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Photojournalism & Social Stories
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59 imagesCITY OF THE DEAD. CAIRO. EGYPT. After Spring Revolution in 2011, Cairo is now an empty ghost town from tourism compare with just only a few years ago, where used to be millions of them discovering the great treasures, amazing people and ancient culture of this huge, crazy and bustling, amazing city. Revenues from ancient Egyptian monuments have fallen dramatically and the city is anxious to welcome back the tourism. I went in 2010 and came back again in 2015 and spent many days visiting the amused City of the Dead, a four square mile necropolis called el'Arafa "the Cemetery" with about 18 million of population living inside, in the heart of Cairo. People live and work amongst their dead and ancestors. Many of them came in the 60’s from the countryside looking for a better life. Part of the City was burned during the clashes.
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117 imagesUkrainian Refugees. Day 30 since war began, at the Medyka border between Poland and Ukraine. March 2022.
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44 imagesILAKAKA SAPPHIRE MINES. MADAGASCAR. Ilakaka, the “Madagascar Wild West” is a recently new mining town of about 60.000 people, just in the middle of nowhere. It was built in 1997, when Sapphire gem was discovered in a nearby river. Since then, miners, dealers and mining companies have come to Ilakaka in the search for the precious Stone. Big companies have failed during the years due to the hard and absolute manual system that is needed to find the gems. Most of the workers are locals but many of the traders are from abroad, from Sri Lanka and Thailand. The vast and red scenary of 4,000 km2 is full of excavations, all made by hand; some large, taking weeks or months time to dig them, but many just small holes (with the diameter of a person) carved deep inside until the sapphire rich gravel is reached. One of the systems is to pull a man vertically down up to 50 meters to the level, where the sapphire can be found in streaks. During eight hours shifts the man fills bags of mud, meanwhile two men use a manual pulley to bring up the loose dirt. One more man flush out the gas continuously using a big plastic bag while underground. Afterwards the sacks are taken to a damm to be sifted the dirt with a metal box searching for Sapphire. In the main street of the town, full of small retailer shops, the dealers use a torch to check the quality of the stones being brought to them by the miners. There can be various intermediaries between the miners and the final retailer who sell the final product, which is produced on-site. But almost 90% of uncut stones are exported to Asia.
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60 imagesGRANDE HOTEL BEIRA. MOZAMBIQUE. The Grande Hotel Beira was a luxury hotel in Beira, Mozambique. It was opened in 1954 and operated until 1974, when it was closed due to lack of guests. The building was used as a military base in the Mozambican Civil War, and it is currently home to over 3500 squatters. Since 1992, Mozambique has enjoyed peace and stability. The seaport of Beira is redeveloped and booming due to the transit of minerals to Asia. The Grande Hotel has deteriorated, however. With only 116 hotel rooms, it now provides shelter for a fluctuating population, with large families inhabiting a single room. They do not pay any rent and cannot claim a right of ownership. There is little formal maintenance of the collective space, resulting in accumulating garbage, leaking rain water, open elevator shafts and inaccessible stairs. The Olympic swimming pool, now polluted, is used for bathing by inhabitants who cannot afford to buy water at the privately owned water pump opposite the Grande Hotel. According to the local Red Cross, there is a high risk of cholera, diarrhoea, HIV/AIDS, malaria and scabies in the Grande Hotel. The water, sewer and electricity infrastructures have been removed and sold in order to obtain money for food and water. The parquet floor is used as fuel for cooking. Most inhabitants find work only in the informal economic sector; they are, as implied by their nickname of 'whato muno' (not from here), excluded from the formal socio-economic life of Beira. As the city's formal economy grows, this puts pressure on the informal economy. It has become harder for Grande Hotel inhabitants to meet basic needs. The nickname 'whato muno' is used in Beira as a derogatory term for the inhabitants of the Grande Hotel. The hotel is considered to be a place where robbers live and where the police do not have any authority. There was at one time an advanced three-layered chief structure which kept order, but this no longer exists. The local municipal secretary of the neighbourhood (who also lives in the Grande Hotel) is now seen as the unofficial chief, but without the power that a chief would normally have in a Mozambique community. These days, there are only two common rules of the Grande Hotel: Respect one another.
