Partos Innovation Festival: how create depth through adding multimedia layers

Partos, a branche organization for the development sector, asked me to share my experiences with adding multimedia layers for online storytelling. By showing some examples of my work, I gave a 15 minute talk during their ‘Innovation Festival’ in Amsterdam’s Pakhuis de Zwijger.

In my experience, working on multimedia stories for Dutch and international media outlets and non-profits alike, I found out that combining audio, video, text and photography for online versions of regular media outlets (like brochures, newsletters) can add depth to human stories.

During my short presentation (from around 5.30 in the video above), I explained a bit more about how I created multimedia stories for Trouw, The Guardian, NRC Handelsblad, El País and the Dutch Relief Alliance. To read all of these individual stories, go to joostbastmeijer.com/partos (or click on the screenshot below).

A new publication in Trouw: aid workers on the situation in Tigray

“I flew directly to Tigray. At Mekele airport, there were soldiers everywhere, even on the runway. They don't do anything, but they are there. On the way to the city, you will pass multiple checkpoints. As a Westerner, you are immediately singled out and questioned about what you’re doing here. They want to make sure that you’re not a journalist, because they do not tolerate prying eyes,” says ZOA’s emergency coordinator Hielke Zantema.

Dutch newspaper Trouw interviewed two Dutch aid workers who recently worked in Tigray, where the fight continues unabated. But no one knows exactly what is happening in the Ethiopian region. Click here to read the story.

New work for El País: Nice Leng'ete and alternative rites of passage

Spanish newspaper El País published some of the pictures I took of Nice Nailantei Leng’ete, who is fighting ancient Maasai traditions in order to put a stop to female genital mutilation, also known as ‘The Cut’. El País focused on her work and published some of the pictures I took of Nice and her grandfather, when I worked on assignment for Amref Health Africa.

To see more pictures in their slideshow, follow this link to the El País ‘Planeta Futuro’ website. To read the (Spanish) article about Nice, click here.

New work for WFP, OCHA & UN: Ethiopian refugees in Sudan

When I was in Sudan, I had the privilege of working on an assignment for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize-winners: the World Food Programme. WFP commissioned 32 pictures that I have taken in refugee camps Village 8 and Um-Rakoba.

The United Nations has used some of the images on their UN News channel and OCHA daily briefings, which you can see below. More pictures taken in Sudan can be seen on the website of the World Food Programme and on the website of British newspaper The Independent.

WFP / Arete / Joost Bastmeijer

New work: reporting on the Tigray conflict for The Telegraph

Fleeing the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, tens of thousands of people walked days to get to neighboring Sudan, where they are staying in crowded refugee settlements. On assignment for British newspaper The Telegraph, I traveled with Africa correspondents Saskia Houttuin and Will Brown to eastern Sudan, where we were some of the first journalists to talk to refugees.

The Tigrayans told us horrifying stories, about indiscriminate bombings, machete attacks, decapitations and executions. But it’s hard to check if their stories are true, as in Tigray, the electricity and communication services have been cut off for weeks. On top of that, journalists are not allowed to enter the region to do their work independently. And so the only way to get an idea of what might have happened in Northern Ethiopia, is to talk to the many refugees that we found in the camps.

To read some of the stories that Will and Saskia wrote for their newspapers, click through the screenshots below. To read the story I wrote for Trouw’s De Verdieping segment, click here. To hear the radio interview I did for ‘Met Het Oog Op Morgen’, in conversation with Wilfried de Jong, click here. To hear the conversation I had in the ‘NOS Radio 1 Journaal’ with Jurgen van den Berg, together with Africa correspondent Bram Vermeulen, click play on the video underneath the newspaper clippings (or click here). To listen to NOS podcast ‘De Dag’ about the situation in the Sudanese camps, click play on the player below.

In addition to the work I did for The Telegraph, NOS and Trouw, I also worked for NGOs, who are working on the ground to help the Ethiopian refugees. To see some of the work I did for World Food Programme (WFP), click here. The photos I took for Save The Children can be seen here. To see the video interviews and pictures I created for Dutch refugee NGO Stichting Vluchteling, click here. And to see the pictures I took for ZOA, click here.

New work for Hivos: renewable energy businesses

New work for Hivos and their ENERGIA program, for which they are engaging women in starting renewable energy businesses. Providing access to energy in remote areas in western Kenya, they claim, should decrease poverty and improve economic and human development. In the slideshow above, you can see some pictures I took of Joyce, Beatrice, Ruth, Adelaide, Everlyne, Mauline and Anjeline in their shops, where they sell charcoal briquettes, cookstoves and solar lights.

Website update: photojournalism, NGO photography and more

You’re looking at the 3.0 version of my website! You can now find selected photography work on my Photography page, sorted in four different categories: photojournalism, NGO photography, travel photography and corporate photography assignments. On these pages, you can find some yet-to-be-published work created for The Guardian newspaper and Dutch broadcaster VPRO.

Also, my blog page is now called ‘Recent work’, you can find a list of clients on this page and I have added a separate page dedicated to video assignments for companies like Simyo and RTL Nieuws.