Canon 7D - 16-35 L lens - ISO200 - f6.3 - 1/1250sec

I recently had the opportunity to meet and photograph one of China’s leading media women, Ms. Mei Yan of Viacom China. On assignment for the Brazilian magazine, Serafina, I met and photographed Mei Yan who runs MTV, amongst other media entities, at her office in central Beijing. I thought I would post a couple of the images from the afternoon here and give a small insight into the shoot.

The image above is the one that the magazine chose to run last weekend. You can see that this image was shot through a window, with Mei Yan standing on the inside while I stood outside. I was trying to get an interesting shot of her and I noticed that the harsh afternoon sunlight was creating some really interesting reflections. I asked Mei Yan to stand inside, making sure that the sunlight was hitting her face. I then proceeded to photograph her from the outside, making sure that I was getting her face against the black of the building. As the light was quite strong, I was under-exposing my a stop or two, to make sure her face wasn’t too overexposed.

Canon 7D - 16-35 L lens - ISO 200 - f9 - 1/160sec

The second shot was a little bit more straightforward however I again tried to use the harsh light and shadows to make the image a little more interesting. I under-exposed the image again to make the shadows very dark, almost black. As I was shooting, Mei Yan and I were talking and joking which meant I was able to get a very natural image of her smiling. I tried to balance to photo and make it a little bit more interesting by waiting for the cleaner to pass by on the left and place the plant on the opposite side. Altogether I was quite satisfied with this image and how we got a little bit of luck to make the portrait unique.

To learn more about Mei Yan, check out the article “A Censor’s Daughter Changes the System” on the Daily Best website.

I am delighted to announce here on my blog that this month’s issue of National Geographic China contains a 12-page essay of my images and text, about my Pulitzer Center-sponsored work on “China’s Growing Sands”. This is a wonderful opportunity to reach out to a new audience in China and bring wider attention to the issue of desertification, which is gripping the north of the nation.

I considered just posting photographs of the layout here as a traditional tearsheet display, but then I thought it would be more fun to create a short video to showcase the layout. Also, this story only appears in the Chinese edition of National Geographic this month, so I wanted those not based in China to be able to see the excellent layout, as if you were flicking through yourself.

Please click on the video above to begin and thumb-through the magazine article with me on Vimeo. If you prefer YouTube, please go here.

If you are in China now, or over the coming few weeks, please pick up a copy. You should be able to buy it on most newsstands across the country.

Always happy to hear your thoughts. What do you think? Do you like the spread?

Greenpeace China

Recently, I was approached by Greenpeace China do write a short article for their website about my work on desertification in China for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. This has been a great chance to reach out to Greenpeace’s audience and inform them about the work that I have been doing on this subject. You can see the article here, or scroll down to read the text as it was published.

Beijing, China — China’s poverty-stricken northwest is swathed in sand. The deserts are creeping over ever larger areas, in part because of weather changes linked to climate change. Sean Gallagher a young British photographer travelled to Ningxia to document China’s growing sands.

“You can smell a sandstorm. As I woke this morning, my throat was drier than normal and the smell of dust and sand had crept into my room whilst I was sleeping. I opened my curtains expecting to see the Yellow River out of my window but all I could see was a haze of yellow light.” Sean Gallagher. Diary entry. April, 2009.

Greenpeace China Front Page

The sandstorm that descended on me that day was the most visually arresting sight I had seen during my time in China. Blocking out the sun, casting a yellow/orange light on the earth and bringing life to a standstill, I was experiencing something that was strangely unnerving. The underlying cause would prove to be even more so.

I was in a place called Shapotou, in the province of Ningxia. Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region is a small province lying in Loess highlands of north-central China. Dry and desert-like, it is China’s poorest province and is the least visited by outsiders. It was the second of my stops on a 4000km journey across China documenting the effects of desertification on the north and west of the country for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. It was a journey that would take me to a city of environmental refugees, visit degraded grasslands, abandoned cities, desert theme parks and disappearing oases.

So what is desertification? The desertification of north and western China is arguably the most under-reported environmental crisis facing China today and is little understood outside the circles of NGOs and groups of scientists who are desperately fighting against it.

Desertification is the gradual transformation of arable and/or habitable land into desert, usually caused by local and global climate change and more recently in China, fuelled by the destructive use of land in the forms of over-grazing, increased population, water mis-management and outdated farming methods. As land becomes degraded, the spring winds of northern-central China pick up sand and dust, hurling into the air creating vast sandstorms which batter the region.

Each year, desertification and drought account for US$42 billion loss in food productivity worldwide. In China, approximately 20% of land is now classified as desert or arid, and desertification is adversely affecting the lives of over 400 million people in China alone.

“Desertification is one of the most serious threats facing humanity.  It is a global problem, affecting one fifth of the world’s population in more than 100 countries”, stated former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a message on World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought in 2006. “If we don’t take action, current trends suggest that by 2020 an estimated 60 million people could move from desertified areas of sub-Saharan Africa towards North Africa and Europe, and that worldwide, 135 million people could be placed at risk of being uprooted.”

