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Pictures of the Day: Zimbabwe and Elsewhere

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Photos from Zimbabwe, Syria, Russia and India.

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Pictures of the Day: Zimbabwe and Elsewhere

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Photos from Zimbabwe, Syria, Russia and India.

Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.



Be a Human First, Then Take the Photo

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Demetrius Freeman is one of two photo interns at The New York Times from Western Kentucky University. Before joining The Times, Mr. Freeman, 27, spent two years after high school traveling in Denmark, Spain, Germany and Atlanta, Ga., while picking up freelance photo assignments for clients including Home Depot, Norfolk Southern and the Georgia Innocence Project. Originally from Atlanta, he recently completed a semester abroad at the Danish School of Media and Journalism and will be returning to Western Kentucky in the fall to complete his degree in photojournalism.

His Turning Point conversation with Whitney Richardson has been edited.

Q.

What is going on in this image?

A.

This image is one of my first photo stories that I took in 2010. This is J.J. and her son, Tyler. J.J. is a young, single parent who was working two jobs to support her son. She was struggling to keep a roof over their heads. This was in Chaney’s Dairy Barn in Bowling Green, Ky. I took this photo the last day I was working with her before she left to move in with her grandparents in Texas. She was 24.

This image was very important to me because it was the first time I saw my photograph make a change in someone’s life. I gave her copies once the story was over. Her family and other people saw the photographs and it made them understand the situation she was going through. They would communicate with her, but I don’t think she ever told anyone she was struggling. When people saw the images, they began to open up and ask her if she needed help watching her son and if she needed money. The story didn’t get very big press, but I liked the fact that it helped someone for the better. It wasn’t just a photo that just disappeared.

Q.

Why was this image your most significant capture from the series?

A.

I spent four weeks with J.J. and her son, going back and forth from school. I took photos of him throwing a temper tantrum because he didn’t want to put on clothes; I had photos that show her doing young things with him, like playing in the sand box.

I think the reason this particular image stuck out to me is because it really showed the core of their relationship. Tyler doesn’t completely understand what is going on, but from this image you can tell that they are a pair. Most of the other images were very documentary-styled captures, but this photo is more abstract, while still telling the meaning of their relationship. It also made me realize the importance of gaining genuine trust and being open to listening. It also showed me that being able to relate to people will provide you with the gift of making really impactful images.

DESCRIPTIONGordon Parks/The Gordon Parks Foundation

Inspiration: Gordon Parks
Image: Ingrid Bergman, Stromboli, Italy, 1949.

Q.

What’s happening in this photo?

A.

This photo by Gordon Parks is of the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman. Ingrid left her family to be with her lover, which was really taboo at that time. She was shooting a film and the press was trying to get an image of her and her partner, the director Roberto Rossellini, but they really weren’t allowing the press to take photos of them.

This image is a significant moment because you can actually get the feel of what she is going through. Almost like the world around her is crashing because of what she did. By the expression on her face and the faces of the women watching her, there is almost this symbolism to the world judging her and her feelings about that.

Q.

Why is this image important to you?

A.

This image is important to me mainly because of the back story as to how Gordon got this photo. He was assigned to take photos of Ingrid and her partner together, but they never really allowed the intimate moments to be documented â€" they would always stage things. So he stopped taking photos and just began hanging out with them. After a while, they created a bond together where they trusted each other. Once that trust was gained, he was able to photograph her and those intimate moments that other people were not able to capture.

Q.

How did this image affect the way you approached your work?

A.

This photo has taught me patience is key and that it is better to be a human first, rather than going in and trying to take photos of someone. I think Gordon Parks was very down-to-earth and very understanding of situations people were in. He was able to relate and was really good at being a human first and letting people understand what he was doing rather than trying to take the best photo.

This image also made me think more about layers I can build upon to make a great image. Not only is it visually layered with subject matter, but with emotions, too. So instead of just standing someone against a wall, you bring in Ingrid’s emotions, their reactions, and now you have a layering effect going on that works together to create this feeling.

Follow @demetriusfreem, @Whitney_Rich and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.



Be a Human First, Then Take the Photo

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Demetrius Freeman is one of two photo interns at The New York Times from Western Kentucky University. Before joining The Times, Mr. Freeman, 27, spent two years after high school traveling in Denmark, Spain, Germany and Atlanta, Ga., while picking up freelance photo assignments for clients including Home Depot, Norfolk Southern and the Georgia Innocence Project. Originally from Atlanta, he recently completed a semester abroad at the Danish School of Media and Journalism and will be returning to Western Kentucky in the fall to complete his degree in photojournalism.

His Turning Point conversation with Whitney Richardson has been edited.

Q.

What is going on in this image?

A.

This image is one of my first photo stories that I took in 2010. This is J.J. and her son, Tyler. J.J. is a young, single parent who was working two jobs to support her son. She was struggling to keep a roof over their heads. This was in Chaney’s Dairy Barn in Bowling Green, Ky. I took this photo the last day I was working with her before she left to move in with her grandparents in Texas. She was 24.

