems, reject their siloing constructs, and

embrace our common humanity. Azoulay

worked with Wendy Ewald, Susan

Meiselas, Leigh Raiford, and Laura

Wexler, for a decade to collectively

reframe infrastructures of photography

to present clusters of vantage points from

which to consider its complexities, offering

a stunning pedagogical tool. Their findings

are offered in Collaborations: Toward

a Potential History of Photography.

Who We See

How has the mitigation of diverse visual

representation shaped our perception and

knowledge, our opinions and behaviors?

Author Sara Ahmed states; “If a world can

be what we learn not to notice, noticing

becomes a form of political labor. What do

we learn not to notice?” A concerted effort

to notice the specificities of who we do not

see represented is well under way and the

results of these observations are striking.

A Le Part Des Femmes study in 2021

found 94% of the French national press

images were made by men. An analysis

of how genders were photographed


Photograph by Rehab Edalil. Embroidered photograph

of Nadia by her cousin Mariam. Up until the 1990s,

women were prohibited from being seen by men

from other tribes without their consent. As technology

evolved, the awareness that an image might be

circulated on the internet and accessed by people

beyond one’s control escalated this concern. This led

some women to refuse to ever be photographed for

fear of losing control of how and to whom they’re represented.

In this collaborative process with the female

Bedouins, every woman I photograph adds embroidery

to her portrait or to a photograph she chooses

printed on fabric. In the process, she freely reveals

or conceals the contents of the photograph using the

traditional medium of embroidery, taking full control

over her representation in the project. St. Catherine,

South Sinai, Egypt, 2019. From the series The Longing

of the Stranger Whose Path Has Been Broken.

found women, queer, and people of color

in submissive postures with gestures of less

agency as opposed to stances by men

reflecting authority and strength. Women

Photograph’s publication What We See,

states 85% of photojournalism is by men.

Positive change is being led by The San

Francisco Chronicle Director of Visuals,

Nicole Frugé who according to the 2023

Women Photograph study achieved 49%

lead photo bylines by women and nonbinary

photographers.

Catchlight’s State of Photography

2022 is an in-depth international study

that targets economic insecurity and

other risks for historically marginalized

imagemakers. It found solid agreement on

these current problems in our field; sexism

79%, socioeconomic disparity 78%, and

structural racism 75%.

In 2019, Getty Images, Dove, and

Girlgaze began Project Show Us resulting

in adding 5,000 images of diverse

female-identifying and non-binary

women to their stock photography

database — and notably they hired 119

women and female-identifying photographers

to make them. (Inc.com) The same

year, the British Journal of Photography

and 1854 Photograph found women

constitute 70-80% of photography students

globally yet account for 13-15% of

professional photographers.

Substantiating these identity-based

inequities is essential to address their

causal relationships. Stratification and

othering, flattens our human complexities

to be singularly categorized. This predominant

vertical power structure preferences

a good, better, best hierarchy, of both the

image maker and the subject. A horizontal

power structure, based on rhizomatic

theory, foundations a multiplicity of

perspectives and contributions, it thrives

on connectivity, recognizing our interdependence

as our greatest sustenance and

strength. A conscious shift towards this

community-focused and collective-based

image-making is being led by women,

genderqueer and people of color— those

previously unnoticed.

In 2020 the The Photo Bill of Rights

, authored by Authority Collective, Color

Positive, Diversify Photo, The Everyday

Projects, Juntos, the National Press

Photographers Association, Indigenous

Photograph, and Women Photograph,

called out harmful practices that marginalize

workers in visual journalism and

the editorial media industry. Focused on

challenging the dominant media gaze, in

addition to a shared manifesto, it offers

toolkits, programming, and resources

to individuals and institutions. It aims to

empower the most marginalized: “BIPOC,

women, and LGBTQIA+ lens-based workers”,

and it notes these visual storytellers

constitute “a genuine mirror to the world.”

Rethink Everything, is a women-initiated

investigation examining interconnectivity

with the intention to highlight causal

relationship. It began as an exhibition

Pensar Todo De Nuevo, curated by

Andrea Giunta, and produced by Rolf

Art of Argentina in March, 2020. During

the 52nd edition of Recontres d’Arles it

launched in book form and as an exhibition

titled, Puisqu’il fallait tout repenser.

The Eye Mama Project is a book,

exhibition, and educational platform that

began on Instagram during the pandemic.

Fifty thousand professional photographers

from fifty countries who are mothers

shared images of their lived experiences.

The founder Karni Arieli calls it a collective

mama gaze, authentically documenting

the light and dark side of motherhood. This

platform continues to address representation,

shared resourcing, community-building,

and advocacy for artists/mothers.

After washing clothes in a roadside puddle, a woman walks home through a parched field in drought-stricken Somaliland.

A changing, more extreme climate has upended millions of lives in the Horn of Africa. As cattle, goats,

and camels have died off, seminomadic pastoralists like her have had no choice but to move, often to displacement

camps or cities.


“Save America” Rally. Miami, Florida (2022) © Debi Cornwall, courtesy of Prix Elysée. From Model Citizens

(Radius Books, forthcoming 2024)

How We See

Aida Muluneh, a recent Catchlight fellow,

is an accomplished artist and visionary

leader who advances African photography

within the continent and amplifies its

representation worldwide. She expanded

the Addis Foto Fest, supported the online

platform Africa Foto Fair, and founded

Africa Print House. Muluneh’s The Road of

Glory series begs the question: have our

human advancements lessened our mutual

compassion? These bold self-portraits are

layered with symbolism investigating how

hunger has been historically used as a

weapon globally.

Multimedia documentary artist Debi

Cornwall, a 2023 Prix Elysée and 2019

Leica Women Foto Awardee, investigates

and illuminates the systemic performances

of power within the complex roles and

dynamics of citizenship. Exhibited in

Europe, Asia, Canada, Australia and the

U.A.E., her work utilizes still and moving

images. Model Citizens, Cornwall’s

2023 exhibition at the Photo Elysée

Museum postulates; “How do staging,

performance, and role play inform ideas

about citizenship in a violent land whose

people no longer agree on what is true?“

The accompanying publication, her third

monograph, Model Citizens, will be

released this Spring.

Rehab Eldalil, based in Egypt, is a

2024 Foam Talent awardee who explores

the complexities of land, migration,

belonging and autonomy of Sinai’s

Bedouin community. Her book and field

guide, The Longing of the Stranger Whose

Path Has Been Broken, published with

Fotoevidence, is the result of a five-year

in-depth community engagement. Eldalil

grew her project in collaboration with the

community including encouraging women

to embroider their portraits as a means of

retaining agency over their shared image.

Lola Flash is an American Black lesbian

photographer on the forefront of genderqueer

visual politics for decades. Their

project surmise is an account of perception

and representation of queer people

focused on the effects on individual

psyches and the society at large. Syzygy,

the vision, is their Afrofuturist self-portrait

series. The retrospective book, Believable:

Traveling with My Ancestors, includes

their multiple projects and is published by

Diverse Humanity.

Marni Shindelmans hauntingly beautiful

nightscapes belie their light source

– U.S. ICE detention centers. Restore the

Night Sky, begins with the statement,

“Detention is everywhere. You just need

to know where to look.” Her ongoing

documentation of the 45 private detention

centers housing 45,000 mostly women

and children addresses immigration, rural

economies, and night pollution impacts.

It is one of several series in the 2024

Fotofest Biennial: Critical Geography

which “explores how space, place, and

communities are influenced by social,

economic, and political forces.” Also

exhibited at the Koslov Larsen gallery during

the Houston, Texas city-wide Biennial

is Paris-based photographer Delphine

Blast’s Mujeres: The Beat of a Wing.

