Interview with Photojournalism News

“I try to make a positive impact on the world”
Interview: Nezih Tavlas / July 7, 2021

https://www.photojournalismnews.com/ed-kashi

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Photojournalism News: What drew you to photojournalism?
Ed Kashi: The desire to tell stories about issues that I move me either on a personal level or as a journalist, whether social or geopolitical. I wanted to be a writer and when I discovered photography and the powerful and inspiring work of photojournalists and documentary photographers, I was determined to apply my desires into this medium and the craft. Photojournalism has provided the perfect synthesis of my desires, to engage with the world, learn, observe, analyze and tell stories with meaning and impact.

Photojournalism News: What equipment do you use? Do you have a favourite lens/camera?
Ed Kashi: I have used Canon equipment since 1977, including now working with their video cameras. Over the years I have also worked extensively with Leica equipment and more recently Fujifilm cameras.

Photojournalism News: What social media platforms do you use?
Ed Kashi: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and I see myself as a publisher.

Photojournalism News: How do you prepare yourself before any assignment? What would you put in your camera bag for a typical task?
Ed Kashi: I do my research of the issue so I can speak to it with authority and confidence, I learn about the place, culture, etc so I can dress, behave and interact in a sensitive and appropriate way, and in my camera bag is usually 1-2 cameras, a couple of lenses, a flash, and all the accessories like batteries, media cards, etc. I like to work light with gear and focus on the emotions, people and environment.

Photojournalism News: How would you best describe your style of work?  What are you trying to say with your photography?
Ed Kashi: I want to capture “candid intimacy” to make people feel they are privy to compelling moments without the imprint of my presence. Visually my work is layered and complex to help tell visual stories.

Photojournalism News: How many photos do you take for one story?
Ed Kashi: There is no formula. I can make 3000 images in a day or in a week. It all depends on the length of the story, type of story it is and how easily I can work in a given place or situation. Some places allow me to work freely and some are very difficult due to security or cultural issues.

Photojournalism News: What is the last trip you made?
Ed Kashi: I last went to various locations around the United States to work on a documentary film about teen mental health.

Photojournalism News: What projects will you be working on next?
Ed Kashi: I have a new book coming out that is a kind of love letter to photography based on a particular style and approach I’ve developed over the past 40+ years, I am working on a Zine about my California Years, I will be doing a NYT assignment about chemical pollution in the United States, I am teaching workshops in Mexico, Paris and the United States, I’ll be continuing to film on an ongoing project about environmental justice and my studio is working on developing legacy edits of my work to present to museums and galleries. I also have lectures and film screenings coming up around our new film, Sheila and Joe, including in person events in New York City. So my practice at this stage in my career is expansive, complicated and I have my hands in a number of different areas besides just shooting photographs and filming.

Photojournalism News: Which of your photographs would you describe as your favourite? What makes them so special to you?
Ed Kashi: I don’t think in this way, so it’s hard to answer questions like this. I have images from certain bodies of work that are important to me and I know have had impact, and there are random images made over the decades that speak to me. The images that are most impactful are the ones I care most about, including images from my projects on Aging in America, the Struggle of the Kurds, the impact of oil in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, and my current project on Chronic Kidney Disease of non-traditional causes. What they all have in common is intimacy, visual strength, a powerful moment and a deeper context that they reside in.

Photojournalism News: What message do you want your photos to convey?
Ed Kashi: I don’t have one message, but the overall goal is to capture moments that reflect the human condition and remind us of our shared humanity, in all its beauty marks and worts.

Photojournalism News: What does a photo need to be a great in your eyes?
Ed Kashi: A great photo can be made up of many qualities, but the most important one for me is that it has authenticity and impact.

Photojournalism News: In the digital age people consume billions of photos every single day, under the circumstances what could make a photo memorable?
Ed Kashi: Beauty, a magical moment, amazing light, strong composition, and a universal quality. Memorable images are imperfect, leaving you to question, wonder, stop, meditate.

Photojournalism News: What motivates you to continue taking pictures and what do you do to keep motivated?
Ed Kashi: The desire to create, engage with the world, learn about issues I am genuinely interested in and try to make a positive impact on the world.

Photojournalism News: What was the biggest professional risk you have taken and what was the outcome?
Ed Kashi: Probably going to Iraq 5 times between 2003-2005 with no financial backing or commissions. I made work that was published globally, I learned a bit more about the country my parents were born in and grew up in, and I came to understand my physical and mental limits as a human being.

Photojournalism News: What would be your dream assignment?
Ed Kashi: To continue on my personal quest to learn more about the origins of my name, Kashi, which emanates from Varanasi, India, is found in Kashan, Iran and Kashgar, China. It’s more of a personal quest, not to change the world, and to allow me the chance to indulge in some history and culture.

Photojournalism News: What are the essential skills/ qualities a photojournalist should have?
Ed Kashi: Empathy, intense curiosity, a questioning mind, a big heart, a strong constitution, ethical and moral fortitude and a belief that the world can be a better place if we honestly illuminate aspects of it.

Photojournalism News: What do you think about the digital manipulation of images?
Ed Kashi: For photojournalism and reality based documentary work it’s unacceptable, but for the rest of photography is part of the toolkit of creativity, personal expression and craftsmanship.

Photojournalism News: What does it mean to be an ethical photojournalist?
Ed Kashi: To understand what you’re observing, capture reality as honestly as possible and make sure you contextualize your images in the must truthful, factual way possible.

Photojournalism News: How do you see the role of photojournalism evolving in the world? Do you think photojournalism is losing its importance? 
Ed Kashi: Photojournalism has lost much of it’s ability to change the world in a single image, but it continues to have relevance and power to teach, influence and change minds.

Photojournalism News: Do you have any advice for aspiring photojournalists?
Ed Kashi: See above the answer to What are the essential skills, etc. Additionally you must be prepared for rejection and being ignored, so you must be strong and believe in yourself.

https://www.photojournalismnews.com/ed-kashi

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AboutFace | US Veteran Laura Wright

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Laura Wright
US Veteran | 1984-1997

Laura Wright, who served in the army from 1984-1997, was assaulted by a group of men one day near their base. Her extremely traumatic experience and the lack of adequate response by the army kept her from reaching out to anyone for help for a long time. She was expected to come back to work in four days as if nothing had happened.

After she left the army, she struggled with drug use and repressed pain. She was unable to tell her first husband about her trauma, and it pulled them apart. When her drug use increased, she eventually became homeless and spent time in prison, while her son was with her parents.

When she found the VA’s 30-day program, she began working one-on-one with a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist, which she describes as “life changing,” finally providing her space and tools to understand her experience and release her deeply repressed pain.

She is married again to a man she calls her best friend, and has completely transformed her self image. “I love myself. I love my life.”

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AboutFace features videos of Veterans, family members, and clinicians sharing their experiences with PTSD and PTSD treatment. AboutFace provides more information about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, finding support and treatment, and resources for family members.

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AboutFace | US Veteran Eddie Statsmann

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Eddie Statsmann
US Veteran | 1987-1990

Eddie Statsmann comes from a long line of United States army veterans. He was determined to be a part of something, as he struggled to make friends when he was a young kid in the foster system.

One night, Eddie was assaulted at gun point. He felt that the army did nothing for him after this traumatic event. Eddie was suicidal, and began using drugs after leaving the army. He got married and had kids, but a wave of unruly behavior eventually almost cost him life in prison, and he did temporarily lose custody of his children.

Lost and alone, he eventually went to Los Angeles, where he sought help at the Veterans Administration. There, he was diagnosed with PTSD in 2009. His therapeutic experience brought relief having someone to talk to. A brave and resilient survivor, he works every day at being a good husband to his wife and father to his kids.

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AboutFace features videos of Veterans, family members, and clinicians sharing their experiences with PTSD and PTSD treatment. AboutFace provides more information about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, finding support and treatment, and resources for family members.

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AboutFace | US Veteran Steve Connor

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Steve Connor
US Veteran | 1977-1979

Steve Connor, who currently lives in western Massachusetts, USA, shares his experience with sexual assault while he served in the US Navy.

The latest Veteran statistic is that 1 in 100 men report they’ve been a victim of MST (Military Sexual Assault).

Steve discovered the Veterans Affairs all-male therapeutic group and felt the pull to face his fears. Through this, he met other men he wouldn’t have expected were vulnerable to MST, and it helped him deal with his shame and embarrassment after a period of drinking, drug use, and sexual promiscuity. Counseling helped him understand it wasn’t his fault, that he was a victim.

In Massachusetts, every city has a veterans service officer to meet the needs of veterans and their dependents. Steve has been fulfilling this role for almost 17 years, and shares how rewarding it is to work with and help other survivors.

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AboutFace features videos of Veterans, family members, and clinicians sharing their experiences with PTSD and PTSD treatment. AboutFace provides more information about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, finding support and treatment, and resources for family members.

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Ulster County Fair

It was 2011, which feels like a lifetime ago, when I first decided to take smartphone photography seriously. Like many photographers, I didn’t consider the iPhone as a tool for “real” work. Entering this world was characterized by playing with new apps like Instagram and Hipstamatic and their funky novelty filters, working in a square format (Instagram’s only option at the time) and realizing that this new platform was beginning to take over my world of visual storytelling. In fact, this new movement of smartphone photography was solidifying the photographic image as the lingua franca of the global community, from personal to public sharing through images made on this relatively new, pocket-sized device. And with the proliferation of social media apps and channels of communication, the smartphone became the perfect tool for creating imagery for these new mediums.

This series was created during one day at the Ulster County Fair in upstate New York, while I was teaching a photographic workshop for the Center for Photography at Woodstock. I brought my students to this nearby event anticipating a wide range of people and activities that we would encounter; a perfect theatre to produce work.

I chose a somewhat aggressive approach, shooting loosely, paradoxically working on the sly and up close. Taking advantage of the incognito quality of photographing with a smartphone, I was taken less seriously than I would have with a full frame digital camera. This was a stretch for my style of working, but I chose to experiment with my approach on this day.

I sought candid moments as well as camera awareness amongst a diverse range of race, age, and bodies. While a county fair is heralded as a place of great joy, I was attracted to the stress and fatigue of the people I encountered on that summer day.

It is always important to look at our work, examine our intentions and consider how they align with the realities we witnessed. In this case, whether it was a reflection of my mood or I was actually capturing the atmosphere, I’m not certain. But that’s one of the magical qualities of photography; the ambiguity and the inverse relation of my internal mood to the external energy.

The use of extreme filters evidenced in this body of work is long gone. I now prefer to capture my images as plainly as possible, using my abilities to see, observe, capture light, color, compositions, to make strong and timeless images.

This work is a throwback to the beginnings of the current moment we’re living through, where photography has become digital, a product of coding and pixels, a medium that lives in electrical currents, not film, paper and the material world. Regardless, the cavalcade of characters that I captured live on in my consciousness and remind me of that day where the digital and physical world collided in a chorus of warmly tinted shades.

A dear friend's visit to Varanasi/Kashi, in mourning

I first met ShastriX on a palm-tree-lined street in an upscale housing development in Bangalore, India in 2007 while on assignment for National Geographic magazine. I was working on a long story about the Golden Quadrilateral Highway, India’s largest infrastructure project at that time.

I was trying to capture the new wealth of this Southern-California-styled development, with million dollar homes in a gated community. One day I was walking through the quiet streets when I came upon a couple of kids playing soccer and I started to photograph them. ShastriX, who was photographing his then teenage daughter, approached me with curiosity about my photography. As we continued talking about photography, he was excited about my work with Nat Geo, and more importantly, gave me permission to continue.

Over the last 14 years ShastriX and I have remained in touch, and he recently shared this very intimate diary of his recent visit to Varanasi, India, a holy city where many Hindus make pilgrimage to have remains burned on the banks of the sacred Ganges River at the cremation ghat on the river’s edge. He journeyed here, where it is believed that if one is cremated in Varanasi, the reincarnation cycle eventually reaches Nirvana, to say goodbyes to his mother who had recently passed away. I was so moved by what he wrote, that I asked my generous and lovely friend for his permission to share it here.

His blog posts can be found here.

Thank you ShastriX and peace to you and your family.

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I journeyed to Varanasi, India in 2019 and produced a body of work called Arc of a Name, exploring the timeless quixotic mix of ancient and modern cultures, and the longevity and transformation of names.

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CONFINEMENT, Prix Pictet interactive online group exhibition

Prix Pictet is proud to launch an interactive exhibition of Confinement.

In their own compelling images and words, 43 of the more than 90 past shortlisted Prix Pictet photographers give us their personal response to the Covid-19 crisis.

The project began with a series of inspiring commissions in partnership with The Guardian, before growing into a book, Confinement, published by teNeues earlier this year. This digital exhibition invites a closer look into each artist's response, with new unseen images, as they move beyond emerging clichés and point to a way forward.

In the next few weeks, Fiona Shields, The Guardian’s Head of Photography, will host the first guided tour of the exhibition online. Follow us on social media to keep updated about this event. 

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The purpose of the Prix Pictet, to quote Gro Harlem Brundtland at its launch in 2008, is ‘to ensure that matters of sustainability remain at the forefront of global debate, where they need to belong’. In the twelve years since, the two greatest threats to life on the planet – excess resource depletion and damaging climate change – have only intensified. The Prix Pictet has documented the growing sustainability crisis in images raw and beautiful from across the world.

In doing so it has become one of a handful of leading global prizes for any type or genre of photography. The smartphone revolution has made photography a medium of communication used and understood by all. It’s a medium that transcends language in its power to communicate, which magnifies the potential of the Prix Pictet to influence government, business and society throughout the world.

This Confinement project started life as a book, published in a year that will forever be imprinted in our memories as the year of the Covid-19 pandemic; of lockdown, of confinement – changing the way we work and live in what Peter Frankopan describes in his accompanying essay as ‘the largest social science experiment in history’. Some changes will be permanent, others will fade with time. Perhaps, in the brief interlude of clean city air and clear skies, we have learnt something about our impact on our planet. Nor should we forget that the year has also amplified economic inequalities within societies and between nations, with lasting effects.

Here, in their own compelling images and words, 43 of the more than 90 past shortlisted Prix Pictet photographers give us their personal response to the Covid-19 crisis.

