A Week in Pictures Middle East and Africa April 5, 2019

A hand reaches in from the bright highlight as if attempting to touch the untouchable in Khaled Abdullah’s gentle picture of people suffering from cholera. Your eye goes straight to the women’s fingertips as everything else in this image is confusing and heavily backlit. The only other recognizable shapes are the saline bottles for the drip feed. You can see all you need to know in this compassionate image: someone is trying to get close to a loved one who is sick and in isolation. Read on here

A woman standing outside a tent where patients receive medical care at a Cholera treatment centre looks in at patients in Sanaa, Yemen March 10, 2019.   REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

What is attractive about Mohammed Salem’s picture is the rather playful use of scale and colour. Your eye flicks back from the writing on the bricks to the figures walking along the wall. Are the bricks in the foreground and is a trick of perspective is being played on us, or are they very large? The writings on the wall - messages of love and politics - add to this confusion. The colour plays with us too, giving an impression that this is a seascape, since the bricks are painted in the colours of the sea, and the rocks on top appear like crests of breaking waves just below blue skies and high white clouds. 

      

Palestinians walks on concrete blocks at the seaport of Gaza City April 2, 2019.   REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

The nonchalance of the protester as he strides towards the flames, hat at a jaunty angle and tyre in hand, in Siphiwe Sibeko’s picture, is just irresistible. He’s got the body language of someone who has had enough and is resigned to doing something about it. What is especially nice is that Siphiwe has kept the foot in the frame. Cut off toes are a pet peeve of mine.  

A man walks with a car tyre as he barricades the street during a service delivery protest in Alexandra township in the north of Johannesburg, South Africa, April 3, 2019.   REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

Even though Ramzi Boudina has cut off the fingers on the left of the picture (see my pet hate above), he’s produced a wonderful picture that exudes a mood of celebration and relief. News has just broken that President Bouteflika has resigned and the protest mood has changed to one of celebration and it’s now unlikely there will be confrontation with the police. The faces say it all. The crowd seems to press down on the man on the foreground, the light giving us a sense of heat and claustrophobia as we squint against its brightness. Read on here

People celebrate on the streets after Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika submitted his resignation, in Algiers, Algeria, April 2, 2019.   REUTERS/Ramzi Boudina

A quiet day in Cairo so Amr Abdallah Dalsh had time to play with some lines and shapes. The fan-like shapes of the bridge and the fence aided by the curves of the uprights speed us to the perspective vanishing point dotted by the red brake light of the motorcyclist. I like the sliver of light alongside the length of the building on the right of the frame, because without it the picture would ‘fall’ to the right. And lastly spare a moment to consider where Amr is standing to shoot this image, bearing in mind the chaos of Cairo traffic.

People drive over Imbaba Bridge near Nile City Towers, owned by Egyptian tycoon Naguib Sawiris in Cairo, Egypt, April 3, 2019.    REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

F1 motor racing is a terrific spectacle. When a car is damaged at night and still powers around the track spraying sparks, it’s really quite amazing. To capture that action the way Thaier al-Sudani has succeeded in doing is not easy but you need to be lucky. It’s all about being in the right place. The action took place a long way away and the frame had to cropped very tightly. The background is clean and dark so the sparks show up, It’s also at night, so far more dramatic than if it had happened in daylight.      

Sparks fly as Ferrari Formula One F1 driver Sebastian Vettel drives his damaged car during the Bahrain Grand prix at the Bahrain International circuit in Sakhir, Bahrain March 31, 2019.  REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani   

I can’t get the notion out of my mind that these drying items of clothing are representative of the victims who were killed or had limbs dismembered during the Rwandan genocide. Brightly coloured shirts missing arms, trouser legs missing feet and necklines missing heads, Jean Bizimana’s picture haunts me. Read on more here

Laundry is aired to dry on the grass at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village built to rehabilitate children who lost their families in the 1994 Rwandan genocide in Rwamagana, eastern province of Rwanda April 1, 2019.  REUTERS/Jean Bizimana 

A Week in Pictures Middle East and Africa March 1, 2019

A last minute edition to this week's selection. Zohra Bensemra covered the clashes after Friday prayers in Algiers and produced a strong set of pictures moving from protesters viewpoint to that of the police. What I like most about this image is the simultaneous action of rock throwing by protesters and police seen through the haze of tear gas. The three protesters in the background are all captured at the different stages of rock throwing, pick up rock, aim, throw and run.

Anti-riot police clash with people protesting against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s plan to extend his 20-year rule by seeking a fifth term in April elections in Algiers, Algeria March 1, 2019.   REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

There is no getting away from the sense of urgency as people seem to struggle against overwhelming odds in Rodi Said’s picture. While the women try to escape the elements, the only glimmer of hope is the sun trying to break through the clouds, a scene played out against a backdrop that stretches to an infinity of emptiness. See the latest here

Women walk with their belongings near the village of Baghouz, Deir Al Zor province, Syria February 26, 2019.   REUTERS/Rodi Said

Sumaya Hisham is making a small visual joke in her picture. At first glance we think it’s South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa smiling at us as he emerges from a corrugated iron shack. We soon realise that it’s someone holding a poster.  Nice to see a little gentle but sophisticated fun in the election campaign. 

