Summer is approaching and that means a seasonal increase in African migrants who try to reach Lampedusa, Sicily or Malta from the coasts of Libya and Tunisia. As in the last couple of years lots of them manage to reach these island outposts that have come to be the most accessible edges of the European Union and lots of them don’t. An sometimes people are deliberately left hanging in between these two options for a while:
Over the weekend 27 migrants spent a day at sea holding on to buoys around a giant tuna net attached to a maltese tow-boat. the captain of the tow-boat had saved them from the waters off the Libyan coast after their boat had sunk. They had to stay there for more than 24 hours because the owners of the tow-boat where afraid to let them aboard in order not to jeopardize the 1 million euro worth of tuna in the net as both the maltese and the Libyan authorities refused to save them from the seas. After 24 hours the Italian authorities intervened and transferred them to an Italian navy vessel (more in this times online article).
Sarai independent fellow Zubin Pastakiais talking pictures of old-style Bombay cinema halls, and has started posting them to his blog:
I am currently photographing cinema halls in Bombay, India, the city in which I live. Here, we still have a mix of older, single-screen halls, and modern multiplexes. I am fascinated by the cinema hall – from its built architecture and physical surfaces to the people that come to watch films and the people that work there. The project seeks to photographically explore the cultural experience of different types of cinema halls in Bombay city.
There are some really beautifully shots on the blog already and he promises that there are much more to come. I really like the ones showing projectionists next to those ancient projectors so common in indian cinema halls. I took some very similar shots two years ago in Bangalore.
… and everybody is talking about the next war. seems to somehow involve iran, the US, israel, the valet parkers, Syria and Lebanon, but there is neither real agreement about the constellation nor does anyone come up with a credible motivation for someone to attack the others or the other way around (except maybe for the US to attack Iran). Meanwhile last summer war has once again (see here for last years favorite ad) been picked up by the advertising industry, this time in the form of an billboard-advertisment for a teenagers credit card, which seems to be inspired by this years world press photo (which caused quite a bit of confusion after it won the award):
Bank Audi teen master-card billboard in downtown Beirut
World press photo 2006 by Spencer Platt, Getty Images
I just finished uploading my pictures from Dubai to my flickr account. the most interesting ones are in the ‘Dubai construction‘ set:
[from the description]: I took these photographs during a stopover in Dubai on the 25th of november 2006. they are taken on various construction sites in the dubai marina area that this located about 25 kilometers south from the old city centre in the vicinity of the Palm Jumeirah artificial island. Most of the construction workers pictured here apporached me by themselfes and asked me to take a picture of them. For more information on the situation of migrant construction workers in the U.A.E see the Human Rights Watch report ‘Building Towers, Cheating Workers‘. Some more background on the insanity going on in Dubai can be found in the essay Dubai: self-help for those you wanted to build a 21st century city by Shumon Basar
The last article has a number of accompanying pictures. this one is my absolute favorite. pretty much sums up the hubris of the place in one sentence:
And if this intrigues you i recommend checking out the websites of some of the big real estate developers like emaar or nakheel.
Is the title of a photo exhibition at the Netherlands Institute of Architecture in Rotterdam (on show till the 7th of january 2007). the exhibition consists of about a 100 mostly large scale large-scale reproductions of – well – spectacular urban landscapes, exceptional buildings and all kinds of eerie views. Many of the pictures contain very little traces of human live (which has a strange calming effect on me). One notable exception is São Paulo, Sé by Andreas Gursky:
On display this picture is something like 3 x 2 meters and which puts you face to face with the waiting subway passengers the picture perfectly captures the monstrosity of the Se subway station in central São Paulo. Looks like he did digitally add a a level or two (see my own impressions and pictures here).