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The year the Earth stood still | Peter Frankopan

Pandemic, pain, language, and culpability | Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

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Volunteers with the Nutley Volunteer Emergency and Rescue Squad, responding to a 92-year-old Indian man who suffers from diabetes and had lost consciousness, in Nutley, New Jersey on 15 April 2020. This force, established in 1954, is a mix of 20 employees and 55 volunteers, responding to every medical call, including Covid-19 emergencies. Since the start of the pandemic they approach every call as Covid-related. Many town residents have been donating protective equipment, covering the squad for now. ‘There is a fear. A fear of bringing this back home to our friends and family. A fear of getting exposed and sick. But we knew that we would have to be ready for anything when we signed up for this. This is a game changer for all of us, whether you’re getting paid or volunteering, but we’re still in it and we’re going to win. It’s the passion and personal belief of helping others that keeps us going. It’s a huge sacrifice that we make so we can serve others in this unsettling and unprecedented time.’ Jonathan Arredondo, President of the Volunteer Association.

An emotional moment during the protests in New York City over police violence and the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police last week. Thousands came out to march and fight for justice and the vast majority of protesters were peaceful and expressing their rights to free speech and assembly.

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Living With Fire: What California Can Learn From Native Burns [excerpt]

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Living With Fire: What California
Can Learn From Native Burns

Officials are beginning to reimagine fire and land management, drawing upon
Native American tradition and perspectives that were long outlawed.

Written by Megan Botel
03/10/2021

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/california-wildfires-native-burns_n_604692eec5b69197db28fdd4

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The tribe’s spiritual leader, Keith Turner, begins burn day with a ceremony, blessing each member of the group with cleansing white sage.

This story is co-published with The GroundTruth Project.

MARIPOSA, Calif. ― Rain falls on the 300-year-old oaks on a cold midwinter morning as a group of nearly 60 gathers here on what was once southern Sierra Miwok land.

Some have returned year after year. Others are here for the first time, eager to learn what California’s oldest residents have long known about land management after the most destructive fire season in the state’s recorded history. 

“We are here to make an offering to the land,” said Ron Goode, the North Fork Mono’s tribal chairman, who organized the event. “Mother Earth supports us. By putting fire on the ground, we support her.” 

Rakes, clippers, shovels and chainsaws in hand, the group heads out to assemble the dead vegetation into burn piles. Using drip torches ― red tin canisters with mixtures of diesel and gasoline ― they delicately light the piles on fire in slow, deliberate motions, painting the land in strokes of orange and red. 

It is the year’s first cultural burn for the North Fork Mono. For more than 10,000 years, tribes used small, controlled fires to open pasture lands and clear out underbrush, promoting new plant growth and reducing the risk of large, dangerous fires.

But when Western settlers took over Native American lands in the 18th and 19th centuries, they began barring many traditional practices, including cultural burning. In 1850, the U.S. government passed the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, which prohibited intentional burning. After over a century of this strategy left the nation’s forests choked with dry underbrush, California’s fire officials are now beginning to reimagine fire and land management, drawing upon Native American tradition and perspective. 

North Fork Mono tribal members are teaching the group of university students, ecologists, journalists and, notably, officials from the U.S. Forest Service and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) how it might help curb the state’s fire crisis by clearing out highly flammable vegetation before the dry, hot summer. 

Officials from Cal Fire and the Forest Service were present at the burn, marking a shift in the way the state’s land managers are imagining fire “fighting.”

Goode, a state-certified “burn boss,” runs several burns a year to rehabilitate meadows across California. This 369-acre property became an unofficial educational site when he opened it up to university students nearly two decades ago, and for the past six years he’s invited the greater public. Interest surged within the past three years, he said, attracting hundreds of participants at each burn, including a growing number of officials from Cal Fire and the Forest Service. (Due to the pandemic, those numbers are currently limited.)

“People are interested in what’s happening,” Goode said. “But it takes disasters for people to start waking up.”

In 2020, wildfires ravaged 4.2 million acres of California, including Big Basin in Santa Cruz, the oldest and one of the most beloved state parks in California. Over the past decade, the state known for its lush forests and rich natural resources has seen hundreds of lives lost and tens of thousands of structures destroyed, entering, as fire historian Stephen Pyne put it, the “fire equivalent of an ice age.” 

The disaster has awakened California’s land managers, who, after a century of promoting fire suppression and rejecting Native American controlled burn techniques, are now trying to figure out what to do with the abundance of dried shrub and brush that, along with a warming climate, fueled the current fire emergency.   

On this February morning, Goode’s 11-year-old nephew, Harlon, uses a chainsaw for the first time to take down a dying white oak. He watched it fall in awe. 

“One day, I’m going to take over for my uncle and be the burn boss,” Harlon said. 

The event took months of meticulous planning, including permits, funding and accommodating the pandemic restrictions. But they could not plan for the weather, and the forecast was for near-constant rain. 

“Whether we get much burning done or not, I am fulfilled,” said Goode, gesturing toward the group huddled under tents to keep dry. “Look at all of you.” 

So is Jonathan Long, a research ecologist for the U.S. Forest Service who attended the burn. 

“There’s some really bad history of labeling Native people as ignorant or superstitious, of actively arresting people and putting them in jail if they were trying to carry out traditional practices like cultural burning,” Long said. “Most people would now say: ‘Yes, if we kept burning in the frequency, in the ways Native Americans burned, we wouldn’t have the fires we are having now.’” 

Once the rain stops, a rainbow forms over the property in Mariposa, California, as volunteers finish up the first day of work.

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covidescence | curated by Philip Blenkinsop

VII Insider

Feb. 12, 2021

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Curated by Philip Blenkinsop

Seventeen pairs of eyes and their offerings; images born between Januarys, during a period of exceptional global uncertainty. The dialogue nurtured by their enforced cohabitation here speaks to me of our fears and our vulnerabilities, whether real or imagined; it begs of us to question our own apathy, our unreadiness or unwillingness to stand up and challenge a poisonous status quo; it alludes to the fragility of those hopes and dreams we harbour for our children.

PB
Arles Feb 15 2021

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Photography Daily - Photographic Life Lessons From A Master

#187 PHOTOGRAPHIC LIFE LESSONS FROM A MASTER

Photography Daily
Feb. 8, 2021
Ed Kashi | Part 2

https://www.photographydaily.show/episodes/ed-kashi-lessons-from-a-master

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Ed Kashi, VII Photo Agency photographer talks of his incurable curiosity when it comes to photographing people. We discuss candid photography, what it is and the rules of engagement. We talk about the current social distrust of the media, photographers and photography, the importance of sound as a way to enhance your photo stories and how he has hope, real hope for the future of photojournalism.

FURTHER REFERENCE: VII Photo and Don McCullin’s marine photograph.

Today something a little different, a short feature at the end of the show helped along by those who support the show via our Patreon link in the menu above. I asked after one of our Tuesday and Thursday Patreon MORE editions, for thoughts about what candid really means since I knew Ed would be discussing a project that broke some of those ‘camera unaware’ candid rules. It’s a great community that we have in Patreon and I got some considered thoughts, inspirational too from members who wanted to help with this question. On that note, Patron of the Day is Michael Beecham, his Instagram is @michaelbeecham_photo. I think by now you’ve worked out my own enthusiasm for simplicity and that’s what I particularly like about Michael’s work. His lockdown project 'The Sanity Within the Stasis' was originally a project he started to keep himself occupied whilst at home last March. It quickly grew into something he says; “I feel reflected the emotional and mental health of the country.” Tab through the grid and his work and you’ll find the black and white studies of flowers made, or shot through a home made scrim of sorts; cling film. These are stunning.  

Today's show is supported by also by MPB.com, the number one platform for buying, selling and trading used camera gear in the U.K. the U.S. and Europe. There is a simple reason I have been using MPB.com myself for buying, selling and trading quality used camera gear. I buy used from MPB because I know there is quality checked kit that will work as well as the products I buy new from a shelf - and I know that this is a sustainable way to buy, plus I love that I've driving the circular economy too. I've used them myself and I've recommended their service to friends too, which is testament to my trust in how their service works.

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On An Ordinary Day, curated by VII's Daniel Schwartz

On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global health emergency. One year later, VII Photo Agency photographers set out to document the stories of ordinary people throughout the world.

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The Visual Artist
Photographed by Nichole Sobecki

Cyrus Kabiru, a visual artist known for his sculptural eyewear, has found a way to respond to the uncertainty and loss brought on by COVID-19 through his creative work, photographed here in his studio in Thika, Kenya, on June 12, 2020. This pandemic series explores questions around social distancing, African responses to the novel coronavirus, and figurative interpretations of the virus itself.

Cyrus is also working with several other artists to make and distribute masks for free to those who need them, focusing on the thousands of Kenyans forcibly displaced from Sewage by the government — the same neighborhood where he grew up. Kenyan authorities forcibly evicted more than 7,000 people from the neighborhood known as Sewage, for an adjacent treatment plant this past April, defying a court order and leaving many stranded and homeless in the midst of the pandemic.

The Baker
Photographed by Eric Bouvet

Sylla Sadia, a 52-year-old baker, is photographed in Paris on January 26, 2021.

“Bread is life. It was like during wartimes — so many people came to buy bread. All day there was a long line.

“I had to work a lot to learn [the trade]. I had respect when I was a kid in Guinea, but here in France I learn the work — this is the country of workers.

“I am the owner of the bakery, and my son works with me. I have six employees. The lockdown is strange. It is a dark period without visibility. I am anxious.

“As an African, I am privileged to be the owner of a bakery, but France gave me everything. For sure I have worked hard, I take care of people, I respect people, so… here I am with the culture and the education, we will survive.”

The Single Mother
Photographed by Mary Gelman

Polina is a solo mother from Saint-Petersburg, photographed on July 25, 2020. “Quarantine didn’t change my life, because it began in April 2019, when my daughter was born. I have been in isolation for much longer, and not just me, but many mothers on maternity leave. There was anxiety in the background of general news. I was afraid of the unknown, of the future. But I found a job, and those years were not so bad.”

The Bartender and Concert Promoter
Photographed by Ashley Gilbertson

Matthew Paneth, 29, a bartender and concert promoter, at The Emma Peel Room, a bar on the Lower East Side, in New York City, on January 24, 2021.

“The last year has been entertaining and terrible,” Mr. Paneth says. “Everything’s been changing by the day, and we’re all going through it. There are new rules, sometimes weekly, that devolve — making less and less sense as we move through this. And we’re scared for our jobs — that we might not be following arbitrary rules closely enough while trying too hard to make everyone —the State and the customers — happy. And then, a hurricane or a snowplough will come through and just erase all the hard work.”

“Here, at the bar, we’ve always been here in the community and for the community. And by being here, I’m not touching 50 people’s lives every day — maybe it’s six, and for now that’s enough. My regulars keep my job afloat, but they also keep my life afloat. Since the pandemic, it’s become clear there’s no way to make it as someone who doesn’t care, who just turns up and does their job. You’re not going to survive if you’re not caring about your community — I mean, what else is there?”

The Sex Worker
Photographed by Ilvy Njiokiktjien

Sex worker Foxxy Angel, 39, is photographed at the Prostitution Information Centre in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on June 30, 2020.

“The pandemic has been very difficult for us as sex workers. Ever since the pandemic started, we have been struggling. At the start of the pandemic, we closed down for 3.5 months. Luckily, we were finally able to open up again later in the year. But that only lasted a few weeks, and in December we closed down again, until now. It has been hectic for all of us. And many of the sex workers do not get help from the government. They are struggling in many different ways.

“I do get government support, luckily, as I am self-employed, and self-employed sex workers do get support most of the time.

“I get a lot of messages on my phone from clients. They are at home, sometimes very frustrated. Many of them rely on the services sex workers provide. I feel our job is not seen as important, but it definitely does serve a purpose in society.

“The clients that message me are sitting at home, all day with their wives. And I know for a fact that that is not always working out properly.”

The Mental Health Worker
Photographed by Ed Kashi

Alexandra Marie Airey, 27, is a mental health worker who is simultaneously getting her master’s degree from Rutgers University while working full time at Jersey City Medical Center in Jersey City, New Jersey, photographed in Montclair, New Jersey, before starting her shift on January 25, 2021.

The Refugee
Photographed by Nichole Sobecki

Portrait of Raymond Brian, a non-binary Ugandan refugee who goes by the name of “Mother Nature,” outside the safe house he helped found in a Nairobi suburb, on June 19, 2020.

Mother Nature had been approved to relocate to the United States before the coronavirus crisis hit and all resettlement was put on indefinite hold by the IOM. For gay and transgender Ugandan refugees in Kenya, such delays comes with immediate risks. “The delay was really traumatizing,” he explained. “I went numb, then blamed myself, before accepting that it was out of my control. But homophobia has been on the rise since the pandemic began — people are looking for someone to blame and we’re a popular target. So it’s stressful.” A friend of Mother Nature’s committed suicide last month.

Sexual minorities are persecuted in Uganda, where lawmakers have made serious attempts to institute the death penalty for gay sex. In Kenya, those acts are also illegal and theoretically punishable by up to 14 years in jail. More commonly, the law is used by the police as a pretext to extort and harass members of the LGBT community.

Nearly 500 migrants in Kenya (and more than 3,000 across Africa, and 10,000 worldwide),­ the vast majority of whom are refugees,­ have had their approved resettlement to third countries put on indefinite hold by the coronavirus. Some include LGBTQ, who face immediate risks due to the delay, struggle to find work, and face harassment by authorities. Queerness remains illegal in Kenya.

The Father
Photographed by Seamus Murphy

Father Hugh MacKenzie, Westminster Cathedral, Victoria, London, January 22, 2021.

Catholic chaplain at Westminster Cathedral and St. John and St. Elizabeth Hospital. He was ordained at Westminster Cathedral 25 years ago.

“COVID-19 has more directly brought suffering into the world in people’s lives. In the Bible, pandemics, and pestilences, are sometimes interpreted as punishments or chastisement. So we’re within that tradition, but for the modern age, we’re trying to understand what that means. Most bad things are related to humans mucking up the environment, not just physically but also particularly spiritually. And so we’ve tried to explore that both in sermons and in one-to-one conversations. We don’t want to give the idea of a sort of arbitrarily angry God, that’s not the God we believe in, in the Catholic tradition.

“In the first lockdown, I was just walking across a zebra crossing and one person walking in the other direction said to me, ‘What’s all this about father?’ I’d never met the person before so it was all slightly tongue in cheek, and I said it was about you changing and saying sorry for things. And then he said, ‘I don’t have anything to say sorry for.’ So as the conversation went on, he recommended something to me to look at on the internet. So I said, okay, I’ll do that as long as you type into Google ‘examination of conscience.'”

