Dear all,

It’s raining. Thick, heavy drops are shooting from the sky.
Once more the rainy season has caught up with us and there seems to be no escape. Several times every day the unbearable, tropical heat is broken by heavy rains.
We are just south of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania. The Land Rover is parked under a palm tree on a beautiful white beach. It sounds like we are having a vacation, but we’re not.
Chiho and I are working hard on our computers and also on the Land Rover. We just returned from Amsterdam, where we travelled for one week in order to pick up my ‘Honorable Mention’ at the World Press Photo Award ceremony. We attended lectures and presentations by other photographers, and I was invited to present some of my own work. We also met with editors and other photography people, so the trip was half work and half pleasure. We stayed for a couple of days on an air mattress at our friend Vero’s place, where me made good use of her super fast wireless internet connection. After many months in Africa the experience of a DSL connection can be quite magical. We also met up with my parents who came over from Germany, partly in order to deliver some formal wear for the award ceremony. Even the Prince of The Netherlands was present at the event, so I was happy for not having to stumble on stage with washed out jeans and a faded old T-shirt.
This year’s World Press Photo Awards are somewhat of a departure from previous competitions, as there were less pure news pictures chosen, typically coming from one of the wire services, but more well composed, moody, and photographically sophisticated stories and images that showed a clear authorship by a single photographer. It seems that slowly the walls between what is still known as photojournalism, documentary photography, art photography and commercial photography are crumbling and I think that this is a good thing. Many of the prize winers this year are very young photographers, young both in age and also in their approach. I feel very proud to be part of this new generation of people who are not so much thinking in categories any longer.
http://www.worldpressphoto.org/index.php?option=com_photogallery&task=view&id=1166&Itemid=187&bandwidth=high

Another group of photographers I am very honored to be part of is this one:
http://www.battlespaceonline.org/
About 22 photographers collaborated in a group show and book project called “Battlespace: Unrealities of War” that became one of the most powerful visual statements about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that I have ever seen.

The Iraq book, both the English version and the German version keeps making a silent, but persistent noise in the publishing world and among readers and I am very happy that several publications wrote reviews about it. The latest could be found in the Tages-Anzeiger Zürich, and it looks like this:
http://www.tagi.ch/dyn/news/buecher/866193.html

The book was also awarded at the Photo District News (PDN) photo annual as one of the best books of 2007.
Here the book again in English:
http://www.amazon.com/Iraq-Between-Jon-Lee-Anderson/dp/1576874001/ref=pd_sim_b_title_2
And in German:
http://www.amazon.de/IRAK-Schweigendes-Land-Christoph-Bangert/dp/3771643694/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205256569&sr=8-1

Before I forget, and before you delete this message, because it became once more terribly long, please check out some new pictures and video on my blog:
http://africa.christophbangert.com/

Apart from shooting and editing video and still pictures, Chiho was also working hard on her own blog, which can be seen here:
http://web.mac.com/chihochiho/

In Japanese, the whole thing looks like this:
http://web.mac.com/chihochiho/iWeb/Africa/CF9DBF1E-9DEB-4735-BA07-91818EAD8EBD/025A919E-4072-4144-81D9-A3FDF9419BE3.html

A map of our travels can be seen here:
http://web.mac.com/chihochiho/iWeb/Africa/Map%202.html