]]> http://gallagher-photo.com/blog/2010/02/10/chinas-growing-sands-on-greenpeace-china/feed/ 0 http://gallagher-photo.com/blog/2009/12/11/new-york-times-socialdocumentary-net/ http://gallagher-photo.com/blog/2009/12/11/new-york-times-socialdocumentary-net/#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:56:14 +0000 Sean Gallagher http://gallagher-photo.com/blog/?p=1537

New York Times' Lens Blog

A couple of online publications this week that I’d like to share with you this week.

NYT

The first one was on the New York Times’ Lens Blog which appeared on their site on Tuesday. James Estrin of the NYT wrote a very nice piece on me and my work on ‘China’s Growing Sands for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and ran a gallery of 18 images to go with it. I’m really happy that the work has found this online platform and will reach out to so many people. Click on the image above to take you to the article.

bit.yl

It’s hard to know how much ‘reach’ work gets when it is published online. Of course I use things such as Google Analytics to track hits to my website and blog, but how do you track social networks passing on links about your work? Well, one of the tools I use is this website bit.yl This site allows you to shorten your links into handier bite-size lengths, then track them, in terms of numbers of clicks. Using this, I know that just through Twitter the link was viewed over 300 times. A modest amount, but that is another 300 people viewing the work, on top of those through Pulitzer, my blog, you tube etc. etc. over the past few months.

Socialdocumentary.net

Also this week, the website Socialdocumentray.net published a series of my pictures on the story of homeless communties in Mongolia. This body of work is in the pool of entries for the “Crisis and Opportunity: Documenting the Global Recession’ Competition. If you like the story, please help spread the word and awareness of this issue.

Phoenix Weekly - Hong Kong

One of my biggest challenges working in China over the past few years has been making inroads into the Chinese press. Notorious for the control that is placed upon the industry by the state, it is hard for foreign reporters to contemplate working under such restrictions that see their work scrutinized so closely and possibly edited accordingly.

Phoenix Weekly - Hong Kong

Recently, I have started to have more and more work appear in the Chinese press, with relatively little interference. By far the most popular story for garnering interest from the Chinese press has been my work on the issue of desertification in China. Many editors and reporters who have contacted me seem fascinated that  a non-Chinese that is reporting this issue, providing a new and fresh visual representation of the issue. Surprisingly also is that many editors have been in contact with me state that the fact they know I have been in China for a number of years, adds to the ‘credibility’ of my work and makes them trust me and it more.

City Construction - Beijing

In this post I have included some tearsheets of my desertification work appearing in two recent magazines, Phoenix Weekly, the popular Hong Kong based current affairs magazine and in City Construction, a Beijing-based publication that falls into the hands of many of the city’s engineers, scientists and government workers.

City Construction - Beijing

One of may main goals has been not to just report issues in China to the non-Chinese communities both in Europe, America etc. but also to the Chinese people themselves. It is of paramount importance that I reach out to them so that I can spread the word within China itself, as it is the Chinese people themselves who are going to combat the issue. By putting my work out there in Chinese publications, I hope that I can do my part to raise awareness of this desperately under-reported issue.

TIME Magazine Tearsheet | North Korea

It has been a whirlwind couple of weeks for me as I near the end of a 2-week trip to the US, which has involved talks at Universities, NGOs, an Emmy party, lots of meetings and pounding the streets of New York with my portfolio in hand.

So, when I checked my email the other day, I got a pleasant surprise when I learnt that one of my recently taken North Korea pictures was chosen to run in this week’s TIME Magazine. I haven’t had a picture in TIME before, so I am obviously very happy. It’s an image taken in Pyongyang, outside the mausoleum which houses the embalmed body of the former North Korean Leader, Kim Il-Sung. Technically he is still the leader, as he was given the title of ‘Eternal Leader’ upon his death, I believe. 

The issue with this photo runs tomorrow (or today, depending on your timezone). Go pick up a copy!

My Image on the front page of Canada's national newspaper yesterday.

I got a surprise yesterday evening when I got a text from a colleague telling me that one of my photos had run on the front page of Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail. Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been contributing the visuals from China quite a lot to the Globe and Mail recently. They are a great team to work with and I was delighted to see that they had decided to run my photo of Mao Zedong’s personal photographer Hou Bo, taken at her home in Beijing, as part of the coverage of China’s 60th birthday.

If you missed my last post about this assignment and meeting this remarkable photographer, please head here to read it.

Hangzhou. Flags fly in the city. 2009

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Here in Beijing, Tiananmen Square has become awash with parades, both military and civilian, as the populace celebrates Mao Zedong’s founding declaration, exactly 60 years ago here in China’s capital.

The build up to this event has been quite something. Beijing has come to a standstill at regular intervals over the past couple of weeks as dry-runs of today’s celebrations have taken place. Tanks have once again graced the streets of Beijing, fighter jets have zipped above the city and and army of yellow-shirted volunteers have descended on every street corner throughout the city.

In the build-up to this anniversary, I have been on assignment for Canada’s Globe and Mail, covering various facets of the country’s preparations and photographing various people who have a close connection to what the country has gone through in the last 60 years.

