Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

Our award-winning enhanced iPad e-Book on life in...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:30:22 -0400

Our award-winning enhanced iPad e-Book on life in post-earthquake Haiti is free until Wednesday. Celebrate Haiti through stories, poetry, song, video, and original music. Get your copy today!

Video: Journalist and poet Kwame Dawes reads his poem, “Storm,” with photojournalist Andre Lambertson’s images illustrating. The poem is featured in the e-Book.

Pulitzer Center grantees Aaron Nelsen and Fernando Rodriguez are...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:00:23 -0400

Pulitzer Center grantees Aaron Nelsen and Fernando Rodriguez are investigating Chile’s fishing laws on artisan fishermen.

“On the beach families welcome the returning fishermen with thermoses of steaming hot instant coffee and bologna sandwiches. Each crew makes use of their allotted plastic trays, doled out according to the amount of fish that were supposed to have been caught. The Recabal family, including Pablo’s mother, and sister, strap on aprons to help strip fish from the net. Crabs too small for sale are tossed into a barrel to be fed to scavengers.

Pablo later confides that the life of an artisan fisherman is a difficult proposition. After paying $10 for the tractor to push the Eslora into the water and pull it out again, $100 for gasoline and the 50 percent fee to his father, who owns the boat, the men will take home around $20 for their efforts.”

In far western Nepal, many believe that women who are...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 19:00:54 -0400

In far western Nepal, many believe that women who are menstruating are impure and bring bad luck. And so they are exiled each month, leaving them vulnerable to rape and other horrors. The New York Times featured their video on their homepage on June 11, 2013. Read more of Pulitzer Center grantees Allyn Gaestel and Allison Shelley’s reporting on chaupadi here.

For one week only, Pulitzer Center’s award-winning e-books...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:35:03 -0400

For one week only, Pulitzer Center’s award-winning e-books for iPad are available for FREE on the iBookstore! Get your copies today.

“Voices of Haiti” is a multimedia celebration of Haiti’s resilience after the 2010 earthquake.

“In Search of Home” uses photographs and reporting to dive into the global crisis of statelessness, when a person has no citizenship to any country.

The giveaway is in honor of Look3, one of the largest photography festivals in the country, which is happening this week in Charlottesville, Va.

In a country noted for its virulent and violent anti-gay culture...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:00:36 -0400

In a country noted for its virulent and violent anti-gay culture the struggle of Jamaica’s LBGT community goes on.

Director Micah Fink narrates a slideshow on the making of The Abominable Crime.

The film will screen June 25, 2013, at Frameline37, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival.

Mullah, give me back my billy goat. I’ve had no kiss despite that spell you wrote.

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 14:00:33 -0400

This is a landay, a Pashto folk poem from Afghanistan. Pulitzer Center grantees Eliza Griswold and Seamus Murphy collected the poems over several reporting trips. Their work was featured in the not-to-be-missed June issue of Poetry magazine. Griswold explained the context behind this particular poem: “For a fee, such as a goat, Muslim holy men used to write spells, love charms, and hexes. With the rise of stricter forms of Islam over the past several decades, this practice, like facial tattoos, has fallen out of favor.” Read more of their stories about women poets in Afghanistan here.

For three years, Mosse has captured retina-searing images of the...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:13:59 -0400

For three years, Mosse has captured retina-searing images of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo for his series Infra, all shot on a now extinct 16mm infrared film designed originally for military reconnaissance through what he calls “an aggressively intuitive art-making process.”

His images depict in hyper-vivid color the landscape of war and those who live within this world of violence and upheaval.

The final iteration of Infra is a six channel video installation titled The Enclave (2013), premiering in theVenice Bienniale’s Irish Pavilion.

Mosse characterizes his work “as not a reaction against journalism, but rather an artist working in places [where] journalists are working.”

In this video for leading contemporary art magazine Frieze, Mosse introduces his latest work and touches on the dissonance of rendering aesthetically sublime such scenes of turmoil.

Mosse draws the eye first to a perception of beauty, the aesthetic of the image, and second to the nature of the scene, what he calls “a Hobbesian state of war where everyone has their back up.”

He visibly translates such heightened sensitivities, each frame saturated in hyper-real color.

With Congo’s lush verdant landscapes turned searing pink, the view is exhilarating.

The infrared film captures infrared light which is invisible to the human eye, with the “potential to make the invisible visible.” Mosse draws parallels with the ongoing under-reported conflict in the Congo, where figures from the International Rescue Committee claim a total of 5.4 million people killed as a result of war since 1998.

To portray the conflict as he has was “to bring these two incongruous notions together—to take two completely unrelated things, one, the history of photography, and the other, the history of Africa, and to examine them in light of each other.”

