Photographing humanitarian issues in some of the most difficult places on Earth really is a calling to a challenging way of life — bringing effective public awareness to nearly unimaginable scopes of hardship. Several local photographers have answered that call, and are speaking about it in Portland this week.
On Friday at the Oregon Historical Society, photographers Greg Constantine, Andrew Stanbridge, John Rudoff, Elizabeth Mehren and Jim Lommasson spoke during Exiled to Nowhere: A Symposium on the Rohingya Crisis. Their powerful panel discussion — Bearing Witness: Documenting Genocide and Mass Atrocities — can be viewed here.
Constantine is definitely not a local photographer. Based in Bangkok, Thailand, Constantine is a longtime Blue Earth Alliance project photographer, and his Nowhere People project has gained prominence as the plight of the Rohingya has become more well-known worldwide.
Another Oregon newcomer — kind of — is Ezra Millstein, a longtime photographer for Habitat for Humanity and other NGOs who is now on staff at Portland’s Mercy Corps. In the past year Millstein has visited 12 countries and shot more than 70,000 photos from the front lines of the war in Yemen to the rice fields of Indonesia. He will show some of this work during A Humanitarian’s Travelogue, a lecture at Mercy Corps tomorrow, April 9. Hear him share the remarkable stories behind his most memorable photos and videos; arrive early for a reception and viewing of Mercy Corps’ newest gallery exhibit, Yemen: Tales of a Perfect Storm.