I’m sure many of you get to see the news as it happens on your favorite news sites, tv stations, or magazines but you may not know where to look for the award winning images and stories.

Here is a collection of some of the top US and world competitions for photojournalists. I am inspired by the work these journalists do and hope that this spurs your interest in the issues they cover.

First is the prestigious World Press Photo where I, at one time, received and honorable mention followed by two domestic competitions, the National Press Photographer’s Association Best of Photo Journalism competition and the University of Missouri School of Journalism’s Pictures of the Year.

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I went to the slum in Phnom Penh once with AFESIP. I knew I needed to go back and make more pictures but finding the time was hard; however one afternoon I happened to have a couple of hours at the right time of day, meaning right around the time the women were getting ready to go work for the night. While I was shooting some of the street kid book sellers, I ran into Mindy’s friend Mike. He’s from California and was waiting in town to renew his visa…before heading out into the countryside to learn how to farm rice with a family he met. Talk about hard work. (at left: with the street kids)

Because I know Mike is a guy who relishes experience, because it’s nice to have someone along, and because I had been told by several NGO staff that I would be knocked in the head and have my cameras stolen (even though my gut told me I’d be safe), I asked Mike if he wanted to join me.

It was fun; Mike truly does seek experience and he is an incredibly engaging individual in foreign lands. Although, to say it was all lighthearted fun would be to simplify things.

These people live in homes with tin or buckling brick walls, no electricity or plumbing, and piles of trash surrounding them. But they also laugh a lot, they were kind, and they were welcoming. One woman kept on asking me if I wanted to see ‘Happeee!” I had no clue until she dragged me around a shack to show me several other women playing a gambling card game. Ah….Happee. (at left: the women playing happee)

Another woman had fired up her charcoal stove and was sauteing garlic, squid, and morning glory. In spite of the fould smells, Mike and I were both hungry. Though we didn’t join them for food, the scent of garlic in oil was quite appetizing and overwhelmed any aversion to the garbage around us.

So here are some self-indulgent photos and some video by Mike. In some I’m even working. (Yes, I do that on occasion). Oh, as for gear: Two Canon 1D Mark II’s and a selection of Canon and Sigma lenses. I bought the Canon and was given the Sigma. I’d like to be given two Canon 5D camera bodies…if anyone has an extra set (or spare $6000) because, while I love them, the Mark II’s are really heavy.

Riding in rush hour.

In the slum.

Stir fried squid and morning glory.

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I’ve been to municipal airports in the states larger than the Phnom Penh International Airport. When our aircraft pulled back from the ramp I saw we were one of three jets on the tarmac, the same number of planes as gates at this single runway airport.

As the pilot turned the aircraft and I looked out across flat earth to low shacks in the near distance thinking it would suck to be on the business end of the turbines on the A320. Increasing thrust, the pilot pushed us down the runway and, at lift off, I looked across the tin roofs, dry paddies, and then out into the haze of the Cambodian sky. At less than 10,000 feet, before the pilot reduced his rate of ascent, all signs of urban Phnom Penh vanished. In the brown flatness below I saw only a few red-dirt tracks, the glint from a cluster of tin roofs, and the irregular squares of dormant rice fields. Again, I was struck by how deep poverty could be, so close to a country’s capitol, in a nation newly emerged from decades of conflict and trauma.

There is much left for me to experience here but I don’t know if I will be back, though I want to and I know I did not want to leave. Not only do I feel my reportage here on sex trafficking, child sex trafficking, HIV/AIDS, and sex tourism is far from complete, there is something romantic and raw about the people which has me enthralled and, in my one week here, I feel I have made the beginnings of a home, one which is less tied to an expat’s world.

There is Leahn, Mindy and Mike’s moto driver who works in Phnom Penh to earn money for his wife and child. Once a month he makes the five hour drive on his 125cc motorcycle to see his family in his father-in-law’s house. 30 years old, the delightfully playful, open and humorous Leahn hopes that in 15-20 years he will have enough money to buy his own home.

There are Todah and Nat, two prepubescent girls claiming to be 14 who sell books at the riverside. Quick witted and street smart these girls run with a gang which can be intimidating at first but, with some time and attention, will warm to you. Mike, Mindy and I would see them on every foray to this tourist spot. We began looking for them, to say hello, and all the other young book sellers knew where to send us; they even toned down their aggressive sales techniques. (at right: Nat and her books)

Eventually the facade of book selling to pay for their education fell away; most worked for their parents and while they are cleaner and better dressed than the barefoot, matted-haired kids begging for money and yum-yum, I have to wonder what opportunities will unveil themselves to these uneducated street kids. Maybe with their English skills, smarts, and savvy they will someday have their own small business.

There is Srey Ka, a prostitute I met while documenting AFESIP, the NGO founded by Somaly Mam, whose mission is to help women in distressing situations; namely trafficking, prostitution, and domestic violence.

