Photography Without Borders

Like much of the rest of Mostar, the Stari Most (Old Bridge) has been rebuilt with UNESCO support using local stone and skills. But until quite recently, the whole town, including this bridge, was more rubble than building.

On the evening train to Mostar my girlfriend and I talked with a local man who shared our compartment. As we plunged in and out of increasingly long, unlit tunnels, our conversation turned to the war of 1992-95, and the damage it has caused the country and its people.

‘The ruined houses we see now and then from our window’, he said, ‘were once everywhere. The war touched everyone, there was no escaping it. Now, you can visit Sarajevo or Mostar and they look great . . . but not so long ago they were mostly still ruins.’

This photograph cuts off the Stari Most roughly where it was reduced to a stump after Serbian shelling.

June ‘08.

Photo and text © Josh Jones / Photography Without Borders 2008.

Pride by Josh Jones

For the first time, an online collection of the best of my photojournalism in Palestine has been created. The series focuses on human rights issues for Bedouin people, farmers, and other locals living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank.

The photo-stories have already been exhibited in Brighton and at the University of Sussex, and some were featured in Palestine Monitor. However, this is the first full, open, online version of the collection. The gallery makes sharing and commenting easy.

I invite you to visit, share with your friends, and comment upon these photos and thoughts. Josh

The Guardian report is accompanied by police video footage taken at the Climate Camp demonstration in Kent last year. It shows the arrogant and high-handed approach of a police surveillance team, as the officers make rude comments about protesters, record facial details of innocent civilians, and take special pains to record the actions of journalists and photographers.

Police ‘Forward Intelligence Team’ officer at a peaceful demonstration, February 2008

In particular, the video shows the hostile attitude of police officers towards the press. A cameraman recording a peaceful protester is described as ‘being awkward’ for not moving away, and is promptly videoed by the team. A revealing conversation also takes place when an ITV crew walk past the police:

PC 1 – “Some more press officers coming out of the camp now.

PC 2- A lot of press officers aren’t there? They just think they can bloody wander in and out of the field.

PC 1- It’s wrong, I think.

PC 2 – I agree.

PC 1 – I trust them less than the protesters.”

The human rights group Liberty is challenging the police surveillance tactics in court.

Visit the map

Weeks of intensive research have culminated in the launch of an online, interactive multimedia map. It documents events surrounding the Smash EDO demonstration in Brighton on October 15th. Clicking on markers brings up raw evidence, such as photography, eyewitness reports, and video footage.

The map makes for harrowing reading. It shows how police invoked anti-terror laws against suspected protesters. It also describes how one disabled observer was arrested and denied access to a doctor, and how peaceful protesters were attacked by police dogs.

Palestine Monitor [Editor]

Palestine Monitor is a news site that reports on the life of ordinary people living in occupied Palestine. Its pictorial output is often fascinating, and the latest photo-story is no exception.

Jenin Camp: Then and Now documents the terror of occupation for the inhabitants of a small refugee camp in the West Bank. The text makes for bitter reading, as with most tales from the West Bank.

The pictures, meanwhile, take a quietly contemplative stance, showing both the pride and strength of the people who survive these troubles, and the darker memories of terror that loom in the background. In one picture, confident children face the camera undaunted, while the wall behind them sports a childishly painted assault rifle.

Elsewhere, a fantastic scrap statue looks like it could adorn the front of a corporate headquarters, but its source gives a different mood altogether: the large metal horse was constructed out of car debris left after a vicious attack.

Palestine Monitor [Editor]
Statue of a large horse on the edge of the camp made out of scraps of cars destroyed in the attack
July 2008

Dorothea Lange made her reputation photographing the victims of the Great Depression in the US, and the exploitation of US farmers that followed. Her most famous photograph, Migrant Mother, shows the strength and torment of a migrant worker, surrounded by her three children.

I am reminded of the raw devotion to family and humanity that is expressed in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. When times are hard, it seems, the best side of people can emerge; their stoicism, their determination to stick to their values against all the odds. Such times also expose the darkest side of capitalism, that two-headed beast that feeds us when times are good, and consumes us when they are bad.

Until the late 20th century, Lange’s most controvestial work went largely unrecongnised, owing in no small part to its censorship by the US government. After the attack on Pearl Harbour, president Franklin Roosevelt authorised the forced relocation of over one hundred thousand Japanese Americans into concentration camps. Assigned to report on this process, Lange could not help but capture the inhumanity of the government’s policies. Some of her most powerful photos, such as pictured below, show American schoolchildren swearing alligence to the stars and stripes before being transported to concentration camps.

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References: Women Come to the Front, City of San Francisco Museum, Wikipedia.