:Against, Opposite, Contrary, in Comparison to, in contrast
Travel Changes You in that you See yourself in the Other and you often reflect on the Randomness of life and ultimately the marginality of your own being.
Opposite in color, in vision, in origin, a juxtaposition of ideas, one image against each other, has over time pulled my attention from one internal narrative to another, combining senses, memories, imagination, and ultimately settling into an abstract impression which in turn forms my own projections across time of what I notice.
The point of view is never objective or real, and the observer rarely knows what the observed experiences. And yet this interplay continues often resulting in beauty or misunderstanding. In traveling, even from the corner of my house to the next street, I soak in and Notice the details, as if the eye has now become its own camera and continually clicks and clicks.
When I was young, perhaps 13 years old, I remember walking with my Mother in a sparkling Orange grove near our home, and she gazed down the path at a tiny daisy and simply said, "Dorit look, beauty is in the details" etching in my memory the notion of searching for meaning, adventure, and solace in vastness yet never loosing sight of the subtle.
In noticing, the sorrows of the poor not so far from my own house as well, intensify in meaning against the images of green fields, majestic beauty, and innocence. The galleries in Circumio are an incomplete travelogue of my internal vision, my inner landscapes evolving over time, informing my point of view both expanding and narrowing my lenses.
image: Singapore, 2012. The Indian quarter. A splash of color in the middle of an urban landscape.
Image: Morocco, Fez, 2005. The leather tanneries. I felt sorry for the men, all day deep in these vats, under the scorching sun. I didn't buy anything.
image: Singapore, 2012. In the Malaysian district, in a little market shop. The lack of motion and the piercing, empty eyes impressed me. As did the fashion statement.
image: Jordan, Wadi Rum also known as The Valley of the Moon, 2007. The Art of History and Nature.
image: Hong Kong, 2013. In the market area. Which generation?
image: Singapore, 2013. The art and science of noodle making. What is he thinking about?
image: Singapore, 2012.
image: Hong Kong, 2013. Many couples come to this market for wedding photos. Is it the Juxtaposition of graffiti, dirt, grunge against the hope of beauty in marriage, a subconscious forecast of an unpredictable life?
image: Hong Kong, 2013. The market workers eating and slurping noodles fast. Noisy and harried.
image: Hong Kong, Lantau Island, 2013. One of the 6 Devas offering gifts to the Tian Tan Buddha: patience, morality, wisdom, generosity, zeal, and meditation-paths leading to enlightenment. I found her face beautiful.
image: Milos, Greece, 2006. Two old men who stared and stared. They seemed relaxed and resigned. A third one joined them later. They could not understand why I wanted to take their pictures.
image: Tahiti, Tikihau, 2013. There is only one village in the atoll, and we took a little boat to see the village nurse. I hurt my ear scuba diving. We communicated with google translate. It was free. He was a wonderful nurse. There are hardly any tourists there so we all stared at each other.
Image: Angistri island, Greece, 2015. A man contemplating his life, his end, measuring what is left.
image: Singapore, Indian quarter. Where there is color there is a chance for happiness.
image: Tel aviv, Israel 2012. The sign: Fighters for Peace. A Peace Now demonstration, one of thousands so many attended hopelessly.
Image: Burma, Water Festival 2016. A 3 day New Year water splashing event, made happier even more so as Aung San Suu Kyi assumed office a week earlier. Like everyone else I went to wash my Buddha at the temple in Yangon. The joy was short lived and then the killings begun. The boy, frustrated at no shooting targets, turned the water gun onto his foot.
image: Buenos Aires, the Pink House, the President's executive mansion and office. In front, the Plaza de Mayo, home to the Mothers of the disappeared.
image: Bali, Ubud 2015. Monkey Forest. There is plenty to be scared of. Squeezing you and trembling together makes it easier.
image: Chilean Patagonia, 2017. The Lazo-Weber trek. High winds, majestic views, and off the beaten path. Torres Del Paine is just around the corner.
image: Rio De Janeiro Favela, 2015. Colorful and cheerful, open sewage, gang violence, poverty, misery.
image: Russian River, California. The view from my hammock.
