travel – Camera Obscura

May the Road Rise to Meet You, by Sara Macel

Sara Macel — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 02:10:43 +0000

In the Company Car in 1981, Spring, Texas
© Sara Macel
Please visit May the Road Rise to Meet You, by Sara Macel for the full size image.

Text and photos by Sara Macel.

For years, I traveled on road-trips throughout America taking photographs. Only recently did I make the connection between my desire for the road and the fact that my father, for the past forty years, has traveled these same routes as a telephone pole salesman. In the age of cell phones and data-reception towers, telephone poles, as both components and symbols of communication, are less vital than they once were. As my father is reaching the end of his career, the traveling salesman’s role in society is also entering its twilight.

My project, May the Road Rise to Meet You, explores the life of a businessman alone on the road. The initial goal was to create a visual narrative of the past 40 years of my father’s professional life, separate from our shared family structure and experience. My father is a man defined by his job and devoted to his family. Considering how much time he spends on the road, he was remarkably present during my childhood. Only occasionally did I really feel his absence, and as I got older, I became more and more curious about where he went when his car pulled out of the driveway. When he announced to the family that he plans to retire in a few years, I knew this could possibly be my only chance to get in that car with him.

House of Pies, Houston, Texas
© Sara Macel
Please visit May the Road Rise to Meet You, by Sara Macel for the full size image.

To tackle the enormous task of creating visual imagery to represent an entire life on the road, I approached this project from multiple angles. I re-traced my father’s steps by going back to places he visited and photographed places he may have passed along the way. Meanwhile, I traveled with my father and documented him on the road in present day. I also collected ephemera from his home office and created my own ephemera that represents or comments on my perception of the life of “the salesman.”

Motel Notes, Hampton Inn, St. Louis, Missouri
© Sara Macel
Please visit May the Road Rise to Meet You, by Sara Macel for the full size image.

Elements of fact and fiction play a significant part in both my image-making. By going to places my father may have visited in the past, I am attempting to put myself in his shoes. Some of the scenes I photographed are based on stories he has told me over the years and notes I found in his files; others are a mixture of my imagination and the portrayals of salesmen from movies and television. Since very little photographic evidence of my father’s work life exists, popularized images of traveling businessmen work to fill in the blanks in my imagination and memory.

By digitally altering some of my original medium-format photographs (as in “House of Pies, Houston, Texas”) to match the look and feel of old snapshots, I am imagining that this collection of snapshots belongs to my father and was taken on one of his trips away from home when I was a child. Combining actual ephemera (the motel notes he wrote to himself, for example) with fictionalized ephemera (my digitally-aged medium-format “snapshots”) is another way of retracing his steps and building a collection of tangible relics that represent his life away from home.

Boots, Seaford, New York
© Sara Macel
Please visit May the Road Rise to Meet You, by Sara Macel for the full size image.

As much as I am channeling the past through my father, I am also trailing the ghosts of earlier road-trip photographers. The genre of road-trip photography has been well-explored by Robert Frank, Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld, Alec Soth, and Justine Kurland, so it has been a challenge to bring something new to the table. My favorite road photography projects were created by men and communicate a sense of freedom and male wandering. And even in Kurland’s This Train is Bound for Glory, the road sings its reckless siren song. I find the experience of being a woman alone on the road to be very different. When I travel, I feel a sense of freedom and desire to throw caution to the wind, but there is also an unmistakable fog of vulnerability. It is a fear that has, at times, held me back from getting the shot I want and left me wondering how or if the situation might differ were I a male photographer. This project allowed me to channel those desires by experiencing the road from my father’s perspective, and in doing so, combine the genres of road-trip and family photography.

7:00 AM, Denny’s Breakfast, Spring, Texas
© Sara Macel
Please visit May the Road Rise to Meet You, by Sara Macel for the full size image.

My dad has a motto for almost any situation. On one of our road-trips, when I asked him about dealing with customers, he told me: “There’s always that old saying that you don’t know someone until you walk a few miles in their moccasins.” When I started this project, I set out to rediscover my father as a man separate from his role in our family and explore the alternating sadness and freedom of a life spent alone on the open road. What I found in chasing this initially elusive male figure is that I can never fully know my father or what it is like to be a man alone on the road.

The Towering Figure, Huntsville, Texas
© Sara Macel
Please visit May the Road Rise to Meet You, by Sara Macel for the full size image.

The title of the project, May the Road Rise to Meet You, is an old Irish blessing often said in my family. I believe it resonates for us because my father is so often away from home traveling on the road alone. For years, there has been a ceramic plaque in my parents’ kitchen, just above the stove, that says: “May the road rise to meet you / May the wind be ever at your back / May the sun shine warm upon your face / And the rain fall softly on your fields / And until we meet again / May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.”

Me and Dad on the road, San Antonio, Texas
© Sara Macel
Please visit May the Road Rise to Meet You, by Sara Macel for the full size image.

In the end, this project became less about the American landscape or traveling salesmen or Robert Frank and more about distance: the emotional and physical distance between me and my dad, the vast expanses of land he travels to this day, and the memories of that brief little stretch of time when we got to travel together.

For more from Sara Macel, please follow her on twitter, facebook or tumblr.

Notes on the Roads, by Alex Tomazatos

Alex Tomazatos — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 06:40:53 +0000

Text and photos by Alex Tomazatos.

Of course I am full of uncertainty. So full of it, that I have reached the point of categorizing it in good one and the one transposed in hair pulling and nail biting. The good one materializes in a spinal downrush when, after a long ride, voyage or flight, I disembark alone without knowing what awaits for me – where I shall sleep, what I shall eat, where shall I go next or who shall I meet. My shoelaces are tightened once again, the camera strap is adjusted one more time around my shoulder and I am ready to exchange uncertainty for concentration and fear for rejoice.

Real and Imaginary Letters to Oana

19.09.2011 Sfistofca, Romania

I haven’t been here for more than 2 months and I miss it – the place and the photos I took there. I miss Egor in his two-wheeled cart, catching up with me just a short distance from his house. I also missed the fish soup, with the fish caught and prepared in the same morning and the comfort of their home. A strange, sublime comfort, which any traveler would long for after so much sand, sun and thorn-bushes. I wonder why exactly today, after 11 months, and 14-15 trips here, I started writing. I have “waves”. I have “phases”. I have crises; all figuratively and literally. Of restlessness, of confusion, of revelation: everything. All day I had one thing in my head – besides Amelia – intimacy. How to illustrate it, this word, intimacy, brings me to Rachel Mummey’s “For better or for worse”.

I passed by Ignat. He was at a neighbor. I raised my hand greeting the men and walked by. I did not recognized him because of his glorious new beard. This upset him.

I cannot concentrate. If I would, maybe I would not call Ignat “Igor” (same as Egor). I am embarrassed when this happens and maybe you’ll say I don’t care about the people I photograph. I do care, but my mind is totally blurred when I come to this place. Maybe there are other causes…

Today I met Alenpe, Vasea’s cousin. He is a very intelligent man, this father of two who took up priesthood. For me, he is a little too intelligent to be the father of children who took up such carriers. I somehow got the impression that he is not very fond of religion, so I think he would agree with me. One of them is now the bishop of the Russian Lipovans. Alenpe and I discussed various topics, and Ignat got himself a Mona, a bottle of the blue sanitary alcohol the locals here consume with gusto. He got it from me… I broke my own code.

Aliosa, Petca, Adi and others started to build a stable. It seemed interesting, especially because is completely made of reed. I have never seen how the reed is turned into a structure before, with the exception of reed fences in Sulina, but then I was too young to care. Back then all I cared for was the perfect cane, to make the perfect arrow or the perfect spear. I brought a photo from last trip to Petca with him steering the boat full of church’s carpets. That was before the motor’s screws escaped the transom and the kid passed out from drinking next to the village priest in the boat, leaving me to row a boat full of carpets and two “sick” people (as described by some tourists) until close to Sulina when a boat came to pick us up.

This evening the light was good, I took some shots, but I was not there. I could not connect. In front of me, unwinding was a brutal and brutalized world, with families gathering around the cheap “100% grapes” wine, the bottles of Mona. Added the chill of a September evening, easily I stepped back when shaking their wet, huge or dusty hands. My mind was filled with thoughts of the hot food, the high old bed with starched sheets, and the warmth of the two elders’ home that is now for me like the center of the Universe.

“This is not a hunt or race”, I thought, reminding myself that to relax. But on my way to my hosts Maria finds me whilst out talking with a neighbor. She stops me for a picture, like every time she sees me. I lied and said that I didn’t have battery or film. Still, she wanted a picture of herself basking in the September sunset. If I had taken her picture just for the sake of pleasing her, she would ask to have it printed next time. No problem, but I can’t really do all of them. As she gets closer I notice she is not wearing beige tights, but she is in underwear only. Maria is about 50 years old, 1.9 meters tall, and she has a slight mental handicap. She asks me for pictures every time she sees me since my first trip here when I gave her a picture with her and her foal.

20.09.2011 Sfistofca, Romania

Egor and I checked his fikenets, a type of tunnel-like fish traps. It seemed like I was his lucky charm today: we found one pike, 3 tenches, a small crucian carp (I have never seen one up-close), a small carp, some Prussian carp and perch. This catch comes after a period when no fish were seen here.

At about 10 a.m. the soup was ready. A tench and a chunk of pike each, plus, for the guests, sunfish and the small crucian carp. Then we go grape harvesting. The light isharsh, but besides taking photos I fill a few times the bucket prepared by Zenovia, Egor’s wife, especially for me. On the way back, I don’t know what took my mind to Oana, but it gave me some swift, hard-hitting flashbacks. I still have them. Still, I sometimes think of answering “Do you miss her?”

The thought of going tomorrow to Letea at the church’s patron fair is thrilling. However, I felt I should stop thinking of everything as a “picture harvest”, something with a quota from which I have to come back with good photos. This is detrimental to the quality, the sincerity. Thinking like this, I felt little better than a hunter, or worse, a scavenger. I should learn to relax.

I don’t know how, nor can I guess, a day or two is enough to think of how good is at home with my family. Here nobody messes with my head, no phone rings and I don’t think about emails. My only distraction is school, because today Laura called to tell me she got into a new master program, and we’ll be in the same university again, but different years of study. I didn’t know what to think; when I am at home it seems to take so little to be close to raging hell.

