Justin Mott

Java, Indonesia. 2007

Justin Mott is a native of Rhode Island with a journalism background from San Francisco State University. Justin received the Greg Robinson Memorial Award, given to the College Photographer of the Year for San Francisco and the Bay Area. In 2007 he was accepted into the Eddie Adams Workshop in New York and the University Missouri Photo Workshop. Justin has been working in SE Asia since 2005 and currently resides in Hanoi, Vietnam. He is represented by WPN. Justin is also co-founder of On the Road Media with producer/reporter Laura Lo Forti. His personal projects and assignment work has been published in Time, Newsweek, New York Times, Business Week, Geo, The and various other international magazines. Justin recently won The Marty Forscher Fellowship Humanistic Photography Award.

About the Photograph:

“I was in Central Java on an assignment for the Times to do a story on Javanese Mysticism. While I was there we also covered the 100th bird flu case, Suharto’s funeral, and a story about two feuding princes fighting for the throne. The mysticism story was challenging visually because floating daggers and levitation is hard to come by. So I searched for symbols and objects that hold meaning. I came across an albino buffalo which is considered by some to be sacred. The manure is even used by people who believe it will yield successful crops.”

Editors note: Jason was one of the first photographers I contacted after beginning Verve Photo. His interview at The Travel Photographer is a candid account of his working methods in Vietnam.