A couple months ago I had a fascinating opportunity to follow around French politician Philippe Douste-Blazy as he campaigned around Harvard University's School of Public Health in a bid (ultimately unsuccessful) to become the World Health Organization's Director-General for an assignment for M, the weekend magazine of the French newspaper Le Monde. It was a quick succession of one meeting after another in sterile classroom settings. I was thankful for instructions from my editor Laurence to use the technique I've been working on in my project on American politics, This is the worst party I've ever been to., as a way of cutting past the surface level of a politician politicking, albeit in a much different arena than I'm used to.

Douste-Blazy has been, at various times: a member of European parliament; the French Minister of Health; the French Minister of Culture; mayor of Toulouse, France, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Under-Secretary-General, Special Adviser on innovative Financing for Development in the United Nations; and chairman of UNITAID. While this campaign at Harvard was on a much smaller scale than either he or I have seen before, the glad-handing and speechifying was very familiar territory.

You can see the two spreads above, published in the 14 January 2017, issue of the magazine, or, if you read French, can check out the article online. I haven't seen the print edition of the magazine yet, but I'm told I was listed up front in the "contributor" section, as well.

Thanks to Laurence and the rest of the team at Le Monde for letting me do my thing on this story.

A big thank you to Simon Bainbridge and the rest of the crew at the British Journal of Photography for featuring my work on the 2016 election in the November issue of the British Journal of Photography. There were a handful of images published across 5 pages (seen here) in the print edition, and more online.

I haven't seen the print copy in person yet, so I haven't gotten to see the other half of the feature with Greg Miller's beautiful project "We The People," but you can check it out on his website or the BJP site.

I spent election night covering Donald Trump's rally for Bloomberg Businessweek. You can see the results in these spreads from the Nov. 14-20, 2016, issue of the magazine. There are additional images on the Bloomberg website: Inside Election Night at the Trump and Clinton Parties: Photos of shocked joy and stunned silence as the results came in.

What we know now that I didn't know then, was that Trump would win the election that night. The plan from the get-go was to have two covers, one from Clinton's rally and one from Trump's, each focusing on supporters. We thought my coverage would be of disappointed Trump supporters, but halfway through that really long night, it became apparent that I was covering a victory celebration. My friend Jonno Rattman, a photographer you should check out if you don't know his work, covered Clinton, and it was an honor to share the election night coverage with him. Check out the two covers side-by-side. His pictures are also seen next to mine in two of the 4-image spreads included here, and he had a couple of additional double-trucks not shown here.

A huge thank you to Clinton and Eugene (with whom I worked on the Bus to November project), and the wonderful designers and other editors at Bloomberg Businessweek. They had a great plan for the coverage going into the final day, and then when it all changed at the last minute, provided great support throughout the night and then made a magazine in a few hours on Nov. 9. I so rarely get to see the inner workings of editorial publishing up close, but in this case it was impressive to see it all come together.

I'll be heading to Belgrade, Serbia, from Nov. 15 to 22, 2016, to take part in Feztival Vizualizator, an annual festival of photography run by the Centar Za Razvoj Fotografije. I will be showing and talking about my ongoing work on American politics, "This is the worst party I've ever been to."

This opportunity came about thanks to a few different individuals and organizations. I first met Zvezdan Mančić while in Sofia, Bulgaria, earlier this year for the BG Press Photo exhibition and talks showing the same work. So, thanks are due to Denislav and Tsvetan and everyone else in Bulgaria for the introduction and initial support in bringing the work to the Balkans. Thanks also to Zvezdan and Marija and everyone involved in Feztival Vizualizator for working to make this happen and to find funding to bring me to the exhibition. And, on that subject, a huge thank you to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and especially to Olja and the rest of the team at the OSCE's Mission to Serbia, for providing the funding and other support.

If you don't already know about the OSCE, their about page is a good place to learn about what they do, as is the wikipedia page, which states, "The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is the world's largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control and the promotion of human rights, freedom of the press and fair elections."

In September 2016, I was invited to Sofia, Bulgaria, by BG Press Photo (БГ Прес Фото) for an exhibition of my work, "This is the worst party I've ever been to.", a couple of lectures, and a workshop and portfolio reviews with Bulgarian photographers, all part of Sofia Photo Fest. It was a great opportunity to bring the work to a new audience. We also got a lot of interest about the exhibition from national press. I spoke to print and television reporters from various national outlets. Embedded below are television interviews with bTV, BNT, and others. There were also print interviews with No Comment, the Union of Bulgarian Journalists, and others.

You can see some images from my exhibition here and read a bit about it all (in Bulgarian) at the BG Press Photo website.

Videos of three television appearances are embedded below, as are facebook posts by BG Press Photo with images from various parts of my participation in the festival.

I could not have had a better time in Bulgaria. There is tremendous talent among the ranks of the Bulgarian press photography community and I'm glad for the opportunity to have seen some of it. Special thanks are due to Denislav Stoychev and Tsvetan Tomchev, whose tireless work make the annual festival happen. They're great guys and I'll always cherish the many hours spent talking and laughing with them. Thanks to Bobi Kirilov and Teodor Todorov for the many hours they spent making sure the exhibition and other events went as planned. And I'm very happy to have gotten time to meet Bulgarian photographers such as Hristo Hristov, Rosina Pencheva, Georgi Paleykov, Georgi Kozhuharov, Anastas Tarpanov, Evegeni Dimitrov and others from his agency BulPhoto, Antonio Georgiev-Hadjihristov, Liyana Pandelieva, and many others.

Thanks also to the generous sponsors of everything: BG Press Photo, the US Embassy in Sofia (and especially Tammy Paltchikov with the State Department), Vivacom, Photo Synthesis, and others. The prints in the exhibition were beautiful, and the opening picture (seen at the top of this entry) is the largest I've ever had a photo printed.