The Veteran
Photographed by Anush Babajanyan

Levon Sahakyan,18, at the Rehabilitation Center Of the Armenian Red Cross Society, in Yerevan, Armenia, on January 27, 2021. Levon was injured fighting the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020.

“During the days of the war, nothing happened [in connection to COVID-19]. Everything related to the war was the priority, and whatever related to the coronavirus was not considered, and it probably should not have been, during the time. That [COVID-19] we could overcome, but this was overall difficult.”

The Communications Adviser
Photographed by Linda Bournane-Engelberth

Marianne Melgård, 42, Oslo, Norway, January 15, 2021, a divorced person living alone.

“I work as a communication adviser, and during lockdown in Norway all my work is managed through the home office. It is hard to live alone and work from home during the lockdown. The feeling of isolation is even harder on people that live alone, when all your social and work life is moved to the screen.”

The Locksmith
Photographed by Valentina Sinis

Marco, a 33-year-old Italian locksmith and handyman, is photographed on January 16, 2021, in London. He is self-employed and works for a company. He arrived in London four years ago with his partner and has been doing this job ever since. His work is considered essential.

During the first lockdown in the UK, his work decreased dramatically, but he was always on standby. When the second wave of COVID-19 hit the UK, he returned to work almost every day, even though the danger of infection had increased dramatically.

Marco travels independently in his van, “I consider myself lucky in this respect, as I do not risk being infected by taking public transport.”

However, Marco says he is not completely out of the woods, as he has almost daily contact with customers. Frequently, he has to repair houses where the inhabitants do not respect the rules of social distancing or do not wear masks. Marco says, “A few times I had to go to houses where someone was COVID-positive. As a rule, they have to warn us beforehand so that we can better organize our safety procedures. I don’t feel comfortable at all when this happens!”

When he gets home, Marco immediately changes his clothes and takes a shower. He does not want to infect himself and his partner or the other inhabitants of his shared house.

Despite all these difficulties, he sees the pandemic era as a “historic time that not everyone has the chance to experience and tell its stories when he gets old.”

The Retired Security Employee
Photographed by Leonardo Carrato

Marçal, 72 years old, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, January 21, 2021.

“I’ve been working in street security for about six years. I am already retired, but since the income is not enough even though I have a simple life, I need to keep working. With the pandemic, I was mainly afraid of my commute to work. I come by public transport from where I live and as there was a reduction in the number of buses, they got even more crowded. Even taking all precautions, it is impossible to feel completely safe. 

“The residents of this street, who are the contractors, did not allow a break or a rotation during the long hours of the shift so that we could stay longer at home. It is hard to believe that they think more about their own safety than about our health, but I am used to it. Many of them don’t even greet us on a daily basis. We have to be on alert day and night, but to them, we seem invisible. I’ve worked my whole life, since I was a boy, and it taught me to move on because I need the money to survive.”

The Real Estate Agent
Photographed by Seamus Murphy

Marisa Ribeiro, Vauxhall, London, January 19, 2021.

Marisa is a real estate agent who has recently assumed ownership and the running of the family fish and vegetable shop.

“Covid’s been good for business, we’ve been really busy. We’ve stayed open the whole time. We closed to do some work to allow for extra space because it was quite tight for people to be able to go in and out without bumping into each other. 

“The Portuguese community are putting their good fortune so far to their consumption of alcohol. If alcohol gel works in your hands, then it’s working on the insides, that’s their theory! Until obviously, and hopefully not, something tragic happens close to them, then they’ll take it a bit more seriously. 

“My granddad in Madeira passed away in December, and that was really hard. Because obviously being in Madeira, you need to isolate for five days. So we had to put his body in the freezer to be able for everyone to make the funeral. So I shipped off my parents to the island for a few days and I stayed here because it was just before Christmas. We had loads of orders. 

“The reaction within the Portuguese community to the vaccine is a bit of a mixture. Men in general rarely go to the GP, but we know of a few people from the community that have successfully received the first dosage, some even the second.

“As a community, I believe they will get vaccinated when invited, especially if airlines and overseas governments decide to put travel restrictions on those not vaccinated. The Portuguese love and miss going home.”

The Photographer
Photographed by Christopher Morris

On January 6, 2021, my day began at 9 a.m. in Washington, D.C., near the White House after just driving 15 hours from my home in Florida — a drive I took without any commitment of an assignment. You could feel the potential for something bad to happen in the nation’s capital that day.

I was not one minute out of my vehicle when I encountered a group of around five or six Trump supporters wrapped and dressed in the American flag. From a distance of around five meters, I lifted my camera to take my first picture of the day. This small group of supposed patriotic Americans started taunting me for having my face wrapped in a mask and scarf. As I looked around and scanned the crowd with my eyes, it became quite apparent to me that no one was wearing a mask. Quite literally thousands and thousands of people were crammed waiting for their dear leader who called them to Washington to protest what he called an “illegal election” or a “stolen election.”

This was a day that I would have to fight for my life on the east side of the Capitol Building. Five times in 45 minutes that afternoon I would have to fight off angry Americans who looked at me with extreme hatred. Now, not only was I fighting to avoid the invisible COVID-19 that surely was in the air of a mad, screaming lunatic crowd of non-science believers, but Americans were literally going insane right before my eyes. Americans who either accused me of being an Antifa agitator or better yet, when I would scream back, “I’m not Antifa, I’m press,” while showing my press card, I was now “the enemy of the people.” “Ohhh, we hang enemies of the people.”

This was my day in America that January 6.

The Undertakers
Photographed by Ziyah Gafic

Sarajevo, April 2020.

I went to the funeral of one of the very first victims of COVID-19 in my town. He was also a victim of the by now infamous “patient path.” It took months for the already crippled Bosnian healthcare system to figure out how to treat patients with this new, unpredictable and fearsome illness. The hospitals were reluctant to receive the patients with the convenient but nonsensical excuse to not let the virus in hospitals.

Sarajevo’s main cemetery is beautiful, well kept and located in the city (we like to keep our dead close to us). The Muslim section is all white, with tombstones made of virgin white marble. The Catholic section is filled with black, impeccably shiny marble headstones; the Christian Orthodox with its elaborate, monumental gravestones with chiseled portraits of the deceased; the Jewish with the Star of David engraved above the names of the dead. My grandparents are buried there, friends too. The person I was named after lies there too — my father’s best friend, lost in the Bosnian mountains years before I was born. During the war, the cemetery was in proximity of the frontline. I remember when I first went there to see what happened to graves of loved ones. I saw tombstones pierced with shells, shattered marble was everywhere, so were unexploded shells.

April is the cruelest month, said T.S Eliot. April always comes big to Sarajevo, often too hot to handle. Sarajevo was liberated from the German occupation on April 6th, the siege of Sarajevo in 1992 began on April 5th.

April 2020 was hot, too. By chance, I went to the funeral of one of the very first casualties of the pandemic. Muslim funerals are usually crowded, that is the last chance to forgive anything for which the deceased might have wronged you. The final words at Muslim funerals in Bosnia are: “Are we going to forgive the deceased?” This funeral was nothing like this. Lockdown procedures were already in place, only the closest family came. Muslims are not buried in coffins usually, but in “tabut,” wrapped in white and covered in green cotton sheets. This coffin was metal, sealed as to not let out this novel death creep out. The Imam said the prayer from a distance. Usually family members put the coffin in the grave, but this time it was a team of undertakers, dressed in full hazmat suits, sweating and panting in the cruel April sun.

The Building Superintendent
Photographed by Ron Haviv

Building superintendent George Valentin, 36, cleans his buildings with disinfectant to slow the spread of the virus on April 14, 2020, in NYC.

Thinking back about that time, George says he “was thinking about everything, about close friends and family dying.”

“I was really worried about everyone close to me. I was just going day by day. It was new. I was just scared. I wanted to keep everyone safe and help people as much as I can.”

The Jeans-Wear Maker
Photographed by Eric Bouvet

Julien Tuffery, 34 years old, photographed in Florac, France, in April 2020. He runs a jeans manufacturing company that has been in operation since 1872 and was started by his great-grandfather.

“The virus was like an earthquake when it happened. The lives of my 20 employees changed overnight. But with common sense, we made 200 masks that we gave to the people. Then in the face of so much enthusiasm, with the local craftsmen, we made 80,000 masks for free to be distributed in our department of Lozère. It gave us even more energy despite this enormous work. We have always worked, and none of us got sick. We took care of each other. This virus has revealed our values. I am proud of my team who know how to do a good job to make our customers happy, with whom we have a direct relationship, and who want quality clothing from a local manufacturer.”

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Photography Daily - The Sandwich Generation

#184 THE SANDWICH GENERATION BY ED KASHI

Photography Daily
Feb. 1, 2021

https://www.photographydaily.show/episodes/the-sandwich-generation-ed-kashi

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A story of love, empathy and dignity today. VII Photo agency member Ed Kashi in the first of two parts, the initial being a most remarkable personal photo story called The Sandwich Generation where he recounts how fourteen years ago with his wife Julie and their children, the family moved their lives and businesses three thousand miles to care for Herbie, Julie’s 83 year old father. It became a touching two part film and photo essay about Herbie's last years of life.

First day of the month and patron of the day is Aleš Wasserburger. If you’re a patron supporter of the show, this is where I share your work to a larger audience and Aleš’s profile is a travel log from the Indonesian jungles to the wonderful streets of Spain and I spied one of my favourite French towns; the glorious fortified Carcassonne.

The patrons help keep this show as a new growing photographic community and I’m delighted again that this month we’re also supported by the camera professional people, MPB.com, the number one platform for buying, selling and trading used gear in the States and Europe. Over 250,000 creatives in Europe and the United States trust MPB for their kit needs.

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"Ideas have never been more important than they are today" - Interview with photographer Ed Kashi

What The Photo

Interview on Jan. 14, 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPMURdZRPsw&t=311s

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David Griffin, Director of Photography at National Geographic, defined Ed Kashi as follows: "Ed Kashi is intelligent, brave and compassionate. He always understands the nuances of his subjects. He fearlessly goes where few would venture. And he sympathetically captures the soul of each situation. Ed is one of the best of a new breed of photojournalistic artists. " Photojournalist, filmmaker, speaker, educator, writer, we can easily attribute Ed the characteristic of creativity. His career takes several paths and not just photography, documenting social and political issues with extreme perceptive sensitivity.

Ed has on his list of merits, great prizes throughout his career, work recognized by major newspapers and magazines, in addition to several published books. In partnership with Julie Winokur, filmmaker, writer, and wife, he started Talking Eyes Media project, to produce short films, multimedia pieces, exhibitions and books on social issues.

Ed is also a member of Agência VII since 2010, where he is also the mentor of new talents in photography, and he says: "Ideas are more important today than ever." Watch this video to learn from this great photographer!

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Georgia Has Become the Epicenter of America’s Political Landscape. See How an Atlanta Suburb Is Navigating the Country’s Divisiveness

POLITICS | 2020 ELECTION

BY ED KASHI , JULIE WINOKUR AND FRANCESCA TRIANNI
DECEMBER 23, 2020 2:04 PM EST

https://time.com/5923106/georgia-suburb-election-video/

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Georgia Has Become the Epicenter of America’s Political Landscape. See How an Atlanta Suburb Is Navigating the Country’s Divisiveness - - - On Nov. 6, Georgia became the epicenter of America’s complicated political landscape, voting narrowly to elevate now President-elect Joe Biden and triggering two runoff races that will determine the balance of the Senate. Georgia now holds the key to whether Biden gets to ride in the fast lane with his agenda, or be stuck on the side of the road. The state’s fast rise to political relevance can be explained by two forces: increased voter turnout and changing demographics. Atlanta’s suburbs have become international hubs with growing numbers of immigrants and more and more engaged first-time voters. Students in Gwinnett County Public Schools speak over 100 different languages—their families were bound to show up at the polls sooner or later. In a new short film for TIME, we visited Norcross, the town in Gwinnett that became majority minority within the past decade. We watched an Asian American first-time Democratic politician canvassing, met a Black American teacher who voted for Trump, and visited Alejandro Villasana’s Christos Community Church, an evangelical Presbyterian congregation where services are conducted in English and Spanish. Demographic data in fast-changing places like Norcross—which can be measured, tallied and visualized—only tells a portion of the story. Behind the statistics are individual people with complex, and often conflicting, beliefs. This short film captures the nuance and thoughtfulness of people with divergent opinions who live in concert at the community level. They are navigating the divisiveness of the moment by finding their true political voices, even if that means breaking ranks with their “tribes.” During the 2020 presidential election, Latino voter turnout in Georgia increased by 72% and Asian American Pacific Islander (A.A.P.I.) turnout increased by 91%. Now, the Senate runoffs are already breaking records for early voting. This electoral cliffhanger promises to be dramatic up until the last ballot is cast. Whatever the outcome, the reality of voters lives on the ground is still a transformational work-in-progress. From his pulpit, Villasana urged his congregation to celebrate the outcome of the presidential election, no matter who wins, and to support democracy above all else. “Before being a Republican,” he said, “I am a believer in the system.” - - - Director/Producer | Julie Winokur Cinematography | Ed Kashi, Julie Winokur Editor | Francesca Trianni Field Producer | Rachel Dennis Researchers | Rachel Dennis, Brenda Bingham Colorist | Michael Curry Supervising Producer | Justine Simons Executive Producer | Jonathan Woods - - - https://time.com/5923106/georgia-suburb-election-video/

On Nov. 6, Georgia became the epicenter of America’s complicated political landscape, voting narrowly to elevate now President-elect Joe Biden and triggering two runoff races that will determine the balance of the Senate. Georgia now holds the key to whether Biden gets to ride in the fast lane with his agenda, or be stuck on the side of the road.

The state’s fast rise to political relevance can be explained by two forces: increased voter turnout and changing demographics. Atlanta’s suburbs have become international hubs with growing numbers of immigrants and more and more engaged first-time voters. Students in Gwinnett County Public Schools speak over 100 different languages—their families were bound to show up at the polls sooner or later.

In a new short film for TIME, we visited Norcross, the town in Gwinnett that became majority minority within the past decade. We watched an Asian American first-time Democratic politician canvassing, met a Black American teacher who voted for Trump, and visited Alejandro Villasana’s Christos Community Church, an evangelical Presbyterian congregation where services are conducted in English and Spanish.

