USA : THE CRESCENT
Rochester, NY, USA
Several police officers search a house for an armed suspect.
The area of Rochester, New York, USA, where these pictures were taken is part of the so-called ‘Crescent’, a moon-shaped area that runs across several city neighborhoods. Crime rates here are significantly higher than the rest of Rochester. The Crescent is home to 27 percent of the city’s residents and 80 percent of the city’s homicides. The causes of the burst of violence include the lagging upstate economy, a steady migration of residents to the suburbs, and a growing number of abandoned houses prone to become centers of drug sales and use. Rochester also has a school system that performs poorly. People inside the Crescent experience those problems in greater concentration.
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Syrie : AIDA
Idib, Syria
Aida cries while recovering from severe injuries she received when her house was shelled by the Syrian Army. Her husband and two children were fatally wounded during the shelling.
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GAZA BURIAL
Gaza City, Palestinian Territories
Two-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and his older brother Muhammad were killed when their house was destroyed by an Israeli missile strike. Their father Fouad was also killed and their mother was put in intensive care. Fouad’s brothers carry his children to the mosque for the burial ceremony as his body is carried behind on a stretcher.
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Japon : AFTER THE WAVE
Ishinomaki, Japan
People walk down a road in a neighborhood ravaged by the tsunami.
One year later, areas of Japan most impacted by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that left 15,848 dead and 3,305 missing, continue to struggle. Thousands of people remain living in temporary dwellings. The government faces an uphill battle with the need to dispose of rubble as it works to rebuild economies and livelihoods.
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Kenya : AT THE DANDORA DUMP
Nairobi, Kenya
Pausing in the rain, a woman working as a trash picker at the 30-acre dump, which literally spills into households of one million people living in nearby slums, wishes she had more time to look at the books she comes across. She even likes the industrial parts catalogs. “It gives me something else to do in the day besides picking [trash],” she said.
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Somalie : I JUST WANT TO DUNK
Mogadishu, Somalia
Suweys at her mother’s home, four kilometers from the center of Mogadishu.
In Mogadishu, the war-torn capital of Somalia, young women risk their lives to play basketball. Suweys, the 19-year-old captain of a women’s basketball team, and her friends defy radical Islamist views on women’s rights. They have received many death threats from not only al-Shabaab militias and radical Islamists, but some male members of their own families. » I just want to dunk, » said Suweys. It is on the basketball court she feels happiest. « Basketball makes me forget all my problems.”
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Inde : SCHOOL FOR LESS FORTUNATE
New Delhi, India
Every morning, children from nearby slums arrive in small groups, barefoot and carrying mats and brooms and start cleaning a portion of a land under a metro rail bridge, which will be their school for the rest of the morning. Rajesh Kumar Sharma, along with his friend, founded the free school for underprivileged children under a metro bridge a year ago. He teaches at least 45 children every day. Sharma, a 40-year-old father of three from Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, was forced to drop out of college in his third year due to financial difficulties. He didn’t want other children to face the same difficulties, so he decided to start the free school. He persuaded local laborers and farmers to allow their children to attend his school instead of working to add to the family income. He prepares these children for admission to government schools and hopes to equip them with the tools necessary to overcome their poverty. Millions of dollars are given to fund the education of poor children in India, however it often doesn’t reach them because of corruption and arduous administrative procedures.
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Brésil : PACIFIED FAVELA
The favelas in Rio de Janeiro, slums where drugs and guns are a daily reality, are often separated by only one street from the richest and most exclusive areas of the city. With the World Cup coming to Rio in 2014, and the Olympics in 2016, politicians are trying to clean up and pacify the favelas. New roads are being built, children play, and mothers take their children to school. Yet there remains an abundance of drugs and alcohol, conflicts between locals and the pacification police, and people who wish things would return to the way they used to be. What will happen when the big events have passed?
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Israel : PEPPER SPRAY
Jerusalem, Israel
Israeli border officers pepper spray an injured Palestinian protester during clashes on Land Day outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israeli security forces fired rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades to break up groups of Palestinian protestors when annual Land Day rallies turned violent. Land Day commemorates the death of six Arabs, killed by security forces in 1976 during protests against government plans to confiscate land in northern Israel’s Galilee region.
EL SALVADOR : GANGS
San Salvador, El Salvador
An anti-gang police unit searches for gang members. Many in El Salvador remain skeptical that the truce will stick, noting that young men in poor neighborhoods lack alternatives and there is no easy way to lure them off the streets.
They had faced off many times before, on the streets, with guns in their hands. But when top leaders of two of the hemisphere’s most violent street gangs sat across from one another in the stifling air of a maximum security prison, the encounter had a very different aim: peace. With a military chaplain and a former lawmaker officiating, the imprisoned gang leaders held a moment of silence for the thousands of people their street armies had killed. After a few more meetings — and the government’s concession to transfer 30 of the leaders to less-restrictive conditions — they shook hands on a pact to put an end to the killings. The truce endures in El Salvador, long one of the most violent countries in the Americas. With 30,000 to 50,000 members and weaponry that includes assault-style rifles and grenades, the two gangs are virtual armies that have the power to affect the security of the entire region — and they have used it to terrorize populations still weary from years of civil war and instability.
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Syrie : SIEGE OF ALEPPO
Aleppo, Syria
Two rebel soldiers stand guard in the Karmel Jabl neighborhood of Aleppo. The dust from more than one hundred days of shelling, bombing, and firefights hung thick in the air around them as they took turns guarding their machine-gun nests.
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SUDAN BORDER WARS
by Dominic Nahr 17 April 2012
Heglig, Sudan
A Sudan Armed Forces soldier lies dead in a pool of oil next to a leaking oil facility. He was killed during heavy fighting with southern Sudanese SPLA troops, after they entered the northern Sudan oil town during a brief but bloody border war between the two countries.
WEBSITE: http://www.dominicnahr.com
ABOUT: Dominic Nahr was born in Switzerland, but raised in Hong Kong, where he established himself as a photojournalist working as a staff photographer for the South China Morning Post. In 2007, while at university in Toronto, Dominic became a freelance photographer, his work appearing in such publications as Newsweek and GQ. His current clients include National Geographic, Time and The Wall Street Journal. Dominic’s accolades include an Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award, a PDN Top 30 Under 30, and an exhibition at Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan.
méridianes géo 