Red Woman, Kampala Boxing Club

This woman worked at a boxing gym I photographed at in Uganda. Her job was to cook meals and mop the sweat and blood from the floor and walls. Every time I went into the Kampala Boxing Club, I would sit next to her. We never exchanged words. And she never refused to have her photograph made – but she knew I was there, observing her. I got her to smile only once.

Tashkumyr

The coal mining industry has many facets. I spent a great deal of time photographing the families of people who sort through coal dust to find chunks of usable coal to put in a sack and sell. The dust piles are mountain-sized and trucks come twice a day to dump more coal onto the piles. Woman, children and laid-off miners sort through the dust and fill fifty kilo bags with usable coal chunks. A family can usually can fill two bags in a day, each bag sells for about $3.50. 

Agadez, Niger

I arrived in Niger a week early for an assignment chronicling the effects of the drought. I traveled North, from Niamey, to the famous city, Agadez, and walked the streets as the sun was setting. I framed up the Mosque in my camera and waited for people to walk through the frame. I never took the camera away from my face, I simply pressed the shutter each time something or someone interesting walked through the frame. This is a single exposure from the three rolls of film I shot that afternoon. 

Child Coal Miners

Kyrgyzstan. For several weeks I climbed up into the Lager hills outside of Kokjongok and photographed the coal miners. The Soviet coal mines closed and since then miners have tunneled holes into the side of the mountain and picked out chunks of coal and brought it down the mountain in sacks on the backs of mules. Many of the miners were no more than twelve years old. One old miner told me that about a hundred and twenty miners work on the hill and each year about ten die. The day I made this photograph, it was spitting down snow and the narrow trail was mud. I was worried I would slip and fall off the edge of the mountain. Kokjongok was one of the most dangerous environments I had ever photographed. 

Migrant Family

In a minority corner of Beijing, there lives a sixteen-year-old girl named Hu Yan. When Hu Yan was a baby her father died in a coal mining accident and her mother now works in another part of the country and can only come home every two weeks, leaving her and her brother, Hu Bing, left alone to take care of themselves. I met Hu Yan at school and I photographed her making scrambled eggs and rice at home for lunch. They eat at home because the combined costs of their school lunches is eighty-cents and their mother only earns three-dollars a day.

Great Wall

The Great Wall is one of those experiences similar to seeing the Eiffel Tower and the Grand Canyon - it was not a disappointment. We went beyond the perimeters and hiked in a less trafficked area. Then we went back to where the tourists were and took the Alpine toboggan down the mountain. The hike was a good workout for the villages we'll have to hike to in the next week - seven hours at 13,000 feet.