Representing the anguish, the human suffering of war in vivid color, Mosse hopes to create in the viewer’s mind an ethical dilemma, that of bearing witness to these crimes. Now fully observant of the deeply sinister nature of each image, so too viewers become aware of the ease by which they were seduced by the simple use of unexpected color.

“The Congolese rebels that we photographed had a very strange reaction to the camera,” recalls Mosse. “They were very ambivalent.”

Richard Mosse, photographer and Pulitzer Center grantee, is representing Ireland from June 1 to November 24 at this year’s 55th Venice Biennale.

Keep reading here.

- Katherine Doyle

everydayafrica: Flowers bloom on a tree in Bundibugyo, Uganda...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 02:00:15 -0400

everydayafrica:

Flowers bloom on a tree in Bundibugyo, Uganda on June 1, 2012. Photo by Peter DiCampo @pdicampo #uganda #bundibugyo #latergram #tree #africa

See Pulitzer Center grantee Peter DiCampo’s reporting on conflict in the Ivory Coast’s cocoa trade here.

Globalize Your Commute!

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:54:55 -0400

Head to our new iTunes U page to download podcasts of interviews, podcasts and event videos on everything from the rising risks of covering conflict, to conflicts over mining in Papua New Guinea, and fracking in Pennsylvania and Poland.

pulitzerfieldnotes: Turkey, perhaps the Middle East’s...

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 16:02:45 -0400

pulitzerfieldnotes:

Turkey, perhaps the Middle East’s most-trumpeted democracy, dominated the international news cycle this week as one peaceful environmental protest in Taksim Square’s Gezi Park in Istanbul turned violent: Government-backed police pulled water cannons and tear gas on protestors. Demonstrations subsequently erupted across the country. The Guardian reported Thursday that three people have died and 4,000 have been injured in the tumult.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has won three straight elections by popular vote – his supporters are largely religious and conservative. But dissent has grown steadily as Erdogan has implemented increasingly authoritarian measures in Turkey.

The Pulitzer Center snagged two of our grantees, Jenna Krajeski and Dimiter Kenarov – both of whom are based in Istanbul – to answer a few quick need-to-know questions about what’s happening there now. Their responses, e-mailed from Turkey, have been excerpted.

What specific stories within the protests do you plan to cover, where and why? How will you do it?

Kenarov: Environmentalism is not just a convenient vehicle for expressing dissatisfaction with the Turkish government, but a very real driving force behind much of Turkey’s protest movements in the past 10 years. In fact, environmental degradation caused by Turkey’s aggressive market liberalization and industrial boom has been tremendous. The pace of Turkey’s industrialization is so great that it threatens serious environmental collapse in a couple of years. In that sense, the clear-cutting of a few trees in Gezi Park is not just an excuse for protesting other social issues, but a serious concern in and of itself, and part of a greater pattern, which has to be explored.

Krajeski: I’m interested in a couple of angles particularly, both rooted in the idea of nationalism. I’ve written a lot about Kurdish rights in Turkey, and so far the Kurds have not mobilized in large numbers to join the protests even though they have many grievances with Erdogan. They feel alienated by the nationalism at the protests - the Kemalists who worship Ataturk, who Kurds consider an oppressor - and they are worried that by attending anti-AKP demonstrations that will ruin their peace process with the AKP.

But who else does the nationalism alienate? That’s what I’m currently working on. This idea of secularism as embodied by Ataturk versus Islamism as embodied by Erdogan is an overly simplistic one, to say the least. It’s worrisome the desire to return to Kemalism, and the real visionaries at the protests are those who reject both Kemalism and Islamism, but their voices risk being drowned out by the nationalism which, in its exclusionary fervor, is quite off-putting.

I’m also looking into the role of women. In my opinion, women have the most to protest and the most to lose. Erdogan has curbed rights to abortion and many other rights for women, but at the same time made it easier for religious women to live and work in Turkey. It’s impossible to look at Turkish society and count headscarves to conclude how conservative it is, but that’s what’s often done, by the media and by the secularists in the park. But what I want to write about is how women – under Kemalism and Islamism – have had their governments be this sort of paternalistic force (not to mention the highly militarized and masculine society writ large) under both Ataturk and Erdogan.

What do you think will come of these protests? What do you think they say about democracy, and Turkey’s democracy in particular?

