All photos © Stacy Kranitz.

Over the last six years, Los Angeles-based photographer Stacy Kranitz has been working on a personal project about the Native American community living on the disappearing Isle de Jean Charles in the Louisiana bayous. Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians first bought land here in 1876. Because of its close proximity to the Gulf of Mexico and the disruption of the Mississippi River levees (built in the Sixties) the island has been slowly eaten away by the Gulf’s saltwater. The land is a fourth the size it was when its oldest residents were children. Oil pipelines began unearthing the land in the early-Nineties and erosion of the island has since accelerated due to the gulf oil spill coating nearby vegetation with crude and chemical dispersants. Less than 60 water-damaged houses remain on the island and more than half of them are empty. The road that leads to the island disappears underwater during storms.

Kranitz explains, “Some of the residents I have photographed have left. There have been four major hurricanes that have devastated the gulf coast during the last six years (Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike). The population has dwindled substantially during this period. I have seen houses blown away, abandoned and deteriorated into uninhabitable dwellings.”

Kranitz is currently working on an installation that includes a model she built of the island along with sound, video and drawings. She hopes to show the work first in Louisiana. The project is a work in progress as long as the Island is inhabited, for a projected  15 to 50 years.

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© Lynsey Addario. “Bhutan Forest, 2007.”

Sebastiao Salgado, Susan Meiselas, Bruce Davidson, Alec Soth, Greg Marinovich and Roger Ballen are  just a few of the many photographers who have donated prints to the May 15 photo auction to be held at Christie’s in New York, to benefit the children of slain photojournalist Anton Hammerl. Hammerl was killed in April 2011 while covering the conflict in Libya by forces loyal to Muammar Qaddafi.

Update, May 2: The Estate of Tim Hetherington has donated a print to the event, which will be hosted by Christiane Amanpour, ABC global affairs correspondent.

Friends of Anton, the colleagues who banded together when Hammerl was first reported missing, have gathered loads of support from the photography community and partners like Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders.  If you think an original, signed print by Lynsey Addario or Marcus Bleasdale might be beyond your budget, you can join the effort by buying a ticket; the suggested donation is $75. Visit the Friends of Anton web site to order tickets, get more information on the Friends of Anton fundraising efforts, see a preview of prints and books available for purchase, or learn about sponsorship opportunities.

All proceeds of the May 15 auction go to Hammerl’s children: 11-year-old Aurora, 8-year-old Neo, and 8-month-old Hiro.

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All photos © Tim Hetherington, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

April 20, 2011 and the days that followed were difficult for many people who admired photographers Tim Hetheringon and Chris Hondros. There is some consolation in the fact we can still look at and enjoy their work. Many of Hetherington’s images from Liberia and Afghanistan, as well as his multimedia works, are now on view in an exquisitely displayed show at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York City through May 12.

The families of Hetherington and Hondros designated charities that were meaningful to these photographers where donations can be made in their memories. More information on these memorials can be found here.

Above: “Untitled, Liberia 2003.”

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All Photos © Jaime Permuth

“Yonkeros,’ a Spanglish derivative of ‘junk,’ is a term for the people and businesses that strip wrecked cars and sell them for parts or scrap metal. Jaime Permuth’s recent body of work Yonkeros, shot over the course of one year, examines the landscape of the junkyards in the Willets Point section of Queens, New York. “In fair weather, this is strenuous, backbreaking work; when the frost sets in it becomes downright monumental”, Permuth says, noting that most of the mechanics grew up in tropical climates of Latin American.

For Permuth, Yonkeros became a lyrical exploration of first world consumerism, waste, and obsolescence as they intersect with third world ingenuity and survivalist strategies in this no-man’s-land of Queens. Now, the days of the Yonkeros are numbered. The City of New York has cleared the last hurdles to redevelop the area for commercial and residential use, and Mayor Mayor Bloomberg himself recently broke ground for the project. “What will become of these 250 businesses, the men who make their livelihoods there and the working-class families who depend on them for the affordable and fast service they provide?  No answers are forthcoming yet,” Permuth says.  “Willets Point is destined to become another urban legend, one which future generations of our glossy metropolis will have a hard time accepting was ever true.” Permuth’s work is on view in an exhibition at Pregones Gallery in the Bronx, through April 28th.

Yonkeros will be published as a book by La Fabrica Editorial in Madrid and distributed worldwide.  Permuth is a Guatemalan photographer based in New York City.  He teaches in the Master of Professional Studies in Digital Photography program at the School of Visual Arts.

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© Ziyah Gafic

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the start of the conflict in Bosnia that eventually became the worst genocide Europe since World War II. While journalists who covered the conflict and historians are now reexamining the bloody conflict and its lessons, the events of 20 years ago are not yet relegated to history. “How could they be, when there hasn’t been catharsis or absolution?” says Ziyah Gafic, a Bosnian photographer.

Gafic, who was 12 years old when Serbs attacked Bosnia in a grab for power in the former Soviet satellite, has been working with the International Commission on Missing Persons to photograph the eyeglasses, snapshots, keys and other personal belongings of victims of ethnic cleansing. The items have been collected from mass graves and are being used as tools to identify some of the 30,000 missing Bosnians. Gafic’s goal is not only to help reunite these objects with the victims’ families, but to document and remember the genocide.

“We so desperately hoped lessons learned in Bosnia will help prevent or solve faster other conflicts, but how foolish was that?” Gafic says. “Just looking at Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Libya, makes ‘never again’ quite a cynical statement.”

Related Article: Ziyah Gafic: A Forensic Documentary of Genocide