This image was very important to me because it was the first time I saw my photograph make a change in someone’s life. I gave her copies once the story was over. Her family and other people saw the photographs and it made them understand the situation she was going through. They would communicate with her, but I don’t think she ever told anyone she was struggling. When people saw the images, they began to open up and ask her if she needed help watching her son and if she needed money. The story didn’t get very big press, but I liked the fact that it helped someone for the better. It wasn’t just a photo that just disappeared.

Q.

Why was this image your most significant capture from the series?

A.

I spent four weeks with J.J. and her son, going back and forth from school. I took photos of him throwing a temper tantrum because he didn’t want to put on clothes; I had photos that show her doing young things with him, like playing in the sand box.

I think the reason this particular image stuck out to me is because it really showed the core of their relationship. Tyler doesn’t completely understand what is going on, but from this image you can tell that they are a pair. Most of the other images were very documentary-styled captures, but this photo is more abstract, while still telling the meaning of their relationship. It also made me realize the importance of gaining genuine trust and being open to listening. It also showed me that being able to relate to people will provide you with the gift of making really impactful images.

DESCRIPTIONGordon Parks/The Gordon Parks Foundation

Inspiration: Gordon Parks
Image: Ingrid Bergman, Stromboli, Italy, 1949.

Q.

What’s happening in this photo?

A.

This photo by Gordon Parks is of the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman. Ingrid left her family to be with her lover, which was really taboo at that time. She was shooting a film and the press was trying to get an image of her and her partner, the director Roberto Rossellini, but they really weren’t allowing the press to take photos of them.

This image is a significant moment because you can actually get the feel of what she is going through. Almost like the world around her is crashing because of what she did. By the expression on her face and the faces of the women watching her, there is almost this symbolism to the world judging her and her feelings about that.

Q.

Why is this image important to you?

A.

This image is important to me mainly because of the back story as to how Gordon got this photo. He was assigned to take photos of Ingrid and her partner together, but they never really allowed the intimate moments to be documented â€" they would always stage things. So he stopped taking photos and just began hanging out with them. After a while, they created a bond together where they trusted each other. Once that trust was gained, he was able to photograph her and those intimate moments that other people were not able to capture.

Q.

How did this image affect the way you approached your work?

A.

This photo has taught me patience is key and that it is better to be a human first, rather than going in and trying to take photos of someone. I think Gordon Parks was very down-to-earth and very understanding of situations people were in. He was able to relate and was really good at being a human first and letting people understand what he was doing rather than trying to take the best photo.

This image also made me think more about layers I can build upon to make a great image. Not only is it visually layered with subject matter, but with emotions, too. So instead of just standing someone against a wall, you bring in Ingrid’s emotions, their reactions, and now you have a layering effect going on that works together to create this feeling.

Follow @demetriusfreem, @Whitney_Rich and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.



Pictures of the Day: Syria and Elsewhere

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Photos from Syria, Italy, Iran and India.

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An Indigenous Way of Life Threatened by Oil Sands in Canada

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Ian Willms has photographed the effects of oil extraction on First Nations land in Fort McKay and Fort Chipewyan, in northern Alberta, Canada. Mr. Willms, 28, based in Toronto, is a founding member of the Boreal Collective and spent several months over the last three years photographing his project “As Long as the Sun Shines.” His interview with James Estrin has been edited and condensed.

Q.

How did this project start?

A.

When I graduated from school in 2008 I was hearing a lot about the oil sands in Canada. So I started doing research, and the more I learned, the more horrified I became.

I read a CBC article about cancer rates in indigenous communities that immediately surrounded the oil sands, and I knew right then that was exactly what I had to do. I searched pretty thoroughly for anybody who had done a proper photo story on the community, and I couldn’t find anything that was particularly in-depth.

DESCRIPTIONIan Willms/Boreal Collective Scotty Lacorde and his nephew in Fort Chipewyan.
Q.

What did you find when you got there?

A.

I found a community that was far more developed economically than I had expected. There was a lot of infrastructure, and the homes were more modern than most First Nations communities. That has a lot to do with the proximity to the oil sands and the economic benefit that comes with that.

But the community is still struggling. First Nation reserves are still very dark and damaged places in many ways, and in other ways, they’re incredibly vibrant. So it was not as bleak as I expected it to be. If you didn’t already know that their water was basically coming off of a storm pipe of one of the largest polluting industrial projects in the world, you wouldn’t.

Q.

A lot of photographers who photograph native peoples in North America just hit and run. How did you go about capturing a fuller view?

A.

Well, the most important thing is time. And it’s always going to be more time than anyone’s going to be willing to pay you for.

Beyond that, I think it’s a matter of becoming invested in people’s lives, because if you don’t care, they won’t. And if you fake it, people know. People aren’t stupid. If you treat them like they’re stupid, they’re never going to trust you. And so I spent a lot of time there, I made a lot of friends.

There are a lot if white journalists that go into indigenous communities in North America with a preconceived notion of what these people are like and what they need. But in truth this attitude is just a continuation of the abuse of those people.

What the first nations really need is the respect and the confidence of the rest of Canada, to tell their own stories and to manage their own communities. They need to be empowered but they don’t need others to tell them what to do.

I continually show my subjects the work that I do in these communities and ask if I am getting this right.

Q.

Tell me more about the oil sands.

A.

