Very saddened to read that the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula is now the most violent place on Earth as reported in today’s Guardian.

I remember shooting a small story there about young people trying to leave the gangs in 2001.

Here are a couple of the images that I made …

Honduras – San Pedro Sula – A former gang member shows his tattoos. San Pedro Sula has several criminal gangs (known as ‘Maras’) that sprang up in the region after their members were deported from the US in the 1990′s. The founders of the gangs were typically Central American youngsters whose families had fled to the US to escape civil war. After peace accords were signed, they were sent back to their countries and took the street-gang culture with them.

Honduras – San Pedro Sula – A former gang member with his mother and his home made pistol, San Pedro Sula, Honduras

It’s deeply saddening to discover that in Mali, militants seem to have systematically destroyed much of West Africa’s Islamic heritage by ransacking and torching the libraries that hold priceless Korans and Hadiths.

Some years ago I made a story in nearby Mauritania about the wind destroying the desert cities of Chinguetti and Oudane, both significant repositories of similar ancient manuscripts. I wrote:

“Once upon a time, the Wind grew jealous of the prosperous cities and resolved to bury them beneath the sands so that the only traces were old men and dusty books. So it was that the wind crashed against the purple stone mass of the Adrar, the mountain range that crosses Mauritania in West Africa. It blew until the rocks were carved into sculptures of fearful complexity. It blew until the dunes advanced and Chinguetti and Ouadane, two once mighty cities of scholars and traders of the Sahara, began to choke under the ocean of sand. Today they are almost gone…”

Mauritania – Chinguetti – A librarian reads an ancient Koran outside the Chinguetti Mosque

Mauritania – Chinguetti – Ancient books, Korans and lahs inside a traditional library

Mauritania – Chinguetti – A man hold a wooden lah covered in Koranic inscriptions

Mauritania – Chinguetti – A pile of priceless manuscripts in a desert library

Mauritania – Chinguetti – A priceless Koran

On assignment in Cairo. Interesting days…

Egypt – Cairo – A young demonstrator atop a statue beckons for his friends to join him in protest against the Egyptian government

It seems that the road lobby is on the march again (or should that be driving…). A link road planned between Bexhill and Hastings has meant a whole new generation of young eco-protesters (known as the ‘Combe Haven Defenders’) have taken to the trees in order to thwart the chainsaws and the bailiffs. The road will destroy the unspoilt Combe Haven Valley damaging an ancient woodland home to protected species.

It takes me back to the mid/late 1990′s when I did a few assignments for magazines (including I remember one for the Independent on Sunday Magazine on the Land is Ours group) about the environmental protests taking place under a previous Conservative government. My abiding memory is of descending a ramshackle tunnel somewhere under Twyford and crawling on my belly for ten yards underground to photograph a young man who’s arm was secured into a concrete pillar (see below). I never realised that I was a tiny bit claustrophobic until that point and was very relieved to get the picture and retreat the way I had come.

Here are some images from the archives.

UK – Berkshire – An environmental protester plays a guitar outside his tent at Twyford Down in a protest camp opposing the building of the M3 motorway

UK – Berkshire – A protester cemented into an underground chamber to prevent the M3 motorway development

UK – London – An eco-protester from the group The Land is Ours on a squatted site in Wandsworth owned by Guiness

UK – Berkshire – A protester in a tree protesting the M3 motorway development

UK – London – An eco-protester from the group the Land is Ours salutes the sun  on a squatted site in Wandsworth

I have, for a long time been photographing around aspects of a changing India. These images, currently being syndicated, show a gentle side of a huge demographic change in that country. It is estimated that by 2020, the elderly population in India will nearly double to 150 million people. Better medical care and low fertility rates have made the elderly the fastest growing section of society. New wealth and urbanisation are starting to erode the foundations of traditional values and kinship. Today fewer than 40 percent of Indians live in so-called “joint families” where brothers share the family home with their parents even after they are married. In a country where only 10 per cent has any form of pension, “old people have to work till they die” says Mathew Cherian, Help Age India’s chief executive. Even specialised medical care is rare, as India has only two medical colleges in the entire country teaching geriatric care. After the Asian Tsunami, HelpAge India set up a pioneering experimental scheme called the Tamaraikulam Elders’ Village (TEV) in Tamil Nadu that initially cared for elderly people displaced by the tragedy. Today, the village is a self-sustaining community providing a family environment where more able-bodied residents assist the less able-bodied. The village provides 100 older people with a safe place to live, free healthcare, emotional security, a good diet and professional support.

