Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the start of the war in Bosnia. Cities, like people can produce strange feelings in visitors – leave tiny traces of discomfort and Sarajevo always struck me as being a little odd; a little schizophrenic… of course I never knew it before the war as a place of civility and culture. The work I made there was always conditioned by conflict but I thought I’d take this opportunity to show a small selection of work from the city taken almost a decade apart that show two different sides. The work from 1997 was made as I’d just returned from a near fatal trip to Sierra Leone and I came back to a landscape of a bitter and fragile winter. I remember the dark coffee and the sleet, the ominous surrounding mountains and the deep, jagged gouges in the buildings – and in the people. I photographed the Blind School, devastated by shelling but trying slowly to come back to life. I photographed children learning to use their canes on a path that the instructor, Borko swore was surrounded by unexploded ordnance. It made the children – and me – very diligent. A decade later I came again in better weather and better spirits with an old friend of mine from Delhi, the critic and writer Meenakshi Shedde to make a story on the Sarajevo Film Festival. Clearly, for me and the city, most of our visible scars had healed.

Bosnia – Sarajevo – Two friends navigate their way to school through a possible minefield, Sarajevo.The Blind School was the only centre in the region for visually impaired children and young adults. It was extensively damaged during the civil war and was used by the Bosnian Serb army as a military position from which to snipe and shell the city. The few teaching staff left during the war managed to visit some of their blind pupils and continue a limited education. The school reopened after the war ended but conditions remained dire.

Bosnia - Sarajevo - A boy makes his way to class in the destroyed Blind School.

Bosnia - Sarajevo - Two friends walk together at the Blind School

Bosnia - Sarajevo - A teacher pays a home visit to a deaf-blind boy and his family

Bosnia - Sarajevo - The Peace Statue and the Orthodox cathedral, Sarajevo

Bosnia - Sarajevo - A square in Sarajevo's Old Town showing the Sebilj and the minaret of the Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque

Bosnia - Sarajevo - Men play outsize chess in a park, Sarajevo

Bosnia - Sarajevo - A couple enjoy drinks in the late afternoon sun at the Sarajevo Film Festival, Sarajevo, Bosnia

I’m coming late to this because I’ve been away but…

The Kony 2012 project is a film that ‘seeks to make Joseph Kony famous’ and in doing so, expose his deeds to a wider world. All very laudable but the entire thing makes me feel deeply uncomfortable. Certainly, exposure for such dreadful stories are generally to be welcomed however this enterprise bears all the hallmarks of an emotionally manipulative Hollywood fantasy that a crazed warlord just appeared from nowhere. I’m all for people changing the world but perhaps we might have prequel (I’m not sure that’s a word either) explaining exactly how something as awful as Kony came about. Perhaps we might talk about how Kony fits into the post-Amin world of Acholi politics (Kony’s early pronouncements on Museveni and his ‘Tutsi empire’); we might talk about disengagement in American Foreign policy in the nineties in Africa shaped in part by the New Barbarism thesis. We might talk about the allegation that the Ugandan security forces had an incentive to keep the war going to keep themselves in power. We might also talk about how the discovery of potentially billions of dollars worth of oil has made (especially) the US sit up and look at how the situation might be pacified.

Crucially we might try and work out why the film makers are doing this now when in fact the LRA aren’t currently operating in Northern Uganda. A cursory glance at the African and NGO press show that people who have worked in Northern Uganda on development and reconstruction are generally surprised; this story has moved on (and that’s not to deny the suffering involved). Not only that, they are arguing that efforts should be made to rebuild and that rather than these children being ‘invisible’, they are, certainly to people like Glenna Gordon (the author of the notorious and extraordinary photograph of Russel, Poole and Bailey holding weapons) and others who knows the situation, ‘pretty visible’. It is certainly true that this story was difficult to place in the mainstream media – although that didn’t stop a stream of Western photographers in the early 2000′s going and photographing the ‘night commuters’ as the children were called. In that respect the film certainly manages to circumvent traditional media outlets that wouldn’t want poor African kids getting in the way of their advertising. My point though is that if you want to defeat something, you have to understand it. And that is where this film, devoid of a good deal of context and seen through the distorting sentimental prism of a well meaning white film maker and his child (At 07:35 the white narrator says that ‘we are going to stop them’) falls down very badly indeed.

