Mindy Tan | Teochew Opera

“As long as the Chinese shrines exist and people continue praying, any Chinese Opera can survive”

Continuing my obsession with Chinese Opera (and for photographers who show work that resembles mine), I discovered the lovely work of Mindy Tan who produced a video-slideshow of her images of a Teochow (aka Chiu Chow) opera troupe called Sai Yong Hong.

The Sai Yong Hong Chinese opera troupe has been performing in the Bangkok area for over 10 years. Considered as the most well known Chinese Opera troupe in the country, Sai Yong Hong has 34 actors in total. Five members come from China and the remaining 29 actors are from Thailand. There are about 20 Chinese opera troupes in Thailand, but they are reputed to be the most professional.

There are almost 10 million Thai Chinese in Thailand, making it one the largest Chinese communities in the diaspora, however the opera is not as popular as it once was.

Chiu Chow opera is a traditional art form with more than 500 years history, and is currently enjoyed by 20 million Chiu Chow people in many regions and countries. Based on local folk dances and ballads, this type of opera formed its own style under the influence of Nanxi Opera; one of the oldest Chinese operas and originated in the Song Dynasty, and originated in southern China's Chaoshan region. Clowns and females are the most distinctive characters of its shows, as well as fan-play and acrobatic skills.

Mindy Tan is a documentary and Street photographer focusing on Singapore and other Asian countries. Mindy began her career as a newspaper journalist. She won the Society of Publishers Asia (SOPA) award for excellence in Human Rights Reporting in 2007, before becoming a successful commercial and documentary photographer.

She worked for brands like Shell, Uniqlo, Mini Cooper and Huawei, and produces commissioned work for various editorial clients including Reuters, the Associated Press and Die Zeit.

An ambassador to Fujifilm on its international team of X-photographers, she has exhibited with Fujifilm in Cologne, and presented at Fujikina 2017, in both Kyoto and Tokyo. She is currently on artist residency with the Exactly Foundation.

Travel Photographer Society Awards 2017

© Zarni Myo Win-Courtesy Travel Photographer Society

It has been a pleasure and an eye opening experience to be part of the jury that adjudicated the Travel Photographer Society Awards 2017. The entries were incredibly powerful, beautiful, compelling and imaginative. And it's extremely gratifying to have Zarni Myo Win of Myanmar winning the overall prize with his monochromatic photograph of three boys jumping off a mythical lion statue into the Irrawaddy river near Mandalay's Mya Thein Tan Pagoda, .

It is infrequent to see a monochromatic image submitted to travel competitions, and the composition of the scene is "balanced". The sense of timing is perfect. I also liked the toning done to the photograph...it gives the clouds an ominous look, but the waters are dark but calm, and the unmistakable insouciance of the youths gives the overall image a wonderful feeling.

Congratulations to all the winners, and for more of the top 45 TPS Awards, click here.

Some of the other and equally talented category winners are:

Category Winner Landscape/Environment. © Giuseppe Mario (Etna Eruption)

Category Winner Travel/Documentary: © Yen Sin Wong. (Suri)

Category Winner: People/Culture. © Corneliu Cazacu (Girl With Bear Skin)

Category Winner: Street. © Moin Uddin (The Man’s Stare)

As for the Editors' Choice Winners, these are:

Landscape/Environment: © Jan Pusdrowski. Flames of Herostratus

Travel/Documentary: © Nick Ng Yeow Kee (A Day’s Work)

 People/Culture: © Suhaimi Abdullah (Color My World)

Street: © Maria Kassimatis. (British Commonwealth)

Flore-Aël Surun | 10,000 Spirits

© Flore-Aël Surun - All Rights Reserved

After my return from Hanoi where I launched my Hầu Đồng: The Spirit Mediums of Viet Nam photo book, I am naturally keen to start on a new long term project, and researching Asian spirit mediumship, I found Korean shamanism to have many similarities to the Vietnamese Hầu Đồng rituals I spent almost two years photographing. By the way, it is said that shamanism is what humans followed before the advent of organized religion.

