Like Spinning Plates

The photograph below is the final scene of a powerful series capturing the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, during a rally in the city of Rawalpindi on December 27th 2007. Interview with photographer John Moore, Getty Images, 1st Prize for Stories, 2008 World Press Photo.

While you make pretty speeches
I'm being cut to shreds
You feed me to the lions
A delicate balance

And this just feels like spinning plates
I'm living in cloud cuckoo land
And this just feels like spinning plates
Our bodies floating down the muddy river

- Like Spinning Plates by Thom Yorke of Radiohead

Standing silent in the Old Church (Oude Kerk) in central Amsterdam, I'd made my annual pilgrimage to remember the world unfolding around me. The sermon was strong again this year; suppression of the human condition in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Kenya and other lands so tortured. How often have we heard this parable and how often have we begged the lesson yet be learned? There was no hymn, no choir of angels to descend upon our fearful souls. We came to see, not listen, and we look until our eyes are filled with tears upon faintest realisation that THIS is happening HERE and NOW, merely outside whatever walls that we imagine line our little lands. There is no priest, except whatever voice wells up from within, and no communion except the few fragile seconds when you let slip and imagine that this man or woman or child is human, just like you.

Afghan Women

Another favourite of mine from this year's World Press Photo. These are two potraits of Afghan women from a simply beautiful collection of ten.

Lana Slezic, Panos Pictures, Portraits: 3rd prize stories.

"Six years after the ousting of the Taliban regime, the lives of many women in Afghanistan remain unaltered. Honor killings, forced marriage, domestic violence and denial of education continue to affect women daily. These portraits of women in Kabul were made by focusing a modern digital camera onto the glass plate inside an old-fashioned Afghan box camera."

Come One and All the Springtime has Befallen

We wait; cold, damp, shrouded in the feeble greying light as color leaches from our skies, our streets and our souls. For long months it goes but this way. Winter passes in name alone, as Spring and Autumn offer no sign of release. Atlantic gales chill our very bones and mock the rare flashes of once pink skin. Those of us from southern climes reach for strong drink and palliatives to fight off insensible complaints.

Then BAMN, just as hopes were being crushed and curses reached the windswept boughs, the Amsterdam Magnificence Engine fires up and turns on this-

Photography by Tom Weaver

Come one and many, the grand summer of 2008 is beckoning from fair Amsterdam! With a great sadness I had to leave my wonderful room on Leliegracht before heading to Brazil. However, I have now taken residence in central Leidseplein, an environment equally comfortable and stimulating, if not rather decadent. Looking forward to sharing a remarkable summer with many of you.

All the Hemispheres

(Click to enlarge)

A scaled down version of a poster I put together for the quintessential mother, Mrs Kate Josephson, who celebrates her birthday today. Thank you once again for the roots and the wings that made the last five years abroad so comfortable.

Photograph: Toni Frissell, "Weeki Wachee spring", Florida, 1947.

Poetry: Hafez e Shiraz, "All the Hemispheres", Persia, 14th Century.

The Kármán line

A particularly beautfiful featured picture of the day on wikipedia. Click to experience it in all it's glorious detail.

The Press Photographer's Year 2007

The Press Photographer's Year 2007 are awards for the outstanding press photography taken for, and used by the UK media in 2006. You can view a slideshow of 133 top photographs selected from the 6000 submissions.

Peter Nicholls

Daniel Berehulak

Timothy Allen

Instamatic Focal Point: Siwa, Egypt

And
For no reason
I start skipping like a child

And

For no reason
I turn into a leaf
That is carried so high
I kiss the Sun's mouth
And dissolve

And

For no reason
A thousand birds
Choose my head for a conference table,
Start passing their
Cups of wine
And their wild songbooks all around

And

For every reason in existence
I begin to eternally
To eternally laugh and love!

When I turn into a leaf

And start dancing,
I run to kiss our beautiful Friend
And I dissolve in the Truth
That I Am.

- Hafez (خواجه شمس‌الدین محمد حافظ شیراز)

2006 World Press Photo

Migrants wait for transportation, Tenerife, Spain, 7 September 2006. By Arturo Rodríguez, Spain, The Associated Press. "Spot News: 2nd prize singles"

Arturo was a recipient of the 2006 World Press Photo awards, announced yesterday. Davide Monteleone of Italy has a very powerful series on the Israeli bombings of Lebanon that is well worth reflecting upon. "Spot News: 1st prize stories".

Easter Island

Stone statues of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) by a Dutch photographer, Wouter Velthuis.
This is my way of saying that RSS and Atom feeds are now available on my blog.

Still, Light

 

Amsterdam by Water

The Saturday before last was Brenda's birthday. She did the most awesome thing anyone can do in Amsterdam- invite all your friends for a canal ride in an old timey 1915 canal boat. She was karmically rewarded for this fine act as Amsterdam provided the most magnificent weather possible. Luckily enough, the rest of us caught some of this karmic bounty.

Amsterdam is designed to be viewed from the water. It provides the perfect distance and perspective from which to view large segments of architecture through the intricate lattice of tree branches- an interest, that has become a passion for me. Furthermore, it frees one of the distraction of bikes, tourists and other such hurdles and thus allows for a good long stare into the powerful aesthetic.

Thanks again Brenda for such an awe-inspiring and beautiful experience!






Boat tour courtesy of the Saint Nicolaas Boat Club, a small non-profit group dedicated to preserving historic Dutch boats. World's better than the glassed in canal buses and their cacophony of multilingual announcements.

The Tacheles

On Oranienburger Strasse in Berlin there is an apartment building called the Kunst Haus Tacheles - or simply "the Tacheles". Since the fall of the wall the Tacheles has been occupied by artists, performers and musicians who create and exhibit there. The structure of the building has been damaged by shelling in the war and fire and dereliction since; anywhere else in Germany it would have already been demolished and replaced. More interesting than the art on display were the surfaces and spaces of the building itself. Monika and I took the series of photos below to capture the feeling of this Berlin icon.

Morning into Evening

Some views from my window. (Large images)

Instamatic Focal Point: Praha, Czech Republic

Praha is an old Czech fairy tale I've never read but have always somehow understood. A dream actualised against all probability, I can only float in pure awe and wonder as I lie emersed in this other-worldly magnificence. I am filled with happiness to know this place exists and I have begun to experience it. What a world we share!

Many thanks for the kindness and hospitality of LC Praha and the Czech MC.

"Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old."- Franz Kafka.

Instamatic Focal Point: Dahab, Egypt

I just returned from a beautiful weekend in Dahab, Egypt. Three days of snorkeling incredible reefs and chilling in a more than luxorious lifestyle by the Red Sea at the edge of the Sinai desert. Less talk, more photos.







And finally, so you too can chill by the Red Sea, here's some video fotage of the scene (5 mb)

The Faluka

Faluka boat we rode at midnight upon the Nile.

The Nile

Awesome Nile (and view from our balcony).

Pictures taken from my apartment on Tahir Square of a rally for Ayman Nour the leader of al-Ghad (Tomorrow) party. He is the youngest and most controversial challenger, a lawyer and journalist who is the favourite of all educated students I have met in Cairo thus far.

Instamatic Focal Point: Washington, US

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Capturing History

This is for drake who claims my blog is a spiritless void lacking even a single picture.

I took this photo outside the "House of Terror Museum" in Budapest- an incredible education on the regimes of terror that tore through Hungary last century. Part of history that too often has no voice.

To see photos that truly capture the essence of history unfolding around
us check the World Press Photo of the Year.