Included are three bodies of documentary

work with Zapotec women, Bolivian cholitas,

and dancers of Queretaro, Mexico,

in a collaborative celebration of artistic

traditions by Indigenous women — enduring

proof of their resilience and independence.

The archive is being utilized as a living

entity, capable of constructing meaning,

and expanding understanding. New Yorkbased

photographer Marilyn Nance was

shortlisted for the Aperture Paris Photo

Book Awards in 2023 for her monograph,

Last Days in Lagos. This historic archive

of the FESTAC 77 convening of 15,000

artists from 55 countries in Lagos, Nigeria

in 1977 affords exceptional documentation

of Black history. Nance is regarded

as having amassed unprecedented visual

documentation of African American spiritual

culture and the African Diaspora.

Spanish photographer Marina Planas,

activates her familial archive in a collaborative

open-ended investigation into

tourism, gender stereotypes, and cultural

identity. Her grandfather’s three million

images of Majorca and the Balearic

Islands are the basis for a transdisciplinary

project questioning hegemonic narratives.

Her project, Warlike approaches to

Tourism: all inclusive, triggers reflections

on opaque forms of power, the gender

gap, sex tourism, class, urban planning,

and ecological abuses.

Photojournalist Nichole Sobecki, based

in Nairobi, is a member of VII Photo who

states; “To change the world, we have

to first understand it as it is.” Where Our

Land Was is her series documenting

Somalis facing drought, displacement,

and possible extinction. Climate crisis is

Sobecki’s perpetual lens and is the subject

of her feature film, Natura. It follows

five women across five continents from

the Arctic to the Sahara examining the

intersection of motherhood in relationship

to our unprecedented environmental

realities.


CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR 2024 AWARDEES

EN FOCO

PHOTOGRAPHY FELLOWSHIP

CALI M. BANKS

JORDANA BERMÚDEZ TORRES

AVIJIT HALDER

ANDREW KUNG

OJI HAYNES

SHINA PENG

SHARON MILLER

LIEH SUGAI

JENNIFER TERESA VILLANUEVA

CHEN XIANGYUN

EN FOCO MEDIA ARTS FUND

WORKS-IN-PROGRESS

INITIATIVE

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FOR MORE

INFORMATION VISIT

WWW.ENFOCO.ORG

The Foundation for Systemic Change

(FSC) is proud to support the

2024 ZEKE Award for Systemic Change.

Congratulations to this

year's winner, Sarah

Fretwell, for her powerful

exhibit highlighting

the Indigenous environmental

defenders of

the Peruvian Amazon

who risk their lives to

protect their ancestral

homelands.

foundationforsystemicchange.org

Photograph by 2024 ZEKE Award for Systemic Change winner Sarah Fretwell


Interview with

ADRIANA

ZEHBRAUSKAS

Adriana Zehbrauskas is a Brazilian documentary

photographer who has worked for over 20

years, showcasing the stories of seldom-heard

people in diverse places, including Haiti, Sudan,

and Mexico.

By Daniela Cohen

Daniela Cohen: How did your

journey into photography start?

Adriana Zehbrauskas: My father was a

journalist back in Brazil. He was a writer,

but he always had a camera with him.

When I was 10, he would send me to buy

the Sunday paper at the kiosk outside. I

would read the stories and was fascinated

by the possibility of knowing things happening

in places so far away from me that

had absolutely nothing to do with my life.

My parents gave me a little camera

when I was growing up but when I was

14, I wanted a nicer camera, and I was

really happy when my father gave me

one. I didn’t want to be a professional

photographer, nor did I know there was

such a thing as being a photojournalist.

In journalism school, I realized that my

path is photography. One of my friends

said this newspaper, Folha de S. Paulo

was hiring freelancers to help with the

election coverage. I put my portfolio

together and the editor was like, “Oh my

God, this is so bad.” He said, “Train a bit

more, get yourself a flash, and come back

in a few months.” I did just that, showed

him some work, and he started giving me

very soft assignments. After school, I went

to France and studied for another year.

I started freelancing with the Brazilian

newspaper as a correspondent. Then I

went back to Brazil and started working

at the same newspaper until I became a

staff photographer. My greatest education

was the newspaper.

How has your journey evolved

since then?

The newspaper would send us on international

and domestic trips. We would do a

lot of interesting stories. It was sometimes

very busy, and I had to do five assignments

a day, including business portraits

and other boring assignments. I had an

editor my age, she was more of an artist,

and she said, “I don’t want photos of

people sitting behind a desk. Think David

Lynch.” We had the time and incentive to

do something different and it was lifechanging.

At one point, I was working as an

editor, and we decided to bring an

important photographer to do a particular

story. I suggested my role model, James

Nachtwey.

When he called me back, I couldn’t

believe it. He couldn’t do the assignment,

but we stayed in contact as I went to New

York and he went to Brazil to work on

another story. It was then that he asked

me to work for him as his assistant and I

spent a month with him. When the story

was ready, he sent the story to be published

for free at La Folha de S. Paulo.

Afterward, he asked me to be his fulltime

assistant, but I wanted to work as a

photographer. He suggested I come for

a month while he found someone else.

And so I went to New York and started

meeting a lot of people at events with

Time magazine and Magnum. One thing

led to another and from there I went to

France for Perpignan, the big photography

festival.

All I wanted was to meet an editor

to show my work. But people would

walk around just looking at name tags,

and if you were nobody important, they

wouldn’t even look at you. I was sitting

at one of those cafés outside with my

portfolio feeling horrible when suddenly

another photographer walked by. I had

just met him in New York while working

with James. As he asked to see my portfolio,

a New York Times editor walked

past. She knew him because he’d just

won the Robert Capa Gold Medal for a

story for the New York Times Magazine.

He said, “This is Adriana, a Brazilian

photographer based in Brazil.” She’s

like, “Really? I’m looking for a photographer

in Brazil. Can I see your portfolio?”

I went back to Brazil, and two weeks

later, the phone rings and it’s her. That

was 20 years ago, and I’m still working

for The New York Times.

What an amazing story!

I live with a lot of serendipity. But at the

same time, photojournalism is something I

really wanted to do, and I’m always pushing

myself to be better, be brave enough

to carve out my own little place. I consider

myself very shy but at the same time, you

have to be a bit pushy and ambitious

in certain ways because this industry is

brutal. It’s been two years and I haven’t

taken a day off.

What’s the part you most enjoy and

what’s most challenging for you?

I enjoy it when I’m out there photographing

the stories and being with people.

When I was a kid, I was super curious.

I was walking on the street and would

see other houses and wonder what was

inside. And this job for me was like, “Oh

my God, I got into so many different

houses!”

For me, it was always about telling

the stories of anonymous people who

don’t have the opportunity to be heard

or be seen. I feel that that is my job. It’s a

privilege to be able to witness life in this

way and that people trust you to tell their

stories. I feel a great responsibility.

The hardest part of being a freelancer

is working in an industry where there are

no guarantees. It filters a lot of people

out – if I didn’t have a private car, for

example, I could not work, the geography

of the place makes it impossible.


and the dream, but you can’t promise

people there’s going to be change in their

lives. So then I said, “I can promise you a

photograph.”

Graduation day at Taffari Community School in the Taffari IDP camp, South Kordofan, Sudan. Learners enrolled

under the Accelerated Learning Programme supported by UNICEF under the Educate A Child program will receive

certificates before transitioning to formal schools. Photo by Adriana Zehbrauskas for Unicef.

