Stephen JB Kelly: Qi Lihe

Photo © Stephen JB Kelly-All Rights Reserved
Stephen JB Kelly is an English photographer, currently based in Hong Kong. He obtained a diploma in Photography from the London College of Communication, which was followed by a degree in Documentary Photography from the University of Wales, Newport.

Aside from winning a number of awards for his photography, Stephen has been published in various magazines including The Independent Magazine, The Observer Magazine, D La Repubblica delle Donne, IL Magazine and The FADER Magazine.

One of his portfolios is of Qi Lihe, on the outskirts of Lanzhou which is the most destitute area of this heavily polluted industrial city in northwest China. During the recent years, there has been an influx of migrant Hui and Dongxiang Muslim minorities into these urban centers. The main cause of the influx is the desertification of their land, forcing these farmers and families to seek a better existence in Lanzhou.

The Hui’s ancestors were Silk Road traders, largely of Arab and Persian descent, who first came to China in the 7th Century. The Dongxiang are closely related to the Mongolians and as an independent ethnic group they arose through contact with Central Asians who converted them to Sunni Islam in the 13th century.

Francesco Lastrucci: Kashgar

Photo © Francesco Lastrucci-All Rights Reserved
Here's the work of Francesco Lastrucci, an Italian freelance photographer who specializes in editorial stories. He's currently based between Italy, New York and Hong Kong from where he works on projects involving Europe, Latin America and East Asia.

From Francesco's diverse editorial stories, including a story of the ubiquitous areca nut and betel leaf chewing in Taiwan (as indeed it is in many other Asian countries), and its marketing by beautiful young women, I chose his excellent work on Kashgar, the capital city of the Uyghur.

The Uyghur live in modern Xinjiang, the westernmost province of China, but the name Xinjiang is considered offensive by many Uyghur who prefer to use Uyghurstan or Eastern Turkestan. Kashgar is an oasis city with approximately 350,000 inhabitants, and its old city has been deemed overcrowded and unsafe for its residents, and will have at least 85% of its structures demolished. Demolitions have already begun, with many of its former denizens forced to move.

Kashgar’s old city has been called “the best-preserved example of a traditional Islamic city to be found anywhere in Central Asia, but it is now being razed by the Chinese government which plans to replace the old buildings with new.

Ryan Pyle: Chinese Turkestan

Here's a feature by photographer Ryan Pyle on Chinese Turkestan, which touches on the Uyghur people and their efforts to preserve their cultural and religious practices in China.

Chinese Turkestan is now known as Xinjiang, and is an autonomous region of mainland China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, has abundant oil reserves and is China's largest natural gas-producing region.

Its major ethnic groups include Uyghur, Han, Kazakh, Hui, Kyrgyz and Mongol.It also has a documented history of at least 2,500 years, and a succession of different peoples and empires vying for control over the territory.

Ryan Pyle obtained a degree in International Politics from the University of Toronto, moved to China permanently in 2002 and began taking freelance assignments in 2003. He became a regular contributor to The New York Times covering China, where he documented issues such as rural health care, illegal land seizures, bird flu and environmental degradation. He also has published magazine work, such as the Sunday Times Magazine, Der Spiegel, Fortune, TIME, Outside, Forbes and Newsweek.

Normally, the Muslim call to prayer is melodious but the one chosen for this piece's soundtrack is not, so perhaps you may want to turn the audio off.

Alfredo Bini: Monlan Festival

Alfredo Bini has always taken photographs, and found his own personal form of expression in reportage photography. He concentrates on documenting stories of social relevance, and hopes that his images increases public awareness on these issues.

I thought of featuring Alfredo's work of the Monlan festival at the time when China is publicly positioning the Panchen Lama as the legitimate representative of Tibetan Buddhism, and to undermine the popularity of Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama.

Monlam is also known as The Great Prayer Festival, falls on 4th-11th day of the 1st Tibetan month. It is greatest religious festival in Tibet, when thousands of monks gather to perform religious rituals at the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa.

Alfredo's reportage "Water and Land in Sahel the case of Burkina Faso", won the title of "Runner-Up" in the "Travel Photo Of The Year", run by The Independent and Wanderlust, and has won 2nd place in the IPA Awards (NYC) for the Political category as well as 2 mentions of honor in the Environmental and Feature Story categories.

His Transmigrations reportage has been published as cover story by the Corriere della Sera Magazine and Alias (Il Manifesto), and has also been published by the BBC and Avvenire.