Demographic data in fast-changing places like Norcross—which can be measured, tallied and visualized—only tells a portion of the story. Behind the statistics are individual people with complex, and often conflicting, beliefs. This short film captures the nuance and thoughtfulness of people with divergent opinions who live in concert at the community level. They are navigating the divisiveness of the moment by finding their true political voices, even if that means breaking ranks with their “tribes.”

During the 2020 presidential election, Latino voter turnout in Georgia increased by 72% and Asian American Pacific Islander (A.A.P.I.) turnout increased by 91%. Now, the Senate runoffs are already breaking records for early voting. This electoral cliffhanger promises to be dramatic up until the last ballot is cast. Whatever the outcome, the reality of voters lives on the ground is still a transformational work-in-progress.

From his pulpit, Villasana urged his congregation to celebrate the outcome of the presidential election, no matter who wins, and to support democracy above all else. “Before being a Republican,” he said, “I am a believer in the system.”

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The mystery epidemic striking Nicaragua’s sugar cane workers – a photo essay

In Chichigalpa, kidney failure accounts for half of all male deaths over the last decade. Could industry changes be the key to saving lives?

Photographs by Ed Kashi/VII
by Kate Hodal
Fri 27 Nov 2020 02.00 EST

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/nov/27/the-mystery-epidemic-striking-nicaraguas-sugar-cane-workers-a-photo-essay

For decades, a mystery epidemic has plagued young male labourers toiling in Nicaragua’s sugar cane plantations. The men start their work fit and strong, but after repeated harvests chopping cane under the tropical sun, they begin to suffer from nausea, back pain and exhaustion, get such severe muscle weakness that they can no longer earn a living, then end up dying of kidney failure, despite many being only in their 20s and 30s.

In Chichigalpa, the centre of Nicaragua’s sugar cane industry, the mysterious illness accounts for half of all male deaths over the last decade. Just outside this “town of city and rum”, as it is known, one rural community has earned itself the moniker “La Isla de Viudas” – the Island of Widows.

Patients in the dialysis clinic at Hospital España. Dr Nelson Garcia, bottom right, has 6,000 CKD patients, 60% of whom have CKDnT

Award-winning American photographer Ed Kashi first visited Chichigalpa in 2013 on assignment to document the plight of the region’s cane cutters. He was unprepared for the reality he found: “A funeral, literally every day, for a sugar cane worker who had died of this kidney disease.” He has since returned to Nicaragua and neighbouring El Salvador, as well as India and Sri Lanka, to cover the epidemic and scientists’ responses to it.

Unlike chronic kidney disease, which is mostly seen among elderly people in urban areas, chronic kidney disease of unknown origin (CKDu) is believed to kill roughly 40,000 people a year, primarily from marginalised agricultural communities living along the equator.

Neraldo Jardiel Cantillano Carrero, 30, receives dialysis at home. He was a sugar cane worker for two years.

Baffled by the ubiquity and intensity of CKDu in Nicaragua, researchers at first questioned whether the deaths could be put down to diet, toxins or dehydration, allowing sugar companies to deny any potential causal link between the disease and working conditions on the plantations. Now the science is underlining a clearer connection between heavy labour in high temperatures and incidence of CKDu. Research has shown that basic workplace improvements, such as regular access to water, rest and shade, can significantly decrease potential kidney injury among labourers.

For the 2,500 field workers at Nicaragua’s largest and oldest sugar mill, Ingenio San Antonio (ISA), this is welcome news. Just five years ago, ISA was among a number of mills donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to research non-work related causes of CKD. Today ISA is at the very heart of an occupational health initiative that has the potential to substantially mitigate, if not eradicate, kidney disease among its sugar labourers.

The focus of the “Adelante” initiative is simple: to limit workers’ exposure to heat stress by introducing compulsory measures such as mandated shade, rest, water and electrolyte breaks. Data from the human rights and occupational health organisation La Isla Network, which is working with ISA to implement these interventions, found that an enhanced rest schedule and improved access to hydration and shade reduced kidney injury among labourers by 70%. The data also found that the labourers’ workload hugely matters: those with heavier loads were 12 times more likely to contract renal damage during harvest than those with a lighter load.

Sugar cane workers in protective clothing arrive at the fields.

As the global climate heats up, the potential for damage to human health increases. Research has shown that extreme heat stress can lead to fatal heart attacks and other cardiovascular fatalities, as seen by the deaths of hundreds of migrant workers every year in Qatar. In Nicaragua, while other factors such as metals, pesticides or toxins may still contribute to CKDu, “the most affected workers are those that work in very hot climates and at the same time have an enormous physical workload,” says Dr Catharina Wesseling, an epidemiologist based at the Karolinska Institute of Sweden.

“You can see sugar cane workers as a sentinel population. They are working in the hottest climates and conditions possible and at the same time their energy expenditure is comparable to half marathon runners … or to [those engaged] in military operations, only they do [this work] every day,” says Wesseling.

“So the combination of those two factors causes an excessive exposure to external and internal heat, and that causes dehydration and alterations of the whole renal system, and leads, in the end, to chronic kidney disease.”

Workers cutting in burned fields wear dust monitors on their chests.

The men working on ISA’s plantations used to chop as many as 7 tonnes of cane each day for seven days a week, labouring up to 14-hours a day in 38C (100.4F) heat with few, if any, breaks. Now they are working just six hours a day for six days a week, taking rest periods of between 10 and 30 minutes every hour after work begins at 6am. Labourers have also been given special wicking shirts and PPE to keep them cool and protect them from injury.

“Many mills and many companies will tell you today they have some sort of ‘water and shade programme’. But having [just any] ‘intervention’ does not mean you have a sufficient intervention,” says La Isla Network’s co-founder Jason Glaser, who is leading the initiative.

“It’s no different than if you had high blood pressure and you were only taking half of your medication. If you don’t have adequate timing of rest, shade, water or electrolytes, you will not keep your core temperature down, and you will still get kidney damage.”

Although CKDu was first documented among sugar cane workers in Costa Rica in the 1970s, it is likely that the “mysterious” epidemic has affected plantation labourers ever since sugar cane was first farmed in the Caribbean in the 1600s.

“If you look at the death records [of slaves forced to work on sugar plantations], their mortality was much higher, much younger than if you compare them with those of slaves in other forms of forced labour,” says Glaser.

Workers on ISA plantations are now provided with PPE to prevent injury as well as special wicking shirts to keep them cool.

“There are other stories from the 1930s of men in Nicaragua dying before their 40s of ‘exhaustion’. In India, in plantations where they only cut two tonnes of sugar cane per day, we don’t see CKDu reported; but if you compare it to the lowlands of Mesoamerica, where they cut six tonnes per day in the high heat, you do.

“In every place you look that has this algorithm [of high heat combined with heavy labour] – like brickmaking, construction or mining, in Central America, south-east Asia or India or Sri Lanka – you will see it.”

In Nicaragua, where sugar accounts for 4% of GDP, CKDu is officially recognised as an occupational-related illness. But to qualify for benefits and specialist healthcare – which involves haemodialysis – patients must prove they worked for 250 weeks and became sick while working. The problem is that many labourers get sick within just two or three harvests, says Glaser, leaving them without access to treatment.

The people of ‘La Isla de Viudas’ meet to raise money for their community-built and maintained water system, which provides clean water to 1,500 people.

Currently, there are no mandated, industry-wide occupational health protections for sugar cane workers. Bonsucro – the global sugar cane platform that maintains the most widely used standards for social and environmental sustainability in the industry, and which is also a founding member of the Adelante initiative – says it is a standard for all Bonsucro members (there are 135 mills in 19 countries) that field workers have access to “sufficient drinking water”. Yet what is deemed “sufficient” and what else might be “consider[ed] occupational risk such as heat stress and long working hours” must be determined by the mills themselves, says Bonsucro’s Latin America director Miguel Hernández. Over time, it may become a requirement that workers follow a specific rest schedule, dependent on the initiative’s findings, he added.

The Adelante research is being logged into a database and shared with other mills and will eventually be rolled out to other countries such as Mexico and Costa Rica, say Hernández and Glaser. There is then potential that the findings could be used to improve working conditions in entirely different sectors, says Glaser, such as construction, mining and brickmaking.

Maritza Zapata Gonzalez at her son Walter’s grave at Guadalupe cemetery. He died of CKDu a month ago. Maritza also lost her husband to CKDnT

For communities at the heart of this epidemic, the initiative has already made a profound impact. Chichigalpa native William Martinez, who lost various uncles, cousins, friends and his father to CKDu, has watched the disease “end the dreams of entire families”. Thanks to improved working conditions at ISA, medical interventions such as dialysis and field research allowing better insight into what might cause CKDu, plantation workers are now encouraging their children to go to school rather than replace them in the fields.

“The psychological damage of knowing that someone in your family is sick is also decreasing,” says Martinez. “And that is an extremely important outcome.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/nov/27/the-mystery-epidemic-striking-nicaraguas-sugar-cane-workers-a-photo-essay

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Undocumented Immigrants Are Still Suffering With No Federal Relief

Undocumented immigrants have had to fend for themselves during the coronavirus crisis.
by Mary Ann Koruth, a freelance journalist covering immigration and culture in New Jersey, and a core contributor to Newest Americans.
Photography by Ed Kashi
September 28, 2020

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/undocumented-immigration-covid-cares/

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Driving along Throckmorton street off Route 9 in central New Jersey, one sees the railroad tracks appearing almost out of nowhere, side by side with the road, out of the shrubbery and trees that have grown like a hood around it. The immigrant workers of Freehold Borough call it La Via—the Way; for years they have walked along these tracks into the center of town to gather and look for work. You see them walking or sitting along the embankment—Hispanic men carrying backpacks, our pandemic era signaled now by the blue surgical masks they’ve donned to protect against Covid-19.

Freehold Borough—famous as Bruce Springsteen’s childhood home—is a tiny, historic town with a revolutionary past. A sign along the railroad on Throckmorton street commemorates the Battle of Monmouth, fought nearby in June 1778. In the 90s, Freehold became a hub for immigrant farm labor. By 2010, nearly half of its 12,000 residents were undocumented Hispanic workers and their families, crowded into the town’s barely two-square-mile radius.

In the early 2000s, Freehold’s day laborers congregated in the town’s unofficial “muster zone,” a shady patch alongside the tracks where workers waited to be picked up by contractors, landscapers, and anyone else hiring day labor. This irked some townsfolk who pressed the town council to prevent them from gathering. Things came to a head in 2003 when the incumbent mayor campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform, pushing for random home inspections that forced day laborers to stop looking for work. When protests and negotiations failed, the laborers filed a federal lawsuit against the Borough of Freehold and won. The court ruling permitted the men to return to the muster zone without fear of being ticketed by local police for loitering and panhandling, but when the pandemic hit in March 2020, there was still no town-sanctioned site where the workers could gather and safely seek work. These days, they cluster in the parking lot of a 6/12 convenience store that abuts the railroad, or outside the bus station and the Rita’s Italian Ice franchise adjacent to it.

Like it did elsewhere in the country, the pandemic shattered the fragile ecosystem of daily wage work in Freehold, subjecting its undocumented community to extreme loss of income. Studies have established that minorities and low-income communities are at persistently higher risk of falling severely ill from the coronavirus because of poor access to health benefits and economic challenges. The virus’s impact in Freehold is no different—by June, 72 percent of the town’s 404 positive cases self-reported as Latino/Hispanic. Casa Freehold, a local all-volunteer grassroots group that advocates for Freehold’s immigrant workers, began organizing food drives. Though the town stepped in to support the workers by providing free food and household supplies, and access to free hospital care, the CARES Act, the federal government’s bailout to aid families affected by the pandemic, completely passed them by.

The act has not only failed low-income, undocumented immigrant populations but, according to its critics, was designed to do so. It was widely criticized for denying financial relief to American citizens who are married to undocumented taxpayers and file taxes jointly, but in immigrant communities such as Freehold’s, it was a slap in the face to undocumented taxpayers because it excluded their dependent children who are American citizens. This exclusion of “mixed-status” families is particularly egregious because, in addition to denying relief to their American children, the CARES Act effectively penalizes undocumented workers for their compliance with federal law and for acting in good faith to document their residency in this, their adopted country.

Meanwhile, local health workers and activists have struggled to assuage stigma around the virus. Health educator Angelica Espinal-Garcia found herself advising concerned employers and encargados—middlemen who rent apartments to workers who live in shared spaces—against evicting sickened workers. Since encargados are not the actual homeowners, they can get away with charging high rents—as much as $500 per room—and can take over their renters’ lives, even holding their mail until the rent is paid. Even with the federal eviction moratorium in place, workers are afraid to come out and self-identify, she said. “They’re afraid of the police, of being fired.” One infected worker was told to move out within a week by his encargado, who feared he would infect other tenants. Casa Freehold had to intervene to prevent the eviction.

Men usually wire money on a monthly basis to their families back home from the local 6/12 store. Its owner told me that since the pandemic, the number of men coming in to do so has dropped; instead, in April and May, many came in to collect money that their families wired to them. He’s never seen this happen on such a scale. In the parking lot where the workers gather, I watched a car pull in and a group of young workers scramble to get in, ignoring an activist handing out free masks; the promise of paid work far outweighed the threat of the virus.

OSCAR J.
DAY LABORER

Oscar J. arrived in Freehold in 2007 from Mexico City. He crossed over to the United States over eight days, walking through the desert, leaving his then-wife and two children behind in Mexico City. His daughter was 12 and his son 10, and he has not seen them since (he is now remarried).

For years, he worked for various construction crews, and in 2019, he began working independently. “I always liked my job, the people I worked with liked my work. I wanted to depend on myself, since I am good at what I do,” he said. In early March, he began feeling ill and had trouble breathing. A week later, feeling very weak, he went to CentraState Medical Center in Freehold, where he was diagnosed with Covid-19. He was admitted and kept in isolation, and because he has type-2 diabetes, he was at higher risk for severe illness from the virus—at one point he had to be intubated. He learned about the lockdown and the surge of the pandemic in New Jersey from television screens in hospital.

“It was very sad; I didn’t know what to think. I thought I wasn’t going to make it. I had no strength left after I was released from the hospital,” he said. His wife, a domestic worker who cleans houses in Lakewood (many of the Orthodox Jewish community’s homes in Lakewood are cleaned by Freehold’s Hispanic women), continued working while he was in the hospital, but came down with a milder case of Covid-19 after he was released from hospital. Between her earnings and their savings, they are able to support their family. Meanwhile, the hospital bills are coming in, some with a notice of delinquency. “One is $1,500,” he said and shook his head. He hopes to pay them off in installments.

