Scarlett Lion » Blog New and New Links

Life without Lights

Glenna — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:35:27 +0000

Life Without Lights from Peter DiCampo on Vimeo.

Peter DiCampo, previously based in Ghana but now heading all over the place, made this great multimedia piece about what happens after the lights go out. Make sure you check out Pete’s other work too here. He was also featured on the Lens blog a bit ago and is now on twitter — @peterdicampo.

Indépendance cha-cha

Glenna — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 19:28:30 +0000

If Alexis Okeowo tried to sell me a mixed tape for $100, I’d buy it. Probably for more. Check out this amazing video by Baloji that she linked to yesterday.

Great Africa photos on the internets

Glenna — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:10:48 +0000

The first set of beautiful photos I’d like to point out are by Jessica Hilltout of football in Africa. They’re features on the Lens today, but make sure you also check out her website. I also love her photos on Imperfection, as well as how she documents her style of working. Thanks to Laura from AidWatchers for originally showcasing Jessica’s lovely work.

I love photos that explore ideas and that’s exactly what Carl de Keyzer does in his series “Congo (Belge)” featured on the New Yorker Photo Booth today. The photos are unusual – at times disconcerting and at times engaging, and at most times both. Definitely worth your bandwidth.

Yo, Your Majesty, Say Cheese!

Glenna — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 02:59:27 +0000

I can’t even imagine the kind of formalities that must go into photographing African royalty. When I wanted to take some photos of the police marching band in Monrovia recently, they made me jump through so many hoops that I just gave up. So getting this many kings and their wives and children to agree to sit for portraits is an accomplishment in and of itself. The fact that Daniel Laine’s photos are fantastic is yet another accomplishment. Check out more of them here.

Interview up on Traveler’s Notebook

Glenna — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 09:39:21 +0000

Lola Akinmade emailed me a couple of questions about my work for an interview on the Traveler’s Notebook, part of the Matador Network. Check it out here.

A golden Chukadu!

Glenna — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:54:15 +0000

Filed under: things I want for my next birthday. Take note, friends and family, that next year simply writing on my facebook wall will not be enough.

Read more about the golden chukadu on Rachel’s blog.

Sketching Africa

Glenna — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:03:38 +0000

George Butler is a sketch artist on a six month journey through Central and West Africa. Here’s a bit about what he’s trying to do, from his first post on the London Times Travel Blog:

I can give the viewer more information than he or she would usually get with a photograph.

I’m now looking forward to putting all these skills to the test again in my most exciting and challenging project yet. I am travelling 8,500km overland from London to Libreville, the capital of Gabon in West Africa. It will take about six months and cover 12 African countries.

My brief is to describe West Africa as I find it, something that I believe you can do honestly only with a pen and paper, which allows you to be discerning and understanding, and to record things over time. I plan to draw with pen and ink and watercolour, but with pencils in reserve.

I am carrying 500ml of ink and as much paper as I can; this is due to run out after about two months so, after that, I will draw on whatever I can find, and e-mailing the images to The Times when I can get an internet connection.

I have rarely drawn anywhere in the world where I haven’t been offered a seat, lunch, tea, chai, vodka . . . I am constantly amazed by people’s honesty and generosity and I hope I can recreate this on my African adventure.

I’ve really been enjoying following his journey over the past couple of months. I think he has indeed shown something that photos can’t show. As a writer-turned-photographer-who-still-writes, I feel very conscious of the limitations of each medium. I can hardly draw a stick figure, but as you can see from the images posted below, George can draw a whole lot more than that. Make sure you check out the whole blog, since I had trouble even choosing which images to post.

Monday Reading

Glenna — Mon, 24 May 2010 20:55:48 +0000

This is Africa blogger spends more than a blog post amount of time thinking about and exploring Joburg pre-world cup, and then he writes about it. Worth more than a blog post amount of reading. The story is here, and here’s a quick quote:

In Soweto, the arrival of Tumi is equally anticipated. By the time the rapper takes the stage, he’s two hours late — just on time, if you set your clock to Joburg’s rhythms. The crowd, having long since given itself over to the bar, is in a forgiving mood. The air is kinetic.