Something strikes me as deeply patronising in portraying this as a fight between good and evil. I spent a few years in Africa in the late 1990′s trying to make the point that the perpetrators of disgusting violence in the guise of child soldiers – were as much sinned against as sinning. An attempt – however flawed – to expose the mental landscape/legacy of exactly these situations of Post Colonial devastation that led to the rise of people like Kony and Taylor and Sankoh rushing in to fill a space that the State could not (or didn’t want to) hold.

I’m sad to relay to those people urging others to be ‘awesome’ and blindly support this campaign that if we blunder in, as well meaning as we might be, we might just make this situation worse. If a generation of American youth think that by capturing Kony and giving him up to the Hague, we can sort this out they are very much mistaken. Doesn’t that sound like the warnings that we were fed about the ‘madmen’ Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden? And didn’t that turn out well? Kony is clearly a product of the political situation in Post Independence Africa. You deal with that by dealing with the ramifications of poverty, politics and corruption. If you take away the justifications for Kony, you take away his legitimacy and his means of survival. And no, that isn’t as sexy and as easily reduceable to sound-bite length for the YouTube generation – but maybe that means the YouTube generation is the one that needs to remove itself from the tit of ‘info-tainment’ and decontextualised explanations. Ugandans aren’t stupid – they aren’t waiting for the White man to come and save them – they are, against very great odds trying to save themselves. They just need the tools to do that without people either exploiting their country or their situation.

Uganda - Gulu - 'Edward', 16 is so deeply traumatised by what he has done and witnessed as a.soldier for the Lords Resistance Army that he is unable to mix with other children. At night like many of his contemporaries, he wets the bed and recounts his experiences as he sleeps. Gulu, Uganda, August 1997

Uganda - Gulu - A former child combatant for the Lords Resistance Army gives confession to an Italian priest, Father Guido. Gulu, Uganda, August 1997

Uganda - Gulu - 'Andrew', 17. Whilst having to fight with the Lords Resistance Army, he remembers killing at least twelve people... but only two with a machete... Gulu, Uganda, August 1997...'We are the miracles that God made to taste the bitter fruits of Time' Ben Okri from An African Elegy.

Uganda - Gulu - A young man with obvious trauma is reunited with his mother and sisters after almost two years in the bush with the Lords Resistance Army. Gulu, Uganda

I just returned from almost a week in Athens on assignment for a magazine writing about how Greeks are coping on a personal level with the rape of their country by international finance. I found many things – a grinding poverty for some – more akin to the Developing World than to Europe but also small stories of hope; of people learning again what community and solidarity mean. Small stories, beautiful stories.

I had barely a couple of hours over a day or so to make some images and none of them reflect the immediate situation, but they were a therapy – going out and photographing people and their lives in the markets and on the streets.

My special thanks to journalist and fixer extraordinaire, Helen Skopis for patiently putting up with me and making all the ‘phone calls – and to two young and very talented photographers, Angelos Tzortinis and Alkis Konstantinidis who were generous enough to share their time and considerable experience to give me some background as only photographers can.

Thanks to all.

Greece - Athens - A child in costume plays in front of a sentry during the Changing of the Guard in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Syntagma Square

Greece - Athens - A fishmonger looks indulgently on a Greek Orthodox priest as he buys seafood from a stall in the Athens Central Market on Athinas Street

I visited the Dickens exhibition at the Museum of London yesterday – a really powerful evocation of the writer and his times.