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77 imagesSAMI REINDEER. FINNMARK. NORWAY. About 100.000 indigenous Sami People live in Northern Europe. Half of them in the remote province of Finnmark, Norway, up north of the Artic Circle. Their best-known means of livelihood is semi-nomadic reindeer herding but only a 10% of them are actually conected to reindeer. I met Eire family in the vast taiga of Kautokeino, full of snow, in the middle of winter, at -20ºC; to show me the real life of the reindeer, reindeer herders and reindeer husbandry. They drive the last snowmobiles to follow the herds, and 2 or 3 times a year get the reindeers in a temporary fence to mark them or separate them by family owners. Then, they drive them into the right fields free to eat. All the members of the families, children, youngs and adults work hard together as has been done for millenia, from generation to generation. Some reindeers are slaughtered just there to eat the meat. Reindeer husbandry today in Norway is a small industry on a national scale, but in a Sami and local context, it has great importance. Reindeer husbandry is not only important economically and in employment terms, it is also one of the most important parts of the Sami culture. Loss of pastures, encroachments, predation and global climate change are the main risks on the survival of this ancient tradition.
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77 imagesSYRIAN REFUGEE CAMP. SYRIA. April 2013. Bab Al-Salam Refugee Camp, 20 km. from the city of Aleppo, Syria. The camp is located in the Syrian-Turkish border. It can be reached from the Turkish town of Kilis. In the press office a Syrian young man offer to show me the camp and explain me the current situation, anxious that transcends in the West to reach an endding to the massacres of the Syrian people. Hundreds of tents are home to more than 15,000 displaced persons. The camp was estimated to approximately 5,000 people supposed that they were going to move to camps better prepared in Turkey, but the reality is that without passports do not let them enter because the displaced overpopulation, so overcrowding and resulting diseases are soaring at Bab al-Salam dramatically in recent months. Most of the families who are living there already more than one year had their houses at less than 50 miles and now all they have is an empty tent. Some with more luck have small stoves. Most of them have experienced some dramatic episode (almost all children, 60% of the population in the field, must be treated psychologically and they're not even able to go to school), have witnessed the savage death of a family member and the destruction of their homes and their lands. They are distributed by families, all of them are very numerous and there are hundreds of children that surround you at glance in a cloud of screams and raised hands with the symbol of victory. There are basic toilets that also use the women to change their clothes. Long lines of women and children end into a pair of tents which distributed food (usually very salty rice) in rations carried in small cubes to their respective tents. Another pair of tents are makeshift schools, where a seller of fast food teaches English. Another pair of tents are barber shops. Some sell clothes and candies that were brought from their abandoned business but hardly earn contribute a day since nobody has any money. NGOs have set up a field hospital in the buildings of the ancient customs and a pharmacy where missing for months the most basic medicines. The aid does not arrive. A water tank can hardly supply to the entire population. Morning dawns soon, women wash and hang the clothes around the tents, children go to school and play in the quagmire of the camp. Youngs play a football match in the afternoon. Men try to make infrastructure improvements but still there's not electricity so after sunset most of the families remain in their tents and try to sleep. I could get only a very slight idea of the cold winter have passed, the hot summer that awaits them, their suffering and pain for the loss of their resignation and hope, their desperated cry.
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90 imagesMADRID FASHION WEEK 2012. LA GUERRA DE CIBELES. Por Almudena Ávalos para SModa. 8 febrero 2012. Sara Janini es una fotógrafa libre. Ha trabajado para la UNESCO o National Geographic y múltiples publicaciones nacionales e internacionales. Pertenece al colectivo Gea Photowords y desde más de hace diez años se mueve por el mundo denunciando la exclusión social, las zonas conflictivas como la vida diaria en Palestina o las revueltas árabes desde Yemen y Egipto. En España últimamente ha contribuido con su trabajo fotográfico a la denuncia de las personas sin hogar y la prostitución para Médicos del Mundo. Cuando no está de viaje duerme en Lavapiés, así que un día se despertó, cogió el metro y se fue a la pasarela Cibeles. Lo que más le alucinó es "que se dieran los mismos codazos para fotografiar a un famoso que a un muerto en una revuelta" y le estremeció la delgadez de las modelos.
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59 imagesGOOD FRIDAY. SPAIN. The Holy burial of the Ester is a liturgical catholic rite held in the town of Bercianos de Aliste (north Zamora Province, Spain) since 16th Century.
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100 imagesYEMEN URISING. YEMEN. Since the January 27, 2011, thousands of yemenis manifested themselves peacefully to overthrow its President, Alí Abdula Saleh, in power for 32 years. After months of protests, Saleh finally resigned from the presidency and formally transferred power to his successor after a presidential election held on 21 February 2012, marking the end of his 33-year rule. The photographs are taken in “the square of the change” during the month of March, 2011. More information (text in spanish) on GEA Photowords by Catalina Esparza http://geaphotowords.com/blog/?p=6775#more-6775
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25 imagesULAN BATOR WASTE DUMP. MONGOLIA. This huge open air waste dump in Ulan Bator, capital of Mongolia, with more than 1,5 million people is full of poor scavengers. Many of them are children searching into the junk looking for plastic bottles, aluminium cans, metal, anything to sell or burn. Because of the freezing winters the amount can reach till 600 tonnes, double than in summer, just to heat the coal fires of the Yurts. The conditions and the contaminated air is unsustainable. The World Bank estimates that in low-income countries around the globe about 2% of the population make a living by selling salvaged materials.
