travling photography

Photo � William E. Crawford | Courtesy The New York Times I don't recall writing a blog post about an article that appeared on The New York Times' Lens feature, but I could not let the wonderful photography of William E. Crawford on Hanoi Streets go without giving it its due merit on the pages of this blog. One of the photographs that I couldn't stop looking at is of this Vietnamese general. I have no idea who he is or what his history may have been...but I've met Vietnamese men (and women) of his age with similar facial expressions, whose astounding gentleness and courtesy to me -as a visitor to their country- are the most rewarding experiences I took away from my travels in Vietnam. In the Lens article, Mr. Crawford is quoted as saying  "despite the embargo and the wounds of the American War there was no obvious anti-American hostility ... the lack of hostility towards Americans, at least in the North, was a relief to me." This is so true! Everywhere I went...

Photo � Reuters/Jorge Silva - Al Rights Reserved I was planning to attend the Poy Sang Long celebration in Chiang Mai in early April, but the opportunity of my Shanghai lecture and workshop intervened, and so I had to postpone traveling to northern Thailand till next year. However, I viewed the recent wonderful photo essay and reportage titled Beloved Princes Become Buddhist Novices by Jorge Silva of the annual event which was featured in Reuters' Wider Image blog, and it definitely reaffirmed my intention to attend the celebration in April 2019. The essay/reportage is quite thorough in explaining what Poy Sang Long is all about, but here's more information: The days of April 4-6 are usually the time for the three-day festival of Poy Sang Long when, in the city of Chiang Mai, pre-teen boys are inducted as Buddhist novices. On the first day of the 3-day festival, the youngsters are in the midst of family feasting and gift giving before they are escorted to the temple to have t...

Photo �  Isabel Corthier | All Rights Reserved It's not often that I stumble over a truly wonderful photographic website, and when it happens, I pore over its images very carefully...as long as it takes and relish the opportunity to share it on this blog. The work of Isabel Corthier is worth poring over; especially that one its themes "Believers" happens to be one that has attracted me for quite a while during my own photographic journey. For "Believers", Ms Corthier focuses her lens on Ecuador, Ethiopia, Uganda, Nepal and Myanmar . In the latter, her protagonist is a Buddhist nun called Ayethikar, who at 21 years was sent to the Agayar Tawya nunnery in Yangon because she was sickly. A few years later, she contracted Hepatitis C after being treated for dental issues. However, Ayethikar accepts her disease with Buddhist acceptance and equanimity. The nunnery houses 30 nuns; one of which is 7 years old. The nuns arise from sleep at 4:00 am to start their meditat...

Photo � Nick McGrath | All Rights Reserved As followers of this blog may know, I've been deeply interested in Chinese Opera for a while, and I'm in the midst of a long term work-in-progress project to publish a photo book on the Chinese Opera in the Diaspora. So it was with great pleasure and interest that I discovered the work of photographer Nick McGrath in his lovely gallery Chinese Opera Bangkok , and from which I chose the above image of a performer's compelling portrait to accompany this post. Bangkok�s Chinese opera has long been a vibrant staple of Bangkok's Chinatown life. The Teochew Chinese, who immigrated to Thailand a couple of centuries ago, brought it with them as part of their cultural traditions, and to this day, during the Chinese festivals, there are regular performances at venues along Yaowarat Road. In common with others regions that have received the influx of a Chinese diaspora, the art form is in decline. Partly caused by a younger generation who...

Photo � Christian Berg | All Rights Reserved Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) previously known as Saigon, has a population of about 8.5 million people, making it the most populous metropolitan area in Vietnam. The city's population is expected to grow to 13.9 million by 2025. Its French-influenced buildings earned it the nickname of �the Pearl of the Orient�, especially because of its tree-lined boulevards flanked by grand hotels with wide verandas. Saigon's old buildings also formed the backdrop for �The Quiet American,� the Graham Greene novel set during Vietnam�s war for independence from France in the early 1950s, and for indelible images of the Vietnam War. The city  was full old apartment buildings; built in the 1950s or 1960s while others dating back to French colonial times.  As an aside: Although I've been to Vietnam many times, I've only been to Saigon once back in 2004, and I distinctly recall the Rex Hotel; the old and famed hotel where the United States military wou...