Your website states your work is

aimed at moving, challenging, and

connecting people. I’d love to hear

more about those aspects and specific

assignments focused on those

areas.

The connection part is the core of why I

decided to be a photojournalist. We are

so busy, and people don’t really know

what’s happening, sometimes even with

their own neighbor. Susan Meiselas says

we are the ones who perceive the bridge

that will connect people to situations

which in turn will create some impact.

Maybe it’s just someone waking up and

saying, “Oh my God, I didn’t even know

this existed,” and feeling empathy or

maybe it’s a politician who will see what’s

going on and change a policy.

A concrete example is the Family

Matters project. It was born out of a story

I covered for two years on the disappearance

of the 43 students in Mexico in

2014. I was approached by the bureau

chief of Buzzfeed News in Mexico City

to partner on a project to follow the life of

one of the families.

You have to put a face to the news

because it’s really hard for people to

connect with an abstract concept or a

number. We spent six months going there

once a month to spend time with them.

I was asking for photos of the students.

And they kept saying, “No, I don’t have it.

I had it on my phone and I lost my phone.

I changed my phone.” I kept thinking that

the students were not just missing from life,

they were going to be missing also from

the memory of their families because they

didn’t have photos or anything to remember

them by. I kept thinking about the

importance of photography just to prove

someone’s existence.

When we finished the project, I went

back and gave them a lot of prints. The

one Adán Abraján de la Cruz’s family

liked the most was the portrait I took after

the first communion of one of his sons.

It made me decide to start a project on

portraits of families living on the brink of

disappearance in Guerrero, one of the

poorest states in Mexico where people

are forced to work for the drug cartels.

I used my iPhone, the same instrument

responsible for them not having photos in

the first place.

It was also a way of giving back

because we go to places and photograph

people when they’re at the most

horrible and vulnerable moments of their

lives and we can never promise them

anything. They ask, “Will this impact my

life personally?” That is always the hope

Your photos are very visually

compelling. For example, the use of

color in this photo of young girls in

Sudan. I’d love to hear more about

how you’re playing with colors.

Something that I learned working for the

newspaper is you have to be very fast

and creative. My editor would say, “You

don’t publish excuses.” That photo was

taken before the graduation ceremony, the

students were already in the school and I

had arrived early. It was around midday

and the light outside was brutal, so I was

walking around and looking for a different

place to photograph and I saw that

classroom. This is the blackboard, and this

wall also tells a lot about the condition of

education because that was part of the

story. There were some students there and

as I started to photograph, others kept

coming and soon enough there was a long

line of them wanting to have their portraits

taken. The fact that they were all dressed

up for the graduation made it more special,

as they were feeling so proud!

I understand you recently joined

the VII photo agency. I’m curious

if that has had any effect on your

work?

It’s really recent, the last week of

December. It’s great to be with this community

because it can be lonely out there.

I’ve known some of the photographers

from VII for a long time and some I’ve

never met, but I feel it’s a new home for

me, that we’re in sync about how we see

photojournalism education.

What would you say is the unique

aspect of your work compared to

other photographers who might be

focusing on similar issues?

I don’t like to compare myself with other

photographers, but for me, what is first

and foremost is to portray people with

dignity even in the most horrible situations.


A Photojournalist’s Work in Gaza

Photos by Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times Text by Lauren Walsh

The headlines have captured the

world’s attention. The photographs

are starkly painful to view. But view

them we must; they are important

to see. Such images belong to a

long history of terrible yet historically

significant photographs—images of

atrocity and devastation. In short, these

are images that force the world to grapple

with human suffering, even when politics

and ideologies may get in the way. Such

imagery provides a visual, evidentiary

record, in this case of the ongoing destruction

of the Israel-Hamas war.

Now, four months into the war,

well over 25,000 people have been

killed (primarily civilians), two million

Palestinians are internally displaced in

Gaza, a genocide case against Israel

is underway at the International Court

of Justice at The Hague, and attacks in

nearby countries pose the risk of escalating

wider regional warfare.

While the future remains uncertain, the

searing images compiled here bear witness

to what has already occurred. Samar

Abu Elouf, a freelance photojournalist,

documented the war’s effects in Gaza

in the months after the October 7, 2023

Hamas attack. Her images were viewed

globally, published in The New York

Times and picked up elsewhere. She holds

multiple journalism awards and the above

photographs display what she witnessed

and recorded in late 2023. As she said

in November of that year: “There are

constant strikes around me. There is fear,

horror, anxiety.”

The dangers of reporting on, including

photographing, conflict have been

well documented. Yet Sherif Mansour, the

Middle East program coordinator at the

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), has

characterized the Israel-Hamas war as

“the most dangerous” for journalists that

the organization has ever seen. Such risks

affect not only the local journalist population

but carry impact for a broader global

audience. As Mansour notes, “With every

journalist killed, we lose our ability to

document and understand the war.”

Samar Abu Elouf has done that work

– documenting in order to increase our

understanding. She recently escaped

Gaza. She has survived physically; she

carries wounds internally. Her photographs,

seen here, provide necessary if

painful records, in hopes of a better, more

just, more peaceful tomorrow.


Left:

The funeral of the bodies of the

children who were killed the

previous night in the raids on the

city of Khan Younis, south of Gaza.

October 19, 2023.

Below clockwise:

Doctor fills out paperwork on top

of a patient on the floor at Nasser

Medical Hospital in Khan Younis,

in the southern Gaza Strip, on

October 24, 2023.

Premature babies were prepared

to be transported across the border

to Egypt for medical care. Some

had been born to mothers who

had been killed in airstrikes or who

had died shortly after giving birth,

doctors said. January 20, 2024.

Injured people at Al-Shifa Hospital

in Gaza City after Israeli planes

bombed a nearby camp. January

2024.

Editor’s Note: The photos presented here in ZEKE by Samar Abu Elouf

were taken while on assignment for The New York Times. Each of these

images has already been seen by a global audience in numerous publications.

We are very grateful to Samar for giving ZEKE permission to

present them here.


.I. and the Future of

REFLECTIONS ON MICHAEL CHRISTOPHER BROWN’S 90 MILES

By Barbara Ayotte

With the rapid onset of artificial

intelligence (A.I.), photography

seems to be at a pivotal

crossroads. Is documentary

photography as we know it

dying or is something else

emerging alongside it?

Michael Christopher Brown calls his

A.I.-driven work post-photography, A.I.

reportage illustration, photorealistic reportage,

and photographic-looking imagery.

In short, it is not photography, and it is

certainly not documentary photography.

His recent project, 90 Miles, is an A.I.

experiment that explores historic events

of Cuban life that have motivated Cubans

to cross the 90 miles of ocean separating

Havana from Florida. Since the time

of Fidel Castro and the Bay of Pigs in the

1960s, thousands of Cubans have fled

across the ocean to the United States. But

what has this passage looked like? By

using the A.I. tool Midjourney, Brown, an

award-winning Magnum, New York Times

Magazine and National Geographic

documentary photographer (his seminal

documentary photography work on the

Libyan war, Libyan Sugar, was reviewed in

the Spring 2017 issue of ZEKE), is using text

prompts while collaborating with a historical

database of photographic images to

illustrate a vision of what was, is, or can be.

No lenses or cameras are involved to make

his pictures. Using A.I, Brown assembles a

body of photo-like illustrations to give us a

sense of that journey. But did these scenes

really happen? Did these people really

exist? Can it be believed as truth?

Seeing is Believing?