I paid a visit to Aliosa, Petca and their father while they were working on their new stable. I snapped some frames of the reed construction and then Aliosa and Octav Postolache, a retired art teacher from northern Romania who moved here with his wife about 10 years ago, posed for me on the field between the crumbling houses. I found out that the community center – the club, as the teacher calls it – has now a PC and a printer, besides TV and stove. I have also learned that a communal chess competition with contestants from Letea, Sfistofca, Rosetti and Periprava took place in the community center here in Sfistofca. Petca finished on second place. I began to realize the efforts the old teacher has made to get the villagers off the bottle, something which seems so attractive here where life unwinds in poverty, dust and isolation.

21.09.2011 Letea, Romania

After I took some pictures of Zenovia picking grapes from yesterday’s harvest for the church’s communion wine, I set on foot to Letea. On sandy roads, through forests, I listened to and recorded owls and cowbells luring me from the misty woods. In one and a half hours, admiring and recording included, I reached Letea. There I met the most photogenic children of the village: Alexandru, Catalina and Constantin. Their mom seemed pregnant to me, a fact confirmed by the French filming crew that already finished their film. The woman was five months along, even though her husband only got out of prison in August, a month ago. Anyway, they liked the photos I brought for them, and the poster from my first real solo exhibition poster, where Catalina features. That was exactly 2 years ago – at the same holiday.

As I do every time I go shooting, I ask myself if I will be able to pull it off this time. It’s like this every time I get somewhere, especially in a new place. This is not a new place, but still… My day in Letea was spent at the church taking pictures, talking with the villagers, playing with their children and taking more pictures. The youth were circulating a rumor that that night at the local bar there would be some kind of special event.

I decided to follow my intuition which, based on previous experiences, told me that not so much would happen (now as I am writing this I realize how stupid this was, and how much in contradiction with my normal practice it was – be there first, leave there last). So, I hitchhiked home, with a boat. Contrary to the custom around here, I got the ride for free.

22.10.2011 Istanbul, Turkey

I got off the bus at 2:30 am, found a crayfish on the street in front of the fish market in Kumkapi, while scouting for the fishing vessel where I stayed last year. I froze on a bench until around 5 am. After that, I set out on foot, crossing Eminonu and Galata Bridge. I stayed there until 7 am. To my surprise, during the night the bridge is filled by roughly the same number of fishermen as in daytime, who keep themselves warm by lighting every kind of litter they can find. By around blue hour those fires looked great. When the light was bright, I went back to find my fishermen from last year. Fish auction are still at around 9:30 am. I did not find the crew from Barracuda 2, but I did find the two other fishermen on a small boat I met last year as well. I gave them the pictures and left to swell my right tonsil some more by waiting Barracuda 2 in the wind by the port’s lighthouse. Two sandwiches and a few apples later (from my mother) I leave Kumkapi.

It felt really good crossing the historical district in the middle of the day, again. I met Michel, a German student sent here to teach Turks GIS for at least a month. I know him from home, in Sulina, where I met him in front of my house. He was with his girlfriend, Ines, and a Polish traveler named Jed. Back then, we partied with barbecue and electric guitars as my part of town had never seen or heard. I took him through the most crowded market I have ever seen since I come to Istanbul and we stayed for juice and tea in 3 different places.

23.10.2011 Istanbul, Turkey

Initially I was going to set my alarm early to catch the fires on Galata bridge, but because of my cold and the back pains which now are spreading to my feet, I could not refuse myself a good sleep; especially after forty hours without sleep with about twenty of walking with a backpack.

Every time I reach my destination, be it new or familiar, the same question runs through my skull: will I manage to do something this time? Every time I ask myself if I will find situations from which to return with good pictures. I gave up the hunter’s approach because it is not good for me. But sometimes I feel I am one. And every time, I try to find perseverance and patience that eventually make it all pay off.

Here is increasingly hard for me to find something. In this gigantic city, it is hard to find something to make mine, something to photograph. So I am not going after my fishermen and decide to wait more. I only paid for 3 nights at the hostel because I never know where I wind up. I went to Taksim Square thinking that, being Sunday, I might find something different to what I had so far. And I did. After about 10 minutes, a group of demonstrators appeared with flags, headbands, and scarves, shouting nationalist and anti-PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) slogans.

Immediately, everything concentrates around the monument in the square, where I was surprised to see small children waving the huge flag with adults and shouting the hymns and slogans. For me, a non-, maybe anti-patriot, this is intriguing. When I start to shoot near the immense flag, a man gestures in sign of invitation for me to take photos from under the flag. I stay there until I go numb on my feet and lower back; so concentrated that I forget about the back pains. What was good was that the demonstration started with me there, meaning I had 40 minutes alone before the press showed up. After that, 4-5 cameras started shooting and, of course, chimping under that same flag. I stepped back pleased. Looking for water and stretching. I followed the rally only to make sure I don’t lose other shots. After that, though, I hardly took any photo at all. It all looked too newspaperish to me. The crowd disbanded and I left to Karakoy looking to buy a shawl for Laura and a lunch for me.

26.10.2011 Istanbul, Turkey

I did nothing for a day, and another one I spent on the Asian side searching for a bazaar, which is only open on Tuesdays. I found it. Pictures ok, but I enjoyed eating a pomegranate the size of my head even more.

I got back to Kumkapi, without a trace of Barracuda 2. I meet a man who speaks English and knows the crew I seek. He is the captain’s cousin. And guess what: Barracuda has left to Izmir – for good. One of them is in Samsun and another quit fishing. I don’t know what to think or how I feel. The absence of the Barracuda 2 leant a lot of instability to my plans, since I wanted so much to see them. I am sure they would have been happy to see me. Uğur was happy to see me. Last year he invited me on his boat to smoke a joint, as big as on a Bob Marley caricature t-shirt. I turned him down, sadly; firstly I was there with work in my mind and secondly I did not want paranoia with pirates in the middle of the day.

As if in some cheap, but somehow cute comedy, the same episode from last year happens again. I walk a few meters after leaving the pictures for Barracuda to the captain’s cousin and greet three fishermen on a boat. “Ḉai? Tea?” was their reply. I am not that stupid to say “no” and there we go again. This way I get to know Ali, Dursun and his son, Tolga. They also left their town, Ordu. Just like last year, one of them was speak a bit of English. Dursun worked on cargo ships almost 10 years. Then again, this year my Turkish is not so bad either.

Accepting tea is enough to be asked if you’re hungry. A few hours later we go to Kumkapi to watch the game of their local team from Ordu with Bursa. We cannot find any place to see the game so we stop undecided in front of a tea saloon where men play cards, backgammon and drink tea. The fishermen disband, one of them left in search for a public phone. Probably there were not enough seats in the saloon. Later I went back to Sirkeci, and checked in for another 3 nights. The next day, I decided to come back again.

27.10.2011 Istanbul, Turkey

Over the past few days I have been thinking of clichés, and indeed how I am perpetuating them. I am the worst person with whom to have a discussion on the theory of photography. I’ve heard that photography has already been “smoked” and now is only being rearranged. However, I have started to feel that the balance is inclined towards the hours of drooling on the net rather than to the days and weeks on the field with the subject. I don’t know…I really don’t. I apply formulas, I improvise, I imitate.

Some of them are commonly know, some are more my own. And I get rubbish, nothing more. Decisive moments, reflections in the windows, strange mix of faces in the frame, cut busts, taken from above, taken from below…long exposures and nothing else. Wherever I turn to, images come to my head, but they are not mine.

29.10.2011 Istanbul, Turkey

I went back to Rustem Paşa mosque in a place I found yesterday. A narrow alley guarded by the high stone walls. There are big arched iron doors, windows with heavy grids and a corner for me to wait around. I frame, focus – talk about hunting – and gnash my teeth in the current whizzing through the thick beanie I bought yesterday near the Egyptian bazaar. The old man from the other corner already knew I was not a tourist passing by just to see the mosque. The shutter snaps metallically several times and… I’m done. Time to go and eat.

Later I hop on the ferry to Kadikoy with my last token. I take it three times, watching how the person beyond the window in front of me changes every half hour; only the reflections of the train station, shipyard, cruise ships and tall minarets are the same on their faces. A waiter cleaning the deck of teacups interrupts my freeze from the bow of the ship and I get down in Kadikoy. It couldn’t be the other side so I won’t have to go into my last ten lira bill!… Luckily it was not necessary though.

Back at the hostel, I was more at ease. I was waiting for the sun to get a bit lower before going out – but I fall asleep on a couch up on the rooftop terrace, enchanted by the muezzin’s call for prayer echoing from the minarets all around.

30.10.2011 Istanbul, Turkey

Err 99 Shooting is not possible. Turn the power switch to and again or re-install the battery.

My camera died and left me just hours before hopping on the bus back home. I was shooting in live-view mode on a bridge and the last few frames carried the “symptom”: a quarter of the frame had light leaks and the last shot had the same portion darkened. Not surprised and I wasn’t expecting that.

14.11.2011 Sofia, Bulgaria.

I checked in at the hotel and I’m dying for a photo. The green, polka-dotted armchairs and curtains are on the sides of the big square window revealing the city at dusk with its lights and smog. The small table, the lamp guarding the large window at the 12th floor in this grand communist hotel, they all compose a scenery long time hidden in my subconscious. I accepted being brought here, but not for a photographic business. Still, it’s the first time in 8 years – no it’s the first time in my life – when I go somewhere without a camera. I could not find one before leaving Iasi, so I won’t come back with pictures on hard drive disk, but on mental one, recalling how I used my eyelids as shutters when seeing something that was worth raising the camera to the eye. I always thought is a good exercise…

22.12.2011 Sfistofca, Romania

My brain turned on instantly when the alarm rang. I was just on time to catch the ride to the village. From C.A. Rosetti until here took longer than usual. I left the road a few times for the woods. My rucksack is heavy, but small and compact. My boots feel tight and impenetrable to the cold because of my two pairs of socks, and my fingertips have just the right amount of freeze. I feel good. It’s my first trip since the camera visited the doctor – it needed a new shutter. It seems slower than before, but perhaps is just an impression. The air is frosty and the hoarfrost decorates everything on the ground. The water-soaked sand is like concrete now. I missed the frozen fields, the ghostly ringing of cowbells in the forest, the croak of pheasants. I don’t know what day is, but I remember when my phone starts ringing. I could not turn it off, even if until 8 a.m. I already spoke with my brother (he called me at 6 a.m.) and my parents who call to wish me “happy birthday”. As the conversations finish, my lapsing back into temporality is both welcomed and inevitable.