There’s an oil reserve that’s located beneath Canada’s boreal forest that’s roughly the size of the state of Florida. It’s rich with oil, but the process of extracting it is incredibly energy intensive, difficult and expensive.

The process involved first clear-cutting the forest and then creating a strip mine. They dig the sandy oil out. It’s like hot asphalt. On a hot day, it’s very gooey and very much like tar.

The environmental toll is dramatic. There was a study by an NGO in Toronto, Environmental Defense, that in 2008 found that about 11 million liters of toxins were leaking into the Athabasca River every single day from several toxic-base water lakes in the oil sands region.

Q.

What’s the effect on the people?

A.

It has brought more money into the communities than there was before. With that said, it’s really a small fraction of what they’re actually entitled to. These First Nations get really bad deals from the oil companies in order to leave their lands for oil.

A career in the oil sands may sound good to some people, but really it is the death of their culture because it’s taking the new generation to work toward a completely different way of life. And it’s a way of life that embraces the destruction of their land.

DESCRIPTIONIan Willms/Boreal Collective A residential school in Fort Chipewyan that closed in the 1970s. The Canadian Indian Residential School System was a cultural assimilation program that saw aboriginal children taken from their parents and forced to live in these boarding schools. Generations of children were physically and sexually abused in residential schools across Canada. The last federally operated residential school closed in 1996.

There’s a lot of grief, especially among the elders in the community, over the younger generation not taking an interest in hunting and fishing and trapping. And there’s a lot of conflict among the generation in between the youth and the elders â€" the generation that are in their late 20s to their 50s; the people who work in the oil sands but grew up hunting, fishing and trapping.

They are very conflicted, because they know what they’re doing. They know that they’re taking away their own land. But they do it because there’s no other option for them to make money. There’s no other way for them to feed their families. These communities are no longer able to be self sufficient off the land like they had been for thousands of years.

Q.

What is the effect of the oil sands on the environment?

A.

Well, they’re finding a lot of animals with physical problems. They’re finding fish with large, golf-ball-sized tumors. There was actually an industry-funded study a few years ago that found that the moose meat had 453 times the acceptable level of arsenic in it.

DESCRIPTIONIan Willms/Boreal Collective Lights from the oil sands industry loom over the boreal forest.

These people who have hunted this land for a hundred years can read their environment like a book. They know when something’s wrong. They open up an animal, they can see the health of that animal by how it looks. The industry and the government don’t really take that knowledge seriously.

Q.

Who are the peoples that you photographed?

A.

There are different bands â€" the Fort McKay First Nation, and Fort Chipewyan is Mikisew Cree and the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. But the people know each other and they’re fairly close together. They’re linked by the Athabasca River, which is probably about a five-hour trip if you have a decent motorboat. In the winter there’s an ice road that connects them.

Fort Chipewyan is insulated from the oil sands only because they’re a bit further away. And Fort McKay is literally surrounded by strip mines and tailings ponds.

Fort Chipewyan is dealing with the same process as Fort McKay did 20 years ago. They’ve seen what’s happened to McKay, and now industry wants to start developing their territory, and they’re trying to resist it.

About half the 1,200 or so people in Fort Chipewyan work in the oil sands, and an even higher percentage of Fort McKay works in the oil sands.

Q.

What do you do while you are there?

A.

I try to allow life to unfold as I work. Every morning I would get up and just head out with my camera. And it’s a small town, so you can walk everywhere. I would walk around and say hi to people, and they’d be interested in me because as soon as somebody new shows up, it’s pretty obvious that they’re not from around there, and they are all kinds of curious.

So we get to talking, and sometimes it would lead to important conversations about the oil sands or they’d say, “Oh, yeah, my mother passed away of cancer last year,” or “My son has like crazy abscesses on his legs and we don’t know what they are,” or “I’m a commercial fisherman and I can’t sell my fish anymore because the lake’s polluted there,” and stuff like this. Or other times they would just be like, “Oh, yeah, you know, I’m going hunting today. It looks pretty good.” And maybe I’d get to go hunting and photograph the traditional way of preparing ducks or moose.

Q.

Was it different from what you expected?

A.

It definitely was. I went up there with all of these pictures of indigenous reserves in Canada in my mind. There are many photojournalists that have gone to document the despair and the squalor and dirt of many First Nations.

The pain and the difficulties faced by those people is very invisible. It’s definitely there. You can’t meet somebody and spend time with them without coming into contact with it. But it’s not right in your face like I expected it to be, which was a tremendous challenge photographically because I had to make pictures of something that was invisible and try to suggest it.

Q.

How did you do that?

A.

Well, it may sound flaky, but I just shot from the heart. I tried to really invest myself in the people I met there emotionally â€" spend time with them, get to know them and grow to really trust them and care about them deeply â€" and then consider their stories and their experiences in my mind as I walked around, and I would make my pictures accordingly.

It’s not like you have the picture of the oil sands and then the person doing chemotherapy and then the gravestone. It’s much more subtle than that, and it’s also much more than the oil sands. It’s a culture. It’s the loss of their culture that’s really what that essay came to be about. So I made a lot of pictures of the traditional ways of life, like the moose hunters and the fishermen.

