T HE Foreign Correspondents Club's new photography exhibition to be opened on

Tuesday, Feb 28 features color images taken by Cambodian freelancer Darren

Whiteside during his travels through Japan, Vietnam, Somalia and Cambodia.

Whiteside's photographs include Maha Ghosananda's Cambodian peace march,

scenes of rural Vietnam and the pomp of a Japanese christening ceremony.

Curious about scant, emerging reports of an imminent famine on top of a

bloody civil war, Whiteside headed for Somalia, touring refugee camps along the

border before entering the war zone. He photographed nearly all of Somalia, such

as Baidoa. "There was no-one writing about Somalia, everyone was concentrating

on Sarajevo and the Olympics at the time. It wasn't till the Americans attempted

to clean up the mess that the world stood up to take notice," Whiteside said,

still bitter.

Whiteside's Somalia portfolio includes a study of a starving woman among a

crowd of refugees at a feeding station, stretching her arm out holding a small

bowl for food.

"I didn't get into pictures of people dying... but later

there were a lot of photographers who came in for a day or so. They would say

'show us the dead people', take their pictures and run off. The aid workers

hated them."

"There was so much great work being done by ICRC and the

smaller NGOs... they were under incredible pressure, I wanted to capture their

work while the UN were sitting on its arse in Nairobi."

Whiteside, who

arrived in Cambodia before the Paris Accords, says he "fell in love with the

people immediately."