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Photojournalism: Singles

  • Muslim devotees arrive to Tongi on the last day of the annual Bishwa Ijtema in Tongi, Bangladesh. The Bishwa Ijtema is the second largest gathering of Muslims in the world, after the Hajj, and is organized by World Tablig Council, which preaches teachings of Islam and prophet Mohammad. (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)
  • A child sits outside his tent while his mother cooks in the Malakpur relief camp in the Shamli district of Uttar Pradesh, India. Riots between Muslims and Jat Hindus broke out at the end of August and lasted until the beginning of September, 2013. More than 55 people were killed, hundreds were injured, at least 6 women were gang raped, and almost 50,000 people fled to relief camps in the immediate aftermath. The cold winter has led to the death of over 34 children in the relief camps. (Photo by Getty Images/Getty Images)
  • A mosque that was damaged in the earthquake is seen in Palu, Indonesia. Photo by Allison Joyce
  • A woman prays at the National Mosque, Baitul Mukarram, during Eid al-Fitr, in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Muslims around the world are celebrating Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
  • A Hijra (transgender) performs at the Hijra talent show, part of the first ever event called Hijra Pride 2014, in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In 2013 Bangladesh officially recognized Hijras as a third gender, though homosexuality still remains illegal. Despite these strides Hijras continue to face violence and harassment as part of their daily life in Bangladesh.
  • A festival goer is seen during the 124th annual Lalon festival in Kushtia, Bangladesh. The Lalon Shah festival is an annual festival celebrating the life and death of Fakir Lalon Shah, who was a Bangladeshi mystic, baul, philosopher, musician, writer and advocate of religious tolerance. Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims follow his teachings and attend the festival, which comprises of 3 days of music, dance, and consumption of marijuana, which is referred to as {quote}siddhi{quote}, or enlightenment.
  • 32 year old Mahada Khatum, 5 year old Hasan Sharif, and 9 year old Umma Kulsum are seen outside their home in the Shamalapur Rohingya refugee settlement in Chittagong district, Bangladesh. 12 years the family escaped violence and discrimination from the Zomgara Baharchara village in the Meherulla district of Myanmar. Last week Tomás Ojea Quintana's, the UN special rapporteur on Human Rights, said that recent developments in Myanmar's Rakhine state were the latest in a {quote}long history of discrimination and persecution against the Rohingya Muslim community which could amount to crimes against humanity{quote}, and that the Myanmar government's decision not to allow Rohingya Muslims to register their ethnicity in the March census meant that the population tally was not in accordance with international standards. Over the years hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees have taken refuge in Bangladesh to escape the deadly sectarian violence in Myanmar.
  • People walk near India gate amid heavy dust and smog in Delhi, India. People in India's capital city are struggling with heavily polluted air after low winds, holiday fireworks residue and crop-burning in neighboring states contribute to the haze, which has reduced visibility to 400 meters. The pollution levels have risen to 15 times more then the safe limit, a news reports said. Thousands of schools have been ordered closed, cricket matches canceled and residents warned to stay inside. The US embassy has said that it is {quote}very concerned{quote} about the impact of the pollution on Americans living in Delhi and the public at large.
  • A woman rows through a dense canal to fish in the Sundarbans forest. The Sunderbans forest in Southern Bangladesh is the largest mangrove forest in the world. There are an estimated five hundred Royal Bengal tigers in the Sunderbans, and about fifty to sixty thousand people depend on the land, rivers and forest for their living. As climate change, hurricanes and cyclones continue to affect the area, the fresh water that once irrigated farmers fields has turned salty, rendering the fields useless. Many people live barely one meter above sea level. Because of rising sea levels and shrinking forest, humans and tigers are fighting for space. The farmers are forced into the forest to hunt for honey, fish, or collect crabs, putting them at risk for a tiger attack.
  • Monks touch solar panels at the Shachukul Monastery, of which the dormitory and school are reliant on solar energy, in Chosling village in Ladakh, India. Speaking two days after US President Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate change, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that India was “part of the world’s shared heritage” and that India would “continue working...above and beyond the Paris accord”. India saw nearly $10 billion invested, both in 2015 and in 2016, in renewable energy projects. (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)
  • Cyrus Fakroddin and his pet goat Cocoa take a taxi ride in New York. Cocoa is a 3-year-old Alpine Pygmy mixed goat who lives with Cyrus in Summit, New Jersey. They frequently take trips into Manhattan to enjoy the city. Fakroddin has raised Cocoa since she was 2 months old and treats her like a human. {quote}She doesn't like goats, she doesn't like farms, she likes the people and the city.{quote} Fakroddin said.
  • 3-year-old Fiana waits for her parents to vote in the presidential elections in a tent in Midland Beach in the Staten Island borough of New York City. As Staten Island continues to recover from Superstorm Sandy, a few polling stations have been relocated due to power outages or ongoing use as an evacuation center.