There are very intimate, tight family units trying to make it work in the midst of this industrial onslaught and this constant sort of humming presence of danger in the background. Everybody knows that their water and their land is toxic, but it doesn’t look like Chernobyl.

It’s much tougher to really see it, but they know it’s there, and they also feel very powerless about it. You have to consider it as a photograph. So here’s the picture of the girl going wading into the lake (Slide 18), or here’s the mother and daughter with the fresh haul of fish that they’re going to spend the next week eating even though there’s a factory that’s pumping hydrocarbons into that water supply.

Q.

How are the Chipewyan fighting this?

A.

It is their land, so they can make the industry jump through a certain number of bureaucratic hoops in order to slow down the process, but in the end it requires a lot of money.

In 1899 there was a land treaty signed for that region, and the condition of the treaty was that the traditional livelihood of the First Nations should never be compromised. Because the indigenous people didn’t operate in the conventional European sense of time, the treaty stipulated that the land would be protected for as long as the sun shines and the grass grows and the rivers flow, which is why the essay is called “As Long as the Sun Shines.”

The treaties are now seen as this very empty promise. So legally, they really do have a right to stand on. But in a real world practice, it’s just not happening.

DESCRIPTIONIan Willms/Boreal Collective The abandoned Bitumount facility at Fort McKay, the first oil sands project in Canada, ceased operations in 1955. According to the government of Alberta, “industry is legally obligated to reclaim all disturbed land to a productive state.”

Follow @BorealCollect, @JamesEstrin and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.



Pictures of the Day: Iraq and Elsewhere

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Photos from Iraq, Italy, Kashmir and Thailand.

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The Public Editor’s Sunday Column: A Blow for the Press, and for Democracy

Jailing reporters makes it harder to keep the government honest.

A Modernist’s Challenge to Instant Gratification

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We live in an age of instant gratification. Our news is delivered as it happens, our musings “liked” before our eyes. Our photographs pop up on the back of our cameras â€" or online â€" moments after clicking the shutter.

Whatever happened to slow and steady wins the race? Culture being cyclical, might there be an adjustment just around the bend? Anne Wilkes Tucker, the curator of photography at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, thinks that might not be a bad idea. “I will look seriously at anybody who sustains a serious, diverse career for 50 years doing anything,” she said. “I don’t care if they’re a car mechanic. There’s something for all of us to learn from anybody who is focused and has a serious intellectual engagement with whatever it is they’re doing.”

Take, for example, the life and career of the Modernist photographer Ray K. Metzker, whose work Ms. Tucker curated for an extensive 1984 retrospective in Houston. Almost 30 years later, he appears to be making a late-career comeback.

Mr. Mezker, who was born in 1931, made sumptuous, formal, humanistic photographs over five decades, moving from one project to the next as his creativity demanded. This year, his work is featured in a traveling exhibition that opens in September at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle, having just been shown at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. He also has a show of vintage prints at the Andrew Smith Gallery in Santa Fe this summer.

His work, like that of his Modernist colleagues, fell out of favor when the world embraced Pop and Post-Modernism. The latter movement has dominated the headlines for decades, with its championing of artists of all races and genders, techniques like appropriation and mashups, and an emphasis on socio-political critique. Andy Warhol’s idea about everyone being famous for 15 minutes might encapsulate our social media world, but Mr. Metzker and his fellow Modernists, who emphasized craftsmanship, subtlety, and patient engagement, might still have something to teach us.

DESCRIPTIONRay K. Metzker Philadelphia, 1964.

Mr. Metzker was raised in Milwaukee and began his photo career at his school newspaper. He studied photography at Beloit College, and worked as a photo instructor for the military during the Korean War, before moving to Chicago in 1956 for graduate study at the Institute of Design. There he worked under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, two important Modernist artists.

Like his mentors, Mr. Metzker photographed in black-and-white, and drew critical attention with his graduate thesis project “My Camera and I in the Loop,” shot in downtown Chicago. (Ten images were subsequently purchased by Edward Steichen for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.) Though the ID helped its students develop commercial careers, Mr. Metzker began to see his photography more as a method of personal expression. In his statement about the Loop project, he wrote, “I wanted to photograph and the Loop was the reason.”

His initial forays into fine art photography were odes to the mystery of light and shadow in the urban environment; lone figures and rounded cars dominate. His photographs from the 1950s and early ’60s have much in common with the work of Mr. Callahan, and the influence of W. Eugene Smith and Walker Evans also can be seen. The pictures resemble those of Mr. Metzker’s contemporary, Robert Frank, though they lack the penetrating criticality of American society.

The transition from straight, ’50s culture to the radical, revolutionary ’60s was neither graceful nor gradual. Experimentation, rebellion and upheaval were in the air, and the arts were no exception. Sober Modernist painters like Mark Rothko gave way to Pop upstarts like Mr. Warhol. Mr. Metzker, however, managed to capture the vitality of the times his way.

In 1964, he began his “Composite” series, for which he was awarded the first of two Guggenheim Fellowships. The series was a jarring innovation, harnessing the power of serial imagery and condensing it. He assembled previously shot photographs into intricately crafted, multiple-image grids where the same photo was repeated, but printed differently. In his Guggenheim application, Mr. Metzker said, “The entire idea comes to me as a unique way of seeing, as if new eyes replaced the old.” Shortly thereafter, he began to create “Composites” by treating an entire roll of film as a single concept to be arranged into a carefully constructed photographic wall sculpture.