Kenarov: It is still early to say. One big mistake that western commentators make is to compare the events in Turkey to the Arab Spring. In fact, the context is very different and, though Erdogan is hated by many, he remains a democratically elected prime-minister in a nominally democratic country, serving his third term and still enormously popular with the majority of the Turkish masses. It is hard to ignore the very real contribution of Erdogan’s party to Turkey’s growing economic prosperity and national confidence. The protest, overall, is not about a radical change of the regime, but about curbing Erdogan’s growing authoritarian methods and arrogance, and introducing a better system of checks and balances in the government, which will defend the rights of all Turkish citizens, not just of the ones who support Erdogan. In that sense, the protest is a welcome development and shows the growing democratic consciousness of Turkey’s middle class, which demands real rights and not just stable economy and jobs.

Krajeski: I have no idea what the outcome will be. So far Erdogan’s not budging. At the very least it will show him and his government that Turkish citizens will not tolerate police brutality and demand a voice in decision making, which is a very positive step.

As global civil unrest goes, how significant is this week?

Kenarov: This week is very significant because we’re talking about civil unrest not just in any country, but in Turkey, one of the key global players in the world economy. Any significant change in the domestic situation could lead to major repercussions in world politics and the global economy.

Krajeski: I can’t help but compare these to Egypt, where I was in 2011. There are so many differences. But this week marks a loud and spontaneous reawakening of the Turkish left wing, and perhaps a new protest culture. This is very important, even though it likely won’t lead to regime change. Turkey’s dormant individualism is now awakened. And it’s pretty exciting to see.

Follow Jenna Krajeski and Dimiter Kenarov on Twitter @dkenarov and @jenna_krajeski. Keep an eye on The New Republic online and The New Yorker online, where Krajeski’s stories will run. Kenarov plans to blog for the Huffington Post. Read their stories for the Pulitzer Center here and here.

All images by Dimiter Kenarov. Turkey, 2013. See more of his photos from the square here.

Students' Digital Storytelling

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 16:00:41 -0400

“I learned that as an interviewer one can never be fearful, for the interviewee would be less likely to share their story. I also learned the meaning of empathy. Although I knew the actual definition of the word, I had to put it to use and realize that these people are in a vulnerable state and it is up to me to make them feel comfortable,” said Sierra Jackson, a Chicago teen who led a group to produce one of the films that won top accolades in the NewsAction/Pulitzer Center student digital storytelling contest. Her video focused on HIV/AIDS awareness in the teen community in Chicago.

Other winners included a film by Dorian Thomas which focused on how the Roma are still segregated from Hungarian society, and a film by Nancy Quiroz, Joshua Strong and Donte Hawkins on sexually-transmitted diseases in Chicago, with a special focus on teens. Watch the films here.

beenishahmed: Mohammad Ali, 12, poses by the artwork he and...

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 14:00:17 -0400

beenishahmed:

Mohammad Ali, 12, poses by the artwork he and other Lettucebee Kids created. Ali has been attending the organization’s Saturday art and music therapy sessions for three years and finds them to be a welcome break from selling snacks in a market the rest of the week.

Tune in to my story about Lettucebee Kids over at Deutsche Welle and check out a slideshow about the group on my project page for Pulitzer Center for Crises Reporting.

“How much simpler can love be? Let’s get engaged now. Text...

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 12:40:05 -0400

“How much simpler can love be?

Let’s get engaged now. Text me.”

This is an example of a landay, a two-line folk poem form from Afghanistan that has been around for centuries. Over time, the subjects have changed — and now the poems feature subjects such as drones, roadside bombs and cell phones. Pulitzer Center grantees Seamus Murphy and Eliza Griswold collected landays on several trips to Afghanistan by listening to women and girls sing ancient and new poems.

Don’t miss the full feature in the June issue of Poetry magazine.

"In the past, Erdogan has used his economic victories as a shield against criticism. As the protests..."

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 13:13:57 -0400

“In the past, Erdogan has used his economic victories as a shield against criticism. As the protests show, there’s an irony to this. By creating a strong middle class—one with wealth and education—Erdogan also created a class of people who are confident enough to speak their mind, and they expect to be heard. In this, he may have also unintentionally strengthened Turkey’s dormant left wing.”

- Scenes from the Gezi Park Protests by Jenna Krajeski. (via thenewrepublic)

Jenna Krajeski is a Pulitzer Center grantee who wrote on Kurds in Turkey and Iraq.

laurenontheroad: On my [otherwise quiet] street, residents lean...

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 12:17:51 -0400

laurenontheroad:

On my [otherwise quiet] street, residents lean out their windows, banging pots and pans, and intermittently cheer “Down with Fascism” and “Resign Erdogan.”

Pulitzer Center grantee Lauren Bohn is in Istanbul.

Yochi Dreazen speaks about the story he uncovered in the midst...