Michael Bednar: Eagle Hunters of Mongolia

Photo © Michael Bednar -All Rights Reserved
I like big pictures, and Michael Bednar's website galleries have such large photographs, that viewing them is a virtual immersion into his imagery. His photo story about the Eagle Hunters of Mongolia is a visual treat...especially since it features not only environmental portraits of the hunters and their eagles, but also breathtaking imagery of the stunning Mongolian landscape.

For Kazakhs, hunting with eagles is ingrained in their cultural heritage, and historians believe hunting with birds of prey was practiced by nomadic tribes in Central Asia almost 6000 years ago.

Michael Bednar is a travel and documentary photographer based in Vancouver. He started by discovering the diversity of life and cultures in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. After some years of globetrotting, Michael returned to Canada to attend the Western Academy of Photography and secured a diploma in Professional Photography.

He worked at daily newspapers in Southern Alberta, and eventually turned freelance, with his photographs published internationally.

Emyr R.E. Pugh: Environmental Portraits

Photo © Emyr R.E. Pugh-All Rights Reserved
In his short website biography, Emyr R.E. Pugh describes himself as a linguist, translator, interpreter and a documentary photographer based in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia....but I think he's way more than that. I have no way of knowing how good his translation skills are, but what I do know is that he's an excellent documentary photographer.

Emyr won Grand Prize in the National Geographic Traveler 2009 World In Focus Contest with this lovely photograph of Master Weng, a master calligrapher in the village of Tunjiao (southwest China), who is seen preparing to write a traditional blessing.

Most of his galleries on his website are portraits; some environmental and others straight facial studies. I gather these were photographed in Hohhot (Inner Mongolia) and Guizhou (Yunnan).

My favorite style of photography is most assuredly photographs taken of people where they either live or work, or in situations that tell a story about who they are and what they do....so I find Emyr's work to be really compelling.

I hope that Emyr will be tempted by multimedia...I can just imagine an audio slideshow of Master Weng in his cramped studio, describing his work among ambient sound.

I was tempted to delay this post until the first days of January, in order to include his work in next year's The Travel Photographer Of 2010, however decided that since I'm the editor (and chief coffee-maker) of this blog, I can do as I please and will include Emyr in next year's poll. I think my readers will agree.

To those of us whose knickers are occasionally pretzel shaped about expensive cameras and lenses, Emyr works with a Canon 40D and a 17-40mm f4...I'm just sayin'.

China: Portraits of 56 Ethnic Groups

Photo © Chen Hai Wen-All Rights Reserved
Here's an interesting "ethno-photographic" gallery by Chinese photographer Chen Hai Wen (all the information was translated from the Wen Xue City news website using Google Translator) who has recently published large scale photographs in what seems to have been titled as Harmonious China depicting groupings of 56 ethnic groups in China.

From what I gathered from the rather awkward translation, Chen Hai Wen led 14 other photographers across China on photo-shoots which took over one year to complete. It seems the total number of photographs made during this massive undertaking was 5.7 million!!

The "family" photographs are technically perfect, and showcase each different group in its traditional dress. The poses are stilted for the most part...and they are all obviously painstakingly staged...but it's certainly a monumental tour de force.

The last portrait is of the Han ethnic group, to which the largest percentage of Chinese belong to. It's also interesting that ethnic minorities of Taiwan are included.

Gilles Sabrié: Chinese Traveling Opera

Photo © Gilles Sabrié-All Rights Reserved
It's by pure coincidence that I stumbled on Gilles Sabrié's website, in which he dazzled me with his many documentary galleries ranging from The Traveling Opera and the Kham (Eastern Tibet) to Faiths of Asia, and passing through Calcutta Prostitution. Large sized photographs on the web always make me happy, and these are large!

As I have just photographed street Chinese opera singing in New York's Chinatown, I thought it worthwhile to highlight Gilles' gallery titled The Traveling Opera. It covers a small opera group (or troupe) trying its best to keep alive one of China's oldest traditions, despite the low pay and dismal living conditions.

The website is flash-based, so you'll have to look for the gallery, but I encourage you to look at and study all of his galleries of large sized images.

Gilles Sabrié is a freelance photographer based in Beijing, China. After years spent working in television, he switched careers to embrace his passion — documentary photography. Since then, he has focused on news and social issues in China. In particular, he spent months documenting the life of China’s migrant workers as well as the fate of the inhabitants of the Three Gorges area. Sabrié’s images have been featured in numerous publications including Newsweek, TIME, US News, The New York Times, The Herald Tribune, L’Express, Focus, Le Point and more.

