invited guest: Ami Vitale

Srinagar Kashmir India

Ami Vitale, best known for her cultural documentation has been praised as a humane and empathetic storyteller. She has received recognition for her work from World Press Photo, the NPPA, International Photos of the Year, Photo District News and the South Asian Journalists Association presented her with the Daniel Pearl Award for outstanding print reporting on South Asia.

Hundreds of villagers sit outside their homes after Indian soldiers search for a militant in Budgam district west of Srinagar, March 28, 2002. The militant hid in a mosque in a 20-hour siege. It was the fourth time in two months that separatists had sought refuge in a mosque in the Himalayan region.

Villagers mourn the death of five people who were killed along with 48 who were injured, when a grenade exploded in the hands of a man who was seeking to extort money from a family in Badgam district of Kashmir, March 10, 2004. Locals said the man was a former militant who was extorting money from villagers and thousands came out to mourn the deaths. Tens of thousands of people have died in Kashmir since the eruption of anti-Indian revolt in the region in 1989. Separatists put the toll at...

Her stories have been awarded grants including the first-ever Inge Morath grant by Magnum Photos, The Canon female photojournalist award for her work in Kashmir and the Alexia Foundation for World Peace. Vitale's photographs have been published in major international magazines such as National Geographic, Adventure, Geo, Newsweek, Time, Smithsonian and Le Figaro among others.

A child holds a mushroom in a village in Rwanda in 2004, ten years after the Rwandan genocide when at least 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and thousands of moderate Hutus in Rwanda were killed.

They have also been presented in international exhibitions including: Visa Pour L'Image, Perpignan, France; Reporters Sans Frontiers, Paris; the FotoArt Festival in Poland; the Open Society Institute and The United Nations in New York.

She began her career working as an editor for Associated Press in New York and Washington D.C. and eventually left in 1997 for the Czech Republic where she covered the Balkan conflict. In 2001 she moved to Guinea Bissau in West Africa after she was awarded the Alexia Foundation grant and lived with a tribe of Fulanis in a remote village. When she returned, Vitale moved to India where she lived for over 5 years, producing memorable work throughout the region.

Muslim children sit inside Dariya Khan Ghhumnat Rahat refugee camp set up outside a school in the state of Gujarat in Ahmedabad, India May 10, 2002.

Children who were forced to migrate from their home in Pargwal, India cool off as a truck sprays water on them near Ahknoor in the Indian held state of Jammu and Kashmir. Indian and Pakistani troops continue to exchange heavy mortar, artillery and machine-gun fire along the line that divides Kashmir between them. India is pressing Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to crack down on the flow of Muslim militants from Pakistan into Kashmir.

Now based in Washington, DC, Vitale is a contract photographer with National Geographic Adventure and National Geographic Magazine and is producing a project for the Nature Conservancy about threatened environments.

Villagers fetch water from a polluted hole in the village of Dambas, 80 kilometers outside of Wajir, in northern Kenya May 10, 2006.

A Kashmiri man paddles to a floating market in the early freezing temperatures before sunrise on Dal Lake in the summer capital of Kashmir, Srinagar India, November 24. In the background, echoing through the nearby mountains, gunshots and fighting could be heard. Kashmir was once a tourist hotspot but now vendors struggle to survive in a place that has seen nearly 1000 civilians killed this year alone and 1,765 wounded in a brutal conflict that the United Nations calls the most dangerous...

more of Ami's works you will find on her web site.

all pictures ©Ami Vitale

Invited by Marcin Górski