KC Ortiz "West Papua" Photography

In a day and age where amateur photographers pop up like pimples, and they over-saturate their “work” using a hodgepodge of applications downloaded for a buck, KC Ortiz is doing something completely different. The Chicago-based photojournalist is quickly becoming a Bang Bang photographer in his own right, cut very much from the same cloth as Kevin Carter, Greg Marinovich, Ken Oosterbroek and Joao Silva. His work takes him to the front lines of war-torn areas, attempting to tell the stories of forgotten people.

His recent trip found him embedded with rebel fighters of the Free Papua Movement as they struggle against Indonesian rule in a place where “neocolonialists have stolen their land.” Apart from his time spent in West Papua, Ortiz has also spent countless frames with the Hmong people in Laos who continue to fight for both their own government and Vietnam over communist blood shed some 40 years ago.