November 14 spotlight
          Photo by Rudi Dundas: Kara Man with full body paint during a dance ceremony in Duss Village.
 
Rudi Dundas/November 2014 Featured Photographer of the month
Damning the Omo River Valley, Ethiopia
 
The Omo River Valley in southern Ethiopia is home to an estimated 200,000 people living in 18 different tribes. A large hydro-electric dam, Gibe III, largely funded by China, on the Omo River is scheduled to be completed within a year and will change tribal life as it has been practiced for thousands of years. The dam will provide hydroelectric power for the cities of Ethiopia, but end the livelihood of the tribes. View Exhibit >>

Rudi DundasRudi Dundas is a photographer focused on social change and environmental issues. She has traveled on horseback into the Tien Shan Mountains in central Asia to photograph wild tulips for Michael Pollan's film, BOTANY OF DESIRE, as well as to Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, and Indonesia to cover sustainable farming for Peet's Coffee and US AID, among others. She has also photographed extensively in Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and West Bengal for Blue Planet Network's drinking water issues. Read full bio>>

Featured exhibits from October 2014 

The Kingdom of Dust/The People of Clouds>>
by Matt Black/Mexico/United States

The social ecology of agriculture, the relationship between land, people, food, and the environment -- and how they are changing -- are questions that lie at the core of these twin projects. The Kingdom of Dust
is an exploration of industrial agriculture as practiced in California's Central Valley...

Orphans Don't Need Words to Explain>>
by Hatice Avci/Sudan / Pakistan

153 million children worldwide have lost one or both parents. Kimse Yok Mu (KYM), an international non profit humanitarian aid and development organization, meets the urgent needs of orphans and vulnerable children around the world and develops plans regarding their futures. To increase their quality of life...

Collapsar>>
by Phyllis Dooney/United States

While incarcerated, D'Juan Collins, 44, petitioned the court system and New York's ACS to place his now 7-year-old son, Isaiah, with his biological grandmother, Dianna Collins. For a variety of reasons, this never came to pass and Isaiah has been stuck in the foster care system for over ...

Northern Nigeria>>
by Ed Kashi/Nigeria

On assignment for National Geographic, Ed Kashi traveled to Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and one of the world's most important oil producers, where 50 percent of the population lives in poverty. In the north, where the situation is particularly dire, more than 70 percent of the...

The AMAHORO Generation: the youth of Rwanda talk peace>>
by Carol Allen Storey/Rwanda

Born during the genocide era, Rwandan's youth speak of their aspirations, and hope for peace in the aftermath of a brutal war that fractured their nation. They are the generation that wants to be acknowledged as Rwandan, united in purpose, eliminating historical tribal labels of Hutu and Tutsi...

Create Change>>
by Warren Zelman/Ghana

Create Change and Forgirlsake are working towards creating a better reality for the youth of northern Ghana.

Assa. A story of hope>>
by Paolo Patruno/Mozambique

Assa is 32-years-old and is now at the end of her fifth pregnancy. She has three other children 14, 12 and 7 years old. Her last child died when he was only two due to serious mobility problems. Assa lives in the community of Madjimisse in the District of Guja, Mozambique, 49 km away from the ...

South Sudan Conflict>>
by Zacharias Abubeker/Ethiopia

These images are made on assignment for Agence France-Presse covering the South Sudan conflict. Some images are made in Nasir, Upper Nile State within South Sudan. Some others are made in the Gambella Regional State, Ethiopia -- as well as in Addis Ababa for the conflict mediation process. The warring...

Fifty Million Trees>>
by Art Zaratsyan/Dominican Republic

The original forest cover of the Dominican Republic was 40,000 sq. km at the start of 20th century. Since then human activity have been reducing the Dominican forests at an increasing pace, leaving just 5,000 sq. km of forest in the end of the 1980s. Starting in the early 1990s, thanks to new protection ...

Portrait series from Uganda Pride Parade 2014>>
by Keiko Hiromi/Uganda

 A portrait series from Post Anti Homosexual Act (AHA) Pride Parade in Uganda in 2014

Leaf UK>>
by Dave Pilkington/United Kingdom

In the early 1990s, I spent several months documenting the work of Leaf UK, Southport's sweet factory, manufacturers of Hollands toffees and Chewits. Since the 1960s, this was the one and only time a photographer was allowed to document the work of the factory in its 40-year history...

