Photography Daily Assignment:Jason Florio #1 – Seeing double this week, well sort of. Jason Florio, photojournalist and African picture correspondent sets you a challenge for the next seven days with his first assignment. It’s been wonderful to see the pictures you have been making from the assignments set so far, so please keep sending your photographs for inclusion on today’s show page. Also I promote forward to my conversation on the 300th edition of the podcast this Friday with Jason on an assignment of a different nature and all-weather walker, bivvy-er, who records his adventures with photographs, Ronald Turnbull. Listen to the Podcast between Jason Florio and Photography Daily’s, Neale James
Stewards of the forest: the pioneering women’s collective harvesting the Gambia’s oysters – The Guardian
The all-female workforce is part of a visionary project committed to protecting the wetland forests. Now their challenge is to earn a sustainable living year-round.
“In the cool air of an April dawn, Marie Sambou, an oyster harvester, carves through the brown water of The Gambia River’s Tanbi wetland in her long wooden canoe. The size of Manhattan, Tanbi teems with life. The mangroves provide an important habitat for many birds and fish, which nest, breed and spawn in the protective, nutrient-rich environment. Snow-white egrets stalk schools of needle-like fish nipping through the shallows as curlews and hornbills whirl overhead, and higher still, vultures turn in lazy circles.
For the next six hours or so, while the tide remains low enough to work, Sambou will paddle along the forests on the riverbank, knocking hard, rock-like west African mangrove oysters (Crassostrea tulipa) from the exposed mangrove roots. It is tedious, physical work – and painful. Sambou has only thin gloves and socks for protection; her hands and feet are scarred from the razor-edged oyster shells”... words by JR Patterson – read more in The Guardian
Jason Florio, award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker, originally from London, based from NYC for 18 years before relocating to The Gambia, West Africa, in 2013. He has produced images and documentaries for clients including The New York Times, Smithsonian, The New Yorker, Men’s, Journal, Outside, Bloomberg, National Geographic, Geographical, MIT Technology Review, PepsiCo, Amnesty International and the World Bank. He is a contributing editor for the Virginia Quarterly Review.
New York Film Academy (NYFA) welcomed Photojournalist & Filmmaker Jason Florio for a special guest lecture and Q&A as part of NYFA’s Photo Guest Speaker Series.
Jason Florio is an award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker, originally from London, based in NYC for 18 years before relocating to The Gambia, West Africa, in 2013. He has produced images and documentaries for clients including The New York Times, Smithsonian, The New Yorker, Outside, Bloomberg, Geographical, MIT Technology Review, and Amnesty International. His focus has been on under-reported stories about people living on the margins of society and human rights. His work has been recognized with a number of awards, including The Magnum Photography Award for his work on migration. His work is held in a number of public and private collections and has been presented in solo and joint exhibitions in the USA, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Jason is represented by Redux Pictures in NYC. – New York Film Academy – Guest Speaker Series
Saturday 9th April 2022: After Gambians went to the polls to vote for a new National Assembly, President Adam Barrow called on the 53 newly elected National Assembly Members to work together and promote the country’s interests.
“He (Barrow) will look at consolidating his power, at legitimising the executive imbalance that Jammeh left and that he inherited, and look at consolidating his influence in order to make arbitrary decisions to leverage access to public resources.” Jeggan Johnson of the Open Society Foundation’s Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project/AlJazeera
His National People’s Party (NPP) won only 19 out of the 53 seats, while the main opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) won 15 seats. Five seats were won by Independent candidates backed by former Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh, who has been in exile in Equatorial Guinea since January 2017.
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