travling photography

Photo � Ofir Barak - All Rights Reserved You'd be forgiven if you thought that the above photograph was taken in Saudi Arabia or Iran, but it's not. It's a street scene in the Mea Shearim settlement  outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem in Israel, and part of the photographic project of the same name by Ofir Barak . We are told that the settlement was established in 1874 and its name is derived from a verse in Genesis 26:12. To this day, it remains an insular neighborhood in the heart of Jerusalem with an overwhelmingly Hasidic population,  and its the streets reminiscent of an Eastern European shtetl. Life revolves around strict adherence to Jewish law, prayer, and the study of Jewish religious texts. It is populated mainly by Haredi Jews and was built by the Old Yishuv (the Jewish communities of the southern Syrian provinces during the Ottoman period). Interestingly, the numerical value of the words Meah Shearim equals 666, which allegedly has esoteric an...

Photo � Sam Sanzetti - All Rights Reserved Working on my forthcoming multimedia project "The Red Qi Pao" has whetted my interest in Shanghai of the 1930s or so, and I stumbled on the work of a photographer born at the start of the 1900 in Russia, and who -for survival reasons - settled for a while in that city 20 years later. The story is fascinating. Sam Sanzetti (born  Sioma Lifshitz) , a young Jewish Eastern-European made his way to China with his parents, and worked at menial jobs until having to flee to Shanghai during the Japanese occupation. He was able to build up the most successful photography studio of the day in Shanghai, eventually opening up four branches throughout the city. When he left China for Israel after 30 years, in the late 1950's, he did so with 20,000 photographs in his bags. In Shanghai, Sanzetti  started working at the studio of a local photographer, and after a few months became so interested in studio work that when an American business man of...

Photo � Hiroshi Watanabe - All Rights Reserved Kabuki is a form of traditional Japanese drama with highly stylized song, mime, and dance, now performed only by male actors, using exaggerated gestures and body movements to express emotions, and including historical plays, domestic dramas, and dance pieces. This art form was created by a woman named Okuni, a shrine attendant, in the 17th century. Although greatly influenced by the aristocratic noh , kabuki was devised as a popular entertainment for the masses. A large part of the popularity of the early, all-female performances was due to their sensual nature. These performers were also prostitutes and male audiences often got out of control. As a result, women were banned from performing by the Tokugawa Shogunate, and only older males were allowed to take part in kabuki . Hiroshi Watanabe, a Japanese photographer, features a wonderful gallery of square format portraits of non-professional kabuki performers in the small town of Na...

Laosheng (??, old man) As another string to my 'Chinoiserie' phase, I've been very attracted (visually and culturally) for quite some time to the art of what is generally known as Chinese Opera. I speak no Chinese, but it (in its many different ethnic varieties) being centuries old and performed in colorful costumes make for an visually appeal that's hard to resist capturing with my cameras. Following my 5-6 hour photo shoot of performers at the Yuet Wan Cantonese Opera Association in Kuala Lumpur a few weeks ago, I resolved to continue on the path that I hope might lead me to another long term project similar to my two year long  H?u �?ng: The Spirit Mediums of Viet Nam , and discovered from an ad plastered all over NYC's Chinatown featuring a Chinese Opera to be  held at the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association Auditorium on Mott Street. I booked my seat for May 21 and with my Fuji X-Pro2 and a a panoply of lenses, was at the door half an hour before the op...

Photo � Wing Shya - All Rights Reserved "Of course Wong Kar Wai yelled at me. Imagine some guy coming to photograph Leslie Cheung and everything comes out blurred. You'd wonder, what's this guy's attitude?" Whilst thinking and working on one of my side projects (tentatively known as The Red Qi Pao), I sought the influence of Wong Kar-Wai 's cinematography, especially in evidence in his seminal In The Mood For Love. Then discovered the photography of Wing Shya, known for his raw, smoky images from the golden era of Hong Kong cinema. Reading various of Wing's interviews just a few days ago, I learned that he writes film scripts for his editorials, and that every photograph has a complete, fictional backstory. And this is what I started doing almost a year ago in my initial effort of that sort, and which I titled The Old China Cafe , and whose sequel will be The Red Qi Pao, currently a work in progress.  I write about this very thing in a previous blog post, ...

I had many chances of using the combination of my newly-acquired ('medium format') Fuji GFX50s with a 63mm fixed lens, along with my favorite go-to camera X-Pro2 and the 16-55mm lens in Kuala Lumpur. One of these opportunities to put the GFX50s through its paces was to produce a themed project involving a Malay young woman (Ms Sarah Dalina) wearing the traditional dress called kebaya. The kebaya is a traditional blouse-dress combination that originated from the court of the Javanese Majapahit Kingdom, and is traditionally worn by women in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Burma, southern Thailand, Cambodia and the southern part of the Philippines. Through the help of Ms Shuhada Hasim (herself a talented photographer), we settled on a traditional Malay house located on Jalan Datuk Keramat, in the center of Kuala Lumpur. This lovely house was the perfect backdrop for the project. While traditional Malay houses have diversity of styles according to each states, provinces, an...

Here's an interesting and compelling slideshow on Thaipusam, the Hindu festival celebrated mostly by the Tamil community during January or February. It's mainly observed in countries where there is a significant presence of Tamil community such as India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Mauritius Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar. Thaipusam is a celebration dedicated to the Hindu deity Lord Murugan (youngest son of Shiva and his wife Parvati).  This particular slideshow was made of a combination of color and monochrome photographs. Thaipusam is a rather striking festival with devotees shaving their heads and undertaking a pilgrimage along a set route while carrying out various acts of devotion, which may include self-mortification by piercing the skin, tongue or cheeks with skewers. For my taste, the slideshow relies too heavily on the Ken Burns effect; presumably thought by the photographer to add focus to the scenes, but I thought was distracting. Nonetheless, the slideshow made...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy - All Rights Reserved Chinoiserie (from ' chinois ' the French for Chinese) is a style inspired by art and design from China, Japan and other Asian countries. Fashion designers, furniture makers, wallpaper designers, artists and photographers have consistently been heavily influenced and inspired to produce work that reflect this aesthetic. My c hinoiserie "phase" has been bubbling for quite a while. Certainly influenced by my travels over the past two years to Hanoi, and annual visits to Kuala Lumpur, it was triggered by a couple of visits to The Old China Cafe; an atmospheric eatery in KL's Chinatown's vicinity, and which in turn resulted in a short  audio-slideshow bearing the same name. My immersive experience in the Vietnamese  H?u �?ng  rituals for my photo book was another push in this direction, especially with the fashion sense and the ethnic costumes of the mediums. Yet another influence of mine is In the Mood for Love (Chine...