#nichole sobecki

[tearsofrefugees]

I am who I am: A non-binary Ugandan refugee stands outside the safe house that was founded for often persecuted LGBTQ refugees in Nairobi, Kenya. This previously unpublished portrait from 2020 was recently featured in our Photo of the Day archival collection. Photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Nichole Sobecki made this image as part of her work on how COVID-19 was affecting Kenya.

[xtruss]

These Mighty Pyramids Were Built By One of Africa’s Earliest Civilisations! The Mysterious Rulers of Nubia, in Present-day Sudan, Erected Hundreds of Tombs and Temples that Rival Cairo’s.

— By Emma Thompson | 29 December 2022 | Photographs By: Nichole Sobecki

A “haboob” (sandstorm) rolls across the Meroë pyramids in Sudan. Most of the 41 tombs here belong to the royals of the powerful Kingdom of Kush (900 B.C. to A.D. 400), which ruled large parts of the middle Nile Valley.

Powered by agriculture, ancient Sudan’s great civilisations thrived and erected mighty temples and tombs honouring their gods, kings, queens, and nobles. Their building boom left behind some 255 pyramids—more than twice the number Egypt constructed next door.

Yet few Western travellers have seen these hulking sandstone relics. That’s because Sudan’s tourism industry has been impeded by two civil wars (1956-1972 and 1983-2005) and the battle for independence that led to the creation of South Sudan in 2011.

The temple of Soleb was built in the 14th century B.C. by Pharaoh Amenhotep III, in present-day Sudan. Visitors can still view its massive columns and splendid relief carvings.

Travel to Sudan is still currently not advised due to ongoing civil unrest related to a 2021 coup. However, when tensions ease, Sudan offers a singular chance to camp beside crowd-free ancient pyramids and to learn about the mysterious reign of these little-known pharaohs. A guided road trip along the Nile Valley takes you from the splendid temple at Soleb to the UNESCO-recognized Meroë, with the world’s largest cache of pyramids.

Black Pharaohs and a Once Great City

Nubia once stretched south from Aswan, Egypt, to modern-day Khartoum, Sudan. It gave rise to one of Africa’s earliest civilisations, the Kingdom of Kush, whose kings—nicknamed the Black Pharaohs—conquered Egypt in 747 B.C. and ruled the vast territory for nearly a century.

This drama played out on the banks of the world’s longest river, the Nile. Flowing south to north from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean, the legendary waterway was considered the source of life itself because the annual flooding brought fertile soil for farming.

From the capital of Khartoum, it’s a nine-hour drive north to Soleb, Sudan’s best-preserved temple and the southernmost structure built by Amenhotep III, the Egyptian pharaoh who also commissioned the temples at Luxor. It was once guarded by the Prudhoe Lions, a pair of finely carved red granite beasts inscribed by the boy-king Tutankhamun when he visited. They are now displayed at London’s British Museum.

Top: Visitor Nadeem Abduraziq Mohammed walks through the ancient city of Kerma, Sudan, in July 2021. Kerma has been occupied for at least 8,000 to 10,000 years, reaching its peak around 1800 B.C., when it was capital of the Kingdom of Kush. Bottom: There are 41 tombs in Meroë’s north cemetery, 38 of them belonging to monarchs who ruled the region between B.C. 250 and A.D. 320.

Take a small barge from the village of Wawa to the western bank of the Nile, and you soon see the sandstone columns of Soleb’s main hall. Carved at their bases are images of Assyrians, hands chained behind their backs, whom the Black Pharaohs took as prisoners of war.

A few miles south of Soleb, set back from the tents where locals serve small glasses of tea beside the Nile, is Kerma. Established around 5,500 years ago, this ancient capital grew up around a huge adobe temple called the Western Defuffa. At its height the city had a population of 10,000; today, its mud brick ruins are inhabited only by nesting swallows. Nearby lies one of the oldest cemeteries in Africa.

Top: A fragment of an ancient carving sits near the Kerma necropolis. This area of Sudan has been inhabited since Paleolithic times. Bottom: Tahani Abdulaziz takes a photograph of family members during a visit to Kerma.

