travling photography

Myanmar, or Burma (as I occasionally prefer to call it) is a wonderful country which I had the pleasure of traveling in some time before its recent "modernization". Its people consist of a mix of settlers and invaders from all sides; the Mon and the Pyu are thought to have come from India, while the now dominant Bamar migrated through Tibet, and by the year 849, had founded a powerful kingdom centered in Bagan.  For the next millennium, the Burmese empire grew through conquests in Thailand and in India, then shrank under attacks from China and due to internal rebellions. Photo � Nhi Dang-All Rights Reserved I am often on the look out for young talented travel photographers to feature on this blog, and, because of my own background, I'm especially partial to those who left the "comfort" of a corporate career for a life of creativity, travel and cultural affinity. My current feature is about such an individual; Nhi Dang who describes herself as a videog...

Photo � J�rgen Johanson - All Rights Reserved Gu� Zhou or Gu�zhou Sheng is a province in the southwest of China, and is demographically one of China's most diverse provinces, with minorities accounting for more than 37% of its population. These include the Miao, Yao, Yi, Qiang, Dong, Zhuang, Bouyei, Bai, Tujia, Gelao and Sui.  The Miao people -at more than nine million - are one of the largest minority groups in China, and almost half of them live in  Gu� Zhou . The self-given name Long Horned Miao refers to the women with their own (and false) hair wrapped around a large horn-shaped wooden comb. In the past, this comb was smaller and the tips only just protruded out from the hair. In more recent times, and especially amongst older people, the comb is extremely wide, almost the size of buffalo horns. During festival times, young women wear as many as thirty skirts and several long jackets.  J�rgen Johanson's Gu� Zhou gallery features a number of photographs of the "l...

Photo � Trupal Pandya - All Rights Reserved The Konyaks are found in Myanmar, in a couple of districts of India's Arunachal and Nagaland, India. They are known in Arunachal as Wancho Konyak. In Nagaland, there are sixteen major indigenous tribes with different cultures and traditions. The most fascinating of these tribes are the Konyaks; the largest in number, identifiable by their tattooed faces and a history of fierce headhunting. Headhunting was important place in the Konyaks' tradition and culture. For the Konyak, killing an enemy and bringing back the head used to be considered a rite?? of passage, and was rewarded with a tattoo on the face or chest of the warrior. The more tattoos the fiercer (and more respected and feared) was the warrior. During the 1970's, the Konyaks converted to Christianity and consequently many ?traditional practices and rituals have vanished. What now remains are? ?a few old men with faded tattoos.These men are idling about certain villages, s...

Photo � Alessandra Meniconzi-All Rights Reserved I am pleased to feature the work of Alessandra Meniconzi, one of my favorite travel photographers, on the Berkutchi of Central Asia . She tells us that in  Kazak language, Berkutchi, means �hunters with the falcon�. Hunting with eagles is a traditional form of falconry. With extreme patience and dedication the Kazakh have domesticated golden eagles, and their techniques were originally adopted by nomadic populations in Central Asia�s plateaus, and eventually spread to the rest of the world. For those interested in linguistics, the Kazakh word for golden eagle is " b�rkit ", and the word for "hunter with eagles" is b�rtkitshi . There are only about 40 officially recognized eagle-hunters in Kazakhstan today, but a village named Nura is its epicenter because it has 14 of them. Kazakh interest in eagle-hunting has been growing since the republic became independent with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Hunting wit...

In the afternoon of November 9, 2016 I was welcomed at the studios of VTV International (VTV4) at 43 Nguy?n Ch� Thanh Street by Ms. Ho�ng Th? Thu Trang (Head of VTV's English Division) and by Ms Duong T. Tran (host of Talk Vietnam) to record an in-studio interview  and to talk about my  recently published:  H?u �?ng: The Spirit Mediums of Viet Nam  photo book. VTV4 upload ed it on You Tube. It is also currently is streaming on VTV4's website  in broadcast HD qualit y. In my jet-lagged condition, I was a ball of nerves before the interview, and being faced with three TV cameras, and hearing the call "Action!" did not make things better...but Ms. Tran was very gracious and her questions put me at ease. I had received the proposed script earlier in the day, and I had rehearsed as much as I could. The interview took 1-1/2 hours. 

Photo � Denis Dailleux - All Rights Reserved Every now and then, I chance on photographic work which fills me with nostalgia, and viewing the monochromatic images of Cairenes and other Egyptians by Denis Dailleux brings me back memories of growing up in a leafy suburb of what was at that a cosmopolitan capital. Unimaginable now of course, but at that time it was more European than Arab...and secularism was the norm.  And Denis says it well in an interview: " I left Cairo more than a year, but return to it on a regular basis. I still love this chaotic city that spellbinds me, and I'm extremely sad of its current situation. However, if there is positive news out of Egypt, it is that of the courageous youths who got a glimpse of freedom ." I stopped at length at every of his photographs...easily imagining what these people would tell me, how they lived, would they share their troubles, their sufferings. Some smile, but others are stoic. A woman squatting in her ki...

� Flore-A�l Surun - All Rights Reserved After my return from Hanoi where I launched my  H?u �?ng: The Spirit Mediums of Viet Nam  photo book, I am naturally keen to start on a new long term project, and researching Asian spirit mediumship, I found Korean shamanism to have many similarities to the Vietnamese H?u �?ng rituals I spent almost two years photographing.  By the way, it is said that shamanism is what humans followed before the advent of organized religion. The Korean shamans are called " mudang ", and are usually female (in contrast to the "gender equality" amongst Vietnamese spirit mediumship practitioners). They are known to perform  ceremonies called  gut   in local villages, to cure illness, bring good luck or plentiful harvests, banish evil spirits or demons, and ask favors of the gods. After a death, the mudang  also help the soul of the departed find the path to heaven. They communicate with ancestral spirits, nature spir...

Photo � Leonid Plotkin - All Rights Reserved " Mysterium tremendum et fascinans"   Mysterium Tremendum is a Latin phrase meaning fearful mystery, which was coined by Rudolf Otto who is best known for his analysis of the experience that, in his view, underlies all religion. This is how Leonid Plotkin -a photographer whose work I've featured a number of times on this blog- titled his photo essay of Buddhist rituals and of ceremonial dances made in the remote regions of Ladakh and Zanskar. Some of the photographs are of Cham dances; the masked and costumed ceremonial performances associated with Tibetan Buddhism performed during Buddhist festivals. These dances are accompanied by music played by monks using traditional Tibetan instruments. The dances offer moral instruction relating to compassion, for good to defeat evil and bring merit to the performers and the audience. Leonid Plotkin is a freelance documentary photographer and writer. His work has appeared in publicatio...

The Vi?t beliefs in the Mother Goddesses of Three Realms, also known as �?o M?u, was inscribed  on December 1, 2016 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. And the inscription comes as an important chapter in my 18+ months journey documenting this indigenous belief system which I stumbled across during a photo expedition in northern Vietnam in September 2014. It also serves to underscore the importance of this tradition to the millions of Vietnamese who flock to it for their spiritual needs, and to gain help in achieving good health and success in their communities, occupations and social circles. I am proud to have launched my photo book  H?u �?ng: The Spirit Mediums of Viet Nam  in Hanoi just 3 weeks before the formal announcement, and contributed in a small way to the anticipatory buzz of  the mystical world of �?o M?u and H?u �?ng. My three photo talks and my photo book were written of in more than 18 different n...