Photojournalist Pete Marovich is trying to raise awareness of the plight of the Gullah/Geechee people of the Sea Islands along the southeastern coast of the United States. Direct descendants of enslaved Africans, the Gullah/Geechee are fighting to hold on to their land and culture in the face of development.

He is raising funds to complete the project and to donate a framed exhibition of the images to the Gullah/Geechee people.

You can see more images from the project and find more information here: Shadows of the Gullah.

(Full disclosure: Pete Marovich is the creator and editor of The37thFrame.org)

Misha Domozhilov has some very nice work on a Serbian enclave on the northern part of Kosovo.

Check it out on his website: domozhilov.com.

Photographer and writer Suchitra Vijayan has been photographing stories along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border for the past few years. Here is a link to some of her very interesting work.

See more at www.suchitravijayan.com

Check out more from the essay here: www.Echophotoagency.com.

Todd Heisler’s essay on the “Gold Coats”, a group of inmates at the California Men’s Colony, help aging inmates who are suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s. Many of the Gold Coats are serving life sentences.

See the essay on the NYT Lens Blog (Behind Bars and Beginning to Forget).

From Guillaume Poli:

Spread between Turkey, Iran, Irak and Syria, the Kurds make the world’s biggest landless minority. In Turkey, they represent 25% of the population and despite this, they face a significant assimilation policy.

Have they not been called “The Mountainous Turks” due to their original lands in the mountains in EasternTurkey ? The ratified Kurdistan at the treaty of Sevres was a born dead country, rebaptised later as « Anatolia ». The Kurds are undergoing discrimination in the workplace and their language is not taught in schools.

The Kurdish Tarlabasi quarter is located in the city center of Istanbul. A stone’s throw away: Istiklal Avenue whose rich-looking buildings, trendy shops and the million of visitors each week earned it the nickname of the « Champs Elysées » of Istanbul.

In this pocket of poverty, doomed to gentrification, the threat of expulsion hangs over the inhabitants. In the name of mass tourism and for political reasons a community lifestyle is in peril.

See the essay at: guillaumepoli.viewbook.com.

Michael Webster’s essay explores Congress of Curious Peoples at Coney Island, New York in a recent essay on American-Journal.org

See it here: www.american-journal.org.

All we can say is that this work is very hard to look at. Getty photojournalist Brent Stirton’s story about AIDS in Ukraine which has the highest concentration of HIV+ people in Europe is a brutal story very well photographed.

See the story at www.reportagebygettyimages.com

Documenting what Americans throws out.
by Jenna Isaacson Pfueller

All Thrifty States aims to document in stills, audio and video the people, scenes and items found in thrift stores nationwide. The project hopes to provide a window into the regional selections of used goods, the current economic climate in America, the breadth of organizations that benefit from second-hand items and the environmental impact of second-hand consumption.

The deadline for funding is Thursday Jan 26 at 11:59PM PT.

This is a wonderful and unique project that deserves to be funded. Help out an independent photojournalist and contribute now.

More on this project can be found on American-Journal.org.

Donate to All Thrifty States on IndieGoGo here: www.indiegogo.com/All-Thrifty-States.

American-Journal.org has an essay by Pete Marovich and a story by Jenny Jones about the Bill Pickett Rodeo and the Legacy of the Black Cowboy.

See the essay at www.american-journal.org.