ALICIA VALERIANO
SHIFT SUPERVISOR/PHARMACY WORKER

Alicia Valeriano is from Mexico City, and when the pandemic began, she was working almost 80 hours every week at three different jobs—waitressing, painting tiles, and as a cashier—alongside her work towards a GED. As the economy shut down, she lost both her part time jobs, but she still has 40 hours of work a week as a permanent employee at a major pharmaceutical chain. Before the pandemic, Valeriano had only to worry about providing dinner for her three children. But as the pandemic worsened in Freehold, her husband, a day laborer, contracted Covid-19 and lost two months of work. Despite having paid taxes for 18 of the 20 years she’s been in the United States, and despite the fact that two of her children are US citizens, her family did not qualify for financial relief under the federal government’s CARES Act.

“The children see that you’re nervous about the money. They see you walking back and forth, and they notice it,” she said.

Though the CARES act hurt her, nothing has disappointed Valriano more than having to postpone her dream of buying a home. Valeriano had a down payment ready and was approved for a mortgage taken in her nephew and her 23-year-old daughter’s names; her daughter is a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status. When the lockdown occurred, her realtor told her their lenders would not proceed unless she could show stronger credit. In June, Valeriano called her realtor again. She was ready to put down a larger down payment and take the loan in her name now. But the realtor had more bad news for her: The rules had changed since the pandemic, and the lender was no longer working with buyers who did not have Social Security numbers. Valeriano is soft-spoken and reserved, and in her quiet voice, insisted to me over the phone, that she was disappointed but not deterred. “I’m not going to let anyone come between me and my dream,” she said. “I’m going to find a way to buy a house.”

GREGORIA R.
DOMESTIC WORKER/ HOUSE CLEANER

Gregoria R., a domestic worker, left Puebla, Mexico, in 1992 and entered the United States through California. She came directly to Freehold to join her father, who was already here, working as a day laborer. Her first job was at a greenhouse in Colt’s Neck, then as a busgirl at a local restaurant. In her first months in Freehold, she walked around town, hustling for work. “I could not speak much English,” she said, “but when I met people I asked—you need me?” She worked for 10 years in the dry cleaning business, keeping eight-hour days, six days a week, operating pressing machines for men’s shirts in very hot conditions. Since 2010, she has worked cleaning homes for members of the Orthodox Jewish Community in Lakewood, N.J., south of Freehold. So many Hispanic women clean houses in Lakewood that Casa Freehold offers classes on how to work in observant Jewish households. Before the pandemic, Gregoria was able to work five days a week, cleaning two or three houses a day. In March, when the lockdown began, her employers called and told her to stay home. “I lost all my former employers,” she said, “They just don’t call me.” Feeling desperate, she texted a woman she used to work for, asking if she could come back. With her help, Gregoria returned to work in the first week of June. Unlike before Covid-19, now she has no guarantee of a schedule.

Gregoria raises her two school-age daughters in the second-floor apartment of a tiny house on Court Street. Sixth-grader Mari translated for us. Gregoria was able to pay rent for April, but not May. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s anti-eviction order protects renters who fallen behind on their rent during the lockdown, but the rent is not forgiven. “I feel stressed all the time—there is stress in my head,” she said. She takes a bus to Lakewood and back, paying $3.80 for a ticket each way. She and the other women from Freehold walk from house to house, earning an hourly wage between $10 and $14.

I later found out that Gregoria’s husband was deported to Mexico on charges of domestic violence. Casa Freehold intervened on her behalf to file a “U” visa, which is awarded to victims of domestic violence. In 2011, on the date she was to appear in court, Gregoria went to work, missing the single appointment that could have put her on a path to citizenship. She is not alone in this: Many undocumented immigrants are too overwhelmed or simply frightened to choose between putting a day’s wages on the table and showing up in court to speak for themselves. Does she regret it? “Yes,” she nodded, “but I didn’t understand at that time how important it was, and I had the pressure of working to pay my bills.” She added, “Now I know.”

FEDERICO M.
DAY LABORER

Federico M. is from Puebla, Mexico, where he upholstered car interiors. Despite the perils of crossing the border, Federico is among many migrants who travel back and forth between the United States and Mexico, staying for years at a time. His second trip through the Sonoran Desert lasted five days and was a brush with death: “My legs gave out,” he said. His food and water ran out and he fell behind, unable to stand up and join the other men. His smuggler came back for him with water and medicines that gave him the energy to walk. He was told to follow a trail of garbage and items shed by those who came before him—or risk getting lost. He crossed over into the states somewhere east of the border with Tijuana.

In mid-March he was infected by the virus and checked into CentraState Medical Center in Freehold, where he was intubated and treated. The nurses pitched in to pay for his taxi-ride home when he was released from hospital. Casa Freehold arranged for funds to pay for his medicines and delivered food to the house where he quarantined. News travels fast in a town as small as Freehold, and it was not long before word spread among fellow workers that Federico had been sick. “After they know you have Covid, they don’t want to have anything to do with you,” he said. Leaving the hospital with no prospects for work, no home to go to, and no money to send his family was a moment of reckoning. At the end of this year, Federico plans to return to Puebla. He has, after all, fulfilled his dream of building a house for his wife and four children, and has paid for their education. “I feel like a cat with nine lives. I got two chances at life—once in the desert, and now after Covid,” he said. “Going home to Mexico will give me another chance to live, another start.”

ELEAZAR H.
KITCHEN WORKER

Eleazar H. came from Oaxaca and worked in the same restaurant on Main Street in downtown Freehold since 2004. It has changed hands over those 16 years, and Eleazar reeled off the names of some of the cuisines he’s learned—American, Italian, Indian. Though he could earn more as a day laborer, he prefers the security of kitchen work. He got his first and only raise six years ago, from $250 a week to $550.

In 2016, when the restaurant changed hands once again, Eleazar’s new employers paid his wages a week late, so that he was always short one week of pay—saying they were withholding wages in the form of a “deposit,” a common practice with undocumented workers that is actually a bond intended to keep workers loyal. During the lockdown, Eleazar asked for his deposit to tide him over for the month of March, but was refused. Still, he went back to work on take-out orders. A week and a half later, feeling feverish and cold, he went to a doctor and found out he had Covid-19. He has since recovered, but he suffered malaise and panic, with sleepless nights spent pacing outside the basement apartment he shares with two friends.

In June, after two months at home without pay, he got a call from the chef at the restaurant. The restaurant was reopening, the chef said, but Eleazar needed to prove that his “body was clean” before he could come back to work. He asked Eleazar to get tested again. By now, with help from Angelica Espinal-Garcia, a health educator, Eleazar refused to get retested. There was no guarantee that the results would be negative, even though he had recovered: “No more, I told him, no more.” He wasn’t coming back, he told the surprised chef—despite their owing him $700 in back pay. He was more than a cook at the restaurant; he was their handyman, plumber—an all-in-one guy—but his wages never reflected this except for occasional extra cash. He is now working a new job at a restaurant in Manalapan and paying off bills for his treatment.

ANGELICA ESPINAL-GARCIA, MPH, MCHES
HEALTH EDUCATOR

As news of the novel coronavirus began to spread in February, Angelica Espinal-Garcia, a health educator for Freehold’s department of health and president of the board of Casa Freehold, began holding information sessions at local churches and in the offices of Casa Freehold on Jackson Street. “There was a lot of interest,” she said, “I felt that people were looking for me.” She advised them on what symptoms to look for, and what precautions to take, using guidance from the CDC, before the pandemic was declared a national emergency. Now, she is a liaison with the Hispanic community, helping them navigate the health care system when they call her or Casa Freehold with questions about the virus. “I try to listen,” she said, “so they can tell me. Trust is very valuable in the Hispanic community.” At the end of the initial surge of cases in Freehold Borough, however, Angelica found herself dealing with a unique situation among workers who had recovered from Covid-19: Social stigma and fear within the community was preventing them from returning to their jobs and their living quarters as employers and the middlemen who rent to them required assurance that the workers were not contagious. “I get calls all the time,” she said, from desperate workers. She reaches out to their encargados: “Your renters are not the only people you can get it [the virus] from,” she tells them. “We’re Hispanic, we should support each other.”

Angelica is from Honduras: Her parents separated and her mother left for the United States to escape political violence when Angelica was 7, leaving Angelica’s grandmother to raise her. She arrived in the States when she was 16 on a petition from her father, who is a citizen. Now an American citizen herself, Angelica was able to sponsor her siblings, who came to New Jersey last year—that was the first time that Angelica’s sister had seen her mother in 29 years.

“When I see inequities in the health system, to be honest, I see my parents, because I have seen them struggle,” she said. “I feel I’m doing the right job. Just talking to the patients’ co-workers, and to their encargados. They’re scared, they want to get the people out of the house if they tested positive. I feel I’m making a difference.”

MARIO R.
DAY LABORER

“I am afraid of the water,” Mario said with an apologetic smile, about his decision to avoid coming to the United States by crossing the Rio Grande. We met in the backyard of the house where he rents a single room. He keeps the tools he needs as a landscaper and day laborer—the wheelbarrow and other implements—against a wall, beside the herbs and flowers he tends. There were patches of mint and an evergreen pruned to a perfect spiral, which he had brought home one day when a client didn’t want it anymore. “It was too pretty to throw away,” he said. He chose the desert and its hazards over the water and crossed into the United States in 2006.

In 2019, he was walking home from Casa Freehold when local police stopped him without cause and asked his name. When he hesitated to immediately disclose it, they took him to the police station, where he called Rita Dentino, executive director of Casa Freehold and an old friend. She went to the police station immediately and filed a complaint with the ACLU. Mario, who has no criminal record, was released without either party pressing charges.

Since the lockdown, his work has dropped to one or two days a week. Before the pandemic, he was able to wire up to $400 a month to his family in Puebla, Mexico. This April he sent them $100, in May, $150. The pandemic has forced him to consider returning to Mexico within a year—he is simply not able to make ends meet. “I am tired,” he said. He has a wife, eight children, and some grandchildren back home. He plans to leave when he has earned enough to buy a plane ticket home. “This country is beautiful. But for immigrants, it’s not easy.” Tears sprang into his eyes. “The people are listening to the president, and so they say, ‘Mexicans are no good.’ Sometimes I am scared.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/undocumented-immigration-covid-cares/

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Scenes from New York's Fight for Black Lives

BY EMMA SPECTER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ED KASHI
June 4, 2020

https://www.vogue.com/article/scenes-from-new-yorks-fight-for-black-lives

The sixth day of protests in New York over the police killing of unarmed black Minneapolis resident George Floyd were marked with a rally beginning in Foley Square and moving to various locations around lower Manhattan on Tuesday. A diverse crowd of thousands of New Yorkers showed up to protest the death of Floyd and countless other black Americans at the hands of the police, bearing signs that read “It Was Murder,” “I Can’t Breathe,” and “Black Lives Matter.”

It wasn’t lost on many attendees that the date—June 2—marked one of the first days of Pride Month, as was evidenced by a series of signs featuring the pink triangles of queer liberation along with the message, “White Silence = Black Death.” Other signs cast a light on the recent deaths of unarmed black Americans Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, whose names have taken on a new resonance as protestors take to the streets night after night to fight for justice.

https://www.vogue.com/article/scenes-from-new-yorks-fight-for-black-lives

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Pride Cannot—And Must Not—Exist Without Anti-Racist Work

by EMMA SPECTER
photographed by ED KASHI
June 3, 2020 3:46 PM

https://www.vogue.com/article/pride-cannot-and-must-not-exist-without-anti-racist-work/amp

“Pride is a riot!” proclaimed a banner hung outside the Stonewall Inn in the West Village on Tuesday, capped off by a Black Lives Matter hashtag. That was the sentiment protestors were greeted with as they filed into the narrow square outside the historic gay bar to protest the killing of Tony McDade, Nina Pop, and other black trans victims of violent crimes.

The scene outside Stonewall early on Tuesday evening was calm and quiet at first, akin to the vigil held there the previous night for LGBTQ+ people of color who had been killed. Many of the protestors in attendance had been at other rallies around the city earlier in the week, but the air outside Stonewall was imbued with a specific kind of grief for a population that is too frequently harmed and too rarely mourned on a national scale. “I identify as queer, so I feel like I need to be here to support black trans people. Their death rate is so high, it’s terrifying,” said Leila, 27.

The names of black trans lives lost were chanted with increasing fervor by the crowd, with the words “Tony McDade” and “Nina Pop” echoing all the way down to where a small clutch of NYPD officers was standing on 5th Avenue. While the crowd included people of color, many attendees presented as white, in a hopeful sign that the white LGBTQ+ community—or, at least, its New York subset—could be beginning to reckon with its own foundational racism.

Things got heated around 6 p.m. on the intersection of 6th Avenue and Washington Place, a few blocks from Stonewall, when protestors began blocking traffic. What began with a few people sitting in the intersection quickly grew to a crowd of at least 100, with one protestor leading the charge from the front and reminding the assembled crowd, “Our trans brothers and sisters get lost and killed. My black and brown brothers and sisters, we are people. Live up to the words of your constitution!” Surveying the scene, it was hard not to think of Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Larry Kramer, and generations of LGBTQ+ leaders who insisted that the ease and convenience of the straight world must be interrupted if the queer world was to assert its right to exist.

What was particularly striking about the traffic stoppage on 6th and Washington was the level of support it garnered from the very cars it was blocking. Drivers stuck fists out of their windows in support to exultant whoops from the crowd, and one city worker even briefly rushed from his vehicle to take a knee with protestors. One truck was stopped in the intersection for over half an hour, with no ability to reverse course, but its drivers didn’t seem perturbed: “The movement is important,” Christopher, 24, told me quietly when I asked whether he minded being stopped by the protestors.

While many of the protestors were veterans of other rallies, some ventured out—amid COVID-19 concerns and the increased threat of police brutality—for the first time on Tuesday to support the black LGBTQ+ population. “This is my first day protesting and I’m usually not one to come out, but I absolutely had to come out for my people,” said Monique, 27, adding, “Black people, we don’t ask for much. We’re are always strong, we’ve been through so much, but when you’re not just subtly racist but blatantly killing us, and doing it publicly in such a vulgar manner to let us know you disrespect and hate us and don’t value us—how far have we come since MLK? How can we trust you to protect us if you value us as nothing?”

