A world of hurt

Vlad Sokhin – declared Photographer of the Year by the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand and OnAsia magazine – has his amazing shots of the last of the Dani hilltribe traditionalists on view at the club this month.
Included is the picture that earned Sokhin the acclaim, showing a naked tribesman at an automated-teller machine. It was deemed the best of more than 3,000 images from 374 photographers in a photojournalism competition.
The Dani, who live in the Baliem Valley in West Papua, Indonesia, were little removed from their Stone Age lifestyle when mainland Indonesians began settling in their area in 1969, bringing the trappings of modern life. Only in villages around the primary town of Wamena do the Dani cling to their traditions – albeit no longer cannibalism.
Around Wamena the foreign tourists pay the tribesmen for handmade crafts and the right to snap their pictures. Village chiefs still wear penis sheaths while banking their earnings.
Thus Sokhin, a Russian-Portuguese based in Sydney, Australia, found 67-year-old Asike Halu making a deposit at the ATM. Halu charges tourists between 50 US cents and $1 per snapshot and also serves as a guide, earning $10 to $60 a day.
Judges in the contest were also struck by Sokhin’s reportage on violence against women in Papua New Guinea, including group attacks on accused “sorcerers” and rape and domestic violence that routinely goes unpunished.
Sokhin’s extensive reportage in a challenging environment represented to the judges the highest ideals of photojournalism, shedding light on an issue of global significance. Sokhin has chronicled the so-called “cargo cults” in Melanesia as well.
The competition was nevertheless dominated by coverage of politics and violence in Myanmar and Bangladesh. Agence France-Presse photographer Munir uz Zaman won in the spot-news category with an emotion-charged shot of Muslim Rohingya trying to cross the Naf River into Bangladesh to escape sectarian violence in Myanmar.
Christophe Archambault, also of AFP, earned an honourable mention in spot news with a picture of Aung San Suu Kyi passing through a crowd of supporters at a political rally during her campaign last year. Another honourable mention went to Kauser Haider for a heart-breaking shot of a Bangladeshi family grieving over the body of a toddler killed in a landslide, an all-too-frequent occurrence.
Alex Hofford of Greenpeace was named Best Feature Photographer for documenting the dangerous fishing method called pa-aling in and around the Philippines. One image shows a diver manipulating a tuna net while breathing through a plastic air hose connected to a rusty compressor onboard his boat. Fatal injury and death result regularly.
Akhlas Uddin won an honorable mention in the features category for his portrait of a Bangladeshi day labourer who sorts plastic bottles in a recycling facility. She earns around Bt40 to Bt60 a day and gets to keep any leftover cooking oil from the bottles.
Chiang Mai photographer James Robert Fuller’s photo essay “Burma to Buffalo: Resettled to the USA” won in the Migration Issues category. It was a long-term project tracking an ethnic Karen family resettling in Buffalo, New York. They were among 84,000 refugees from Burma who moved to the US from 2007 through 2011.
And Japan’s Kazuhiko Matsumura had the Best Photo Essay, “Subtle Beauty”, about the maiko and geiko who entertain mainly rich men in Kyoto. Elegant, polite, beautiful and highly trained, the girls and women live in their own communities, supervised by a madam.
  MUCH TO SEE
n See the winning photos at the Foreign Correspondents Club until April 27. Get the details at www.FCCThai.com.