travling photography

Photo �  Andres Serrano | All Rights Reserved Readers of this blog are well aware of my current "chinoiserie" phase, of my interest in creating Chinese fashion themed multimedia stories and of my working on a photo book on Chinese Opera. So it's with great pleasure that I discovered the work of the famous photographer Andres Serrano, and his wonderful portraits of Chinese men and women in traditional garb and costumes in his Made In China gallery. One of the most famous traditional Chinese clothing type is the Han Fu style. This is the type of dress worn by the Han people from the Yellow Emperor (about 2698 BC) till the late Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644 AD). It became known as the Han Fu (�fu� means �clothes� in Chinese) because the fashion was improved and popularized during the Han Dynasty. It is usually in the form of long gown, cross collar, wrapping the right lapel over the left, loose wide sleeves and no buttons but a sash. My very favorite is the qi pao or cheongsam ...

Photo �  An Rong Xu | All Rights Reserved Having just returned from Shanghai where I was giving a photo talk on travel photography following a street photography walk-about workshop, I was struck by the depth and breadth of talent found in young emerging Chinese photographers, who are passionate about their craft and eager to break boundaries. They are like "sponges" for ideas; new and old...and are quick learners when they need to be. Working on some of my personal projects took me to a couple of old water towns near Shanghai, such as Qi Bao (commercialized), Jinxi (untouched) and Xinchang (preserved), along with Shanghainese photographers.  The above photograph by An Rong Xu is of such a water town, and exemplifies the scenery that most of these relics have and provide to its visitors...whether local or foreign. It's part of his portfolio listed as New Romantics: China   in which he provides us with his view of his native country. He chose the title New Romantics to ex...

Photo � Xiaoxiao Xu | All Rights Reserved I am always on the lookout for ethnic cultural traditions that are off the radar for most of us, and with my forthcoming photo talk in Shanghai and working on a forthcoming photo book on Chinese Opera of the Diaspora, I am naturally focused on China and its wealth of obscure (and rural) rituals, performances and festivals. One of these performances is Shehuo, which originated in ancient religious rituals performed by ancestors of the Chinese to worship the earth. In common with every other ancient people, they believed that the worship would bring plentiful harvests and fortunes in return.  The etymology of the word comes from She,  the god of land and Huo the god of fire. In time, these primitive worshipping rituals evolved into the Shehuo festivity; a tribute to the Tudi Gong, a deity who holds sway over fortune and wealth. Most Shehuo performances take place around traditional Chinese festivals, especially at templ...

Photo � Cira Crowell - All Rights Reserved Koyasan is one of the most important Buddhist temple complexes in Japan. This monastic complex of 117 temples is dedicated to the study and practice of esoteric Buddhism. It's the center of Shingon Buddhism, an important Chinese-influenced Buddhist sect which was introduced to Japan in 805 by Kobo Daishi, one of Japan's most significant religious figures. It is one of the best places to experience an overnight stay at a temple lodging pilgrims and visitors can experience a monk's lifestyle, eating vegetarian monk's cuisine and attending the morning prayers. Around fifty temples offer this service to both pilgrims and visitors. The history of Kobo Daishi is interesting. In 816, after years of study in China, it is said he climbed the holy mountain of Mount Koya and created the first temple of the Shingon sect of Esoteric Buddhism among its eight peaks, said to resemble a lotus. He was regarded as a saint by the time he fell ill...

Photo � Alfred Weidinger | All Rights Reserved "The most important thing is to find one king -- when I have one, he will guide me to the others." -  Alfred Weidinger With a couple of exceptions, African kings are traditional rulers who often derive their titles from the rulers of independent states or communities that existed before the formation of modern African states. Although they do not have formal political power, in many cases they continue to command respect from their people and have considerable influence.  There are only three African countries with constitutional monarchies � Morocco, Swaziland and Lesotho -- but there are several hundred traditional monarchs dispersed across Africa in urban, semi-urban and rural communities in independent countries. It is estimated that there are about 70 such African monarchs as well as some 500 tribal leaders, whose dynasties and fiefdoms marked the history of Africa until the middle of the twentieth century.  A...

Photo � Antoine Schneck | All Rights Reserved Following the recent racist vulgarities uttered by the White House resident describing African, Caribbean and South American nations (among others), I decided to feature photographs of Malians by French photographer Antoine Schneck as a riposte. I have rarely posted about Mali on The Travel Photographer blog and for those of us who need a geographical refresher, it's a landlocked country in West Africa, and is the eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of just over 1,240,000 square kilometres (480,000 square miles). Its population is 18 million, and its capital is Bamako. Setting aside its troubled recent politics, Malian music is glorious, and is derived from the griots , who are known as "Keepers of Memories". Its most well known is the late guitarist Ali Farka Tour� and the Tuareg band Tinariwen, and the wonderful Fatoumata Diawara and Babani Kon�. Schneck tells us that he starts the process of his portrait-making...

Photo Courtesy Hanfugirl   Readers of this blog know of my "chinoiserie" phase in my photographic trajectory, which ranges from photojournalistic projects such as documenting various types of Chinese opera to what I call "fashion themed storytelling'. It's the latter that led me to discover the work of Ms. Gong Pan Pan, a Singaporean whose passion is to re-enact the ancient/traditional Chinese female�s way of dressing, either through modeling the dresses herself or relying on friends to do so. Ms Pan Pan's delightful blog is The Hanfu Girl , and she pens a number of historically and visually interesting posts about her passion. One of specific interests at this time is the Hanfu style. Hanfu is the term for traditional clothing worn by the Han Chinese before the 17th century. Of the 56 different ethnic groups in China, the Hans are the largest, and make up approximately 90% of the population in China. In a recent interview, she estimated that she has betwee...

