M A R C E L L I S O N | Data- & Photojournalist

And The Dead Shall Inherit The Cloud

marcellison — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:38:10 +0000

As a little girl, Jamie Cuthbertson, now 26, had a fear of being eaten by insects — spiders especially. After her 17-year-old cousin was killed by a drunk driver, young Jamie’s thoughts turned to her own mortality. She talked with…

FordScraper

marcellison — Thu, 23 May 2013 19:03:02 +0000

The comments on the Facebook page of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford are, on the whole, positive and congratulatory. And in the wake of ‘Crackgate’ Facebook fans have been posting a plethora of supportive comments:

“Rob. Hang on. you are…

Photo/graphica

marcellison — Mon, 20 May 2013 19:21:58 +0000

In recent years the graphic novel has morphed into an alternative medium for non-fiction storytelling. From Art Spiegelman’s Maus which documented his father’s experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor, to Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis which details the author’s life…

C A S I ( N O / G O )

marcellison — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:12:37 +0000

After an online survey was conducted in January to gauge the public’s views on a Toronto casino, as part of a process that cost taxpayers $370,000, the results show that most Torontonians never wanted a casino in the first place.…

Essay: Communing With The Digital Dead

marcellison — Wed, 08 May 2013 18:31:31 +0000

A smiling Cayne Miceli holds a fetishistic staff bejeweled with an animal skull, and gazes directly into the photographer’s lens. The image is mounted in a photo album with cream-coloured, corrugated pages. There is no caption, and no indication of…

P A P A N A C K

marcellison — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 02:18:45 +0000

Papanack zoo is currently boarded up for the winter, but in the summer months it overflows with visitors. From all over the Ottawa region, parents bring their children to see Keith Forgie’s collection of exotic animals. But some of his…

Visualization: Money In, Money Out

marcellison — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 13:04:04 +0000

The weighty tome that outlined the Canadian government’s 2013-2014 budget was a veritable doorstep, crammed full of confounding fiscalspeak, graphs and tabular data.

No doubt this data makes perfect sense to economists or budget-scarred journalists, but how do you make…

Book Review: A Season In Hell

marcellison — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:07:14 +0000

Held captive by al-Qaeda for 130 days in the unforgiving Malian desert, not knowing whether each day would be his last, Robert Fowler says it was the idea of writing a book about his ordeal that gave him the hope…

From Igloos, To Microwaves

marcellison — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 02:05:01 +0000

Abbygail Noah was driven south from Nunavut by a desire for an education, and by the high food prices in the north, where 70% of the population is food insecure.

Abbygail blames the high cost of food on changes in…

The Digital Death Of Hugo Chavez

marcellison — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 16:30:38 +0000

A tsunami of consolatory tweets choked the Internet’s arteries this week following the deaths of Venezualan leader Hugo Chavez and Canadian folk hero Stompin’ Tom Connors.

The death of Chavez came as no surprise – he’d been battling cancer for…

They were firing at me with their eyes

marcellison — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 19:29:04 +0000

The thick charcoal around the woman’s eyes does little to mask the contempt she seems to feel for the photographer.

She stares directly at the camera, defiant, with a subtle scowl etched into her symmetrically-tattooed face.

The featureless white wall…

Bleed for your (adopted) country

marcellison — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 21:16:59 +0000

I must have missed the disclaimer on the citizenship pamphlet: becoming a Canadian may result in serious physical scarring.

There I lay on the ice of the curling rink like a crumpled snow angel, a small claret cloud of blood…

Mali: It’s hard to convince people to put blood and treasure on the line

marcellison — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 02:10:00 +0000

Even as Canada extends its commitment of a C-17 transport plane to war-torn Mali in mid-March, a former Canadian diplomat warns our nation is repeating the same mistake it made during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Robert Fowler, who was held…

Children Of The Snow

marcellison — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:28:23 +0000

More than 20 Somali youths have been murdered in the last three years across Canada. Unable to assimilate into Canadian culture, unable to find work, many have become involved in drugs and criminal activity. But community groups in Ottawa, buoyed…

Picturing inequality

marcellison — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 17:39:58 +0000

Today I spoke to CBC’s Robyn Bresnahan about how I came to take the photograph that won the Africa category in the World Bank’s international Picture Inequality photo competition. The picture shows female former child soldier Christine waiting to get…

Penis captivus

marcellison — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 01:51:03 +0000

Damn, it felt good to get out of the city.

Steven Zhou watched the Malawian savannah scream by in a viridian blur as the car hurtled southeast out of the capital. Lilongwe was left behind in a billowing mushroom cloud…

Ain’t idle no more

marcellison — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 21:54:33 +0000

From Winnipeg gangbanger to Keystone Cop, Clayton Thomas-Müller’s life story reads like a paint-by-the-numbers, Hollywood movie script.

