travling photography

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved I was officially recognized as the photographer for The Shade of Butterfly & The Red Pear Blossom opera at the community center theater in NYC's Chinatown. It was the first opera of the season, and is one of the most famous Cantonese operas, and described as a masterpiece. The plot centers on a scholar Yu-chow and the courtesan So-chow who write poems to each other and fall in love despite having never met. The scholar is attached to the court of a treacherous high official who schemes to keep the lovers at bay. The two lovers meet in the final act much to the delight of the audience. I was introduced to Mr. Qu Hui, a mainland Chinese performer, who was to perform one of the lead roles in the opera, and also to sing a few more modern songs. A charismatic tall man, seemingly very comfortable in high heels, he posed for my camera for a few minutes before the show. Cross-dressing has been an integral part of Chinese Opera from its ...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved On an overcast day during my two weeks stay in Shanghai, I traveled to the ancient water town of Jinxi with a Chinese photographer, his wife and a translator. The town is about an hour's drive, and is known for being -as yet- untarnished by commercialism. Jinxi is also known as Chenmu, or the tomb of Chen. She was a beautiful royal concubine of Emperor Xiaozong(1127-1194)of the Song Dynasty. The legend is that during their stay in Jinxi, she decided to stay a little longer, and died there because of a sudden illness. However, this is not about Jinxi, but about a small nondescript small town a few miles away called Shi Hu Dang, where I was introduced to a delightful octogenarian by Mei Qi; a businesswoman and his student at the school where he had worked for decades.  I was welcomed by Mr. Wu into his small house; neat but cluttered at the same time. Unfortunately, his wife was absent doing errands so I could not meet her, alth...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved Amir Khusrow Dehlavi (1253 � 1325 )  was a Sufi musician, poet and scholar from the Indian subcontinent, who was quoted as saying of Kashmir: �If there is a heaven on earth, it's here, it's here. (� Gar firdaus bar-rue zamin ast, hami asto, hamin asto, hamin asto. �) It is also said that it was Emperor Jehangir who said these words...whoever said it (and my money is on Khusrow), Kashmir is indeed beautiful. I'll set aside political views on the current (and recent) political events in Kashmir, and dwell on its beauty and spirituality....and its photographic magnetism. Historians are united that Hazrat Bulbul Shah was the first saint who sowed the seeds of Islam in Kashmir in 1301, and he might have come from Samarkand or from Bukhara. It was he who convinced Rinchan, the then ruler of Kashmir to convert to Islam, and Sadruddin Shah (as he became known) was the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir. He ruled Kashmir from 1320 to 13...

 A shuchang in Qi Bao. Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved Six months ago the words Qi Bao (totally distinct from qi pao , which is also known as cheongsam ) and Shuchang would've been totally unfamiliar to me; yet during and after too short a trip to Shanghai this past September, they've become part of my vocabulary as I am planning my return to this exciting megalopolis at the end of next month. Shuchang is a traditional teahouse where storytelling called " shuohua" is performed.   Storytelling was one of the major forms of entertainment in the medieval cities of the Song period (906-1279), and contained both spoken and sung performances, and many of the themes told are still part of today's storytellers' repertoire.  It's in the old water-town of Qi Bao  (???) that I walked in such a teahouse, and experienced a  shuoshu storyteller performing his art of  talking, joking, singing and acting; all accompanied by his three-stringed lute (pipa or...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved This Beyond The Frame post features one of the many images I made at the Robot Restaurant, located in Tokyo's Shinjuku nightlife district, and described by many as one of the wildest shows on Earth....which is quite true. Anthony Bourdain got the shock of his life here, and it has since become a magnet for foreign visitors (and locals) seeking to experience the same "buzz' he had. The Robot Restaurant is located not far from the Shinjuku Station, and is in the area best described as the underbelly of Tokyo's nightlife...which includes all sorts of seedy venues and other activities best left to the imagination. The 90-minute cabaret style shows include bikini clad futuristic dancers, performers dressed as robots and a host of oversized vehicular robots -- all in a laser-lit room. The dancers et al are highly trained and rehearse around the clock to perfect the complicated routines involving dancing to drumming, pole dancing a...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved I've immersed myself (not totally...but let's say, up to my waist) in documenting Chinese Opera in its various forms since mid 2017, but have found the project to be daunting because of the complexity of that ancient art form, its diverse types/styles, because of its thousands of tales and because I don't speak or understand Mandarin and/or Cantonese. Notwithstanding these challenges, I started to read on the various types of Chinese opera, and during 2017 attended and photographed various performances in New York City's Chinatown (Cantonese), in Kuala Lumpur (Hokkien) and in Shanghai (Qinqiang). It is a Qinqiang performance in Shanghai that's the subject of this Beyond The Frame blog post. The premier venue for Chinese opera in Shanghai is the Yi Fu Theater on Fu Zhou Lu Road near People's Park. It was known as the largest theater in the Far East, and no opera actor or actress could achieve fame until they performed ...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved Having recently visited this blog's archives, I remembered it had a periodic feature called "Beyond The Frame" in which I chose a single image and wrote about its back story.  As it was quite popular with readers, I decided to re-introduce Beyond The Frame as an irregular feature on The Travel Photographer blog. Readers will recall from my many posts on The Red Qi Pao that I've produced two multimedia essays about an imaginary love story involving  a Shanghainese young woman and a foreigner in the 1930s at a time when Shanghai was a "wicked" city. Taking the opportunity of being in Shanghai in September, I was fortunate to be introduced to Yi Yi (a pseudonym); a professional model and a budding photographer herself, and featured her as the red qi pao -clad girl of Nanjing Road; a famous road in the city. Along with Eric, a photographer friend, we went to Guilin Park for a 3 hours photo shoot. The park's tea h...