Two weeks ago, myself and the Globe and Mail’s Mark Mackinnon headed to the city of Hangzhou, which lies just west of Shanghai. We visited this city as it has been deemed to be one of the city’s in China that has changed the most since Mao’s declaration in 1949. Hangzhou is a pleasant city, sitting next to the beautiful West Lake which dominates the center of the town. When we were there celebrations were in full swing. Chinese flags were everywhere, special ‘pillars’ has been erected next to roads to remind passing motorists of the anniversary, and people sported t-shirts with slogans celebrating the upcoming day.

Hangzhou. Father Bao Lu, in his church in central Hangzhou. 2009

Whilst witnessing the obvious fervor and excitement surrounding the 60th birthday party, we also spoke to people who offered us much more sobering accounts of where China had come from in the past six decades, offering us thoughts and memories that seem to have been ‘swept under the carpet’ for most. Bao Lu, for example, is a priest that we visited in Hangzhou. He recounted stories of how all religions were prohibited during the Cultural Revolution and how his church was commandeered by the local police to be turned into a temporary prison. Yu Hua, a controversial author who is openly critical of the country’s failings during its early development, spoke to us in Beijing and told us of his worries for China’s social future.

One of the most interesting people we met for me however, was an 85 year-old lady called Hou Bo. This remarkable lady was Mao Zedong’s personal photographer before and during his rise to power to lead China. She is famous most famous here because of an iconic image she took of Mao, announcing the founding of China to the masses on October 1st 1949. She recounted that standing just a couple of feet away from Mao, she cautiously snapped away with only 8 rolls of film in her pocket. When questioned about whether she remembered the exact moment taking the picture, she replied she was more worried about falling off the balcony she was on, as she was pressed against it in order to get the wide shot of Mao.

Photographer Hou Bo in her home in Beijing. 2009

Flicking through her book of black & white images, I was stunned to see that this lady had been by Mao’s side through everything. Through the long march, the continuous fighting with the nationalists, through the founding of China and beyond. I was looking at quite epic photography and I had previously never heard of her. At a time when Henri Cartier-Bresson was flitting the streets of Paris searching for his decisive moments and Robert Capa was on the beaches of Normandy, Hou Bo was creating equally amazing work in China. You can view more images on Hou Bo here.

Needless to say, this has been another eye-opening assignment. A unique chance to see what China has become (or is becoming) and to listen to the voices of some of the people who have experienced the change first hand. To see the video that Mark, Mark’s assistant Yu Mei and I produced on this story please go here to the Globe & Mail’s website.

I just noticed today that I haven’t had a new post up for 10 days! Wow. I have been quite busy of late, having just got back from a shoot in the Chinese city of Hangzhou where I teamed up again with the Globe & Mail’s Mark Mackinnon for a new story. More on that to come in later posts.

A lot of my work appeared online in various blogs and magazines this week, which was great.

Burn Magazine Logo

On David Alan Harvey’s magazine, Burn, he published a short selection of my images that I took from the recent trip I took to North Korea. David edited these images himself actually, sequencing them also in the way he saw best fit. If you read the dialogue, he offers a few insights into how he went about this and his thoughts on editing. As this work is quite new to me, I was more than happy for David to help me create a voice for this work. To see what he came up with, go here.

Resolve Logo

Also, over on the liveBooks’ blog RESOLVE (for whom I am a regular contributor) my final post about some of my experiences photographing desertification for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, went up this week. If you missed some my earlier writings for RESOLVE, please go here, here and here to see them.

Duckrabbit Logo

Finally and by no means least, the excellent multimedia website duckrabbit featured a short highlight of some of my recent work focusing on both my desertification work and that in North Korea.

I can’t encourage you enough to go and check out all three of the above outlets. They are all very exciting venues for photography online at the moment.

As some of you may already know, last week I was on assignment in North Korea. Forgive me for not giving a hint of this exciting assignment beforehand, however myself and Mark MacKinnon from Canada’s Globe & Mail, for whom I was working, wanted to try and keep this as quiet as possible until (a) we made it out safely and (b) the work was first published on the G&M website.

Well, we are now back in Beijing and are happy to show the first of three videos shot from the trip. This is the first video I have ever shot, all done on a very touristy camcorder as not to raise suspicions, but I’m very happy with the results, especially considering the conditions we were working under i.e. being watched at all times by our government minders.

Needless to say, this was the most eye-opening photo-assignment and traveling experience I have ever had and possibly the most nerve-wracking. Fresh off the back of the story of Euna Lee and Laura Lin, American journalists who were caught crossing the China-North Korea border, being sentenced to over 10 years in a labour camp and then subsequently being ‘rescued’ by Bill Clinton, Mark and I were obviously a little nervous about heading into the country. Would Bill come and rescue us too if something went wrong?!

I will be posting plenty more about our trip into North Korea, however please sit and enjoy the first installment of videos from the ‘Hermit Kingdom’. To read Mark’s excellent articles and diary entries from the trip please go here and to see more of my images from the trip, please go here. Scroll through day-by-day to see the images from each day in chronological order.

*Update* 09/09/09 To view video #2 “The Arirang Mass Games”, please go here and the view video #3, “On the North Korea/China border”, please go here.