creatures strange and beautiful

A galapagos penguin shares a rock with marine iguanas on Isabela Island in the Galapagos. It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.–Charles Darwin I don’t consider myself a nature photographer but I have spent perhaps some of my happiest moments in the wilderness–in South…

Ikiwa’s world

Ikiwa Abdulla arranges her hijab using a small broken mirror in her home in Fumba, Zazibar. I spent time with Ikiwa while working on a story about an aquaculture project that hopes to teach rural women in Zanzibar how to cultivate shellfish as an alternative form of protein. After documenting the scientific aspect of the project in the shellfish hatchery, spending time in Ikiwa’s…

the red-eyed women

Sayi Mwandu, 56, who had her fingers cut off after she was accused of being a witch, is photographed in her room in Kolandoto, a protective institution in Shinyanga, Tanzania. Mwandu was accused of witchcraft after her eyes turned red from overexposure to smoke from cooking fires. Below is the tale of my thwarted attempt to tell the painful story of Tanzania’s red-eyed women….

the art of losing

I photographed artist, Coco Larrain, at her home the day before she had a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. Coco documented her first experience with cancer 15 years ago through painting and drawing. “I’ve always done self-portraits and documenting myself going through the cancer treatment process helped me look at my body objectively and get outside of what I was feeling,” she says. While she…

bread and olives with a Berber family

From left, Khina Boujnoui and her daughter, Fatima, share a moment of affection outside the family’s home in Tamda, Morocco. The women are part of a traditional Berber family that has been weaving for generations. A few weeks before leaving for Morocco, I was photographing an assignment on the Cape and commented on the beautiful and unusual shoes my subject, Nathalie, was wearing. “They’re…

camels, sand and the seamless Sahara

                        The Sahara desert has always been a mythical place in my mind. Mysterious, romantic, intriguing, the backdrop to one of my favorite books, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. It’s a place so storied, part of me doubted its existence in modern times. And yet here we were, in the Sahara…

portrait of a blue town

Children play in Chefchaouen’s medina (old city), a place famous for its striking blue walls. Chefchaouen is a small medieval town in the Rif mountains of Northwest Morocco. The “medina” (old city) is surrounded by a large stone wall with 7 arched doorways. Once inside the pedestrians-only medina, one is confronted with a mind-boggling maze of narrow streets and alleyways, beautiful arches, hundreds of…

Photographing Casablanca’s Grand Mosque

Before arriving in Casablanca, Morocco a few days ago, I was told most visitors get out of the city as quickly as possible. It’s true the city is gritty, chaotic and full of dinged-up cars that hold evidence of Casablanca’s seemingly lawless roads but then, off in the distance, at the edge of the Atlantic ocean …there’s the Grand Mosque. Despite our hotel receptionist’s…

lump-in-throat moments

A boy holds his puppy while he waits for it to get treatment at one of CLAW’s mobile clinics in Soul City, an impoverished shantytown on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa. I spent the past week documenting a nonprofit organization called CLAW (Community Led Animal Welfare) that provides free veterinary services for the most impoverished shantytowns in Johannesburg, South Africa. I was so…

township energy!

A boy jumps joyfully next to a woman selling chicken feet and entrails in a township on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I am currently in South Africa working on a story about CLAW (Community Led Animal Welfare), an organization that provides veterinary services for the most impoverished shantytowns and townships around Johannesburg. Despite having…

Paradise Lost

A woman is photographed with her puppy in Randfontein Refuse Center on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa, where she, like many others, live in small shanties and survive off the refuse brought in every day. Residents sort and sell recyclable items and live off what edible food they can find thrown out by others. There is one faucet for the entire area and…

paradise found?

I finally went to the Zanzibar tourists come for. I’ve been holding out for a while partly because it’s so completely divorced from the reality of the rest of Zanzibar and also because I’ve been caught up working on my shellfishing story which took me nowhere near Nungwi or any of the other beach resort areas. I have to admit, however, that Nungwi, which…