Thursday, September 21, 2006

Calcutta


This picture was shot around the early afternoon on a typical busy day in Calcutta, back in 2001.

Read a travel book, and they will mention the traffic is frenetic, and that there is 30 plus traffic fatalities a day-which is clearly horrible. But, travel one day in the city, and you will think,"...only 30 a day? that is incredible!"

One day, I just stood on the edge of the market and shot a photo each minute, barely changing angle, just refocusing, framing and shooting. What came out of this roll of film is 36 utterly distinct images ( you could even say worlds) even though the area shot is very small. In one image, a Sadhu or holy man grimaces while walking across the street, another a boy selling bright clothes pins jumps in front of the camera and in this image, many different things are happening.

In the centre, a man walks with an entire booth on his back: stand, pepsi advert, poori puff balls and a variety of sauces. To the left, a rickshaw wallah walks the streets.

At the time of this shot, I did not notice the man and child which are the defacto centre of attention. The man is in his salwar kamiz and the boy has this semi-western outfit on, complete with tie. At first glance, they seem to be sharing a tense moment which, upon inspection, more akin to a tenderness of father and child.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Me man Georgie


Still pouring over the images from my recent trip to the UK.
I have yet to scan much of the negatives

(hard to concentrate while listening to Styx and Mr. Roboto-crap was this song bad! product placement in a song "...my heart is human, my brain IBM.")

EGAD, I digress...

I was scanning some of the negs from this 6x6 bellows Kodak camera I bought in Portobello Road, ("where fortunes are bought and fortunes are sold" so sang Angela Lansbury) and came across my super cool uncle George. He is 82 years old and absolutely piss and vinegar. The last of the great dudes.

He left morocco to join the British forces in WWII, man what a life of hardship and an amazing ability to laugh at "la vita" as he would say (he was stationed in Italy)

On my recent trip, we had a ritual of making sandwiches, mint tea and then loads of ice cream to beat the heat. I am willing to bet he may eat the most ice cream bars, cones and mugs of ice cream for anyone in his age and weight class (less than 10 stone)