Sometimes I think there are two kinds of people in the world: those who like Nick Kristof and those who don’t. While I’ve always been clearly in the second camp, hopefully his most recent column will bring more people over to the other side. Africa is a Country does a nice takedown:

Kristof… finds a Congolese child–it plays well with American readers to focus on children, he has argued somewhere else–whose parents cannot afford to pay his school fees but have cheap cellphones and occasionally have a drink.

And then he brings up Bill Easterly’s favorite economist Esther Duflo to endorse his 19th century views in which Westerners, and particularly white Westerners, decide whats good for poor, third world, mostly black, particularly black people, and then he babbles on about microlending. I am tired

Back in college, I didn’t believe in two kinds of anything. I studied art history and valued the ability of an image or piece of art to say two things at once, whether they are contradictory or complimentary. There’s an amazing sounding art exhibit that almost makes me want to say something like, “Get thee to Detroit!” but for now I settle with reading reviews of “Through African Eyes,” which looks at how Africans have pictures westerners for the past couple of centuries. G. P. Zachary blogs at Africa Works with the kind of anecdote that perfectly summarizes how there’s more nuance to the world that Nick Kristof acknowledges:

In my living room, I keep an old colonial, a Congolese carving of what is meant to be a cartoon-like Belgian soldier. The statue is recent, one of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of retro-colonial representations that Congolese carvers and artists are producing these days. When faced with the conundrum of why we exoticize the other, and are seemingly condemned to do so, I will visit with my Belgian soldier who is dressed in pith helmet, big black boots and sports a pencil moustache. The old soldier says no words but speaks nonetheless.

Steve Bloomfield’s new book Africa United: How Football Explains Africa is listed by the New York Times as a must read World Cup book. I took the photo they used for the cover of the UK edition when Steve and I worked together a bit in Liberia. I’m looking forward to reading it.

Ernest Bazanye lists things he’s learned from TV all of which are of coure hilarious, but here are a couple of my favorites:

3. The news is more factual, accurate and timely if it is delivered in broken English with a fake accent.

4. I now know what to drink if I want confidence.

6. Most animals do not speak. But those which do are hilarious.

11. Meredith Grey would beat John Dorian in a fair fistfight.

12. White People Can’t Dance

13. White People who can dance are black.

Immunity to suffering? Not quite.

Glenna — Fri, 07 May 2010 13:39:58 +0000

From the always great meowtree posted on Wait… What?

About 3 years after I moved to El Salvador I started my first NGO job. One of my responsibilities was accompanying delegations to see different community projects. In many cases, as soon as we’d arrive to the communities, people would approach me and unleash the litany of their troubles and poverty, sometimes wringing their hands or their hat, asking for help, painting themselves as victims because I was white, had arrived in a 4×4 with an NGO logo on the side and a group of foreigners, and could translate their pleas for help.

I must have seemed pretty heartless, but it was hard to see people prostrating themselves when they lived in similar conditions to the ones my neighbors and I did in the Barrio, and no one in the Barrio saw me as someone who would fix things for them.

It probably seemed to the foreign visitors that a terrible thing had happened to me. I had become “immune to the suffering”. But what I think was really the case is that I didn’t feel sorry for people. I had no illusions that I could solve anyone’s problems.

Breaking News!! World Press Includes Lots of Awesome Photos from Africa

Glenna — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:56:29 +0000

Okay, I was so excited to see that Malick Sidibé won that I put up a blog post about it instantly. Now, hours later as my internet struggles to keep up with my photo-looking-desires, I realize that there are a couple of great photos from Africa of the total non-poverty porn vien included in the winners this year. Check out Francesco Giusti’s pictures of the sappeurs society in Congo, and Joan Bardeletti’s photo of a picnic on the beach in Mozambique, an aerial shot of JR’s awesome installation in Kiberia, and Denis Rouvre’s images of Senegalese wrestlers. There’s also plenty of standard fare that I won’t spend time linking to here, but, I’m happy to see these four examples mixed in.

Maybe this will be a good year for media in and about Africa. I certainly hope so.