EDITOR'S NOTE:

In November we present five dispatches. Richard Humphries covered the surprising and gentle Rose Revolution in Bangkok. Mark Allen Johnson presents a decidedly different story: the bloody gang neighborhood of Compton, Calif. Wanting to document contemporary slavery, Peter Pattisson went to Africa to pursue the story. Balazs Gardi's longstanding work with the Roma (gypsies) of Eastern Europe is the subject of his article and the work for which he received a Getty Grant. Yannis Kontos has built a remarkable body of work on North Korea. We show a small selection here and will look at his work in depth early next year. Kontos is one of many feature photographers who first came to the editors' attention in Dispatches.

These five dispatches derive from the photographers' passion to see and to communicate. One worked in the U.S., three are extending larger projects and one pursues a part of his own experience.

Richard Humphries left England years ago to work in Southeast Asia. He lives in Bangkok, speaks the local languages and doesn't need a translator to understand how a situation evolved.

In many ways, one can also say that Mark Allen Johnson knows the language. He was a tough kid who matured along with hip-hop music. That world of violence and exploding energy, with its own rough vocabulary, infuses his work in Compton.

Pete Pattisson finally left his teaching job in inner-city London to spend more than a day or so on the weekends to devote himself to photography. Building on his larger project dealing with contemporary slavery, he wanted to contribute to our knowledge of these largely hidden practices during the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade by the British Parliament.

In September 2005, at Visa Pour l'Images in Perpignan, France, Balazs Gardi was awarded the Getty Grant for Editorial Photography. The grant funds allowed the photographer to continue his work on documenting the Roma communities of Central and Eastern Europe and the prejudice they face.

Yannis Kontos had to photograph surreptitiously in North Korea to avoid the consequences of picturing everyday life in the country. No small amount of courage and drive is necessary to document life in a police state.

Marianne Fulton
Dispatches Editor
mfulton@dvnetwork.net

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