Many white LGBTQ+ people—myself included—have grown up and come out into a world where we have the right to legally marry, serve in the military, and any number of other civil rights, without being forced to reckon with the fact that those rights were hard-won for us by queer activists of color. It’s been easy for me to think of Pride as a party—an excuse to wear rainbow, drink too much, and take to the streets of New York with my friends in celebration—because the NYPD that’s now brutally attacking my colleagues has always been invested in keeping those same streets safe for me. When QPOC are already doing the work of telling white queer people how to be better allies, it is incumbent upon all of us to listen, educate ourselves, and carry the message back to our white friends and family: solidarity is no longer enough, if it ever was.

If we wish to consider ourselves worthy of the legacy of Johnson, Rivera, Maxine Perkins, Audre Lorde, and countless other people of color who fought for queer liberation, we must do the work: whether that’s donating to anti-racist causes, lobbying our elected officials to reallocate police funding to social services, showing up at protests to put our bodies between black and brown protestors and the police, or any number of other actions. The scene at Stonewall on Tuesday ably demonstrated that the struggle is ongoing for queer people of color, and white queer people have assimilated and exempted ourselves long enough: it’s past time to take up the fight.

https://www.vogue.com/article/pride-cannot-and-must-not-exist-without-anti-racist-work/amp

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“AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 7: American Hope, American Fears

“America, Again” is a year-long project by the photographers of VII, an exploration of some of the most important issues facing American voters as they head to the polls on November 3rd. This is Chapter 7: American Hope, American Fears, which includes an essay by Alexis Okeowo as well as photo stories by VII members Ed Kashi, Christopher Morris, Maggie Steber, and Danny Wilcox Frazier, VII Mentor Program photographers Nolan Ryan Trowe and Christopher Lee, and guest photographer André Chung. We welcomed Dudley M. Brooks as photo editor for this final chapter.

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Essay by Alexis Okeowo

The purgatory Americans have found themselves in this year has been unrelenting, a limbo that burns and chills. First came a global pandemic and lockdown, then an economic recession and a racial uprising, all amid a political horror show. The spread of COVID-19 took the United States by surprise, but the ways in which it devastated American lives in its wake shouldn’t have. The pandemic bankrupted uninsured or under-insured families whose members became sick or died, pushed people onto the street when they lost their jobs and could no longer afford to pay their rent and bills, and left children and their parents hungry. Its ongoing aftermath was destined in a country where the inequities were never truly in the background. The surge of homeless people on the streets of Los Angeles, tent cities sprouting in parks and in front of high-rise buildings, has long been a steady phenomenon. In the Black Belt, the rural poor got sick with COVID-19 and died more frequently than their friends and family in the cities, but were already facing high rates of diabetes and other chronic illnesses as hospitals closed around them.

In New York, for months the center of the American pandemic, I and millions of other privileged residents quarantined in our apartments, terrified and anxious, the silence of the streets outside interrupted only by ambulance sirens and the engines of delivery trucks and buses. For millions of other city residents, life went on as before: waking up, taking the subway to work, interacting with bosses and customers, hoping for kind treatment and fair pay — but all under a cloud of ever-increasing precarity, the threat of sickness, the promise of nothing. The lockdown further revealed the unfairness of belonging to what we would soon call the “essential worker” class, utterly needed and unprotected.

The limbo continues: the confirmation of a new conservative Supreme Court justice weeks after the death of a much-admired progressive one, an uncertain presidential election that will determine the American landscape for decades to come, and future legal battles over the rights of our most vulnerable muddy the horizon. Yet, at the same time, a profound racial reckoning has finally begun. So has a deeper consideration of what kind of country we want, and deserve; beyond suppressive bureaucracy, hours-long early voting lines show that reflection, too.

These photos do many things. They document life across the country during the pandemic, memorialize the protests and federal militarized crackdown in Portland, capture moments in the days of politically mobilized Americans and immigrant Americans and joyous Americans and suffering Americans. Americans still living during what many of us can recall as the most tumultuous period in our lifetimes. The images are riotous and beautiful, startling and haunting, evocative tributes to the work and pleasure of surviving in the most free and arrogant country in the world. Pundits like to say our country is “on the brink,” or “at the edge” — of more unrest, of armed conflict, of chaos. But these photos remind us that we are still trying to do our best, still living.

View “America, Again” | Chapter 7: AMERICAN HOPE, AMERICAN FEARS here.

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Shopping along Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, Calif., on July 19, 2020.

The Divided State of America
Photos and essay by Ed Kashi

This summer I had the privilege to work with Jyllands-Posten, one of Denmark’s major daily newspapers, on a 30-day road trip from Los Angeles to New Orleans. The mission was to work on a series of stories about the state of America, as our nation approaches the 2020 election. In this particular moment, the United States can more accurately be known as the divided states.

This is Trump’s America, not mine. As with my work, I try to keep an open mind and heart, and through decades of working across all 50 states and over 100 countries, I’ve learned that America is a magnificent composite of diversity and quirkiness, a massive spectrum of both wealth and health; but at its core, there is a rot. The rot of racism and genocide. The cancer that was embedded in our founding has never entirely been eradicated. While we have made tremendous progress and continue to do so, we are still hurting and bleeding from our endemic racial injustice. With the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, after far too many other unnecessary deaths of Black people at the hands of police officers, this rot has been exposed for a new generation that has taken up the call to make change.

What I documented during this journey is a country and people divided in the midst of an evolving spirit of protest. This set of images does not claim to capture the microcosm of America in 2020, but the breadth of stories and images represents a country at a crossroads, grappling with a severe wealth gap, continued racial injustice and a body politic that for some are itching for civil conflict to justify their positions. I continue to ask myself, a child of the revolutionary America of the 1960s and 70s, how have we gotten here.

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We Keep Us Safe
Photos and essay by André Chung

At the beginning of the summer of 2020, as hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest police brutality, I did so as well. This wasn’t the first time I witnessed protests against the barbarity of the state, but as we’ve seen, this time was different. As the movement coalesced, protesters in my hometown of Washington, D.C. have been out in force every single night. When news cameras leave, the cops move in with pepper spray, gas, and munitions. They arrest people en masse to clear the streets, only to release them the following day with “no paper,” the term they use when there are no charges to file. They continue to kill Black men. All over the country, every week, there’s another Black life lost at the hands of police and another community demands an end to the wickedness. In D.C., two more young men have died during police encounters since protests began. Deon Kay. Karon Hylton.

As the police have historically resisted reform, there have been calls for police to be defunded and even abolished. Protesters believe that police, entrusted to protect and serve, do neither, and ask, “Who keeps us safe?” The response, “We keep us safe!” They protect and defend each other, not just from police but from opposition activists, the media, and anyone who would do harm. A man on an electric scooter, who disrespected some of the Black women at a march, was run off the plaza by protesters but brandished a knife and menaced himself and the crowd. A protester disarmed him while Metropolitan Police stood by, only to tase him after the man was subdued. At Black Lives Matter Plaza, the focal point in D.C., protesters set up food tents, medic stations, and give each other haircuts. At a tent city occupation of the Department of Education, protesters watched the presidential debate on an inflatable screen and settled into games of chess and spades to pass the night. The dedicated group of several dozen activists has been hardened by the protests but have become close. The movement is not only about rage, it is about love as well. It is about love for Black lives and the love and respect for those who would acknowledge that Black lives matter. They determine the community here, and it defines a generation.

Sharece Crawford, At-Large Committeewoman, addresses activists and community members outside 7th District headquarters. Residents and activists react to the police slaying of Deon Kay, 18, who was shot by MPD officers who say that Kay was armed and had a weapon at the time of the shooting. Body cam footage corroborates the officers’ version of events, but family and community leaders and activists demand to know why non-lethal methods were not used. Activists rallied at 7th District headquarters where they were met by a phalanx of officers who stood sentry at the entrance to the precinct.

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Making a New Life on Dreams and Fears in Little Haiti
Photos and essay by Maggie Steber

Little Haiti is a place about memory as much as anything. Even if their memories are fearful, as is the case for many Haitians, they are still memories of the homeland which they have tried to re-create in Miami, Florida. Every story here is a story of survival, about escaping violence, about winding one’s way through an impossible stacked-decks immigration system, and about keeping some vestige of culture, language, history, and dreams alive. If there were ever a prime example of the racism toward and hardship of being an immigrant in America, it can be found here in Little Haiti.

As with all cultures, the beating heart of Haiti is found in its history, which is singular. Enslaved Africans overthrew their French masters to achieve the only successful slave revolt in the world at a time when the world’s economies rotated on the backs of enslaved people. They beat back Napoleon’s armies and still had to pay reparation to France for taking over the richest colony in the French crown. Led by revered heroes, Haitians built a new nation, full of sophistication and intellectual abilities. But the world turned its back on Haiti and isolated it to keep news of a slave revolt secret. It retained its African heritage but also embraced a rich culture of art and letters.

The main street of Little Haiti is pretty with gingerbread features on colorfully painted stores and a large marketplace. Currently, it is holding off the invasion of gentrification. Important Haitian leaders and artists live here. Amid them is Jean Mapou whose bookstore sells thousands of books in Creole, French, and English and is a center of culture. He is considered to be a Poteau Mitan (elder statesman). Next door, internationally-known artist Edouard Duval-Carrié creates bodies of work that draw from the traditions of vodou and Haitian history, and down the block renowned writer Edwidge Danticat lives with her family writing books that break the heart and lift the spirit.

Isolated from much of Miami by culture and language, Haitians turn to local community leaders for social services and assistance. Two names known to all are Gepsie Metullus and Marleine Bastien. Gepsie is executive director of SANT LA Neighborhood Center where Haitians can go for help with unemployment payments, medical help, social security, and taxes. Marleine Bastien, a venerable political leader, is the executive director of FANM, the Haitian women’s agency, which provides women with help finding employment, domestic violence, after-school child-care services, and an annual health fair. Bastien also leads demonstrations against U.S. immigration policies and has run for political office.

At the heart of the community is Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church, overseen by Father Reginald Jean Mary. The church is a community center and hosts a school for children and adult Haitians who learn to write Creole and English, even in their later years. Haitian teens have access to computers and etiquette classes and seniors have morning exercise classes.

Over in the community garden, Prevenir Julien makes a living thanks to the non-profit that sponsors him. He and his son Belix, 12, have a nice one-bedroom apartment nearby. They came to the U.S. on a medical visa after Belix was critically wounded during the 2010 earthquake from which the country is still recovering. Belix recovered and is receiving a free education that Prevenir would have had to pay for back in Haiti.

As for street culture, Serges Toussaint paints murals around Little Haiti and takes visitors on tours of Little Haiti’s streets in an effort to grow appreciation for the neighborhood.

No matter what pressures Haitians face in the U.S., they continue to dream about a better and more peaceful life, free from political violence and crippling economics. Whatever their fears, they have learned to face them full on. It is still not an easy life, but they get up every day and do it all over again, in search of that elusive American dream that promises so much but often falls short for these immigrants.

These photos show how Haitians help each other to settle into a new land vastly different from their own in an area called Little Haiti in Miami, Florida, a vibrant immigrant community that struggles to recreate a part of their old country in a new land by maintaining cultural aspects of their lives and with the help of organizations in Miami, mostly run by members of the Haitian diaspora. Haitians come with dreams but live with fears of racism and discrimination and often temporary status that is constantly challenged by changing immigration rules.

A Haitian nun prays during mass at Notre Dame d’Haiti, the Catholic heart of Little Haiti. Mass is held in Creole and offers a safe and caring place in the community. The Catholic church, which raised money to build a new church, also provides school courses for young students and for Haitians who want to learn to speak and write English, as well as fitness classes for older Haitians.

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Unlearning
Photos and essay by Nolan Ryan Trowe

Some people see me as a disabled photographer instead of a photographer. It’s true that many of my stories have focused on disability, as I am a person who happens to have a disability. However, when people choose to only see my work through the lens of disability, they miss out on a lot. On the surface it’s a disability, but underneath that, when people look beyond my wheelchair and leg braces and frailness, they would see that the work is about ideas that every human can relate to: fear, shame, masculinity, intimacy, anger, love, and family are just to name a few. And even more so it’s about learning to love myself so that I can properly love others.

Until I became disabled, I never had to worry about being put into a box based off of a physical immutable trait — you know, I had that privilege for nearly 23 years, and I’ve lost it for the last four and change; it’s shifted the way I navigate the world physically and mentally. It makes me question everything, because one day the world treated me one way, and overnight it treated me another. I never realized how much pain I was in, how much harm I had done to myself.

My personal journey, much like my country’s, is to unlearn most of what I was told about myself.

This project was produced with support from the Magnum Foundation.

The author stands for a self-portrait in his home in July 2020. His genitals and thighs are obscured.

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America
Photos and essay by Christopher Morris

I’m struggling with what to write here, with the new reality of the country of my birth. I first was assigned early in the pandemic to go to the small Georgia town of Albany, where I spent several days with the County Coroner as he struggled with the surging deaths in his community, with this unknown new disease that was flourishing in his county. Racing through city streets with his sirens blaring and lights flashing, when we passed vehicles, the occupants would stare in pure horror, as if the Grim Reaper himself had just passed them by.

After this experience, the virus for me and my family became something serious that we needed to understand and to pay very close attention to. I’ve spent the past eight months now protecting myself and my family. I believe in science and could understand that simply wearing a mask whenever I go out into public was my best defense and protection for others with this new world we all live in. That brings me to today, after attending an extremely large Trump campaign rally here in Florida where I live. I’ve covered over 20 conflicts up close over my 30-plus-year career, and I have never been more shocked and more afraid at what I witnessed at this rally. Thousands of American Trump supporters crammed into an open field next to a stadium with over 70% of participants maskless, shoulder to shoulder. Blindly worshiping their dear leader, on cue screaming “lock them up,” and laughing and jeering at the mention of lockdowns and mask-wearing. It was extremely frightening, and I do not scare easily. But what I witnessed at this rally was a true “cult of death.” I fear for my country and what the months will bring.

Albany, Ga., where an increase of COVID-19 deaths surged in this rural, mainly African-American community. April 5, 2020.