image: Buenos Aires, 2017. The underground tunnels. A life in the deep under.
image: Athens, Greece 2014. A Gypsy woman and her balloons. Watching her made me want to cry. The winds were high and she struggled right and left to maneuver the colorful bunch, yet she could not sell any.
image: Ushuaia, 2016. The end of the world In a strange way felt as the end of a journey, a marker in my life of having arrived thus far to see the edges of the planet as well as my own.
image: Bora Bora, 2012. Something about how they were hang made it serious. I wanted to take them with me.
image: Borneo, 2013. At the market, eating seafood I have never seen before, and no one could explain to me what it was.
image: Varanasi, 2001. The charity meal for the poor. Lined up to receive meager nutrition. Varanasi was an experience of contradiction, confusion, love and disgust. I wanted to stay for 3 weeks, a year, to understand deeply the gestures, the fears and the intensity. I know i will return.
image: Roatan, Garifuna village, 2011, freedom celebration. Dancing, drumming and getting relief from ice popsicles.
image: Buenos Aires, 2017. What a lovely man. His smile was gracious.
image: Mumbai, 2006. The public laundromats. All the uniforms, sheets, clothes from the endless city make their way here to be washed, ironed, delivered. An organized chaos much like the country itself.
image: Bali 2014, the rice terraces crossing the country.
image: Cochin, India, 2006. The fishermen nests resting in infinite beauty.
Goa 2006. At the beach his white back was prepared to itch and turn red.
Contemplating on the Nile, a handsome Nubian man on a felucca in Aswan. I couldn't resist and bought a jellabiya just as his. I wear it and magically land on the Nile. Egypt, 2008
Patagonia, Chile, 2016. We listened to music and ate grilled meats and his smile was kind and innocent. The Matte was a treat that lasted a few hours as we passed the cup around, bitter and warm, with a light buzz signature.
Bali, Ubud, 2013. The monsters We create only to later kill.
In the train station heading to Varanasi a pandemonium of noise and confusion, the porters descended upon us determined and mighty, grabbing unaccounted luggage, absurdly heavy with nothing whatsoever lost, misplaced or stolen. I thought of the bodies breaking internally, the men at night nursing pain and sorrow. India, December 2004
Bali, around the world women balance on their shoulders, hands and bodies all the goodness of the world, backs straight or bent, stubborn determination overcomes or silently suffers the pain. Bali, 2013
Singapore, Marina Bay Sands. Israeli Architect Moshe Safdie, launching a vessel into the future, complete with an outdoor pool overseeing the city at the top. I stayed there for my birthday, once was enough. Singapore, 2015
Beauty in Burma at a Bagan Temple (2016). It was a moment of hope before the killings. The reign of Aung San Suu Kyi, I thought it would be a good window to visit the fabled country.
A little Dancer in Yangon, Burma, posing after a performance in honor of the Water festival. I found out that when you ask someone to take their picture it is a serious affair and smiles are not encouraged. 2016
An old man in Buenos Aires in La Boca (2016). The painted tin city, a refuge to the poor, now popular with the tourists. No one goes to the allies, crime lurks behind the walls.
Curiosity brings a sort of joy when you realize someone notices you. I noticed the red teeth, he noticed me noticing him. Betel nut. India, 2004
A girl in the Barracas neighborhood, her house in the middle of the largest mural in world. Buenos Aires, 2016
A Garifuna fisherman in Roatan, Honduras (2011). Sensual and serious, I left the fish out. He could have been a poet, an artist, a hero of an untold story.
How defiant, as if saying: "this is my country"... proud, that’s how I saw him. Varanassi was humbling and shook me to the core. I did something I am not sure how to relate to: I hired, like the custom, a human Riksha, who worked for me for a day and a half. He showed me the way, protected me, and waited for me everywhere I went. I paid him well I justified, 4 times his asking price, and I thought a lot about Philip Zimbardo and his research. I sat behind him and I observed every gesture, movement, communication, between him and the world. I contemplated continually what sort of experience it was for me to have a servant for that task. I felt nauseatingly awful and it colored my sense of the city and my awareness of the poverty. There was nothing exotic about it. I tried to record everything in memory. I did not take a picture of my driver, I owed him his dignity, I thought it would be rude to ask. Nevertheless, or as a result of, Varanassi has been one of the most important moments for me, in my life, committing to deep memory the complexity of beauty in life.
