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Concerning Cairo Sidewalks
Continue ReadingA new resident out for a stroll in Cairo, Egypt will right away notice the lack of continuous sidewalks. Getting around in most neighborhoods requires learning to expect stumbling blocks at every turn. In my district everyone walks in the street hugging parked cars — the only practical choice. Directly outside your building pavement exists […]
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Giza — Deep In December Haze
Continue ReadingLooking northeast toward Cairo from the hill above Giza Pyramids on an opaque winter morning, I could see just five blocks into the closest neighborhoods. The rest of the gigantic city lay obscured by dust, haze, mist, and smog. Nothing prepares you for the grandeur of the Giza complex. Its artistic theme and layout impresses […]
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Photographic Quotations, Vol. 1
Continue ReadingI take it quotation differs from homage. Homage is a gesture of respect, made by a lesser artist toward one considered on a higher plane of accomplishment. A quotation on the other hand is an intellectual cross-reference. To illustrate I share above a typical homage — to Harry Callahan — an esteemed photographer who seemed […]
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Backyard Beauty
Continue ReadingThere is loveliness next-door. Applied perception can endow commonplace objects — even a poisonous one like this — with elegance A landscape plant growing along highways in Arizona and California, the botanical foot-soldiering Oleander can survive and flourish many months without rain or irrigation. Here I think it transcends its utilitarian, garden-variety self.
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Figures in the Landscape
Continue ReadingHuman figures add interest and comprehension to a landscape. However, it is not often possible to include them in a photograph; it involves patiently waiting for people to appear, and then waiting longer for them to arrange themsevles into an interesting configuration in relation to the earth. Or you can get lucky occasionally, as […]
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The Joy of Small Victories
Continue ReadingThis photograph was not created at the Olympic Games. It is not an NCAA championship, or a even city-sponsored marathon. It is a provincial race across humid and heavily-forested terrain in the state of Illinois. There will be no award ceremony for this competitor because his team did not win, or even place highly. Notice […]
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Calls To Prayer On Testosterone
Continue ReadingHaving lived in Egypt above a neighborhood mosque for nearly two years, I was accustomed to hearing the daily call to prayer at first light. I could sleep through it after a while despite its amplified intrusion into my room. My first awakenings in Yemen — in the ancient part of the capital city — […]
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Boy With A Wasting Disease
Continue ReadingThe boy had contracted the tuberculosis bacterium, causing a wasting disease among the scourges of the 19th century. Here he reclines in a camp alongside his grieving sister — both of them orphaned refugees amidst the devastation of the Civil War — their home now a make-shift tent, their uppermost concerns finding enough to […]
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Another From the Island of Serendip
Continue ReadingLike the three princes of Serendip, I often find what I am not looking for. I was walking along the Gulf of Finland searching for the simple house Peter the Great designed for himself — away from the monumental palace at Petergof — when I entered this scene. I felt as if I had stepped […]
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