DESCRIPTIONRay K. Metzker “Composites: Nude,” 1966.

From a contemporary perspective, the difference between images like one shot in Philadelphia in 1963 (Slide 1), and “Composites: Nude” (right) made three later, is startling. While the former style may resemble the work of other photographers, the latter is genuinely new and important within the history of photography. Keith Davis, the curator of photography at the Nelson-Atkins museum, who curated the current traveling retrospective, said, “If we had to boil Ray down to one body of work, and I don’t want to do that, but if we had to, the ‘Composites’ would be the great art historical achievement.”

Though he supported himself over the years through teaching, Mr. Metzker was well-placed to take advantage of the burgeoning market for fine art photography as it developed in the ’70s. Ultimately, he was able to stop teaching and live on print sales. According to Mr. Davis, though, the fact that his formative years occurred before the possibility of a serious payday was key to his artistic evolution.

That may also be crucial to the renewed appreciation of Mr. Metzker and his Modernist contemporaries. Though much is to be respected about the manner in which Post-Modernism opened the door for all artists to have a place at the table, the Modernists left a legacy of doing the work for the “right” reasons. The pictures were made as the result of an idealistic journey on the creative path, not as products to be cranked out for an insatiable market.

The artists of Ray K. Metzker’s generation believed the work was its own reward, and strove to build lives that would enable sustained creation over time. In fact, he continued to work seriously until 2007, making sure to move on to a new project when he grew bored with the previous one. He refused to repeat himself for the sake of giving collectors what they wanted.

That seems to be the lesson to take from Mr. Metzker’s long career, and perhaps from Modernism as well. Instant gratification might not necessarily be a good thing, and we could all do with a bit more patience. “If people will give it the time, they’ll find things that speak to them,” said Ms. Tucker. “There is meat on these bones. It challenges and engages us. God knows it’s not the social media world. And that’s maybe its biggest handicap. It’s work that takes time.”

DESCRIPTIONRay K. Metzker Albuquerque, 1972.

Follow @jblauphoto and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.



Pictures of the Day: Egypt and Elsewhere

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Photos from Egypt, India, Mali and the West Bank.

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Ode to a Polish River

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When Mikolaj Nowacki calls Poland’s Odra the “river of history,” he might as well be talking about his own life. Having grown up along the river, even its damp smells linger in his memory. After originally pursuing a doctorate in space law, he turned his back on that profession to become a newspaper photographer. Two years ago, he was accepted into the mentor program at VII Photo, where he has been working with Antonin Kratochvil. Mr. Kratochvil taught him his most important lesson yet: “There’s only one way, and it’s your way.”

The following conversation, conducted by e-mail, has been edited.

Q.

What are your earliest memories of the Odra river? How did your relationship to the Odra change over time?

A.

When I was 5, I moved with my parents to new, concrete blocks of flats in the Biskupin district in Wroclaw, Poland. The neighborhood was a five-minute walk from the river. In the late ’70s, my neighborhood was “at the end of the city,” as everybody said. Odra was a natural border between the city and the wilderness. My first memories from the river were walks on the narrow path on a half-wild embankment with my parents. It was in a hot summer. I remember the strong smell of river mud. This smell accompanied me my whole childhood.

From my room, I could see trees on embankments and the faraway forest. When the water was high, I could see the river. At night in the summertime, when I slept by fully open windows, I remember the thunder of a waterfall which was under the Bartoszowicki Weir. I loved this sound. When I was older, I walked with my best friend to Opatowicka Island, which was a totally wild place. It is a large island on the river, half covered by deep forest and half with meadow. There are 200-year-old trees and many of them lay down on the ground, rotten. Truly wild nature. It’s a part of the primeval forests of the river valley.

Once, under Communism, some forest worker told us everything on the island would be cut down! We sat below a tree and cried. Luckily, they only “cleared” the forest and left older trees. Anyway, it looked horrible. I felt as if someone cut out half of my soul.

When I was 13, I became interested in ornithology. Till the beginning of my law studies, I walked many kilometers down and up the river in search for rare species of birds. It was a difficult time of adolescence. By the river and with a binocular, I felt free and safe.

DESCRIPTIONMikolaj Nowacki Lukasz Szymanski; his fiancée, Maria Szukalska; their dog, Daisy; and Capt. Czeslaw Szarek in the ballast water of a newly built barge on the Odra river. From “The Last Kings of Odra.”
Q.

How did your visits to Odra and your interest turn into a photography project?

A.

It wasn’t obvious in the beginning. I finished my three previous projects and was looking for something close. I wanted to have my own, personal long-term project. My photography teacher, Tomasz Tomaszewski, the National Geographic photographer, asked me what I like. I answered with some hesitation, “You know, I like… water.” Not long after my talk with Tomasz, I realized how very much I like Odra. I thought I could photograph connections of people with this river in my home city, Wroclaw. So in late 2008 I consciously took the first photograph of the project. It was a night picture of the last barge of the year before winter, which came to power plants with coal and was unloaded.