Rainer Maria Rilke said it better “Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies? and even if one of them
pressed me against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.”
Varanassi, December 2004
Wisdom in Placentia, Belize 2015
San Francisco, City Hall. An assembly of Sikhs protesting the pogroms against their kin in India 1984.
The tea plantations in Munnar, India. Perfection we enjoy daily, for the people, hard back breaking work. India, 2007
A village in Rajasthan, I wish I remembered the name. The girls where coming back from the well. India, December, 2004
Sunset in the Mekong Delta. I hired a small boat and travelled for 4 days from Saigon to Phnom Penh. Slept in nameless towns along the way, thinking of wars, preconceptions, and struck with beauty. Being alone in a place no one speaks your language you can only go inside for a lengthy dialogue. Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam 2007
On the side of the road waiting for a bus, somewhere in Jaipur. Her beauty, the colors of her dress and jewelry held my breath. I wish we could have spoken. So many times I longed to sit by the side of the road and ask "tell me about your life, tell me about you". India, 2004
2004-Shanghai market before the big boom.
South Belize, Punta Gorda, land of Maya. "I am sorry, we run out of food".
Burmese peasant. He wanted money for the picture, and why not.
Kali dancer in Cochin getting ready to impress the anticipating audience.
Girls resting in Goa watching the tourists.
working in Bali
When you Opened your Eyes and you did not know or suspected what lay Ahead. Happiness was all present for that one moment, for that one smile.
Curiosity is all you had. You asked so many Whys. You stared. You smiled. You played: got dirty and didn't care, you jumped and climbed trees, you dove into the water, you pushed and pulled, you screamed and laughed. You fell and tried again even when you were scared to death. You didn't think about the future...
Mostly you didn't know that you Were, for quite a while you only soaked and became used to some people who seemed to be present daily and give you what you asked for. There was some consistency. Eventually you learned their names as Mother and Father, and later on their actual names, which seemed strange to think of them as separate people with separate lives that did not involve only you. But for now it was only a renewed excitement daily, one of awe, or sadness, or fear.
A cat was a creature that was delightful and fragile, especially the little babies that later you gathered when they were left alone to die. A dog was a fluffy creature that kissed your face and pied and pooped wherever it felt like. You didn't know you had to put clothes on, you didn't know you had to go to the bathroom in one place.
It was strange to understand more and more. To realize when your tummy was growling and you were hungry and later to learn to ask for food. It was strange to know what clothes were nice and which were not. And even more strange to realize that some little people had more than you or much less than you.
Arriving at consciousness as a child was as painful as going to a person called a dentist. The awe never stopped but the disappointment and sadness were now more present in noticing and realizing how others differed from you. So was the curiosity, confusion, and fear seeing a baby in the arms of a gypsy woman begging by the shoe store, or a girl wearing a velvet dress at her birthday party and having all the Mickey Mouse collections you wished Mom and Dad bought you.
Beautiful children no matter which part of the world, you could have been them just as easy, just as randomly.
Image: Athens, 1964. The child who asked too many questions and had an opinion on all things.
image: Cambodia, Tonle Sap sap lake, 2007. The village was poor. There was a poverty alleviation program going on, supplying pigs to the villagers. The kids nevertheless, run in the dusty paths and smiled and giggled.
image: Belize, 2016. Indigenous village, women's cooperative. Grandma washed some small mangoes. Joy in small bites.