Here are some pictures I took with my camera phone during todays i am(not)amsterdam radio ballet organized by the balie in the framework of the ‘the public desire‘ weekend:
The border film project by Brett Huneycutt. Victoria Criado and Rudy Adler has some amazing pictures online. The project distributed hundreds of disposable cameras to undocumented migrants attempting to cross from Mexico into the US of A (they also distributed them to so called minuteman vigilantes trying to stop the immigrants from coming there). The migrants used the cameras during their travels and then returned them to the project. Pictures are still coming and the ones already available on the website give a very impressive (and intimate) insight into the process of crossing borders.
To celebrate(?) the fact that i have started to eat meat again (after 12 or so years) i have created a flickr set highlighting some meat related pictures in i took during my two visits to Buenos Aires (in 2004 as a vegetarian and in 2006 after having started to eat meat again in Patagonia). It might be possible to go to Argentina as a vegetarian, but to come back for a second time and still refuse to eat meat comes down to masochism. Remains to be seen if i will continue eating meat here in Europe.
After 9 days in Patagonia i am back in Buenos Aires and will probably stay here till i go back to Berlin on the 19th. Have bought myself a bike and started to explore the city. The character of the city is a really strange mix of speed (alsmost hecktic when i to comes to the inhabitants) slowness and style (especially when it comes to waiters and espresso machines).
While cycling through the downtown financial district today, i came across this scrap collector who was pushing along his push cart loaded with the discarded sign of a restaurant. I really like the photo i took of him and his cart. while i tried to take another one from a higher vantage point he found two abandond chairs on the side of the street which he loaded on top of the sign so this is the only picture i managed to take…
One of the works shown as part of the World-Information City exhibition is ‘Change of State’ by Ashok Sukumaran. It is a simple but effective installation of power switches, lights garlands, a cassette recorder and a couple of other electric devices on the facade of the Elgin Talkies cinema hall on Shivaji Street. During yesterdays opening a couple of us had the opportunity to get into the projection room in the rear of this oldest cinema hall in town.
If something like the magic of cinema exists then it probably does here. the projectionists is one of the most impressive rooms i have ever seen, two old hot, oil dripping dust and light emitting projectors that are operated by two small men with an careful dedication dominate the barely lit room. The combination of sound, smell, temperature and light creates a very special atmosphere. The place has a truly analogue feel to it something that i have not been able to appreciate for a long time. Further proof that there is a world beyond bit-torrent…
Here is a bit of historic background information about Elgin Talkies that i dug up from the depths of the internets:
If you ever want to savour the past, the City still has the oldest entertainment house-turned-cinema – Elgin Talkies. Though it didn’t start out that way, it came to be called a Talkies.
Elgin Talkies beginning coincided with the birth of cinema in India – in 1896 – when the Lumiere Brothers presented their year-old invention for the first time to an astonished audience in Bombay at the Watson Hotel. Tents followed and after 1907 came the cinema houses. There are many cinema houses of the early 20th century vintage. But I doubt if any of them is exactly as it was originally built.
The Elgin (which takes its name from Lord Elgin who ruled India) was built in 1896 – when India woke up to magical cinema – brick by brick exactly as it was designed. Even today it follows strict segregation of the sexes – booking, entrance and seating! Thus it becomes the oldest building remaining unchanged in every aspect since 1896, now serving as a cinema house.
It started as a variety entertainment hall, but records of the Elgin are available only after its switch to cinema around the end of World War I. The exhibitor those days was a showman. He dressed for the occasion, received higher class audiences, held forth on the merits and demerits of the film and was usually an expert on public taste. This tradition continued till the late ’50s.
The Elgin exhibitor’s son, the grandfather of the present owner, was by the celluloid bug, ran away from home and came back with a projector to convert the Elgin into a cinema hall.
The Elgin has now completed 109 years of uninterrupted “entertainment”, which richly qualifies it to be declared a heritage building and preserved by the State in tribute to the grand cinemas of the last century.
meanwhile... is the personal weblog of Paul Keller. I am currently policy director at Open Future and President of the COMMUNIA Association for the Public Domain. This weblog is largely inactive but contains an archive of posts (mixing both work and personal) going back to 2005.
