Take a virtual tour through the Zilveren Camera exhibition at Museum Hilversum

Now Museum Hilversum is closed until further notice due to the COVID19 outbreak, it will not be possible to see the best photojournalism of The Netherlands according to the jurors of the Zilveren Camera Photojournalism awards.. But luckily, they have created a handy virtual tour of the exhibition, so that you can see all winning photos (including my 2nd prize Beira shot) from your self quarantine space.

Press the ‘play icon’ in the image by Marijn Fidder above to check out a small preview. If you’d like to click through the whole exhibition, follow this link to see the digitalized Zilveren Camera exhibition at Museum Hilversum.

P.M. Magazin: new work for German science magazine

Some of the photos I took in Burkina Faso have been published in the German popular science magazine ‘P.M. Magazin’. The photos, depicting the controversial experiments with genetically modified mosquitoes, have been published in The Guardian, De Volkskrant, De Morgen and El País before. To find out more about the GMO mosquito project, click here.

To take a closer look at the article in P.M. Magazin, click on the photos above.

Zilveren Camera in Museum Hilversum: exhibition of winning photos

Want to see the best photographs of Dutch photojournalism? All winning pictures of the 2019 Zilveren Camera, including my second prize Beira photograph, will be exhibited in Museum Hilversum from 2 February to 22 March. The image will also be on display in the center of Hilversum town, as part of the same exhibit. After March 22nd, the winning photographs of the Zilveren Camera competition will travel to various exhibition locations in The Netherlands.

To read more about de Zilveren Camera and my photograph that won the second prize, click here or check out the website of De Zilveren Camera. To read more about the exhibition, check out the page of Museum Hilversum.

Front page story about locust swarms in Kenya

In today’s NRC Handelsblad and NRC Next, you can find Africa correspondent Koert Lindijer’s story about the enormous swarms of desert locusts that are on the move in East Africa. For this story, I joined Koert on a three day trip to Mwingi, a subcounty of Kitui County in northeast Kenya. One of my photos made it to the frontpages of this morning’s NRC Next and this afternoon’s NRC Handelsblad.

You can read Koert Lindijer’s ‘most read story of the day’ by following this link. To see more photos, click on this link to NRC’s ‘In Beeld’ Instagram account, or check out the photo collection below. To see more recent work I made for NRC Handelsblad, check out this blogpost. Another photo was featured in the weekend newspaper of 22 February, next to this article.

Canon Zilveren Camera: a second place for my Beira photograph

Silver! The photo above was awarded the second prize 🥈in the most prestigious Dutch photojournalism awards, de ‘Canon Zilveren Camera’ (‘Silver Camera’), in the ‘International News’ category. I took this photo, of the 28-year old Isabel and her children, in the Mozambican city of Beira, which was partially destroyed by the Idai Cyclone.

They waited for rescue for days, clinging on to trees and rooftops, after a powerful cyclone tore through Mozambique and triggered flash floods in what the UN has called "one of the worst weather-related catastrophes in the history of Africa”.

When rescue workers arrived in boats and helicopters, most had nothing more than the clothes on their backs, and their feet were swollen from days of waiting in water. Hundreds were taken to the Escola Secundaria Samora Machel in the city of Beira. Aid agencies were providing survivors with a bucket of drinking water and a large pot of rice, but other basics are still lacking. Some were relieved just to be alive, but said they fear for those left-behind.

Twenty-eight year old Isabel Daniel and her children were stuck on a roof for days before they were rescued. Together with hundreds of others, they survived by drinking boiled water.

The winning photograph was part of a series published by Al Jazeera English. To see more photo and video shot in Beira, of the cyclone Idai aftermath, you can click here. To see the other winning pictures in the Zilveren Camera awards, follow this link.

Polyphony International Photo Festival: my photos will be exhibited in Howrah, India

I’m excited to announce that one of my photo series shot in Plateau State, Nigeria, will be shown on the 3rd edition of the Polyphony International Photo Festival. The annual photography festival is organized by the Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira’s Belur Math-a College. Eight of my photographs will be exhibited on the banks of the holy river Ganges, early February.

To find out more about the festival, check out their Facebook page or check out this video.

Zilveren Camera Shortlist: my photos made it to the Top 5

I'm very glad to hear that my photographs made it to 'the best five' in the international photography section of De Zilveren Camera! Read more about de renowned Dutch photojournalism awards and the jury’s remarks on the Zilveren Camera website. Fingers crossed.

'Wiping out the daughters': new work for De Volkskrant, De Morgen, El Pais & The Guardian

De Volkskrant, El Pais, De Morgen and The Guardian published Hidde Boersma’s piece on genetically modified mosquitoes in Burkina Faso. For this story, Hidde and I traveled to the Burkina Faso village of Bana, where we spent a week learning about the work of ‘Target Malaria’. In Bana, a radical experiment to genetically modify a strain of mosquito is ongoing. The main goal of the researchers? To stop mosquitoes from breeding malaria-carrying daughters.

‘Target Malaria’ is the Gates Foundation-backed organization that wants to genetically modify mosquitoes in order to combat malaria. In the small village of Bana, Burkina Faso, researchers are looking to change mosquito DNA, so that the mosquitos that can transfer malaria can only give birth to male baby mosquitoes, which will eventually mean that one type of malaria spreading mosquito will die out.

