Photos and Videos

Each year, men and women leave Aneda’s province in Indonesia in their hundreds to hire out as migrant workers– for places as varied as Kuwait, Hong Kong and Singapore. Foreign lands offer what home cannot – an escape from poverty.

But the dream of earning money abroad often goes awry. In order to leave, most take on large debts during the recruitment and training stage. These debts later create the conditions for a pliable workforce – willing to work long hours but afraid to complain about exploitative conditions.

Problems are especially acute for female domestic workers, who work in private residences and who make up the majority of Indonesia’s 6.5 million migrants. According to the ILO, up to 80 per cent of these domestic workers endure isolation, underpayment, long working hours, forced labour, human trafficing and violence.

Dreaming Singapore’ investigates the movement of migrants from Indonesia to Singapore, one of the busiest migratory pathways in Southeast Asia. 

It follows three different women at various stages of their journey: from training centres in Indonesia, to daily life in Singapore, and finally the return home.

http://www.ruom.net/portfolio-item/dreaming-singapore/

Published on RUOM, an organic collaboration between photographers, journalists, videographers, and researchers, drawn together by a passion for social documentary work.

Text: Micheal Malay

Photos: Nicolas Axelrod – Thomas Cristofoletti

Mongolian Nomads struggle with mysterious diseases in their livestock, contaminated water, and toxic dust. A French nuclear company, which is testing uranium mining in the area, claims they have nothing to do with it.

For years Areva Mongol and the subsidiary Kogegobi  are preparing the breakdown of deep uranium reserves in Ulaanbadrakh, Mongolia. In this context, Kogegobi tested from 2010 to 2011 the so-called in-situ leaching method („on-site leaching“), similar to the fracking of unconventional shale gas sources. Shortly after the first tests,  an accumulation of miscarriages and malformations were noticed in the livestock of the nomads. The phenomenon spread throughout the region, reaching its previous peak in 2014: A family then lost 95 young animals – 80 percent of births in their herd.

Read the whole story and see all photos on jib-collectives:
https://jib-collective.net/stories/mongolia/de/

Jib considers itself as a self-organized collective of young, committed journalists and multimedia storytellers from Germany. What unites them, is their political approach and the standards they set to their work. They promote journalism with attitude and connect critical reporting with new media storytelling. They work was awarded several times and published in magazines and newspapers such as Spiegel, stern and Zeit.

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. 

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

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

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.

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.