At a recent panel discussion as part of

SDN’s Visual Storytelling Festival 2024,

Brown talked about this work with Fred

Ritchin, dean emeritus of the Schools of

the International Center of Photography;


Stephen Hart of Adobe; and Lauren

Walsh, professor at New York University.

As Ritchin pointed out, manipulated imagery

is not new and the practice of creating

“synthetic images” has been going on for

decades, well before the arrival of A.I. But

today in this social media age of photo

saturation, dis- and misinformation, he

says, “we don’t know if any photos are

real, and should be skeptical of all images

we see.” Ritchin has concerns about what

this means for history when synthetic

images get fed into the A.I. database of

images and the lie is perpetuated. Hart

said, “the evil is not A.I., it is the lack of

education and assumption by many that it

is OK to manipulate images and present

them as reality.” Princess Kate’s family

photograph is a case in point. Many

people didn’t see what the problem was

with the palace releasing a manipulated

image, even though it was passed off as

“news” until Associated Press pulled the

image after recognizing it was fake.

What if There is No Light?

The generally understood definition of photography

is the art, application, and practice

of creating images by recording light, either

electronically by means of an image sensor,

or chemically by means of a light-sensitive

material such as photographic film.

Noted Southern Gothic author Eudora

Welty, who was also an accomplished

photographer, described photography

Visual Storytelling

as “trying to portray what you saw, and

truthfully. A camera catches that fleeting

moment.” But is it photography when a

camera isn’t even used at all to generate

the image? What if there is no light involved

at all? As Brown says, “reportage illustration”

is visual journalism that has been used

for 150 years. Other more appropriate

words that come to mind are history paintings,

visual fiction, or visual novels.

Looking at 90 Miles, the photos all

have a certain lighting quality to them,

almost like a Renaissance painting. There

are no captions since there are no details

about each composited image. Something

about them looks off yet familiar at the

same time. Some of the faces and scenes

clearly look fake, while others are believable.

But these built images defy the definition

of photography. As the writer Susan

Sontag said, “The painter constructs, the

photographer discloses.”

Who has Agency?

“When it overlaps with reality, it gets

more complex. How does an A.I.-created

image appeal to the people being

depicted?” asks Ritchin. People who are

victims of violence are the ones who are

most affected—often they need the photo

of their situation to be believed, especially

if the photo is being used as evidence.

More importantly, it is well-known that

there is an inherent bias in A.I. But Brown

says, “People generally don’t want to be

voiceless but often desire to be faceless.”

Could A.I. be a tool for NGOs to “document”

what is impossible to photograph

due to the danger the images might

cause for the victims? There is an ongoing

debate about whether using real images

of real people who are victims is ethical.

What if A.I. is the only way to tell the

story? The problem with A.I., however, is

that it is unclear if a real person is being

presented at all.

Whose Truth?

We know that traditional documentary

photography has contended with biases.

For decades these images have been from

the perspective of the White, male gaze

(that is changing now, see page 52 for J.

Sybylla Smith’s article on women changing

the face of documentary). A.I. as a result,

has the same inherent biases in the images

it finds. It would be interesting if the subjects

themselves could take part in producing

A.I. images to have more control over their

own storytelling and their own truth. But

even that gets fraught as people are keen

now more than ever to curate and manipulate

images of themselves to create an

identity that they want people to see.

Brown doesn’t know how he feels about

these images. He is happy he made them

since he couldn’t get access to take these

pictures in real life. “I am not trying to

destroy the field of photography; I really

care about these projects. You can criticize

this new medium, but, first, learn how it

works.” Clearly there are more questions

than answers. SDN and ZEKE will continue

to explore this important topic.

To view a video of the

panel discussion, visit

here.


BOOK

REVIEWS

ATACAMA: RENEWABLE

ENERGY AND MINING IN THE

HIGH DESERT OF CHILE

Jamey Stillings

Steidl, 2023

175 pages / 28 €

Atacama:

Renewable

Energy and

Mining in the

High Desert of

Chile by Jamey

Stillings brings

our eyes to the

forefront of an

ongoing wave of

development in

the driest place on

Earth. This book was my first glimpse into

this seemingly uninhabitable landscape

that has become blemished with patterns

and grids of human creation.

Stillings’ images show humankind forging

ahead, away from a fossil fuel era,

in an untapped landscape with promise

to power the globe. It is not until we pull

back and take an 1800-meter view that

we can see the scale of such a revolution.

Massive scars stencil the landscape as

we tap into the largest lithium and copper

deposits in the world. At a distance, it

seems lifeless and impossibly man-made.

How could these craters be decades in

the making? What will Atacama look like

decades from now? Stillings challenges

our perspective on the lesser seen side of

a new energy era.

This collection of aerials reveals the

very raw and captivating essence of our

rapidly advancing technological era. In

the introduction, best-selling author Mark

Sloan wittily states that Stillings’ work

“documents humankind’s attempt to save

itself from itself.” It is worth noting these

are not just drone snapshots from above,

but carefully coordinated windows in

time from a plane or helicopter.

Stillings’ careful attention to detail

is apparent throughout this book. The

El Romero Solar, Atacama, Chile, 14 July 2017, #19207. This 246-megawatt photovoltaic plant supplies the

Google Data Center in Santiago with 100% of its energy needs. Photo by Jamey Stillings

wraparound cover on metallic paper is

striking and showcases his fine art training.

His photographs exhibit a careful use of

shadows, adding depth to an otherwise flat

land. The tonal consistency ties the images

together into a cohesive array with notes of

bright blue from lithium evaporation ponds

in contrast to bronze earth.

One thing that surprised me about this

book was the unconventional layout. The

portrait orientation requires you to rotate

horizontally in order to move through the

photographs, then back to portrait to read

the text that follows with small captions

above the book spine on a blank white

page. I originally had to pause and flip

back, thinking I completely missed the introductory

text and statement. Initially, I found

it confusing to have the foreword and introduction

come after the images, but when I

asked Stillings about this, he revealed his

intent to challenge our expectations on layout

and allow the images to speak before

the words that follow. He says “by starting

with the images, only you, the viewer, are

allowed the respect of encountering the

photographs first on your own terms. No

one is telling you what they are or what

to think.” The hidden cleverness in this

approach is that it forces you to go back

through the images once again with new,

informed context to see if your paradigm

has shifted after reading the text.

Once you make it through the 60+

full-page images, you’re offered text in

English and Spanish, for further consideration

on what you viewed. The one thing

this doesn’t leave you with is a closing

image for reflection. I also think Stillings

missed an opportunity to pull us further

into his world by not including a picture of

himself. I would have loved to see what

making this body of work from the side of

a small Cessna looked like. Additionally,

I appreciate Stillings’ inclusion of a map,

pinning where these constructions exist in

the high desert of Chile. Though, I personally

would prefer to see this referenced at

the beginning of the book to help establish

our sense of place in the world.

Stillings’ work in Atacama leaves me

with a few unanswered questions: What

does this window into an advancing

renewable energy world look like from

the ground? Who are the people behind

these large-scale operations working to

meet global demands? While this documentation

is undoubtedly human, what’s

missing for me is some emotional connection.

I can imagine working in such

an unfavorable environment comes with

very human challenges. Instead, he holds

our sights from above for this particular

project. I would love to see a few closer

detail shots or portraits from the ground to

give us the full picture of what’s going on

in the desert. Perhaps this paves way for

Atacama’s sequel to come?

—Justin Dalaba


UKRAINE: A WAR CRIME

Edited by Sarah Leen

FotoEvidence, 2023

540 pages / $80

An individual,

centered in

the frame,

kneels and holds

a Ukrainian flag.

We can’t see their

face, which is fully

obscured by the

blue and yellow.

