'Starved for Attention' Chronicles Malnutrition

Medicins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) and VII Photo Agency have partnered to produce a series of short online videos that chronicle the devastating impact of childhood malnutrition throughout the world, "Starved for Attention."

Top videojournalists have committed to this humanitarian project in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, India, Mexico, and the United States.

Marcus Bleasdale, Jessica Dimmock, Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil, Franco Pagetti, Stephanie Sinclair, and John Stanmeyer traveled to malnutrition “hotspots” around the world -- from war zones to emerging economies -- to shed light on the underlying causes and innovative approaches to combat this condition.

An estimated 195 million children worldwide suffer from the effects of malnutrition, with 90 percent living in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Malnutrition contributes to at least one-third of the eight million annual deaths of children under five years of age.

In honor of World Food Day on October 16, Telegraph21 video magazine is featuring six stories from this series.

For Invisible, photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair turned her lens on a Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF) program in Bihar state (India) which treats children at the epicenter of one of the world's malnutrition hotspots. These children descend from generations of a chronically undernourished population, where malnutrition is so pervasive, it is almost invisible.

In Terrifying Normalcy, photojournalist Ron Haviv documents the challenges of food insecurity, rapid climate change and poverty that make malnutrition so pervasive on the densely-populated island of Bhola in southern Bangladesh. In his intimate portraits, Haviv captures the resignation with which Bhola's malnourished mothers and children accept a chronically-meager food supply.

“Documenting malnutrition has been one of the toughest challenges our agency has faced,” says Ron Haviv. “We believe that we have found a completely new visual language to tell this story -- one that has the potential for great impact.”

Ed Kashi Joins VII Photo Agency

Photojournalist Ed Kashi has joined VII Photo, the prestigious Paris and New York-based photo agency, as a co-owning member.

In the British Journal of Photography, Olivier Laurent interviews Kashi about his latest book, Curse of the Black Gold: 50 years of Oil in the Niger Delta.

Kashi's multimedia work on that topic has been published by National Geographic and showcased on KobreGuide.com (pictured).

In this in-depth Q&A, Kashi reveals how he obtained both access and funding to accomplish the task of visually documenting such a gargantuan topic.

Here's an exchange regarding Kashi's pioneering foray into video that we found engaging:

Q: You’re a big proponent of multimedia, using audio for decades, and mixing stills with videos in projects such as The Sandwich Generation. Increasingly, with the development of video-enabled digital SLRs, video is gaining in importance in a photojournalist’s work. Are audio and video complementing still photography? How important are these storytelling tools for you? Is still photography still a powerful medium or does it need to be associated with other media?

Ed Kashi: Still photography will always exist because our brains are wired to ingest still images. The fact our brains are being rewired might change that equation down the evolutionary road, but for now still images continue to be powerful forms of communication and enlightenment. Mixing still imagery with moving imagery, audio, graphics, ambient sound, music and most importantly the voice of our subjects is exhilarating and has only enhanced our abilities as visual storytellers to tell our stories in new, dynamic ways that can reach broader audiences and break the space logjam that print media has always forced our work into.

Regarding his new partnership with VII Photo, Kashi crows (on Facebook): "The future looks bright and I am looking forward to working with such a great group of photographers and staff at an agency dedicated to so many of the values and goals I am also committed to."

LINKS:

* BJP interview with Ed Kashi

* VII Photo

* Ed Kashi's Website

* "Curse of the Black Gold" on KobreGuide