Writing Here:

duckrabbit
David White, photographer
Ciara
Adam Westbrook
Joseph Rodriguez

What they say about duckrabbit:

'One of the hazards of publishing a well-known photojournalism blog - getting multimedia like yours, where the photos are both powerful and moving, and I end up in tears at my desk.'

Alan Taylor, Boston Big Picture)

'David White's multimedia work with duckrabbit is very exciting.'

Kate Edwards (Guardian Magazine Picture Editor)

'I am a fan of duckrabbit. I am not a fan because I agree with everything Ben has to say, but because he says it without frills and then will spend the time necessary to engage the consequent discussions. Such commitment is a priceless commodity.'

Prison Photography

'I met one of them at an academic conference in the summer. He was the sanest person there, but sure enough by damn gadnabbit ruffled more than a few fluffed up peacock feathers.'

The Photography Pages

'If you haven't seen the duckrabbit blog on multimedia you should.'

Stephen Alvarez

'duckrabbit has done another jaw-dropping job with Condition Critical, a highly commendable and important project for Medecins Sans Frontiers.'

The Travel Photographer

Bombay Flying Club's Streetlights: a last for Flash?

Multimedia producers the Bombay Flying Club have just published their latest piece, shot in Ethiopia.

At 11 minutes, Streetlight is a little on the long side for most armchair viewers, and the Flying Club’s trademark use of rich black and white photographs, while stunning, perhaps steals something from the overall piece. Their use of audio is [...]

Photo: the last night of the noughties on the hill of Masailand (Kenya)

Photo: the last night of the noughties on the hill of Masailand in Kenya- Yasuyoshi Chiba on [...]

Do unto others ...

Very roughly some 2000 years ago we nailed some bloke called Jesus to a tree.

Nothing new about that. Nailing people to trees was a rather effective form of crowd control.

Since then though a lot of people have been following this Jesus bloke. One of his oft quoted mantras was treat other people people as you [...]

The Vision and the Voice

A few days back I exchanged emails with the photographer Stephen Alvarez, who for the last fifteen years has shot for National Geographic. He suggested we take the conversation onto our blogs.

If you’re not aware of his work than I would say it is characterized by being both hard won and sublime:

(c) Stephen Alvarez

“We never knew”

(click on photo, the video player will load, then click again to play)

It’s one of those moments you don’t forget.

This term I’ve been a guest lecturer at Birmingham City University.  I sat twenty students down in front of one of the four videos we’ve been producing for MSF (more of that in a [...]

Thanks Mondo (Multimedia Muse), your words are a real encouragement

The credit is shared with the masters we worked with at MSF. Jake, Robin, Julie, Martin, Pete, Bruno, Mitch, Pascale and many others.

Just another set of limb chopped Africans by a famous photographer

The headline on the BBC website reads:

In Pictures: Rebuilding Wrecked Lives After Sierra Leone’s civil war

Sounds interesting?

Then I flicked to the set and found another story to the one sold to me in the headline.

There’s nothing technically wrong with Nick Danzinger’s black and white pictures of people from Sierra Leone except that it [...]

'Kenya hasn't seen a drop of rain for several years.'

If you have no knowledge about East Africa you might actually believe a statement like the one written above presumably by the photographer Stephano de Luigi on the VII website.

I’m wracking my brains to imagine how he (or someone else) could have got it so wrong, and how no-one else has spotted it? Of course [...]

An interesting point of view about the NGOization of African imagery fed to America

has been posted by Paul Melcher on the Black Star Rising blog. You can read the full post here. duckrabbit doesn’t entirely agree with him. I think its actually a bit of a cliche that NGO’s only show pictures of despair coming out of Africa.  Actually I think a lot of what they show is [...]

Parched in India

A photographer whose work I’ve come to admire greatly is Sanjit Das. He and I briefly worked together on a job for the NGO Action Aid in Delhi last summer, and since then I’ve been watching his output with interest – and not a little envy. He is a serious talent.

Anyway, the other day I [...]

Miss HIV, Botswana

MISS HIV STIGMA FREE 2007 BOTSWANA..TSHEBETSO THOBOLO comes on stage at the MISS HIV pageant to great applause. (c) David White

Stories about HIV and AIDS in Africa are often presented as either one of polar opposites. There are the news outlets who tend to publish negative stories, sometimes with a picture of a [...]

Time to turn the camera around on Africa

Think of Africa and you envision wild animals, conflicts, starving kids and suffering. On a whole, this continent hasn’t had the best of times in the past few hundred years. Whilst for some it might be a fact of life, for others it’s a rite of passage in an industry that thrives on misery and [...]

Is this an own goal?

Having just seen the winner of The Press Photographer’s Year, I completely understand now why Kenyan photographers get totally pissed off  so many of the photography jobs go to visitors to their country (NGO or otherwise).

The argument being that outsiders are better equipped to deliver (yeah right).

The winners photo was taken in Kenya. The shot [...]

Multimedia -Sexual Warfare, Rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo

When duckrabbit lived in Ethiopia the radio programmes that I managed regularly told stories of women and children who had been the victims of sexual violence. The stories were horrific.  To say that that the problem is endemic is to put it mildly. Sexual violence  against women and children is rampant the world [...]