  • Local women swim in the ocean in Guraidhoo, Maldives. The Maldives is one of the world's lowest-lying countries; more than 80% of the Maldives’ land is less than one meter above sea levels, making it extremely vulnerable to climate change. At current global warming rates, 80% of the Maldives could be submerged by 2050. At the recent UN General Assembly, when discussing the threat of climate change, Maldives President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih said “There is no guarantee of survival for any one nation in a world where the Maldives cease to exist.” (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)
  • Buddhist monks wear face shields amid concerns over the spread of the COVID-19 as they collect alms in Bangkok, Thailand. Thailand has more than 1,500 confirmed COVID-19 cases and has entered a state of emergency in order to take stronger measures against the spread of the virus. (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)
  • he body of 35 year old Amena, who died of Covid-19, is taken on a stretcher at a hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Bangladesh enacted a nationwide lockdown on July 1st in an effort to contain a third wave of Covid, as cases have surged, fueled by the Delta variant first detected in neighboring India. (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)
  • A vendor waits for customers at Galle Face Green in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has to repay about $2 billion in foreign debts before the end of 2021. The shortage of foreign currency caused by a pandemic recession has hindered the ability of the government to import goods. Prices for essential items, including food and cooking gas, have soared. The government has asked India for a loan for petrol and diesel. Some analysts say that Sri Lanka may be forced to seek a bailout.
  • Rohingya refugees queue for a blanket distribution in a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. The UN's International Court of Justice in The Hague began on Tuesday hearing a case filed by The Gambia against Myanmar over the Rohingya genocide case.
  • A man holds a Bangladesh flag as he rides a motorbike in a {quote}wheel of death{quote} at a circus in Bangladesh.
  • Momin Mohammad brushes his teeth by the canal outside his home in the Hazaribagh neighborhood of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Momin has lived here for 15 or 20 years and works loading and unloading leather in the tanneries, earning 6,000 to 7,000 (about $77 to $90) taka a month. He says that living in the neighborhood is difficult but he has no other options. Often he and his family have health problems including diarrhea, headaches and jaundice. Hazaribagh was just listed in a report by Green Cross Switzerland and Blacksmith Institute as the 5th most polluted place on earth. It houses 95% of Bangladesh's leather tanneries, and every day they dump 22,000 cubic liters of toxic waste, including the cancer-causing hexavalent chromium, into the capital city's main river and key water supply, the Burgiganga. Most of the laborers work with the hazardous chemicals without any safety precautions, and there have been reports of horrific workplace accidents in the factories. Residents of the neighborhood slums are exposed to the extreme air, water and soil pollution. The tanneries export millions of dollars of leather good around the world, including the US and Europe.
  • Kathy Lahey sifts through her damaged home for items to save in the Breezy Point neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. With the death toll currently over 100 and millions of homes and businesses without power, the US east coast is attempting to recover from the effects of floods, fires and power outages brought on by Superstorm Sandy.
  • 12 year old Shobe Majaraz hugs 12 year old Suma on the beach in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.
  • Rohingya refugees walk through early morning mist in a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.
  • Rohingya Muslims celebrate at a fair during Eid al-Adha in a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Eid al-Adha, or the Festival of Sacrifice, marks the end of the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and in commemoration of Prophet Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his son to show obedience to God. Muslims slaughter a sacrificial animal and split the meat into three parts, one for the family, one for friends and relatives, and one for the poor and needy.
  • A festival goer dances during a live music event during the 124th annual Lalon festival in Kushtia, Bangladesh. The Lalon Shah festival is an annual festival celebrating the life and death of Fakir Lalon Shah, who was a Bangladeshi mystic, baul, philosopher, musician, writer and advocate of religious tolerance. Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims follow his teachings and attend the festival, which comprises of 3 days of music, dance, and consumption of marijuana, which is referred to as {quote}siddhi{quote}, or enlightenment.
  • 28 year old Rupa has her hair shaven to donate to the Gods at the Thiruthani Murugan Temple in Thiruttani, India. Rupa donated her hair with the wish that her daughter's illness is cured. The process of shaving ones hair and donating it to the Gods is known as tonsuring. It is common for Hindu believers to tonsure their hair at a temple as a young child, and also to celebrate a wish coming true, such as the birth of a baby or the curing of an illness. The {quote}temple hair{quote}, as it's known, is then auctioned off to a processing plant and then sold as pricey wigs and weaves in the US, Europe and Africa.
  • A Rohingya refugee is seen during a rainstorm at Nayapara refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Rohingya refugees said on August 21st that they did not want to return to Myanmar without their rights and citizenship, as repatriation is set to start on August 22nd. August 25th marks the second anniversary of the Rohingya crisis in Bangladesh. Myanmar's military crackdown on the ethnic Muslim minority forced over 700,000 to flee to Bangladesh from violence and torture. The United Nations has stated that it is a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.
  • Walita Lalam poses for a photo in her kitchen with her seeds in Baan Klang village, Lampang province, Thailand.
