Colophon: A.V_M Improvements

I finally broke down and made a few changes to this site.

Changes under the hood include an upgrade to WordPress v.2.7.1. The admin back-end interface is much improved and there are more content creation tools and compatibility with more widgets and plugins. And it is goodbye to that sturdy but a little-too-ubiquitous Cutline theme. The new theme Clean Home is minimalist and um, clean; it should also give my site more of an individual visual identity.

Now all I have to do is spend less time over on Twitter and more time finding afromedia goodness.

africa.concerned_photography*

Screen shot from Krisanne Johnson’s portfolio web site. © K. Johnson

Krisanne Johnson: ”I Love You Real Fast”.

Swaziland reports the highest percentage of HIV-positive people in the world, with the hardest hit being women aged 15-24.

SEE ALSO: Generation Next: Youth in South Africa. Images in this series featured in the kwaito story, FADER 52 (AFRICA).

Screen shot from Michael Zumstein’s photo essay at the Oeil Public web site. © M. Zumstein

Michael Zumstein: Mothers against the Atlantic: Senegal 2006 

Since January 2006, about 50 young Senegalese from Thiaroye’s neighbourhood have been lost at sea trying to get to the Canary Islands in dugout.
Getting together mothers who lost their son at sea, the Group of Thiaroye’s Women tries to dissuade the young people to leave and risk their life.

SEE ALSO: Women at war Cote d’Ivoire 2004: Photo essay about women who joined the rebel forces in Ivory Coast’s civil war.

*The Concerned Photographer

“The concerned photographer finds much in the present unacceptable which he tries to alter. Our goal is simply to let the world also know why it is unacceptable.”
–Cornell Capa (b. 1918), photographer

nyt.africa: Malick Sidibe: Prints and the Revolution

Malick Sidibe Prints and the Revolution

Fataumata Cissé wears a Junya Watanabe multicolored top and green plaid skirt. Miu Miu bag. Zoraide shoes. Mamadou Gamara wears a Dsquared2 blue-and-white striped shirt. Missoni multicolored vest and pale blue pants. Gucci shoes. Mariam Sidibé wears a Nicole Miller multicolored dress. Tsumori Chisato multicolored wrap-skirt. Christian Louboutin shoes. Albertus Swanepoel hat. Dries Van Noten necklace.
Photo: Malick Sidibé for The New York Times

Harlem Jazz

Audio-enhanced photo essay by Andrew Sullivan: Harlem Jazz.

Jazz weaves threads of Harlem’s identity. On 125th St., near Hotel Theresa, where Louis Armstrong slept, a clothing store entices shoppers by adding “Jazz” to its name. Street vendors sell John Coltrane and Josephine Baker t-shirts to locals and foreign tourists. Murals of musicians and dancers emerge when shopkeepers pull down decorated security doors at closing time.

Max Lucas, 98, has played his saxophone in Harlem since 1925, when his first gig was a duet with a banjo player in a barber shop. He performed in the Savoy Ballroom as 2,000 dancers covered the floor. During Prohibition and the Great Depression, Lucas worked rent parties, where the hosts had three-piece bands in their homes, sold bootleg liquor and charged 25 cents admission to help pay their landlords. When he joins his son’s band at the Lenox Lounge on Wednesdays, the crowd reveres Lucas as its connection to Harlem’s cultural legacy.

China in Africa: The Great Chinese Takeout

While America is preoccupied with the war in Iraq (cost: half a trillion dollars and counting), and while think-tank economists continue to spit out papers debating whether vital resources are running out at all, China’s leadership isn’t taking any chances. In just a few years, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has become the most aggressive investor-nation in Africa. This commercial invasion is without question the most important development in the sub-Sahara since the end of the Cold War — an epic, almost primal propulsion that is redrawing the global economic map. One former U.S. assistant secretary of state has called it a “tsunami.” Some are even calling the region “ChinAfrica.”

There are already more Chinese living in Nigeria than there were Britons during the height of the empire. From state-owned and state-linked corporations to small entrepreneurs, the Chinese are cutting a swath across the continent. As many as 1 million Chinese citizens are circulating here. Each megaproject announced by China’s government creates collateral economies and population monuments, like the ripples of a stone skimmed across a lake.

Beijing declared 2006 the “Year of Africa,” and China’s leaders have made one Bono-like tour after another. No other major power has shown the same interest or muscle, or the sheer ability to cozy up to African leaders. And unlike America’s faltering effort in Iraq, the Chinese ain’t spreading democracy, folks. They’re there to get what they need to feed the machine. The phenomenon even has a name on the ground in the sub-Sahara: the Great Chinese Takeout.

Special Report: China in Africa

SEE ALSO: TIME photo essay “China Goes to Africa, images by Paolo Woods

Screen shot from Time web site. Image © P. Woods

SEE ALSO: Current TV documentary: Chinatown, Africa [via Africa is a Country]

SEE ALSO: Nigeriatown: (Accompanied an article, Letter from China, “The Promised Land,” in The New Yorker issue of February 9, 2009)

Screen shot from New Yorker site. Image © D. Hogsholt