This project by photographer Jill Peters is stunning. Traveling to remote locations, Peters captured the portraits of Balkan women who have chosen to live as men for cultural and tribal reasons, an archaic tradition now fading as the region lurches into modernity.
Portfolio: Jill Peters Photography: Sworn Virgins of Albania (website)
Shakesville’s (a blog you should be reading) Melissa McEwan on July’s confounding onslaught of natural and man-made disasters:
“…I don’t have the expertise to write about what’s going on in the world right now, how to tease out what’s ‘normal’ from what isn’t, and I’m not sure I’d know what to say even if I did. Anyway, I want to mark that this happening in some way; I want to document that people are struggling and succumbing and surviving. That’s insufficient, I know, but it’s all I’ve got.”
“‘There’s also a certain level of fear you have when working and living in a region as unpredictable as the North Caucasus. Something I am still trying to get used to: my phone conversations are listened to. I am often followed on my shoots by federal security forces; my images have been deleted and I’ve been detained now more than a dozen times.'”
Photo Essay: Young Women in Chechnya
Wayfaring Feminist 