The caption

explains this is a

young woman.

This is the first photograph in Ukraine:

A War Crime, a massive book that brings

together 366 images documenting the

first year of Russia’s 2022 invasion of its

neighbor. The compilation, published by

FotoEvidence, reflects the work of 93 photojournalists

from 29 countries; provides

text in English and Ukrainian; and was

edited by Sarah Leen with assistance from

Irynka Hromotska, with overall artistic

direction led by Svetlana Bachevanova.

The opening photograph visually

announces that this is a book about

Ukraine: it is an image highlighting a

national symbol, not the individual “hidden”

in the center. But from there, the

book brilliantly, sensitively and, at times,

graphically reminds us again and again

that, in the end, war is about individual

lives. Trauma, destruction, crimes and

resilience can occur on a collective level;

but each and every person is impacted by

the war that engulfs their country.

Ukraine: A War Crime is organized

into sections that highlight specific

moments, atrocities or aspects of the war,

and selected photographers have written

statements that pair with their photographs.

The introduction, by Volodymyr

Demchenko, a journalist and soldier, is

less a preview of what is to come and

more a plea to the reader to grasp the significance

of this compilation: “With visual

documentation it is much more difficult, if

at all possible, to hide crimes and social

catastrophes.” It is no accident that a

majority of the images are by professional

photojournalists, because we accord them

a special status in the documentation of

history. They are not just creating images,

but doing so with an ethic that protects

and, hopefully, ensures the integrity of the

work.

The short statements by photographers

provide powerful glimpses into

the thoughts and experiences of the

documentarians, and deepen the reaction

to what we see in the static images

throughout the book. They also demonstrate

that photographers do far more than

simply “take pictures.” They risk their own

physical safety and mental health. This

line of work is an embodied praxis. And

the camera isn’t their only tool; reading

the quotes they transcribe from civilians,

for instance, simultaneously enriches the

visual documentation and reminds the

reader that the photojournalist actually

operates across multiple mediums.

“We had to walk for 36 kilometers to

reach the Polish border,” says Aline (10)

to photographer Espen Rasmussen, whose

images depict the intensity of the refugee

experience.

The style of photography and writing

is expansive. Essays range from matterof-fact

to poetic. Images, likewise, reflect

a breadth of approaches, some are

highly artistic while many others are more

traditionally journalistic. Certain photographs

feel like echoes from wars past, for

instance, an eerie revisualization of WWII

in John Stanmeyer’s photo from a Lviv

train station. All told, the book shows us

civilians, fighters, pets, children, refugees,

political leadership, volunteers, the war

effort, destruction, death, grief, resilience,

recovery, rehabilitation, perseverance,

and myriad aspects of daily life. War

spares no facet of society.

As photographer Carol Guzy writes,

“Civilian things. Not the stuff of combatants.

Humanity’s hopes, dreams, loves –

in war, merely termed ‘collateral damage’.”

The staccato style of her statement

emphasizes the fractures of war and the

ways that small moments of life become

frozen, interrupted forever. She adds,

“broken glass becomes a metaphor for

shattered lives.” Guzy’s photographs

carry the same lyrical tone as her words,

depicting small details of life forever

upended by war.

Yet it is perhaps the essays by

Ukrainian photographers that feel most

weighted. As Oksana Parafeniuk writes,

“It is one thing when your home and your

Photo by Oleksii Furman. Bila Krynytsia. 27.6.2022 A young woman kneels while holding a Ukrainian national

flag as she takes part in a “living corridor” of people that lined the road to pay tribute to Oleksandr Hrynchuk as

a bus carrying his coffin passes. Oleksandr Hrynchuk, 33, was killed on June 21 in the Luhansk Region.


loved ones are safe…and it is absolutely

another situation when they are not,

when you need to make a decision on

how to stay safe, how to keep your future

child safe.” Or as Myklhaylo Palinchak

says, “I never thought of being a war

photographer.” He goes on to explain

that many Ukrainians began to train for

combat or volunteered to help the war

effort, “but I knew only how to make

photographs, so for me the only option

was to take my camera in hand.”

And there is the statement by Evgeniy

Maloletka, whose photograph of an

injured pregnant woman being evacuated

from a maternity ward that was hit

during a Russian airstrike was published

globally. It is one of the most iconic

photographs to come out of this war.

And yet in the context of this book, where

words and many images come together,

any habituated sense of “I have seen this

photo already” vanishes. Maloletka’s

haunting descriptions provide a vivid,

utterly harrowing foundation for his visuals

over the next many pages.

At times the imagery is unrelenting.

But that is the point. War doesn’t offer

“time off” for those trapped within. Even

so, the book has a cadence that allows

the reader to move in and out of the most

grievous imagery, picturing war from a

variety of perspectives, not all of them

violent.

But toward the end, in an homage

written by Stas Kozlyuk, we learn of the

death of Ukrainian photographer Maks

Levin. This was a powerful and wise

decision by the editors to remind the

reader of what is at stake in creating such

documentation.

This book is a record of the many

aspects of this ongoing war, and as the

title suggests, of the variety of crimes that

remain to be investigated if not prosecuted

in courts. The concluding image of

Ukraine: A War Crime ends on a note that

beautifully echoes the opening—but with

a small twist. Again, we see the blue and

yellow flag, yet this time we are privy to

the face of a woman who wraps the flag

around her, gracefully enveloped in all its

literal and metaphorical meanings. She

looks sad, but also stoic and resolute.

—Lauren Walsh

Photo by Evgeniy Maloletka/AP. Mariupol, March 9, 2022. First responders and volunteers carry an injured

pregnant woman from a maternity hospital that was damaged by Russian shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, March

9, 2022. The woman and her baby later died.

THE MENNONITES

Larry Towell

GOST Books, 2022

288 pages | $80.00

The opening black and white image in

the second edition from GOST Books

of Larry Towell’s iconic book, The

Mennonites, is quietly subversive. Three

boys wearing old ill-fitting clothes stare at

the camera. The foregrounded boy’s face is

slightly obscured by cigarette smoke haze.

The boys flanking him smirk. They know

they are breaking the rules of their Old

Colony Mennonite family.

The image also suggests a familiarity

with these camera-phobic people

that few photographers achieve. This

10-year project photographing Old

Colony Mennonites who travel between

Towell’s home in Ontario and Mexico is

the best of slow, long-form documentary

photography. Through the 115 black and

white photographs, 40 of which are newly

published, Towell gives us an intimate yet

oddly detached portrayal of this Protestant

religious sect which has lived apart from

modern society since the 1800s. They reject

public schooling and modern technology,

including electricity and rubber tires. Most

only speak Low German. By now, almost

all of them have lost their land from lack of

education, the economy, and exploitation

so they live as migrant workers or sharecroppers

earning almost no money at the

end of the year.


Towell, a renowned documentary

photographer and member of Magnum,

known for photographing the dispossessed

and landless, first met Mennonite

David Redekkop and his family in 1989,

“landhungry and dirt poor,” almost literally

in Towell’s backyard. They allowed

Towell to photograph them because, he

writes: “I liked them a lot because they

seemed otherworldly and therefore completely

vulnerable in a society in which

they did not belong and for which they

were not prepared. Because I liked them,

they liked me, and although photography

was forbidden, they let me photograph

them. That’s all there was to it.”

The book nestles in a plain cloth black

slip case, the title embossed in a lighter

matte black on the book’s spine. Holding

it conjures a hymnal, complete with a ribbon

marker. The pages are not numbered.

The captions consisting only of the colony

name, its location, and the date appear in

the back of the book next to image thumbnails.

