For more than a quarter of a century, Afghanistan has been ravaged by war, drought, and famine. Afghan-born photographer Zalmaï returns home after twenty-three years in exile to rediscover his homeland at a crucial moment of transition. Working in rich color, and frequently using a panoramic format that embraces the vastness of the sky and sand, Zalmaï immerses us in the ravaged landscape and the bustle of reconstruction. “My project tries to capture the resilience of a people who have rarely known peace, their optimism in the face of overwhelming odds and the very real worry that the country remains on a knife-edge and could easily slip back into a nightmare from which it is still trying to escape.”

 

 

India's economic growth has produced a new middle class larger than the entire population of the United States; it is spurring growth in smaller cities like Bangalore, Hyderbad, and Pune, cities that are transforming like chameleons to suit the new consumer culture. Indians have a new religion and their new temple is the Mall.

 

 

ECLIPSE Umbrage

Zalmaï’s photographs capture the slow, distressing drift of exile and dispossession: spectral figures against a stormy sky, a sheared row of peaks framing a figure like a sacred relic, horizons of men, both of this world and of some timeless land. This is a documentation of a journey through ambiguous territories—from Cuba to India, Mali to the Philippines, Indonesia to Egypt, and a return to Zalmaï’s native Afghanistan—a search for place when one’s own land has been destroyed.

 

 

The evolution of skin.

 

 

Central African Republic

Africa's Pygmies Forced to Abandon Traditional Way of Life.

Nomadic hunting and gathering peoples of equatorial Africa (sometimes called Negrillos) whose adult males average under 5 ft (1.5 m) in height. They were probably the sole inhabitants of the Congo valley before farming was developed. Numbering c.250,000, they traditionally lived in small bands, dependent largely on the forest for their food, although trading with the settled agriculturalists around them. Deforestation, however, has displaced many Pygmies. Pygmy groups include the Akkas, in the upper Nile R. valley; the Twas or Batwas, in the great bend of the Congo R. and in Rwanda and Burundi; and the Mbuti, in the Ituri forest of NE Republic Democratic of Congo.

 

 

CUBA With a unique history and culture, Cuba is a country which few of us know about and fewer yet understand. What is the country like? What are the people like? How is its culture both similar to and different from other Caribbean countries? How did its past determine its present? How will the present mold its future?