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To Peacefully Protest in Portland
Photos and essay by Christopher Lee

In the early weeks of July, federal law enforcement from agencies such as Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Department of Homeland Security were dispatched to Portland, Oregon, in the wake of the ongoing protests for civil rights shortly after the death of George Floyd. This was part of a mission called Operation Diligent Valor by the Trump administration. There, agents armed with less lethal munitions met peaceful protesters every night to “take care” of the activists that would congregate in front of the Mark Hatfield Federal Courthouse, according to the president. While the protests have been largely calm and nonviolent, federal agents would dramatically escalate violence during the demonstrations, discovered in an analysis by The New York Times.

In a letter written by Portland City Council Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, condemnation of the presence of federal law enforcement was outlined. There, Eudaly stated that Portland was a “test run,” saying “the Department of Homeland Security has openly stated that they intend to replicate these tactics in cities across the nation.” While we might not know what the November election will bring, one thing is for sure: the fight for civil rights in America will continue on no matter who sits in the Oval Office. My fears remain for the future of our rights as Americans to fight for what we believe in. Will this be a lesson that we will learn for how we as a country interact with demonstrations in the streets, or will Portland truly become a preview for what's to come?

Pro-BLM protesters and members of the Wall of Moms are seen near the Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Portland, Ore., on July 25, 2020.

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Cowboy John
Photos and essay by Danny Wilcox Frazier

I drove up to the Neumann Ranch after getting lost while on my way to Cactus Flat (population 12 in 2008). I drove past a Minuteman Ballistic Missile historic site and ended up on what Julie Long, John Neumann’s girlfriend, described as a “broke down horse and cattle ranch.” John and Julie took me in, years later joking over dinner that if they knew I meant it when I asked to move in, well maybe the answer would have been different. This photograph, the most well-known from my work on the Great Plains, is something John was proud of. It was recognition that his life, with all the rusty edges, broken bumpers, and pain was also beautiful. It wasn’t all polished up like a big city, but as he once told me, “We might be poor, but we still have fun.”

John took his life on June 9th, 2019. He left behind a 6-month-old son, Stetson, and longtime girlfriend, Tabatha Swartz, as well as many loved ones and friends. Tabatha continues to raise their son on the Neumann Ranch, fighting to maintain the operation for when Stetson takes over, John’s dream for his son.

Suicide is personal for me, a part of my life since I was a teenager. While trying to understand John’s death is a heartbreaking daily reality for Tabatha and all those who love John, there is a piece of this that must be spoken. John suffered from ankylosing spondylitis, a chronic inflammatory disease where the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy joints. “John was always hurting because of his joints,” says Tabatha. John and Tabatha tried to get John to specialists that could help, but the waitlist was a year long at the (one) doctor in their region. John was spending $600 a month for insurance so he could receive medical care that was then 12 months out of reach. “It was very physically painful for John and he had tried different ways to control the pain, but we weren’t rich. John was just waiting, just waiting all the time and he was tired of it,” Tabatha says. “There was no access to the care John needed. Maybe down the road (there would have been), but John didn’t wait long enough.”

Rural America is seeing a dramatic rise in suicides. Studies show the rate of suicide in rural counties is 25 percent higher than major metropolitan areas. Since 2000, the overall rate in the United States saw a 41 percent rise in suicide among people ages 25 to 64. Factors pushing the increase in rural communities include poverty, low income and underemployment, isolation, neglect, lack of access to mental healthcare, and the stigma mental health treatment has in rural culture.

In the remote communities surrounding the badlands of South Dakota which includes the Neumann Ranch, access to healthcare and the money to pay for it are real barriers. The system failed John. “It was all about pain for the most part, physical and mental,” says Tabatha. “John’s body hurt so much he didn’t want to be here.” Maybe if the care John needed was readily available, his pain could have been managed. Maybe if our society valued access to healthcare for all, no matter wealth, race, or location, suicides like John’s would fall in number. Until we work together to find solutions for those outside of the ultra-wealthy ranks, the impact of wealth consolidation will continue to take loved ones, like John, from us all.

John Neumann, Cactus Flat, South Dakota, 2008.

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Contributors

Essay by ALEXIS OKEOWO, writer of A MOONLESS, STARLESS SKY: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa, which won the 2018 PEN Open Book Award, and a staff writer at The New Yorker and a contributing editor at Vogue.

Photo editing by DUDLEY M. BROOKS, the Deputy Director of Photography for The Washington Post, where he manages the creative strategy and production of photo-oriented content for the Features and Sports sections. He is also the Photo Editor for The Washington Post Magazine. Preceding this, Brooks was the Director of Photography and Senior Photo Editor for the monthly magazine Ebony and its weekly sister periodical Jet — both formerly published by Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago.

Guest photography by ANDRÉ CHUNG, an award-winning photojournalist and portrait photographer based in the Washington, D.C./Baltimore area.

About “America, Again”

Exactly one year before voters go to the polls on November 3, 2020 — and three months before Iowans gather for their caucuses — VII launched the first chapter of our year-long collective election coverage, “America, Again.”

This project emerged among a few of the VII photographers with the intention of focusing attention on the issues that will dominate the U.S. election. The VII Foundation and VII Academy have stepped in to support the project in recognition of the importance of critical and independent storytelling in civic discourse. We will produce stories on material issues that people worldwide are wrangling with, not only Americans. We’ll cover issues that are used to divide us, and that allow populist politicians to undermine the values that are foundational to our societies.

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“AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 1: IOWA
“AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 2: THE ENVIRONMENT
“AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 3: AMERICAN DREAMS
“AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 4: INTERRUPTED
”AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 5: AMERICAN MYTHS
”AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 6: AMERICAN IMPERIUM
”AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 7: AMERICAN HOPE, AMERICAN FEARS

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“AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 6: American Imperium

“America, Again” is a year-long project by the photographers of VII, an exploration of some of the most important issues facing American voters as they head to the polls on November 3rd. This is Chapter 6: American Imperium which includes essays by Suzy Hansen, Anthony Loyd, and Jill Filipovic as well as photo stories by Hector Guerrero, Stefano De Luigi, Nichole Sobecki, Valentina Sinis, Leonardo Carrato, Forough Alaei, and two essays curated for this chapter from the VII archive.

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Introduction essay by Suzy Hansen

In May of 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent his vice president, Richard Nixon, to visit Latin America. By then, over a decade into the Cold War, the Americans wanted to win hearts and minds in the so-called Third World. But when Nixon toured Venezuela, a crowd erupted in protest. “Get out, dog!” they cried, “We won’t forget Guatemala!” The protesters threw rocks at Nixon’s car, shattering the car windows. Eisenhower recognized that the Americans had a public relations problem. In a meeting with his national security advisers, the president observed that “capitalism, which means one thing to us … clearly meant to much of the rest of the world something synonymous with imperialism.” He suggested they come up with new phrases for the American project. Among them were “free enterprise,” the “free world,” and “freedom.”¹

If American propaganda failed to convince Venezuelans, or Iranians, or Chinese, it succeeded in shaping the collective worldview of its own citizenry. Of the many ways the United States government has insulated its citizens from responsibility for their role in the world, the use of language may be the most pernicious. It is still common, for example, to hear pundits, journalists, and politicians attribute the invasion of Iraq to “idealism,” the genuine belief that the Americans could bring the Iraqis “freedom.” Rarely in these discussions are Americans compelled to consider what that word had come to mean by 2003, or its long, deceptive history. James Baldwin once identified that white Americans and Black Americans had different “systems of reality;” a similar condition exists between Americans and the rest of the world.

Americans still not only rarely hear how the world speaks of American power, they know little of its effect on individual lives, not only from wars or invasions, but economic policies, international laws, and political whims. The photographs in this series address this gulf: Iranians separated from their loved ones because of Trump’s travel ban; migrants lured by America’s promise trapped at the border; women whose bodies are politicized by American policies; the possibility that China and the U.S. could enter a Cold War with as deleterious repercussions as the one with the Soviets. The photos not only help to understand the way American actions impact millions of lives across the globe. They remind us that the Americans and the rest of the world are connected by American power, that every U.S. election affects the world as much as Americans, that we live in a shared reality.

It is striking how many of these photos of today’s America do not echo the story Americans like to tell themselves about America: the melting pot, Ellis Island, bring me your tired. These photos often tell a story of exclusion. Today, America’s president uses words like “freedom” to mean the liberation of the American people from the humanity beyond its borders. One series of photographs here, however, remembers WWII, when Americans left their own shores to assist a foreign people against a fascist foe. Superimposed on the photos of American war veterans, and American gravestones, are the jarring, isolationist words of America’s current president. The effect is sobering, and of course, might inspire Americans to feel nostalgic for a more honorable time. But I wonder if we might also look at the composition as an act of questioning: What was in that honorable history that was a myth? What was lurking within us that led us to Donald Trump? Might the rest of the world know something about ourselves, our long history, our shared reality, that we Americans stopped being able to understand so long ago?

[1] The author would like to credit historian Alex von Tunzelmann’s wonderful book “Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder and the Cold War in the Caribbean” (Henry Holt, 2011) for this passage.

View “America, Again” | Chapter 6: AMERICAN IMPERIUM here.

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Border Wars

Photos and essay by Hector Guerrero

Guatemala, October 19, 2018: Honduran migrants who had made their way through Central America gather at Guatemala’s northern border with Mexico despite President Donald Trump’s threat to deploy the military to stop them from entering the United States.

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I Miss You, America

Photos and essay by Stefano De Luigi

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Afghanistan: 1998–2012

Essay by Anthony Loyd and photos from the VII Archive

The fighter in the rocks with the gun in his hand had jail time in his memory, shrapnel scars in his gut, and said he was tired of killing, but was ready to kill some more. A mid-level Taliban commander, whose war alias was Khalid Agha, he said that he was sure of victory, and there was no compromise in his narrative of impending triumph.

“We haven’t been shedding blood all these years with the intent of sharing power with the Kabul government,” he said, tapping his PK machine gun as dust devils whirled across the Afghan plain. He laughed too, though the noise sounded more like contempt than mirth. “We fight for sharia, for the Islamic Emirate, not to make deals with democrats in the time of our victory.”

Just nine days earlier, on February 29, 2020, the Americans had signed the Doha Agreement with the Taliban to lay down the conditions for a phased U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. As these images bear witness to, made by VII photographers across more than three decades, there was no shortage of reasons to end the war.

Afghans were exhausted by four decades of conflict and deserved the peace they craved. Over 100,000 civilians had been killed or wounded in the past decade alone. Understandable too was the U.S. wish to leave its longest ever conflict, which across 19 years had cost it more than 2,400 American lives and a total investment of up to $2 trillion, for so little obvious result.

Yet the Doha Agreement seemed flawed from its inception, a charade advertised as a peace deal yet likely to precipitate further violence. Essentially, the agreement acquiesced to the Taliban’s main demands, without giving anything concrete to the Afghan government. Women’s rights? Democracy? Human rights? They had no meaningful mention in Doha.

Gifted the narrative of victory over a superpower, in the wake of this accord the Taliban’s mood was boosted from one of dogged endurance into a belligerent triumphalism. The sons of men who had fought the Russians saw the Doha Agreement as little more than a fig leaf to allow the Americans to withdraw before the Taliban recommenced their fight to seize the country, much the same as their mujahideen forebears overthrew the Afghan communist government in 1992, three years after Soviet forces had withdrawn from Afghanistan.

“We have just defeated a superpower,” smirked Khalid Agha, his men gathered around him.

March 2001: A group of armed Taliban in a jeep. Prior to every mission, Talibans receive training in one of the many different camps in the Afghan mountains. The training includes suicide attack education. © Franco Pagetti / VII.

February 15, 2001: An Afghan family seen preparing the body of an 8-year-old boy who died from the cold at the Maslakh refugee camp near Herat, Afghanistan. The boy’s uncles place the body on a white sheet as family members look on. © Alexandra Boulat / VII.

April 2, 2001: Photos and essay by Daniel Schwartz.

November 13, 2001: Northern Alliance soldiers show off Taliban prisoners-of-war on the Old Road to Kabul. © Ron Haviv / VII.

November 2001: Ghulam Ali, Parwan Province. Osama bin Laden on television before the fall of Kabul. The broadcasting of tapes claiming the survival of bin Laden emphasized the Coalition’s failure to capture him. Ironically the message was delivered via a medium, television, outlawed by the Taliban. © Seamus Murphy / VII.

November 11, 2001: The first two women to register at Kabul University since 1995. © Gary Knight / VII.

April 2003: U.S. troops taking part in Operation Valiant Guardian in the village of Loy Kariz, near Spin Boldak, Afghanistan, on the hunt for Al-Qaeda and Taliban. © Ed Kashi / VII.

April 24, 2003: (left) A U.S. trooper searches a local Afghan man for weapons during Operation Valiant Guardian. (right) A member of the U.S. Armed Forces covers the head of an Afghan fighter who is being arrested in the village of Loy Kariz, near Spin Boldak. © Ed Kashi / VII.

November 2003: (left) A makeup class organized by Pangea, an Italian NGO, in Afghanistan. (right) Students take a sculpture course at a university in Afghanistan. © Stefano De Luigi / VII.

October 2004: View of a neighborhood with heavy war damage in Kabul. © Danny Wilcox Frazier / VII.

April 6, 2005: Specialist Adam Burk, 22, from Indiana, USA, waves to new members of the Afghanistan Army as they pass a depot which contains destroyed tanks, weapons, and planes from Afghanistan’s war with the Soviets as well as the Northern Alliance war against the Taliban. The history of war and fighting has long been a part of Afghan society. © John Stanmeyer / VII.

October 9, 2006: (left) A man prays in front of the King’s tomb. The King’s tomb is located on a nearby hill overlooking Kabul. For hundreds of years, it served as a traditional burial place for Afghan royalty. Due to its strategic position, it has been one of the key places for artillery positioning. During the years of unrest and strife between different Mujahideen factions, following the fall of the Soviet-led government, it was heavily shelled and destroyed. October 12, 2006: (right) An Afghan boy sits on the edge of a swimming pool. Large swimming pools were built by Russians on one of the numerous hills overlooking Kabul. It was used as an artillery position against the Russians and during the combats between different Mujahideen factions. People come here in the afternoon to escape from the city dust and the terrible traffic. © Ziyah Gafic / VII.

July 21, 2006: A uniformed soldier guards the former presidential palace in Kabul. © Espen Rasmussen / VII.