Photo � Sebasti�o Salgado | Courtesy Folha de S.Paulo I'm very glad to have stumbled on the latest work by the legendary Sebasti�o Salgado. It's published as a reportage in the magazine (or blog?) of the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo , and while its descriptive text is in Portuguese, I used an online translator tool to feature it here. The remote tribe known as the Korubos received Sebasti�o Salgado, in September 2017. He was welcomed with guttural sounds such as "hey hey hey", and stayed in their village in the Javari valley for 20 days to produce his new project, "Amaz�nia". The Korubos number about 80, and maintain regular contact with officials of the Brazilian State... but have had little contact with the "white" culture. They are divided into two villages on the banks of the Itu� River, in the Indigenous Land Vale do Javari, in western Amazonas, along the border with Peru, 3,500 km from S�o Paulo and 1,200 km from Manaus. This tribe w...

This is a double feature on the eagle hunters of the Altai mountains of Mongolia; one is the cinematic work of Cale Glendening, and the other is a photographic essay by Sasha Leahovcenco. The golden eagles live in the high Altai mountains, in far-western Mongolia, and build their nests in the crags of the area�s rugged peaks. The hunters, a Khazak minority, are traditional nomadic clans who learn to climb up to these crevices to capture and domesticate the young eagles. The birds are hand fed, and live with the hunters� families for years. The hunters take their eagles high into the mountains, so they can fly down and catch foxes and other small mammals. It's a dying tradition, with an estimated number of only fifty or sixty authentic eagle hunters left. Photo � Sasha Leahovcenco  | All Rights Reserved Although eagles can live for thirty years, the hunters keep each one for only about ten years, then release it to live out its last years in the wild. The hunters are called bu...

Photo � Nagi Yoshida-All Rights Reserved I now feature my favorite 5 photographer for 2017. I do so in no particular order, either alphabetically, nor chronologically nor by preference...just randomly. Nagi Yoshida :  My first favorite photographer of 2017 is Nagi Yoshida which was featured on this blog on June 26 with her work on Ethiopia . I liked her imagery of the various tribes in the Omo Valley such as the Mursi, Bume, Hamer and the Afari people.  The Japanese photographer's love affair with Africa started when as a child, she was fascinated by being African. Some children want to become pilots, some models, but her dream was just to become African.  Photo �  Corentin Fohlen  | All Rights Reserved Corentin Fohlen : Another favorite is French photographer/photojournalist Corentin Fohlen featured in my post of March 3 , with his incredibly colorful and fantastical portraits  of Haiti's Karnaval .  This festival has been held for ove...

Photo �  Patrick Aventurier | All Rights Reserved Having attended the Nine Emperor Gods festival's celebrations in Kuala Lumpur last month, I was interested to discover a gallery of 50 portraits of The Ma Song by French photographer Patrick Aventurier (which were in all probability taken during the festival in Phuket, and known there as the Vegetarian festival.  My own experience at the Nine Emperor Gods festival in Ampang was very much milder than what these portraits depict....but let's start with what the festival is all about.  The Nine Emperor Gods Festival is a nine-day Taoist celebration beginning on the eve of 9th lunar month of the Chinese calendar, and celebrates this community's belief that abstinence from meat and various stimulants during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar will help them obtain good health, peace of mind, as well as spiritual cleansing. Its sacred rituals grant good fortune on those who observe this rite. In accordance with ...