The first time I met her was in a slum reeking of trash and sewage where she and other prostitutes live. With her friends she was all smiles and excitement and we learned we were both traveling with AFESIP to Siem Reap to see the Queen of Spain. Unfortunately, that trip didn’t materialize because tragedy befell the Queen. (at left: Srey Ka)

Srey Ka’s eye was still slightly swollen from the beating she received from her last Khmer client. She’s been gang raped, had her teeth knocked out, she was trafficked, raped at 16, she’s been discriminated against because of her profession, and once was in love with a German who helped her and held her until, after two years, he returned to Germany.

She returned to prostitution because of the money. Srey Ka could take a job in a garment factory but wouldn’t earn enough to support herself, her mother, and put her 13 year-old sister through school. To take another, lower-paying job “would only be for me” she said, touching her heart. For Srey Ka that is not good enough so, as soon as her eye is healed, she will go back to working as a bar girl. Her sister must go to school; Srey Ka doesn’t want her to suffer the same lack of opportunity as herself. (at right: life in the slums)

Another prostitute I met was “N.” Mike, Mindy and I went to a bar for happy hour and very quickly realized it was a working girls’ bar. While Mike and I were inquisitively conversational–in a non-client like fashion–it was Mindy who made the connection. I looked up to hear “N” say, with a shrug, “I don’t know how many. I don’t think,” as she looked up and away, referring to how many clients she sees per day.

“N” works for the money and chooses her clients with care. She enjoys staying home on her one day off per week; every few months she’ll have several days off in a row to go home by bus to visit her mother.

For “N” it’s a job of necessity though she says she’d like to get out. Mindy, after a walk down the street to quell her tears, returned to do some outreach. Numbers were exchanged, contacts given, support offered. Maybe later we’ll find out what opportunities “N” finds, for Mindy was offered a job in Phnom Penh, one which would employ her skills as a counselor in sexual and domestic violence–though she won’t work directly with Khmer clients. (at left: life in the slums)

“N” offered to show us around, to the local markets, the food she likes to cook, to get an insider’s look at Khmer life. I would have loved to but it was Mindy’s last night and without her company Mike and I would have felt awkward, our masculinity making us potential clients.

The bar itself is nice, run by a jovial pair of expats who are obviously proud of their place. They’ve been coming to Phnom Penh for several years and decided to commit. In the main tourist area, with a good menu and guest house above, they stand to succeed. Plus, with their overtly sexualized drinks and the added income of having bar girls around, the business should grow.

There was the evening I did my laundry on the roof of the guest house where the male staff live. The timing wasn’t right for me to have the guest house do the laundry so I found myself with scrub brush and soapy water as the guys laughed with me and offered their dinner of rice and chicken. Together we watched the sun set deep and red in the haze over Phnom Penh. (at right: dawn from the guest house roof top)

I’ve got a favorite noodle cart run by women who love to help me with my Khmer, a breakfast place that knows I want the #1 with “coffee sweet milk,” often to go in a plastic cup, bag, and straw. Like the guest house, it’s family owned and the male staff sleep out front on folding wooden beds they set aside for the daytime patio furniture. (at left: roasted banana)

Last night as I left the internet cafe dehydrated, somewhat drunk, and finally able to relax on the back of a rickety moto, I scanned the benches of the park running down the center of Sihanouke Boulevard near the Independence Monument. I spent some time in a slum where AFESIP does outreach and the park is where most of the prostitutes from the slum work. And I saw them, sitting in pairs on benches, waiting for their “johns.”

In the darkness I couldn’t see anyone familiar but one woman recognized me. She waved her arm, jumping up to shout her recognition. Immediately wanting to stop, I waved back with my own shout. But I hesitated and we moto’d off, my driver chuckling that a prostitute would know me.

I regret not stopping. Professionally it was an opportunity to document, but that was not my first thought. I’m not sure who she was or what we would have said to each other, seeing as I don’t speak Khmer and most of the prostitutes I met had rudimentary English skills. But I would have liked to thank her, again, for allowing me into her world and to wish her safety and good fortune. But I think, most of all, I wanted to return to acknowledge that while we come from disparate lives we can still share a smile and appreciate each other for what we are: people of this world.

Phnom Penh is flat, hot, smelly, loud and chaotic but there’s something here that has penetrated me. The red-dust landscape has its own mystique but it’s these people; their horrific past, their poverty and minimal opportunity, their smiles rich in warmth, emotion, and care that worked in deeper than the dust. Who they are drew out a part of me I would like to know better.

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Tonight I talked with husband and wife at a hot pot dinner place.

