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In each of the last five years, the Mother Jones International Fund for Documentary Photography has awarded competitive grants to outstanding world photographers covering social issues. Happily, the fruits of this collaboration are now available in several new books. We think they’ve done us proud.

“Every day brings a new vision and new dismay in witnessing the lives of Delta people,” writes Ken Light, in Delta Time: The Mississippi Photographs (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1995), a journey through Mississippi’s poorest communities that evokes Depression-era images of crushing poverty illuminated by individuals’ hope and resilience. An acclaimed documentary photographer whose work has appeared in more than 100 international exhibits, Light is also a co-founder of the Mother Jones International Fund for Documentary Photography. Foreword by Robert Moses.

In Mixtecos, Norte Sur (Mexico: Nuevos Codices, 1994) Eniac Martinez Ulloa (1991 winner) documents the spectacle of everyday life of the Mixtecs, an indigenous people from Oaxaca, Mexico. Because of the profound environmental and social changes that colonialism in Mexico has brought about in the lives of the Mixtecs, many–forced to choose between immigration or extinction–have relocated to California, where they form agricultural communities of the lowest caste. Mass immigration has allowed them to preserve their traditions and has also introduced them to some modern Western rituals like Halloween. Ulloa’s moving photos successfully depict both the Mixtecs’ displacement and their willful cultural survival.

Maya Goded (1993 winner) illuminates the community of African Mexicans on the coasts of Guerrero and Veracruz in Tierra Negra (Mexico: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994). The African component in Mexico’s heritage is undeniable: For every European who came to this continent, 20 Africans also came, making Africa Mexico’s “third root” after the predominant indigenous and European cultures. Goded’s view of this little-known but fascinating subculture is not anthropological but, rather, empathetic and poetic.

In the Balkans, with photos by Nikos Economopoulos (1992 winner) and text by Frank Viviano (author of “The New Mafia Order”), who met through Mother Jones, will be released in the fall of 1995 by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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