The text, divided as preface and

Towell’s notes, is isolated in the front of the

book. This part of the book design is odd;

the factual preface is printed on the same

thick luscious paper as the images, while

the remaining 58 pages of text are printed

on very thin paper.

Written by Towell from journal notes

and memory, this text vacillates between

being overwrought metaphors or similes

(“The sun was like a big fat woman with

sharp daggers for teeth.” ) to the brilliant

pithy observations of a great photographer

(“He was a non-conformist to the

core, living in a world in which he knew

he did not belong. He pondered how

much air was left in it for him to breathe.”)

None of the text references specific

images; Towell wants us to experience the

images unmediated.

Theorist John Berger suggests that,

when paired with photographs, words

provide meaning and interpretation. That’s

true here. If you read the text first, it hovers

as you page through the extraordinary

photographs, falling into the rhythm of

Towell’s relationship with these people as

it unfolds over time. He often traveled with

Photo by Larry Towell. From The Mennonites. El Cuervo (Casas Grandes Colonies), Chihuahua, Mexico, 1992

them—once accompanying a Mennonite

family of 10 on a harrowing journey from

Canada to Mexico, where, over several

days and many car breakdowns, the family

subsisted on little more than Coke and

mayonnaise sandwiches.

Towell doesn’t seem to have a point

of view, and his photographs might more

accurately be described as the indecisive

moment, improvisational vérité, yet

hauntingly beautiful because he understands

the value of natural light, soft

mid-tones, and how to make the most

effective use of the edge of a frame. His

compositions are loose and many lack

an obvious main “subject,” allowing the

viewer to meander through the frame

and its internal narrative.

Most of the images are unsettling—

think Farm Security Administration, Walker

Evans or John Steinbeck’s Grapes of

Wrath. They also are as raw and unvarnished

as the lives of the Mennonites. One

stunning double page image screams of

poverty so palpable it’s shocking that it

was taken at the end of the 20th century.

A couple, with their three young blond

children, stands so close to the foreground

that they are almost falling out of

the frame. Behind them sits their decrepit

adobe house, the dirt yard littered with

nothing but debris. Or a woman in bare

feet sweeps dirt into a dustpan in a room

devoid of furniture except for a few chairs

against the wall. In one of most touching

images, a young blond boy stares

deadpan at himself in a small handheld

mirror, with no apparent recognition of his

individuality or joy in seeing his face.

Ultimately, the photographs reveal

a life ruled (and destroyed) by a strict

adherence to belief and rejection of

modernity. Time passes the way time has

always passed on the land. Birth and

death. Crops planted and harvested.

Cows milked. Animals slaughtered.

Over and over. Day by day in the face

of drought, abusive and exploitive farm

bosses, and dust storms. This is a life of

pure survival in the face of overwhelming

odds. When you reach the end of the

book, you realize that what’s missing is

laughter, joy, or childhood play. Towell

does not pass judgement; he leaves that

up to the viewer.

—Michelle Bogre


BRIEFLY

NOTED

EDITED BY ALICE CURREY

WE SORT OF PEOPLE

By Henry Horenstein

Kehrer Verlag, 2023

136 pages | $50

Journalist and writer Leslie Tucker

and photographer Henry Horenstein

began working together in 1997

when she invited him to Maryland to

shoot a mysterious multiethnic family,

the little-known Wesort clan: “We sorts

are different from you sorts.” The project

started as a genealogical search for a

family whose roots stretched back to

the founding of Maryland as the first

Catholic colony, it grew into a mystery

about the multiethnic origins of America,

then became a race against time as the

Wesorts and their descendants disappeared

and their stories died. While

Horenstein photographed the last generation

of Proctors and their disappearing

world, Tucker recorded the conversations

she had with the wise women of the family.

A living archive emerges, with voices

that portray the complex realities of their

lives in their own words, as seen through

their eyes.

SHADOWS OF EMMETT TILL

By Bob Newman

Kehrer Verlag, 2022

268 pages | $90

The Mississippi Delta has been called

“The Most Southern Place on Earth,”

a region of layered histories that collide

with each other daily. It is a place that

defines America like no other part of the

country – a culture entwined with slavery,

poverty, and political and economic

oppression. It is the land that gave birth to

the creative genius of B. B. King and the

murder of young Emmett Till. Shadows of

Emmett Till seeks to probe that complex

past by observing the many ways the

shadow of Till’s murder still hangs over

the Delta. This work breathes the Delta

air and seeks to frame the region and its

people in a 21st-century context, at a time

when White America may be starting to

finally come to terms with the sins of its

past. Along the way, the past spills into the

present, with parallels to George Floyd

and so many others.

DEEP INSIDE THE BLUES

By Margo Cooper

University Press of Mississippi, 2023

384 pages | $45

Deep Inside the Blues collects thirtyfour

of Margo Cooper’s interviews

with blues artists and is illustrated

with over 160 of her photographs, many

published here for the first time. For thirty

years, Cooper has been documenting

the lives of blues musicians, their families

and homes, neighborhoods, festivals,

and gigs. In 1993, Cooper began

photographing in the clubs around New

England, then in Chicago, and before

long in Mississippi and Helena, Arkansas.

On her very first trips to Mississippi in

1997 and 1998, Cooper had the good

fortune to photograph Sam Carr, Frank

Frost, Bobby Rush, and Otha Turner,

among others. “The blues come out of

the field,” blues musician LC Ulmer told

Cooper. Seeing those fields, as well as

the old juke joints, country churches, and

people’s homes, inspired her. She began

recording interviews with the musicians,

sometimes over years, listening and asking

questions as their narratives unfolded.

Many of the key blues players of the

period have already passed, making their

stories and Cooper’s photographs of them

all the more poignant and valuable.


JOSEF KOUDELKA: NEXT

By Melissa Harris

Aperture and Magnum Foundation,

2023

352 pages | $50

An intimate portrait of the life and

work of one of photography’s most

renowned and celebrated artists.

Throughout his more than sixty-yearlong

obsession with the medium, Josef

Koudelka considers a remarkable range

of photographic subjects—from his early

theater work to his seminal project on the

Roma and his legendary coverage of the

1968 Soviet invasion of Prague, to the

solitariness of exile and the often-devastating

impact of humans on the natural

landscape. Based on hundreds of hours

of interviews conducted over almost a

decade as well as conversations with his

friends, family, colleagues, and collaborators

worldwide—this deftly told, richly

illustrated biography offers an unprecedented

glimpse into the mind of this

notoriously private photographer. Writer,

editor, and curator Melissa Harris crafts a

unique, in-depth, and personal history of

both the man and his photography. Richly

illustrated with hundreds of photographs,

Josef Koudelka’s Next includes many biographical

and behind-the-scenes images

from Koudelka’s life, as well as iconic

images from his work, from the 1950s to

the present.

DAMMED: BIRTH TO DEATH

OF THE COLORADO RIVER

By Debbie Bentley

Daylight Books, 2024

192 pages | $50

Dammed follows the roughly 1,450-

mile main stem of the Colorado

River, from birth in the Rocky

Mountain National Park to its end at the

border of Mexico, and the 16 dams and

diversions along its course. The multi-year

photographic project documents the river,

dams, reservoirs, and people interacting

with the river along this route. This environmental

photography project intends

to bring attention to the increasingly arid

condition of the Colorado River basin,

and prompt discussion and learning about

not only the Colorado River watershed but

of water supply in general.