My last dispatch came from Cape Town in South Africa.
We left the city early one morning and made our way down to the Cape of Good Hope, where we took some pictures with the Land Rover, proud to have reached this important point in our journey. The following day we also  visited Cape Agulhas, the largely unknown most southern tip of Africa, which is located several hundred kilometers east of the Cape of Good Hope.
At this point, where the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean meet, our journey to the South came to and end. From now on we would constantly drive in a northerly direction, all the way back to Europe.
We followed the South African coast to the northeast, visiting the well known Garden Route, the Wild Coast and the Transkei which is home to the Xhosa people. In Umtata we went to see the Nelson Mandela Museum and went on to Durban. We then turned northwest towards the Drakensberg Mountains and went on to Johannesburg.
In South Africa’s largest city which locals refer to as Jo’burg, we hired a guide to take us into the crime infested city center. Especially at night this is an empty, violent and lawless place, with one of the highest crime rates in the world.
We also spent some time in Soweto, South Africa’s most famous and historically important black township. Nelson Mandela used to live here as well as Bishop Tutu. Both the Hector Peterson Museum and the excellent Apartheid Museum were highlights of our journey to South Africa and helped us tremendously to understand the history and trauma of this African nation. And although South Africa is not our most favorite African country, it certainly is the historically and socially most interesting place we visited on this continent. In no other country is the gap between rich and poor so severe and so plain to see. Few places are struggling as much as South Africa with an exploding crime rate. The rich and middle class, both black and white are living their lives behind high walls and barb wire fences while a large portion of the population is struggling to survive in the many shanty towns outside the cities, just as they did during the Apartheid years.
If South Africa, with it’s huge shopping malls, American style supermarkets, fast food restaurants on the one hand and shanty towns and buildings occupied by squatters on the other hand, was thought provoking, our next destination surely was even more so.
We decided to travel to Zimbabwe, a country that is terribly suffering under an economic crisis which was caused by mismanagement and the forced eviction of white Zimbabwean farmers from their land by one of Africa’s last strongmen, the 84 year old Robert Mugabe.
Local, parliamentary and presidential elections were to be held in Zimbabwe on March 29. There were almost no foreign journalists permitted to cover the elections. Even in normal times permissions to work in Zimbabwe are rarely granted by the government, resulting in journalists posing as tourists and working under cover. Several foreign journalists working in this way were arrested in the past, just like their Zimbabwean colleagues, who are frequently facing imprisonment and mistreatment by government security forces.
Before Chiho and I entered Zimbabwe we went shopping. We bought everything we needed for the next two weeks, like loads of food, water, diesel, batteries, toothpaste and cherry flavored candy. I hid my press cards and extra passports deep inside the Land Rover and burned all my business cards that say “Christoph Bangert -photojournalist-”. On a deserted South African camp site not far from the border I seized to be a photojournalist and became an engineer.
I was very nervous when we crossed the border into Zimbabwe at Beitbridge. On the one hand I really wanted to be there during the elections and document this crucial time in the history of Zimbabwe. At the same time I had to work under cover, pose as a tourist, which in some way I was, but by doing so I risked arrest and imprisonment by the police or the secret service, possibly bringing our Land Rover journey to an abrupt end. I wasn’t too concerned about going to jail myself, but the thought of Chiho having to go through arrest and spending time in an African prison made my stomach turn.

For 11 days Chiho and I traveled through Zimbabwe, while strictly keeping to the touristic or formerly touristic sites that the country has to offer.
We were wearing funny hats, huge sunglasses, shorts and white sneakers in an effort to appear as tourists. We talked to Zimbabweans, both black and white as much as we could to try to understand the immense problems  that the population is facing. Shops were empty, fuel was only available on the black market, long queues formed in front of banks, where people patiently waited for days to receive only worthless pieces of paper. The annual inflation rate has reached 100,000%. A teacher earns about $10 a month while prices on the black market, almost the only source from where food and other supplies are still available, are on a similar level as in North America or Europe.
I was lucky to be able to work for the New York Times again and some of my pictures where published here:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/04/02/world/20080402ZIMBABWE_index.html

On April 3, the The New York Times writer Barry Bearak, who was working without official permission in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, was arrested by police forces. We hadn’t been working in the same places and didn’t meet, but my pictures were published alongside his texts both online and in print and both our names had been mentioned in the credits.
I learned about his arrest late at night from the picture desk in New York and it was decided that we should try to leave the country the following morning. Chiho and I were concerned that we might get arrested before or during the crossing of the border. An under cover human rights activist had been taken to prison while attempting to board a plane out of Zimbabwe.
After a sleepless night we woke early and drove the few kilometers to the border. We were lucky to be in Victoria Falls, a small town next to the famous water falls of the same name, where the huge Zambezi river spectacularly slams down into a deep gorge. Despite the morning chill we were sweating considerably when we handed over our German and Japanese passports to the Zimbabwean immigration official. We had been hiding all our photography gear and computers in the car and were wearing our tourist uniform again.
With great relief we watched the man un-ceremonially stamp our passports. The crossing of the old steel bridge over the Zambezi River into Zambia turned out to be one of the happiest moments of our journey. We felt as if we had committed the perfect crime and had just gotten away with it.
From Livingstone, a small Zambian town just across the border, I called my editors in New York, who had been very concerned and had provided us with great support and understanding.
We went into a supermarket to see a very different picture compared to the one only 10 kilometers away in Zimbabwe. Shelves were bending under South African and European products, there was bread, meat, sugar and cooking oil readily available, supplies that were almost impossible to come by in Zimbabwe.
As I am writing this today, more than a month after the elections, there are still no results for the presidential race announced, and the situation for Zimbabweans of all classes and races is still as desperate as before. Although Robert Mugabe has clearly lost the elections, he and his party, ZANU-PF, refuses to acknowledge defeat. Currently a run-off seems likely as none of the three presidential candidates appears to have won a clear majority of more than 50% of the vote. This is disputed by the opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC, who claims to have won 50,3% of all votes.
My colleague Barry Bearak was released on bail four days after his detention and was said to be OK.