Brought up by a single mother (“poppa was a rolling stone”), in and out of over 40 schools by Grade Eight, incarcerated in…

Lulu-Lemoned limbs

marcellison — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 21:56:26 +0000

Lithe Lulu-Lemoned limbs warp, contort and twist in the heat; faces are pained, collapsing in on themselves like black holes. Rivulets of sweat avalanche from noses, forming minute individual Rorschach tests – there a butterfly, there a supernova – on…

The Puppetmaster

marcellison — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 00:32:51 +0000

Groans emanate from the depths of the old house. Walking down the winding stairs, the decaying head of a zombie comes into view. Its torn, blood-spattered clothing gives way to the arm of Matt Ficner – founder of Creepy Puppets…

Corrugated ribs

marcellison — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 21:53:11 +0000

The young toddler hunches over in the baked dirt in mock-genuflection, the Sudanese sun silhouettes the child’s corrugated ribs. A vulture stands behind, nature’s Grim Reaper, seemingly waiting for the child to die.

Kevin Carter, a member of the infamous…

Photography: Committing Soft Murder?

marcellison — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 20:15:07 +0000

The paparazzi aren’t a modern pest, nor do they solely prey on the Justin Bieber’s and Lady Diana’s of our world.

At least that’s what Susan Sontag, famed writer and filmmaker, would have you believe in her 1977 collection of…

Crime rates in Vancouver falling – or are they?

marcellison — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 02:04:02 +0000

Crime records recently released by the City of Vancouver as part of their Open Data Catalogue would have you believe crime rates are falling – but dig a little deeper and the statistics are a little misleading.

VIEW THE…

It’s not about guns – it’s about educating people

marcellison — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 21:09:13 +0000

David Lomeling used to be a child soldier in South Sudan’s SPLA – then he became a journalist.

In the summer of 2012, as I taught a hands-on photojournalism course to reporters at Radio Miraya in South Sudan, David told…

Journalists: Embrace Your Inner Geek

marcellison — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 19:58:03 +0000

Last week I gave a guest lecture to journalism students at Langara College in Vancouver, B.C. Alex Samur, the regular instructor had asked me to give a basic introduction to data journalism: what it is; why we need it, and…

People are literally dying trying to get here

marcellison — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 22:17:53 +0000

This piece was featured in The Toronto Star on 13 October 2012.

Below is an early draft that includes a bit more info than the Star’s edited version.

MABAN COUNTY, SOUTH SUDAN – Syrupy mud claws at…

The Hygiene Song

marcellison — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 19:41:32 +0000

In writing an article about my experiences in South Sudan’s Yusuf Batil refugee camp (thankfully made possible by the wonderful folks at Radio Miraya and UNHCR), I came across this wonderful nugget.

In one of the makeshift schools in the…

Scanoramas

marcellison — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 19:16:46 +0000

One upside to temporary unemployment is that you have a chance to (a) finally reflect on recent African adventures, and (b) find the time to muck around with some new multimedia skills.

One of the most memorable experiences of my…

New beginnings

marcellison — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 03:15:25 +0000

Featured in Toronto Star, 8 September 2012.

In the summer of 2011 Vancouver-based photojournalist Marc Ellison interviewed 40 formerly abducted women in Uganda about their post-abduction difficulties. As a part of the project, Ellison gave five of the women digital…

Let them come out

marcellison — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 19:13:09 +0000

Colonel Joseph Balikuddembe is not a man to be envied.

But for a man charged with hunting down one of Africa’s most wanted, the Lord Resistance Army’s Joseph Kony, the Ugandan colonel seems disconcertingly at ease. He sits under a…

Refugees can be happy

marcellison — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 18:17:33 +0000

There was no wailing, weeping nor gnashing of teeth as the families shuffled gingerly off the truck.

But contrary to expectations, these refugees are happy to be home.

More than 300 men, women and their young children, deemed to be…

O God, you know what I was

marcellison — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 18:15:31 +0000

So began Jennifer’s prayer.

We are sat in her small, dimly lit tukul in Gulu with heads bowed, thunder rumbling in the distance a reminder that the rainy season is upon us. Her children play outside, the wind whipping up…

picket-2-go

marcellison — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 05:43:34 +0000

As the Fraser Canyon scenery screams by in a torrent of copper and viridian, Kim Marshall takes one hand off the steering wheel to point excitedly at the blue and gold train as it emerges from the tree line on…

Tucson: an unexpected muse

marcellison — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 17:08:51 +0000

Desert noir and Tex-Mex folk rock.

These are just a couple of the terms that have been bandied about by critics to describe the catalogue of young Mexican-American musician Brian Lopez.