Image: Roatan, 2011. Garifuna village celebration. Ecstatic dancing and music, our gaze was transfixed.
image: Laos, 2005. A small village not far from Luang Prabang. The little girl was so beautiful, a princess in a pink dress, torn and old, but a princess still. She danced and laughed, I wish I could have spoken to her.
image: Laos, 2005. The man insisted I visit his hut. There lay a young girl and her two babies, and next to them a fire smoldering inside the clay ground to heat the place. The mom was exhausted. I did not know what to do or say. The man was excited and happy. The babies were born yesterday he said. The hut felt like a sauna. I wished I was a nurse. I was ashamed that soon I would be leaving and what would become of these babies. What were their chances and hope, the village was so poor. I left behind all the money I had the image has never left me.
image: Laos 2005. Sometimes so many things are frustrating. I can relate to that. she tried for a long time to unscrew her toy.
image: Rio De Janeiro in a favela. The little boy and i spend some time painting the bag and the tank top I bought. He was shy and sweet. I hope he will be ok.
2005-In a market in Phnom Penh, ice cream cools all. The girls were having fun with me and mocking me. I don't blame them.
Laos, 2005
Cambodia, 2005. The village was impoverished. An NGO had a poverty alleviation program going, giving each household a pig or a goat. The village was by the TonLe Sap lake, not far from Siem Reap. At that time it was all dirt road and one bar in the village, in Siem Reap and its surrounds. I stayed in a beautiful wooden villa guest house, British Empire style. I was astonished and disturbed, that I could take the old elevator up and the maid had to take the stairs.
Beijing, 2004. I visited a kindergarten and the kid looked so serious, he caught my attention.
2005 TonLe Sap, Cambodia
2004-India, Rajasthan. Sometimes beauty lies in the smallest of gestures. A flower behind my ear is a world unfolding its petals and pure.
India, 2004
Tonle Sap Lake, 2005
Brother and sister in Placentia, Belize 2015
Girls playing on the banks of the Yalong river, China 2004.
image: China, Beijing 2004. Tiananmen Square.Did she know what happened there?
I love my goat. Rajasthan, 2004
Rajasthan, 2004
2004-Yalong river near Yangshuo. I took a bamboo raft and swam along. The kids antics were the best show.
Laos village near Luang Prabang. The girl took a break sweeping the hut. There is always work to be done.
I squarely believe I was the attraction here! Laughter and jokes in a language unknown to me, but with kids you can always make gestures and noises and faces and erupt in insane laughter, for a minute forget the troubles of the world.
image: Jordan, Petra 2012. A little bedouin girl trying to sell her crafts and chat.
image: Laos, 2005. Hiding in the trees seems fun.
image: north Vietnam, 2006. Mischievous little girl, excitedly grabbed her cat and squeezed her to no end. I was worried for the cat and distracted her to play with something else.
Mixed with sorrow, mixed with anger, mixed with power, mixed with sex, sometimes it is also a matter of love.
Desire, the essence that moves us through passions, dreams or meaning we aspire to reach, the energy of temptation, an agony to connect and exchange, an attachment to an image concrete or abstract, internal or external.
Glances, touch, symbols, present or future, projections, impressions, running through our veins since the creation of man and woman.
The images here are incomplete, leaving room to interpretation, i am still looking for the moments to capture something I know in myself.
image: Buenos Aires, 2016. Milonga dancing at Palermo Soho, the Armenian center. The man holds tight on to the woman, exquisite sorrow in his embrace. The women clutch palms, leaning into a bonding heat.
image: The Armenian Center in Palermo, Buenos Aires. Place your foot on the ground and follow the signs. The party starts at 2 am.
image: Aswan, Egypt 2006. My mom carried an Israeli passport. We flew to Cairo from Tel Aviv and took an Oberoi boat from Luxor to Aswan. State security boarded the boat in Aswan and accompanied us to the market. The men at the cafe followed us with a gaze mixed with desire and hostility. It was never clear if the security was there to protect us or keep an eye on us.
image: Buenos Aires, 2017. The woman who wanted adulation and the people who continue to worship her.
image: Cairo, 2006. Outside the miserable archeological museum at 40 degrees heat. The most beautiful artifacts presented in a building with no ventilation, signage, or proper bathrooms. There was a fainting station for the people who succumbed to the heat. I was wondering what statement was she making with her dress and if only Marilyn knew, how would she react. I thought, nothing can escape desire.
image: Tango night at the Gala, Ventana. Intimate, red, velvet, chandeliers, and Malbec. A waiter, smooth, joyful, selling an experience. He won on all marks.
image: Buenos Aires, 2017. The ultimate woman.
image: my favorite muralist in Buenos Aires, 2017. Men fight, men fight all the time, men fight for nothing and for everything. Men become brutal when they fight.
image: Buenos Aires, 2017. The man at the Independence avenue above all, the people blind willingly or not. How many countries are the same? Power is the ultimate elixir for some. Some take it and some follow it in hopes it gives them the same.