At that time I couldn’t imagine shooting the river’s whole length â€" it’s 530 miles! I thought that it’s too difficult and too expensive. So at first I started to look for different connections of people with the river, and I also started to photograph sailors transporting barges on Odra.

DESCRIPTIONMikolaj Nowacki Barges with coal are unloaded by a crane at a power plant’s port. Ninety percent of the coal comes to the plant on barges. From “Odra, Part 1.”
Q.

For the second part of the series, which you call “The Last Kings of Odra,” it looks as though you spent a lot of time on this barge and encountered a lot of characters. Did you get along or did they view you with suspicion?

A.

Since 2009 I’ve spent time in different parts of the year on ships with Capt. [Czeslaw] Szarek and his crew. This is a chorus of my whole Odra story. He is the only captain on the river who transports really huge, newly built barges.

Most of the crew consists of characters. The captain himself is the strongest character. He is short tempered, curses incredibly, smokes all day and writes poetry during long days behind the steering wheel. He is the real man of the river. Even when he must go to a dentist, he goes there by his ship when he can. He reminds me somewhat of those pilots from Mark Twain’s book “Life on the Mississippi.”

Another character is his faithful sailor Zbyszek Laskowski, who looks like the famous French cartoon character Asterix. Short, bald, with a thick mustache, very well built and strong like a bull. In summer, he is always bare-chested. He can do everything on the ship, from dragging out an anchor to complicated engine repairs. He says that he’s tough as concrete, and most of the year he spends on the ship. He has a wife, daughter and a small son, and he misses them very much. He says that he will sail till the end of the world and one day longer.

As I also love the river life, I found a common language with the captain and the rest of the crew. After some time they came to treat me as another member, the one with a camera.

Q.

Did the crew tell you stories?

A.

I remember one story told to us by a younger sailor. Before becoming a river man, he used to be a hooligan, an extreme soccer fan. The story was about bloody street fights between two soccer fans’ gangs. We talked many hours in a wheelhouse. It was a hot summer night last year. His story was so strong that the next morning another sailor complained that he slept very badly. He dreamed that a gang chased him, captured and beat him. Poor guy was screaming in his sleep.

Q.

The first part of your Odra series seems to contain a more general look at life on a river â€" there are floods, rowing competitions, a staged protest and children playing. What do these images have in common? What is different?

A.

In that part, I wanted to look for as many connections of people with the river as I was able to find. I also wanted to show the river’s nature. Sometimes the connection wasn’t that obvious, like the reconstruction of fights on Grunwaldzki Bridge in Wroclaw. Other connections were deeper, like fishermen in the Szczecin Lagoon estuary (Slides 11 and 19). I wanted to pay attention to how it matters to people’s lives and how nature is beautiful. Many people are not aware of it. They think of the river only in the case of flood.

DESCRIPTIONMikolaj Nowacki Residents tried to stem floodwaters that had just broken an embankment in Wroclaw during a 2010 flood. From “Odra, Part 1.”
Q.

Which picture is your favorite in the series?

A.

My favorite photograph from the series is children playing in water, taken where I grew up. The waterfall in the background was like music when I was falling asleep in my childhood. For me, everything is perfect in this photograph. When I took it, I couldn’t believe in my luck. I had taken a bicycle and camera and rode along embankments around the Great Island. I did it often. I even started to call it, facetiously, “Odra’s Photographic Bicycle Patrol.” From the distance, from the embankment, I saw three children playing in water. I approached their father and explained who I am and what I do, and asked if I may take some photos. He agreed. Then I asked the kids. They also agreed. They returned to their play and I spent an hour with them. Suddenly, one of the boys jumped into the water from the sandy beach while two others swam. This picture reflects my memory of the river, and, what’s more important, it could have been a photo of me in childhood.

Q.

Having grown up nearby, was there anything about this project that surprised you? Anything that angered you?

A.

I think the most surprising was for me the discovery that on Lake Dabie there’s an old concrete ship on shallow water (below). It was a tanker built at the end of World War II by the Nazis. Due to lack of steel, it was built of concrete. The Russian Air Force sank it, and the ship was later taken up by Polish divers and was dragged to the lake. It’s now a tourist attraction.

But what really angers me is the fact that so many wild places along Odra are unprotected or that the protection is very superficial.

Q.

Have you changed over the course of this undertaking?

A.

During these five years of work on this project, my own photographic style emerged. I’ve become uncompromising in choosing subjects and the time of when to photograph. When working for newspapers and doing assignments for magazines, I learned to take the most of the given situation I had to cover. During this personal work, I learned the most important thing â€" how it is to be free.

DESCRIPTIONMikolaj Nowacki The wreckage of a concrete ship, Urlich Finsterwalde, at dawn on Dabie Lake in Szczecin. From “Odra, Part 1.”

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Pictures of the Day: Spain and Elsewhere

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Photos from Spain, Mali, Brazil and India.

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Pictures of the Day: Bahrain and Elsewhere

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Searching for Hope and Humanity in L.A.

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Pictures of the Day: China and Elsewhere

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Photographing the Part of Buddhism That Can\'t Be Seen

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When David Butow decided to spend 2012 traveling the world to photograph Buddhism, he knew there would be a rich abundance of visual material: colorful clothing, vibrant decorations and precisely choreographed rituals.