The Korean shamans are called "mudang", and are usually female (in contrast to the "gender equality" amongst Vietnamese spirit mediumship practitioners). They are known to perform ceremonies called gut in local villages, to cure illness, bring good luck or plentiful harvests, banish evil spirits or demons, and ask favors of the gods. After a death, the mudang also help the soul of the departed find the path to heaven. They communicate with ancestral spirits, nature spirits, and other supernatural forces.

There are two varieties of mudang. The kangshinmu, who become shamans through training and then spiritual possession by a god, and the seseummu, who receive their power through heredity. In both cases, the mudang is initiated after a process called shinbyeong, or "spirit sickness."

The spirit sickness often includes a sudden loss of appetite, physical weakness, hallucinations, and communication with the spirits or gods. The only cure for shinbyeong is the initiation rite, or gangshinje, in which the mudang accepts into her body the spirit that will bring her shamanist powers. This has some similarities to what the Vietnamese spirit mediums experience, although in their case, initiation rites with a master medium must occur.

Flore-Aël Surun's photographs of South Koreans shamans in her 10,000 Spirits gallery consists of more than a dozen photographs of the practitioners either performing their craft or portraits. She tells us that " A shaman is a person regarded as having access to, and influence in, the world of benevolent and malevolent spirits, who typically enters into a trance state during a ritual, and practices divination and healing."

She has also produced a short photo-film of her photographs accompanied by the audio of the shamans' chants. It is well worth viewing as it gives an added dimension to the eeriness of the practice.




Flore-Aël Surun studied photography in Paris, then lived in Romania for a year totally immersed in the daily life of kids living on the streets of Bucharest. This documentary, entitled “Sur-vie sous” (Survival Under) was awarded the Special Jury Prize of the Angers Festival of Scoop and Journalism in 1999. In 2001, commissioned by the Joop Start Masterclass, she made the documentary “FTM-MTF”, a series of portraits of women who have become men, which questions the notion of identity.

Since 2002, she has begun a series of documentaries on world peace which have led her to join a Buddhist march in the Negev Desert, hideouts in Canada for young American deserters and among other places, a village in which the three great religions coexist.

Nick Ng | Chinese Opera

Photo © Nick Ng-All Rights Reserved

Readers of this blog know I immerse myself in personal projects that "speak" to me for many reasons; some of which are unknown whilst others are obvious. Documenting endangered cultures and traditional life ways, with particular emphasis on religious traditions and events, cults and esoteric practices, is what attracts me the most for my photography.

I've very recently started the process of exploring the tradition of Chinese Opera. Earlier this year, returning home after completing my work photographing the Vietnamese religious tradition of Đạo Mẫu, and its ceremonial manifestations of Hầu Đồng, for my forthcoming book "Hầu Đồng: The Spirit Mediums of Vietnam”, I spent time admiring large photographs of Chinese Opera performers displayed at Hong Kong Airport.

Perhaps it was the visual/aesthetic connection between the Hầu Đồng mediums and the Chinese Opera performers that was at play, but it was then that I decided to add this project to my to-do list.

During my recent trip to Kuala Lumpur to attend Travel Photographer Asia 2016, I met Lim Li-Ling, a Malaysian part-time photographer, who had documented the Xiao Qi Lin Hokkien Troupe of Singapore  for a number of years, resulting in a book titled Wayang (A Javanese term for theatrical performances). Discussing it and receiving a copy of her book cemented my decision to go deeper into this traditional art form.

In contrast to Hầu Đồng which is relatively unknown by photographers outside of Vietnam, Chinese Opera has been popular with a large number of documentary photographers. I found a expansive amount of photographic essays documenting Chinese Opera; the first of which is by the very talented and prolific Nick Ng, a Kuala Lumpur resident and a Sony Malaysia's Alpha Professional Photographer.

Chinese Opera is one of the oldest dramatic art forms in the world. Many of the features that characterize modern Chinese Opera developed in northern China, particularly Shanxi and Gansu Provinces. The main forms are the Shanxi Opera, the Beijing Opera, the Shanghai Opera and the Cantonese Opera.