The plans of Target Malaria are contested. Western countries, where malaria is causing many people to die, have their doubts about ‘GMO’s’, ‘Genetically Modified Organisms’. Dutch biologist and journalist Hidde Boersma wrote about Target Malaria’s plans and efforts, and what it will mean if they are allowed to genetically modify mosquitoes in Burkina Faso.

The story was first published by Dutch medium De Volkskrant, both in their newspaper edition and their website. Online, an extensive online multimedia version of the story is visible, which boasts videos by Karsten de Vreugd and René Hoeksema and many of the images I took in Burkina Faso. After De Volkskrant, also De Morgen (Belgium), El Pais (Spain) and The Guardian (Great Britain) published the story. The creation of our story is made possible with financial support of the ‘Fonds Bijzondere Journalistieke Projecten’ and the European Journalism Centre. For a behind-the-scenes glimpse of our activities in Ouagadougou, Bobo-Dioulasso and Bana, you can check out this pinned Instagram Story!

The publication of the story about GMO mosquitoes comes a month after my photography debut in The Guardian, for which I photographed Kenyan women who are planning on leaving Kenya to work in Gulf states - despite abuse fears.

VPRO Bureau Buitenland multimedia project: 'Grit & Grass'

If Nigeria is mentioned in Dutch media, chances are high that the news story is about Boko Haram. But just a couple of hundreds kilometers from where the Boko Haram insurgency is taking place, thousands of Nigerians have been killed in a lesser known conflict between herdsmen and farmers.

For Dutch broadcaster VPRO’s Bureau Buitenland platform, Saskia Houttuin and I traveled to Plateau State, where we created two interactive stories which focus on both sides of the conflict. The first story is about Nding, where Fidelis tells about the Fulani herdsmen that attacked his family. The second chapter is about a nearby settlement of Fulani herders, who explain why they had to move their cattle into famers territory - one of the biggest reasons is drought caused by climate change.

This multimedia interactive story is made with the Slices storytelling tool, and includes photography, video, text and infographics. You can watch both (Dutch) chapters of the story in the video below, or click through the English two chapters through these links:

• Grit & Grass 1: the farmers

• Grit & Grass 2: the herdsmen

In July 2020, the production was a finalist in the 7th edition for the LUMIX Festival for Young Visual Journalism, in the ‘Digital Storytelling’ category. Read more about the festival here.

To watch more multimedia stories about climate refugees, you can take a look at this VPRO Bureau Buitenland web page.

Rising sea levels in Mombasa: a story for Samsam

For Dutch newspaper / magazine Samsam, I met up with Swabir, a 12 year old boy who lives in the Kenyan city of Mombasa. His father is Head of Education at the renowned Fort Jesus, the number one cultural attraction of Kenya’s coastal area. But the fort has seen better days: due to coastal erosion, rising sea levels and erosion caused by rain water (all linked to climate change), the centuries old structure is deteriorating rapidly.

Together with Raphael Igombo and his son Swabir, I visited the fort to have a look at the recently constructed wall that should protect Fort Jesus for the next hundred years. You can read the story in the current edition of Samsam, online on their website or you can click on the image below to enlarge the article. Samsam is a magazine and learning method, which is distributed to and used by primary schools all over The Netherlands.

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Travel story about Dakar - New work for Msafiri Magazine

For this month’s Msafiri, the inflight magazine of Kenya Airways, I created the ‘lead travel story’ about Dakar, Senegal, focusing on where to eat, sleep and stay. Above, you can read how I described my trip to the Senegalese capital (some photos are mine, too). To read the whole issue of Msafiri, you can click here!

If you’d like to read more travel stories, you can click here for my piece on Ethiopia (including Lalibela, Gondar, Addis Ababa and Bahir Dar) or click here for my Uganda travel story (focusing on Kampala, Queen Elizabeth National Park and Bwindi).

Photography for The Guardian: women leave Kenya to work in Gulf states

On my first assignment for The Guardian, I have photographed the women of the East African Institute of Homecare Management, who are preparing their move to countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Kenyan women used to make a lot of money in the Gulf region with domestic work, but because of high numbers of mistreatment, the Kenyan government have put a ban in place to prevent Kenyan women from being beaten or raped.

After some years of bilateral talks with Gulf states, the Kenyan government promises to make domestic work safer in a region notorious for labour trafficking. And so the aforementioned ban has been lifted. Now, Kenyan women who want to move to the Gulf region have to go to institutes like the one I visited, which prepare them for their domestic work abroad. Here, they learn how to cook, clean and tend to children - the women also learn Arabic to ensure that communication with their future employers will not be a problem.

Most of the women I photographed for the article told me that they have to make money to make sure that their children will have a better future than them. You can read the full article, written by Jillian Keenan, on The Guardian website.

Travel stories in Ng'aali, the new inflight mag of Uganda Airlines

For the inaugural issue of ‘Ng’aali’, the inflight magazine of the recently launched Uganda Airlines airliner, I created three travel stories about German lion doctor Ludwig Siefert, chimp trekking in Uganda and the Nai Nami Tour experience in Nairobi. You can read the first-mentioned piece above, or check out the whole magazine here, on the Ng’aali website.