After one night in a noisy and overcrowded backpacker’s lodge in Livingstone, another stark contrast to the almost deserted guesthouses and hotels across the river, we made our way northeast towards Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, and from there on towards the South Luangwa National Park. We decided to take a short cut not usually used during the rainy season, that was just about to come to an end in this part of the continent. We also took two hitchhikers along, Diana and Kate from the US, who were great company and of good help during our two day odyssey through the wild bush of Zambia.
The road was heavily overgrown and muddy and the friendly villagers we encountered on the way were happy to see us. We had been the first car since January.
Once I almost flipped the car onto its side while attempting to drive up a steep river bank. I failed to see a deep hole that was covered with vegetation and proceeded to slam the Land Rover into it. The vehicle was on the verge of tilting over and we had to climb out the side window. Very, very slowly. The left front wheel was dangling about one meter in the air and it took us a while to secure the car with straps that we attached to a nearby tree. The following rescue operation was unnerving because I first had to climb underneath the tilted vehicle in order to retrieve our winching gear.
Once more the electric winch that is attached to the front of the Land Rover saved us and after an hour the car was standing on all four feet again.
We saw hippos, elephants, zebras, giraffes, baboons, wildebeest, buffaloes, countless antelopes and even a sleepy lion during our visit of the South Luangwa National Park. A few days later we proceeded to Malawi and it’s capital Lilongwe. There we met Kate and Neil again, British travelers who are on the road with their four children and an old Land Rover Discovery. We had seen them last in South Africa.
We spent only a few days in Malawi, visiting Livingstonia, an impressively remote and beautiful mission, and Nkhata Bay, a village on the shore of the wonderful Lake Malawi.
We entered Tanzania on April 14th and made a our way to Dar Es Salaam, the largest and economically most important city in this East African nation. On a beach just 8 kilometers south of the center we set up camp and immediately started to work on the car, which badly needed some maintenance and also on our visa application for Sudan. The Sudanese visa is not easy to get and it can take up to three weeks to be granted. After visiting the Japanese as well as the German embassies in order to get recommendation letters we applied for a Sudanese tourist visa, which will hopefully be approved by the time we reach Nairobi or Addis Ababa, where it then actually will be issued. That’s at least how it works in theory. We will see.

The rain has stopped in the meantime and the sun came out between the clouds. Chiho and I are repacking the Land Rover. Tomorrow we will leave this wonderful spot on the beach and travel to the northwest to Mount Kilimanjaro, the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti National Park. We will then visit Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya before we make our way up to Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt. We unfortunately only have three months left for the last part of the journey, which is not much given the bad roads and long distances that are still ahead of us.

Best
Christoph.

me@christophbangert.com
Cameroon cell: +237-96572516

Dear all,

The book is out. As some of you know my new book IRAQ:The Space between just came out and can be ordered in your local book store or on Amazon. For more details please click here: http://iraq.christophbangert.com/

Although many people already received their copy, even my mother got hers already, ironically Chiho and I were not able to see the completed book ourselves yet. The work proofed to be hard to come by in Africa. And although we were present during the printing of the book in China, both of us are suffering from recurring nightmares of finding the book horribly misprinted and of terrible technical quality on our return to New York.

We are both burning to see the final product but with equal intensity fear the moment of holding the book in our hands.

Read more

Ghana cell: +233-245831859
Thuraya Sat phone: +88216-51071135
me@christophbangert.com

Dear all,

Let’s face it. I’m not really in the mood for writing.
I’m walking up and down in the living room. I enter the kitchen in search for food. I’m looking Chiho over the shoulder while she is editing our latest video, which will be online by the time you read this. (http://africa.christophbangert.com/) Back to the computer. There’s no escape.