They both worked for the office of tourism but because it is a man’s culture the wife, with her master’s degree from Holland, only worked part time there because she’d been passed by for promotion so many times it wasn’t worth it. She is still called in to consult when her superiors, who haven’t even bachelor’s degrees, need to use her ideas for their benefit.

She teaches part time now, as does he. He also freelance guides/fixes for journalists and the like.

He sees a huge disparity in economics in the country, with the elite getting richer and the poor staying poor. He believes tourism could save it but the government doesn’t know how to promote for this; he says they only send people to Angkor Wat and they don’t care to do more because it is a corrupt government.

As if to support his statement I noticed behind me a long table of men raise their drinks in a toast. One was a police officer in full uniform, his sidearm with reach of my hand. I asked about this and the man replied that someone had the policeman here because the restaurant needs the police; they are paid, they are bribed, they are treated special because when something happens and you have to call the police, you’d better have them on your side.

There is no national airline and many large hotels, he says, are foreign-owned and don’t employ enough Cambodian staff to help the local economy. He wants to see tourists stay longer and spend more money at Cambodian businesses; now they stay on average only two days and just give money to hotels and transport drivers, not the general economy. Just this last year, he said, they finally reached 1million visitors, compared to 10 million/yr for Thailand and 3 million in Vietnam (I have not fact-checked this).

He believes the government is still a puppet of Vietnam, he hates the communists and equates them to Sadam Hussein and wishes George Bush (who he loves because he is a ’strong’ man) would do the same in Cambodia.

He feels the Americans don’t like Bush because they haven’t experienced the fear of living under the communists–a time where you could be killed for saying something different.

He was 15 when the Khmer Rouge seized power; he was a soldier previously and was imprisoned for 3 months and then sent out to the countryside to work 16 hour days farming.

Apparently life under the Vietnamese wasn’t any different except there was less farming.

He is 47 and has spent 20 years with nightmares from his experience under the Khmer Rouge. He says much of the population his age and older have similar PTSD but because of Asian culture and because of how they’ve learned to survive, the Khmer people keep it inside.

Haidy Dupuy, a media relations person for the NGO World Vision–which has a 1000 staff in country–said the Cambodians are hard to read because their true emotions are covered in a smile. They smile in happiness, in fear, and in embarrassment. A native Cambodian co-worker said to her that to smile is all the Cambodian people have left.

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Exhausted would be a good word. Travel fatigue: accumulated late nights, early mornings, dehydration, walking, and too much weight in my camera bag. But I am not tired; the experience is too wonderful.

I have spent the last few days as a tourist. The morning after my arrival I made my phone calls and emails to NGO’s I hoped to meet. One was a total shot in the dark but the next day I had a response; from the founder. The day after we agreed to meet and the day after that I was shooting. I’ll tell you more, later, but as a primer read up on them: AFESIP.org. If you want to see passion, look no further. (at left: founder Somaly Mam introducing her girls to the Spanish delegation)

But that is now and I am talking about the yesterdays, for that is what I was doing, seeing the yesterdays of Cambodia.

In the 70’s the Khmer Rouge wrested control of the country to impose their idea of a utopian agrarian society. Urban centers were emptied as massive public works were undertaken: roads, irrigation, farming. As key figures promoted themselves into leadership roles they began to purge the educated. It soon moved on to others, including the Rouge’s own ranks, as paranoia seized the regime. (at right: a bed and restraints)

Toul Sleng was converted from a school to a prison, interrogation, and torture center. Thousands died, many having given up all hope and confessing to anything to stop the torture. (at left: the old school building of Toul Sleng)

Set in the heart of an impoverished residential neighborhood, the site looks much as it was: like a school. Inside are displays of torture implements from water tanks to electric whips and a child’s swing set used to hoist victims. Preserved holding cells and photographic displays fill the buildings.

The Rouge photographed all inmates and this display, for me, had the most impact. Board after board of mug shots filled the school rooms. Children, mothers, old men stare from behind glass. Some are clearly terrified, others angry and contemptuous and still others gaze with hopeless despair, full with the knowledge of their fate: death. (at right: one of many portraits made by the Khmer Rouge)

However death often came slowly; after extensive self-incriminating interrogations, if they were still alive victims were bound and blind folded for a truck ride to Choung Ek, a farm on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. There killers waited with bludgeons, machette and mass graves. DDT was spread on corpses to keep the stench down and to kill any survivors in the open pits. Some 20, 000 were killed here and of the corpses exhumed from 129 mass graves, 8000 were interred in a memorial. Some 80 mass graves remain. (at left: at Choung Ek a memorial to the victims of the Khmer Rouge)

Choung Ek drew its victims from throughout the region, not just Toul Sleng, and at times the executioners could not keep up with the killing of 300+ new arrivals.

In all an estimated 1.5 million people died through execution or starvation under the rule of the Khmer Rouge; their leaders denied knowledge of the killing fields and many, including Pol Pot, lived to a ripe old age.