Haunting Tombs and Dazzling Murals

Just over an hour’s drive south, and slowly being swallowed by sand, is Old Dongola. Founded with a fortress in A.D. 600, it served as the capital of the medieval Nubian kingdom of Makuria and grew to include palaces, houses, and Christian churches. It was a major stop on the Darb al-Arba’in (Forty Days Road) that thousands of camel caravans followed, transporting ivory and slaves between the Sudanese town of Darfur and Egypt.

Best preserved is the Church of the Old Granite Columns, its pale pillars framing a Throne Hall that was converted into a mosque in 1317 and remained in use until 1969. Now it’s open to visitors, along with an adjacent Islamic graveyard with distinctive 17th-century domed tombs known as qubbas.

From there, the Nile loops eastward and you come to El-Kurru, a cemetery used by the royal family of the Kingdom of Kush. Unlike in Egypt, Nubian burial chambers sit below the pyramids, not inside them.

Adobe tunnels cover the entrances to the chambers, chief among them the tomb of King Tanutamun (who died around 653 B.C.). Uneven shallow steps descend into the darkness until a flashlight click reveals a duo of domed rooms, one leading onto the other. Their white gypsum walls are covered with intricate murals in colours of ochre and yellow.

On the back wall is an arresting scene depicting Tanutamun’s heart being weighed against a feather by Maat, the goddess of truth. Kushites believed this recorded a person’s good and bad deeds and determined if the king’s soul could pass into paradise.

A Sudanese family tours El Kurru, a field of pyramids built for the kings and queens of ancient Kush.

More royal tombs crop up in Nuri, further upstream. Its smaller and steeper 70-plus pyramids are now reduced to 20. The most famous tombs belong to King Taharqa, the Black Pharoah who conquered Egypt, and King Nastasen, which archaeologists have to scuba-dive to reach because of rising ground waters.

Nuri served as the royal necropolis for the adjacent town of Napata, the first capital of the Kingdom of Kush. Both the cemetery and the ruins of the settlement lie across the Nile from Jebel Barkal, a 341-foot-tall sandstone mesa. From its summit, you can see the ruins of Nuri, including rows of cracked pillars and pairs of giant stone rams, their eyes and ears worn away by time.

Top: The pyramids of Nuri, Sudan, were built between 650 and 300 B.C. The most famous tomb belongs to King Taharqa, the Black Pharaoh who conquered Egypt. Bottom: Archaeologist Gretchen Emma Zoeller excavates a burial site in Nuri. The ancient site sprawls across more than 170 acres along the Nile in northern Sudan.

On the western side of Jebel Barkal is a crumbling stone door frame leading to the Temple of Mut, wife of Amun. Spotlights illuminate its fine wall murals chronicling Taharqa’s coronation in white clay, ocher, and deep blue.

The World’s Largest Group of Pyramids

Finally, the Nile weaves past Meroë (pronounced Mero-way), the Kushite capital until the empire collapsed in A.D. 400 and site of Sudan’s best-preserved pyramids. More than 200 of them spread across the sands. Their granite and sandstone bases are etched with elephant, giraffe, and gazelle designs, proof that this was once fertile grasslands.

Sudanese tourists visit Jebel Barkal, Sudan, to climb the small butte, which has been considered sacred for thousands of years. Roughly a dozen pyramids are also scattered around the base of the mountain.

“It’s the biggest congregation of pyramids in the world,” reports archaeologist and Meroë site manager, Mahmoud Suliman. “At the time of the 2019 revolution, street signs, advertisements, and paintings all featured their images. It brought people together because the pyramids are so tied to our sense of identity.”

Mentioned in the writings of Herodotus, there’s an air of defiance about these structures that stand firm against the sands trying to swallow them. Indeed, it was an act of resistance that led to their construction in the first place. In the third century B.C., Kushite King Arakamani (Ergamenes) had grown tired of the Meroitic (Meroë-led) kingdom’s power-hungry high priests. So when they sent an order for him to commit suicide, he responded by having them all murdered instead.

