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Foreign Policy has a great little photo essay on Africa today. Really like some of these, and the story they tell is happily counter to a lot of photojourno I see coming out of there. Some see Africa’s “rise” as a myth, others a reality. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that the continent is changing rapidly. At 6 percent, Africa’s GDP growth rate has surpassed that of Asia — making it the world’s fastest-growing continent and a promising target for emerging-market investors. As the Economist noted in 2011 in its issue on “Africa rising,” roughly 40 percent of Africans now live in cities, compared with 30 percent a generation ago. That percentage is expected to rise to 50 percent by 2025. Yet despite this promising trajectory, the modern, urban, and thriving Africa is not the one we usually see — a reality that Swedish photographer Jens Assur is hoping to change with a new collection of photographs. “In Sweden, we see only two types of pictures from Africa,” Assur tells FP. “It’s either war, famine, and HIV, or pretty lions on the savanna. I know, because I have myself contributed to those images, being a photo journalist in the 90s,” he adds. This time around, Assur chose to focus on big cities instead of the slums on the outskirts of urban areas, with the aim of capturing “what could be called a revolution in terms of construction, infrastructure, growth, and development.”

Foreign Policy has a great little photo essay on Africa today. Really like some of these, and the story they tell is happily counter to a lot of photojourno I see coming out of there.

Some see Africa’s “rise” as a myth, others a reality. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that the continent is changing rapidly. At 6 percent, Africa’s GDP growth rate has surpassed that of Asia — making it the world’s fastest-growing continent and a promising target for emerging-market investors. As the Economist noted in 2011 in its issue on “Africa rising,” roughly 40 percent of Africans now live in cities, compared with 30 percent a generation ago. That percentage is expected to rise to 50 percent by 2025.

Yet despite this promising trajectory, the modern, urban, and thriving Africa is not the one we usually see — a reality that Swedish photographer Jens Assur is hoping to change with a new collection of photographs. “In Sweden, we see only two types of pictures from Africa,” Assur tells FP. “It’s either war, famine, and HIV, or pretty lions on the savanna. I know, because I have myself contributed to those images, being a photo journalist in the 90s,” he adds.

This time around, Assur chose to focus on big cities instead of the slums on the outskirts of urban areas, with the aim of capturing “what could be called a revolution in terms of construction, infrastructure, growth, and development.”

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nathanaelturner: Rochester, 2010 Today in New York it’s sneaky cold. It was raining this morning, and the scene outside has a dreary day in fall type of pallor. But it’s actually like 30 something degrees, and feels almost colder because the air is so damp. Makes me miss the upstate New York winters that are almost sneaky warm. A compact between the clouds and the snow creates a weird pool of reflected warmth and light, illuminating and heating an otherwise snowy landscape. Like that.

nathanaelturner:

Rochester, 2010

Today in New York it’s sneaky cold. It was raining this morning, and the scene outside has a dreary day in fall type of pallor. But it’s actually like 30 something degrees, and feels almost colder because the air is so damp. Makes me miss the upstate New York winters that are almost sneaky warm. A compact between the clouds and the snow creates a weird pool of reflected warmth and light, illuminating and heating an otherwise snowy landscape. Like that.

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