  • Sheuliy, shuts her eyes as Rezaul Karim throws flaming knives at her during a performance at the Olympic Circus in Jamsha, Bangladesh. Sheuliy, who doesn't know her age, got married to another circus worker when she was 10 or 11 years old. She never had a chance to go to school. Rezaul, who is 52 years old, joined the circus when he was a teenager. He dropped out of school when he was 12 years old. Rezaul enjoys his work in the circus. He like performing and watching his friends perform, and he enjoys the music. Generations of low income families are born into circuses with rarely the hope of ever working in different profession or escaping the harsh realities of the circus. The children, often very young, are trained to be full working members usually without the opportunity for an education. As modernization slowly takes over landscape of Bangladesh, the circus is a dying art form and is moving further and further away from mainstream entertainment.
  • Dhaka, Bangladesh
  • Medical workers distribute doses of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Bangladesh enacted a nationwide lockdown on July 1st in an effort to contain a third wave of Covid, as cases have surged, fueled by the Delta variant first detected in neighboring India.
  • 35 year old patient Barvine Akhter lies in a rice paddy outside the intake center of Pabna Mental Hospital in Pabna, Bangladesh. Mental health in Bangladesh is largely neglected and under financed, and the stigma of mental health is huge. In rural areas there are few doctors and families generally take the patient to a traditional healer first, who usually tries to exorcize the Jinn (spirits) with holy water and versus from the Koran. Families who have a mentally ill family member sometimes tie them up out of desperation and lack of education and options. There is only one government run mental hospital with 500 beds in the entire country. Less than 0.5% of government health budget is spent for mental health.
  • A man rows a boat to Kanewal village lake, a village without electricity, in Gujarat, India.
  • Firoz Milon collects waste on the Buriganga river in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He sells one kilo of waste for 20 taka and says he averages 400-600 taka per day of work. Bangladesh has been reportedly ranked 10th out of the top 20 plastic polluter in the world with the Buriganga river known as one of the most polluted rivers in the country due to rampant dumping of industrial and human waste. Like many developing countries, Bangladesh lacks the infrastructure to effectively manage their waste which causes problems in keeping the waters safe for human and aquatic lives while dozens of tanneries on the banks of the river contribute industrial waste into the ground water. As June 5 was marked by the United Nations as World Environment Day, Buriganga symbolizes the general state of many rivers in Bangladesh, with the growing levels of pollutants and plastic waste consuming up all oxygen in the river and affecting our seafood while fishes consume bits of plastic which mimics their natural food sources and eventually lands on our dinner table.
  • A house is seen in Kanewal village lake, a village without electricity, in Gujarat, India.
  • Children are let out from class for the day from a solar powered {quote}floating school{quote} operated by Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha in Pabna district, Bangladesh. About 3 million people live on geographically isolated islands, known as {quote}chors{quote}, with no roads, no electricity, and no medical facilities. Every year, the nation is inundated with monsoonal rains which can flood up to two thirds of the country. Approximately 10 million people live in parts of Bangladesh lying less than a meter above current sea levels.
  • A woman sits on a seawall in Palu, Indonesia.
  • Young girls pick through trash along Banani Lake in the Korail slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Korail is one of Dhaka's largest slums.
  • Bangladeshi Buddhists light a large paper balloon into the sky during Probarona Purnima in Ramu, Bangladesh. The Probarona Purnima festival celebrates the conclusion of the three-month long seclusion of the monks inside their monasteries for self-edification. Last year, on September 29th 2012 a muslim mob attacked and destroyed temples and homes of Buddhists after an anonymous person posted a photograph of a desecrated Quran on a local Buddhist boy's facebook wall. The community did not participate in Probarona Purnima last year in protest of the attacks.
  • People are seen on a chor in Rajshahi, Bangladesh.
  • People work in a dying factory in Shyampur, whose waste is dumped into the Buriganga river in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Bangladesh has been reportedly ranked 10th out of the top 20 plastic polluter in the world with the Buriganga river known as one of the most polluted rivers in the country due to rampant dumping of industrial and human waste. Like many developing countries, Bangladesh lacks the infrastructure to effectively manage their waste which causes problems in keeping the waters safe for human and aquatic lives while dozens of tanneries on the banks of the river contribute industrial waste into the ground water. As June 5 was marked by the United Nations as World Environment Day, Buriganga symbolizes the general state of many rivers in Bangladesh, with the growing levels of pollutants and plastic waste consuming up all oxygen in the river and affecting our seafood while fishes consume bits of plastic which mimics their natural food sources and eventually lands on our dinner table. (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)
  • Intro
  • Portraits
  • Photojournalism
    • Singles
    • Circus
      • India's Rambo Circus
      • Growing up in the Bangladesh Circus
    • The Bangladesh Surf Girls
    • The Hijra Village of Bangladesh
    • Eid During Covid
    • Child Marriage & Sex Trafficking in Bangladesh
    • Sri Lanka's Missing
    • The Scars of War
    • The School For Child Brides
    • Meghalaya; Where Women Rule
    • Thailand's Sex Workers
    • Rohingya
      • Singles
      • Rape Survivors Speak Out
      • The Widow's Village
      • Child Marriage
      • "I'm Better Than Before, But Inside My Heart Lies So Much Pain"
      • The Rohingya Community of Chicago, USA
  • NGO Work
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