China's Tibet: Desmond Kavanaugh

China's Tibet from Desmond Kavanagh on Vimeo.

This is hardly a travel feature, but is more of a statement against the encroaching Sinification of Tibet. Desmond Kavanaugh is an a Dublin-based photographer, who produced a documentary made of still images titled China's Tibet.

The collection of photographs is an exploration of the effects of Chinese occupation and development on the ancient culture and land of Tibet as it is pulled into the 21st century by one of the worlds fastest growing economies.

As Desmond writes: "This new Tibet is powered and connected, and is a haven for Han Chinese migrants attracted by Government subsidies. The documentary focuses on the issues of militarization, immigration, construction, propaganda and and repression of culture all set against the backdrop of the stunning plateau."

NYT: Ariana Lindquist: Heshun (China)

Photo © Ariana Lindquist/NY Times. All Rights Reserved
The New York Times featured a short slideshow of Ariana Lindquist's photographs of Heshun, in Yunnan province, China. With beautiful scenery and abundant cultural traditions, Heshun is one of China's earliest border trade town, and is a perennial favorite of film directors, photographers, and painters.

Heshun is located on China's southern border in Tengchong County, and was once famous for its wealthy merchants who traded with India, Burma and the interior of China itself. Its location on the tea caravans route made it also an important hub for the tea trade.

During the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, caravans arrived to Heshun ply their trade. They would bring silk, jewelery, books and Western commodities to exchange for jade.

I am tempted by articles like these to set up a photo expedition to Yunnan province...perhaps in 2011?

Zhou Mi: Where The Ganges Flows...

Here's a black & white photo essay Where The Ganges Flows... by Zhou Mi, documenting his traveling down the Ganges from its source in Gangotri to Kolkata, passing through Rishikesh, Haridwar and Varanasi.

It brought to mind the classic book Slowly Down the Ganges by Eric Newby, which may have been the photographer's inspiration.

Zhou Mi was born in Wuxi, Jiang-Su, China and worked as an engineer in his country before gaining a M.A. Communication Arts from the New York Institute of Technology. He then worked for Young & Rubicam Inc./ K& L Advertising before being a freelance photographer in San Francisco.

An eclectic photographer, Zhou Mi's galleries are mostly black & white and range from documenting lost and found objects on San Francisco's beaches to Burning Man festival in Nevada, passing through a photo essay titled Wu Yong in Kangding, Sichuan.

Hakka Dwellings: Ryan Pyle

Photo © Ryan Pyle/GlobalPost-All Rights Reserved
The GlobalPost website features Ryan Pyle's Chinese Hakka Houses, which are also known as Hakka Tulou "apartments" in Yongding county, Fujian province. These structures are indigenous to the Hakka minority group and other people in the mountainous areas in southwestern Fujian.

In 2008, UNESCO granted the Tulou dwellings World Heritage Status, and cited these structures as "exceptional examples of a building tradition and function exemplifying a particular type of communal living and defensive organization."

Having seen these buildings in Ryan's slideshow, these are typically large enclosed buildings, rectangular or circular in configuration, between three and five stories high, housing up to 80 families. Unfortunately, the slideshow feature doesn't include many interior shots of the apartments or of their occupants themselves.

Ryan Pyle obtained a degree in International Politics from the University of Toronto, moved to China permanently in 2002 and began taking freelance assignments in 2003. He became a regular contributor to The New York Times covering China, where he documented issues such as rural health care, illegal land seizures, bird flu and environmental degradation. He also has published magazine work, such as the Sunday Times Magazine, Der Spiegel, Fortune, TIME, Outside, Forbes and Newsweek.

Alessandra Meniconzi: Hidden China

I've waxed lyrical many times about Alessandra Meniconzi's Hidden China book, and it was with great pleasure that I realized she recently updated (and enhanced) her website with absolutely magnificent photographs of minorities in China, structured along the same chapters in her book.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If there's one travel photography book you ought to have on China, this is the one. If this still doesn't convince you, I believe the imagery you'll find on her Hidden China website will. This is travel photography and ethno-photography at its best.

As background, Alessandra Meniconzi is a Swiss photographer fascinated by the lives and traditions of indigenous people in remote regions of the world. After many years of working in Asia, she traveled in Iceland and became interested in the Arctic. She is the sole photographer for the books Hidden China (2008), Mystic Iceland (2007), and The Silk Road (2004), and she is currently working on the new book about Tibet, Arctic and Himalaya.

Alessandra was featured here on TTP.