Philippines' forgotten slums>>
by Dalibor Mlcak/Philippines

Philippines could be a world of paradise. Nevertheless bad policy making by the ruling class made the rich even richer and the poor even poorer causing irreversible bad living conditions for about 40% of the urban population living in slums. Unequal demographic development feeds the migration from rural areas ...

Qurbani, a Sacrifice of Muslim>>
by Khaled Hasan/Bangladesh

Sacrifice, commonly known as Qurbani, means slaughter of an animal in the name of Allah on the 10th, 11th or 12th of the Islamic month of Zil Hijjah. Qurbani, like Zakat, is essential for one who has the financial means and savings that remain surplus to his own needs over the year. It is essential...

Made in Kinshasa>>
by Felix Masi/Democratic Republic of Congo

Made in Kinshasa is a series of images capturing daily life and hustle in the capital of Democratic Republic of Congo. Kinshasa is home to about 10-12 million people, most of them officially jobless. Art and entrepreneurship are the only means of survival. Kinshasa is a busy and chaotic capital ...

Kenya's Industrial Heart>>
by Alex Pritz/Kenya

Development talk in East Africa often tends towards the fast-paced, illustrious world of tech and ICT. Yet the expansive industrial area buried deep within Nairobi provides the true heartbeat of Kenya's economic power. Kenya's advanced manufacturing industry provides car parts, construction ...

South Sudanese Refugees>>
by Jiro Ose/Ethiopia

Since a political dispute between President Salva Kirr and his former deputy Riek Machar led to inter-ethnic fighting in December 2013 in South Sudan, at least 10,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million people are displaced, some of them sought refuge in neighboring Kenya, Uganda...

Access to Health for Entertainment Workers in Cambodia>>
by Marta Soszynska/Cambodia

Since Cambodia introduced a law de-legalizing prostitution in 2008, the business moved underground. Nowadays karaokes, massages, and beer parlors are places where sex is sold for money, far from tourists' eyes. However, this led to the situation where women working as "Entertainment workers...

Pushed Out | Gentrification in Washington D.C.>>
by Jonathan Levinson/United States

The Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas posits that large cities around the world are all destined to become "generic cities," culturally and architecturally homogenous. The generic city is constantly destroying itself in order to create itself anew, accommodate modernity and growing populations. ...


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SDN News

SDN Launches New Website and New Name
SDN launched our new website on October 28! We were able to do this because of the support of donors who have generously contributed to the redesign. To complement the redesign, we are also changing our name from SocialDocumentary.net to Social Documentary Network (still known as SDN)! Read More >>

SDN Interview with Matt Black
Matt Black
Matt Black is an American photographer who grew up in California's Central Valley. His work primarily revolves around documenting food, farming and the human relationship to the land in that area. SDN's Caterina Clerici talked to him about the work recently exhibited at his first solo show in New York at Anastasia Photo gallery, his ongoing 'Geography of Poverty' project on Instagram, and what it means to work on life-long projects. Read interview >>

Envisioning Human Rights: A new website by Human Rights Center, Berkeley
Mimi Chakarova
Photograph: Mimi Chakarova

As part of its 20th Anniversary celebration, the Human Rights Center at the UC Berkeley School of Law presents Envisioning Human Rights, a collection of world-class human rights photography, curated by Pamela Blotner. The website features the work of Mimi Chakarova, Nic Dunlop, Stephen Ferry, Stephen Goldblatt, Ken Light, Susan Meiselas, Thomas Morley, Gilles Peress, Sebasti�o Salgado, and Jean-Marie Simon. More information >>

Miradas: Contemporary Mexican Photographers
Bronx Documentary Center
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 15, 6-9 pm
Mexico is too often represented by American photographers traveling south across the border. In this exhibition, five Mexican photographers reverse that dynamic, focusing their lenses on the complex duality of their experience. Read more >>

Call for Entries: PhotoPhilanthropy's 2014 Activist Awards
PhotoPhilanthropy's annual Activist Awards honor outstanding work by photographers in collaboration with nonprofit organizations worldwide. This year PhotoPhilanthropy will award photographers in two categories:  
  • Professional: $15,000 Grand Prize
  • Emerging: $5,000 Grand Prize
Deadline for submissions December 3, 2014.
Read more >>


About Social Documentary Network
SocialDocumentary.net is a website for photographers, NGOs, journalists, editors, and students to create and explore documentary exhibits investigating critical issues facing the world today. Recent exhibits have explored oil workers in the Niger River Delta, male sex workers in India, Central American immigrant women during their journey north, and Iraqi and Afghan refugees in Greece.Click here to view all of the exhibits.