Photographing the 10 Year Anniversary of Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Accident
Photojournalist and Founder of @everydayclimatechange James Whitlow Delano has lived and worked in Tokyo for decades, and has covered the disaster, its aftermath, and the glacially slow rebuild. For the 10th anniversary of the tragic event, Delano created a haunting photo and video package for the New York Times. I reached out to him via email to learn more about his experiences.
This week on Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up – the final video interview for Photojournalism Now: In Conversation 2020 is now live featuring award-winning photojournalist James Whitlow Delano.
This is exactly what has happened in Borneo, where indigenous Dayak peoples have found themselves unable to enter forests their ancestors have hunted in for a millennium or more because a bureaucrat in an office in a city far away has given over the title to their ancestral homeland to a politically-connected corporation.
James Whitlow Delano – Fifth Dispatch: Slash Cameroon’s Rainforest and Lose Ancestor’s Souls
In this longread and photojournal for BagNews Originals, photographer James Whitlow Delano details the impact of multinational logging and palm oil operations on the people and rainforest of Cameroon. In previous posts in the series, he details the devastation of the rainforest in Malaysia and Indonesia and the impact on indigenous tribes resulting largely from the corporate cultivation of palm oil. In Suriname, he documents the social and environmental effect of intensive international mining operations.
In this longread and photojournal for BagNews Originals, photographer James Whitlow Delano chronicles his investigations in Suriname. In previous posts in the series, he details the devastation of the rainforest in Malaysia and Indonesia and the impact on indigenous tribes resulting largely from the corporate cultivation of palm oil. In Suriname, the influx of foreigners, the ecological toxification and the adverse cultural effects are largely the result of intensive mining spurred by international conglomerates.
The Baram River, the jungle thoroughfare for the indigenous Dayak peoples, snakes through the last great forest in Southeast Asia, the interior forest of Borneo, and into Penan territory. Not long ago, the Baram River and its tributaries were the only way for tribes like the Kelibits and the Penans to travel to the coast from Long Lellang. For a couple of decades, tons of top soil, mostly washed away because of intensive logging operations, have turned the waters the color of cafe latte.
Over the months ahead, I want to make some sense about how a long- term project on the needless destruction of the equatorial rainforest came to be an obsession and how I have attempted to visually portray this form of daylight robbery. I also hope that a few good nuggets of advice can be carried away from these dispatches.
Link: What Does Mercy Look Like? James Whitlow Delano Sought an Answer – NYTimes.comMercy is commonly defined as compassion, forgiveness, kindness or an act of piety. But photographs of prisoners reaching through bars, a wrestler being contorted by masked men and an infant dressed for burial are among the many interpretations of the word in the book “The Mercy Project/Inochi,” created and curated by James Whitlow Delano.
Link: Worth a look: 100eyes – China: The Past is a Foreign Place | dvafotothe talented group of photographers that comprise this issue: James Whitlow Delano, Markel Redondo, Katharina Hesse, Ryan Pyle, Xiqi Yuang, Wayne Liu, Carolyn Drake, Rian Dundon, Tim Franco, Eric Guo, Christian Als and Holly Wilmeth, M. Scott Brauer
Link: Showcase: A Thirsting Planet – Lens Blog – NYTimes.comCarrying a Leica with a 35-millimeter lens, James Whitlow Delano photographs fast and unobtrusively. He says that photography is part of his D.N.A. “I am moved by light,” he said. “I like to tell stories. There is this need to travel and learn that I have been lucky enough to indulge.”
Much has been made of the perils undocumented workers face crossing the southern border of the United States in search of work and a better life. For Central Americans, the U.S. border marks the end of one of the longest, most treacherous migrations on the planet. Still there has been a rise of 50 percent of undocumented Central Americans from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras living in the U.S. since 2000.
Deb and I had the good fortune to cross paths with James Whitlow Delano because of the Blue Planet Run book and Redux Pictures. His images of China’s desertification caught our eye for the book (They didn’t make the final edit). But more than the subject of the photographs, it was the tone, the feeling and what they convey that held our interest. I’ve always thought that the highest standard for photojournalism is to create images that serve the publishing environment for the day but that remain relevant beyond the day. Another way of saying this is to make images that are as at home on a museum wall as they are on a page. James’ photos linger in the mind and the eye. We were able to catch up with James just before he traveled from his home in Japan.
Check it out here.