I'm not exactly sure where my interest in Shanghai erupted, but I do know that my  c hinoiserie "phase" has been bubbling for quite a while. Although it was influenced by my travels over the past two years to Hanoi and Kuala Lumpur, it was triggered by a couple of visits to the Malaysian capital's Old China Cafe; an atmospheric eatery in its Chinatown's vicinity. It was at this Old China Cafe; an old caf�-restaurant that serves a combination of Straits Chinese and Malay dishes, and whose untouched pre-war ambiance and large traditional feng shui mirrors gave me the idea of constructing a fantasy story about a beautiful Chinese woman dressed in a clinging red  qi pao  (or  cheongsam)  appearing   to an opium-addled Western photographer. Another another influence is In the Mood for Love , the 2000 Hong Kong film directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung. It's moody theme is especially inspiring.  Fast forward to earlier ...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved I've been in Kuala Lumpur for exactly a week today, and have yet to shake off the dreadful jet lag that comes with traveling from one of the globe to the other...metaphorically-speaking.  There's quite an activity amongst the Taoist community here on account of the Nine Emperor Gods festival; whose observance and rituals occur in KL's temples. The largest of these rituals occurs in the Kau Ong Yah Temple in Ampang...however this post is about the ancillary events of Cantonese Opera that are performed at some of these temples; essentially to entertain these gods on their arrival to earth. The most elaborate performance is held at the Leng Eng Tian Khien Ong Tai Tay Temple (yes, it's that long of a name) in Petaling Jaya, where it's attended by a large number of temple devotees, as well as by photographers who take delight in going backstage to capture the actors' make up sessions and costumes before they come on stage....

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved One of the most difficult subject matters I've had to photograph is Chinese Opera, not because of photographic requirements, but because of the sheer diversity of its various types and styles, as well as its thousands of different operatic tales. Qinqiang is one of these regional types, and was performed at Shanghai's Yi Fu Theater on  Fuzhou Road. The opera's tale was about two women; both brides but with different fates. The opera's title is The Qilin Purse (a red purse bearing the symbol or image of the mythical Chinese 'unicorn', meant to bring luck and good fortune to brides at their weddings). Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved The performance is representative of the  folk Chinese opera of the northwest province of Shaanxi, where it was called Qin thousands of years ago. Its melodies originated from rural areas of ancient Shaanxi and Gansu.  The singing style is described by musicologists as resoundin...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy (Fuji GFX50S + 63mm) It's been a while since I last posted here, but I was extraordinarily busy in researching the ancient art of Chinese opera; which I hope will become one of my long term documentary projects. Following my earlier attendance of The Purple Hairpin performance at the Chinese Community Center's theater on NYC's Mott Street, I had the chance of befriending Ms. Yan Wu "Camille" Shuang (???) who kindly invited me to attend another Cantonese Opera show at the same venue. This time it consisted of a medley of scenes from various operas; some were performed in full costumed regalia, while others were performed in Western dress. Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | GFX50S+63mm Being invited by one of the stars of the show meant I could walk backstage while the actors were applying their makeup, and witness how the costumes are carefully prepared, ironed and worn. Although the lighting was atrocious and the space tight, I photographed two of th...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy - All Rights Reserved I had the pleasure to be asked to photograph the fabulous Mandarin Hotel Kuala Lumpur (MOKL) during the Travel Photographer Society events in Malaysia a few weeks ago, and having spent the better part of day doing so, I can vouch that hotel photography is most certainly not as easy as it may appear to be. Having the DNA of a travel-documentary photographer meant that I sought to have people in most -if not all- of my photographs. I recalled a ad campaign by Annie Leibovitz for The Peninsula Hotel (Hong Kong and New York City) some years ago, in which she produced monochrome photographs of the hotel's staff, and it was hailed as a huge success in the hospitality industry. That was to be my inspiration, and I determined I'd produce both color and monochrome versions of my images and leave it to the hotel's managerial staff to decide which to use. There are innumerable photographers who specialize in producing stunning...

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...