AMERICAN PROSPECTS

By Joel Sternfeld

Steidl Books, 2023

108 pages | $50

Born of a desire to follow the seasons

up and down America, and equally

to find lyricism in contemporary

American life despite all its dark histories,

American Prospects has enjoyed a

life of acclaim. Its pages are filled with

unexpected excitement, despair, tenderness,

and hope. Its fears are expressed

in beauty, its sadnesses in irony. Oddly

enough, the society it seems to presage

has now come to be; oddly enough, the

ideas of this book bespeak our present

moment. Often out of print, this new

edition of Joel Sternfeld’s seminal book

returns to the format of the original 1987

edition. All of the now classic images

within it—alongside a group of neverpublished

photographs—examine a once

pristine land stewarded by Indigenous

peoples who needed no lessons in

stewardship, and a land now occupied

by a mix of peoples hoping for salvation

within the fraught paths of late capitalism.

The result suggests a vast nation whose

prospects have much to do with global

prospects, a “teenager of the world”

unaware of its strengths, filled with idealism

and frequent failings. These pictures

see all but judge not.


Content Contributors

Samar Abu Elouf is a Palestinian photographer

who has worked extensively in the

Gaza Strip covering stories around gender,

women’s and children’s lives, and the consequences

of war. Her images, both intimate

and shocking, capture and convey the dignity

of her subjects. Since the October 7, 2023

attacks by Hamas on Israel, Samar continued

to work in Gaza for The New York Times

covering the destruction and human casualties

caused by Israeli bombs, artillery, and

ground forces.

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.

Daniela Cohen is a freelance journalist and

non-fiction writer of South African origin based

in Vancouver, Canada. Her work has been

published in New Canadian Media, Canadian

Immigrant, eJewish Philanthropy, The Source

Newspaper, and 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.

Alice Currey is currently a student at

New York University with an individualized

major in photojournalism. Having spent

her childhood in Kenya and her teen years

in Uzbekistan, she has adopted a cultural

insight and empathy that uniquely understands

the power of visual storytelling in

implementing global change. As both a writer

and photographer she hopes to contribute to

the reconfiguration of photojournalism as a

method of advocacy.

Justin Dalaba is a photographer based in

Upstate New York, dedicated to documenting

the natural world and our relationship with

it. Originally trained as a conversation biologist,

he embraced photography as a means

to share human stories of climate, culture,

and the environment. His work aims to inspire

change through visual narratives that are as

hopeful as they are informative.

William Daniels is a French photographer

working on long-term documentary projects,

with a particular interest in people’s quest

for a sense of identity and territories prone

to chronic instability. His personal projects

include documenting conflict-ridden places

including the Indian Kashmir, the Central

African Republic, Kyrgyzstan, and the

Bangladesh-Myanmar border as well as documenting

life along the railway of the Russian

Far East.

Maurizio Di Pietro is an Italian freelance

photographer focusing on social

and environmental issues. After graduating

in Computer Science in 2001, Maurizio

obtained a master’s degree in photography

at WSP Photography School in Rome. He has

collaborated with various NGOs in Morocco,

Sri Lanka, Guatemala, and the West Bank,

and later worked for several years in Kenya

on the topic of climate change.

Isabella Franceschini is an Italian freelance

photographer, Lowepro Ambassador,

and member of the Parallelozera agency.

She holds a degree in Economics from the

University of Bologna. Isabella is currently

developing long-term projects primarily

inspired by what influences human beings

and their relationships. Her long-term project

“Becoming a Citizen” won the 2022 “World

Report Award Documenting Humanity” and

was later exhibited at the Ethical Photography

Festival in Lodi which in 2023 won the 21st

Julia Margaret Cameron Award.

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 a human

connection that engages people on a personal

level. Her work offers individuals a voice for

justice, insight for solutions, and the human connection

needed for international engagement.

Max Cabello Orcasitas has been working

since December 2009 on a project about the

consequences of Peru’s civil war in Chungui

and other sites in Ayacucho, an Andean region

that was fiercely struck by political violence.

He has also been developing a series on how

people of the middle class, mostly comprised

of migrants from the Andes and the Amazon,

celebrate on the outskirts of Lima and other

Peruvian cities, demonstrating how modernity

and tradition mingle in urban settings.

Rohingyatographer is more than a photography

project, it is a platform of narrative

justice for Rohingya refugees. Through the

photographic magazine Rohingyatographer,

refugees recover parts of their lost identity,

sharing their stories of resistance and hope

amid despair. Rohingyatographer is distinguished

by empowering Rohingya people to

become narrators, not just subjects, promoting

a level of authenticity rarely seen. In

doing so, the project challenges existing stereotypes,

provokes meaningful dialogue, and

instills a new respect for human resistance.

Glenn Ruga is a photographer, graphic

designer, and curator. He founded the Social

Documentary Network (SDN) in 2008 and

in 2015 launched ZEKE: The Magazine of

Global Documentary. As a photographer, he

has created traveling and online documentary

exhibits on the struggle for a multicultural

future in Bosnia, the war and aftermath in

Kosovo, and an immigrant community in

Holyoke, Mass.

Natalya Saprunova, born in Murmansk in

the Arctic region of Russia, is a documentary

photographer now based in Paris and a member

of the Zeppelin agency. She continues to

explore the issues of modern society related

to identity, integration, climate change, youth,

femininity, and spirituality. Passionate about

the transmission of knowledge, she has been

teaching photography at the Graine de

Photographe School in Paris since 2016.

Małgorzata Smieszek is a photographer

and documentarian, a graduate of the

Warsaw School of Photography and photography

workshops at the Pix.house Foundation

in Pozna. She has received numerous awards

for her photographic documentary “The Price

of Patriotism.” She is the author of the series

“Red Zone” (about loneliness in COVID

wards) and “It Happens” (about the work of

rescue teams). Currently, she is photographing

in Ukraine.

J. Sybylla Smith brings a concept development

lens to her work as an independent

curator, podcaster, and consultant. Smith

is on a mission to illuminate, elevate, and

amplify the work of women photographers

and other marginalized, underrepresented

narratives. Her approach to visual storytelling

is with an intersectional lens and a focus on

equity and inclusion. Smith guest lectures and

teaches workshops, writes for publications on

contemporary photography, and jurys global

photo exhibitions and awards.

Dr. Lauren Walsh, Professor at New

York University and Founder and Director

of the Gallatin Photojournalism Intensive, is

the author of numerous books on the visual

coverage of conflict and crisis, and peace

journalism. Walsh heads media and visual

literacy educational initiatives globally, with

an emphasis on ethics as well as safety and

mental health concerns for journalists. She is

the lead educator who oversaw the development

of media/visual literacy curricula,

including a focus on generative AI, for the

Content Authenticity Initiative.


2023 SDN/ZEKE Donors

January 1, 2023– January 15, 2024

SDN thanks the following individuals, foundations,

and businesses who have contributed to

SDN in 2023, making possible everything that

we do.