We are in Accra, the capital of Ghana. Our friend Jane, who has been living and working as a freelance photographer here for the last six months (http://www.janehahn.com/), arranged for us to stay at a place of a friend who is currently out of town. It’s a lovely little house with a safe driveway for the Land Rover in front of it. Yesterday night we slept in a real bed for the first time since we left Dakar about one and a half months ago. I never thought I could enjoy a hot shower so much.
Chiho and I both like camping with our vehicle a lot, but we were also reminded that there is an actual reason why people generally live in houses and not in cars. It’s far more comfortable. After having experienced great hospitality in Dakar, our buds were saved for a second time by a fellow photographer and we are grateful to be able to stay here for three days while we work on our computers and run errands in the city like stocking up on food and supplies, getting visas and doing some repairs on the Land Rover.

Read more

Senegalese cell: +221-240-2331
me@christophbangert.com

With the intention to finally start to select about 20 pictures from Iraq for a gallery show that will open in the fall, I am turning on the computer. As usual the little machine is placed on my knees while I am sitting in the front seat of my Land Rover. Outside it’s already dark. The sun was swallowed by the Atlantic Ocean some time ago, ending a hot and humid day. The inside of the vehicle is being dimly lid by the computer’s screen, making me blind to the dark surroundings of the makeshift campground that I am calling my home for more than a week now. I am the only guest. Just a few moments ago, while deep in thought, I noticed some sort of movement on my right side. When I looked up I saw the dark face of a huge man just millimeters away from the glass of the car’s side window staring at me out of the night in total silence and with great seriousness.

Overcoming my shock and surprise I stumbled a clumsy “Bon soir.”, gratefully recognizing the man’s face as the one of the night watchman, who had come to say hello and observe me at work.

I am in Dakar, Senegal.

First of all I would like to thank everybody who responded to my last dispatch. Not all responses were positive, which I was quite happy about, because it helps me to improve things. I never felt very confident about my writing and I only see it as a supplement to my images. I am a photographer not a writer. Nevertheless I feel that it is important to condense some thoughts into words sometimes. I am continuing to write in my little blue diary every night.

To sum up the reactions to my last dispatch: My mother loved it. My sister thought it was too negative. My father probably did not read it because it wasn’t in German. (And I admit, it was terribly long, too. He has my full sympathy on that one.) My girlfriend just kept laughing.

Please do not hesitate to let me know if you want to be taken off this email list. I do get tons of annoying mass emails myself, so if you think that my occasional dispatches are just unnecessarily adding to the mountain of “free Viagra” and “Instant penis enlargement formula” emails, please tell me.

I completed the first part of my journey. From Daun in Germany to Dakar in Senegal. 8,515 Kilometers in about six weeks. The trip went very well so far, but it has to be said that this was probably one of the easiest parts of the journey. I am in good health, and the car is running without any problems. Like an old steam locomotive. It’s not the fastest or most elegant vehicle around, but it just never stops functioning.

I am happy. It was a bloody good idea to do this trip. If I’m lonely? Yes, I little bit. I miss my girlfriend. A lot. It makes a huge difference if you are in a relationship or not when you do such a long journey. When I was traveling from Argentina to New York, I had no girlfriend, well, most of the time, so there wasn’t really anybody to miss.

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Mauritanian cell: +222-763-3098
Thuraya Sat phone: +88216-51071135
me@christophbangert.com

Dear all,

I am in Nouadhibou in Mauritania.
I’ve been trying to avoid writing this dispatch. I repacked the Land Rover again and again. I filled some oil into the engine, I made travel plans, pored over maps, read in my guidebook, drove a lot through the desert, cooked some spaghetti, and drove some more through the desert. Finally there wasn’t anything left to do but to reluctantly sit down and start to write this dispatch.

I like writing. I do write every day in my little blue notebook that I bought on the day I left on my great journey to South Africa in my little hometown’s only stationary store.

At night you can see me sitting in my car accurately noting the day’s traveled kilometers, date and place into this small diary. I am writing about the highlights and low points of the day and about people I met. But mainly I am writing down my thoughts and ideas, as there is a lot of time to think about things when you are driving for days and days all alone through the desert or the mountains or on a Spanish motorway.