What always struck me about Dickens was his ability to convey the despair and misery that the city around him housed: no stranger to debt, his past was marked by the fear of slipping back into poverty. I think that the exhibition gave me a very apt adjective to describe the dark underside of a city that I have worked in so much, namely Delhi. Perhaps all societies lurching through such painful Capitalist development are like this – but certainly Delhi is Dickensian in its mercilessness and its cruelty. The lack of a safety net and not-so-subtle machinations of caste mean that the people who produce the city’s wealth by selling their labour are completely at the mercy of the vagaries of the Market and the violence of the street. In a similar fashion to Dickens’ time they must struggle against a whole moral code that tells them they are nothing if they have no status. I’ve mentioned here before a slim volume of reportage and writing from those at the bottom of the dark underbelly of this metropolis called Trickster City and the more that I looked at the exhibition yesterday, the more I thought of Delhi.

Dickens’ “slime and ooze of the Thames” is the realm of the boy who picks bits of detritus out of the poisoned Yamuna River on a pathetic raft of polystyrene and rags. Budi Lal, pouring through other people’s filth and rubbish and ignored by all except the snarling dogs and his debtors is Boffin, the Rag Picker from Our Mutual Friend. The men burning plastic bags could be from the slum in Bleak House; Tom-All-Alone’s.

All of them would recognise Victorian London.

India - New Delhi - A young scavenger on a raft, beneath the road bridge across the Yamuna River by the Kudsia Ghat, New Delhi. Scavengers trawl the filth of the river to find objects to sell. The river is so polluted that it can no longer support life, however a community still live and work on it's banks.

India - New Delhi - Buddhi Lal, 30 works before dawn collecting refuse to recycle and resell. Known as 'rag-picking' he can make perhaps Rs150-200 a day and is often chased and attacked by stray dogs because of the smell of his work

India - Delhi - Destitute men gather around a fire made from refuse and plastic bags to try and keep warm. It is estimated that around 100000 people are homeless in the city

“We are pleased to announce to Our People that on the advice of Our Ministers tendered after consultation with Our Governor-General in Council, We have decided upon the transfer of the seat of the Government of India from Calcutta to the ancient Capital Delhi….” (Quoted in New Delhi Making of a Capital, Malvika Singh and Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Roli Books, 2009)

With that on 12 December 1911, George V sealed Calcutta’s fate as British India’s capital city. Delhi, itself a city of seven (perhaps more) kingdoms became the new political centre of India.

Today, a forgotten, dusty patch of land is all that remains of the Delhi Durbar site; an obelisk marking the spot where George made his speech, Ozymandias like now in its echo. Most Delhi-wallahs know nothing about it, nor the park adjacent which holds statues of Imperial notables and a likeness of the King himself that, until the 1960s, stood beneath a Chhatri next to India Gate.

I first visited the place in 2005 and found, with some difficulty, a silent park off a minor road next to the main highway. Last week, in search of story about New Delhi’s first century as capital I drove out again only to find the place in ruins. Much to my and my taxi driver’s amazement the place was being demolished by hand by day labourers. It seemed to me that some of the statues had gone or were at least moved (although I cannot confirm if this is true or indeed how many) and certainly some of the plinths had been destroyed.

I am by no means a fan or apologist for the Raj – indeed as I’ve written before I hold very little truck with romantic India but I was  dismayed that such a crucial piece of India’s history looked so … desolate. I haven’t had chance to ascertain exactly what the plans for this remote graveyard of empire might be but I sincerely hope that they are, as the foreman told me, to restore the place. If true, it is, like the Commonwealth Games building saga, a very furiously last minute – very Indian – job.

It could all of course be a dastardly case for Delhi’s detective extraordinaire, Vish Puri…

The first image was taken in 2005 – the rest are as I found the site last week:

India - Delhi - Statues of British Imperial notables, with Lord Hardinge, Viceroy Of India (1911-1916) to the right at the Coronation Park next to the site of the Delhi Durbar of 1911

India - Delhi - Commemorative obelisk at the Coronation Park marking the throne of George V during the Delhi Durbar of 1911

India - Delhi - Commemoration Plaque below the Obelisk that gives the date of the Delhi Durbar of 1911

India - Delhi - Statue of Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson at the Coronation Park next to the site of the Delhi Durbar of 1911

India - Delhi - Women construction workers demolishing the Coronation Park next to the site of the Delhi Durbar of 1911

India - Delhi - Security guards watched over by the statue of George V next to the site of the Delhi Durbar of 1911

Finally, the Chhatri that originally housed the statue of George V in the shadow of India Gate -

India - New Delhi - The empty canopy next to India Gate that originally held the statue of George V

According to General Stanley McChrystal, America’s war in Afghanistan began with a “frighteningly simplistic” view of the country.