Photo � Chen Haiwen-All Rights Reserved Whilst in Shanghai, I was very pleased to meet with Mr Chen Haiwen; a master photographer, the founder of Shanghai Museum of Antique Cameras, the recipient of the highest photography award in China twice in a row and Vice Chairman of the Shanghai Photography Association.  He and his family were a model of gracious hospitality and assistance. Between the summers of 2008 and 2009, he and his support teams  visited 28 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, 554 cities and counties of China (and Taiwan), to produce  The Family Photos of China's 56 Ethnic Groups. Mr Chen and his team took 57,228 family photos of 1,125 cultural heritage  ethnic group representatives. These are analog images that provide a complete ethnographic record of China's 56 ethnic groups. Using a VIP invitation to the Shanghai PhotoFairs, I posed in front of one of Mr Chen's large format images. At Shanghai PhotoFairs Aside from his masterly wor...

Photo � Li Jianzeng | All Rights Reserved I'm currently immersed (well, partially) in research for what I hope may be a long term project, involving various types of Chinese Opera. It's a lot to chew on since Chinese Opera has innumerable varieties. For instance, there's the well known Beijing Opera, known also as Peking Opera (Jing Ju), and which is regarded as the standard opera of China. There's also the Cantonese Opera, (known as Yue Ju) and that's performed in Cantonese; the Sichuan Opera which is also widely known in mainland China and is delivered in Mandarin; the Ping Opera (Ping Ju) which is easy for the audience to understand, and thus popular with rural communities and especially where people are not well educated. There's also the Henan Opera (Yu Ju), the Qinqiang Opera, the Kunqu Opera and the Huangmei Opera. For this post, I am featuring a gallery by Chinese photographer Li Jianzeng* of th e Daoqing opera popular among villagers in some of the p...

Photo �  Christian Rodriguez - All Rights Reserved I've always thought that circus performers had sad lives. Perhaps it was becasue of the clowns with their tragic-comical faces and makeups. So I'm not all all surprised that Hanoi�s prestigious state-run circus, a relic of Vietnam�s Marxist past, lost a third of its budget and will have no government funding at all by the end of the decade. It is reported that a majority of circus artists suffer occupation-related illnesses.Common conditions include broken limbs, fractured bones, spine curvature, and stomach ailments, while bruises and bleeding occur on a daily basis. And circus artists in Vietnam are paid poorly, face numerous health risks, and even suffer life-threatening, debilitating conditions from their lifelong dedication to their profession. Christian Rodriguez brings us close to the backstage lives of these Vietnamese circus performers in his compelling Xi?c photo essay. He spent eight months in Vietnam over the ye...

Photo �  Corentin Fohlen | All Rights Reserved Every year in the small port of Jacmel, in the south of Haiti, the most important festival is held with residents wearing incredibly colorful and fantastical costumes. The festival is called Karnaval  and for more than 100 years, it has been held in various cities around the island to showcase the island's unique creole culture. Corentin Fohlen began to photograph Haitians by creating a makeshift studio on a city sidewalk near the Karnaval celebrations, where he could create portraits of each unique costume.  The Karnaval festivities were traditionally considered sinful to Protestant Haitians, and participation was discouraged by their churches.  The festivities were criticized for condoning sexually-suggestive dancing, profanity-filled plays, music lyrics mocking authority, and vodou music rhythms. As with other Mardis Gras carnivals, the festivities in Haiti enabled its people to enjoy the pleasures of life befor...

Photo � Yvan Cohen - All Rights Reserved I've been interested in Chinese opera for quite a while; way before watching Farewell My Concubine. As a photographer, I'm attracted by its visual aesthetics and by its colorful make up and costumery...but I am also interested in its history and its influence on other similar art form in Asia. For instance, I've photographed a performance of H�t Tu?ng in Hanoi a few years ago. Influenced by Chinese opera, it is one of the oldest art forms in Vietnam, and is said to have existed since the late 12th century. I wanted to spend much more time in photographing its performers, but was constrained to do so as I was leading a photo workshop, and couldn't set aside enough time for it. Together with Greece tragic-comedy and Indian Sanskrit Opera, it's one of the three oldest dramatic art forms in the world. I won't go into much background detail about the art, as it is widely -and more ably- described on scholarly websites, as wel...