I was fortunate enough to visit for a few days and make some work there. Work that for personal reasons has an enormous resonance for me.

Despite great effort (especially on the part of Jon Jones at the Sunday Times Magazine) they remain unpublished. Of all the stories that I have shot over the last few years, I really want to see this run somewhere: not because my images are so wonderful but rather because of what they show and the issue that they address.

My agency, Panos is syndicating a 35 image set that can be viewed here.

Here are seven of my favourites.

India – Tamil Nadu – Meena, 65 pretends to hit a male nurse with a crutch after he teased Janagi, 76 who is always cleaning around the village. Tamaraikulum Elders village, Tamil Nadu, India

India – Tamil Nadu – Manjani, 75 inside his room.

India – Tamil Nadu – An elderly resident shares a joke with her social worker in her room.

India – Tamil Nadu – Ganapadi and his wife, Khrisaveni residents in their room.

India – Tamil Nadu – A daily exercise class for residents.

India – Tamil Nadu – An elderly resident stretches and takes the morning air at dawn by the lake at the Tamaraikulam Elders’ Village

India – Tamil Nadu – Meena, 65, an elderly resident, makes a fuss of one of the villages two dogs

I read with great regret a small piece from the Economist that tells of a ‘souring mood’ in the tiny African country, Burundi. It seems that opposition forces have again taken to the hills after around three hundred of their number have been killed since July and dozens arrested. Much of this goes back to the 2010 election which, despite the International community declaring reasonably fair was greeted by anger from the forces opposing President Nkurunziza. I worked several times in Burundi during the last twelve years – assignments ranged from looking at the so-called Regroupment camps where the Tutsi government corralled Hutu peasants ‘for their own safety’ in appalling conditions (as part of a global series called The Politics of Hunger) to looking at the steps to reconciliation with the Bashingantahe councils. I also photographed and wrote about the extraordinary Marguerite Barankitse, The Angel of Burundi who adopted children of all tribes amidst the terrible violence of the Civil War. I fear that her heroism and devotion will be called on again.

On Monday, The Forces for National Liberation (FNL) leader Agathon Rwasa, whom Burundian authorities believe is hiding along with fellow combatants in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, called on Nkurunziza to step down. Reuters are reporting this as a declaration of war. I sincerely hope that they are wrong.

Burundi – Bujambura – President Buyoya speaks at May Day rally

Burundi – Buhonga – A Hutu child carries water in a tin up a steep hill in Buhonga Regroupment camp

Burundi – Buhonga – A malnourished Hutu peasant woman receives treatment at a medical centre. She is part of the ethnic Hutu population that has been internally exiled from their land by the Tutsi military in order to cut aid to Hutu rebels.

Burundi – Buhonga – A peasant cultivates land in Buhonga Regroupment Camp watched by a soldier. He is part of the ethnic Hutu population that has been internally exiled from their land by the Tutsi military in order to cut aid to Hutu rebels.

Burundi – Buhonga – Hutu peasant family cultivates a small patch of land within their regroupment camp

Burundi – Ruyigi – A counsel of the Bashingantahe (roughly meaning ‘wisemen’) meet to settle a dispute in their commune. The Bashingantahe, a traditional court system, have been successfully resolving disputes concerning the civil war and issues of forgiveness and acceptance.

Greece – Athens – A homeless man asleep whilst begging near Syntagma Square

The piece that I wrote for Effilee Magazine on the situation in Greece is now available to view in English on my website here

According to a piece in the Guardian, it seems that authorities in Delhi are piloting a project to tackle the city’s enormous waste problem but the solution may affect those whose livelihood depends on it. Currently, waste is sorted manually by an informal army of men, women and children and then passed on to middle-men to sell or recycle. Three new plants (one at Ghazipur) will, it is hoped, sort the 8000 tonnes of Delhi’s daily waste automatically. It is estimated that more than 50,000 people work in this informal sector (known as ‘rag-pickers’) in and around the capital. The work is terrible and dangerous but for a significant section of the transient population of one of the world’s fastest growing cities, it is at least a living.