An illegal, arrogant, NeoCon invasion was premised on a basic misunderstanding?

No shit…

As our colonial masters in the White House might say.

Afghanistan - Kabul - A woman begs on the street

After visiting Hackney twice in the last month for the first time in several years (once to work on a story and once to mentor a young photographer), I’m currently re-reading Patrick Wright‘s excellent ‘On living in an old country‘. Wright’s one of those brilliant cultural commentators who should be far better known and the edition I’m reading (because I lost my original copy) has illustrations by another underrated genius, the Polish cartoonist, Andrzej Krauze. I knew Krauze from his biting satire in the Guardian and a few years ago, I got to photograph him for a magazine. I remember that I had very little time (it wasn’t his fault) and that I didn’t have chance to put up the usual lighting rig. Anyway, here are two images from the job… I remembering noticing the label that reads ‘Mr Pen’ at the top right of the chest of drawers he kept his work in…

UK - London - Polish cartoonist Andrzej Krauze at his studio

UK - London - Polish cartoonist Andrzej Krauze at his studio

The Hindustan Times has reported that the Indian Coffee House in New Delhi, my favourite haunt for a dozen or more years, will now finally close because of unpaid rent. According to the ‘paper, “…the civic agency has finally told them to vacate the premises by the end of the month.” Pratap Singh, manager of Indian Coffee House is quoted as saying “We owe them nearly Rs 55 lakh as rent and interest apart from the monthly rent. We don’t have so much of money as our sales have dipped over a period of time.”

I first wrote about the Coffee House on this blog in June 2009 when I compared it to the great post-war classic cafes in London. Only last month Effillee magazine in Germany published a spread of my work shot over two years in the place. In that piece I tried to explain how I felt that the Coffee House was a kind of critical aide-memoire to Post Independence Delhi. I said that:

The Indian Coffee House is buried deep in the collective memory of Delhi. Perhaps never as flamboyant as its cousins in Calcutta on Bankim Chatterjee Street and Chittaranjan Avenue where Satyajit Ray et al held court, its presence is like a reincarnating deity. Stuck on a corner of one of the radials of the Colonial city, seen from above it is like a spur, preventing the wheel of Connaught Place fully turning and making itself into a Western High Street. It locks down an older geometry like a portal to the past. It will not let Delhi, always a city of trauma (from the destruction of Old Delhi to the Sikh riots of 1984) forget itself. Delhi is a palimpsest of cities (seven, eight, nine?) and if you look carefully the past is barely below the surface.

I am sad that a place that I cherished so dearly will close but sadder – and more concerned for the staff – cut adrift in a cruel city that has no time for the poor and those down on their luck. I am also sad because the Coffee House with a little imagination could  have worked. Malvika Singh, that most extraordinary of Delhi-wallahs (and publisher of Seminar) who I interviewed for the Effillee piece argued, quite simply that with a little imagination (and a bit of a paint-job) someone could turn the place into something special and profitable whilst preserving the character of the place. Only last week I ate in Dishoom – a very good pastiche of a Mumbai street cafe in London. Someone recognised that people will pay good money to eat somewhere that is not an Americanised chain selling plastic, mediocre food and expensive coffee. Someone obviously realised that people might want to spend time in places like this that have at least a stab at a cultural resonance…

The loss I think will be keenly felt – the last time they tried to close the cafe there was a minor public outcry. I can only hope that this will happen again and someone will step into the breach. I suspect however, that, as the unnamed official in the Hindustan Times piece salivated, “Once they vacate we will start the procedure of renting it out and we are hoping to get a rent at a rate of at least R400 per sq ft”, this really will be the end. The shame is of course that the coffee shop’s closing is a metaphor for what India and Delhi in particular, is running headlong into: a mishmash of Market-led, corporate half-truths that will be the disaster that this short term, only-for-profit thinking has brought all across the world. Delhi doesn’t need another fake Western, air conditioned soulless hang-out that caters for the tiny minority that can afford to eat there living out some 1980′s fantasy of wealth. It has plenty of those already.

