Flory Kolobe, surrounded by some of the 80 orphans in her program. Tsepong Counseling Centre was established in 2001 to raise HIV/ aids awareness in rural and urban areas. To provide counseling services, HIV testing at the Senkatana Clinic Centre.  To support identified orphan and vulnerable children. Since 2002 they have been taking care of double orphans from five areas in and around Maseru. © Steve Simon

Blue Earth currently sponsors about 30 photographic projects.  Over the years, different projects have run their course and moved forward on their own.  But that doesn’t mean they are any less important today than they were when Blue Earth first sponsored them.  This week we are pleased to highlight Steve Simon’s The Grandmother Spirit.

The idea of this project is to illuminate the determination, strength, resiliency, and inspiration of The African Grandmother: the heart, soul and hands of response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic there.

Revealing documentary moments of daily life, still lives, extreme close-ups, and landscapes will be integrated with portraits; strong, direct, with simple backdrop or background. These high resolution portraits will be displayed large, insuring these beautiful, quiet people who often go unnoticed will be seen.

The Grandmother Spirit will capture the universal, inexorable human connection between the Grandmothers and the orphans they are raising.

“We almost never think of the grandmothers, except in passing. Yet they are emerging as the unheralded heroes of the continent. They’re poor, they’re old; they live with the inconsolable anguish of having buried their own adult children. They’re tired, they’re hungry, and yet they’re fast becoming the true, resilient, magnificent hearts of the struggle of the continent.” - Stephen Lewis, United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa

Visit Simon’s project gallery for more photos.

- Bart J. Cannon, Executive Director

The latest edition of The World Meteorological Organization’s Bulletin features an article by Blue Earth project photographer Gary Braasch, including many new images from his World View of Global Warming project.  As Gary explains, this publication is part of the organization’s effort to encourage “weather agencies and scientists to strengthen their communication with the public by using powerful photography and direct accounts of climate science and events.”

Check out his article and a gallery of images online, and download a free PDF of the WMO’s Bulletin.

- Bart J. Cannon, Executive Director

Recently, Blue Earth project photographer Benj Drummond and Sara Joy Steele were in Tanzania to participate in a training for Conservation International’s Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring project.   They provide a brief description of the trip in an article on their blog and a gallery of images from the meeting as well as from an excursion to the Udzungwa National Park.

- Bart J. Cannon, Executive Director

Aaron Huey, member of the Blue Earth Board of Directors, has been awarded a prestigious John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. The fellowship program tries to “foster journalistic innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership” by helping individual applicants “to pursue and test their ideas for improving the quality of news and information reaching the public.”

Our congratulations to Aaron from all of us here at Blue Earth!

Happy, an infant from the Kyagurilo Group in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, stares at tourists through the underbrush. The reality facing conservation planners and managers is that as long as people and gorillas compete for resources, if the resource needs of the local people are not accounted for; those people will find a way to meet their resource needs, regardless of the legal or moral implications. Conservation without morality and social justice is unsustainable. The onus is on us to find and achieve that balance. Bwindi Impenetrable National Park - Uganda.  © Gene Eckhart

Once again, we are happy to highlight another of our sponsored projects - this week it’s Gene Eckhart’s Mountain Gorillas… and People. Gene is a freelance photographer and writer currently living in the United States. He has worked throughout the world with the primary focus of his field work being environmental and cultural studies, the documentation of these remote areas, the people and the animals that inhabit them.  His intent is to use the power of photography and information to influence how people think in order to inspire others and affect meaningful change. His focus for the last five years has been on understanding the linkages\interplay between mountain gorillas and people, and promoting a broader understanding of why they matter.

This project is designed primarily to promote mountain gorilla conservation, to educate lay people (in Africa and around the world), and to influence policy in a meaningful way, both on the ground in central African and in donor countries around the world. This will be done by using photography, information and exhibition as tools that can educate broader lay audiences in ways that traditional scientific materials and publications often don’t, and in avenues and venues where images and information important to understanding the issues are not generally accessible to the larger lay communities. Mountain Gorilla conservation is a text book example of how the existence of humans in, or on the edge of sensitive animal habitat impacts both humans and critically endangered species. This program highlights the need for comprehensive approaches, and cross disciplinary conservation planning and management practices that include social justice for the people involved in order to make them ultimately sustainable.

Visit his project gallery for more photos.

- Bart J. Cannon, Executive Director

Ever the dedicated photojournalist, the indefatigable Gary Braasch has been hard at work writing, taking new photos, documenting the effects of global warming, and promoting public education.  Updates from his latest newsletter include…

More images and ideas - including climate change effects, science and solutions in the Pacific region:

• In Tuvalu and Kiribati, small scale solar energy works for families and public spaces.
• In Hawaii, scientists unravel the relationship among forests, carbon, and rising temperature.
• LIfe, people and culture in new portfolios on Braasch Photography, including Kiribati

Recent and upcoming image publications and events:

• Gary Braasch’s environmental photography was featured in The Bund, Chinese news and photo magazine. The essay on CO2 monitoring was picked up by the excellent website CO2 Now. Current CO2 level is above 392 ppm.
• Photos of eroding American coastlines are central to the redesigned Koshland Science Museum, National Academy of Science, opening soon.
• For the upcoming World Meteorological Organization Bulletin, an eleven-page portfolio and article on the urgency of communicating weather and climate events - more on this to come.
• I will be teaching at the Maine Media Workshops in early July. Excellent for aspiring professionals and leaders in environmental NGOs. Also excellent for NGOs, teachers, and “every citizen” (as Al Gore said).
• My book Earth Under Fire is now available as an e-book.

Keep up to date with Gary’s ongoing projects with updates here on the Blue Earth blog and on his own website World View of Global Warming.

- Bart J. Cannon, Executive Director

Exiled To Nowhere - Discriminatory citizenship laws imposed by the Burmese government have systematically stripped over one million Rohingya in the Rakhine state of western Burma of their citizenship. Blind in one eye after being beaten in the head during forced labor, the man fled from Burma in the mid 1990’s and is one of an estimated 100,000 stateless Rohingya now living in the southern part of neighboring Bangladesh. © Greg Constantine

It has been another busy year for Blue Earth project photographer Greg Constantine traveling to continue work on his project Nowhere People, documenting the daily lives of persons coping with statelessness across the globe.  His most recent exhibit “Kenya’s Nubians: Then Now,” which was shown at HOST Gallery in London and at The Go Down Arts Centre in Nairobi, has just been shortlisted in the Photojournalism category of the Amnesty International Media Awards in the UK.

Our congratulations to Greg! In case you missed it earlier, read Greg’s latest report from the field.

- Bart J. Cannon, Executive Director

NYPH’11 – Portfolio Reviews
Friday, May 13 and Saturday, May 14, 2011
Two review sessions daily: 10:00am - 1:00pm & 2:30pm - 5:30pm

Get your portfolio in the hands of some of the world’s most renowned photographers, curators, artist reps, photo agents, and editors. Whether you are looking for a book publisher, a fine art gallery to represent you, or a museum to exhibit your work, the New York Photo Festival Portfolio Reviews provide one-on-one critiques of your work with professionals who are at the top of their game.