Index World Press Photo
February 2008 | Edition Nine     

The plight of the dispossessed features strongly in our galleries for this edition.

Migration of rural communities to cities is a worldwide phenomenon and Indonesian freelance Henri Ismail focused on the wretched conditions endured by those who have left the land to scrape a living on the streets of the country’s capital Jakarta.

They all live in one basement he calls the Ten Cents Hotel because what they pay is the equivalent of ten US cents a night.

Another angle on a similar story is presented in Tolga Sezgin’s study of agricultural workers in South East Turkey.

Here people who have lost their land because of military conflict have taken to the road, traveling far and wide to find work to support themselves and their families.

These are people for whom the law offers little protection and so their life is one long journey for survival.

Rüta Kalmuka records one result of political change in Eastern Europe in her gallery.

Now that Latvia and Russia are separate countries again after the collapse of the Soviet Union, some of their border crossings have come to a virtual standstill as administrative short comings and suspected corruption mean long queues of lorries are now an everyday fact of life.

In our fourth gallery, Indonesian freelance Sumaryanto Bronto presents a portfolio of life in his country.

The emphasis is on natural disaster – in this case what happened when a big earthquake struck and was immediately followed by the threat of a potentially catastrophic volcanic eruption.











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