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A father with his young daughters at the Hadj pilgrimage. © Newsha Tavakolian

MJ: Maybe we can talk about a couple of the images. I’m looking at number 6. There’s a father taking a picture of his daughters with a little camera.

NT: That picture was taken around 2am. At night many people are sleeping, resting from the long day. But it’s also less busy so some people take the opportunity to visit the Grand Mosque when the crowds have left. While wandering through the corridors of the Mosque, I met this family. The father was with his four daughters who were dressed up in Hajj dresses, and I thought they were so cute. The father was so excited to be there, sharing the moment with the family. When he started taking pictures of the girls, I thought this was a nice moment to capture. Generally Muslims are too often portrayed as large groups, not individuals. The picture of a father being happy with his children hopefully shows that there is fun and happiness out there.

MJ: I haven’t seen a lot of pictures of families there; usually the images are of crowds. There was another one in a hospital. I thought that was interesting because usually pictures of Hajj are outside with beautiful buildings.

Pilgrims inside a hospital during Hajj. © Newsha Tavakolian

NT: Hajj is expensive. To go there and come back you need at least five thousand dollars. Because when you go on the pilgrimage, you have to return with gifts for all your family members. There are cost for hotels and transportation. People from countries like Yemen or Bangladesh spend so much money to buy tickets to get to Saudi Arabia and Mecca that they want to stay a long time. They don’t want to just go there for 4 days; some people who go there stay for one month. So it’s an expensive trip. Not many young people can afford to go there. Many people who go are old and have saved up for a large part of their lives to do the pilgrimage.

Some even pass away while they are there. I saw over 20 dead people on the street, wrapped up in white sheets. They died because they were too old, from heat, from pressure. This gave me the idea to spend one day only in the hospital and take pictures. Also National Geographic magazine supported me on this trip and they had asked for behind-the-scenes images of the pilgrimage.

I also want to point out that many Muslims want to go to Hajj, but the Saudi government cannot handle all of them, especially because Mecca is a small town. The authorities say they cannot deal with more than 2 million people, and point at disasters in the past in which pilgrims died in stampedes or giant fires in the tent camps. So you have to apply to come to Mecca during the Hajj. Your country has to submit your name, and you wait until it’s your turn. For example, if I were to submit my name as a pilgrim, it would take 17 or 18 years until I could go. As a photographer, different rules apply.

Newsha's Hajj dress hanging in her Tehran apartment. © Newsha Tavakolian

MJ: Maybe we can talk about the last photo, of your white dress hanging up in the window. It’s really poetic. I wonder if you have any special feeling about it.

NT: One of the special things about Hajj is the dress. Everybody wears the same dress, all in white. That is quite impressive. The idea is that everyone is the same in front of god, it doesn’t matter where you came from or if you’re poor, rich, black, white, or yellow, you all look the same in the same dress. That was why I took the opening picture of my ironing board and the Hajj dress; the clothes were the main symbol of the pilgrimage before I started the trip. When I returned, I hung the dress at the window, as a souvenir. The next evening, when I walked into my workroom, the image suddenly struck me and I knew that the dress pictures would be my opening and ending shots.

Before I went to Hajj, I decided to mix my work with the intimacy of my personal trip there. Since I work with Polaris news agency, most of my work has been straight photojournalism. Being a photojournalist in Iran, where I work and live, poses certain challenges, so I am now focusing on documentary series, which I really enjoy.

Non-Muslims cannot enter Mecca, so I decided that I wanted to show the pilgrimage like the journey that it is, close to the people, seen through their eyes. I hope my images give people a realistic idea of what it is like to be there.

Alan's portrait of a man working a concession stand at the Pepsi Center during the Democratic Convention is a reminder that, in spite of the demonstration of populism inside, inclusion -- especially with all that wealth and power around -- has its limits. ©Alan Chin

The method I have with Alan is to compare what’s happening on the ground, as he’s experiencing it, with the media and/or the political narrative and show how they illuminate each other. Ideally, we try to illuminate the contradictions, the artifice.

I decided not to go to the Obama inauguration and the reason is, and this is what was weird, in Denver I got really disoriented. The problem, I realized later, was that I couldn’t read the spin because being at the Democratic National Convention was like being on a giant stage set.

