Reportage is shifting focus. It used to be that photojournalists got reasonably well paid for their work, at least paid something that enabled them to keep doing what they do. However most will now agree those days are gone. It is becoming increasingly difficult to make a living as a traditional photojournalist, someone who spends time immersed in the subject and as a result produces a worthwhile body of work which tells the story in a way that hurriedly produced work, constrained by a deadline and a minuscule budget can never do. Yet we all know that there are important subjects out there and projects that should be worked on that no newspaper or magazine these days is going to pay for.

So Reportage, in an effort to address this is shortly to offer photographers a platform to seek funding for their projects. Most people are familiar with the concept of crowd funding, a few may have seen or even used any of the crowd funding sites springing up all over the internet. However we do not know of one which concentrates purely on photography or film making projects within the photojournalistic genre, which is what we intend to focus on. Whether anyone will actually fund the projects is yet to be seen, and of course it will largely be down to the strength of the idea, the passion and commitment of the photographer or film maker and the way he or she can convey the idea to potential investors. We think there are enough people out there that are interested enough to keep this medium alive and will happily contribute, be it a small or larger amount towards the cost of a worthwhile project.

So at the end of February 2012 Reportage will cease to be purely a photography showcase site and play its part in keeping great photographers and film makers doing what they do best.

If you have a project in mind, that will only happen if you can raise the finance for it then let us know. Use the project funding application form to let us have the basic idea and then we will ask for more information as things progress. Then sometime during February 2012 the site will publish all the projects, in conjunction with an aggressive marketing campaign to bring investors in to fund those projects.

When you meet Anne-Sophie Rettel on the street, you would expect her to be just a normal 23-year-old woman from Leipzig, Germany. She likes partying, she works as a travel agent, she’s single and she raises funds for an orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya. “All started back in 2009 when I went to Kenya with a social organization looking for working volunteers all over the world”, Anne-Sophie explains. What started as a good thing to put on for her C.V. soon became an important part of her life. She spent four months in an orphanage in Africa, working as a social worker and teacher.

When she came back to Germany in December 2009 she started a tour of schools and told students about the lives of the children in the Watoto Wema Center, an orphanage in the Kayole neighbourhood in Nairobi, the capital the East-African state. Most of the 70+ children there lost their parents to diseases like tuberculosis or HIV, some died in car accidents – and even some are so-called social orphans. Their parents just don’t have enough money to take care of their siblings, they put them in the bus, they throw them on the waste dump – or just light them up in fire. These kids are deeply traumatized – and some of them wet their beds each and every night. That’s why they have to dry their mattresses on the roofs of the buildings, next to the drying clothes.

The people Anne-Sophie was talking to about the circumstances in the orphanage were deeply moved, students from schools started to collect toys and sanitary goods along with money to help the kids in the Watoto Wema center. Over the years the blonde woman from Leipzig traveled back several times to keep an eye on what was happening to the money she raised.
Together with some other organizations she could celebrate a new chapter in the track of the Watoto Wema Center. The management of the Center bought land in Ruai, a rural area at the edge of the city, with less pollution, less crime – and most important: no rent to pay. During the Christmas holidays 2011/12 the complete orphanage moved to the newly build area. The cooking stove and the beds had been paid for by the German woman.

For Anne-Sophie Rettel this is not the end of the story. She continues to raise funds, she wants to buy some animals for the center. “A couple of cows or some goats would be great, then they don’t have to buy the milk anymore”. She hopes to move the orphanage to a more to a self-sufficient model. To help “her” children move out of Kayole to the new center in Ruai was the best Christmas gift the children could imagine.

All images copyright © Alexander Baumbach
View Contributor Profile: Alexander Baumbach

For decades, the xenophobic, Burmese military junta has refused to recognize the Rohingya as a distinct Muslim ethnic minority living in western Burma. Internationally, their story is under reported. The Rohingya are probably the most voiceless and stateless refugee community in the world.

Since early 2009, I have been photographing exiled Rohingya in Bangladesh, inside the refugee camps. With the support of the Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund, I documented resettled Rohingya refugees in Bradford, England, as they make a foreign land their new home. With the support of UNHCR, a small number of Rohingya people are able to leave their temporary homes in refugee camps to resettle permanently in other countries including Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States.

The next chapter of my project, will take me from Bangladesh to Malaysia. The Rohingya have been fleeing Burma to Malaysia for decades to seek better lives. But when the Rohingya reach Malaysia, they live in limbo. Most do not have permission to be in Malaysia, but they cannot return to Burma. In Malaysia, the Rohingya are often not permitted to attend school and many are denied health care. They are also at constant risk of arrest. Even those persons the UNHCR has recognized as refugees are detained and deported on a regular basis.

When the project is complete, I will work with UNHCR to distribute the photographs through publications and public exhibitions. I hope that my work will bring greater visibility to the Rohingya people and the enormous challenges they face to gain the most basic human rights.

All images copyright © Saiful Huq Omi
View Contributor Profile: Saiful Huq Omi

By 1970 only two remained, whereas eye witnesses report that they have seen 20 boats in the harbour of Inis Mór, the biggest of the three Árainn Islands and 35 boats sailing out of Conamara.