I think there is a balance in recalling these yesterdays. Undoubtedly they are tourist attractions marketed to foreign visitors, of which I am one. They are also preserved in honor of the victims, that their deaths not be forgotten. The thought is, as written at Choung Ek, as described at Auschwitz, as remembered the internees of the Japanese-Americans during WWII: if we forget it will happen again. (at right: excavated mass graves dimple the ground at Choung Ek)

I would like to believe the interpretive boards at the memorials, that if we remember the yesterdays they will not be perpetrated in the tomorrows. But I think our humanity fails us when our community is global. Just look at Darfur in Sudan. We stand by as genocide is committed yet again. Do I do anything about it? No…I stand guilty with the much of the world. But I believe my awareness matters. And here, in Phnom Penh as a tourist, maybe this is all I can do; be aware, honor, and remember. Though for today’s suffering I know it is not enough. (at left: 8000 victims’ skulls are interred at Choung Ek)

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PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA – I am going to skip ahead here, passing by the night with the street kids in Chiang Mai following the outreach volunteers and sex workers for the better part of the evening.

Later I will have to tell you the story of the 60+ year old expats and their younger Thai wives. I must preface that story with the comment that it is not the kind of relationship I would look for, but for the men and these couples it seems to work. (at right: evening on a Phnom Penh street)

Then there was the evening with the gay men who are working with the gay, transgendered, and male sex workers to promote HIV/AIDS awareness, testing, and the building of community.

But those stories are for later because I must skip ahead to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where I am sipping an espresso in what looks to be a gambling establishment. There are nice cars out front and a doorman with a metal detector who will check your weapon at the door. Last night on the way from the airport, on the back of a motorbike taxi, we passed a police checkpoint where everyone was getting pat-downs for guns. But weapons aren’t obviously prolific; I’ve seen more assault rifles in Europe than I have here. (at left: housing on farm land just outside the city)

The streets are wilder, louder, and more chaotic. I feel fortunate for having a primer in traffic management by running the moat road in Chiang Mai. Here you don’t even look for a gap in the vehicles, you just step out in the road and maintain a predictable pace as cars, trucks, motorbikes, tuk tuks, and cyclos weave around you. No one is going faster than 40km/hr and everyone expects drivers on the wrong side of the road or crossing traffic during red lights…you name the stateside traffic law and it’s broken once a minute here. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get home; jaywalking will seem trivial and red lights…?

Tuk Tuk and moto drivers are aplenty. You can’t walk out of a restaurant, the guest house, or down the street without three or more saying ‘hello! you want tuk tuk? i take you!’ They will swarm you but they do so with smiles and some, seeing you turn down the last guy, will still ask but playfully.

There are the children. All ages. Last night I saw a baby, couldn’t even stand yet, set out for begging by some unseen parent. Often they bare foot, dirty, and wanting yum yum (food), muuuneeee (money), for school, pens, books…to live. There are the insistent, the reasonable, the silly and playful, and the pack of wolves. There’s a delicate balance though; as the customer, as the foreigner, as the adult you get a level of respect but if you get too familiar, allow that boundary to slip, these children will not hesitate to push. For what they want is your money, and they are well trained by experience. (at right: mindy getting mobbed by a pack of wolves)

Street-side food stalls are less common here than in Chiang Mai. Snacks, meat on a stick, whole chickens, fried grasshopper or cockroach are available but less common is the $0.60 meals. Here, in the poorer country, everything costs more. And US dollars are traded as much or more so than the local Riel. (at right: roast cockroach?)

Moto repair shops line the street, fixing flats, welding, you name it. Late at night children man the hand pump petrol stands. More simple versions are one liter glass pepsi bottles with fuel. Families bed down beneath mosquito netting beside their roadside shops. Dirt roads aren’t more than a block from the main drag. (at left: my moto driver getting a flat fixed at a roadside repair stand)

It’s flat here. Like pancake flat. On the outskirts of the city, dry paddy fields stretch across the land, palm and coconut trees lining the horizon. In the marshland of the Mekong river houses on stilts rise from patches of drier earth, rows of farmed plants are navigated by longboats.

The heat here is gentle but the sun is deceptively strong. Often a breeze blows in from the Mekong providing a cooling caress in the humidity; if it isn’t lost in the fumes and roar of the asphalt streets.

It’s rough. It’s ragged. It’s poor. But surficially it is gentle, it is welcoming, it is kind. Although, I feel, you have to be ready for it. Smiles are offered freely and the bigger the smile you give back the warmer the connection, the more genuine the response. (at right: outside Phnom Penh)

Oh, and attempting to speak Khmer? It’ll win you a good laugh, from the Khmer and yourself. I think I’m starting to enjoy making a fool of myself because I can’t speak a lick.

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