Mick Stetson
ASMP
Tokyo, Japan
MICK STETSON is a photojournalist and freelance photographer who specilizes in documenting cultures and people from remote regions within Asia. Mick focuses mainly on diminishing cultures and cultures that are transitioning or transforming as a result of the encroachment of modernity. He is especially interested in the effect that the pressures of globalization are having on the traditional lifestyles of various ethnic groups and how it affects their individual and cultural freedom.
2016 - Photolucida 2016 Critical Mass — Finalist, 2015 - ASMP’s Best of 2015 — Winner, 2014 - PDN “World in Focus” — Winner
- Audio capture
- Breaking news
- Conflict
- Crisis
- Editorial
- Environment
- Interview
- Landscape
- Reporting
Death Row — Japan
Mick Stetson
Akihiro Okumoto’s grandmother wakes every morning wondering if today is the day her grandson will be hanged for a crime he committed 5 years ago. Akihiro’s case was one of the first ones to follow the newly reformed judicial system in Japan. Although it appears the same as the United States’, it functions more like the archaic one it was supposed to replace. Advocates for further reform are pressuring the government to make changes that guarantee transparency and genuine justice, but will it take place before Akihiro’s execution?
Ghost Villages
Mick Stetson
Today, the young are no longer happy living traditional lifestyles, instead they dream of the success the modern world promises. In Nepal’s rural villages, very few people remain. What were once thriving, autonomous villages 30 years ago, are now filled with abandoned houses and uncultivated fields. The tragedy is that the traditions that helped these communities survive and flourish for centuries are at risk of vanishing, taking with them the vast archive of knowledge, expertise and imagination that make up the complexity and diversity of their culture.
