I’ve been laying low in the workshop continuing work on the A, Eb and G prototypes, but perhaps more importantly I’ve re-started therapy sessions to hopefully cure the illness I’ve been suffering from for the last 5 years.

This is a fascinating interview with (the late) Tim Hetherington.  It’s Michael Kamber asking questions.   Both well respected photo journalists.

I’m no expert but on the Palestinian situation but Julia Bacha’s TED talk which I found on Louise William’s blog seems to offer a fresh perspective.  The interesting point is how the media, in the main, is drawn to sensationalist aspects rather than using  judgement to cover what is most likely to contribute to progress.   Hopefully the emergence and empowerment of ‘independant media’, just like Julia, will re-address this.  It’s a TED Global talk and looks like it was recorded in Edinburgh in July 2011.

I have an unexplainable fascination with conflict that might take me to conflict (war) zones one day.  I can’t tell whether this is a fascination is grounded in a want to engage, document and get to grips with the world’s key issues, or whether it’s a unhealthy obsession based on more selfish reasons.  Either way I’ve decided to document the thoughts and the process of coming to a conclusion on a future course of action, whether it be one way or the other.

Love this picture from Canon Ambassador Brent Stirton.  It’s from the Omo Valley, Ethiopia.  Use of flash lights to bring out the foreground works really well here but I  find the use of flash jars sometimes on his other pictures because the light is a different colour / temperature to the ambient light.  I wonder if he couldn’t use coloured filters on his flash guns?  See what you think >> http://www.brentstirton.com/

Developing script which may be used for a soundslide about South Sudan.  Still some research to do checking accuracy and no idea how the length will work out with image length. It feels like that last sentence is floating in space also. Comments welcome.

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There are parts of the world where politics is locked up, immobilised by power too centralised and bureaucratic sludge, and there are others where it’s very much active and relevant.  African politics in particular is ever turbulent.   For decades things can go along in a kind of stalemate, before one day it erupts, a window of opportunity appears – a real chance for progress – and people can either take it or let the opportunity slip away with the resulting misery.

South Sudan’s Indepenence in July of 2011 has offered one such opportunity.  Locked in Africa’s longest civil war for four decades, Sudan’s recent history is perhaps as turbulent as any.  Sudan’s borders, like many of Africa’s boudaries, were drawn up on European soil, and left disparate peoples trying to operate under one government.  South Sudan’s separation to form the world’s 193rd nation voted for by 98% of South Sudan’s population, is the first time that African borders have been redrawn from within Africa.

But even in a continent where you think every political scenario might’ve been played out before, the split of Sudan can be seen in a Black and white rarely seen in African politics.   South Sudan remains one of the most undeveloped countries in the world.  South Sudan’s reserves of oil and Uranium are relatively undeveloped, offering a very faint glimmer of hope that extraction might not neccesarily destroy the fabric of the country on a politic and social economic level.    Or it may be the poisoned chalice that leads back to war.

From a few weeks in South Sudan, while I saw one of the poorest countries in the world economically, I also saw one of the richest places on earth culturally.  The dirt tracks that criss cross the vast expanse can lead you to colourful peoples you will could not have imagined.  Their elemental lifestyle somehow gives you the feeling that being with them, you are that much closer to fire, water, courage, fear, life and death.  They touched me on a profound level I haven’t found elsewhere.

On visiting the cattle camps in Bor district, you can see humans co-existence with cattle has synenergised into a way of life which evolved through the centuries.  People and cattle.  Their nomadic lives might be admirable and incredible, but they are far from idealistic.  Lack of sanitation, healthcare and education make the cattle camps centres of disease and malnurishment.    Many are literally covered in cow shit from head to toe – even their orange and green hair dye is made from cow urine and shit.  It’s an assault that means it’s survival of the fittest – from before they are born babies must have or develop immunity, or not make it through.  But some do make it through, and for them our arrival offered some hope that we would click our fingers and white power and money would bring medicines and treatments for them and their cattle.  But even without medicines, education derived from modern science would say the first step would be to limit the spread of disease by putting some distance between them and their cattle.  And the process of ‘development’ immediately starts to errodethe character that makes these people so remarkable.

