A little piece I worked on with my colleague, Grant Slater, at the Stewart/Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington DC.

Like every August for thousands of years, the Yazidis in northwest Iraq just celebrated the Feast of 40 Days of Summer. The Yazidis' secretive and peculiar beliefs date back to a time before both Islam and Christianity. They have been misunderstood and maligned by the outside world as devil worshippers for almost as long. However, the balance of power between the tribe and the outside world is shifting. The Yazidis now have enough voting power to determine the future of Iraq's new government in disputed areas like Kirkuk and Mosul and are being courted by Iraq's largest political groups. But they are facing a new threat from within - continued attrition and disillusionment from tribe members who cannot abide by the strict familial and social rules established to ensure the faith's future.

The Black Snake

The Origin of the Kurds

The New Generation

An estimated 4,000 children currently suffer from heart conditions in Iraqi Kurdistan -- a number that is increasing significantly year after year. There is currently only one pediatric cardiologist in the region and no surgeon.

This piece is a compilation of my work documenting Kurdish daily life between Turkey and Iraq during the last six years. I put it together to show at the 2010 Foundry photojournalism workshop in Istanbul, Turkey. The slideshow is divided into two parts (hence the 6:00 minute time stamp) and shows the stark contrast between the life of Kurds living freely in the region with the life of those confined to refugee camps in Iraq.

This is actually a shortened version of a piece I made after the 2007 wildfires that consumed 500,000 acres and 1,500 homes, but in light of the recent station fire I thought it would be nice to republish it to show that the people that lost their homes in the last ring of deadly fires have not been forgotten.