I spent more time on the road because I started to explore what I think could be a new chapter. The award from COPY while I was inactive has motivated me tremendously. I want now to experiment, to do something different, but complementary. The influences are obvious, but the other part of “Homeland” (my biggest, never-ending project about Danube Delta) has its origins in my subconscious, perhaps somewhere back in my childhood. I went into the delta with something in my mind…maybe unpeopled? Question marks have always tormented me. I always searched for human presence in my photographs. But now, at least for the moment, I see this parallel as some kind of “after”, if the current series in colors is “before” or “now”. What would happen “after” people are no longer in my pictures? I borrowed a film camera from Daniel, a good friend and colleague, but it’s the digital still then one I use now.

I don’t have money for film and it would take a few rolls just to see how things work. I do not know what film is, and the thought of lacking the “discipline of film” has always made me feel incomplete. On digital I used to have 2000 shots at the end of the day. Maybe for commercial shooting is okay, but for me it is the reflection of occurring impatience, invasiveness and lack of discernment; a fear that the decisive moment would escape me if I stay on “single shot” and not on “burst mode”, thus making me a visual Gatling gun with less discernment than intended, driven by the images of my models that got stuck in my head.

I start the above-mentioned “parallel” in digital, though. I can’t wait until I can afford some film. I feel like I start all over by doing this. My photos are amateurish and with a high dose of uncertainty, and it’s a cross I bear with pleasure, I must say. Black and white photography on film, not to mention developing processes, has always seemed to me something unattainable…

Egor and I went fishing – seven fish this time. Now I grope in an abandoned house, I reach for some food in my rucksack and I head to C.A. Rosetti through the forest. I try an alternative way, which leads me to the village cemetery, and from there I find my way back, out of the village. I roam through the woods following feral horses. My simple and safe mental map shatters when I make my way out in the field and I see in the distance, in the direction of my destination, the village I just left from not so long time before.

Back in Rosetti and then Sfistofca. Two perches and a Prussian carp, all fried and…done – I’m back to base. In the room, the heat makes all optics unusable and torpor sets in as if I have stacked hay all day. Today was not so bad. I did not photograph so many people, and the result was the same for me. I did exactly what I considered “artistic” in a mild fulsome way. I did not hunt. I walked and gave each shot some thought. Maybe what I want to do next is a counterweight, the dreamlike “parallel”. Or perhaps this will destroy the balance (is there any?) of what I have so far.

It suddenly came to me that I don’t have any finished body of work. Something concrete, solid. I still have moments of doubt about what is best of my work. Impatience and confusion are draining the life out of me. Same for exhaustion. It’s just past 6 pm and I feel all my bones broken. After more than a month of successfully doing nothing, I start to feel guilty.

23.12.2011 Letea, Romania

I left Sfistofca on foot. I passed through Rosetti and reached Letea. The village is ghostly – I have hardly seen a person. I roam aimlessly looking for “trouble”. I did not aim my camera too much on people these days. I photographed Zenovia and Egor because I stayed with them more, but for the rest of it… still searching without knowing what for.

The delta has something that hardens a man. It reveals more of his wild nature, accustoming him with her isolation. As someone said, here, man limits himself to what he sees – water, reeds, bulrush, nothing more. Compared to the rest of the people, he is like the feral beasts that sniff the dirt in the woods and were, some time ago, in his homestead. Thinking of this, I start asking myself why when I am at home is like walking on burning coals and after two or three days on the field it does not seem so bad returning home. Only a couple of days! The landscape and atmosphere have some oppressive. It’s a marvelous land nonetheless, but it has its own spookiness. The truth, admitted only in my heart and mind (and now in these rows) is that since Oana and I parted, I haven’t been the same ever since. And the spookiness is spookier and harder to bear. I am totally changed, maybe in good, maybe in bad, but I incline for the first. This happened years ago and since then Sulina is a place I can hardly stand. It’s not that I did not get over it, I did, but walking through her parent’s villages I feel the loss of something inside me never to be found. Maybe it’s better this way and time is the only one needed. To “marry” photography this time seemed the best and most normal outcome. To put my work which does not even provide me with a living in front of my relations with family and others; to submerge myself in what I do, to be constantly on the road, so I won’t have when to think of something else. And the more hurdles I leap, the more sucked I get. This cannot last forever and I have to look for some balance. My photographic dilemmas are too many and too big to leave room for others. And what is more difficult is being unable to distill my dilemmas into words, words to form sentences, sentences with any kind of punctuation at the end, if that matters.

A mother with three small children were on their way to school. From their discussion I understood that there was a Christmas show where children sing carols and recite poems to Santa Claus. I knew that was the place I wanted to be. Outside it was very cold, inside it was very hot, and my camera got fogged to the core. Wiping my lens or viewfinder was useless, and the last time I was at this kind of event, I was the same age as the ones on the stage.

I met Constantin in front of the school. His sister, Catalina, the girl on my first exhibition poster was participating in the show. From Constantin I found out that their brother, Alexandru, works for a neighbor chopping firewood. Both boys dropped out of school, and Catalina is back in the first grade. After the show Constantin took me to a shop I did not know, but because it was closed we visited the graveyard. I ask him about his father who got out from prison less than six months ago. I was also curious about his baby brother, Luca Andrei, who was only one or two months old. In his purple thin jacket the boy shivers in the whipping wind. I feel sorry to hear they dropped school. There is no future for them here, and they, with the help of their parents, have thrown away their last chance to pull themselves out of the hardships to come. A villager appears and easily sets a bargain with the boy who follows the man to work.

Frozen and waiting for the minibus I saw dusk’s usually consistent blue sky succumbs to darkness faster than usual, because of the clouds. The car arrives; the terrace of the shop where I am waiting is lighted, so I think I can get something out the dark sky. I set my camera on a high ISO, maximum aperture, long exposure, handheld. The strange, beautiful, mix of people, bags, carts, bicycles and playing children, that unwinds every day at 5 p.m. when the minibus is ready to connect the villages north of Sulina, made me forget about the cold and lit a fire under me. It is one of those combinations of artificial and natural light that is visually stimulating.

18.01.2012 Iasi, Romania

I went to Laura. She was working, and she asked me to pay her tuition fees, because otherwise she wouldn’t be able to attend the exams. A bit of frost is good for me and I can have some time with myself on the way. This way I hoped to clear my mind of the thoughts that got crammed between four walls during the last few days.

I tried to take photographs of the student life – again. I failed, obviously. I got one or two good pictures, but nothing solid. This because I hated it, I did not belong to that kind of life. It does not matter why. I hated pretty much everything that comes with it. I did not enjoy being a student. I got good grades, even though I hated my faculty, and living in Iasi.

Obviously I have a fair share of guilt. But since I started my last academic year in October things changed a lot. I started to like Iasi, but only in my room and around my roommates. That’s why I take pictures, without any intention of showing glimpses of student life. What is here is, for us, outside time or space. It’s like living my subject.

2.02.2012 Sulina, Romania

I arrived home yesterday. Even though I had plenty of time, I forgot to write. From Tulcea to Sulina instead of 4 hours, it took me 8. Not with the ferryboat, but with a beacon carrier. I was not alone, many people had to reach their homes. The Danube is not navigable and the ferryboat is blocked at shore. Everything is paralyzed, and here in the delta, isolated too. What I saw during those 8 hours was really spectacular. Such a hard winter had not visited these places for a long, long time. I do not feel sorry for coming, although I might get stuck here. I like what I see, but I don’t like the possibility of not getting out in time for my last exam. Without it, I can’t apply for the internship in Turkey and with the complications will come in a cascade effect.

Two and a half years ago I started a multimedia project about the Greek community from Sulina. For that I visited Vanghelie and Alexandra Marcari, the eldest couple in town, twice. On Monday, January 30th, Vanghelie Marcari turned 99. Two days after that, yesterday as I write, his wife Alexandra died. I visited him today at noon and in the evening at the vigil watch. There were no people. It is too cold.

6.02.2012 Sulina, Romania

On the other end of the town, across the Danube, things look different. There, behind the houses stretching on a single street on the river’s bank, it is hidden a small channel connected with the one leading north, to Cardon. On the far end, it reaches the Danube one mile upstream from where the town ends. People are poor, and isolated; the landscape portrays the relative poverty of Sulina on its left bank. I walk across on frozen water, and meet Petre Ujei who is going to his father for some firewood. Since it was such a hard winter, people’s stocks of firewood were already dwindling. This led to the cutting of many willows from nearby. Later, walking on the ice, I meet Marius, who was “sewing” his gillnets under the ice with great skill. I get acquainted with Mr. Mihai too, after helping him to carry a sheaf of reeds he cut near the channel.

After that we discuss various topics while sipping something one can hardly call “wine”. Our topics range from the history of our town, to the genesis of the delta, to our national poet; 40 delightful minutes that freeze me to the core, there, in the middle of the frozen channel.

Marius kept “sewing” his nets nearby, lightly dressed, like Mr. Mihai. Both men had been with their hand in the ice holes for the whole morning. Marius’ worried wife appears when he has already finished and asks me if I want to warm up a bit. Of course I do and once we get home, the couple with their youngest son, Sorin, and their smallest dog, Maia, start to defrost and talk.

He was a fisherman until 7 years ago when he had to quit when the law changed and he had to do it on his own with authorization. Without money to afford the taxes, he gave up fishing. Now he fishes for subsistence, but the law not so long ago changed again and such practice is allowed only with fishing rods, not with net gear – making it impossible to feed a family. This is the reason for which the border police confiscated his boat, something he was only able to afford after two years of hard work in Greece with his wife. You hear a lot about the abuses of the authorities, especially the border police in these parts.

Two years ago he underwent surgery on his spine, but his wife is a very fierce woman. She told me that in case Marius gets incapable of fishing, she would go and work in his place with his brothers. As I later found out from my grandfather, an old pal of Marius, his wife comes from a family where the members have been fishermen for many generations. Well warmed after a mug of hot, spiced wine I leave with Sorin, who offers to lead me back in town.