However, as Lim Li-Ling asserts in her Wayang book, Chinese Opera in the region of South East Asia is currently a dying art from whose performances are limited to key religious festivals.

Travel Photographer Asia Invalidates 2016 Original Winner

Photo © Alex Varani - All Rights Reserved

Travel Photographer Asia and its judges have taken the difficult, but unavoidable, decision to revoke its 2016 winning photograph of Malaysian photographer Yen Sin Won, and replace it with the above photograph by Alex Varani of Italy.

The new winning photograph was originally first runner-up, and with the said elimination is now the overall winner of Travel Photographer 2016 contest. It is of Indonesian fishermen battling a shark near Cenderawasih Bay. 

The updated line-up of the winners is here.

Although Yen Sin Won's monochromatic photograph (see my previous post to view it) was compelling enough to garner the admiration of the jury, it came to the attention of the judges when asking for and viewing the RAW version that it violated the rules and spirit of the contest regarding post processing restrictions on submitted images. 

As I posted earlier, Travel Photographer Asia is much more than a photographic contest. It is also a travel photography festival consisting of photo talks, an exhibition and photography master class & workshops for the professional and amateur photographer.

I shall join photography luminaries Ms Huang Wen, Mr. Che' Ahmad Azhar, Dr. Shahidul Alam and Mr. Vignes Balasingam in giving photo talks during the festival. My photo talk will focus on travel photography, and I'll touch upon its challenges and rewards, how to approach people and build trust, how to take the right photos for an article, how to build up a story with photos, and how to brand yourself. I will share how I started as a travel photographer, how I built my travel photo workshops business from scratch and how I go about developing personal projects. 

Travel Photographer Asia 2016 Contest Winners

Photo © Yen Sin Wong- Courtesy TPA 2016 

Ahsan Qureshi of Travel Photographer Asia has announced the winners (and best 50 photographs) of its 2016 contest in which more than 3000 images were submitted for consideration.

The winning photograph is "Jump Over" by Malaysian photographer Yen Sin Wong**. As a judge, I was immensely impressed by the quality of the submissions (which made the judging extremely tough), and by the fact that amongst the 50 top submissions, 6 are monochromatic. In my view, it took courage from these six photographers to submit entries in black & white to a travel photography contest. Color is frequently the instinctive choice for submissions to travel photography contests. I also noticed that the judges seemed to generally coalesce behind photographs that told a story, and that were more complex than simple portraiture. Naturally, all submissions were anonymous to the judges.

** see update.

Congratulations to all the winners and to all who submitted...you gave the judges a very difficult task to do. Well done. For those interested in the prizes, check them here.

However, Travel Photographer Asia is much more than a photographic contest. It is also a travel photography festival consisting of photo talks, an exhibition and photography master class & workshops for the professional and amateur photographer.

I shall join photography luminaries Ms Huang Wen, Mr. Che' Ahmad Azhar, Dr. Shahidul Alam and Mr. Vignes Balasingam in giving photo talks during the festival. My photo talk will focus on travel photography, and I'll touch upon its challenges and rewards, how to approach people and build trust, how to take the right photos for an article, how to build up a story with photos, and how to brand yourself. I will share how I started as a travel photographer, how I built my travel photo workshops business from scratch and how I go about developing personal projects. 

Travel Photographer Asia 2016 Kuala Lumpur

I'm very pleased to be included amongst a panel of prominent individuals in the photography industry scheduled to give photo talks at the forthcoming Travel Photographer Asia 2016 event in Kuala Lumpur at the end of May.

In association with with “Fuji Film X“, Travel Photographer Asia 2016 offers a unique and ultimate travel photography festival consisting of a photo contest, photo talks and photography master class & workshops for the professional and amateur photographer.

The photo talks will be given by:

Ms. Huang Wen, currently the Secretary General of the Chinese Photojournalists Society, and one of the biggest names in Chinese photography. She is also is the director of the International Business Development Division of the News & Information Center, Xinhua News Agency

Mr. Che' Ahmad Azhar, currently a lecturer at the Faculty of Creative Multimedia, Multimedia University, Cyberjaya, Selangor, Malaysia. He taught in the field of Visual Communication and Photography for eighteen years. 

