Supporter: Phil Ottum

Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

We were recently asked to create a large-scale permanent photography collection for the gallery attached to our Portland Action Center. This image by Thatcher Cook was one of the selections. There are several in the series of this woman in Ethiopia, but this one struck me right away because of the angle of her face. Her name is Khadija Ali, 45, and she lives in the Addis Alem neighborhood of Dire Dawa, Ethiopia. She was the recipient of a loan to rehabilitate her house. The house is tiny - basically just one room with a single door and window - but the pride her upturned chin and her posture display is engaging. It's as if she's saying “Yes, this is my wonderful house, take a good look ... isn’t it fantastic?” Here’s what Thatcher remembers about his time with her:

“I remember making this photo well ... after Roger (Burks) interviewed her, I went inside her home and used the window and the door as a light source. She initially faced the light and then moved her head away from the light and that’s when I snapped this frame. I had made versions of her looking towards the light, but I was struck by the partial silhouette and the green palette — a very beautiful environment indeed. (I was especially drawn to the red!)”

The colors work so well in this image. Note the soft blue-green of the shutter and hutch in the background in concert with the green of the walls and her headscarf.

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This intriguing image is part of the work that Cassandra Nelson brought back from her recent MC assessment trip to Libya and Egypt. It was taken in Cairo while visiting a Coptic Christian community in El Makattam Hill.

Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

The residents make a meagre living sorting through garbage for recyclables. She’s captured a moment that’s an appealing combination of composition, background, and expression and almost appears staged. It isn’t. Cassandra rounded a corner and found these two as you see them.

One of Cassandra's talents as a photographer is the ability to disarm subjects and elicit open and honest reactions. This is a first-rate example. The centerpiece of the frame is the oddly mature looking baby perched like an adult in his full-sized chair. The wall with its saturated colours and partial script is a photograph all its own…particularly the upper right hand quadrant. It takes the eye from a rusty switch whose wire trails upward across the portrait of Jesus to that lethal looking jumble of ancient wiring in the junction box and on to who knows where inside the building.

Cassandra will be showing her work and talking about her experiences in Libya and Egypt at the Mercy Corps Portland Action Centre, at 7pm, Wednesday, May 1st.

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Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps

Photographer Miguel Samper recently visited headquarters to give a workshop for Mercy Corps staff. Miguel continues to be one of our most trusted photographers and always provides us with images we are able to use in a wide variety of ways.

His visit offered me the opportunity to sit down with him and look as some of his work in our library. I’m attracted to the quiet, still life images he creates while working with our beneficiaries. Miguel is able to organize a wide variety of visual elements within the frame. The result is often an image I can return to several times before I see everything that’s been included.

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Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

I'm often attracted to photographs that have an air of mystery — images that pose a question and encourage the viewer to fill in the blanks. Because children are so naturally gregarious, my curiosity is piqued by this solitary little girl in pink. What's motivated her to sit quietly and alone by a river in Jakarta? Her body language seems neither happy nor sad, just contemplative. Thatcher Cook took this intriguing image when he traveled for us to Indonesia in August of 2009. Here's what he says about it:

"It was a hot day and I sat with some old men and smiled and made hand-gestured small talk with them. This little girl came and sat in front of us and I decided to make some photographs of her with the numbers in the background. She was this sweet little pink and white angel in a city neighborhood. The numbers are for a fishing derby that happens in the Krukut river. I was reacting to the soft colours of her outfit and the juxtaposition of the heat and the old men. I also remember many boys playing an aggressive version of marbles. I photographed them as well — but it was this little girl who sat in the middle of the activity that was the winning image for me."

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Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

Cassandra Nelson has helped tell Mercy Corps' story with photographs and video for eight years. Her work is the backbone of our photo library — more than 9,000 of the archive's 60,000 assets are hers. She has been on the ground for virtually every emergency we've responded to during that time and she's covered most of our programmes worldwide. She was part of our first-responder team after the Haiti earthquake and supplied moving images of Mercy Corps' early relief effort there.

This touching image is from Twic County, South Sudan in 2005 when 150 abducted slaves were freed and reunited with their families after 17 years of separation. The emotion of pure joy in the photograph is compelling. Here are Cassandra's recollections of the trip and this moment:

We received word from the UN that there was a group of slaves who were being repatriated from the north, back home to Turalay in South Sudan. At the time I was in Wunrock, South Sudan with Mercy Corps. We decided to go meet the families that were being reunited because part of Mercy Corps' work in South Sudan was to work with war-affected youths and help to reintegrate them into their communities. It took us the better part of a day driving on one of the areas very few roads to reach Turalay. It was incredibly hot — well over 100 degrees and no shade.. just a lot of dust.

"When we reached the village, the returnees had not yet arrived. I spent an hour talking with the grandmother of some of the children who were being freed. She told me that she had never met the children — they were born in captivity in the North. Her son, had been taken as a slave when he was a young man. He was walking to a nearby village to go to the market and he never came home. It had been 17 years since she last saw her son. She was not at all certain that he would really be coming home that day. She was very excited, but also afraid in case the reunion did not really take place.

When the truck with the freed slaves arrived the grandmother stood back. She didn't rush to see if her son and grand children were there. She just watched and held her breath. Then suddenly she ran across the compound calling out their names at the top of her voice. When the children saw her they ran towards her. I remember thinking it was amazing that they met as if they had known each other for a long time...but this was the first time they had every seen one another. It was beautiful — almost like a scene out of movie. The dust and the heat melted away and all you could see was this amazing joy and love."

By the way, a few more of Cassandra's images are featured in this month's Portland Monthly magazine.

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