10.02.2012 Sulina, Romania

It was 1:19 am when I noted that I had been on a tugboat, Gheorgheni 2, for one and a half hours. It reached the port not long ago, it waits for the local stores supplies to be unloaded and then it leaves again to Tulcea. It’s my only chance to leave Sulina these days. I don’t know when, but I will get to Tulcea. The 72-73 kilometers can take a day or it can take three. We are about 10 persons who hope to reach Tulcea. The moon is almost full, and its light is strong. No one has seen this kind of ice blockade. The ship shakes with a rumble sound when it hits the ice banks that plug the Danube once every few miles. Gathering pace, it climbs the thick ice, which breaks under the tugboat’s weight.

After my eyes got used to the dark, I could really see for the first time what lies ahead: ice that was compact enough to walk on, sparkling under the moonlight. Oana’s father, Gheorghe, was working on this shift, below in the engines room somewhere…

At 9:15 am we docked in Tulcea. I spent Eight hours between the deckhouse, cabins and the three decks where the cold felt like pliers tearing at the flesh on my face. I did not sleep, there was no space for that, but others have managed to do it in the engine room, where you couldn’t even hear your thoughts if you tried. This was the most interesting part of the journey.

Next is my brother’s flat in Galati, where all that impresses the camera’s sensor looks like creepy paintings. The trains are canceled too. One had a delay of sixty hours, time that people froze, hungry and could not use the toilets in the middle of a white, endless field. I had no idea when I would reach Iasi.

15.03.2012 Somewhere on a train between Iasi and Bucharest, Romania

The two phone’s alarms rang simultaneously, waking me up instantly although something of a deep, narcotic sleep still clung to my head and eyelids. I hate sweet, greasy “goodbyes” so a “Good night, see you when the summer comes” was all between me my roommates before going to sleep. They understand me…

I have left to Turkey. In fact tomorrow I am departing – to Eastern Anatolia to be precise. It was nice in the room, but not very active for me. I had almost no schoolwork, nothing. This state of things would eventually drive me crazy, so I decided to do something before leaving university for good. I leave in great disgust for my university and faculty, which by now cannot surprise me any longer. I shall see Iasi again, after 3 months when the hell of my un-equivocated exams and final thesis will break loose in my last days as a student. By then, it is possible that the mud and puddles filling the streets and alleys will be gone and the tram will reach my campus as it did last year until fall. Or I might be too optimistic. I do want to leave that blasted place, but it will be great to come back in the room and then have at least one barbeque down the ski trail with Roberto’s boom box cassette player blaring out. If not, the summer is long and my house is enough for everybody.

What’s next? I don’t know and I don’t think I am supposed to; a lot, of that I am sure. Next is life – real, adventurous, hard-punching life. The world that lies ahead is waiting for me to take a dive. I imagined many times how I would feel in those moments. It will be the moment when I’ll be seeing myself on the edge of my highest cliff, bracing and saying, “Let’s jump. Let’s fucking jump, man!!” Joy, fear, good thrills, bad thrills, good trips or bad trips, new friends, old friends, adventure – anywhere, love, death…I am waiting for all of that. And I hope my camera won’t leave my shoulder for even one instant.

I would like to express my gratitude to Ronan MacDubhghaill and Mark Byrnes for helping me bring this story to its present form. Their time and effort is greatly appreciated.

Please visit Alex Tomazatos website for more information and photos.

On the Road to Nowhere, by I-Hsuen Chen

I-Hsuen Chen 陳以軒 — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 21:22:15 +0000

Text and photos by I-Hsuen Chen 陳以軒.

A “road movie” is a film genre in which the main character or characters leave home to travel from place to place. They usually leave home to escape their current lives.

The prototype of road movie could possibly be tracing back to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, which is the most influential piece about road trip since the 1950’s. The main character Sal, or Kerouac himself, goes on the road for writing material and new life experience with another character Dean. This novel has sent countless kids on the road, influencing works about road trip in various forms including road movies and road trip photography.

Often, each character has his own reason to escape from where he belongs. On the road he experiences everything as a reflection of life, which makes him either feel lost in nowhere or rediscover himself. In Wim Wenders’ movie Kings of the road, the main character Bruno goes on the road along the border between East and West Germany as a movie projector repairman. He meets the suicidal Robert, who escaped from his home and wife but still keeps calling her anonymously. In the last part of the movie, Robert realizes that the whole wandering on the road is aimless. While waiting for the bus to go back home, he abandons his suitcase and sunglasses and gets a notebook with a pen instead. This could be a hint that he is not looking back, but trying to put down all of his experiences in words.

In another of Wenders’ road movies Paris, Texas, the main character Travis struggles to meet his old lover, who is also his son’s birth mother. So he wanders around Paris, Texas. Finally, he makes his decision to allow the mother and son to meet; then in the last scene, he drives away alone. He does not find anything out of his journey. He just escapes from the real life, and he goes back to face the music.

[Robert Frank’s] Rebellious anger, coupled with an outsider’s detachment and an insider’s love, is at the heart of the Americans. – Sarah Greenough

The great road trip photographer Robert Frank went on the road not only because of his ambition to capture all aspects of Americans, but also because he held unique perspective from other photographers at that time. He was a Swiss immigrant. “When he immigrated to the United States, he continued to feel separate from other Americans” Therefore he documented the United States with a really sharp eye but a warm heart. Somehow I had a similar feeling as “a consummate outsider” looking in at my native country of Taiwan.

Reverse culture shock results from the psychological and psychosomatic consequences of the readjustment process to the primary culture…the readjustment to the primary culture is postulated to be more difficult than the culture shock experienced when going abroad. Furthermore, it is considered the most stressful aspect of sojourning. — Jennifer L. Huff

I experienced “reverse culture shock” when I went back to my country. I did not feel that I belonged to either Taiwan or New York. Losing my identity, I became a “legal alien” in Taiwan.

In the winter of 2010, I went to the artist Alec Soth’s lecture. He affectionately described how fascinating it is to be a photographer on the road. He was also influenced by the idea of the “road trip” in American culture, exemplified in the work of such photographers as Robert Frank, Stephen Shore, and Joel Sternfeld. At that moment, I thought “I will definitely do a road trip photo project when I go back to my mother land.” A year and six months later, I went on a road trip in Taiwan.

The camera therefore is an eye capable of looking forward and backward at the same time. Forward, it does in fact “shoot a picture,” backward, it records a vague shadow, sort of a x-ray of the photographer’s mind, by looking straight through his (or her) eye, to his(or her) bottom of soul. — Wim Wenders

Escaping from Taipei, my city of birth, I hit the road. I took photographs everywhere as my “self-portrait”. In order to feel my surroundings, I usually sat or stood in certain places for a while. With camera in hand, I shot right from the same angle I had while I was sitting or standing.

Consider the short, 16mm film of Kennedy’s death. Shot by a spectator in the crowd. It is a long take, the most typical long take imaginable. The spectator-cameraman did not, in fact, choose his camera angle; he simply filmed from where he happen to be, framing what he, not the lens saw. Thus the typical long take is subjective. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

Could I structure the picture in a way that my experience of standing there, taking in the scene in front of me? Sometimes I have the sense that form contains an almost philosophical communication—that as form becomes more invisible, transparent, it begins to express an artist’s understanding of the structure of experience. — Stephen Shore

Instead of composing an image, I imposed my point of view into my camera. I was there in that moment, and the camera subjectively documented my experience. Thus it became my first person point of view, or the “perception point of view.”

I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was. — Jack Kerouac

Moving from town to town, I saw everything changed from here to there; I lost the sense of time and space without future and past. It totally fit my culture-shock state of mind. I found my self-conscious clearly existed, but vaguely floated without identity. I started to see scenes and situations that seem to be “in between,” neither landscape nor cityscape but existing in an ambiguous space. They were actually “nowhere.” Some of these sites are suburban, or partly urbanized, or abandoned and left behind. I saw the traces of human presence and gesture that reside or remain.

The connections between one element of the story and another were not always obvious to the emperor; the objects could have various meanings: a quiver filled with arrows could indicate the approach of war, or an abundance of game, or else an armourer’s shop; an hourglass could mean time passing, or time past, or sand, or a place where hourglasses are made. — Italo Calvino

While the collective memory endures and draw strength from its base in a coherent body of people, it is individuals as group member who remember. — Maurice Halbwachs

I was illustrating my country through objects. These cultural layers became the Roland Barthes’ “Studiums”, recalling my “Collective Memories.”

I suddenly realized that I had become what Lacan called “others” while studying abroad. When coming back home, I re-encountered a new “mirror stage”: I started to recognize myself through the images of my native country that had shaped me; I rediscovered my lost identity.

For more information visit I-Hsuen Chen website or read I-Hsuen Chen interview on Camera Club NY.

Passengers of earth, by Noran Bakrie

Noran Bakrie — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 17:30:21 +0000

Text and photographs by Noran Bakrie.

We are, intrinsically, insignificant pieces of the universe; and that is why, I always try my best to keep connecting myself to earth, to not fall out of it… to stay by the gravity. To preserve humility.

My name is Noran, I’m a daughter of exuberant obstinate mother and a suicidal poetic father, and I like to transcend through physical limits. Visuals are mediums to me, objects and subjects are converging in notes, some are beautiful and some are broken; but together they are forming a lullaby. What I actually do is humming.

What I’m singing is life; the wrinkles in mother Gaia’s old beautiful face, the falling and flying feeling that human’s heart delivers, a little bit background in stranger’s look in the eye so I can reflect myself, and some episodes of people’s lucid dreams that converse — between the reality they never realize and the phantasms they already live in.

What I’ve been meaning to say in my works is an open book. Nothing needs to be translated, or interpreted, there are no hidden messages that will justify people’s acknowledgment of art and things. All we have to do is just… listen. Listen to it. Life is, a grip of notations between truth and fantasy. And to live, people need to drift and float and fall, and drown and, feel. People need a medium for doing so. That is why art, and by art photography is also a part of it, always makes sense.

Have you been lost in the crowd with the constant sound of your head? Have you ever witness how everything surrounds you hustling down, in mute? I bet you have. How reality sounds is really frightening at times, so I just open my eyes, open my chest and shut my ears. A lot of people claim that artists tend to live in their own world, but let me rephrase, everybody lives in his own world. No one is strong enough to face the actual world. Everybody’s dreaming while walking on the streets.

Have you ever seek for balance and once you found it, you’re so scare of it? It doesn’t feel right when things fall in its right place, I mean, they will, eventually, but now is not the time. What’s the fun of it? What will it leave us? Perfection kills. I adore flaws. I love imperfection. It makes life understandable. That is what I’m doing with my works. I preserve mistakes, I’d like to stay stupid. It makes me human, it humbles me.

People seem to keep forgetting that life is a ride. The more money they have, the more static they have become – stick at one point and piling up inventories to make them a little bit proud, to build a little kingdom of their own. Everybody wants to have a place of their own, while there in the outer territory, they are already parts of a kingdom. Nature offers them places to discover, earth is a big enough space for humans to intersperse. I’d rather see what’s in front of my window than to see what’s inside my living room, that is why I join the ride, I travel. I need to wander. To make a connection with life. With strange cultures. With peculiar principles. With the unknown world. Out there far from home, I’m just one microcosm who’s trying to form with others, praying that someday our shape will be seen from heaven there and will make God smile. And I hope I can touch Him by doing so.

I am a passenger of Earth. Like any other, I make stops, stay in there for a while. I watch how civilization can be constructive and the origins of human nature can be formless, I try to comprehend the varieties of value and appreciate the new found structures of nature that I don’t find everyday, then I continue. In fact, everyday is every single day for me. Daily routine suffocates my brain, or maybe I’m just shallow person and have ridiculous short attention span. I can’t stick to repetition. You would notice that from my works, I tend to differ. I don’t feel comfort in repeating the same treatment over and over again, I can’t see the point. Furthermore, I need to alter, to fade my autograph every time it starts to appear clearly. I feel weightless when I’m anonymous.

I believe that when I work, I’m not speaking of myself, I’m speaking of how the place/object/subject had influence me, sometimes I’m just speaking of how my life and emotion have made me become. I’m representing them, and each of them breathes differently.

I have an issue with emotion. I tend to overload with it. Maybe that’s why I use photography, to let things inside me… out. Unleashed. So I don’t keep them anymore.

Speaking of emotional release, there is this one album, Fragments, which was made after the passing of my schizophrenic only brother. It is probably the most honest project I’ve ever produced, well, so far. It’s starkly human;
it delivers a plain feeling of losing, despair, alienation, cultural ambiguousness, the scattered moments I need to figure out, before I can finally lead to acceptance. It creates a world where narratives are simultaneously suggested and undermined; where drips of emotion leak and heightened the intense rawness in a period of being lost and finally found.

So by all means, for me, photography can be a therapy, I use it to deal with poignant memories. I use it to overcome, to erupt and let things out so they can passing me by. Sometimes, it heals. Sometimes, it helps me in treasuring moments.

It helps me appreciate life and the nature I’m living in. It grows curiosity within me, tells me to never stop moving, to always learning from the simplest things in life, to always discover something new. To always develop. To always be grateful in life. To always find a way to be content with earth. To remember.

See, here’s the thing, you don’t need to describe anything. Just tune in and listen to the frequency. Life is calling, amid billowing harmonies. I always have this urge to keep moving, and tasting what life offers in many points of this planet. Yes I’m leaving my comfort zone all the time, why not? — Earth is here, an unsolved symmetry, waiting to be found.

There are bigger things from your personal life and success, there is a debt we human need to redeem to this planet who has contain us ever since the time begins.. and that is, to appreciate. And the easiest thing for human to appreciate is to experience.

We are micros, together we are forming a myriad of organism. I’m asking you as one passenger of earth to another, “Touch the unseen, explore. Broaden your horizon.”

Sixteen Thousand Nautical Miles, by Ole Brodersen

Ole Brodersen — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 21:17:07 +0000

Text and photographs by Ole Brodersen.

Zero eight, zero eight, zero eight at twenty hundred I embarked ”Ejdern” and also embarked on one of the greatest journeys of my life. “Ejdern” was built in eighteen ninety-four as a sailing pilot boat. We were to circumnavigate the Atlantic Ocean. Four guys, one year.

When people ask me how it was, I answer salty, maybe because it was the only constant ingredient of the trip. But I think I answer it because there is no simple way to explain how it was. I changed though, somewhere, somehow. This series of photographs, and text, contain an explanation, or proof of why, where and how and such.

Photography is very personal for me, and I feel I learn about myself through the process of taking pictures. I shoot with film for many reasons, but partly because I like the time it takes until you have the picture in front of you. It is easier to see if you‘ve been able to capture the feeling you had when you took the shot, if you have some time in between to consider it.

When you‘re on such a trip, the need for a project of some kind is important. At least for me. It‘s not that I needed proof of being on the boat; I just needed something firm that I had created while being there. This is why the result of our dinghy-capsize in Cape Verde hit me that hard. My Leica was broken. I had to ship it to Germany to get it repaired. This meant that I was going to cross the Atlantic without this project of mine. Maybe I already felt I was changing, and understood that the camera was my way of understanding that process. It would be 5 months until I saw my beloved Leica again, on Cuba. I cried.

I survived though, mentally as well, across the Atlantic from Cape Verde to Brazil. Seventeen days. And luckily, in more than one way, I got my hands on an Olympus OM1n. I only used the Leica while on land after I got it back. I don‘t think I brought anything that didn‘t break in one way or another. So did the OM1 as well of course. I had to get a new one in NYC. And thus it became a repeating message to all our visiting crew: Do not bring anything you care about on board. Or at least consider whether the joy of spending more time with something of high sentimental value exceed the sadness of breaking it.

In the middle of our second crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, from Newport to the Azores, my best friend died. We had two more weeks to go, when we got the message from Norway. Ironically, he had drowned. There was no chance in hell to get to shore on time to get to the funeral. Our only means of communicating was when people called us, we could not call anyone. I was able to write down some words though, which another guy on the boat had to read to my mother. I couldn‘t manage.

After 25 days, one storm, and one death we reached the shores of the Azores.

I keep wondering if the loss would have been easier if I‘d been with him until the end. I hadn‘t seen him for 11 months when it happened. I had an e-mail from him in my inbox once I reached a computer ashore.

I guess we where hoping that nothing had changed at home. Somebody might have gotten married; somebody had a kid, yes. But this we hadn‘t expected. Something big had changed. Something big was missing. And we had changed. This event had definitely triggered a larger change. In all four of us. Would you be happy with the life you were living if you died tomorrow?

What else happens to you, when you sit under the stars for four hours every night? When the weather has full power over you. It controls where you are going. How fast you are going to get there. What you are wearing. Moving so slowly that you, sometimes, even move backwards with the current. You can adjust your sails of course, but in the end, the weather has the final word. It never made me believe in faith or anything though. That what you do doesn‘t matter. On the contrary actually, I feel empowered. Because I now know of a situation that is totally opposite of the life I am living on land.

I flew from Cuba to NYC. I needed vacation. It might sound weird, but yes, I did. First of all the boat isn‘t big, there are no doors, and what probably bothered me the most was the lack of freedom. Any decision, no matter size, had to be discussed by the four of us. Where we were going, how long we were staying there, who our guests should be and so forth. Even leaving the boat, if we were on anchor, would have to be done together with somebody. Thus, in New York, it became very clear to me what I liked and disliked about this trip. And I simply loved the freedom I had in NYC. I had a flat I could enter and leave as I pleased. I had a cell phone, which finally made my appointments easier to make and change. And it was only me, myself and I. There were almost no limitations.

The adaptation to a more civilized life in NYC went very smooth, of course because I had missed it, but also because it was temporary. I knew I was getting back on the boat. I didn‘t like the thought of it in the beginning, but at the end of my stay I was ready for, and even missed the life on the boat.

The trickier part was getting used to life back home. One year without conventional work, one year with having the opportunity to read eight hours a day, one year with not knowing what tomorrow will be like. The longer we‘d been sailing, the harder I believe it would‘ve been to get back.

As I mentioned, I feel I learn about myself through my photographs. I seriously believe that my subconsciousness can tell me and explain things to me through the photos. And to put an end to this story I have included a photo I took after I had returned home. I took this on a road trip in Norway. I like the simple symbolism of the future and past being the same, and personally consider this photo as some kind of a proof of me being comfortable with the journey being over.

Please visit Ole Brodersen homepage.

White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein

Jens Olof Lasthein — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:09:20 +0000

Grigoriopol, Transnistria 2006
© Jens Olof Lasthein
Please visit White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein for the full size image.

Text and photographs by Jens Olof Lasthein.

I was born three years after the Berlin Wall was built. My childhood was marked by the division of Europe, the sharp line between East and West. External political conflict shaped inner mental boundaries that had to be confronted – who are they; who are we?

I travelled through Eastern Europe for the first time in the summer of 1984. At the age of 20, I had long wanted to see what life was like on the other side of the Iron Curtain, the part of Europe I could only fantasise about growing up in the West. I didn’t doubt that the media image of a uniformly grey, comfortless world wasn’t the whole story, but I had little idea what to expect instead.

Transsylvania, Romania 2001
© Jens Olof Lasthein
Please visit White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein for the full size image.

I travelled the way I always did in those days: by hitch hiking. Highways were practically non-existent, so drivers had no trouble stopping to pick me up and I made my way at a slow but steady pace. Afterwards, I still wasn’t sure if I knew the answer to my question about what it was like on the other side, but at least I had met many Eastern Europeans.

There was Dora, quiet but somehow intense, whom I met in a Budapest restaurant when she left her telephone number on a napkin. Later I would live with her in Kazincbarcika, and I can still see her before me as we waved farewell outside the petrochemical factory where she worked.

There was the frightened silence in Sibiu when someone whispered “Securitate!” And the German woman, Gerda, who didn’t waste time worrying about the secret police but invited me in for dinner, serving smoked blubber in her dirt-floored kitchen. There was Kapika and his friends from Zaïre who lived in a student dormitory in Cluj, laughing uproariously at everything while preparing a feast from bits of meat, some onions and a few tomatoes. Handsome Kapika, who had a child with one Romanian woman and was having an affair with another.

Odessa, Ukraine 2006
© Jens Olof Lasthein
Please visit White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein for the full size image.

There were the two East German girls I met out on the puszta, Hungary’s semi-desert steppe, where we spent a night camping out under the stars. Awakened by lightning, we set out walking through a dark and rainy night toward huge gas flames shooting into the sky – a factory out in the middle of nowhere. The guard couldn’t believe his eyes when we showed up at the gate, but he was kind enough to let us in to get dry.

There was the old man, so fat it was a wonder I could get both myself and my backpack into his Trabant, which had to stop every other kilometre to let the spark plugs dry.