Dr. Shahidul Alam; well known for having established the  Drik Picture Library, The Bangladesh Photographic Institute, Pathshala, The South Asian Media Academy and others. A member of advisory board of National Geographic Society and the first Asian to chair the International Jury of World Press Photo. 

Mr. Vignes Balasingam is a photographer and curator based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is the director of the OBSCURA Festival of Photography and the Monsoon Artist In-Residence program. He has curated over 40 exhibitions featuring international and Malaysian photographers.

And myself.

Kiki Xue | Ethno-Fashion

Photo © Kiki Xue - All Rights Reserved

I've written up a number of posts about the fusion of fashion and travel photography, and this is certainly not the last. It is no surprise that I am frequently influenced by fashion photographers' aesthetic, by how they set up their shoots, and by the postures and poses adopted by the models, the color schemes and the lighting. It would be an exaggeration to say that this kind of photography inspires me, but it certainly leaves a visual and and subconscious residue which I reach for when I'm photographing in the various countries I travel to.

Having spent all of 2015 and almost half of 2016 photographing hầu đồng ceremonies in Vietnam to produce my forthcoming photo book: Hầu Đồng: The Spirit Mediums of Việt Nam, I've realized that much of my resulting images were instinctively influenced by fashion photography, especially those that had an Asian theme to them.

One of these influences is certainly Kiki Xue; a Chinese photographer who is currently base in Paris. Inspired by Irving Penn, Xue uses a digital Hasselblad, and creates an artistic atmosphere in his photography.

With one exception, I failed in convincing any hầu đồng practitioner to pose for me as in a fashion shoot. The exotic costumes they wear during the ceremonies are religious, and wearing them outside of temples during ceremonies is considered a sacrilege. Nevertheless, the mediums offered me ample opportunities to photograph them during their ceremonial incarnations. 

Photo © Kiki Xue - All Rights Reserved

Travel Photographer Asia Contest | Top Five

Photo © Sugiarto Sugiarto- Courtesy Travel Photographer Asia

Photo © Chee Keong Lim-Courtesy Travel Photographer Asia

Photo © Achmad zet Zaeni-Courtesy Travel Photographer Asia

Photo © Deba Prasad Roy-Courtesy Travel Photographer Asia

Photo © Magnus Brynestam-Courtesy of Travel Photographer Asia

Eric Beecroft, Rahman Roslan, Khaula Jamil and myself juried the Travel Photographer Asia* contest which has just announced its top five winners.

The top winner of the contest is Sugiarto Sugiarto with his monochrome image of a Pacu Jawi racer with his buffalos during a traditional bull race in Sumatra. However, the remaining 4 photographs are equally impressive, and all five are well deserved wins for their photographers.

I was glad to have been chosen to the panel of judges, and view the over 2000 submissions of travel photographs from both professional and amateur photographers who travelled in Asia. Many of the submissions were enormously inspiring and will certainly inspire many photographers to expand their geographical explorations within that unique continent, with its myriad of cultures and traditions.

My thanks to Ahsan Qureshi in Kuala Lumpur for having invited me to join the jury panel, and for his continuing involvement in enhancing photography in Asia.

Travel Photographer Asia | Contest

I'm very pleased to introduce the Travel Photographer Asia Contest to my readers.

As I've always evangelized, travel photography is a complex and varied discipline that includes a wide range of genres and subjects, from cultural events to food, from architecture to people and from reportage to wildlife. Travel photographers must be able to capture these diverse genres using all sorts of techniques, and resources.

Spearheaded by Ahsan Quraishi, the Travel Photographer Asia is a travel photography contest aimed at professional and amateur travel photographers who have travelled in Asia. Through the submitted photographs, it seeks to highlight the undeniable vibrancy of the people, places, food and festivals in Asia.

The best 50 photographs will be chosen by a panel of judges, and will be exhibited for a week at one of Kuala Lumpur's best exhibition venue, MapKL@Publika and the winners will be unveiled in a gala prize giving ceremony on the opening night.

