Opening on May the 13th at New York's Bonni Benrubi Gallery and running until July the 16th, is a solo show of work from photographer Jehad Nga.
Entitled 'Turkana', this will be Nga's second show at the gallery, and this time he turns his lens to the Turkana tribe in Kenya.
Presenting them in striking chiaroscuro, he removes his subjects completely from their environment by photographing them in a freestanding hut built for this purpose. In doing so, he refuses to allow the harsh terrain of the region to become the defining element of his work, but rather forces the viewer to confront the human subject in front of the lens.
Forgotten by a government that hardly felt their own, Kenya's Turkana tribe is withering in numbers as a drought devastates the Horn of Africa, and Nga documents in the clearest light possible the people and faces at risk of disappearing as a result of the disaster.
This vein of arresting documentary is Nga's speciality - previous assignments have found him covering stories in Somalia, Kenya, Iraq, Liberia, Libya, Darfur, Ethiopia and Iran.
His work continuously appears in such publications as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, TIME magazine and Forbes, and his images have garnered him awards including winning the Picture of the Year International Award (POYI) more than once for his coverage of the Darfurian war, Chadian refugee crisis and of Operation Steel in Iraq.
If you won't be in New York for the show, do visit his own site at the link below for a look at some of his sometimes beautiful, often harrowing, depictions of humanity and their situations.