Photo � Delphine Blast | All Rights Reserved And for a total change away from Asia, I'm featuring photography out of South America,; a continent I've visited a number of times but neglected on this blog. A French photographer, Delphine Blast was on a two month journey in Bolivia, and met dozens of cholitas;  Aymara and Quechua women in layered skirts and shawls, with the distinctive bowler hats atop their heads, and learned of the social and racial discrimination they had faced for as long as anyone could remember. She decided then to produce a series of portraits in a gallery titled The Cholitas Project to feature these women's identity affirmations and to reflect the social changes in the country following the 2005 election of Evo Morales, the country's first indigenous president. A possibly apocryphal tale about the bowler hats worn by these indigenous women is that in the late 1800s, two brothers in Manchester were manufacturing a line of bowler hats, and plann...

Photo �  Victoria Knobloch | All Rights Reserved I can make no apologies for the recent spate of China or Chinese related posts. As this blog's readers know, I'm currently neck-deep in a new long term project revolving around the traditional Chinese opera (and its various styles) amongst the Chinese diaspora in South East Asia and elsewhere. So here's the work of Victoria Knobloch which she has titled China Charm . Many of her monochromatic images are of simple portraits, with some more complex environmental portraits (including the cormorant fishermen of the Li River), along  with some landscapes.  Aside from her portraits, I was mostly attracted to her work depicting men in traditional Chinese interiors (presumably rural tea houses) and walking cobblestoned old villages. She has also a number of other galleries worth stopping by; those of Tibet, Tibetans in exile and Kham stand out and reaffirm Ms. Knobloch's fascination in Tibetan Buddhism.  V...

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...

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, ...

Photo �  Giselle Natassia - All Rights Reserved This blog post will lead to a photo gallery that featured graphic and possibly disturbing images. The Nine Emperor Gods Festival is a nine-day Taoist celebration starting on the eve of the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar, and is observed in a number of Asian countires, including Thailand. In Thailand, this festival is called thetsakan kin che or the Vegetarian Festival. Celebrated throughout the entire country, it is at its height in Phuket, where more than a third of the population is Thai Chinese. The festival honors the nine Taoist emperor gods. During the Vegetarian Festival, Thai people practice jay , or veganism. Men (rarely women) participate in this self-mutilation ritual, and are called masongs . They are men possessed by gods or deities during the festival. Only pure, unmarried men without families of their own can become a masong.   The deities inside them   protects them from feeling any...

Photo � Sam Barker Photography -All Rights Reserved Let's go south of the border with the charro. These are Mexican horsemen (the horsewomen are known as charra) typically dressed in an elaborately decorated outfit of close-fitting pants, jackets, and sombrero. The charro originated in the ce ntral-western regions of Mexico, and participate in the c harreada ; a form of rodeo riding that has become an official sport in that country. It  is a competitive event quite similar to the United States rodeo, and was developed from animal husbandry practices used on the haciendas of old Mexico. According to scholars, there is perhaps no better representative of the country's combined cultures and history than the horse trained for " c harreada ." Charros believe that Mexicans were originally conquered by horses, but gained independence with horses, so are inseparable from their steeds.  The horses preferred by the charros are a combined breed: the American Quarter Horse, des...

Photo � Viet Ha Tran-All Rights Reserved My previous blog post dealt with the question as to whether the Fujifilm X-Pro 2's capabilities mitigates my "need" for acquiring its medium format GFX 50S to seriously indulge in my interest in "fashion-lifestyle-travel" photography. I concluded the jury was still out, and that most probably the X-Pro 2 was more than capable of producing exquisite images without the weight and cost associated with its medium format cousin. As I was checking Google News for recent updates on my photo book H?u �?ng: The Spirit Mediums of Viet Nam  in the Vietnamese newspapers, I chanced on an article lauding the work of a Vietnamese phot ographer, whose name I was not familiar with, and who wasn't in my extensive Facebook network. Some of the work I viewed exemplified what I am interested in pursuing (to a certain extent). I chose the lovely photograph above, which is one of many in Ms Viet Ha Tran's The Soul of Vietnam gallery,...

Photo � Souvid Datta - All Rights Reserved One easily falls head over heels for India. No question about it. It happened to me in 1998, and I've traveled to its four corners (with some exceptions) over 20 times, imbibing its people, sights, smells, cultures, music and everything in between. It's well known for its diversity, various physiognomies, languages, religions, traditions and cultures. Across the country�s 29 states, over 500 dialects are spoken, over 800 million reside in booming metropolises, and its rural enclaves are home to over 2000 tribes. However modernity and globalization exact a price on all nations; especially those with traditions and cultures as deep as those of India. And may well cause the disappearance of its tribes, cultural practices and musicians. For example, the dancing Veerghase troops of Karnataka, the formidable hunting tribes of Nagaland, the revered Kawaili singers of Rajasthan: these groups, once essential and symbolic of their regions, may n...

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 � Mark Bennington - Courtesy Huffington Post � Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on ,� his campaign said in a release. June 28, 2016 I never thought I'd see a fascist running for President of the United States, and win the election on a platform of hatred, misogyny, racism and discrimination...but one did. I was thrilled to see Mark Bennington's America 2.0 portraits which, as he describes them, are his direct response " to the politicized images of American Muslims depicted as a plagued foreign diaspora ". He found it to be the time to start this project that dealt with the aspirations of ordinary people, and give them a voice through his portraits and interviews. Reading these young and accomplished people's thoughts is an eye-opener. It is what our country is all about :  E pluribus unum, the 13-letter traditional motto ...