Leadership Circle

Anonymous

Bob & Judy Ayotte

Barbara Ayotte

Peter & Martha Goldman-

Kongsgaard

Dan Lenchner

Clara Maxwell

Susan Mazer

Ogden United Church

of Christ

David Spink

Michele Zousmer

Benefactor

Anonymous

Julien Ayotte

Margo Cooper

Rudi Dundas

Timothy Eosco

Ivy Gordon

Kamini Grover

Roree Iris-Williams

Mary Ellen Keough

Paul Marotta

Susan Mazer

Mariette Pathy Allen

Maggie Soladay

Jamey Stillings

Bob & Janet Winston

Amy Yenkin

Sustainer

Jacques Abrams

Jay Aronson

Edward Boches

Frank Coco

Lee Cott

Greig Cranna

Collette Fournier

Morrie Gasser

Windsor Green

Michael Kane

France Leclerc

Rusty Leffel

Kevin McKeon

Houck Medford

Anthony Morganti

Fredrick Orkin

Betty Press

Bruce Rosen

Deborah Shriver

Mark Silverberg

Supporter

Anonymous

David J. Ayotte

Cathi Baglin

Sheila Bodine

Nancy Brandt

Anja Bruehling

Diana & Jack Clymer

Antonio Denti

Diane DePaso

Lisa DuBois

Susi Eggenberger

Sandra Eisert

Kent Fairfield

Ellen Feldman

Frank Folwell

Connie Frisbee Houde

David Greenfield

Ellen Harasimowicz

John Heymann

Linda and Gary Hirsch

Jeffrey Hurwit

Ed Kashi

Mary Ellen Kelly

Linda Christina Koopman

Sandra Matthews

Peter Merts

Jorge Monteagudo

William and Sara Mrachek

John Parisi

Mark Phillips

Elin Spring

Frank Ward

Kiliii Yuyan

Andrea Zocchi

Donor

Anonymous

Michelle Badash

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Jynx Houston

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Uday Khambadkone

Charles Kinghorn

William Livingston

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Roger Mummert

Ezio Gianni Murzi

Laila Nahar

Meredith Nierman

Faith Ninivaggi

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Margaret Ramirez

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Leszczyńska

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Stephen Walker

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Richard Wood

Carl Young

Foundations

Sponsors

WINNER:

REVIEWERS CHOICE

AWARD

SDN presented two

Reviewers Choice

Awards at the SDN

2024 Portfolio

Reviews held on

April 20, 2024.

Pictured at left:

Héctor Adolfo

Quintanar Pérez

Male Survivors of

Sexual Abuse

Veracruz, Mexico

The other winner,

Emily Whitney, can

be found on the

following page.


SPRING 2024 VOL.10/NO.1

$15 US

ZEKE

THE MAGAZINE OF GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY

PHOTOGRAPHY


ZEKE is published by Social Documentary Network (SDN),

a nonprofit organization promoting visual storytelling about

global themes. Started as a website in 2008, today SDN

works with thousands of photographers around the world to

tell important stories through the visual medium of photography.

Since 2008, SDN has featured more than 4,000 exhibits

on its website and has had gallery exhibitions in major cities

around the world.

ZEKE

Executive Editor: Glenn Ruga

Editor: Barbara Ayotte

Intern: Alice Currey

SDN and ZEKE magazine

are projects of Reportage

International, Inc., a nonprofit

organization founded in 2020.

ZEKE does not accept unsolicited

submissions. To be considered for

publication in ZEKE, submit your

work to the SDN website either

as a standard exhibit or a submission

to a Call for Entries.

Reportage

International, Inc.

Board of Directors

Glenn Ruga, President

Eric Luden, Treasurer

Barbara Ayotte, Secretary

Dudley Brooks

John Heffernan

Maggie Soladay

Documentary Advisory

Group

Bill Aguado, Bronx, NY

Cathy Edelman, Chicago, IL

Jill Foley, Silver Springs, MD

Lori Grinker, New York, NY

Michael Itkoff, Bronx, NY

Lou Jones, Boston, MA

Ed Kashi, Montclair, NJ

Lekgetho Makola, Johanesburg

Mary Beth Meehan, Providence, RI

Marie Monteleone, New York, NY

Molly Roberts, Washington, DC

Joseph Rodriguez, Brooklyn, NY

Jamel Shabazz, Hempstead, NY

Nichole Sobecki, Kenya

Jamey Stillings, Sante Fe, NM

Steve Walker, Danbury, CT

Lauren Walsh, New York, NY

Frank Ward, Williamsburg, MA

Amy Yenkin, New York, NY

ZEKE is published twice a

year by Social Documentary

Network, a project of Reportage

International, Inc.

Copyright © 2024

Social Documentary Network

ISSN 2381-1390

61 Potter Street

Concord, MA 01742 USA

617-417-5981

info@socialdocumentary.net



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To Subscribe:


WINNER:

REVIEWERS CHOICE

AWARD

SDN presented two

Reviewers Choice

Awards at the SDN

2024 Portfolio

Reviews held on

April 20, 2024.

Pictured at left:

Emily Whitney

A Migrant Teen

Mom Three Thousand

Miles From Home

The other winner,

Héctor Adolfo

Quintanar Pérez,

can be found on the

previous page.


PROFILE: COVER PHOTOGRAPHER

William Daniels

Advocating for the Recognition

of Stateless People

By Daniela Cohen

At the age of 20, William Daniels

quit his Physics studies in Paris and

went travelling for five months in

Latin America, where he started

taking photos. He then went to the

Philippines to teach photography for an

NGO supporting girls who had experienced

abandonment and homelessness.

Through this experience, he realized the

important relationsWhip between human

stories and photography and was inspired

to become a reporter on social issues.

Daniels was attracted to places of instability.

“I realized that I really liked to go

back again and again to see places, to better

understand and to take different pictures,”

he said. One of his first long-term

documentary projects was on Kyrgyzstan,

which he visited six times in two years.

This culminated in a book, Faded Tulips

about the aftermath of the Tulips revolution.

He then went to the Central African

Republic, where he travelled 10 times

between 2013 and 2016, publishing the

book RCA in 2017.

Daniels usually tries to get a newsfocused

assignment in a particular location

and then looks for a grant to return.

“Then I can work quietly, slowly and

take my time and develop a more personal

visual language than with the more

newsy pictures,” he said.

After realizing his projects were connected

by histories of colonization, he

decided to pursue an investigation of

colonization’s impact on different societies.

“I’m very interested in how colonization

has shaped some special identities and

fragile societies,” he said. His family on

his mother’s side were settlers in Tunisia,

so for Daniels, “it’s my duty to understand

colonization and its long-term influences

and consequences.”

His project “The Stateless” started with

an assignment for National Geographic in

Bangladesh in 2016, when a new wave of

Rohingya refugees fled from Myanmar into

the country. The story was only published

eight months later, and by then, the photos

did not reflect the extent of the crisis.

Daniels returned to Bangladesh and started

to investigate its history. “The Rohingya

arrived with a different religion brought by

the [British] colonizer, which didn’t help

build peace between communities,” he said.

In the cover photo, a Rohingya refugee

who arrived in Bangladesh 20 years earlier

is walking through white sand towards

William Daniels in New Delhi at the main mosque

in 2020.

the sea. “There was very light fog, which

made some crazy light. I love it. This is

what they would consider winter,” said

Daniels. “The sun was about to set, and

all these trees were planted to stop the

progression of the sea in case of a storm

because this part of Bangladesh is very low

and very affected by rising sea levels.”

Subsequently, Daniels decided to do a

larger investigation of stateless populations

and was awarded a National Geographic

Society grant. “Statelessness says a lot

about the world today and what could be

the future – about populism, racism, and

the way there are more and more fractures

between communities,” he said.

He hopes that through the “Stateless”

project, “people understand that to live in

peace, every ethnic group must have their

identity recognized and acknowledged.”


documentary

SDNsocial

network

PUBLISHER OF ZEKE MAGAZINE

61 Potter Street

Concord, MA 01742

USA

Photo by Natalya Saprunova from “The Evenki People: Custodians of the Resources of Yakutia.” Aliona, 11 years old, of Russian origin,

was born in Lengra village in Southern Yukutia. She wears an exemplary Evenki costume decorated with white fox fur and simple geometric

patterns on the occasion of singing competitions in the Evenki language.

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