Working as an NGO Photographer Covering Leprosy Elimination for WHO in Cambodia

After a successful collaboration with WHO last year, it was great to be asked to work as a documentary photographer to produce another photo essay as part of their People of the Western Pacific Series.

The brief was to produce 25 photos to tell the story of Visal and the invaluable work that he does in eliminating leprosy from Cambodia.

Visal works for the National Center for Tuberculosis and Leprosy Control, under the Ministry of Health, and has been instrumental in implementing the National Programme for Leprosy Elimination.

Visal is dedicated and passionate about his work and even faced discrimination from his own family. They asked him not to visit his home town before he educated them about how easily treatable the disease is.

I spent a day taking photos of Visal as he worked in the community.

I photographed Visal conducting a training session, speaking to the local health authorities to explain their activities and conducting screening in the community.

At the end of the day, we visited a couple who both had leprosy and suffered disabilities as a result.

Visal’s work has helped to reduce the stigma within their community and he’s helped them to establish a chicken husbandry business that helps them to be financially independent.

Visal has also been instrumental in establishing networks using social media to help identify new cases. This has been very effective, particularly when working with people from remote areas, which is where most new cases are detected.

Leprosy is easily treatable and can be eliminated from Cambodia.

Due to the hard work of people like Visal, there are very few new leprosy cases in Cambodia and by educating people, their work has helped to reduce the stigma.

I wish them luck in achieving their goal.

You can see more of my photography work for WHO here. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any NGO photography projects you would like to discuss.

NGO Photographer in Siem Reap | On Assignment for Kiva

It was a great opportunity to work as a photographer and videographer with international NGO Kiva in Siem Reap, Cambodia. I spent two days photographing and filming a series of case studies about people who have taken out loans offered by Kiva to buy a cooking stove made by the social enterprise ACE. It was my first job through Storyhunter and will hopefully be the first of many.

The ACE stove is a great invention. It’s very efficient and within no time at all after turning the stove on and adding the biomass fuel there is a roaring fire that is hot enough to cook rice, stir fries and soups. The stove comes with a solar panel, so it perfect for people living off grid. It also has a USB port so it can be used to charge phones and other battery-powered electric devices and it’s smoke-less, so it’s a cheaper, quicker and healthier alternative to using charcoal which is commonly used in Cambodia.

It’s great to see how such a seemingly small thing can help improve people’s finances, save them time (if they collected fire wood) and contribute to improving their lives. The kind hospitality of the Khmer people is second-to-none. Everyone of the people we filmed and photographed invited us into their homes with open arms, were patient and had a good laugh. It really is one thing about Cambodia that makes the job easy, rewarding and fun.

Below are a selection of images from the couple of days I spent filming case studies and taking photos. You can see more examples of my work as an NGO photographer here and here.

Working as a camera operator and photographer for World Animal Protection

Nicolas Axelrod kindly recommended me to work as a camera operator and photographer for World Animal Protection.

After spending almost 4 years working in Mondulkiri on Last of the Elephant Men, it was great to go back to Sen Monorom to catch up with everyone and document the great work Elephant Valley Project are doing.

It was my first time working as a camera operator and a photographer at the same time. It was challenging, but overall good fun. I look forward to doing more of this in the future.