Monday, October 20, 2008

Another Me Project

Photograph © Achinto Bhadra

The Terre des hommes Foundation (Lausanne, Switzerland) conceived the Another Me project in which the documentary photographer Achinto Bhadra and counselor Harleen Walia guided 126 girls and women through a healing journey of psychological transformation. Achinto’s portraits record trafficking survivors’ imaginative visions of themselves as human, animistic and divine beings of power, love, revenge and freedom.

The girls and women in the photographs, from 8 to 25 years old, are survivors of trafficking, rape or abandonment, or are the children of sex workers. They have been in the care of Sanlaap, a non-governmental organization based in Kolkata, India. The photography sessions were conducted at Sanlaap’s Sneha Girls Shelter.

The project's photographer is Achinto Bhadra, who studied photography at Chitra Bani, Kolkata and at the London College of Printing. He's a recipient of the Charles Wallace Scholarship. As an independent documentary photographer, he has spent years photographing the urban poor and marginalized children and women for national and international development agencies.

DenverPost.com: Sukkot

Photograph AP Photo/Nasser Ishtayeh-All Rights Reserved

The Denver Post is another of the newspapers adopting large format images for its Captured Photo Blog of photo galleries, multimedia and video. While many of its features are of Colorado, it also offers international coverage such as the festival of Sukkot, which occurs during the latter two weeks of October in 2008. This Jewish festival commemorates the 40 years of wandering in the desert after the exodus of Jews from Egypt some 3200 years ago.

Browsing the photographs on the Sukkot feature, I stopped at the above image, which I initially thought to be of a Muslim imam, but is of a member of the Jewish Samaritan community. According to tradition, the Samaritans are descendants of Jews who were not deported when the Assyrians conquered Israel in the 8th century B.C. Click on the image to see it in a larger size.

The rest of the photographs are on the Denver Post's Captured