Image: "i think I love you; I am serious; I am here; I am breathing."
image: I am ready to devour the best. Buenos Aires, 2017
image: I have something you want. Buenos Aires, 2017
image: All the promises we made, all our dreams, how long will they last when the fear creeps in. Couple in Buenos Aires, 2017
image: China, Zhouzhuang, 2004. The canal city. They were so happy I wanted to take their picture. I took a regular bus there and lost my return ticket. No one knew english but the passengers spoke loudly and they let me back up. I had a wonderful day. Traveling in China alone without knowing a word in Chinese was satisfying. I knew than as I do now that people make communication is possible when the warmth is there. I saw myself conquering a barrier and I felt mighty.
image: Hong Kong at the market, 2011. It is impossible for me to think of marriage without desire holding its back. I had a friend that said to me "I just want to see a ring on my finger". "I want the status-married-on my papers". "I want a child" "I want him only", " I want her young", "I want an Asian". I want, want, want.
image: Hong Kong at the market, 2011. One wedding party after another made its way to the market, posed, smiled and hoped.
:To pray, to hope, to be faithful, to believe, to be loyal, to betray, to idolize.
Some popular cliches: religion is the opium of the masses, men built idols only to destroy them, If there was no God men would have invented him.
Often we follow or forced to obey, to kneel, to close our eyes, bringing our palms together, raising our hands to the sky, we gaze up, we lower our heads, we place our palm to our heart, we turn to the West or the East, we face walls, we go to a mountain. Often, even with a gun to our head We hope we are heard.
And yet again, how often our beliefs crowd the space of our head, limiting possibilities and dialogues, focusing on ritual rather than meaning, leading to blindness, to death in the name of...How often we seek redemption, humility or strength in the face of intolerable cruelty. We plead for safety and warmth, escape or tolerance of pain and grief, we offer a promise to change.
I have talks with God, criticisms, anger, and on occasion I have bargained with him. I am one of those people that imagine a white bearded man is looking upon me, through some film of mist, directing the traffic, sending me trials, and often presenting me with solutions and a strong push to leap. Perhaps because my father in his 80's walks slowly to a church and lights a candle in my name weekly, despite or perhaps because of his innumerable sins towards me and others, I keep a certain alliance. A habit, a superstition.
Perhaps the lamentations of Yom Kippur, and the desire for Tikun, following a bitter self examination and a plea for forgiveness anchors me. Moves me to tears without going to services. I practice Yom Kippur in my mind frequently.
I am unable to resist the warm glow of Greek Orthodox Churches, curious about all Churches, enamored with Christmas, unable to stay unmoved when people pray, privately, in silence, and together in unison. And so, I drift as well towards the hope.
I was born and raised in Greece as a Greek Orthodox. I was a plump baby baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. I went to Church weekly with my class and didn't understand a word of what was said. I chocked on the incense., but liked the smell of it. I liked the paintings and frescos, in dark, shaded spaces, golden light drifting in. The priests majestic crimson and gold robes moving along the red carpeted isles at the monotone sound of the unfamiliar words.
I mix and match my Gods. The Greeks are my favorite. I climbed Mount Olympus and at the freezing cold, sharp rocks pointing to the sky I knew Zeus was watching, I felt his spirit, Athina by his side, she has always been my favorite.
I don't discriminate: Ganesh is at my door step. Blue eyes, protectors from each corner of the planet along side with Buddhas, Madonna's, Voodoo Gods, and my own namesake the byzantine Madonna, Zoodoxou Pigi: the spring of life.