There was Bogdan from Krakow, who picked me up in Czechoslovakia. He was one of the few people who consented to speak Russian, the only language we had in common. Most people refused, even though everyone learned it in school. He invited me to visit him in Poland, where he took me on a tour of the enormous Nowa Huta steelworks. A year later, Bogdan’s wife Halina wrote me a letter to say that he had died in an accident with the same Polski Fiat in which I had hitched a ride, leaving her alone with two small children.

Kaliningrad, Russia 2007
© Jens Olof Lasthein
Please visit White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein for the full size image.

There was the party in Katarina’s tiny apartment, where we squeezed together in her bed and sofa, enveloped in thick cigarette smoke, with Paweł Orkisz, always the life of the party, playing his guitar and alternating between his own songs and interpretations of Okudzhava and Vysotsky.

There was the Gypsy shepherd, who woke me early one morning as I slept under a tree, and had me watch the village cows while he ran off to buy a bottle of palinka brandy with my money.

There was Andrzej, whom I met at a café in Warsaw and who perhaps regretted inviting me home because his boyfriend Ryszard, a film photographer who always bought the drinks when we went out to bars, took a liking to me and spent most of the night trying to seduce me.

Tiraspol, Transnistria 2006
© Jens Olof Lasthein
Please visit White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein for the full size image.

And there was the charcoal burner Karoly, who had fled from society to live in the Bükk nature preserve, where I was regaled with warnings of the coming downfall of civilisation under the crushing weight of individualism and consumerism.

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. I remember the depressing sight of a Marlboro delivery lorry backing into Potsdamer Platz to bestow the long-deprived East Berliners with specially produced mini-packs of cigarettes. On the flip-top was printed: “Marlboro, the taste of freedom and adventure.”

A couple of years later the Soviet Union ceased to exist, and when I travelled to St. Petersburg in 1993, Russian society was just climbing out of the rubble of a collapsed system.

The years since then have seen new boundaries rise up between Europe’s east and west, and this is the borderland I have visited most recently, from the White Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. Isolated moments and fragments from these travels make up the images and tales in my book, White Sea Black Sea.

St. Petersburg – Tallinn, 1993

The train slows, finally coming to a stop. Outside is – nothing. I look questioningly at the jovial conductor with whom I am drinking tea and vodka in his tiny compartment.

“Hurry”, he says, pointing to a small station building with a light shining in one window.

We’ve come to the new border between Russia and Estonia.

St. Petersburg, Russia 1993
© Jens Olof Lasthein
Please visit White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein for the full size image.

Suddenly the tracks are overrun by people trying to be first into the little structure. Chaos breaks out, with yelling, swearing and jostling. Industrious men try to push through the crowd with bundles of passports. It’s impossible to know which window to go to, but it’s obvious the right decision has to be made quickly. Even though I’ve abandoned all courtesy and joined in the shoving, I’m pushed further and further towards the back.

Now the ticket checker is beside me, gesturing for my passport. He disappears, and a sense of unease falls over me. Then I see him, over by the entrance, with a distressed look on his face. He furiously waves me over, pressing my passport into my hand and running ahead of me to the train. We’re barely aboard before the whistle blows and the train begins to chug away. Everyone who has failed to get the required stamp is left behind, watching us disappear into the night.

Arkhangelsk, 2005

“Come on! We’ll do it like we did in school!”

The two festively dressed gents on the quay look surprised as a half-naked man who has just climbed out of a motorboat dances around them with clenched fists. They try to ignore him, but it’s no use. He won’t give up. Finally, one has had enough and beats him to the ground with several quick blows and a well-aimed kick to the head.

Five minutes later the underwear-clad man is back, going after the other partygoer with renewed energy. But this guy is no worse than his buddy. A crunch, and then a thump as the back of the drunk’s head hits the asphalt.

Arkhangelsk, Russia 2005
© Jens Olof Lasthein
Please visit White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein for the full size image.

Arkhangelsk. The very name rings of permafrost, darkness, endless forests and icy wastelands. But now it’s a new town. I walk for days on end, and when my legs won’t carry me any longer, sometime after midnight, I futilely attempt to close out the sunlight with a bedspread over the window. By 7 o’clock I give up and pull on my shoes again.

There’s electricity in the air. The throngs of people crowding the beachfront walkway never seem to want to go home, choosing instead to take a stroll over to the unknown soldier’s eternal flame, or the go-cart track wedged between the pier and the disco boats. The annoying whine of two-stroke motors doesn’t stop until well past midnight. The scent of sjasjlik – grilled meat on a stick – hangs heavy in the warm evening air. The midnight sun perches stubbornly on the distant horizon, refusing to drop below the arms of the river delta.

Kaliningrad, 2007

The girls look about the same age as my daughter, maybe 11 or so. Like young girls everywhere, they try to look older with make-up and high heels, short skirts and silver belts. A torrential rain is falling, and the ancient drainage system – a holdover from the time when this seaport was known as Königsberg – doesn’t have a chance of carrying away all the water. We stand in a doorway to keep out of the downpour, but when the girls see puddles grow into lakes they can’t hold back any longer. They run out into the street, laughing and shrieking.

Kaliningrad, Russia 2007
© Jens Olof Lasthein
Please visit White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein for the full size image.

Shoes come off, and on, and off again – the girls can’t get enough of this. Now they’ve discovered that the road at the bottom of the hill has turned into a river that cars can barely get through. There, soaked to the skin, they completely forget the limitations that make-up and heels place on older girls.

Sofiyovka, 2005

The air stands still between the houses, and the puddles are evaporating under a strong sun. The only sound is a distant hammering and the clucking of a few hens and geese behind a fence. A bread truck breaks the near-silence, pulling in on the patch of dirt to deliver crates of newly baked loaves to a shop in what I thought was a ghost town.

Laughter and loud voices. An engine starts and a dented old car tears away in a cloud of dust. Outside the youth centre, Aleksandr wonders if I’d like to come inside. Light falls in through ragged lace curtains in chilly rooms that might have once served as a pioneers’ meeting hall. A wood stove, a few chairs and a disassembled motorcycle are the only furnishings apart from a three-legged pool table with one corner propped up by a chair.

Sofijovka, Belarus 2005
© Jens Olof Lasthein
Please visit White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein for the full size image.

Aleksandr selects a cue, and with a crushing break shot sinks one ball. He moves to the other side of the table; I step around in the opposite direction. We have stopped speaking, and a curious tension builds with our slow movements around the table. Aleksandr ponders his next shot, sights along the length of the felt surface, changes his mind, goes back, aims carefully and shoots. He seldom misses.

Straightening his back, Aleksandr circles the table looking for a shot. He’s also moved into the right place for my shot – with a camera. “Stop,” I say. He looks up, and my lens pans slowly over the scene. When the motor stops humming, he cracks another ball into a corner pocket. Now whenever I like what I see through the viewfinder I just say “stop” and our eyes meet over the table for a long exposure, and then the game continues. I don’t know how long this goes on, but when I step outside into the hard sunlight it feels like I’ve been holding my breath for a very long time.

Stolnitsy, 2004

Alisa looks through the gate towards the high barbed-wire fence cutting across the main street a few dozen metres from her house. Has the neighbour on the other side come home yet?

Stolnitsy was once an ordinary Hungarian-speaking village under the dual monarchy. Then came World War I, and Stolnitsy became part of eastern Czechoslovakia. Nothing strange about that; borders in this corner of Europe have been moved fairly often during the course of history. But things got more complicated by the time World War II was over. The village was still Hungarian, but the Yalta Agreement gave the easternmost part of Czechoslovakia to the Soviet Union. Stolnitsy was split down the middle, right over the main street, with barbed wire, mine fields and a guard tower.

Stolnitsy, border between Ukraine and Slovakia
© Jens Olof Lasthein
Please visit White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein for the full size image.

And that’s how it remains when I come to visit Alisa. The mine fields are gone and the old guard tower stands empty, but the cruel wire fence is still there, patrolled now by Ukrainian border guards on this side and Slovakian EU soldiers on the other. So when Alisa wants to have a cup of coffee with her nearest neighbour, they stand on either side, giving the wire a respectful distance, shouting and gesticulating, both of them speaking Hungarian.

Chernyakhovsk, 2007

The boys are taking turns on their shared bicycle, sprinting around the block and spraying gravel when they brake. I commend the exquisite spoke decorations – red and orange plastic shooting stars. Now one of the lads is climbing along the gas pipes running over our heads. It’s obvious he’s done this may times before, but I can’t help feeling a bit anxious as I watch him balance up on those narrow tubes.

Chernyakhovsk, Russia 2007
© Jens Olof Lasthein
Please visit White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein for the full size image.

The boys appear to be on their way someplace else, but they can’t seem to pull themselves away. I shout good-bye and begin walking away. One of them comes running after me.

“Have you got a bicycle at home?” He lights up when I say yes, sure I do. He kneels by his bike, pulling loose two plastic beads and a bright orange shooting star.

“Here you go,” he says proudly, and the two of them disappear between garages and wash lines.

“The Zone”, 2005

Bragin is an unassuming little town in Belarus, close by the border with the radioactive area surrounding Chernobyl. There are five exits from the traffic circle just south of the municipality, one of which features a guard shack and a boom. To the left, oddly, a parallel road runs straight into the Zone.

Esenyi, Chernobyl Zone, Belarus 2005
© Jens Olof Lasthein
Please visit White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein for the full size image.

Climbing out of the car a quarter-hour later, I can’t see the asphalt for the thick covering of leaves. Buildings are only partially visible behind the trees and bushes that have grown up unattended over the last two decades. A rusty sign points the way to what once was a side road. Roofs and walls have collapsed, and through a broken window to what must have once been a medical clinic I see a rusted gynaecology chair. There isn’t a sound.

I stop outside a school. The memorial to the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45 looks lost and helpless. Suddenly, as if the projectionist had switched to the wrong reel in the middle of a film, the silence is broken by singing and laughter. Confused, I stumble out of the bushes and very nearly collide with two quite drunk ladies on bicycles. They laugh heartily when I ask if anyone actually lives around here, and point down the road before re-mounting their bikes. I drive in the direction they indicated.

Behind a high fence a dog is barking, high-pitched and angry. Strangers don’t often pass this way and when the gate opens and the dog comes bounding out, his excitement is so great he’s got an erection. Leonid and Vladimir have lived here all their lives. They don’t know where else to go, so when everyone else evacuated after the nuclear accident, they and a handful of other families simply stayed put. They grow their own potatoes and shrug off stories about radioactive uptake. Ivan comes by leading a horse and wagon loaded with planks. The red sun is low in late afternoon sky, and he’s already well and truly drunk. He slaps the horse’s rump and staggers off along the lonely road.