Conamara is a coastal region in the north west of Galway bay which is situated on the West Coast of Ireland. The Workhorse of the West, the Galway Hooker, was nearly extinct in the early seventies. Once boats built for the local waters of the Galway Bay and Conamara, when transport on roads was too slow or cumbersome and railway transport did not exist.

The bád mór, as the locals call it (big boat) got its name “Galway Hooker” more likely from the Spanish that traded into Galway harbour previous to the year 1588, which at that time was not deep enough to accommodate the bigger Spanish vessels. The Spaniards used smaller boats to clear their freight into the harbour.

Due to early publications, the bád mór as we know it, able to carry 14 tons of cargo, evolved from 1790 onwards from a much smaller 4-6 ton boat, that the locals and the early seafarers used. Turf was transported, along with seaweed, limestone, goods, building materials and consignments of poitín (illicit whiskey) between Conamara, the offshore islands and Galway. The boats where also used for line or net fishing, from which the theory evolved that the word “Hooker” originated in Holland (Dutch hoeker) – wherever it evolved, the local Irish speaking people never use it.

The revival of the characteristic vessel, with its red sails, its short foredeck and the open, tarred hull was initiated just before it very nearly became extinct. In 1966 a 47-foot Hooker called Morning Star was sold to Dublin, Ireland’s east coast. Built in Kinvara about 1890, (rebuilt in Dublin before it went back to the St Macdara Festival in Carna in 1976) in a traditional way and only returned to Conamara for the St Macdara festival at Carna July 1976.

A further factor in the revival then was the first new built boat in probably 40 years: a 23 foot Gleoiteog. A Gleoiteog has the same form as a bád mór but is smaller, it was the main work horse in the nineteenth century as the boatmen could not afford the bigger boat. The third class of the Galway Hooker is the púcán, yet again smaller, still sharing the same form, but a completely open hull and this boat can also be rowed. Púcáns were commonly used for seaweed harvesting.

1978 the Galway Hooker Association was founded with the task of placing the fleet on an organized footing. From there on numerous regattas were initiated and the number in the Hooker fleet steadily increased. Since then the commissioning of new boats and restoration of others has gone hand-in-hand with the revival and expansion of regattas.

Historically the bádóir, the boatman, took great pride in his boat and this has not changed to the present day. The bádóir did most of the boat maintenance himself, but also relied on the boat builder, carpenters, blacksmiths and sail makers. With the downturn in numbers of Hookers in the middle of the 20th century all the affiliated trades suffered downturn as well. Traditionally this was an important part of employment in Conamara. Nowadays young craftsmen like Patrick Connolly from Inverin, who learnt his trade as a traditional boat builder try to keep the Hooker literally afloat and alive.

The current fleet of báid mhóra consists of 25 boats. They are Conamara – Conamara is them. Hooker country is, of course a place but it is much more, it is a way of life, casual and friendly, reserved towards the stranger until credentials are well established.

All images copyright © Dr. Jürgen Bodamer
View Contributor Profile: Jürgen Bodamer

In November of 2010, my father and I travelled into the bush of Tanzania to live with three remote tribes: the Maasai, the Barbaig and the Iraq. This was a journey of not only self discovery, but one of education and learning, as we went to locate the roots of tribal music in ancient cultures. The aim was to travel to cultures largely untouched by western civilization and communicate with them primarily through song, not words. This has never been done before and hopefully will lead on to more of these studies in the future.

The African people have always been in my mind as a proud and beautiful race that have endured not only the harsh conditions of their surroundings, but the ever changing influence of the world around them. I wanted to document the journey to show the indigenous tribal people as I saw them: a wonderfully rich and wise people, full of pride and determination to preserve their way of life.

They truly are a most beautiful people, who welcomed us with open arms into their society and allowed us to be part of their day to day lives.

These images show a small selection of the amazing people I met in my journey and are part of a large collection of images that show the tribes of Tanzania as I saw them.

Tanzania is undergoing big shifts in their political, education and social infrastructure and these changes are affecting the remaining indigenous tribes of the country.

Before the traditional ways of these tribes are lost, we wanted to visit them to learn from their traditions and how they live their lives. One of the goals of the project was to create a set of photographs that could be used to show how these remote tribes live, and to raise awareness of the work that the Livingstone Tanzania Trust does to help these people adapt to the new world.

Click here to view the photographer profile
More details of this and other projects by James Stone can be found at www.jamesoliverstone.co.uk

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12354346

Well worth listening to James Morgan (Reportage Featured: Eagle Hunters | Child Trafficking in Nepal) talk about the Coral Triangle project he has been working on for the last few months.

Photography by James Morgan

http://www.formatfestival.com/

‘Right Here, Right Now’ | Exposures from the public realm

4th March – 3rd April 2011 | Derby, UK

http://blog.leica-camera.com/guest-blog-post/john-amedick-bids-photokina-farewell-to-rescue-trapped-miners-in-chile/

John Amedick explains how his M9 became part of his engineering toolbox during the Chilean miner rescue efforts.

Photo Rio - Nat Geo Channel from Bryan Harvey on Vimeo.

We are very pleased to announce the launch of the new look Reportage web site. Lets us know what you think!