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An image from Obama's inauguration, which Alan published on the BAGnewsNotes blog. ©Alan Chin

The biggest continuing problem is that, although Michael has established himself as a non-profit, and  fund raises in that sense, let’s be realistic: This is a tiny, tiny amount of revenue coming in compared to traditional media. So while he has been able to pay, to support what I’ve done and what other people have done in terms of our original contributions to the site, thus far that remuneration has been more symbolic. I should say it’s more than symbolic, because when you consider how little the magazines pay these days, even to get the equivalent of a couple of day rates is actually pretty significant. But at this point I can say it still doesn’t replace getting a traditional assignment.

Like everybody else, we’re trying to figure out how to make money on the Internet. Major newspapers and magazines are going bankrupt every day; they don’t have a clue what to do. Presumably they tried their damnedest and hardest, hired the best people they could, and still they fail. So our task is exceptionally daunting. But we have the advantage, at the moment, of being lean and personal and we have the faith of idealists and revolutionaries. But will that be enough?

The reason I’ve done it is there is hope in this model. Of course right now we’re not making a lot of money, and we’re barely breaking even. For example, we spent a week at the DNC in Denver. We were able to post dozens of images. The content we published was really strong. But to field an operation like that costs money. It would cost a lot of money for Time magazine, and it cost a lot of money for us. So Michael was able to throw some money my way to pay for lodging and transportation and also a little bit of money so that my time isn’t entirely volunteer, but at the end of the day it cost thousands of dollars to do that. And of course we can’t really compete with Time magazine. But in terms of what we’re able to do on-site, the level of discourse and the level of imagery is excellent. What the blog medium allows us to do is very dynamic. I think it’s the future of our industry.

We’re doing a lot of great work, but we’re still at the very beginning. During the DNC Michael was getting, I think, one day 40,000 hits, which actually crashed the picture-hosting server for a while. So we make mistakes, which we know we have to avoid in the future. But in a way I think that was very encouraging. If you have 40,000 hits, it’s not the million people that read the New York Times or Time magazine, and in that sense it’s very humbling. But 40,000 people who are actually going to go to a website, they actually care. They are committed to seeking something, as a opposed to all those copies of magazines and newspapers that circulate, but do people really care what’s in a paper at any particular moment? Whereas the people that come to our site, we know that they care, because the Internet being what it is, you don’t go anywhere on the Internet unless you really want to see what’s there.

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.

A so-called "alternative logging operation" in 1991 at Tofino Creek, Clayoquot Sound, Vancouver Island. The image ended up being a poster for Greenpeace's campaign to end clearcutting. ©Garth Lenz

Some photographers who approach ENGOs are already established. Since I started working with ENGOs very early on, now when I approach an ENGO I have not worked with previously, I almost always know someone there and they are already aware of my work. So how did I start working with ENGOs before I was an established photographer? Local groups in my hometown of Victoria were working to protect the Carmanah Valley, one of the last large and intact watersheds of old growth coastal temperate rainforest on Vancouver Island and home to the recently discovered tallest trees in Canada. It was all scheduled to be clear-cut in the very near future. At the time, I was still teaching piano to support myself, but photography and environmental issues were exerting an ever stronger pull. I had recently visited the area and was equally impressed by the devastating clearcuts, majestic forests, and the committed individuals I met there who were building trails to help the public access the area and learn what was at stake.

An image of the Carmanah Valley on Vancouver Island, from Garth's first feature assignment. The area was slated to be clearcut but later protected after a lengthy protest. ©Garth Lenz

I spent a few days in the area hiking and photographing, and upon my return to Victoria, I introduced myself to the local chapter of the Sierra Club and showed them my work. Shortly thereafter, Canada’s weekly news magazine, Maclean’s, decided the issue warranted national attention, they contacted the Sierra Club who referred them to me and I had my first published photo. Not long after that, our national newspaper the Globe and Mail decided to cover the story. The Sierra Club recommended me and I had my fist assignment, shooting aerials, which I’d never done before.

How you approach work with an ENGO or any other NGO will depend on how established you are and what subjects and areas you have in your photographic inventory. For someone in the early stages of their career, I think it is best to start locally. Is there an issue you care about that a local NGO is trying to promote? Do you already have images depicting this issue? If the answer to both these questions is yes, then you have an excellent foundation to begin building a relationship on. How you approach this will depend on how established you are and what subjects and areas you have in your photographic inventory. Of course, there are also other ways to make an initial connection.