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 23:00:25 -0400

Yochi Dreazen speaks about the story he uncovered in the midst of Mali’s civil war: The secret rescue of centuries-old manuscripts in the ancient city of Timbuktu.

This Week at Pulitzer Center

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 20:30:22 -0400

I call. You’re stone.
One day you’ll look and find I’m gone.

The June issue of Poetry, now in its second century as the country’s leading poetry journal, is devoted entirely to the work of Pulitzer Center grantees Eliza Griswold and Seamus Murphy. The subject is landays, two-line poems long associated with the Pashtun women who live in the borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Eliza, a poet herself, collected the poems with Seamus, an Irish photographer with years of experience in Afghanistan.

A landay is “distinctive not only for its beauty, bawdiness, and wit, but also for the piercing ability to articulate a common truth about war, separation, homeland, grief, or love,” Eliza notes in the introduction to the extraordinary poems and photographs that fill this issue. “[T]he couplets express a collective fury, a lament, an earthy joke, a love of home, a longing for the end of separation, a call to arms, all of which frustrate any facile image of a Pashtun woman as nothing but a mute ghost beneath a blue burqa.” Eliza and Seamus discuss the project, and some of their favorite landays, in a podcast withPoetry editors Christian Wiman and Don Share.

The Pulitzer Center’s association with Eliza and Seamus began with the reporting they did for a widely discussed photo essay last year for The New York Times Magazine. This year we funded additional reporting in Afghanistan and the production of a video, “Snake,” that captures the lives and scenes that inform the landays. Our collaboration continues with two public performances next month, the first July 30 at the Culture Project in New York City and the second July 31 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington. The performances will include landay readings in Pashtun by Afghan women.

STRANGE LAND

North Korea’s isolation is no secret but Pulitzer Center grantee Tomas van Houtryve has captured the strangeness of that country memorably in his photographs, along the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea and also on the rivers that line North Korea’s long border with China. In a radio interview with American Public Media’s The Story he tells of Chinese entrepreneurs who take tourists along the North Korean shore. One of them throws a packet of food to a hungry child. Another tosses a Chinese cell-phone SIM card to a North Korean man in army uniform, seizing his chance to make a connection with the world beyond.

MAKING CONNECTIONS IN WESTCHESTER

Our Campus Consortium partnerships with colleges and universities are built on the premise that journalists can help students engage with big global issues—and make them participants in telling those stories. Brendan Roode and Sydney Smith of New York’s Westchester Community College did just that in the video they produced on the campus visit by grantees Allison Shelly and Melissa Turley and Pulitzer Center managing director Nathalie Applewhite. The journalists discussed the reporting projects on gender issues they had done in Nepal and South Africa as part of Westchester’s career-development program “Meet the Pros.”

In the video Westchester professor Don Gregory praised the journalists’ approach. “They talked about getting to know people. That’s the important ingredient, balancing passion and professionalism.” Professor Eric Luther noted the Pulitzer Center’s emphasis on under-reported topics: “You could see light bulbs going off in people’s heads—like ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’ Their answers and insight were really enlightening.”

Until next week,

Jon Sawyer
Executive Director of the Pulitzer Center

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And we’re LIVE with journalist Frank Greve, who’s...

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 18:07:14 -0400

And we’re LIVE with journalist Frank Greve, who’s discussing the risks of covering conflict. Join the conversation by tweeting at us (@pulitzercenter) or commenting here.

Landays featured in Poetry Magazine

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 16:40:24 -0400

“In Afghan culture, poetry is revered, particularly the high literary forms that derive from Persian or Arabic. But the poem above is a folk couplet — a landay — an oral and often anonymous scrap of song created by and for mostly illiterate people: the more than twenty million Pashtun women who span the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Traditionally, landays are sung aloud, often to the beat of a hand drum, which, along with other kinds of music, was banned by the Taliban from 1996 to 2001, and in some places, still is.

A landay has only a few formal properties. Each has twenty-two syllables: nine in the first line, thirteen in the second. The poem ends with the sound “ma” or “na.” Sometimes they rhyme, but more often not.”

— Pulitzer Center grantee Eliza Griswold

Get a unique glimpse into women’s lives in Afghanistan by reading their landays in the June issue of Poetry magazine (Click here). See reporting from the whole project at the Pulitzer Center website. We’ll be featuring some landays here on our Tumblr throughout the week; join in with your own — send them to pulitzercenter@gmail.com and we’ll publish our favorites on our site.

laurenontheroad: #OccupyGezi #Turkey Pulitzer Center grantee...

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 16:36:21 -0400

laurenontheroad:

#OccupyGezi #Turkey

Pulitzer Center grantee Lauren Bohn is in Turkey; check out her pictures of the protests.