Top: A group of school children approach the pyramids at Meroë. Bottom: Volunteer tour guides show a group of Sudanese school children the Meröe pyramids. During the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir from 1989 to 2019, Sudan’s school curriculum was infused with Islamic ideology and much of its rich ancient history was glossed over, but the new government wants to change that.

The rebellion ushered in a new era of culture: the almighty Egyptian god Amun-Ra was downgraded in favour of the lion god Abedemak, the (still undeciphered) Meroitic script was created, and warrior queens, known as kandakes, ruled the army. Inside the tombs, the carvings of the kings stand taller than the gods. You won’t see that in Egypt. Here, kings controlled everything except death.

It’s a strong message and one that’s inspired a fresh wave of national pride. For just as Ancient Greece informed so much of today’s European culture, so too did Nubia shape Sudan. It is the bedrock that formed the country’s sense of self and identity. Understanding this history suggests a way forward for Sudan.

“These were very popular kings and queens,” says Aya Allam, a Sudanese martial artist based in Khartoum. “They are a reminder that we were once a great nation and could become great once again.”

A pyramid covers a tomb in Meroë, Sudan. Rulers of the Kingdom of Kush were buried here underneath the steeply pitched structures, which range in height from 30 to one hundred feet tall, far shorter than the pyramids in nearby Egypt.

— Emma Thomson is a British Travel Writer. Nichole Sobecki is a Kenya-based Photographer.

[projectourworld]

A collection of wildlife photography explores the work of more than 100 photographers in Why We Photograph Animals, supporting the images with thematic essays.

Photography on display at the Cheltenham science festival 4-9 June 2024

Main image: A seven-month-old cheetah in the back of an SUV hisses at a rescuer’s outstretched hand, western Somaliland, 2020

Photograph: Nichole Sobecki/Thames & Hudson

[theo-in-the-toaster]

National Geographic magazine July 2022

Diving Under the Pyramids by Nichole Sobecki

[reduxpictures]

ReduxStock: Photo by Nichole Sobecki/VII/Redux of a woman and camel in Somaliland, on the cover of Switzerland’s Eine Welt magazine, December 2023 issue (via our German partner Laif)

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Cheetahs

Photographer: Nichole Sobecki

[ooookaythennnn]

[mappingthemoon]

Nichole Sobecki, from VII [A woman walks through a cactus field in a drought-stricken area of western Somaliland, via NPR]

[bauzeitgeist]

“Fishing boats gather at dawn in the old port in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, in front of destroyed Aruba Hotel. Somali fishermen-turned-pirates have made the waters off the Horn of Africa one of the most treacherous places in the world for international shipping vessels.” Photo: Nichole Sobecki, from this article on Somalia and climate change.

[everydayesterday]

This is the story of the mother who didn't flee civil war but fled the drought. Of the fisherman pushed into piracy by empty nets in a depleted, lawless sea. Of the young farmer who felt the pull of the extremist group Al Shabab when his crops failed for multiple seasons. Somalia has long been beset by extremes, but climate and environmental changes are compounding these problems and leading to the end of a way of life. "With this weather pattern, Somalia or Somalis will not survive," said environmentalist Fatima Jibrell. "Maybe the land, a piece of desert called Somalia, will exist on the map of the world, but Somalis cannot survive." As one of the places hardest hit by climate change, Somalia is a harbinger for the rest of the world.

From "The Watson Files", Foreign Policy Magazine, May 2017

[pamwmsn]

Kenya Sunrise 

📷: Nichole Sobecki

[npr]

Over the past decade there has been a surge of interest in a novel approach to helping the world's poor: Instead of giving them goods like food or services like job training, just hand out cash — with no strings attached. Now a major new study suggests that people who get the aid aren't the only ones who benefit.

Edward Miguel, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-author of the study, says that until now, research on cash aid has almost exclusively focused on the impact on those receiving the aid. And a wealth of research suggests that when families are given the power to decide how to spend it, they manage the money in ways that improve their overall well-being: Kids get more schooling; the family's nutrition and health improves.