Best Multimedia: Journey To End of Coal

Here's one of the best multimedia web documentary I've seen so far, and it's titled “Journey to the end of Coal,” developed by two French multimedia companies, Honkytonk and 31Septembre.

It's an interactive web documentary set in China, and documents the sacrifices that millions of Chinese coal miners are making everyday, risking their lives and spoiling their land to satisfy their own country’s appetite for economic growth.

I was amazed at how this web documentary has crossed over to television visual territory, and how well the interactivity of this web documentary is done, which adds an altogether exciting feature to the experience. You have to see it to be blown over as I am. It gives you the opportunity of experiencing what an investigative photojournalist goes through and faces on a similar assignment!

In short: one of the best I've seen so far, and one that totally justifies the 1.5 million page views it received so far.

However, set aside enough time to experience it..this is not the type of multimedia that can be rushed through.

Via Innovative Interactivity.

Jean Claude Louis: Asia Polaroids

Jean Claude Louis was born in France, and moved to Southern California in 1990. He's a physician and scientist, and had a life-long career in biomedical research. He now is pursuing his passions: travel and photography.

I've featured Jean-Claude Louis' work through the many photographic contests he won in 2007 and 2008. He participated and won (in specific categories) awards in National Geographic International competition, the Travel Photographer of the Year competition (two categories), and the B&W Magazine Portfolio Competition.

He returns to TTP with his Polaroid images of Asia...countries such as Myanmar, India, Viet Nam and China.

In Jean Claude's own words:In the Shadow of Time "is homage to the natural environment of these places and the people who live in it. The physical beauty and harmony of the places is accentuated by my use of the unique texture and light rendition of Polaroid Time Zero film to create a timeless, painterly effect."

I think Jean Claude succeeded in his quest...the images are ethereal. I chose the above image of a fisherman at dawn on Li River, China, because of its beautiful colors.

Justin Jin: 100Eyes Magazine

Justin Jin worked for more than than a decade as an independent photojournalist with leading magazines and newspapers, specializing in documenting people in hidden, harsh and sensitive situations, such as authoritarianism in Russia, exploitation in China or illegal immigration in Europe.

Based for the last four years in Moscow, Justin is doing reportage and
corporate assignments in Russia, China and beyond. While some of his projects are commissioned, others are self-initiated.

The beautifully produced 100Eyes Magazine features Justin Jin's edgy photo essay Made In China-Blues After Midnight which documents how workers in Chinese factories toil through the night scrubbing, spraying and tearing trousers to create the rugged look of blue jeans so favored by consumers all over the world.

Justin Jin's website is here.

Shiho Fukada: The End of Kashgar?

© Shiho Fukada/NYTimes-All Rights Reserved
One of my favorite photographers/photojournalists is Shiho Fukada, and she returns to the pages of The New York Times with photographs of Kashgar made into an audio slideshow titled A City and People At a Crossroads with the narration of Michael Wines (also author of the accompanying article To Protect an Ancient City).

Kashgar is a important hub on the Old Silk Road, a vibrant Islamic centre within Chinese territory, where over a thousand years ago, traders from all over Asia, sold and bought their goods on its streets. It is the largest oasis city in Chinese Central Asia and 90% of its population of over 3,000,,000 are Uygur. Kashgar’s Old City, is “the best-preserved example of a traditional Islamic city to be found anywhere in central Asia,” as wrote the architect and historian George Michell.

The article questions whether the Chinese government's policy to demolish the Old City and replace it with modern buildings is really because of its fear of earthquakes, or motivated by the desire to dilute the Uygur's identity by moving them elsewhere.

Some lovely photographs by Fukada of the Old City, especially the first one in the slideshow.

Stefen Chow: Imperial Beijing

A few days ago, I posted a POV titled Larger Is Good in which I wrote that larger images on photography/photographers' websites were advisable in order to attract photo editors and buyers.

Here's a beautiful example of what I meant: the website of Stefen Chow, a photographer who worked with Getty Images, Associated Press and Bloomberg News, Singapore Airlines and Shell. Not content to have traveled to over 30 countries, Stefen also summitted Mount Everest in 2005. He currently lives in Beijing and Singapore.

To show off the website, I chose Stefen's work on Imperial Beijing. This photo essay consists of photographs of Beijing's Imperial City, or The Forbidden City, which was home for 24 emperors over almost 5 centuries. I'd also encourage you to explore his other galleries, especially the Everest Adventure.

His beautiful images are almost as large as many monitors, and the navigation is ultra simple and intuitive. Check it out, and you'll join the large imagery converts!