People Power (part 2)

Rescue Mission

Featured: Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architecture for Humanity

Nine years ago Cameron Sinclair quit a promising job with a major New York City architecture firm to take up the torch of humanitarian architect pioneers like Samuel Mockbee & R. Buckminster Fuller. "When I was in architecture school, I didn't give a crap about Frank Gehry," says the lumberjack-size 33-yr-old Brit. "I looked to people like Fred Cuny, a Texas engineer who had a Cessna & basically would fly into disasters & take over - he was very renegade." So Sinclair & his wife, Kate Stohr, founded Architecture for Humanity, & last year the Sausalito, California-based nonprofit organization, which matches money & designers with real people facing disaster, barnstormed three continents to produce 25 architectural-relief projects, including post-Katrina housing in Biloxi, Mississippi, & girls' soccer fields that double as AIDS clinics in South Africa.

The projects are designed by architects he discovers through rigorous competitions, as well as a few on staff, but Sinclair himself doesn't even have his own license - "It's technically illegal for me to call myself an architect," he teases in a washed-out English accent - so he's more catalyst than creator. His 2006 book, Design Like You Give a Damn, is now the encyclopedia of humanitarian architecture & a manual for the grassroots movement Sinclair has ignited. From Iran to Tokyo, nearly 5000 people operate under the AFH umbrella, taking on issues no one wants to face, like helping New York City plan for refugee camps in case Manhattan were ever evacuated.

Now Sinclair's work has catapulted him into the company of Bono & Bill Clinton. Last year he was awarded the TED prize (Technology, Entertainment, Design), which sets winners up to produce their dream projects. His choice was to create a Flickr-style online network housing a library of blueprints anyone can access for free. By this fall, Sinclair's Open Architecture Network, a million-dollar project, will debut as the go-to place for architects, engineers, NGOs, & even frugal civilians looking to build.

Though Sinclair has become the charismatic leader of what has long been an under-the-radar movement, his days are mostly spent in the non-profit trenches, wrangling philanthropist cash. Still, while he was in India last year, working on a school that would help get women out of brothels, he received a death threat & had to leave the country. "When I was a kid, before I knew I wanted to be an architect, I wanted to either be a war photographer or a politician," says Sinclair, who still considers breaking into politics. "I just always liked the idea of exposing truths."

Rescue Mission
Featured: Cameron Sinclair
by Danielle Sacks
Men's Vogue
May 07

People Power (part 3)

Depth of Field

Featured: Samantha Appleton, documentary photographer

"If I could have any superpower," says Samantha Appleton, "I would be invisible." For Appleton, a 32-year-old photojournalist who has covered the war in Iraq off & on, this is not just an idle wish - it's a professional necessity. And in this, she has a distinct advantage over her male colleagues. When Appleton wants to disappear into the crowd, she dons an abaya, the long, black garment worn by women in Muslim countries. Most men ignore her; in conservative areas, they won't even make eye contact with her - a dream come true for a documentary photographer.

Though she's been at it for only seven years, Appleton's lush, visceral style has won her commissions from Time, The New Yorker, & The New York Times. She got her start in 2000 as an assistant to the acclaimed war photographer James Nachtwey, who cites her bravery in making "powerful, resonant photographs of issues that need to be in the public eye." But she soon began to generate her own stories, traveling alone to global hot spots, usually without a set assignment. Her big break came in April 2003, when she drove from Amman, Jordan, into Iraq just after the fall of Baghdad. At that point, most foreign journalists were exhausted & heading home, which left Appleton with a windfall of plum assignments that might otherwise have gone to more experienced photographers.

The pictures she shot that spring - & on five subsequent trips to Iraq - capture the brutality & chaos of war in swarming, off-kilter compositions packed with humanizing details. Although she's interested above all in documenting the effect of war on civilians, Appleton has also been embedded with U.S. military units. On these missions, there's tons of downtime. "Then all of a sudden," she says, "you're out on patrol & you spend 20 minutes terrified out of your mind."

At least since the 1930s, women have covered wars alongside men - Margaret Bourke-White & Lee Miller are renowned for their work in Europe during World War II - but war photography remains a chiefly male domain. "People always ask if there's a boys' club," says Appleton, "but I've never experienced it on the ground, not once." Men may still outnumber women on the front lines, but the common conception of war photography as a testosterone-fueled floating frat party is more fantasy than reality. "The thing you need in this job is a certain capacity for stress," she explains. "You either have it or you don't. And once you prove you're capable of doing the job, people want to work with you." Of course, it probably doesn't hurt that Appleton, a petite, striking brunette, grew up playing sports in rural Maine with her three brothers. "I'm used to being with groups of men," she confesses. "Nothing fazes me. Growing up with brothers, I've already seen the worst."

Depth of Field
Featured: Samantha Appleton
by Mia Fineman
Men's Vogue
May 07