Teerayut Chaisarn : The Sufis of Gujarat

Photo © Teerayut Chaisarn-All Rights Reserved

Photo © Teerayut Chaisarn-All Rights Reserved

Photo © Teerayut Chaisarn-All Rights Reserved

Teerayut Chaisarn is a young emerging photojournalist/photographer and Photoshop artist from Chiang Mai in Thailand.  He was one of the 6 participants in my In Search of the Sufis of Gujarat Photo Expedition™ a few weeks ago, and featured a number of galleries on his personal website. Some of the photographs in his The Religion of Islamic Sufis In Gujarat gallery are toned, while others are not. The photographs are also less portrait-biased than those in his first gallery, which he titled Faces of India.

You'll find some brilliant images in Teerayut's galleries...I haven't put it in this post, but the one of the elderly man in a mosque with the sun filtering through the intricately-worked jalis is a beauty...so look it up. I'm sure you'll agree.

Teerayut started photographing about 4 years ago, and is largely self-taught. He started work as a photographer on the magazine staff of his hometown, but preferred to become a freelance photographer. He also applied his Photoshop post processing expertise to assist various Thai professional photographers, and processes their portfolios. He worked on various occasions with Steve McCurry in Thailand.

Most of his galleries in his portfolio are post-processed, and while some may find these over-worked, it's a style which finds favor amongst many in Asia.

NYT: Paolo Pellegrin's The Exodus From Libya

Photo © Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum-Courtesy The New York Times

The New York Times just featured a photo essay titled Scenes From The Libyan Exodus of Paolo Pellegrin's splendid black & white photographs made in Ras Ajdir of immigrant workers fleeing the erupting violence in Libya, and streaming into Tunisia. This is one the best photo essays I've seen out of Libya.

It reports that some 75,000 migrant workers, mostly male Egyptians, were trying to pass through the checkpoints that separate Libya and Tunisia, overwhelming the latter country's meager infrastructure.

I chose Pellegrin's above photograph to feature along this post because, in my view, it's the most powerful of the lot. Perhaps it's the sight of the Egyptian passport in the hand of the migrant that influenced me. After all, I had one just like that years ago.

Pellegrin's is quoted as saying that while Ras Ajdir is desperate, it “isn’t a panic in the terms of what we saw in Kosovo or the scenes of Congo, with women and children. These are all able men.”

Thankfully for these men, that's entirely true, but let's not lose sight that each of these migrants supports an extended family in Egypt where the current situation is difficult...and returning home to a long period of non-existent employment will cause significant difficulties for them and for their country.