I am also very glad to have been chosen as one of the 4 judges on the Travel Photographer Asia panel, which includes photography heavyweights Khaula Jamil, Eric Beecroft and Rahman Roslan. The winning entries will be first shortlisted by the judges, then chosen via social media.

The rules governing the contest are simple and straightforward. Submissions to the contest start on January 21, 2015 and all entries must be submitted on or before midnight on 20 April 2015. The winners will be announced on May 29, 2015.

The prizes are very generous, but I would be remiss if I didn't highlight that both the Winner and First Runner-Up will be each awarded a spot in the fantastic Foundry Photojournalism Workshop (held on 19 -25 July in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia) inclusive of tuition fees, 7 days 6 nights accommodation and return flights (ex KL).

There's no question there is an incredible amount of photography talent amongst Asian and non-Asian photographers who make images in Asian countries, of cultures, people, its food, festivals, religious events and its landscapes. I am certain that this contest will brings phenomenal imagery to the forefront, and will introduce new names to the multitude of people who love photography.

So if you traveled to and photographed the Asian continent, participate in this inaugural photo contest, and let us see your photographs!

Kares Le Roy | Asia In 6 Minutes

I frequently find wonderful work by photographers on my ZITE, and this remarkable video by Kares Le Roy managed to temporarily distract me a little from following the horrific events in Egypt. I hope it will have the same effect if you feel the same way.

Kares is a French photographer and graphic designer. More of his background can be found on his blog (scroll down for the English version). He traveled and photographed in Tibet, Nepal, India, Bali, Cuba, Cambodia and Morocco. He traveled through 56 000 km of land and humans: faces, smiles, eyes, monuments, cultures, events and this 6 minutes video masterfully provides a bird's eye view of the Asian continent.

I have featured the work of Kares on The Travel Photographer blog already, but Beware Magazine also has an interesting interview with him.

Miguel Ángel Sánchez | Palestine Portraits

Photo © Miguel Ángel Sánchez-All Rights Reserved

Here's another series of wonderful photographs by the talented Miguel Ángel Sánchez.

Not only are they wonderful, but they depict one of the most oppressed people in the world, living under a dreadful occupation for over 60 years, as beautiful human beings by borrowing the techniques of the Old Masters....perhaps Caravaggio.

Miguel Ángel Sánchez is a Spanish photographer based in Cairo since 2009, where he opened his own photography studio. Cairo is the base where he works and prepares projects developed in Egypt during the past 5 years.

He is also an itinerant photographer who takes his workspace to many corners of the world: Asia, Middle East or black Africa. He covered the war against Gaddafi in Libya, documented the Ulu Pamir in Turkish Kurdistan, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

His work has been published in media such as El País, The New York Times, Le Monde, New Yorker, Photo Raw, La Lettre de la Photographie, and many others.

While this post features Miguel's portraits of Palestinians, don't miss his gorgeous portraits of the Ulu Pamir people in Turkey.

Out of Eden Walk: 30 Million Footsteps

A few posts ago I suggested there were no more explorers in the mold of Richard Francis Burton.

I was wrong.

An incredible exploration trek is being planned by Paul Salopek, a writer for the Chicago Tribune and National Geographic, who will be walking the journey taken by early man tens of thousands of years ago.

The walk, Out of Eden, will take 30 million footsteps, over 21, 000 miles over 7 years to complete. It will start in Great Rift Valley in Ethiopia, and will cross the Red Sea into the Middle East, cross China, into Siberia, cross the Bering Strait into Alaska and then walk all the way down the western coasts of North and South America.

Graphic courtesy The Observer

Salopek will be taking a micro-light laptop, video and audio recording tools, since he intends to record his journey; including landscapes and voices and faces of the people he meets on the walk. He will also be taking a satellite phone through which he will be uploading his journal's recordings to his his website.

He tells The Guardian newspaper that "We will be creating a family portrait of humanity for the next seven years."

That promises to be one damn exciting journey for all of us.