I have not believed in any man or any woman. I embraced suspicion alive from the start. I grew up in a dictatorship and my mother survived the Holocaust. I include the statues of powerful figures we follow, dead or alive, the ones that promise a better future, whether true or false. I know there is nothing left after the dark, my hope is to join the light of a spirit and not return, especially not as a cockroach.
Chilling monks in Burma outside a temple on Inle Lake.
The Christ of Rio, thousands flock
Yangon, Burma
Paris, France
Monk, Luang Prabang, Laos
Novice Monk Girls, Yangon, Burma
where?
Yangon, Burma
Siem Reap, Cambodia
Luang Parabang, Laos
Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia
Agia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey
Hong Kong
Empress Zoi, Agia Sophia, Istanbul ,Turkey
Luang Prabang, Laos
Varanasi, India
Luang Prabang, Laos
Bali, Indonesia
Siem Reap, Cambodia
North, Burma
Big Synagogue, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Byzantine Church, Athens, Greece
Falkland Islands
Che Ge Vara, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Ho Chi Minh, on the Mekong Delta town, Vietnam
Mao
The Pope, Buenos Aires, Argentina
South of India
Palo Alto, California
:a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight.
In real time it is not only this silent image, all 5 senses are engaged: the laughter and screeching of the children, the swoosh and swish of the waves and the wind, the tangy and crunchy salt and sand in my mouth, the sensation of my skin touching the sea drops, dripping from my wet hair onto my flinching eyelashes, to the tip of my nose, my shoulders, my arms, smelling the perfumes in this space, locking eye with the sun, following the procession of the sculptured mythical clouds, in real time. Now I remember, or I think I remember or even think that I am there again. This is time, it can go both ways all at the same time, or separate times, seemingly unrelated times, and this is the space, so wavy with noice and movement of each particle, each particle in which I am but one container of multiples, and this is all that is beauty.
How was it when you went to the beach. Did you like the sand, did you like playing with the water. Have you ever been to the beach when you were young. Did you play with your friend or sister or father. Did you get ice cream. Did you bring sand into the house and your mom yelled. Did you want to leave or stay. Just a little bit more and you were very tired. Tel Aviv, Israel
Art on Art on the Painter, Of City, of Woman, and even the manly Motorbike, and the Cigarette, and I am one of two that know that the image was across from the sea, inTel Aviv. “Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe”, Art on Art on Object, where is my actual pipe, and where is my actual heart. The Painter from the Art is young I think, does he live in the neighborhood and sees himself everyday painting?
It is the Sahara, I was there with a Hungarian Man. We became our shadows and it is the only thing we could see in each other; For a Moment, the long reflection rested on the moving sand and gave me a pause of beauty: just a second to click and eternalize the image. And then it was gone, and we were gone too as the wind spread its direction, and we followed our separate paths.
He is serene, In Sebastopol, in Sonoma that now burns more often. A Sunday, outside Whole Foods before Amazon, the bakery and the smells. I wasn’t there when he played.
MangoTime in Belize, Placentia Area.
: a class, kind, or group marked by common characteristics or by one common characteristic; A biological ranking between the family and the species...
I don’t like taking photos of animals. They are never as alive as in nature or national geographic pictures. To capture the liveness is a true talent. Yet it is so difficult to watch without raising a camera. The final image is not as satisfying as my memory of the feeling I had at the specific moment, and the memory of the image in real time. You will not see here the camels, the elephants, the cheetahs, the lions, nor the endless variety of primates, the many species of spiders, or birds the world around. I left these photos out. They didn’t seem alive.
Under the surface of the oceans and seas, an uncaptured beauty of the underworld occupied with magical creatures, velvety, thorny, monstrous, is as impossible to define. I find the slow and meticulously measured breathing delivers me into a deep sense of calm, my thoughts floating quietly, my mind buoyant. Holding a camera becomes cumbersome, no more a fish myself but an image hunter. I did not include these photos either; I didn’t like them.
Often I saw tragic things: elephants injured and slowly dying a painful death from either a hunt or a trap. Tribes hunting monkeys and capturing a baby, while killing its mother. Baby owls captured and sold.
In observing other species, comparison to homo sapiens is inevitable. Comparisons of the animals we are, and comparisons on the relationships we have with other animals, the practice of Projection being one of them: Animals as deities, symbols of might or dread, sacrificed, feared in myths, black cats delivering bad luck.
We are the worst of species: we kill for fun, enslaved to beliefs and values, or driven by raw emotions, rage, envy, lust, love. We torture each other, including ourselves.
We have turned the homes of birds, mammals, fish and other little and bigger creatures, into harsh and inhospitable lands. We cut the trees and leveled and burned the forests. We dug deep for oil and precious stones. We didn't stop to think creatively on how to pull resources with measure. We killed and trapped and ate without discretion everything on our path. There are jungles on this planet with no birds left. We made our lives harder, and we became slaves to our own insatiable appetites.
Perhaps our species is doomed to extinction as well, the land turning into desert, no shade left away from the sun, no oasis on path.
I saw myself in him, pensive, a relative. My heart fluttered as it reached for the past and remained in the present. I am him and he is me. What will become of us.
Is there a judgment passing through his mind?
A Macaque Monkey in the Ubud Sacred Forest (Bali). The forest is managed according to the Hindu principles of “Tri Hata Karana”, the three paths to spiritual and physical well being: Harmonious relationships between humans and humans, between humans and the natural world, and between humans and the Supreme God.
A little vervet monkey family. The male adults have this beautifully blue colored scrotum.
Parenthood.
I am thinking he is thinking and thinking. Is he only scratching?
There are 17 species of penguins round the world, 7 in Antarctica. Here is a Gentoo baby, it could be a mom, it could be a dad.
A baby King Penguin waiting for food. Will he survive?
There is a good reason to protect the egg, to surround it with a little nest: Raptors swarm above.
A rockhopper with an egg.
A Falkland Albatross and her baby.
King Penguins Hanging Out.
Somewhere in the Falklands. I regret now I didn’t write all the bird names down.
Tikehau Bird island, Tahiti. A red footed booby baby.
A White Tern in Tikehau.
Tikehau bird, species unknown to me.
Laguna Nimez, El Calafate, Argentina.
It doesn’t look real, but it is. An Armadillo in Patagonia, Chile. Front and Back.
Rhea birds, Patagonia, Chile.
Guanaco little family, Patagonia, Chile.
A raptor of sorts in Patagonia, Chile.
Rheas in motion, Patagonia, Chile.
An Ibis, Tierra del Fuego, Chile.
A Caracara in Tierra Del Fuego.
A sacred Goa cow. Maybe the happiest on Earth?
Only 6 of 35 seal species live in Antarctica. A Fur baby seal is one of them.
feed me, feed me.
Intent to dive, focused, single minded.
El Calafate wetlands, Laguna Nimez, Flamingo performance. Argentina.
A rockhopper chap. The Penguin highways to fetch food from the ocean are rehearsed through generations. A human crossing disturbing the highway forces the penguin to find an alternative route, often longer, and so the chance of its progeny to survive are slim.
The only underwater image I saved, the colors reminding me of the endless technicolor blue under the surface in Aqaba, Jordan.
Perhaps the ultimate guard of the South Georgia Islands.
This is lovemaking. It does not seem such, but it is.
The noise, the pungent smell, the freezing cold. The touch of the prickly snowflakes stinging my face and hands, an internal unrest in my fast beating heart of an unfolding drama I could only observe.
: sweet home.
We come from somewhere, we go somewhere, we return. Odysseus made his way back to Ithaka. I once visited a very good friend who was born and lives there. "As you set out for Ithaca hope your road is a long one, full of discovery, full of adventure" (Cavafy), my father read this poem to me over and over again, since I was a little girl, with his typical gusto, bordering on threat, a directive. It became a deep love. Eventually it became a lifetime of losing and regaining homes.
My family comes from many places to where we will never return to. So we make a home or we carry our home with us wherever we go. So did I. Sometimes a home is just another person or a dog. Sometimes a home is in a tent on the side of a street, or a cardboard, or a blanket. Homeless people in San Francisco spend the whole day in the public library near the city hall. When you visit, the smell and luggage informs you. I have seen homeless people building makeshift homes in all the unlikely places.