1. Offer to give a lunch hour presentation of your work to staff. Or you might ask a local group to host a public presentation on an area you have visited and feel strongly about, perhaps splitting any proceeds from the event with them. Most NGO’s have a good base of supporters and may be able to assist in getting a larger audience than you would on your own.
2. Consider donating a print for one of their fundraisers.
3. See if you can organize a photo workshop through the NGO. Ask the NGO to organize it and perhaps for every paying customer they bring in they can have a free spot for a staff member.

Basically, you want the NGO to get to know you. They need to know that you care about the issues as much as they do. Thinking that you will walk through the door and come away with a paying assignment after your initial meeting is, in most cases, just not realistic. Okay, maybe that happens for some of the photo-gods and with very large NGO’s but for most of us mortals, being sent on a paying assignment by and NGO is something that only comes later.

A local woman at the Amber Fort in Jaipur poses for money. "Such a bummer," Ed says. "It reminds me of how the world has become spoiled." ©Ed Kashi

1/6/09

What strikes me about being in India is the growing gap between village and city life. City life is dirtier and more chaotic. People are drowning in their own excrement and sullied air. The calm of silence is hard to find, and the constant blaring of horns and the sounds of a civilization on it’s out-of-control march towards modernization leave me questioning the future of mankind.

Rural life is simpler, often set in magnificent landscapes and rich environments, yet impossibly poor by first-world standards. There are too many children, not enough education and health care, and a toughness to daily life that leaves me feeling as uncertain about the fate of man as the city does. If India represents the future of human civilization, an emerging economic superpower, I fear mankind is doomed on this earth. The common denominator between this imbalance and the one I’ve witnessed so graphically in the Niger Delta is a clear lack of sustainability. The more I travel the world with my peering eye and my questioning mind, accruing a privileged wealth of firsthand knowledge, this lack of sustainability is my overwhelming impression.

A Hindu god immersed in rose petaled water. ©Ed Kashi

From my upper-middle-class-but-progressive New Jersery neighborhood to the oil-spoiled countries of Africa and the Middle East, to the overpopulated India and China, to the dirt poor communities across the globe, particularly in the southern hemispheres, we have created an international human community that is in imbalance and cannot possibly sustain itself from the point of view of resources, pollution, overpopulation, and the associated social, economic, and environmental strains. Unless we change our ways fast, failure seems to be the only outcome. Maybe not in my lifetime, but eventually.

These thoughts leave me less than sanguine about life, yet on a daily basis I also witness the spirit of human ingenuity, the life-sustaining power of people’s survival instincts and the glimpses of solutions, both on a small community level and at a global level as practiced by the most progressive corporations and institutions. Take for instance an initiative we learned about, which preserved and developed medicinal plants and herbs native to this Rajasthani community. They have created a nature preserve dedicated to this cause, thereby providing income for the community. While being a photojournalist can be damaging to one’s sense of hope and drive you into a deep hole of despair, there are also uplifting moments and glimpses into how people survive and help one another. It’s this constant cycle of destruction and renewal, part of the life cycle, which I get to witness on a constant basis through the privilege of my roving observations.

Students on assignment at the National Geographic Photo Camp in Rajasthan, India. ©Ed Kashi

Every National Geographic Photo Camp I’ve worked on has impressed these notions upon me, and as I get older, the need to receive and give nourishment and cross pollination becomes essential. Being in this rural community in Rajasthan makes me wonder if the future of sustainability, or at least any hopes of survival, will come from the simple, centuries-old agrarian lives people here live. They are not greedy, they live within their means, eat fresh food and all seem to have one need. Yes they could use surer, cleaner sources of water, more reliable electricity, stronger houses, much better education and health care….all the extraordinarily important elements of a healthy life. But at least they live within their means while the developed world lives far outside of theirs, relying on a structure that is unfair, destructive to the earth’s environment, and self-serving.

I am eager to teach, give information to, even lecture my children because I want them to learn what I’ve learned — sooner rather than later. Maybe they’ll be able to take advantage of the information and avoid some of the mistakes I made growing up. This desire also holds true for the photo students I encounter in my workshops. Photography is so much more than image making, particularly photojournalism and documentary work. There are deeper responsibilities and moral and ethical issues connected to your work when you are given permission to enter people’s lives intimately to witness their pain and joy. We photographers become agents of communication, bridging worlds, charged with healing as well as slapping our viewers in the face with information they must know. Students and young photographers must learn this as early as possible to better serve the purpose of this work. We must learn to make the world a better place by shedding light on dark places but also by providing solutions and hope. It took me years to understand this, having spent so much time just trying to make my mark in this profession and struggle with making a living and gaining influence to get my stories out. I want my students to understand these critical elements sooner rather than later.