It reminded me of a story relating to the expedition that successfully conquered Everest in 1967.  With the party returning through the foothills of the Himalaya, Urkien Sherpa, who had lived there all his life, was asked what he thought of the successful conquering of the mountain they had lived next to for generations.  He paused for a moment and replied ‘I do not envy your restless spirit’.  He had highlighted a fundamental difference that separated peoples around the world.  As some believed in ‘progress’ – pushing science, developing medicines, and structures that reached into the sky – others simply believed in being.

There can be no right or wrong, but I stood in awe looking at people at the camp, and they stood in awe looking at me.

It is good to ask questions when things go wrong, but it’s difficult to answer them unless you have the full picture.  What makes me think of this is recent coverage of the Famine in the horn of Africa and a recent post by media theorist / conceptualist David Campbell about the reporting of such events.  The tragic truth is that coverage of such events while completely neccessary, seems to reinforce the misconceptions people have of Africa as a continent and in doing so contractict its intentions of providing information to people to make balanced judgements.  A disaster makes news but longer term efforts to avert disasters all too often go unreported.

It made me think of one of the projects I came across while in Ethiopia earlier this year, although this is by no means the only example I’ve come across in Africa.  In an area hit very hard by the 1984-85 famine, a Canadian Aid organisation has been working with local populations on a scheme to make best use of the available rainfall.    On a massive scale the hillsides have been terraced to help retain soil so that vegatation can grow and moisture is retained.  This is all fine and well in Ethiopia, where the politial stability makes it possible to work with the government to ptovide long terms solutions to famine caused by drought.  Somalia, for example, is a very different case, but at least it goes a little way to deciffering where the problems are.

Perhaps at some point I’ll go back to make a more complete record of the work – these were taken in passing with the significance only being realised in retrospective.

These pictures were taken about 5 weeks ago, but their current posting is timely none-the-less.  Recent reports have been emanating from the region indicating that as many as 600 people have been killed in tribal clashes and cattle raids around this region in this week just gone by.   These pictures are actually from Bor district which lies adjacent and to the West of Jongeli District, the area where recent reports have come from.  None-the-less these pictures may build a picture of the lives of the cattle people.  The tribe shown here are known as the Bor Dinka:

Over this last week I’ve been going to some of the events at the Beyond Borders festival in Edinburgh.  Last night there was a short film about the Romanian Revolution in 1989, Mark Muller Stuart’s video diary from a trip to Libya earlier this year, and a discussion about similarities and differences between these ‘revolutions’ with the producers and narrators.

The second session saw an airing of a film about the final weeks and months of the civil war in Sri Lanka.  This is harrowing but necessary viewing indeed.  Although the film cannot be taken as fact it does seem to offer lots of evidence of war crimes committed against civilians by both sides – the LTT and the Sri Lankan government soldiers.  It leaves us with serious questions to answer – how can this happen in this day an age.  Somehow the government were able to implement a media blackout, perhaps not dissimilar to  what’s currently happening in Syria.  I remember suspecting a something was going on in Sri Lanka at the time [around early 2009] and looking about for information I found a website that was a list of people that had been abducted or killed – that’s all it was a rolling list of names.  So it obviously wasn’t that difficult to get an idea what might be going on over there.  It seemed almost unreported in the West however.  It raises some questions: how did the media miss it?  was it just because the blackout was so effective?  were the media impassive because it’s difficult to make people take notice of a war that’s been going on for decades?  Surely, you’d think someone would make it through to report it.  Gordon Weiss, head of the UN in Sri lanka at the time and present at yesterday evening’s Q&A has recently written a book to help provide information on what we can learn from the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war.  Watch the film – this is something everyone should know about.

Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields by Channel 4 [Full video] from judy123 on Vimeo.