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44 imagesELDERY'S HOME. NEPAL. The elderly's home "Social Welfare Center Briddhashram" has been operating near of the Hindu temple of Pashupatinath in Kathmandu (Nepal) since 1882 and gives shelter to 230 elders, all of them beggars from the street or without relatives who can take care of them. While these days appear news as the announcement of a German financial Bank that it has released a fund that has already generated an investment of 200 million euros which allows customer to bet on the life expectancy of the elderly persons; in this place, the elderly recieve medical care, clothing, food, care and a roof. An example of dignity human and respect for elders. More info: http://www.deltaworld.org/international/A-Deutsche-Bank-Investment-Fund-allows-you-to-bet-on-the-death-of-the-elderly/
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36 imagesVALLEKAS NAVAL BATTLE. MADRID. SPAIN. Since 1982 this popular festival held in the neighbourhoud of Vallecas (Madrid, Spain) coinciding with La Virgen del Carmen, usually the 2nd or 3rd Sunday of july. The idea of throwing water without limits between the neighbours started when the thermometers reached up to 40 degrees celsius during the summer of 1081. In year 2011 was commemorated the 30th anniversary.
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131 imagesPALESTINE. Gaza Strip. The Dumps, The Fishing, The Tunnels and The Daily Life.
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50 images798 ART DISTRICT. BEIJING. CHINA. Located in Dashanzi Art District (original 798 Factory), the heart of a growing art and culture community in Beijing, 798 Space is the center and the biggest space that provide cultural, artistic and commercial activities in the area. It was designed by the East German's architects in the Bauhaus style in the early 1950's. Through the reconstruction and redesigning with the contemporary aesthetics by artists, the space combines the past, present, and future of the "New China" and the unique meaning of the socialistic culture.
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88 imagesROSH HASHANAH PILGRIMAGE. UMAN. UKRANIA. Uman is a city of the Cherkasy province in central Ukraine. Every Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) thousands of Hasidic Jews from all over the world visit the burial site of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, located on the former site of the Jewish cemetery in a rebuilt synagogue. Rebbe Nachman spent the last five months of his life in Uman, and specifically requested to be buried here. As believed by the Breslov Hassidim, before his death he solemnly promised to intercede on behalf of anyone who would come to pray on his grave on Rosh Hashana, "be he the worst of sinners"; thus, a pilgrimage to this grave provides the best chance of getting unscathed through the stern judgement which, according to Jewish faith, God passes on everybody on Yom Kippur. The Rosh Hashana pilgrimage dates back to 1811, when the Rebbe's foremost disciple, Nathan of Breslov, organized the first such pilgrimage on the Rosh Hashana after the Rebbe's death.
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50 imagesWINE HARVEST. SPAIN. In the Garcia Figuero Winery located in the small village La Horra, Burgos; 13 families of Gypsy ethnic group arrive each year during the harvest since more than 30 years ago to gather the grapes in a traditional manner from sunrise to sunset.
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120 imagesK2 EXPEDITION. PAKISTAN. In the summer of 2002 I jointed the K2 expedition of Carlos Soria (the only mountaineer to have ascended 10 mountains of more than 8,000 meters after turning 60 years old, and he is the oldest person in history to have successfully climbed 7 of them). Carlos Suárez and Jorge Palacio were there too and climbing Sherpas, Jangbu and Lhakpa Gelu, as mountain guides. We arrived to Islamabad to get the permits when most of the foreigners were leaving the country because the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan. Then we flight to Skardu in Gilgit Baltistan Region to meet the more than 100 porters that will carry 25 kg. of equipment over their shoulders, and made the last arrangements. We drove through the amazing Karakorum Highway to Askole, the last and remote small village in the mountains at 3,060 m. of altitude and start the trekking of 7 days to the Base Camp of the K2 at 5,135 m. We passed the nights in tents at Jula, Paiyu, Khoburse, Gore, Urdukas, Concordia, and Base Camp points; after long walking days of sun and hard snow, passing through sliding rocks and crevasses on the way within the great Baltoro Glacier, surrounded by the highest peaks in the Himalayas. The team tried hard to summit but bad weather, with many snow avalanches, made impossible that time to succeed. Carlos Soria made it after 2 more attempts in 2004.