Back in the semi-darkness that has fallen over Bragin, I find what may have once been a better restaurant. On the menu is pork chops and potatoes. While I eat, the other guests are arguing over a bottle of vodka. One of the men pushes angrily away from the table, falling off his chair. His woman stumbles off in disgust.

Volhovshina, forbidden radioactive zone, Belarus 2005
© Jens Olof Lasthein
Please visit White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein for the full size image.

Julia is a cancer physician at the local hospital, where I pay a visit to her tiny apartment. She’s gorgeous, and I’m more than happy to sit and chat while we drink Champagne – until her mobile phone suddenly rings. A fearful look crosses her face. No time for formalities now – the police have found out that I’m here and she shows me a back way out of town.

I travel a good distance northwards before stopping. In the darkness, under an impressively starry sky, the tension lets go.

Kegostrov, 2005

Stepping ashore from the riverboat that morning, I see the rusting hulks of old ships, lying where they’ve been drawn up on land and never put to sea again. I return to the wrecks at the same time two boys come riding up on their bikes. One is a couple of years older than the other, and both are named Alyosha. I feel an expectant, almost reverent tension in the air when I walk up and say hello. I need to be careful; it’s better to say too little than too much. I begin taking pictures, letting the tension build and keeping the boys’ gaze locked in mine.

The younger one is a little reserved and can’t seem to relax, but the older lad seems to possess an instinctive sense of self-worth. He opens up his rucksack to show me the day’s big find: a crow! It looks like one wing is broken, but it’s a living crow, which the elder Alyosha takes in his arms and pets before placing it on his shoulder. It flaps a bit, but stays put.

Kegostrov, Arkhangelsk, Russia 2005
© Jens Olof Lasthein
Please visit White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein for the full size image.

Using this panorama camera requires a fairly slow pace – each frame has to be wound forward – and we soon fall into a close, almost meditative co-operation. Each time I change film rolls, the older boy alters his pose, moves the bird, and asks with his eyes if this looks good. After a while the younger Alyosha falls into the game as well.

By the time I leave, they’re deeply into their own game: back and forth between the boats, up to the cabin, down in the hold. The crow has no choice but to follow along, occasionally being thrown into the air in well-meant but tortuous attempts to get him to fly.

Later that day I run into the older Alyosha in the garden in front of his house. He’s digging a grave for his bird.

Grigoriopol 2006

Heading north out of Grigoriopol, I happen to look down a small side road towards the river and see a man swimming with a goose under his arm. What a photo! I run, but just before I get there he releases the goose.

It turns out to be an old ferry dock. But the other side of the Dniester is now enemy territory. The barge no longer runs, instead lying rusted on the riverbank. The afternoon sun is warm, and the place has a strange atmosphere. Suddenly a horse-drawn wagon comes careening at high speed down the bank carrying Ivan, Grigorij and Ljuba – father, son and daughter-in-law.

Grigoriopol, Transnistria 2006
© Jens Olof Lasthein
Please visit White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein for the full size image.

The plan is to wash some rugs and the horse, but first on the agenda is a picnic. As the watermelon is sliced and the vodka glasses are filled, they tell me of their friends and relatives on the other side of the river, in what used to be the same Soviet republic but is now another world – Moldova. They almost never see them any more. But they can live with that; they’d never consider moving from their breakaway republic.

Now it’s time to wash down the horse, and Grigorij rides him bareback, far out into the Dniester’s swirling currents. Next is a swim among the river’s geese, more vodka and cigarettes as afternoon turns to evening and we say farewell.

Much later, with darkness now fallen, I feel a twinge of melancholy as I cross the border at Dubăsari, leaving Transnistria, the last Soviet republic.

The new eastern edge of the European Union is not the sharp, merciless border of the Iron Curtain, but it remains palpable for everyone on both sides. Whether this new demarcation is an absolute one remains to be seen – and it’s up to us to decide how much we will allow it to affect our inner boundaries.

Every time I travel to the east, I re-live my first trip back in 1984. As foreign as the world on the other side may be, there’s always a strong but indefinable sense of coming home.

For more photographs please visit Jens Olof Lasthein website.

Arkhangelsk, Russia 2005
© Jens Olof Lasthein
Please visit White Sea Black Sea – travels on the Border, by Jens Olof Lasthein for the full size image.

A dedication: to Urghyen and Ladakh, by Sankar Sridhar

Sankar Sridhar — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:07:39 +0000

A Changpa family on the move. The tribe's movements are dictated by the season and women and children lead the migration while men follow while herding their sheep goat and yak. Since good quality Pashmina grows only in extreme cold, the nomads keep to altitudes of about 17,000 feet above sea level where, despite daytime temperatures of 40C, the glacial winds allow enough nip in the asir for the prized goats to grow their undercoat.
© Sankar Sridhar
Please visit A dedication: to Urghyen and Ladakh, by Sankar Sridhar for the full size image.

Text and photographs by Sankar Sridhar.

The invitation to contribute to this blog has come at a time when a needling regret was just beginning to surface yet again. It has been nearly a six months since Urghyen passed away. I learnt about it when I had gone to visit him. I was told that his daughter, Nyima, has married and moved to her husband’s household. She’ll never walk the old trails again. To find her in the maze of mental maps criss-crossing the high-altitude desert that is the Changtang will be a mammoth task. I don’t know if I ever will get to meet her again. A relationship seven years in the making has ended, just like that.

Urghyen and, to a lesser degree, Nyima have been instrumental in helping me love Ladakh, the trans-Himalayan desert in the northern tip of India that shares its border with China. For a long time, it was only for Urghyen that I retraced my steps there, a zero-carbon-footprint journey necessitated by the roadlessness of the land he called home. He made me love him, and the Changtang, enough to throw away my job, twice, so I could live his life.

A recent picture of Urghyen, taken in January 2010.
© Sankar Sridhar
Please visit A dedication: to Urghyen and Ladakh, by Sankar Sridhar for the full size image.

Yes, my journeys into this Himalayan shadowland have culminated in a book that has done well in the market. Yes, I had been visiting Ladakh for four years before meeting Urghyen and Nyima. Yes, I have made many journeys in Ladakh that have not involved meeting Urghyen. But truth be told, much more than images and the odd award, and books and travelogues in magazines, I thank Urghyen and Nyima for teaching me how to love a region written off time and again as desolate, harsh and lifeless.

If I have grown to be content with what I have even while living in the city, where flaunting material possessions comes second only to the necessity of acquiring them, it is in no small measure for Urghyen. And he must be given complete credit for instilling in me the courage, the faith even, to get up and going solo across Ladakh, a land of emptiness on such a grand scale that I have seen trekkers break down and cry because they have lost sight of their team behind a sand dune or a mountain pass.

Winter on the Changtang. Even though the region receives very little snowfall, everything liquid freezes. Here Changpas and horse share the same water from a thawed pool in a frozen stream. The thumb rule among the tribe in such situations--never collect water from downstream.
© Sankar Sridhar
Please visit A dedication: to Urghyen and Ladakh, by Sankar Sridhar for the full size image.

Urghyen was a Changpa, a nomad of Tibetan stock who moved into India’s Changtang plateau across the unmanned borders several decades ago. I met his daughter, Nyima, while heading to a roadhead to begin a trek. Upon my request, she had taken me to he home, and there, Urghyen invited me in and later accepted me as family. He even gave me a name — Thamo, which meant “The Thin One” in Ladakhi. Over time and many travels, much of which was with Urghyen and his flock, I began to realize what a wonderful a life they led. There will be many who would disagree — many Changpas, after all, have almost no access to modern medicine, schools are not much heard of, and they live in eternal migration with their sheep and goats and yaks, moving from one pasture to the next. Rain is a rarity in these places, and temperatures soar to 48C in summer and dip to -45C in winter.

Survival is hard work in winter and entails walking as much as 20km a day to collect shrubs that can be used as fuel. The hearth in a Changpa rebo (yak-hair tent) burns through day and night during the seven months of winter. Droppings and wood make up the fuel sources.
© Sankar Sridhar
Please visit A dedication: to Urghyen and Ladakh, by Sankar Sridhar for the full size image.

But Urghyen never found any reason to complain. He was bolted to the Changtang with firmness as astute as that of a believer. This land, where only the hardiest of species survived, was his home. And he loved it for the way it was, living true to the faith he followed — Buddhism. And he lived well, he said. “I breathe clean air, I have all the space I want. People in the city need all the medicines they can have because they are unhappy. Happy people stay healthy.” And as for education, he knew and had passed down to Nyima all the knowledge that was needed to survive in these high plains. He knew where water was to be found in each season. He knew prime grazing patches. He knew how to help a goat deliver a kid and keep them safe from predators. He knew where the 90kph winds would not rip apart his tent. He knew which clouds would bring rain and which would only raise false hopes.

Water kicked up by gusty winds freeze midair on the Changtang during extreme cold snaps, when temperatures can fall more than 10C in seconds. If such cold snaps come frequently, Changpas head to lower altitudes (around 15,000feet above sea level), as seen in the picture, to ensure their livestock's survival.
© Sankar Sridhar
Please visit A dedication: to Urghyen and Ladakh, by Sankar Sridhar for the full size image.

He was happy with his tent, his flock of pashmina sheep, and the traders to whom he would sell the fine undercoat that goes into making the much-sought-after fabric for shawls and stoles.

Being a nomad was a lifestyle he cherished, faults and all, quite like we do our ways of life. It was an acceptance, a happy acceptance, not a helpless surrender as many may point out. And in my time with him (on and off, much, much more than two years), he convinced me enough to respect his way of life rather than consider him an oddity because he lived in a manner far removed from what I was used to.

Availability of water remains the single-most important prerequisite for the choice of a Changpa camping ground. Often, pastures don't come with it. Changpas make the most of the cool dawns to head out to graze their sheep and goats, sometimes over 8km one way.
© Sankar Sridhar
Please visit A dedication: to Urghyen and Ladakh, by Sankar Sridhar for the full size image.

