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| © Jehad Nga / Corbis |
| A woman holding a baby collects water at a well in Dreshka, Darfur. Click photo for more images. |
Age: 30
Location: Mogadishu, Somalia
Website: lightstalkers.org/jehadnga
Funds from Nga's art sales go to Somalia. "It's all one big piece of work," he says.
Jehad Nga is not only an emerging photographer -- he is one of a whole new generation of photographers for whom the medium is more than just an effective way to communicate. For Nga, photography is a tool with which to build an identity as an activist as well as an artist.
Nga (pronounced "ing-ga") was born in Smith Center, Kansas, but his family moved when he was very young, first to Libya and then to London, where he was raised. In his early 20s he was living in Los Angeles, working in a hotel while taking courses at UCLA, when he dropped into the Book Soup bookstore and discovered a volume called Digital Diaries by photographer Natasha Merritt. The book, a collection of intimate photos made with a digital point-and-shoot, convinced Nga that he could strike out with his own digital compact for a backpacking trip to southeast Asia. By 2002 he was traveling through the Middle East. "I ended up volunteering to work in a rehabilitation center in the West Bank, but I was also shooting all the time," he recalls.
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One picture he made there was published in New York City's Village Voice. He returned to New York and, inspired by his work in the rehabilitation center, enrolled in a course to become an emergency medical technician. At the same time he began a photo course sponsored by the Magnum photo agency. By early 2003 he was back in Jordan, this time with a Nikon D1H, hoping to cover the Iraq invasion. He met New York Times correspondent Ian Fisher, who thought that a trained EMT might be a valuable traveling companion. Shooting for the Times, Nga made his way to Baghdad.
Nga's unorthodox career is still a work in progress. He continues to shoot for the paper's travel section. Meanwhile, his photography has acquired a decidedly more personal, expressive note -- especially in his series made in Somalia. The work has been shown at the M+B Gallery in Los Angeles and the Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York, and funds from his art sales are going to build a school in Somalia. "It's all one big piece of work," he says.
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