But Miguel says that "as nonprofits and governments are ramping up cash aid, it becomes more and more important to understand the broader economy-wide consequences."

In particular, there has been rising concern about the potential impact on the wider community — the people who are not getting the aid. A lot of them may be barely out of poverty themselves.

Researchers Find A Remarkable Ripple Effect When You Give Cash To Poor Families

Photo: Nichole Sobecki for NPR Caption: Denis Otieno and his daughter plant a cypress sapling purchased with money received from the charity GiveDirectly back in 2017. More recently, the charity teamed up with researchers to study the impact of cash grants on the wider community.

[xtruss]

The Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) stands out in this aerial view of São Paulo, Brazil 🇧🇷. The powerhouse art museum is completing an ambitious expansion project due to open in 2024. Photograph By Mavinho Acoroni

Stars glitter above Naveta des Tudons, Spain 🇪🇸, Menorca’s most famous burial monument. It’s just one of over a thousand sites on the island built by the Talayotic culture in the Iron Age. Photograph By Sebastián Iturralde

Sandstone formations, dunes, and ancient rock art fill Tassili n’Ajjer National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Algerian Sahara, Algeria 🇩🇿. Photograph By Matjaz Krivic

A juvenile whale shark glides over Ningaloo Reef, in Western Australia 🇦🇺, where these gentle giants congregate annually. Photograph By Kiliii Yüyan, National Geographic

The majestic Magdalena River is at its narrowest near San Agustín, Colombia 🇨🇴. But new small-ship cruises take in the landscapes, birdlife, and villages along the vital waterway’s wider stretches. Photograph By Florence Goupil, National Geographic

Brown bears graze in Hallo Bay, in Alaska’s Katmai National Park, United States 🇺🇸. The bay‘s grassy meadows are a popular spot for bear-watching tours from June through September. Photograph By AcaciaJohnson, National Geographic

Guide Hamprey Mweterwa (center on white horse) leads a group on a safari in Kenya’s 🇰🇪 Borana Conservancy. Visitors to Borana might encounter zebras, leopards, impalas, elephants, and the area’s population of 200 rhinos—a relative of the horse. Photograph By Nichole Sobecki, National Geographic

[ortodelmondo]

Beit Beirut recently opened as an exhibition space and memorial to the civil war. During renovations, Mona El-Hallak, an architect and heritage preservation activist, discovered 11,000 photographic negatives—most of them portraits dating from the 1950s to the 1970s—in a photography studio on the ground floor. Visitors are invited to take away a photo print and try to trace the person in the portrait. © Nichole Sobecki

[jamesnort]

Pre-Virus Research, Whitney Johnson, ‘How photographers capture a world besieged by infectious diseases’

*Click link below to open article

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/proof/2020/01/how-photographers-capture-world-besieged-infectious-diseases/#close 

*Focusing on the second image by Nichole Sobecki

The great thing about photography is it can be done within the safety of a home outward, at a distance, or with protective equipment.  The camera can’t catch a virus and stop working, it is an extension that can be used to communicate ideas that are difficult to express and dangerous for everyone to risk being around.  I’m not saying I want to or you should go out and document up close the effects of the COVID-19, but can and is being done.

This might be a time to learn how to use art elements and up close shots to express and idea or feeling or possibly learn about photography through glass windows or even capture how a small epidemic can cause massive change.

[wisegardenbluebird]

LA MUJER EN LOS GRANDES TEMAS DEL FOTOPERIODISMO

LA MUJER EN LOS GRANDES TEMAS DEL FOTOPERIODISMO

Una exposición de National Geographic recoge algunas de las fotografías icónicas de la situación de la mujer en el mundo

           La sede de National Geographic en Washington atesora, desde su fundación en 1888,  una colección de más de 60 millones de imágenes, entre diapositivas, negativos y placas fotográficas. Muchas han sido publicadas y otras permanecen inéditas. De ellas, unas cincuenta…