Sebastião Salgado: The Nenets of Siberia

Photo © Sebastião Salgado/Amazonas/nbpictures

The new work by my very favorite photographer Sebastião Salgado was featured by The Guardian newspaper in the UK. It's been trending very heavily on Facebook and on Twitter, which is not surprising since so many people admire him and his work.

I not only admire his work, but his way of seeing....as he describes it by saying " If you take a picture of a human that does not make him noble, there is no reason to take this picture. That is my way of seeing things."

But back to his new work.

Mr Salgado's Genesis project is now complete after 30 trips made over 8 years. The project portrays the beauty and the majesty of regions still in a pristine condition, areas where landscapes and wildlife are still unspoiled, places where human communities continue to live according to their ancient culture and traditions.

From The Guardian's very interesting accompanying article,   Mr Salgado's latest trip was to the nomadic Nenets of northern Siberia. The Nenets are also known as Samoyeds, and are an indigenous people in northern arctic Russia. There are 40,000 Nenets in the Russian Federation, most of them living in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Nenets Autonomous Okrug.

The Nenets' lives are defined by reindeer, which are the source of their food, clothing and transport. Every spring, the Nenets move large herds of reindeer from winter pastures on the Russian mainland, travelling more than 1,000 kilometers north to summer pastures in the Arctic Circle.

I ought to also mention that London's Natural History Museum is scheduling an exhibition of Genesis on 11 April - 8 September 2013. There is no way that I will miss it...no way.

Captain Tristram Speedy: Travel Photography At Bonhams

Why would I mention Bonhams, an auction house, on The Travel Photographer's blog?

Well, it's because Bonhams is holding an auction of a rare photographic album of 180 Ethiopian images by Julia Margaret Cameron, Felice Beato and others. These images include a number of self portraits of Captain Tristram Charles Sawyer Speedy(1836-1910), a well-known English explorer and adventurer during the Victorian era, who was also known by his Amharic name 'Báshá Félíka'.

He was a fascinating character who was an Indiana Jones of his time, with a long association with India, Ethiopia and Sudan.

Born in Meerut (India), Captain Speedy was a red-haired bearded man 6'5" tall, who learned to speak Amharic, adopted Ethiopian native dress, and was photographed by Cameron in various guises such as a Bedouin chief, a Nubian chief, a Nubian warrior and much more. He was the inspiration for a number of popular books.

I am enormously interested in news like that because it merges history, Africa, Asia, adventurism, exploration and photography. Despite my abhorrence of colonialism, I consider men such as Richard Francis Burton and now, Tristram, as quintessential eccentric explorers, as orientalists and ethnologists, and as remarkable linguists with an extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures.

They just don't make men that way anymore.

For those who don't know Julia Margaret Cameron: she was a British photographer born in Calcutta, known for her portraits of celebrities of the time. Her photographic career was short, spanning eleven years of her life (1864–1875), and got her first camera when she was 48 as a gift from her daughter.

As for Felice Beato (1832-1909), he was an Italian–British photographer, and one of the first people to take photographs in East Asia and one of the first war photographers. His work provides images of such events as the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Second Opium War.

Karl Doyle: Nomadic Souls

Photo © Karl Doyle-All Rights Reserved

Karl Doyle's Nomadic Worlds Series is the type and the quality of work you don't want to miss, especially if -like me- you're interested in ethnography and ethno-photography.

Karl Doyle is originally from Ireland, and relocated to London working with many visual artists. He traveled to Mongolia on the Trans-Mongolian Express train from Beijing to Ulan Bator, and spent weeks on horseback to capture the true essence of the Mongolian nomads. 

In this Nomadic Worlds gallery, he merges the Mongolian Nomads, and the Harajuku Girls of Tokyo and New York’s stylized sub-cultures into one continuing series...to highlight the diversity of their environment.

For larger projects, Karl uses a Sinar 4x5 for studio/interior settings, and a Wista for outside work.