Over the years, I’ve photographed and written about many of the city’s rag pickers who exist in a twilight, Dickensian world ignored by almost everyone, quietly making the city function in a most human but terrible way.

India – New Delhi – Buddhi Lal, 30, a rag-picker, works before dawn collecting refuse to recycle and resell. On a good day he can make perhaps Rs150-200

India – New Delhi – Buddhi Lal, 30, a rag-picker with his small children playing behind him on the pavement, sorts the refuse that he has collected during his dawn round to sell

India – New Delhi – A child rag-picker collecting plastic bottles (and anything else he can scavenge) from the carriage of a train at New Delhi Railway station

India – Delhi – A child rag-picker cleans his fingernail with an old razor blade at a rubbish depot in Old Delhi

India – Delhi – A boy scavenger on the Yamuna River on a home-made raft of sacking and polystyrene. By dragging a magnet through the filthy water he collects scrap metal to sell

UK – London – Friends, Claire, 36 and Edwin, 61, both homeless, talk after a soup run organised by a Christian Charity on the Strand

The Broadway Homeless charity have just reported that London has seen a 43% increase on people sleeping rough in the capital from last year. The only glimmer of home in this figure is that 70% of those aren’t sleeping out for the second night due largely to the actions of charities like Broadway and increased work from outreach teams. This, despite Boris Johnson’s pre-election pledge to ‘end rough sleeping by 2012′. According to a Guardian report in April this year, £5m – underwritten by central government – was diverted from the Mayor’s budget for rough sleepers, to ‘other purposes’. Expect worse to come if proposals to remove housing benefit for under 25′s come to fruition.

There is a clear link between London’s rents becoming more and more unaffordable for large sections of the population and these figures. London is often referred to as a divided city. It isn’t. It is now many cities. Extraordinarily wealth in the centre, guarded and cosseted by technology and private security (tested and honed on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan) swimming in an ocean of increasing poverty – material and aspirational – that finds its dreams impossible. All of this underwritten by a facetious, poisonous narrative of unfulfilled personal responsibility and fecklessness.

According to Stuart Hall, cities of the nineteenth century and twentieth centuries were monuments to Imperial power: motors of industrial production and trade. Globalisation has significantly reshaped London and the people sleeping on its streets (or the thousands a breath away from it) as inconvenient dislocations from an industrial to a service economy dictated to by modern day robber barons fixated on personal wealth and profit. I write so much about the Developing World, Delhi in particular (and recently Athens) that it is easy to neglect what is literally under my feet.

As Delhi labours under relentless 45 degree heat, the availability of water is as ever, a battleground. According to India Today (quoting an investigation by The Mail) reporters have uncovered a nexus of corrupt Delhi Jal Board (the local authority that looks after water in the city) employees and private tanker operators offering water for sale at inflated prices. Delhi, like many Developing World cities has a particularly rickety infrastructure when in comes to water supply. Illegal drilling of underground aquifers and horrendous pollution mean that at the best of times water supply is erratic. Add in seemingly endless low-level corruption and you have a perfect storm. I made a film about Delhi’s water wars a couple of years ago for Channel 4. You can see it here. As I said at the time, for the middle classes, access to water is an expensive and miserable inconvenience but to the poor and the slum dwellers, it is literally a daily fight. As my images show…

India – New Delhi – Slum dwellers scramble for water in Jai Hind Camp. The camp is home to perhaps 3000-4000 migrant workers from all over India. It has no water supplies at all so once a day, the Municipal JAL Board truck delivers some water. There is never enough for the expanding population to go around and some are left with nothing.

India – New Delhi – Women at the Kusumpur Pahari slum fight for water after a tanker delivery. Built more than thirty years ago the slum has no running water or sewage facilities. The only water supply come from the Municipal JAL Board water trucks that visit several times a day. The deliveries are supposed to be free but in reality, residents must pay bribes to have the water delivered.

India – New Delhi – A woman pushes her bike home after filling many cans from a water tanker in Kusumpur Pahari.

India – New Delhi – Middle class housewives in the Vasant Kunj area wait for water to be pumped into their water tanks from a JAL Board tanker. Vasant Kunj is one of many places in New Delhi that has frequent loss of mains water and relies on such infrequent tanker deliveries