I don’t know when, but the Ladakh that began as only a mountain-grit region of peaks and altitude transformed into a living, breathing land, and I, a traveler without an agenda. Somewhere during my travels I let go of the map, the trekking trails, the urge to get to a place with a name by evening. There was no hurry, no destination to get to. I lived in the faith that when I ran out of rations, I’d find help. More often than not I did. Over time, like Urghyen, I feared not about getting lost, but about being found. In the past seven years, the only signs of humans, other than the Changpas, I have seen on my travels have been the litter mindless trekkers intent on bagging bragging rights have left behind.

The vagaries of weather show on the face of three-year-old Trinley. The scorching sun, extreme cold and whiplashing winds, not to mention the singeing heat of the hearth, all conspire to lend the Changpa the weathered, wisened look at an early age.
© Sankar Sridhar
Please visit A dedication: to Urghyen and Ladakh, by Sankar Sridhar for the full size image.

As the army has built more roads into its heart and magazines and newspapers have touted Ladakh as the ultimate adventure destination, so too has the level of litter increased along roads and trekking trails. Empty beer bottles, cola cans, polythene bags and a whole lot more crowds trekking routes today. Each time Urghyen came across another stash, his eyes would give away the hurt he felt at the defilement of his home.

Urghyen has seen, as have I, the sudden bureaucratic decision to demarcate part of the Changtang as a national reserve, off limits to the Changpas. The reason? Man-animal conflict. It was strange that in the entire range of the animals that inhabit Ladakh, they have dealt with the Changpas, and the Changpas with them, ever since either can remember. Urghyen had moved, but never understood how someone who might never have visited Ladakh decided the Changpas are doing the terrain more harm than good, while fuel-guzzling SUVs offroading on the same terrain caused no damage to the environment or wildlife.

For a tribe that counts its wealth in heads of goats, every birth brings added anxiety. Here Lamho warms an orphaned kid with love even as she prepares lunch for her family.
© Sankar Sridhar
Please visit A dedication: to Urghyen and Ladakh, by Sankar Sridhar for the full size image.

It was on a day when he was depressed that he asked me to take pictures of his people, his home, and show it to “my kind” in the city so they could learn to love the impressive and fragile land. When you love someone or something, he would say, you’d be willing to give up your life to protect it.

No newspaper or magazine would be very keen on recording the passing away of a nomad. And not many would spare space for personal emotions. Even without Urghyen, I find myself drawn to this part of the Himalayas, ploughing ever deeper and away from trekking trails to discover new landscapes that would have made even Urghyen stop a moment more and appreciate it.

Yaks are the only animals truly suited to survival in the extreme temperatures. So much so, the Changpa drive the yak to higher altitudes even as winter sets it. The animals roam freely in herds and are rounded up again post winter.
© Sankar Sridhar
Please visit A dedication: to Urghyen and Ladakh, by Sankar Sridhar for the full size image.

The images in this series are part of a collection that Urghyen has seen, and appreciated. There are some recent ones as well, which he might gaze upon now and smile. They are an attempt to set the community of the Changpas in context with their environment and lifestyles, through the seasons. Urghyen felt some images could make at least some people ponder on the frailty of the balance in the Himalayas and goad them to be better hikers and mountaineers. I, too, can only hope that the images that brought a smile on the face of Urghyen — a man as used to the majestic landscapes much as we are to our surroundings — will have the same effect on admirers of the mountains.

And to my friend Urghyen, a man who measured distances in hours and time by the length of his shadow, who knew neither blog nor internet nor computer, I say this: Thank you for the giving me the gift of lack of direction, the greatest possession I shall ever have on my forays into the abode of snow.

For more great photographs and stories about Changpa nomads life in Ladaks please visit Sankar Sridhar homepage and blog.

A flock grazing sheep take on the look of a celestial constellation on an evening on the Changtang. In the foreground is the roof of a house, complete with fluttering Buddhist prayer flags. More and more Changpa are embracing a sedentary life, egged on by the government which wants them to join the mainstream. As of 2008, only 1,500 families remained rooted to their traditional ways. Urghyen's was one of them.
© Sankar Sridhar
Please visit A dedication: to Urghyen and Ladakh, by Sankar Sridhar for the full size image.

Same same but different, the backpack travelers by Jörg Brüggemann

Fabiano Busdraghi — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:32:21 +0000

The series “Same same but different” by Jörg Brüggemann portrays young backpacking travelers from western countries, which -from an alternative form of traveling- today represent a new form of mass tourism, with its codes, its recurring traits and its diversity.

It is a topic that particularly interests me, because when I travel I always do backpacking, even though I try as much as possible to leave the beaten circuits. Furthermore I love Jörg Brüggemann color palette and style. Here an interview about his photographs and travels.

Fabiano Busdraghi: How did you start taking pictures? What is your history as a photographer?

Jörg Brüggemann: In 2003 I did an abroad term studying graphic design in Buenos Aires. Back then I visited the typography classes and all of that, but what really thrilled me was wandering around the city and taking pictures. Back in Bremen where I studied at the University of the Arts I took my first serious photography class with professor Peter Bialobrezski. And from then on I took the straight road as I finally found what I really wanted to do.

Fabiano Busdraghi: What is photography for you?

Jörg Brüggemann: Manly a way to tell stories and to confront myself with the world outside of my private life and give a statement about it. But I am a visual person not a writer. Photography just came naturally to me as I ma also not that good at drawing and so on. Apart from that I love to work for my own accounts. Photography gives me a maximum of personal freedom.

Fabiano Busdraghi: How the idea of “Same same but different” was born? Can you describe this work?

Jörg Brüggemann: After the abroad term in Buenos Aires I went traveling around South America for 2 month. That was the first time I got in touch with the backpacking scene. I was fascinated about the dimensions the alternative travel industry had reached. Two years later I had the chance the fly to India and I remembered this idea. I had heard that the backpacking scene in India should be even bigger then the one in South America. It turned out that I underestimated that. But the best or worst was still to come… Thailand.

Fabiano Busdraghi: Backpack travelers often has a distinctive look, that usually is very different from the main style at home. But as you show in you series, at the end everyone looks the same. Do you think that it is just a question of trend but differences exist or there is no hope of personality and individuality?

Jörg Brüggemann: Yes, you are right, fashion is a very strange part of backpacking. I never understood how all these travelers can take off their Levis 501 and put on ridiculous puffy trousers that they will never wear again in their life. Some say they want to dress like the locals. But no locals wear these cloths. It is probably really a question of trend and maybe group pressure. Which also answer the question about personality and individuality.

Fabiano Busdraghi: Backpack traveling was born as an alternative form of tourism. More freedom, less expenses, more contact with the local population. Respect for traditions and environment. Do you think that today backpack travelers has loosed those values? Why the situation has changed?

Jörg Brüggemann: I think these values are still the main reasons why young westerners go backpacking. But do they still find them when they are on the road? Freedom and less expanses, yes. But more contact with local people and respect for traditions and environment, no. The main reason for that are the masses that go backpacking nowadays. You can’t be individual when you are one of millions who go backpacking every year. And the locals have reacted to these masses. They offer the travelers what they want in order to make money. In that way it has become a tourist industry.

Fabiano Busdraghi: Sometimes when you travel it looks as everyone goes in the same youth hostel. You go on the other side of the world just to find yourself in a restaurant where everyone has his lonely planet posed on the table. Do you think that this kind of trip can still be interesting or it would be better to live all the guides home and just travel outside of those circuits?

Jörg Brüggemann: The Lonely Planet can be a helpful tool when you are in country like India. It really makes things easier because it is a thoughtful edited travel guide. The problem is that a lot of people rely too much on it. Some even call it “the bible”. It is really no adventure to travel through Thailand with the Lonely Planet. It is more or less like a packaged tour. So, if you want to see something else leave the Lonely Planet at home. But I prefer to take it with me and then I don’t touch it for weeks or so while traveling. And when I feel like banana pancakes and beautiful beach I look up where the best places are. It just really depends on you what you make out of it.

Fabiano Busdraghi: Yes I understand. I traveled 3 times in South America, the last one without any written guide, and it was a completely different trip.

But let’s go on with the interview: can you choose one of your photos and tell its history?

Jörg Brüggemann: The picture “New Year’s Full Moon Party”.

The Full Moon Party on Ko Pha-Ngan have become legendary. Once a month about 10.000 young traveller gather on Sun Rise Beach in Hat Rin in the South East corner of the island to party all night long. The event is very well organized by the local bar and hotel owners. It is also them that clean up the beach the next day like the woman on the photo. The party crowd has already gone to bed or to one the numerous After Full Moon Party in the village. I took this photo just after sunrise on the 1st of January 2008. In the night a storm had flooded the beach and left not only the rubbish but also a lot of seaweed. The trees were just decoration for the party. Their leafs are made out of paper.

Fabiano Busdraghi: Can you speak about one or more of your favorite photographers and tell us why you love his/their work?

Jörg Brüggemann: Well, it is quiet obvious that Martin Parr has been a big influence, although I claim for myself to be fairer to my subjects. But I simply love his irony and his everyday themes that relate so much more to my own life then most other photographers’ subjects. Same for Joel Sternfeld, Steven Shore and Lars Tunbjörk. My professor Peter Bialobrzeski influenced me as well. His passion for photography and the straight and consequent way in which he works were impressive for me.

And I worked two years in the office of Ostkreuz – Photographers’ agency in Berlin where I learned a lot about editorial photography and about attitude.

I probably admire any photographer whose personality can be seen in his work, because that means that his is passionate about what he does. But it has to be an interesting personality, because otherwise the work will be boring as well.

Fabiano Busdraghi: What are your favorite photography and art sites? Do you read any photo e-zine, blog or online art magazine?

Jörg Brüggemann: Yeah, I am actually quite addicted to photo blogs. There are about 30-40 that I read regularly. I find it very interesting what is going on there at the moment. However I am still not sure if this is not just another bubble because the whole scene is very self referential. I can’t really tell which ones I like the most because they are all very specified. Unfortunately there are very few good ones from Germany.

Fabiano Busdraghi: Do you have any photographic dream? Something you want to shoot and you can’t, some camera you dream to have, some place you want to go…

Jörg Brüggemann: There are a lot of photographic dreams I have, but none that I couldn’t put into reality. It is more the other way around. I need these dreams to make them my next project.

Fabiano Busdraghi: Wonderful answer Jörg! Thank you very much for the interview and good luck making your dreams reality.

Related posts:

Oitarizme and Love Issue, interview with Constantin Nimigean

Beyond the Land’s End, by Yumiko Kinoshita

Inside the infinite cube city