“I followed this girl out into the water during Pongal, the Tamil New Year festival. She was one of thousands if not millions, that day on Chennai’s Marine Beach, the second longest in the world. On the third and final day of the festival, families throng to the beaches, irrespective of socio-economic class. She was having a personal moment away from the crowds and was unaware of me.”

As I soak in Kirk Mastin’s print, the world population is surging past 7 billion.  India is on pace to become the most populous nation in the world, surpassing China within the next generation.  Our global community is becoming increasingly urbanized and inter-dependent, with growing demands to stay ‘connected’.  My life feels as though it is under constant attack from information and ideas on all sides.  I’m not complaining.  I love it actually.  It’s stimulating. 

Yet, looking on as this woman enters The Ocean I couldn’t help but feel a bit jealous.  The place where she stands is a sacred place – where water meets the land – and one of my favorite places in the world.   As a waterman – a swimmer, surfer, and diver – I have a love affair with The Ocean.   It is my place of refuge.  It is my sanctuary from the blistering pace of life digitalized and globalized.  It is the place where I prefer to go when I desperately need to think clearly.  When Mastin writes in his backstory, “She was having a personal moment away from the crowds and was unaware of me,” I knew the feeling exactly.  It happens every time I enter The Ocean and get a quiet reprieve from the near-constant connection.

In Kirk Mastin’s print I see the duality of my own existence. The earthy sand being churned by an energetic sea mirrors the gentle colors of the clothes wrapped around this woman’s dark skin and hair.  The Ocean draws me into my own mind and then back to shore, and my other reality, again.  I feel the “thousands, if not millions” as I leave them behind; but I know I’ll be back because I love the hectic squalor – check my messages, leave an update, schedule that meeting, prepare this presentation, scan the news – of my daily life as a teacher, husband, colleague, and friend in the information age.

As an educator, I do my best to prepare my students for our 21^st century online world. Working with Nuru Project, I can virtually bring my humanities students to New York, around the world, and back into their own lives with engaging projects in photojournalism.  We use Skype to connect with other learners and experts around the world, and share our thoughts and images using various social media and web platforms.  The 14 and 15 year-olds in my class hardly take notice of the whirlwind pace of things. They’re actually far too comfortable if you ask me.  I also want them to know the great power of solitude: the peace and wisdom that can come from being alone with your own thoughts; the true nature of The Ocean, and all of Nature’s other elements; and the knowledge that when we enter The Ocean alone it is “irrespective of socio-economic class” or any other divisions we have created back in our communities. I want to introduce them to the woman in this image.  I want them to remember to stand where she stands.

- Danny

At Nuru Project, we connect photojournalism with causes. Consider benefiting Acumen Fund at checkout with your Kirk Mastin print purchase. Acumen Fund invests in Indian entrepreneurs who are building businesses that provide services like housing, water, and healthcare to the poor. You can see this print in person next Wednesday, 11/9 at our Dignity NYC photo auction in support of Acumen Fund.

Danny Kinzer is a teacher at the Kaohsiung American School in Taiwan. He is a surfer, an avid traveler, a lover of kids, and an extremely tall individual. Nuru Project CEO JB Reed has been teaching students in Danny’s humanities class about photojournalism via Skype.

So, when I order a print, what’s in the envelope anyway?  Well, first of all, your print. We got this from Taylor after he opened his 8x10 Espen Rasmussen print.

And here are prints by Marco Trovato and Brandon Thibodeaux that we shipped to Kelly earlier this week.

What’s that card with the handwriting on it and why are that dude’s hands so hairy?  Unfortunately, we can’t do anything about Matt’s body hair. But every print comes with a printed version of the photographer’s handwritten Backstory. Backstories explore the photographer’s experience of creating the image. Why were they there? What do they know about the people in the photograph? What happened just before and after this particular frame? 

What’s with all the stamping?  We do love our Nuru Project stamp! We stamp your envelope so that you’ll know your Nuru Project print has arrived when it shows up in the mail. And we stamp the back of your print to remind you that your print purchase supported a good cause.

How do I know my Nuru Project print is the real deal?  Easy! We include an archival foil-backed Label of Authenticity with all the relevant info, including the photographer, a brief image description, the date, the medium, the size and print #, your name, the cause you benefited, and a printed version of the artist’s signature. We recommend that you let your framer apply this to the back of your print.

You said that the prints are numbered? Does that mean they’re part of limited editions?  Limited editioning is about creating scarcity. We believe the true spirit of photojournalism is to tell a story far and wide to an audience passionate about social change. As such, Nuru Project does not limit the quantity of prints we sell for a given image. Just the opposite: we celebrate volume. The more copies a print sells, the more impact it has on a cause and the more it supports the photographer’s work. And we pair volume with moderate prices, allowing us to reach a wide audience and raise more money for causes. Volume = Impact. We do, however, number prints. This is called an Open Edition. 

Here’s a screenshot from my computer of what you can expect to find on your Label of Authenticity, including your Open Edition Print #:

So where can I get a Nuru Project print? Glad you asked! You can purchase prints to benefit Acumen Fund, Architecture for Humanity, Malaria No More, Partners In Health, and Pencils of Promise right here.

- JB

(Source: bit.ly)

Now that our print-selling site is up, we turn to sharing what we think makes the 35 prints that we chose for launch remarkable, starting with Marco Trovato’s print from Angola.

We first came across Marco’s print while curating images about soccer (yes, I’m American) for our World At Play event during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. As he writes in his handwritten backstory, the image eventually made its way onto the cover of the May 2010 Sports Illustrated as part of their build-up to the World Cup.

While I was excited to show an image that had graced a magazine cover, I was moved by the motivation behind Marco’s work. In his backstory, he writes, “For over twenty years, I’ve been telling stories from the continent about subjects other than war, misery, or disease.” 

Marco’s sentiment resonates deeply with me. I got my start in photojournalism on a Fulbright Fellowship photographing young people living in Nairobi’s Mathare Valley slums. My big takeaway from the year-long experience was that while Mathare residents lacked such basics as running water, electricity, and security, many of the people I photographed were nonetheless proud and conducted their lives with a sense of purpose. That sense of humanity is often missing from the media’s coverage of places like Mathare. Telling stories about “war, misery, and disease” is an important part of photojournalism’s role. And yet those can’t be the only stories we photojournalists tell. It’s important to remember that while life in Mathare is incredibly difficult, that does not make it worthless.  As hip-hop artist Talib Kweli puts it in I Try (listen at 3:00), “Life is a beautiful struggle…”

Our mission at Nuru Project is to connect photojournalism with causes. So we’re suggesting that buyers of Marco Trovato’s print select Malaria No More as the benefit organization at checkout. Malaria No More works to eradicate malaria across Africa and has distributed mosquito nets in Luanda, where Marco took this image. 

- JB