Paris Steps

For anyone looking for something truly unique in photography, you must get to know Fan Ho. Shooting in China throughout the 1950’s, Fan Ho has an incredibly unique take on light, shadow, and line. His subjects, almost always candid, are caught in the mundane actions of life amid the lines and shadows of China’s seductive background. Visually his work is subtle yet stark, making no excuses for its bold strokes and contrasts, the kind of vision that requires the utmost patience. It simply makes a little fluttery knot of admiration in my chest that makes me want to run right outside with my camera. The above is a shot taken of the Seine river bank steps in Paris inspired by Ho’s use of line, asymmetry, and shadow with figures.
The only gallery featuring his photography is located in Palo Alto California on University Avenue; though his works are also published in a series of books, the newest of which is called The Living Theatre, which can be seen at http://www.modernbook.com/static.html under publications.

Class Clown

As requested, the crew of the Indian coal ship in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Covered from head to toe in black coal dust they spoke to us in broken English dialogues taken from famous Hollywood blockbusters and posed like they were in the middle of a New York fashion shoot.

In Dubai nearly every taxi driver is Indian or Pakistani, many of which come from Peshawar, Pakistan where war and violence is almost a continual state of being and continues to escalate daily. A young Pakistani driver told us that he came to Dubai to make money to support his young wife and family back in Peshawar but he is worried because he hears of more and more violence in his home town every day. Thousands of hopeful immigrants flood into the United Arab Emirates every year looking to make their way in one of the fastest growing resort cities in the world, a place with its own middle-of-the-desert indoor ski resort, hundreds of high-rise hotels and a dozen or so man-made resort islands. However, the massive construction projects driving the city’s economy have nearly all gone stale in the current conditions, a state of affairs that began largely with the mass exodus of the city’s migrant labor backbone last winter. Thousands of cars were left abandoned at Dubai’s international airport with hand-written notes of apology for unpaid bills; but with the construction industry shutting down multi-million dollar projects and workers losing jobs, they have only a few short days to find new work or leave the country.

Perspective

One of the more serine spectacles I have ever witnessed was an upturned tree on the island coast of Mon, Denmark. Hiking the long way to the island’s famed white cliffs, much like the ones in Dover, we walked across an endless sea of bleach white rocks and fossilized coral. This massive tree, once on the mainland has been evicted from its roots by the creeping ocean tides and now forms a barrier across the rocky beach. The mangled dry roots and the beating waves below them became to me an ironic symmetry of life and death, and a frozen image of the passage of time. Do you ever wonder what a tree or a hill could tell you could it speak? Imagine all the things they have seen, all the rings and sediments of time and age, each with an epic of its own, a struggle to survive, a will to live. Are we so different?

San Fransisco, MOMA

In San Fransisco last week for the Ansel Adams and Robert Frank exhibit at the MOMASF. Inspiring. Frank’s “The Americans” a series of portraits had me glued to the hardwood for hours. A brilliant mind, able to accentuate the quirks and expressions that define a personality and a people. Note the eyes especially. I highly recommend the new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, which also includes Georgia O’Keeffe which will be there until September 7, 2009.
This is my imitation of Frank’s portraiture, though taken candidly, of a street performer in the city.

London

Rainy summer day by the Tower Bridge, London. On rainy days the urban rush slows to a lazy crawl along the river and the buffeting sounds of the city are quieted by the patter of rain. The kind of dreary secretive setting you expect to have inspired Dickens.

UAE

" Strolling in Sharjah, a quiet Emirate just northeast of bustling Dubai we discovered the sunset over the harbor and an endless line of cargo ships docked at its side. Men in tattered cloths and turbans from India, Pakistan, and Iran loaded their ships and inspected their deliveries. I was caught red handed pointing my telescoping lens toward the bow of a rather large coal ship by its crew; who vigorously waved us both toward a rickety red ladder connecting the bobbing deck with the solid ground below. With a quick glance between us Miles and I scaled the rungs to the black soot deck. We were greeted by a dozen or so coal-soaked Indian sailors lining up for a photo shoot, striking poses, nearly falling over themselves to get in front of the camera. "

Yazd, Iran

"Yazd, Iran a woman walks with her daughter on a deserted street in the waning winter sun. Little stirrs here in the late afternoon during the Persian siesta."

Oakland Temple

" It is eighteen months, twenty-nine days, twenty-three hours, twenty-two minutes, and forty-five seconds; two round trip tickets to the edge of the earth, eleven months abroad, twenty-two countries, thirty-six borders, twenty-nine thousand one-hundred and sixty miles and seven thousand five-hundred and thirty-four photographs since we were married in the temple in Oakland California, December 28th, 2007."