I decided not to write a daily online blog, but write an old-fashioned hand written diary instead, just as I did on my last long trip through South America. And although I know that this is a little disappointing for some people who where hoping to get more frequent updates on my travels, there are several good reasons for this. First of all a diary is something extremely personal and it is important that it contains some things that are not for everyone’s eyes. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a diary, but a dispatch or an article. I found it very important for my last trip that I wrote very personal things in a way where it didn’t matter how many grammatical errors the notes contained or if it made any particular sense to the reader, in my own language, German, and with the knowledge that not every online geek will read it. My last diaries were the basis for my first book, and it wouldn’t have been possible to edit a meaningful book without writing things up in a very straightforward way while on the road. The only solution would be to write two diaries one on a paper and one online, but I simply don’t have the time.

So there will be no daily blog, but there will be regular dispatches, like the one you are reading, every three weeks or so. And honestly, who really has time to read blogs? I don’t.

I will mainly use the blog to post some of the images of this journey, my current location and updated contact information. You are also able to find my location on a map and all travel dispatches will be collected there. I just uploaded new images, so check it out:
http://africa.christophbangert.com/

I am sitting in the pleasant and shady communal space of a small dusty campground right next to a gas station in the center of town and I not only have to fight the blaring TV that is producing an incredible noise by presenting French afternoon game shows to the half sleeping guardian of this place, but also a local visitor, who additionally to the TV terror, has just decided to reset the ring tone of his brand new cell phone. The only possible way to do this, naturally, is by listening to all of the 50 or so different tones and songs that are on offer. We just finished listening to the entire melody of “Jingle Bells” and are now slowly, after some consideration, moving on to a Shakira song that I can’t recall the title of. I am sure I will be cursed to carry around the melody in my head all day, though.

I will not use these minor distractions as just another excuse for not finishing the task at hand, which is to write down some notes about my travels. I will concentrate as best as I can.

Read more

I can be reached at:
cell Germany: +49-170-8642912
Thuraya Sat phone: +88216-51071135
me@christophbangert.com
christoph_bangert@hotmail.com

my latest dispatch:

Dear all,

I am in Southern France.
A couple of days ago I started on a half year long overland trip with my trusted Land Rover from Daun in Germany to Capetown in South Africa.
First plans for this journey were made in 2002 while on the road with the same vehicle from Buenos Aires to New York, a project that resulted in a book called Travel Notes. (powerHouse 2007, http://travelnotes.christophbangert.com/)

The final decision for this latest trip to Africa was made in Baghdad, where I spent about nine months on assignment for the New York Times during the past two years. Working in Iraq was professionally and personally probably the most challenging, serious, and also frustrating experience of my life. I spent the last several months putting together a photo book with pictures from Iraq. The book will come out this fall and will be published by powerHouse.

The idea was to keep my life somewhat balanced and to do something that is challenging in a different way than war journalism. I was hoping that this journey would help me to keep a healthy distance to places like Iraq, Lebanon or Afghanistan, so I will be able to go back there again with a fresh eye and without becoming a cynic or loosing faith in the human race over the years.
Basically it’s about keeping my sanity.

And just to make this clear:
No, this is not a vacation. No, I am not retiring from covering wars, and I am not planning to become a landscape photographer. Yes, I am available for assignment all over the world, at any time.

On my journey I will visit Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo, Republic of Congo, Angola, Namibia and South Africa.
I will generally travel alone, but will have occasional visitors. Right now my girlfriend Chiho is with me, but she will fly back home to New York tomorrow.

I will constantly be available by local cell phone and Thuraya Satellite phone. (+88216-51071135)
Email will work as well, but there will be times when I will only be able to check emails every three or four days. I do have an R-bGan Satellite device, but won’t be able to use it constantly because of the high cost. This is a low budget, self-assigned project.
In urgent matters, feel free to call or email Chiho in New York. chihochiho@mac.com , +1-917-679-4440
For picture requests please contact laif in Germany (http://www.laif.de) or Redux in the US (http://www.reduxpictures.com).

My current location and updated contact information you will always be able to find on my new blog along with some new images and short texts. The blog also has a map function, where you can exactly see where I am. Like a UPS package…
http://africa.christophbangert.com/

Once in a while I will write a mass email like this one to keep you informed about my whereabouts.
If this should annoy you, please let me know and I will take your address off my email list immediately.

All the best
Christoph.

Christoph Bangert
-photojournalist-
currently in Southern Europe,
on the way to West Africa
cell Germany: +49-170-8642912
Thuraya Sat phone: +88216-51071135
me@christophbangert.com
http://www.christophbangert.com/
http://travelnotes.christophbangert.com/
http://africa.christophbangert.com/
http://www.laif.de