On the last night of the Convention, I only had two press passes to Invesco Stadium, but there were three of us. So I ended up staying behind.  And, although I was disappointed at first, it turned out to be a great relief to watch the whole “show” on TV in The Bloggers Tent. The experience really was stunning. It was the first time in the whole four days I could see the show through the media lens, and I could really appreciate how much this whole experience was constructed for television.

You know, what we see of politics, and even governance now, is so contrived, whether it’s mediated by the media’s agenda or by the agenda of parties, candidates, and elected officials. And I think we — meaning Alan and I, my other contributors, and the BAGnewsNotes — have to stay outside of that. So when I have someone like Alan on the scene, the idea is to be able to see beyond or though what the stakeholders necessarily want you to see.

Because the parties and the media are so sophisticated in the use of imagery (we’re talking Madison Avenue-level expertise), our mission is simply to try and narrow the perceptual gap between the public and the spin.  Readers are pretty smart when it comes to breaking down words, slogans, and text. But when it comes to pictures, I think there is still a lot of work ahead to raise the level of visual literacy on the part of the news and politics consumer.

• According to an Associated Press report, Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton called for the release of detained American-Iranian photojournalist Roxana Saberi at a press conference yesterday, two days after the NPPA released an announcement that the Iranian government admitted Saberi was held in prison. Since the US currently has no diplomatic relations with Iran, the State Department is now working with Swiss officials to find out details of her detention. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) started a Facebook petition which had already collected over 5,500 signatures as of yesterday afternoon. NPPA has more on Saberi and the arrest here and here. For a complete story and update, go to Free Roxana website.

• Moodboard, the London-based stock photo agency that has gained popularity in this struggling economy, debuted its digital magazine ONE this week. While some think that the stock industry is in freefall, Moodboard CEO Mike Watson thinks it is the perfect solution for photographers and creatives to counter the slashed marketing and photography budgets companies everywhere are experiencing. Regardless, we think the 34-page magazine is visually pleasing and a great attempt to connect with the photography community at large.

• The 50 States Project published its first “assignment” on March 1. The innovative online gallery pulls together 50 emerging photographers, one from each state, and asks them to make a photo according a bimonthly theme. The first theme was “People,” and the photographers were asked to create images that convey their own style as well as the feel of their home state. A Photo Editor has already given it his blessing and undoubtedly other editors have bookmarked the page as well.

• The Guardian reported Monday that after ratings for the Academy Awards last year plunged to a historic low, producers asked key actors and presenters not to enter via the red carpet this year so viewers would have to watch the ceremony to see their gowns. Not surprisingly, the photographers who make their living from photos of Oscar gowns were pissed. The ratings this year jumped 13 percent — and in typical over-simplified fashion, we bet the academy attributes that to this new policy (not the fact that the styling was classy and classic this year, the presenter was hot, or even, that people need Hollywood distractions more when the economy’s in the toilet), and keeps it.

• In an official announcement released via the NPPA website, Pete Souza, the recently-appointed official White House photographer, filled out his team with Chuck Kennedy as assistant director of the White House photography office and Lawrence Jackson and Samantha Appleton as official photographers. Kennedy’s precisely executed inauguration picture made front covers of hundreds of newspapers all over the world. Jackson was most recently a staff photographer at the Associated Press in Washington DC, and Appleton, named one of the “30 Under 30” by Photo District News, is known for her projects on Iraq and Africa. Souza said she will be primarily assigned to cover the First Lady. We wonder if it’s common practice to have a woman photographer specifically assigned to the first lady. Anyone know?

• After months of speculations, Rocky Mountain News owner E.W. Scripps announced yesterday that the publication will cease operations after its last edition today (February 27, 2009). The paper, which has been serving Denver for 150 years, has won 3 Pulitzer Prizes in photography since 2000. Sadly this is likely the first in a long line of newspaper closings; the San Francisco Chronicle also announced this week that it is looking for buyers in a bid to save the paper. We can’t decide if it’s poetic justice or just sad irony that the best reporting on the closing was done by the paper’s own staff via Twitter.

• Defense Secretary Robert Gates has finally lifted the 18-year-old photography ban, now allowing caskets arriving at Dover airforce base in Delware to be photographed, as long as families of the deceased agree to it. The Dover Air Force Base is the military’s largest mortuary facility, where bodies of American troops are sent before traveling to hometowns. We hope this is part of the wave of change apparently sweeping Washington. If those photos had been allowed earlier, maybe we wouldn’t have had to wait so long for that change.