Crisis in Nepal

Jun Michael Park/Laif
Jun Michael Park/Laif

Almost one year after the deadly earthquake, Nepal is facing a fuel and housing crisis. The ethnic Madhesi minority in the border region has been staging violent protests over its representation in Nepal’s new constitution and India is imposing an unofficial blockade over safety concerns. Fuel and goods cargos have all but halted at the border. Antagonism against India is high due to what is perceived as political interference and manifested as the hashtag #BackoffIndia on social media.

Jun Michael Park/Laif
Jun Michael Park/Laif

Hundreds queue in line for 3-4 days to get patrol and profane gas, and the blockade is disrupting Nepal’s already stretched reconstruction efforts and affecting average Nepali people with price hikes and lack of general necessities. Medical supplies are dwindling and some Nepalis are turning to firewood for cooking.

Jun Michael Park/Laif
Jun Michael Park/Laif

According to the UN, the earthquake destroyed approximately 600,000 houses and damaged 290,000 in Nepal. Aid groups warn that temporary housings made with corrugated tin and tarp will be inadequate in cold weather, especially in higher altitudes. 

Read more and see further pictures on Jun Michael’s website or visit his agency LAIF

Jun Michael Park is a documentary photographer and visual storyteller from Seoul, South Korea. 

Jun has worked for Der Spiegel, Welt am Sonntag, Brand Eins, Cicero and Greenpeace Magazine in Germany, LA Times, Financial Times, Bon Appétit Magazine, Lonely Planet Magazine Korea, Save the Children, Asia Society Korea Center and National Film Board of Canada among other publications and organizations. 

Jun is a winner of a Silver award in Press-Feature Story category at Prix de la Photographie Paris (Px3) 2015 and is a participant of the Eddie Adams Workshop XXVIII in New York. He is represented by laif agency in Germany and available for assignment and commission worldwide. 

 

Familiar Strangers: Storys of migrant workers in Singapore

Kenji Kwok
Kenji Kwok

Familiar Strangers is a campaign to both collect and share the stories of low-wage migrant workers in Singapore.

„We strive to provide numerous platforms for them to tell their own stories, in their own words and other means of expression, such as through photos and videos.

Through that, we hope to give Singaporeans an opportunity to learn more about the lives of low-wage migrant workers here, from reading the unfeigned and heartfelt stories that they have shared with us.“

 

 See more of this project on http://www.familiarstrangers.sg

A Final Year Project by students from

Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Singapore (WKWSCI, NTU)

If you would like to get in touch with them, drop them a mail at hello.familiarstrangers@gmail.com

 

China: Drinking the Northwest Wind

Like so many of Mao’s pronouncements, it sounded simple. “The South has a lot of water; the North lacks water. So if it can be done, borrowing a little water and bringing it up might do the trick.” And thus, in 1952, the spark was lit for what would blaze to life four decades later as China’s most ambitious engineering project—a scheme to bring some 45 billion cubic meters of water, mostly from the mighty Yangtze and its tributaries, up to the north China plain to Beijing and the parched farmland and factory towns around it. The central route of the project began carrying water from Hubei to Beijing in late 2014, and, like so many of Mao’s plans, it has left a swath of human devastation in its wake. (Text by Susan Jakes, Multimedia by Sharron Lovell, Tom Wang)

See more on Chinafile:

http://www.chinafile.com/multimedia/video/drinking-northwest-wind

Sharron Lovell is a multimedia storyteller and educator. She is currently based between Rome and Beijing and possesses a misguided love of China’s lower tier cities. She lectures on multimedia journalism for a Beijing-based, U.K.-accreditedMaster’s program and is co-hosts a podcast on multimedia journalism.

Lovell’s work has been published in National Geographic books, PBS, Aeon, Foreign PolicyNewsweekThe Guardian, Buzzfeed, PolitikenThe Wall Street JournalThe EconomistThe Irish TimesForbesThe IndependentGraziaMs.AdbustersLe Monde, and The Financial Times.

Tom Wang hails from central China, where he studied multimedia journalism. He has always been a music and film lover and while studying in University discovered documentary film. His interests include urbanization, rural development, water resources, and other environmental issues. Wang currently lives in Beijing, where he works on documentary projects.

 

Photohoku: Bringing disaster-stricken families together with photographs

Frederick Jon Chen
Frederick Jon Chen

Imagine this: you’re a bright-eyed youth with a passion for helping out communities in need, disillusioned by seemingly trivial “let’s repaint an old school building for the poor”-type projects. At the same time you have an interest in photography, which you really want to put to good use, but haven’t had the opportunity to.

That was the scenario Frederick Jon Chen found himself in a few years ago, until he came across Photohoku, an unconventional project that allowed him to use his photography skills to do good for disaster-stricken communities.

It turned out to be more meaningful, says Frederick, than many of the community involvement projects he’s been involved in. 

photohoku2
Frederick Jon Chen 

After years of volunteer work, “I had become disenchanted, as it were, with my role, fundamentally,” he shares. “By coating a wall of a school atop a mountain in Sa Pa with fresh paint, were we creating and imposing new expectations on our recipients which – crucially – were previously non-existent?”

In 2013, he came across Photohoku, a photo-giving movement formed in response to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. “Unlike photojournalists who travel to Tohoku mining relentlessly and insensitively for photo opportunities in the dismantled region, we (Photohomies) travel up to northeast Japan to make and give photos to those affected by the events of March 2011,” he shares. (by Natalie Koh)

Read the whole article and see more pictures on contended.cc:

http://contented.cc/2015/09/photohoku-disaster-stricken-communities-singapore-tohoku-earthquake/