Stefen Chow: The Hasidim

Photo © Stefen Chow-All Rights Reserved

Stefen Chow is a photographer currently living between Beijing and Singapore. He worked with various news organizations, including Getty Images, Associated Press and Bloomberg News, as well as commercial clients such as Keppel Corporation, Singapore Airlines and Shell International. Not content to have traveled to over 30 countries, Stefen also summitted Mount Everest in 2005.

His website is full of visually varied photo galleries and I thought his most interesting were those of his personal work. For those who are adventurers, I recommend you view his work of Chomolungma (the Tibetan name of Mount Everest). and for those interested in culture to spend time viewing his large photographs of the Hasidim in Brooklyn, New York.

Hasidic Judaism is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and joy through the popularization Jewish mysticism as the fundamental aspects of the Jewish faith, and was founded in Eastern Europe in the 18th century. Brooklyn is home to one of the largest Orthodox Jewish communities outside of Israel, with one of the largest concentrations of Jews in the United States.

Al Jazeera: Vietnam

Photo © Nicole Precel_Courtesy Al Jazeera

If you think Al Jazeera is only an excellent source of international news, and the Arab satellite television channel that left all our cable networks in the dust during the momentous events in the Middle East, you'd be wrong because it also features photography essays such as the one by Nicole Percel's Vietnam: Between Tradition & Modernity.

In February 2011; Nicole Precel and Nick Ahlmark were in Chi Ca Commune, a cluster of villages in Xin Man district, part of Ha Giang province in northern Vietnam, the poorest province in the country, to make a movie for the final episode of Al Jazeera's Birthrights, a series examining maternal health around the world.

Al Jazeera also features social documentary work such as the accompanying video The Mountain Midwives of Vietnam.