June 2009: French soldiers from the 1st Infantry Regiment were in the Uzbin Valley for six months. They were directed to take the valley, a place where ten months ago a dozen French soldiers were killed. But while they were there, they never used their weapons; they never saw the Taliban. It was like fighting a ghost. There were attacks but they never knew where they came from… they never saw the enemy, which only intensified their fear. © Eric Bouvet / VII.

August 20, 2009: Women line up to receive their ballot cards at a polling station in central Kabul. The election resulted in victory for the incumbent Hamid Karzai, who won 49.67% of the vote, while his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, finished second with 30.59% of the vote. © Nichole Sobecki / VII.

November 23, 2010: These images are from the series ‘Seeing in the Dark,’ shot during an embed with the medevac crew from Company C, 101st Combat Aviation Brigade at Camp Dwyer along the Helmand River Valley. I found that there was so little light on night missions that I was struggling to make pictures, and began experimenting with holding night-vision goggles up to the end of my lens. They’re strange, and otherworldly, and also the only images I shot while embedded that look the way I felt being there, and witnessing this (perhaps not) forever war. © Nichole Sobecki / VII.

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No Choice

Essay by Jill Filipovic and photos by Nichole Sobecki

For hundreds of millions of women the world over, their safety, options, and opportunities hang in the balance of an election they don’t get to vote in.

The Trump administration has transformed America’s handling of international women’s rights, and its treatment of women themselves. For women fleeing extreme violence — a common “push” factor for women leaving Central America, where women are often the victims of domestic abuse, rape, and murder, and where police do little and sometimes participate — Trump’s America is not a safe haven. The administration’s cruel family separation policy ripped children from their parents, leaving some children and their mothers alike vulnerable to abuse behind bars. The president’s attorney general, William Barr, tried to remove domestic violence as grounds for asylum; Trump’s proposed new rules for asylum-seekers would end gender-based asylum claims, allow judges to refuse grants of asylum without a hearing, and make an already complicated system even more Byzantine.

One of the first things Trump did in office was reinstate, and then radically expand, what opponents call the Global Gag Rule. Under the rule, U.S. funds are cut from any organization abroad that provides abortions with its own non-U.S. money, refers women for safe abortion services, or advocates for safe, legal abortion. It doesn’t apply to U.S.-based institutions, because in America, it violates First Amendment free speech protections. Groups that provided family planning tools, HIV treatment, prenatal care, even malaria treatment and aid to orphans lost U.S. funding for engaging in work that is legal in their own countries, and would be legal in the United States. We don’t have hard numbers yet, but the Trump cuts have likely translated into millions of women losing access to contraception, which means that millions of them became pregnant when they didn’t want to be. Many have had children they can’t afford to feed. Many have had abortions, some safe and many not. Some have died.

While U.S. funds were being pulled from basic development work in some of the world’s most fragile places, the Trump administration was also undermining the ability of the international community to even discuss women’s health: After a UN Security Council meeting in 2019, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN announced that the U.S. would not accept the use of the term “sexual and reproductive health.” While abortion has long been controversial among UN member states, the objection to sexual and reproductive health — a widely-recognized need, not to mention a thing that simply exists — was a stunning and Orwellian change. The U.S. delegation to the UN has objected to basic women’s and LGBT rights at nearly every turn, often siding with some of the world’s worst human rights abusers to fight any advocacy for women and sexual minorities. One State Department report on global human rights took out all references to reproductive health and rights, and even removed statistics on maternal mortality.

American politics reach so wide they circle the globe. When U.S. voters cast our ballots on Nov. 3, it’s not just America’s future we’re voting for — we’re shaping the destinies of women we’ll never meet, whose bodies are politicized and whose rights are so often up for debate, and who have so much more to lose than an election.

Riohacha, Colombia, September 25, 2018: Silvana Hinestroza Mendoza, 43, holds her grandson as they nap in their home in Colombia. It’s been seven years since Silvana Hinestroza Mendoza first spoke publicly about being raped by members of a guerrilla group who kidnapped and tortured her when she was a young woman. More than 15,000 Colombian women and girls were raped or otherwise sexually abused during the country’s civil war; many remain too terrified or ashamed to tell anyone. Finally speaking the truth about what happened, Silvana said she feels good, even powerful — like a layer of shame peeled back with each telling. But each telling also means exposing painful scars, literal and metaphorical.

Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh: (left) Miscarriages can be induced by inserting the roots of a local tree vaginally and securing with a piece of string. Honduras and Nicaragua: (right) The leaf of the hyptis verticillata plant is used to induce abortion in Central America.

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Made in China

Photos and essay by Valentina Sinis

With China’s efforts to become the world’s economic superpower, the U.S.-China battle has been underway for years. Four years ago, Donald Trump came to power as a deal maker. He even claimed that trade wars are good and that he is the master of winning them. But in reality, he hasn’t won this battle; instead, the tension between the two superpowers is at its highest in years.

I’ve lived in China for the past 15 years. I watched the country and its youth move closer and closer to the West. For nearly half of that time, President Xi Jinping has talked about a Chinese Dream of global dominance, a return to the grandeur of past dynasties that inspires many Chinese. But from what I saw and experienced among Chinese millennials — particularly among the artists’ circles I was part of — the American Dream holds far more influence on young people than past and future visions of Chinese greatness.

As China and the U.S. move toward a new Cold War, I worry about them. I fear that Chinese millennials are trapped between two worlds — and that any wrong move could destroy their fragile dreams.

Chengdu, China, May 2017: A Chinese girl attends The Strawberry Music Festival, one of the country’s biggest outdoor music festivals in Chengdu. The Chinese government deploys a few hundred police forces to be present at this event. While the young audiences enjoy the event, they are aware of the officers around the site. China’s government believes that any imported cultural product should not disrupt Chinese social/political order and threaten the unity of the state.

Hong Kong, October 2, 2017: Lily and Karl in their living room in Hong Kong. They own a small tattoo studio and express their inner feelings through their line of tattoos. Despite their passive role in politics, they consider themselves Hongkongers and being seen as Chinese is out of question. The future for many young Hongkongers like Lily and Karl is dependent upon the ongoing trade war between Beijing and Western states such as the UK and the United States. They may be the ones who will pay the price for these political/economic battles.

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Here Without You

Photos and essay by Forough Alaei

“My hopes for a new fantasy life, suddenly became a nightmare,” my friend said, while her eyes filled with tears. Maryam had married her classmate, an American citizen, and she planned to go with him to the U.S. after their wedding in Tehran. But the newlyweds’ plans ran smack into the travel ban imposed by Donald Trump as one of his first acts after taking office in 2017.

After hearing Maryam’s story, I began to look for the stories of other Iranians whose lives had become entangled with the political views of the new president of the United States. There are literally thousands of people in my country whose visa applications have been refused since the ban was imposed. Many are seeking waivers, a procedure which may take years, while they are separated from their loved ones.

They are families, ordinary citizens, whose lives have been turned upside down by Trump’s foreign policy. They include the baby girl who has been in the U.S. for medical treatment while her father still waits for a visa; the mother who sleeps on her son’s bed, just to remember his scent — something she has done since 2015, when he went to Boston to study mechanical engineering; the family of four who can only gather via Skype. There are so many more.

Note: The families included here were photographed and interviewed between 2018 and 2019; some of them have been granted U.S. visas recently. Names have been changed at their request.

Behzad’s son Parsa stayed in Iran for the summer with his father. Behzad had not been living with his family for nearly five years. His wife and son immigrated to the U.S. a few years ago, while he had been waiting for a visa. “I cannot plan for my future, my son doesn’t talk to me and he even denies looking at me,” Behzad said.

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To Break the Ties

Photos and essay by Leonardo Carrato

Things were going well in Macaé. A small Brazilian city along the Atlantic Ocean, oil was discovered here in 1974, bringing with it rapid economic development and urbanization — and the national oil company Petrobras, which made its headquarters here. Over the next 30 years, Macaé became Brazil’s national oil capital, and while development was messy and unequal, the gleam of prosperity didn’t dim.

Then, in 2014, Macaé came face to face with a two-headed monster: the plummeting of global oil prices, and Operation Car Wash. The embezzlement investigation into Petrobras spanned the country, but its epicenter was Macaé, reducing the city to survival mode. The investigation rocked Brazil’s political and business establishment, leading to the imprisonment of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — a move that barred him from reelection and paved the way for a win for far-right Jair Bolsonaro. A feeling of decay and abandonment took over Macaé.

The operation was hardly a Brazilian-only affair though. A trove of leaked documents — co-analyzed by The Intercept and the Brazilian investigative news outlet Agência Pública — reveal that Operation Car Wash was a secretive collaboration between the Brazilians and the U.S. Department of Justice that may have violated international legal treaties and Brazilian law. The documents also reveal clear misconduct and political bias by the judge and prosecutors who handled the case against Lula, and critics have argued that the U.S. had undue influence here.

For many Brazilians, it’s yet another dark reminder of the U.S.’s history of intervention in Latin American politics, particularly in light of the close relationship between Bolsonaro and Trump. For those left in Macaé, all that remains is a grim reality, and the last, fading vestige of hope.

(Left) At the window of his house, Edmilson reveals how he is coping with the serious crisis faced by the city of Macaé. In the 2000s, he left everything and came to Macaé in search of a better life. A former butcher, he was seduced away by the promise of prosperity and a good life. After the fall of the oil market and cases of corruption involving local companies, Edmilson lost his job and now survives through the help of close friends. He reports that he has already gone through serious psychological problems and today considers returning to his city and reuniting with his family. (Right) In the main square, Marciolínio awaits the arrival of other colleagues for their daily meeting. He says that he comes to the square every day in search of work. This is the meeting point for a group of tankers who are unemployed and hoping for a place in the job market. Marciolínio, also known as Mestre, is another case of those who left everything behind and came to Macaé to pursue the promise of prosperity in the former national oil capital.

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The Mighty Dollar

Essay by Nichole Sobecki and photos from the VII Archive

The 1950s in America was a decade of suburbia and segregation, the Chevrolet and Mad Men advertising — and the rise of the U.S. dollar as the world’s dominant currency. That America’s role as the sole financial superpower has endured for the past 70 years is remarkable, especially considering that the U.S. economy declined from nearly 40 percent of world GDP in 1960 to just 25 percent today. It’s also given America astonishing, and at times terrifying, power over other countries’ destinies. The images here, made by VII photographers, illuminate the implications of this often misused influence from the symbolic (and waist-expanding) association of fast food with success, the ubiquitous presence of Hollywood and Bieber, the way our national pastime of baseball has championed the values of the American dream abroad, and the high cost to Africa of well-intentioned used clothing donations. And still, the dollar endures. When the COVID-19 crisis hit, there was a record-breaking rush to get dollars, and the U.S. Federal Reserve has been sending billions to banks the world over in a process known as “swap lines” that help stabilize the global economy, and boost America’s financial hegemony. But the images also point to ways in which the dollar’s status will be tested by the rise of China, and President Donald Trump’s heedless use of financial warfare. Abroad, U.S. rivals and allies alike are looking for ways to liberate themselves from the mighty greenback. What would that world be like, and how would it change Americans’ place in it?

At the Bunker Bar, just outside of the massive Turkish Incirlik Airbase near Adana, Turkey, a local Turkish man shows off his money. The “alley” is a strip filled with bars, restaurants, and trinket shops to attract U.S. military personnel. This airbase hosts as many as 5,000 U.S. forces and military equipment including nuclear warheads. October 2002. © Ed Kashi / VII

Accra, Ghana, July 2017: (clockwise from top left) Men sell sunglasses on the Oxford Street shopping strip outside the Osu branch of KFC. Since 2015, the fast-food giant has opened multiple restaurants in the city and beyond to meet Ghana’s rising demand for Western-style fast food. People outside a new KFC outlet in Accra. A woman sells doughnuts outside a KFC outlet in Dansoman, Ghana. The outlet serves 7,000 people a week, including 4,200 through their drive-through. Men load freshly imported soap outside a KFC outlet in the Tema Harbour area, outside of Accra. © Ashley Gilbertson / VII.

(left) Hollywood, California, February 2004: A Japanese TV presenter reverentially holds an Oscar to the camera on the red carpet during the final preparations for the ceremony on the morning before the Oscar’s main event. © Jocelyn Bain Hogg / VII. (right) Hollywood, California, February 29, 2004. Donald Trump and Melania arrive at the post-Oscar InStyle magazine party. © Jocelyn Bain Hogg / VII.

Hollywood, Florida, August 29, 2019: At the Midtown Manor Assisted Living Facility, 30 employees care for 100 residents of all ages and for all reasons. Caregiver Sherly Aguilar makes beds and visits with some of her favorite residents. She has worked there for seven years and is from Nicaragua, a legal immigrant who studied care-giving after arriving in the U.S. She feels you cannot do this job without heart. Miami, Florida, March 7, 2012: (right) Actress Adriana Fonseca studies her lines as the director and floor manager check for the next scene of Telemundo’s new telenovela CORAZON VALIENTE filmed at the posh Coltorti Boutique. As Hispanic audiences in the U.S. continue to grow, more and more telenovelas are being made in Miami, making it the new Latin Hollywood or Hispanic Tinseltown. © Maggie Steber / VII.

Northern Iraq, 1991: An American soldier offers a young Kurdish girl a Barbie doll. Without the Allied presence in Iraq, Kurdish autonomy would have been crushed by Saddam Hussein’s military. © Ed Kashi / VII.

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Contributors

Introduction by SUZY HANSEN, a journalist based in Istanbul and New York. Her first book Notes on a Foreign Country was a Finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction, and the winner of the Overseas Press Club’s Cornelius Ryan Award for Best Nonfiction Book on International Affairs.

Essay by ANTHONY LOYD, English journalist and noted war correspondent. He began reporting for The Times during the Bosnian War in 1993 and since then he has reported from a series of major conflict zones, including those in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.

Essay by JILL FILIPOVIC, a Brooklyn-based journalist and author of OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind and The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness. She is also a weekly columnist for CNN and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.

Photo editing by SARAH LEEN, former Director of Photography National Geographic Partners and founder of the Visual Thinking Collective for independent women editors, teachers, and curators.

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“AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 1: IOWA
“AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 2: THE ENVIRONMENT
“AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 3: AMERICAN DREAMS
“AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 4: INTERRUPTED
”AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 5: AMERICAN MYTHS
”AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 6: AMERICAN IMPERIUM
”AMERICA, AGAIN” | CHAPTER 7: AMERICAN HOPE, AMERICAN FEARS

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