But the challenge of capturing the essence of spiritual experience became apparent to him quickly. While sacred rites are visually lush, and obvious, spiritual experience is interior and hidden - and it is difficult to photograph something that is not visible.

Mr. Butow used a variety of strategies - and camera formats - to try to capture the heart of Buddhism. He layered reflections, employed camera motion and made metaphoric images that suggested stillness. He included double exposures, used diptychs and even physically altered negatives with a small blade.

His journey last year, as he worked on “Seeing Buddha: A Photographic Journey,” spanned 10 countries including Bhutan, Cambodia, Japan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala, India. Along the way, he discovered that Buddhism and photography have much in common, including observation, empathy and being fully in the moment.

DESCRIPTIONDavid Butow A monk performed “walking meditation” in a forest in Sri Lanka where he lives with other monks. There is a tradition of monks spending years in the forest away from material goods and other distractions that could disrupt their quest for spiritual enlightenment.

“Among the core concepts of Buddhism is the idea of understanding your individual experience of living and the way that you are connected to other people,” he said. “As a photographer, you observe your subject, try to become connected and then capture that in a single moment.”

Mr. Butow started the project after many years as a photojournalist who often covered conflicts and disasters for U.S. News and World Report, as well as for the photo agencies Saba and Redux. He said that empathy in the face of suffering and a sense of shared humanity were important both in photography and in Buddhism.

So, too, is patience.

He recalled photographing a small group of monks for two or three hours while they were chanting, but not moving at all. Finally, there was one moment in which light came through the window and illuminated a monk (Slide 2). Mr. Butow can't know exactly what the monk was thinking or experiencing, but the image reflects what the photographer perceived.

“Perhaps that's all I could do,” he said. “The pictures are as much a reflection of my own experience as they are of the people who are in the shot.”

DESCRIPTIONDavid Butow Schoolgirls sipped ceremonial tea in Kyoto, Japan.

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Pictures of the Day: Syria and Elsewhere

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Photos from Syria, Jordan, Egypt and China.

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Rugby Rehabilitation in an Argentine Prison

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After finishing an emotionally wrenching project on children with leukemia, Rosario Heer wanted to photograph something lighter. A chance meeting with Diego Claisse, a rugby coach, got her to thinking: Wouldn't it be nice to spend time taking pictures of rich kids tussling on the field at one of Buenos Aires's exclusive rugby clubs?

When she asked Mr. Claisse if she could go with him to the club, he agreed. But then he made an offhand comment: he also coached a rugby team composed of convicts.

“I wanted the jail!” Ms. Heer recalled. “I always get attracted to those kinds of stories. Why did he have to say that to me? I knew that if I was photographing the rich kids, I would have been wondering what was going on in the jail.”

So, before she took a single frame, her project went from looking at Argentina's elites to spending five months with felons serving time at the Unidad Penitenciaría de San Martín, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. The result is “Try,” a peek at the lives of Los Spartanos, men behind bars who find a measure of release, brotherhood and hope playing a rough-and-tumble sport that is more popular on the other side of the world than in soccer-mad Argentina.

DESCRIPTIONRosario Heer Santiago, 20, is one of the youngest members of the team. The oldest is 56.

Ms. Heer arrived at the prison last year with Mr. Claisse and Eduardo Oderigo, a lawyer who founded the club three years ago almost on a do-good impulse. She had no idea what she was getting into, though her first steps into open-air sections of the complex didn't seem so daunting - at first.

“I was a bit paralyzed,” she said. “The first part, I felt free, in a sense. But you start to feel trapped because everyone is looking at you, from the guards to the prisoners. And, I'm claustrophobic. It was not a great combination. Well, who told me to go to jail?”

That first day, she had a chance to present her project to the members of the rugby team, who for the last two years have lived in their own cellblock. The unit attracts those who want to play rugby, as well as prisoners who are sent there for good behavior and wind up helping the team. The cellblock has some comforts absent in other parts of the jail, like a television, video games and table tennis.

She said her proposal to photograph the team was received well, since the men wanted to show a different side of prison life. They knew that because of their crimes, the outside world would judge them as undesirable. But they saw in Ms. Heer a chance to humanize themselves and their situation.

Granted, the fact that they played rugby instead of soccer itself gave them a certain reputation among the other inmates.

“Rugby has a lot of contact, and to outsiders it looks like they are killing each other,” Ms. Heer said. “If you know how to play, it's not as hard as it seems. But from the outside, it looks like they are the rude boys of the jail, so no one gets near them.”

DESCRIPTIONRosario Heer Carlitos has been part of the team since it started. He wants his child to play rugby in the future.

Though she wanted to get close to the rugby players, Ms. Heer chose not to ask why they were in prison or even how long they were sentenced. She thought that kind of information would alter how she looked at them, or even scare her. If anything, the inmates took pains to be courteous around her, even scolding others who spit or swore.

The team practiced with their coaches, and in front of Ms. Heer, on Tuesday mornings. On Fridays, they practiced without Ms. Heer. Every three months, they played another team, and not always in jail - a judge sometimes allowed them to travel to a match.