A Three Hour Tour by Lee Cohen on Exposure The Circular Railway is a local commuter rail network that serves the Yangon (previously known as Rangoon) metropolitan area. It extends over 28 miles, and serves 39 stations in a loop system. The railway has about 200 coaches, runs 20 times and is said to sell 100,000 to 150,000 tickets daily. The loop, which takes about three hours to complete is heavily utilized by lower-income commuters, as it is (along with buses) the cheapest method of transportation in Yangon. It is also a way to see many areas of Yangon. It runs daily from 3:45 am to 10:15 pm, and the  cost of a ticket for a distance of 15 miles is about $ 0.18, and for over 15 miles is $ 0.37. These prices are for the locals. The cost for a one-way tocket for non_burmese is $ 1.00. The circular train stops at each and every station for only a minute or two, forcing passengers to quickly clamber on board, with all sorts of luggage and belongings. It returns back to Yangon�s ...

Photo �  Jean-Claude Moschetti - All Rights Reserved African spirituality, such as worship of ancestors and protective spirits, also includes traditional secret societies and voodoo, and is a fertile field for unusual ethnographic photography. Jean-Claude Moschetti's photographs in Magic On Earth is about these African occult traditions where masks are considered to be mediators between the living world and the supernatural world of the dead, ancestors and other entities. He tells us that in Burkina Faso, these masks represent protective spirits that can take animal forms or can appear as strange beings. These spirits watch over a family, clan or community, and if the rules for their propitiation are followed correctly, provide for the fertility, health, and prosperity. The word Egungun signifies all types of masquerades or masked, costumed figures worn by the Yoruba people, and which are connected with ancestor reverence, or to the ancestors themselves as a collective force....

Photo � Shiho Fukada - Courtesy Bloomberg Here's another photo essay on the Soma-Nomaoi festival by photojournalist Shiho Fukada as featured by Bloomberg Pursuits. The annual festival involves horse-riding participants don elaborate armor like samurais, who aim to recreate scenes from Japan's Sengoku period (1467�1603) which was marked by social upheaval, political intrigue and near-constant military conflict. The festival's original purpose was a military exercise designed to sharpen the fighting skills of the samurai. One event in the festival, Shinki Sodatsusen, sees the samurai compete for flags that have been shot into the air. The festival has been designated as an "intangible cultural asset" by the Japanese government. Shiho Fukada is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, cinematographer, and photojournalist based in Boston and Tokyo. She started her career as a news photographer in New York and has a decade of experience shooting and producing stories nationall...

Photo �  Richard Atrero de Guzman  (aka Bahag) - All Rights Reserved One of the great summer festivals of Japan�s northeastern Tohoku region, Soma-Nomaoi dates back over a thousand years and is held every year for three days during the month of July. Some 500 armored and helmeted warriors ride on horseback, and  take part in this military recreation. There are primarily two main attractions during the festival: the Koshiki Kacchu Keiba and the Shinki Sodatsusen. The former event involve 12 samurais in their armor who race over a distance of 1,000 meters. The latter event involves several hundred samurais on horses that compete for the 40 shrine flags known as " goshinki " that are shot into the air with fireworks.  Richard Atrero de Guzman (also known as Bahag) was recently at the festival and produced a number of photographs viewable on his Photoshelter website . Bahag (or Bahagski) is a Tokyo based photographer/filmmaker whose photographs have been published ...

Photo � Dorie Hagler-All Rights Reserved To continue religious posts which I've added to my blog over the few past weeks, and to provide equal opportunity to the three main world religions, I'd like to feature Dorie Hagler's Semana Santa photo story. I attended a Semana Santa in La Antigua (Guatemala)in 2002, and it was quite an experience. Although small, it featured rituals indigenous to this Central American nation, which included covering streets of La Antigua with natural, aromatic carpets of flowers, pines, clover and fruits, which the residents made and placed in front of their homes.  I recall the tremendous fervor expressed by the Guatemalans who participate in the processions and its preparations, creating an extraordinary outpouring of Christian faith and devotion. I found it quite easy to photograph in Antigua during the Semana Santa, as there are ample accommodations, the routes of the processions are planned in advance and no one minds photographers. The proc...