Six years ago, Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls. Where are they now? The 'Chibok girls’ kidnapping sparked international outrage. More than a hundred are still missing. Today the survivors are trying to rebuild their lives. Bénédicte Kurzen was on assignment for National Geographic
Bénédicte Kurzen / NOOR
Kadir van Lohuizen is a 2020 Columbia Journalism School's visiting fellow and will be screening and talking about his work After Us The Deluge, followed by a Q&A at the school, Thursday, February 27th, at 6pm.
Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR
"After Us The Deluge" looks at the human consequences of the rising sea level. Due to the climate crisis, the glaciers all over the world are retreating and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are melting at an alarming pace. The future human cost of rising sea levels are dramatic. The entire country of Kiribati, for example, will have to relocate, while it is estimated that in Bangladesh about 50 million people will need to move from the delta region by 2050. Nobody knows where they will go. The east coast of the USA is experiencing sea level rise which is three-times higher than the global average. It is predicted that major centres such as the Miami beach area will need to be evacuated by 2060.
"After Us The Deluge" provides vivid visual coverage of how the climate crisis is already affecting places where people live, Greenland with its melting glaciers, Kiribati, Fiji, the Carteret islands in Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh, the Guna Yala archipelago in Panama, the United Kingdom, Jakarta, the Marshall islands, the Netherlands and the United States.
Kadir van Lohuizen will be giving a keynote lecture at Princeton University's Humanities Council, on February 19th.
Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR
The first thing you miss once a loved one has passed away is their voice. In 2016, Pep Bonet recorded Stanley Greene talk about his life, his experiences working as a photographer, but also his thoughts and vision about our world.
On Valentine’s Day, but also Stanley’s birthday, we’d like to share with you all what he defined as Love.
Stanley Greene / NOOR
For DeVolkskrant, Yuri Kozyrev photographed the polar town of Pevek, home to the Akademik Lomonosov, the first floating nuclear power plant in the world. Russian President Putin has ordered a whole series of floating power stations to support Russia's expansion into the Arctic.
Women Take A New Lead In Talmud Study In Israel
Tanya Habjouqa captured the custom called Daf Yomi, Hebrew for "daily page," which involves reading a page a day of the Talmud. Orthodox women in Israel held their own large-scale Talmud celebration for the first time this year.
As of 2018, it was estimated that the Chinese authorities may have detained hundreds of thousands of Muslim Chinese Uyghurs in so-called "reeducation camps". Most people in the camps have never been charged with crimes and have no legal avenues to challenge their detentions. Often, their only crime is being Muslim, human rights groups say, adding that many Uighurs have been labeled as extremists simply for practicing their religion.
Yuri Kozyrev portrayed the Chinese Uyghurs that managed to flee to countries bordering the Xinjiang province.
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR
As part of NOOR's year long collaboration with the Musée de la Photographie, Nina Berman and Jon Lowenstein will be showing their respective films The Triumph of the Shill and Lincoln's Promise in the museum's "Boite Noir", from January 25th to May 5th
From her series “Banned Beauty”
Egyptian visual researcher Heba Khamis' work concentrates on the sensitive, tabooed, social issues related to the body. In 2018 and 2019, her projects were awarded at the World Press Photo prize. Her work has been recognised as well with other international awards including the PHMuseum grant and the Ian Parry Scholarship award.
After graduating with a bachelor in painting, Heba Khamis had a career shift and worked as a photojournalist, covering the two revolutions in Egypt and it's aftermath. Currently, she is working on the topics of breast ironing in Cameroon, and transgenders in Egypt. Her latest series "Black Bird" uncovers stories of gay prostitution among straight refugees in Germany.
Through developing her storytelling visual language, she considers herself as a visual researcher after having working as a photojournalist, documentary photographer, and now as a storyteller. She carries the ethics of traditional documentary form with her, but believes the need to care further about the subjects while telling their stories. Beyond her usual photographic approach, she adds different elements and mediums belonging to the subjects to her stories.
Recently, she has been interested in art therapy, where she would like to involve the protagonists more, giving them the chance to express themselves and interact in telling their own story, by adding their drawings alongside her photographs.
Heba Khamis is based between Alexandria, Egypt and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
From her series “Black Birds”
On joining the collective, Heba Khamis shares: "After many years of walking in this world and industry independently, today I am glad to part of a team of 18 individuals from all over the globe (14 photographers and 4 office staff) with different perspectives on life, to walk in hand with. We follow the same passion for storytelling and ethics . By joining the NOOR family, I believe we will inspire and feed from each other, deepening our understanding in telling meaningful stories. We will help each other to reach out and tell people’s stories that need to be told, and to share them with all those waiting to hear."
"It is a great pride that Heba joins NOOR. Her work, in addition to being visually fascinating, fills us with deep compassion for others. Her respectful approach is important and necessary. With Heba joining our collective supports further our mission and our will to tell, witness, and document issues of our time," shares NOOR Managing Director Clement Saccomani.
NOOR Author Tanya Habjouqa shares: "I had been following the work of Heba Khamis for years, with a curiosity for who this photographer was who seamlessly blended poetics and some of the more darker aspects of socio-politics and humanity. The work was brilliant, no doubt, but what took me even more aback was listening to her speech when she received her first World Press Photo award for Banned Beauty.
"She, of course, referenced to girls and women who let her into their lives so intimately, but mentioned her recently deceased father, reflecting how to make quality work , it can come at a personal cost. She had not made it back in time from on assignment to say a proper good by to her father before he passed. There was not a dry eye in the place, and Heba has that affect. In person, and in her work. A kindness and soulful quiet. That rare breed of humble. And then she did it again, a consecutive World Press Photo…from diverse locations that are not close to her home or reality, but again…so intimately and respectfully she captures it.
"She is not a one trick pony—but will continue to surprise and evolve and question our medium. And elevate the bar for all of us. An honor to have Heba in our NOOR Family."
The Calabar Carnival festival starts every 1st of December and ends on the 31st of December in Nigeria and considered the cleanest, friendliest and best maintained state capital in the whole country. This year, NOOR photographers Benedicte Kurzen and Sanne De Wilde covered the event which had as a theme "Africanism".
Bénédicte Kurzen and Sanne De WIlde / NOOR