David Lazar: South Asia Collection

Photo © David Lazar-All Rights Reserved

It's not the first time that I post about David Lazar's excellent work on The Travel Photographer's blog. Far from it. But he has just revamped his website, and it has vastly improved the layout of his many collections.

He suggested that I feature his new Kenya gallery which he titled Wildlife & Warriors which has photographs of Masai tribal people, but since I have recently had a post about the Masai, I thought I'd choose his South Asia Collection gallery to headline this post instead.

David is a travel photographer and musician from Brisbane, who is drawn to locations with rich cultural backgrounds, and is especially interested in portrait and landscape photography. His work is frequently published in photography and travel magazines, and in 2012 he won the Travel category in the Smithsonian Photography Competition.

He has been travelling annually since 2004, the year in which he became interested in travel photography.

No two ways about it....this is travel photography in the very sense of the word!

Monica Denevan: Burma

Photo © Monica Denevan-All Rights Reserved

I'm glad to have found Monica Denevan's website with its gorgeous photographs of Burma and China. Trust me...you will find that her some 120 photographs are indeed luminous and gorgeous.

Monica travels with her medium format Bronica, one lens, and a bunch of plastic bags filled with Ilford Delta 400 film. She tells us that her photographs are printed from negatives in her traditional darkroom and selenium toned.

Classic photography in the full meaning of the word, and the farthest thing from the Instagram and Hipstamatic fad.

Born in San Francisco, Monica studied photography at San Francisco State University. She started visiting parts of Burma and China for many years, and always had her Bronica along. Her work was published in ZYZZYVA, Communication Arts Photo Annual, SHOTS, Black and White Magazine, The Photo Review, The Sun, and Artvas-The Photo (Korea) among others.

She is represented by Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco, Duncan Miller Gallery in Santa Monica, Capital Culture Gallery in London, and Tao Evolution Gallery in Hong Kong which produced a small catalogue of her work. Monica’s photographs are in the permanent collection of UCSF Medical Center.

Mauriã Rodrigues Sabbado: Opera Of Sichuan

Photo © Mauriã Rodrigues Sabbado-All Rights Reserved

I was glad to see that Mauriã Rodrigues Sabbado, a Brazilian photographer and a member of my class Introduction To Multimedia Storytelling at the Buenos Aires Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, has recently updated his website with six photo galleries.

Mauriã's documentary photography is centered on Asia, and particularly on Tibet and China. I highlight his gallery Sichuan Opera, which documents a troupe whilst preparing for a performance, and the actual performance itself.

Sichuanese opera is a type of Chinese opera originating in China's Sichuan province around 1700, with Chengdu being its main home. It's well known for its singing, which is more free than the popular Beijing opera form. Sichuan opera is more like a play than other forms of Chinese opera, and the acting is very professional. The music accompanying Sichuanese opera utilizes a small gong and a two stringed traditional "violin".

Alessandra Meniconzi: Nenets Of Arctic Siberia

Photo © Alessandra Meniconzi_All Rights Reserved

“I prefer remote and rugged places, mountainous terrain and desert."

Yes, Alessandra Meniconzi prefers to travel to areas many other travel photographers wouldn't think of going because they're truly remote and inaccessible. An excellent photographer, she's also extremely versatile, and her updated website features new galleries that cover most of the globe's regions.

Alessandra's galleries range from the Arctic Siberia to Ethiopia, from Lapland to the Silk Road, and from Greenland to Tibet and the Himalayas. She worked extensively for more than a decade in the remote areas of Asia, documenting minority people and their traditional cultures. More recently, she focused on the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions that are threatened by climate change, development, and resource extraction.

I chose to feature her Nenets of The Arctic Siberia gallery, as it's one of her most recent work. The Nenets are an indigenous people in northern arctic Russia. According to the latest census in 2002, there are 41,302 Nenets in the Russian Federation. They have a shamanistic and animistic belief system which stresses respect for the land and its resources.

Her photographs have been published widely in magazines, as well as in books for which she was the sole photographer: The Silk Road (2004), Mystic Iceland (2007), Hidden China (2008) and QTI -Alessandra Meniconzi, Il coraggio di esser paesaggio (2011).