Essays and Features

Nepal: The art of dying

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Yani Clarke

This year Australian photographer Yani Clarke spent a month documenting life and death at Nepal’s Pashupatinath Temple, a site that incinerates more than 40 bodies a day. Despite the constant presence of death and grief, Pashupatinath is hardly somber. Clarke’s photos are full of holy men, monkeys, and festivities. But it was still a shock for the photographer, at the age of 21, to engage with death so intimately for the first time.

Yani Clarke
Yani Clarke

Erected in the 17th century, Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu, Nepal, is one of the most significant Hindu temples of Lord Shiva in the world – home to orphans, beggars, rabies-riddled-monkeys, un-holy-holy-men and of course: the dead, the living, and both – stuck in the grips of life`s cruel limbo. Pashupatinath is in a state of flux, brought about by modern technologies such as the impending opening of an electric crematorium only a few hundred meters away.

Read the interview with Yani Clarke on VICE.com:

http://www.vice.com/read/living-with-death-in-a-temple-in-nepal

Yani Clarke is a 21-year-old Australian photographer based in Montreal, Canada. Yani was raised in Newrybar — a small country town in the Hinterland of Byron Bay in the Far North Coast of Australia. 

In 2013 Yani worked in tandem with renowned Australian documentary photographer and photojournalist, Jack Picone. In 2014 and 2015 Yani was nominated for the prestigious Joop Swart Masterclass, being one of only three Australians selected.

Perspectives Foundation connects NGOs in China with documentary photographers worldwide

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foundation

Perspectives Foundation connects NGOs in China with documentary photographers worldwide to present to a wider public the work, the challenges and the results of those organisations, while supporting and furthering local talent. They believe that there is a substantial lack of representation and visibility at the level of Chinese NGO and we aim to fulfil this need. 

Gilles Sabrié
Gilles Sabrié

Internationally renown photographers, including Magnum’s Chris Steele-Perkins and Steve McCurry support this project. The talented Gilles Sabrié, Theodore Kaye, Liu Tao and Qi Tian are taking part in this initiative as well.

They believe that this connection between art and civic involvement will attract substantial funding, support and attention to the work of Chinese NGOs.

Perspectives Foundation was initiated by Qi Tian, Pang Jian and Guo Shu.

To fund this project, visit https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/952780988/perspectives-foundation

More information about this project on http://perspectivesfoundation.tumblr.com

Stairway to Heaven: Japan’s high-tech skyscraper cemeteries

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Noriko Hayashi
Noriko Hayashi

Land has become increasingly scarce in cities. In Tokyo, a plot of land at a traditional urban cemetery can be astronomically expensive, often reaching USD $100,000 in central areas. If one adds the purchase of the tomb and other associated costs the final price tag can be prohibitively expensive.

And the solution to this lack of final resting places? Japan’s new breed of hi-tech, urban, skyscraper cemeteries.

Noriko Hayashi
Noriko Hayashi

Clean, convenient, cost-effective and increasingly inclusive of differing religious beliefs — these cemeteries represent Japanese society’s evolving relationship with life, death, technology and the afterlife. Read more:

https://maptia.com/norikohayashi/stories/stairway-to-heaven

Story told by Noriko Hayashi
Japanese photojournalist with a focus on human rights issues and cultures in different parts of the world. I hope to connect people and stories in an intimate way through photographs.
www.norikohayashi.com

JuJu – Traces That Cannot Be Erased

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Photographs of the survivors of “comfort women” in Asia-Pacific

Ahn Sehong
Ahn Sehong

It has already been 20 years since I started meeting the survivors of “comfort women”. It only seems like it was yesterday when I – as a man – felt guilty and struggled to think of what I could do for the survivors. Then, as a photographer, I decided that sharing the victims’ grief deep down their hearts through photographs was the best possible way I could help them. With the start of an exhibition in Seoul in 2003, I have met a lot of people, including the victimized women who are now quite aged, and learned to sympathize them. And after the first “JuJu Exhibition” (2012) in Japan, I have continued to keep in contact with the women. Although the first exhibition at the Nikon Salon was unjustly interrupted, it was later re-opened with the help of citizens and 7,900 audiences.

Ahn Sehong
Ahn Sehong

I had a chance to meet the survivors now residing in the Philippines in January, 2013 and those in China, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and East Timor last year. Then I realized that although they all suffered from the ordeals during the Japanese colonialism, their tragic stories have not yet been shared well. (by Ahn Sehong). 

http://juju-project.net/en/exhibitions/#prettyPhoto

About the JuJu-Project

The term of ‚Juju (重重)‘ signifies ‚being piled up one upon another‘, and it is used in the situations of both the survived ‚Comfort Women‘ and our tasks to deal with their related issues stage by stage.
Its director, Ahn Sehong, met those suffering human beings (mostly in their 80s-90s) whose sorrow was ‚piled up one upon another‘ for more than 70 years in the deep furrow of their wrinkles. All of the matters from the past to the present came up to us, becoming grudge that got unravelled one over another. Everything has its seed! In this sense, the more people participate, the more the significance of the proceeding ‚juju‘ will be great.
The Juju Project is the photograph exhibition of the living comfort women that we all are making together. Each voice in ours can get stronger and stronger, and this is able to pay off their old grudges and recovery of their human rights. We appeal to you to support this Project in order to receive a sincere apology from the Japanese government as soon as possible, while a few comfort women are still alive.