Such genre-straddling labels may sound frivolous until you hear…

How do you reconcile the two sides of Alice?

marcellison — Mon, 28 May 2012 16:53:00 +0000

The article in many ways felt like a book end, a final closing chapter on the research I did in Uganda last summer.

The piece, which was featured last weekend as part of the Toronto Star’s Childhood Interrupted series,…

The Missive

marcellison — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 03:47:53 +0000

The path was somewhat circuitous, but the scrawled, handwritten plea for help from Christine eventually found its way into my email inbox.

Christine was one of 40 female former child soldiers I worked with last summer in northern Uganda.

I’ve tried to keep…

StopKony? No. #StartReading.

marcellison — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 04:30:56 +0000

I wrote an opinion piece earlier this week for OpenFile Otatwa (see below).

It got a staggering 4,000+ hits and over 1,400 shares.

But more importantly it generated some heated discussion in the page’s comments discussion. Good to see at least…

Buckling of swash

marcellison — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:02:59 +0000

This week a panel of experts is convening to judge entries for this year’s Tom Hanson photojournalism award (more on the award below)…a competition I’ve entered with no realistic chance of winning.

But, odds be damned, I submitted a…

Help me please so that this freakazoide can be put in jail

marcellison — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 05:31:18 +0000

Diane Simpson has barely slept since her son Apollo-Lyn was gunned down earlier this week, in what was the latest in a rash of fatal shootings that plagued Metro Vancouver over the Christmas long weekend.

In a voice thick with…

White minefield

marcellison — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 04:50:50 +0000

Mountain passes ranging all the way from the B.C. coast to the Alberta border are on high alert against avalanches – but the real danger comes when the winter snowstorms end, a senior forecaster says.

The Sea-to-Sky, Kootenay Boundary, Purcells,…

Four days, four fatal shootings

marcellison — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 02:47:54 +0000

With four fatal shootings in as many days and fears that the Lower Mainland is about to fall witness to another bloody gang war, police did their best to alleviate the public’s concerns by announcing the incidents weren’t linked to…

The appeal of polygamy

marcellison — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 06:09:16 +0000

A court-appointed lawyer will not appeal a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that upheld Canada’s ban on polygamy, leaving the federal and provincial attorneys-general only two days to decide what to do next.

The decision announced on Wednesday by George Macintosh,…

Bad mushrooms

marcellison — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 05:39:32 +0000

The province’s chief coroner has ordered a public inquest into how three employees of a Langley mushroom farm died in 2008, after inhaling noxious fumes, in the hopes that a broader examination of the incident can prevent similar deaths from…

Thrill-kill

marcellison — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:04:48 +0000

In his 26 years as a conservation officer, Steve Wasylik says he’s never before seen the brazen thrill-killing that has recently targeted bighorn sheep near Kamloops.

“There was simply no effort to recover the animals,” Mr. Wasylik said. “They weren’t…

Xmas bad guys

marcellison — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:25 +0000

RCMP officers have seized $1.15-million of counterfeit $100 bills at a Richmond apartment – one of the largest hauls in British Columbia history according to police.

The Federal Commercial Crime Section monitored the forgers for two months before they…

They’ve got no mom now

marcellison — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 03:06:28 +0000

In the last moments of her life, Thuy Yen Vu was sitting in the driver’s seat of her BMW SUV on the street in front of her family’s home in a quiet neighbourhood of southeast Vancouver.

Frank Brick, her neighbour,…

Meth sting

marcellison — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:46:13 +0000

A series of co-ordinated police raids involving more than 150 officers swept across three cities to bust five meth labs early Thursday morning.

The province’s Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit had been monitoring the labs in Vancouver, Surrey and…

Making amends

marcellison — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:41:05 +0000

The Whistler-based company responsible for the slaying of more than 50 sled dogs in April of last year has donated its remaining animals and property to a non-profit foundation, denying that this is a damage limitation exercise.

The Sled Dog…

Dumpster-divin’ bear

marcellison — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:10:59 +0000

The dumpster-diving black bear discovered in downtown Vancouver Monday got a reprieve from being euthanized – but may not survive in the wild, says a conservation officer.

The 45-kilogram, 18-month-old juvenile was tranquilized Monday afternoon after hitching a ride on…

Go occupy something else

marcellison — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:59:11 +0000

The Occupy movement and the labour movement have been allies, but that association has begun to fray as protesters looked to shut down Vancouver’s port – a move that would cost union members a day’s pay.

More than 60 Occupy…

White supremacists come from all walks of life

marcellison — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 03:45:23 +0000

Three alleged members of a white supremacist group are facing charges in connection with a spate of attacks on minorities – including one incident in which a man was lit on fire.

The B.C. RCMP’s hate crime team held a…