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Human Hands III — The Ferry Driver
Continue ReadingOur subject pilots a passenger ferry many times daily across the Nile in Upper Egypt. I am standing with camera and longish lens on a raised platform making up the second-tier of his boat. Later on the observation deck — seated alone — I wonder about the gesture and open look bestowed on me by […]
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Approaching Arabic
Continue ReadingKnowledge of Arabic opens a civilization stretching thirteen thousand kilometers wide — from Morocco eastward to Indonesia. In that vast territory not everyone speaks with the Arab tongue in daily life, yet most build their spiritual life upon the Koran, delivered to the Messenger of God Mohamed by visionary experience in the idiom of the […]
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Taking The Easy Shot
Continue ReadingOn occasion effortless images become my favorites. I call this shot easy because photographing children in poor countries creates only modest challenges. The youngsters lack suspicion; they might feel important owing to a stranger’s interest in them, so they press forward naively rather than drawing back from the lens. The difficult task for the camera […]
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Sahara Rains
Continue ReadingIt rained in Cairo, Egypt on this day — a brief and not very satisfying shower — which passes for precipitation in the great desert. It was less than usual, barely enough to make splotches in the dust covering the neighborhood automobiles. As in most Cairo rains you had to be alert or you […]
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Mother of the World
Continue ReadingCairo they call Umm-i-dunya — Mother of the World, a massive, dirty, noisy and crowded place alive with kinetic energy — for the past thousand years a Muslim city, before that the site of layered kingdoms and monuments, and long before that it formed part of the ancient route for human migrations out of Africa. […]
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Cairo Nights
Continue ReadingCars parked tightly on a narrow street. An automobile tire discarded between bits of trash. A television running off ghetto-rigged electricity. Men young and old together sitting, relaxed on upturned soda crates waiting for a football match to kickoff. A classic Egyptian scene during the Cairo Derby. The tournament ultimately crashes sports clubs Zamalek and […]
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Observing Butterflies
Continue ReadingIn Egypt I observed two categories of women. The first I nicknamed penguins; older and generally overweight, they hide their figures so well under dark robes they appear as broad rectangles from behind when silhouetted on the street. They tend to waddle like those arctic animals and are equally anti-social. To the remaining females I […]
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An Anomaly Below the Mokattam Hills
Continue ReadingOccasionally you come across something which — at least in your own mind — does not belong in the place where you find it, an anomaly. While wandering the Cairo Necropolis, an inhabited complex of tombs and catacombs in the medieval quarter of the city, I noticed this bedraggled poster seeming unusual in a Muslim […]
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What Is The Subject Here?
Continue Reading“Photography performs one function supremely well: it shows what something or somebody looked like, under a particular set of conditions at a particular moment in time. This specificity has been, and remains, photography’s boon as well as its bane …. An earnest and honest appreciation of subject matter is the genesis of a clearer, deeper […]
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What Was He Thinking?
Continue ReadingI took this photograph from a taxi moving approximately 50 miles per hour in chaotic traffic; the Levantine Sea forms the backdrop. May we draw conclusions after studying this picture? Perhaps the father’s life is worth more than his daughter’s life and health; or his being-in-the-world has more value than the wife’s existence, who rides […]
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