A young girl holds an election poster for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) during President Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit to Kkayelitsha township near Cape Town, South Africa, February 27, 2019.  REUTERS/Sumaya Hisham 

And while in a cheery mood, I can’t help adding a second picture from Sumaya from the same event. The colours, the warmth and the hand in on the left just jump out at me. This picture is so messy, with so many clashing colours, abstract and confusing shapes that it just should not work. But it does  

A woman holds an election poster for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) during President Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit to Kkayelitsha township near Cape Town, South Africa, February 27, 2019.  REUTERS/Sumaya Hisham

Senegal is also holding presidential elections and there was no lack of pictures that ooze colour and shape. It was not an easy choice, but Zohra Bensemra’s image has it all. So many bright colours vie for attention but the narrow depth of field draws your eye to the face in the foreground that is haloed in yellow cloth. You have to work hard to see the face, eyes down and with a gentle smile, but at the same time the viewer is being drawn back to the colours in the queue.

People wait to cast their vote at a polling station in Fatick, Senegal, during the presidential election February 24, 2018.  REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

A dramatic image from Feisal Omar, in which rescue workers carry an injured man from a burning building after a bomb attack. Feisal has achieved a balance in scale so the viewer can see the action of the injured being carried while at the same time keeping the context of the wider scene in the background. This was all shot at night, while the attack was going on, which is not easy to achieve at all. See the full story here 

Rescue workers evacuate an injured man from the scene where a suicide car bomb exploded targeting a hotel in a business centre at Maka Al Mukaram street in Mogadishu, Somalia, February 28, 2019.   REUTERS/Fesial Omar

It’s a little unclear why the police officer is pointing at the ballot paper with his baton in Afolabi Sotunde’s picture. Is he giving advice? Is he pointing out where to vote? Is he indicating where a voter had put their mark? What makes this image really work is the eyes of the man on the left and the compositional “W” shape and line that take us through the officer’ back, his arm and baton to the cast vote. This is all set against the cool colour of the duck egg background. 

A police officer points his baton at a ballot paper during their sorting at Giginyu Primary school in Kano, Nigeria February 23, 2019.    REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde 

Two images from Gaza scream from opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. The first by Suhaib Salem shows a young girl crying at the funeral of one of her relatives killed during clashes. The girl holds a figure on the left who is just out of frame, a consoling hand from a woman with a stoic look on her face reaches out to touch her, but just falls short of the touch. Maybe the girl is inconsolable?   

A relative of Palestinian teenager Yousif al-Davyah, 15, who was killed at the Israel-Gaza border fence during a protest on Friday, mourns during his funeral in Gaza City February 23, 2019.   REUTERS/Suhaib Salem 

The second image, by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa, shows sheer joy and relief on the woman’s face as she hugs her relative, knowing that he is alive, well and back at home. Her eyes are closed tight as she crushes him in a tight hug, her face pressed against his, feeling his closeness and breathing in his presence. The face on the right and the crowd on the left squeeze us into the image so we too feel the closeness of this moment.

A relative hugs a Palestinian Hamas member who went missing in Egypt with others a few years ago, after his arrival in Gaza City February 28, 2019.   REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

Khaled Abdullah’s picture is a simple and striking half-length portrait of a girl in Yemen. The dark windows in the mud hut seem to echo her piecing look from within her niqab, her hand directing you to her eyes. What is most striking is the overwhelming sense of poverty, but it’s hard to pinpoint why we get this feeling. Is it the rough surface on the house in the background, the dust on her niqab, or the sun-bleached and torn clothing? Probably the combination of all three, but the caption confirms her poverty. She is in a camp for the displaced. 

A girl stands near a hut in an improvised camp for internally displaced people near Abs of the northwestern province of Haija, Yemen, February 18, 2019.   REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah 

Because I am interested in how we see pictures, I have added Thaier al-Sudani’s Friday prayers image. What do you see first? The shape and lines are quite regular but immediately you are drawn to the yellow shirt. Is it the combination of yellow and black, nature’s danger flag, think wasp or bee? Or is it that you can clearly see the word SPORTS? The mind’s eye always wants to read text and make sense of letters in pictures. Or did your eye jump to the complementary colours of red and green, bottom left? And how long does it take you to see the man in wheelchair as your eye darts around the image? Lastly, did you see the boy standing up, his hand to his mouth? 

Supporters of Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr attend Friday prayers in Baghdad’s Sadr City, March 1, 2019.   REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani