Travel Photographer of the Year: Africa

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Nicolas Lotsos: The Masai Typology

"Photography is my motive for travel."

The Masai Typology is one of the many gorgeous photo galleries of Africa by photographer Nicolas Lotsos. I'm not much of an African wildlife aficionado, but his fine art galleries of photographs of the handsome Masai, of Zanzibar, or of the African slums and townships are lovely exemplars of monochromatic imagery.

Nicolas Lotsos is a fine art photographer (and in my view, a travel photographer as well) and a basketball agent. He co-runs a sports agency representing some of the top sports figures in Europe. He has been a photographer since he was 16 years old, and specializes in photographs of wild life and nature.

He also won an impressive number of awards, to include Gold Winner at the 2012 Grand Prix de la Photographie, Outstanding Achievement at the Spider Award 2012, the 2012 Veolia Wildlife Photographer Award, including two awards by the Travel Photographer Of The Year (TPOTY), amongst others.

A Nilotic group in East Africa, next to the Indian Ocean, the Masai society is patriarchal, and elder men decide most major matters for each group. A full body of oral law covers many aspects of behaviour. The Masai are monotheistic, worshipping a single deity.

Dan Kitwood: Benin Voodoo

Photo Dan Kitwood/Getty Images-Courtesy The Guardian

Can anything dispel the auguries of a Friday 13th better than a Benin Voodoo festival?

Being fascinated by such religious festivals and rituals (the more obscure the better), I was glad to have seen Dan Kitwood's gallery of a Benin Voodoo festival in The Guardian, which also led me to his website/blog on which he lays out further captivating photographs (with better resolution) of Voodoo which also has a slideshow at the bottom of the post.

As seen in the above photograph, the costumes are incredibly colorful...perhaps rivaling the Bhutanese dancers at tsechus in their elaborateness and intricacy of their embroidered designs .

In the tiny West African nation of Benin, Voodoo is and remains the state religion. Incredibly, voodoo has officially been a national religion of Benin since 1996, where more than 60% of the people are said to follow its traditions. Slaves from this corner of Africa brought the religion to the New World, most notably to Haiti.

And while Christianity and Islam in Benin are also practiced, voodoo still influences them. In the voodoo tradition, there's a supreme god, Mahu, and a number of smaller gods or spirits, with whom humans can interact.

Dan Kitwood is a UK photojournalist who, after completing a degree in Fine Art, traveled around South East Asia, Australasia and South America, which triggered a passion for photography. After two years working for the South West News he joined Getty Images in London.

Agata Pietron: War Songs (Part 1)

Here's the powerful, technically well-made and intelligent multimedia work by the talented Agata Pietron. It's about teenagers who live in one of the most dangerous places in the world: in the two Kivus in East Democratic Republic of Congo, where war lasted for two decades. These young men and women experienced the influx of Rwandan refugees into their homeland of South and North Kivu, which caused political instability, genocide and eventually civil war.

These young people want to rebuild their lives by embracing hip-hop, rap and R&B as musicians, and take American monikers such as Dangerous, Young Boys, B2K, Kashmal, Lille Cent, Peace Life, Victory etc. They speak in French, but the audio slideshow is subtitled in English. Excellent pacing, top notch audio...enviable resolution.

Agata Pietron is an independent photographer and journalist, currently based in Warsaw. She graduated from Cultural Studies at University of Warsaw, studied at European Academy of Photography and Academy of Film and Television. Now she works mainly on social projects. Her works has been exhibited in Poland and abroad. Her clients (among others) are: Orange, Unicef, RR Donnelley, Sotis, Lego, Natura, Lyreco, Fundacja Pomocy Dzieciom Niepełnosprawnym, Fundacja Synapsis.

She's also an alum of the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop...which she attended a number of times; last of which was in Buenos Aires. She worked in the DRC; covering many social issues that put her safety at risk on more than one occasion.

A real pro. What else can I say?

John Kenny: Kenyan Portraits

The Guardian newspaper in London alerted me of an exhibition opening next week of John Kenny's new portraits from Kenya.

John Kenny started a journey in 2006 that took him though many of Sub-Saharan Africa’s remotest communities. He spent hours walking, hitch-hiking and driving across African countries making photographs of people, ancient cultures and traditions.

The Guardian and the exhibition venue (3 Bedfordbury Gallery) has a selected number of these portraits, but the collection can be best seen on John Kenny's website.

He tells us that the images were taken during his second trip to the far North of Kenya in 2011. With major drought across the Samburu, Rendille and Turkana villages in the region, he wanted to to convey a little more on how climate changes are undermining traditional pastoral ways of live in East Africa.

I have featured John Kenny's work a number of times. You can the posts see here and here.

Should I go and see the exhibit at the Covent Garden gallery whilst I'm in London, I'll post my impressions.

I just noticed that John Kenny used a 10x8 format Chamonix camera for some of his work.

Dominic Nahr: Travels Through Islam

Photo © Dominic Nahr-Courtesy TIME

With good reason, I've become skeptical of mainstream Western magazines abilities or interest to present non-stereotypical (and non-judgmental) features dealing with Islam, but I found TIME International's Travel Through Islam five-part series in its Summer Journey issue, to be interesting and insightful.

In this first installment, photographer Dominic Nahr followed the footsteps of famed 14th century explorer and traveler Ibn Battuta into sub-Saharan Africa. In February 1352, Ibn Battuta set off from the city of Sijilmasa at the edge of the Sahara to journey with a camel caravan to lands far to the south.

A few years ago, I was fascinated by Ibn Battuta (whose full name is Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Abdullah Al Lawati Al Tanji Ibn Battuta), and read anything I could find about his life and his travels, to the point that I went to the New York Public Library to read some older manuscripts.

Ibn Battuta's journeys took almost thirty years and covered almost the entire known Islamic world and beyond, extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in the West, to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China in the East, a distance far surpassing that of his predecessors and his near-contemporary Marco Polo.

For an interesting book on Ibn Battuta and his exploits, Tim Mackintosh-Smith followed the traveler's footsteps as well, and wrote Travels With A Tangerine. Not to be confused with the fruit, Tangerine is a resident of Tangiers...as Ibn Battuta was.

Tobin Jones: Healers of Kibera

Here is a powerful photo essay by Tobin Jones on the healers of Kibera. Kibera is a slum of the Kenyan capital, and is home to over one million people but a handful of clinics, most of which are run by charities. Religious healers associated to the Christian church claim to be healers and offer their services to solve problems from relationships to sickness to exorcising demons. While 80% of Kenya’s population is Christian, traditional beliefs and customs influence most of Kibera’s African churches, forming a quasi-Christian religion quite different from Western forms of Christianity.

The photo essay appears on the BBC News website, and I suggest you view it there as the images are larger than on Tobin's website.

"Kibera residents go to healers for a wide range of reasons that include family disputes, theft, unemployment and curses, as well as possession by the devil."

Tobin Jones is a photographer of English and American descent, and he lived much of his life on the African continent, where he was born and grew up. He graduated from McGill University, with a major in International Development, as well as minors in Economics and Political Science.

Paolo Evangelista: Stone Town (Book)

I've previously featured Paolo Evangelista's work of Zanzibar on The Travel Photographer, but he has just self-published a book of his photographs of Stone Town, the ancient city and cultural heart of Zanzibar, where little changed in the last 200 years, so I thought it would be of interest to my readers who are curious in that tiny but authentic part of Africa.

Stone Town is a 142 pages book, currently available on Blurb, and is very well designed. I think Paolo's best color photographs are those spread in a double truck, like the one of a young girl running in the rain or the one with a women in red with a young girl in a frilly white dress. I also liked some of the quotes used by Paolo; "God made the country, and men made the town", and "God made women to be loved, not understood". You can have a preview of the book here.

The backdrop of these photographs are the narrow alleys of Stone Town, whose houses were built in the 19th century when Zanzibar was one of the most important trading centres in the Indian Ocean region. It is a place of meandering alleys, bustling bazaars, mosques and impressive Arab houses.

Nick Riley: The Witch Doctor Of Tanzania

"For issues of love and business, property and health, people in Tanzania will visit a witch doctor. The job description appears to vary significantly between individuals. Some can help to find lost property, others specialise in healing the unwell, others still in raising curses on those that have wronged you."

My readers will immediately know that this photography essay is one that The Travel Photographer's blog relishes in featuring.

But first things first. Nick Riley is a UK photographer, currently working in Tanzania. His work has featured extensively in the press, including BBC Wildlife magazine, where he won photograph of the month. In June 2010 he was shortlisted for Photographer Of The Year. He worked on projects for clients across the public and corporate sectors, including the NHS and Diageo, but his passion is for documentary and wildlife photography.

The Witch Doctor is a multi-gallery photo essay, arranged in a blog format. Nick was allowed to photograph during the healing sessions conducted by a witch doctor in a poor suburb of Dar Es Salaam. In a tiny room filled with incense, and lined with various shells, leaves, carvings, coins, jars and packets of various powders. It was there that the witch doctor started her magic.

These are extremely atmospheric photographs, and are very well composed despite the difficult circumstances. Short of being there, I would have loved to hear the ambient sound from these sessions! Beautiful and rich colors...And do take the time to explore the other entries in Nick's blog. Well worth it.

It should be mentioned that although Islam orthodoxy frowns on witch doctors and other sorcery for exorcism, other sects less strict tolerate (and even encourage) such traditional ways to rid those afflicted with jinns and evil spirits.

Pete Muller: The Cattle Keepers of Southern Sudan

I wasn't planning to feature the work of Pete Muller today (the sequence of my posts are often pre-decided a week in advance), but seeing his terrific work The Violent Cattle Keepers of Southern Sudan on the wonderful Time Lightbox blog convinced me otherwise, and I rejigged the sequence.

Pete writes that these cattle keepers are members of the Dinka Rek sub-tribe, who describe themselves as a “brigade.” In this remote area of southern Sudan, there are no signs of the army or the police, and no government as such. Consequently, these men form a militia to protect themselves from marauders of other equally well-armed pastoralist groups in the area.

The moment I saw the first photograph in Pete Muller's slideshow, I thought "oh, Jehad Nga's chiaroscuro style!", and true enough, Pete graciously ends his write up by giving credit to Nga for inspiring the aesthetic of these photos. A statement that reflects well as to Pete's character.

Pete Muller is a photographer and multimedia reporter based in Juba, Sudan. He uses images, words, audio & video to tell under reported stories. He maintains an excellent blog which also features many of these portraits.

A really excellent photographer.

Travel Photographer of the Year