The first game Ms. Heer photographed was between Los Spartanos and a team of judges and lawyers. No one on either side recognized one another.

“One of Los Spartanos asked if they let the judges win would they get early release,” she said. “It was a fun game. They were afraid of taking the ball away from the judges or lawyers.”

Games like this one were also opportunities to reconnect with friends and family, moments treasured by the prisoners. And as part of the game ritual, they shared snacks and conversation with their opponents afterward.

“The captain of Los Spartanos said it had been a long time since he felt as free as he had that day,” Ms. Heer said.

Another game, inside the walls of another prison, had a different tone. The men complained about unfair calls from referees who favored their opponents. Some were petulant, like unruly children, she said. Their coaches took the opportunity to teach Los Spartanos tolerance and restraint.

“ ‘On the field, you are seeing inmates,' ” a coach told them, according to Ms. Heer. “ ‘Once you get out, you are going back to your old neighborhood and see the people who put you in here.' It reminded them they were always going to have these encounters.”

Of the rugby-playing inmates she photographed, Ms. Heer said five had since been released. All five are still free.

“The coaches are doing this not so the prisoners can get out,” she said. “They do it so they won't come back.”

DESCRIPTIONRosario Heer Rugby, once considered a game for the elite, is increasingly popular in Argentina. It is the only sport played in the prison.

Ms. Heer's project came to our attention by way of FotoVisura.

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Pictures of the Day: Syria and Elsewhere

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Photos from Syria, Indonesia, the Philippines and Spain.

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Diving for the Winning Shot

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Jabin Botsford, 23, is a freelance photojournalist whose work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and Getty Images. Originally from West Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Botsford is studying photography and sociology at Western Kentucky University and is a staff photographer at the student newspaper, The College Heights Herald. He completed an internship with The Washington Post in 2012 and is now a photo intern at The New York Times.

His Turning Point conversation with Whitney Richardson has been edited.

Q.

What's happening in this image?

A.

I go to Western Kentucky University, and our basketball team tends to be very hit-or-miss. We hadn't done well in several years, and this was the Sun Belt Tournament in Hot Springs, Ark. At the time, we were ranked seventh out of 10 teams. I went for my student newspaper as a last-minute thing, so me and my friend went during spring break to photograph it. We thought we were going home in two days, but our team just kept winning. There was all of this buildup that we were not supposed to win, with a lot of close calls. We won the last game, barely, by like two points.

The woman's final was just before that, and I went out early to watch how it ended. I wanted to see what they would do if they won, just to get a better idea of what would happen. When they won, they immediately ran to the center of the court, and I figured the guys' game would end the same way. I was standing by the bench with my wide-angle lens ready. As soon as they won, I ran right to the center. The guy in my image was a senior, and it was his last game before graduation. He was the player to capture. I sprinted to the center and literally dove to the floor. I am inches away from him. It was an amazing moment for me.

Q.

How did capturing this image affect your work?

A.

I had a friend that was working at ZUMA Press. After the event, he told me he was interested in the images from the game if my photos were O.K. That night I signed a contract with ZUMA and my photo was on the wire. It got picked up on The Wall Street Journal. It ran small on their blog, but that was the first time I was in front of a larger audience. At that time, I had only been published in a smaller newspaper internship and for my school newspaper.

Q.

What was the response at school to the picture?

A.

We posted the image straight to the Web right after the game, just the photo because the reporters were still writing. A lot of people praised it. It kind of got my name out in school. People started recognizing me as Jabin, that photographer, or that guy who carries his camera around. My classmates are very supportive of each other; it was a lot of support from friends and family.

DESCRIPTIONSam Abell

Inspiration: Sam Abell
Image: Ken Rosman Ranch in Utica, Mont.

Q.

We recently featured this image in another Turning Point interview with Jared Soares. Why do you think it's such an inspiring image for budding journalists?

A.

In my first photojournalism class we had to pull the names of famous photojournalists out of the hat and we had to study them. I picked Sam Abell. I found this photo and it always stuck in my mind. I really hadn't gone far enough in my career to understand why it was good; I just knew that I liked it. That was until last year, when I heard Sam Abell speak. He spoke about this photo, and it completely changed the way I thought about what goes into a photo. He explained, yes, it is a layered photo, and it is what we all try to do as storytellers.

But then he said, “This photo is really more about the red bucket.”

When he said that, my head kind of exploded. He said that the red bucket was swinging back and forth in the frame, and he spoke about wanting this red bucket because it not only added color to the photo, but it also told something more. It makes me think more about what I have in my photos and more waiting for that thing to happen. Sam Abell is the master of layers, and that is still something that I try to understand and incorporate into my own work.

Q.

What would you say is the difference between what you saw in the image before you heard him speak and after?

A.

Before I heard him speak, to me, it was just this really beautiful image with all of these layers happening. After I heard him speak, it was still that, but he spoke about microcomposing, which is where you compose frames from the back forward. You then fit your subjects together in the frame. In this photo, the guy in the frame is perfectly placed between the guys with the cattle and the two guys in the front are getting ready to brand the cow. Everything leads to the back. Just that whole idea of microcomposing is a really small detail that I realized after I heard him speak. It made me rethink how I composed my frames and how shapes can fit together to better tell a story.

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