Posts in Travel

Photographer Michael Heller Documents Africa Fire Mission’s Tireless Work In Kenya

Mathare is one of the oldest slums in Nairobi — home to over half a million people who live in a sea of mud-and-tin shanties, tightly packed into just 2 square miles. Survival is a daily struggle, set against a backdrop of poverty, disease, anarchy and violence, social complexities, and a lack of basic amenities, like sanitation, clean water, electricity and passable roads.

It is hard to imagine what would happen if a fire were to break out here — which is precisely what 20 firefighters and EMTs from the United States considered last November while touring the slum as part of their debriefing with Africa Fire Mission, a nonprofit organization that trains, empowers, supports and encourages fire departments in developing countries.

Among the firefighters was Michael Heller — an active member of the East Hampton Fire Department and a professional photographer whose work regularly appears in the Express News Group publications. He soaked in the atmosphere and conditions, noting the sewers running next to the shacks, the air heavy with the smell of burning and human waste.

“It gave us a sense of, ‘This is what the firefighters are having to deal with,’” he said, adding, “We were educated on what the odds are — and what they’re really dealing with when they try to go to a fire in these situations.”

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Photographer Renate Aller Captures the Spaces Between

Whether she’s watching a river of clouds snake through a mountain pass, or holding her breath as the sun breaks through a storm on the ocean horizon, Renate Aller has honed her ability to predict a moment — and only then does she click her shutter.

That split second, she says, is “the space between memory and expectation,” during which nothing inherently happens, but without which no change could occur.

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Searching for Land Art in the Wild West

Jane Weissman usually travels alone — by both circumstance and design, she said — and she loves paper maps.

If she can, she rents a car and plots her routes by hand, avoiding interstates as much as possible. It gives her a truer sense of a place, she explained, eight months back from a road trip around the Southwest, though the fine red rock sand likely lingers.

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