Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Note: The MoJo Wire’s presentation of “World With a View” includes additional winners (not pictured in Mother Jones magazine) from the United States, Nigeria, and Algeria.

Every year, the Mother Jones International Fund for Documentary Photography awards grants to photographers from around the world. The following images represent four of this year’s winners, all of whom trained their cameras — like CNN with a conscience — on global change.

Russia
Like a Baby’s First Words
Ljalja Kuznetsova
Our top winner received our 1997 Leica Medal of Excellence.

For hundreds of years, Russia has tried to control the nomadism of its Gypsy tribes. Kazakhstan native Ljalja Kuznetsova began photographing the Liuli Gypsies 20 years ago.

“In their company,” says Kuznetsova, “I caught occasional glimpses of an inner life, [which became for me] a metaphor for freedom and free will.” She compares the sense of revelation in this photo of Liuli boys and a dove to “a baby’s first words.”

Iran
Iranian Strongman
Mohammad Eslami-Rad

Introduced through Italian Hercules films in the 1960s, bodybuilding has flourished in Iran despite Islamic law, which strictly forbids the display of bare skin. In part, bodybuilding’s popularity can be traced to an ancient Iranian sport called Varzesh-e Baastaani, which involves weight lifting and wrestling to live music.

Mohammad Eslami-Rad has been photographing the changing face of his country since the 1970s, capturing the clash and commingling of cultures. “I am documenting the history of my country and my people, which is not truly known in foreign media because the door is closed to them and, in many cases, closed to me.”

China
Captives of Progress
Wu Jialin

There is a tradition among elderly men in China’s Yunnan province of “walking” their caged exotic songbirds. By swinging the cages from side to side as they socialize with friends, the men exercise their birds by forcing them to tighten their grip on their perches. Despite strong traditions practiced by its 25 ethnic minorities, Yunnan province is quickly modernizing. China is currently pushing for the construction of trade routes through this once-remote region, which borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam. That transformation has brought its share of problems, including drugs, AIDS, and prostitution.

“The mountain folks of Yunnan are in progress, and I am trying to keep pace with them,” says Jialin.

Brazil
Road to Nowhere
Paula Sampaio

In the 1970s, Brazil’s military dictatorship ordered the construction of the Trans-Amazonian Highway and offered free land and agricultural subsidies in hopes of developing the rainforest. Thousands of poor people jumped at the offer, only to discover that some of their land was in the middle of rivers; few subsidies were available; and the road was often impassable during the rainy season. Today, the road stretches about 5,000 kilometers and appears from above as a rip in the rainforest’s green canopy.

“From the ground,” says Sampaio, who lived along the highway as a child, “it is testimony to failed promises and broken hopes.”

The Cartagenas United States
The Cartagenas
Steve Hart

Steve Hart’s “A Bronx Family Album” records not only the immediate effects of living with HIV/AIDS and the ongoing emotional repercussions of disease and of inner city life on surviving family members, but also how poverty, violence, drugs, and AIDS invade even the most private sanctuary of children’s lives.

 
Nigeria
Watery Hopes
Paul Oloko

Paul Oloko is a photojournalist for the Guardian Newspaper of Lagos. His project, titled “Children Under Pressure”, aims to document how the recent structural adjustment of Third World economies has affected the lives and futures of children. Here, a seemingly determined young Nigerian sells ice water after school to help support his family’s income.

Wat ery Hopes
 
Young woman from Srebrenica at a refugee camp Algeria
Young woman from Srebrenica at a refugee camp (Tuzla, Bosnia).
Nadia Benchallal

Nadia Benchallal records the daily life and struggle of Muslim women around the world as they try to forge a path which allows the fulfillment of their aspirations and the development of their potential despite the restrictions imposed on them. (From the project, “Women and Islam: Struggles for Tolerance in the Face of Fundamentalism.”)

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate