Jan Sochor: The Palo In Cuba

Photo © Jan Sochor -All Rights Reserved
Jan Sochor is a freelance photographer, working between South America and Europe. He lived and worked in Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Spain and the Czech Republic during the past five years. His photographs and stories have appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers and websites, including Sunday Times, National Geographic, Reuters, Burn magazine, Foto8, 100Eyes, UNESCO, Boston Review, PDN online,and others.

In this 3 minutes audio-slideshow, Jan has now focused his lenses on the adherents of the Palo religion, also known as Las Reglas de Congo. Palo is a syncretic religion which developed in Cuba amongst Central African slaves. Due to forced evangelicalism, Palo adherents gave their deities names from the Christian faith to continue their spiritual tradition.

Palo's main tenets are the veneration of ancestors' spirits, and belief in natural powers. The Palo pantheon starts at the creator god, Nzambi.

Highly recommended viewing for those of us who document, and are interested in, global spiritual traditions.

Reuters Does Big: Full Focus

Photo © REUTERS/Carlos Barria -All Rights Reserved
Reuters has joined the other news media in featuring large photographs on a blog.

Full Focus, a large format showcase of Reuters award-winning photography, tells global stories. The agency seeks to use this imagery to foster a deeper understanding of current events and social issues, and Full Focus provides an opportunity for its readers/viewers to offer perspectives on the photographs and the topics they address.

The lovely photograph by Carlos Barria and is part of the Haiti Revisited photo essay, and is of expecting women waiting for tent distribution near the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince on February 19, 2010 during the aftermath of the earthquake.

I ought to add separate links (to the right of this page) for all the large-sized photo blogs of major news media...Boston Globe's The Big Picture, Sacbee's The Frame, WSJ Photo Journal, The LA Time's Framework, etc.

Kristian Bertel: India

Photo © Kristian Bertel-All Rights Reserved
Kristian Bertel is a Danish photographer who graduated from Aarhus Tech with a degree in graphic design. His passion for photography began in 2006, and it was exercised in India some years later.

Kristian started out in Delhi and ventured into the Thar desert in Rajasthan, and then to the holy city, Varanasi.

There are 12 sideshows of India on Kristian's website, and are mostly of portraits of Indians in the streets, accompanied by Hindi songs and music. The one titled Vijayawada however, is accompanied by Arabic music....possibly an Egyptian rural song.

Apart from this minor lapse, these galleries will satisfy most Indiaphiles as being accurate representations of Indians going about their daily lives in various cities, towns and villages.