The plain truth is that the closure marks the victory for an imported mindset that knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

India - New Delhi - The door to the Indian Coffee House

India - New Delhi - A stained, wet table in the Indian Coffee House

India - New Delhi - A waiter's rag in a pool of late afternoon sunlight

India - New Delhi - Mr Baldev Kumar, smoking in the afternoon in the Indian Coffee House

India - New Delhi - A man reads his morning newspaper on the terrace of the Indian Coffee House

For the second year in a row, The Mercer Group has confirmed that the world’s most expensive city to live in is Luanda in Angola. What the report didn’t make clear was that the city was also one of the most savagely segregated cities in terms of wealth: a tiny native elite and foreign nationals working in oil, sitting atop a mountain of desperate poverty.

I’ve worked in Angola a couple of times and was always shocked at the disparity.  I had, until I looked back at these images, forgotten spending an hour watching Dasilio and his mate fruitlessly begging rich Luandans for small change. I had forgotten the smell inside the tent of Bule’s eye, hanging by a thread, rotten and useless in his head. I had forgotten Engracia sitting in the ruins of her home, destroyed illegally by property developers. I had forgotten the harsh light and the long shadows. Shame on me for forgetting.

My few good memories come, as they often do, by listening to the music on the streets. A decade ago I discovered the delightfully named Bonga via a very talkative taxi driver in the city. That led me in search of saudade – a very difficult Portuguese word that translates roughly as a longing for something lost: a melancholy. You can hear it in the husky Morna of Cesária Évora and you can certainly hear it in the Fado of Carlos do Carmo. You can hear it on the breaking Atlantic waves whispering along the shore of the Marginal where both the rich and poor promenade – but for different reasons…

Here are some images.

Angola - Luanda - A street boy stands in front of a poster of Agostinho Neto, a hero of the Angolan revolution

Angola - Luanda - Two friends, Bule Manuel (r) from Uige and Joachim from Huambo live together in a tented camp for Internally displaced persons (IDP's) just outside of Luanda, in Viana. Both have lost their sight due to the war and Bule's eye is rotten in it's socket. The two men care for each other as best they can

Angola - Luanda - Engracia Lourenco in the ruins of her home in a middle-class suburb known as Golfe 2. In December 2002, men, presumably from the government forcibly demolished privately owned homes on this land. The land titles legally held by the occupants were ignored.

Angola - Luanda - A man walks through a shaft of sunlight on a Luandan street

Angola - Luanda - A woman works herself to a religious frenzy during an evangelical service in the Prenda slum

Angola - Luanda - Dasilio and his friend, both injured during the Civil War, beg from wealthy Luandans

Angola - Luanda - Wealthy Luandans dance the night away at Xavaroti's nightclub in the Vila Alice area of Luanda.

This Saturday, July 2nd 2011 marks the 75th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War and events will be held at memorials all across the UK. This annual commemoration honours the 2,500 men and women from the British Isles who served in the International Brigades as soldiers or medics, of whom 526 were killed in Spain. They were among 35,000 volunteers from around the world who rallied to the Spanish Republic as it tried to put down the fascist-backed military revolt.

In the London ceremony on the South Bank, I believe that two surviving veterans plan to attend. They are David Lomon, who was captured with other members of the British Battalion during fighting in Aragón in the spring of 1938 and spent six months in the notorious prison camp of San Pedro de Cardeñas, near Burgos, and Thomas Watters, who served in the Madrid-based Scottish Ambulance Unit. I hope I can be there.

In 1996 I wrote and photographed a piece for the Independent Magazine about the veterans of that war.

Here are three images that I found from my archive.

No Pasaran

UK - London - Alf, Spanish Civil War veteran

UK - London - Michael Economides, Spanish Civil War veteran

UK - London - Max Collins, Spanish Civil War veteran