Longing for a home, protecting it, making it pretty, losing it, hating it, are all veins in a heart that pumps or bleeds.
The images are my fascination at how and where people make a life. At how the Other lives. At how I could have lived if I was born in a different place or time.
Buenos Aires Mural
Inle Lake, Burma
Morocco
Ti ke hau, Tahiti
Bagan area, Burma
Venice, near the Jewish Getto
Uruguay
Rajasthan, India
Rajasthan, India
zhouzhuang, china
Morocco
Hutong, Beijing
Yangsho river, China
Rajasthan, India
Yangsho River, China
Athens, Greece
Shanghai, China
Tel Aviv, Israel
Athens, Greece
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Placentia, Belize
Essaouira, Morocco
San Francisco, USA
Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia
Russian River, Guerneville, California
San Francisco, USA
Guerneville
Russian River, Guerneville, California
Bagan Area, Burma
Mekong Delta, Vietnam
Laos
Laos
Mylos, Greece
The River House
Mylos, Greece
somewhere
Morocco
Pushkar, India
:investigation, inquiry, research, written account of past events, narrative, a story
A story always involves a past. I visited Dachau when I was 21. I rushed to the train right after the visit, needing to get out, Munich to Paris. The sound of the language restricted my breathing, and I felt I had to escape to the next border.
Some years later I went to Terezin because my English teacher, Dita, was one of the children that survived both Terezin and Auschwitz. She has a painting that survived and travels around the world with the childrens art exhibit. I thought of my mother, who one evening after dinner the Hungarians came and boarded the jews onto horse carriages to some other place.
Knowing the past, the far past and the nearer, one is crossing the borders of time, centuries and generations, and it reveals to oneself that they will not be here for long. They will not see how things will evolve, will not remain. This often leaves me in owe and saddens me. I want to know. I am curious. I want to see the flying cars, the cures, the transformation of ideas and cultures.
Seeing the past makes my knees tremble knowing that one can be easily swept into forces one has no control over. I went to Hiroshima when I was in my 20's to pay homage. I was born in Athens, and now from my dad's balcony, you can see the Acropolis, a reminder of all that was, the glory and the gore. I lived through the Junta in Greece. An imprint of memory etched forever in my brain. I resolved to climb mount Olympus to have a talk with Zeus.
The Gods always impressed me, studying mythology in grammar school I believed in the powers of Demeter and Athina. I still do. Seeing plays in Epidavros, hanging out in the Agora, taking the metro in Athens, where all that has surfaced in its construction has been preserved behind glass, seeing the Minoan Palace, the dreams of a Labyrinth and Ikaros falling in Ikaria where I spent a summer as a child, forced me to notice.
I grew up in the past and my past is engulfed by a much wider past. My memories are endless: the Alhambra, the Colosseum, Effesos, Agia Sophia, the Sphinx-eternally asking questions, which many, too many remain answered. I immigrated to Israel, and somehow visiting Jerusalem has always been painful and avoided. My father's house, his Patriko is there and no longer ours. I climbed a tree in my grandmother's garden in the Greek Colony in Jerusalem, from which I couldn't come back down.
Both my parents where refugees-one from Hungary, one from Palestine. History is eternity, hidden in the desert, writings of the Nabateans etched on the stone telling us stories, caves that keep secrets of the ice age, a time that began 80 million years ago. I spent a time of my childhood with a family friend, an anthropologist recording the Bedouins oral history and poetry and it impressed me even then how people carried the past with them, mouth to mouth, from memory to memory.
Just lately, I travelled to see the Mylodon cave, following the Giant Sloth's footsteps into Patagonia, another homage to the glaciers from the bygones, and to Bruce Chatwin whose books strengthened my wanderlust. Mylodon was around 10-14 thousand years ago. I live in a house from 1904, before the big fire in San Francisco and the old redwood walls make me think of the people who lived here that I have never known.
Endless places: travelled to where Budha was born, to where Christ lived and died, where tragedy and comedy began. Travelled to so many graves of good and not so good people. Paying homage always meant something to me. I am sentimental that way; Kafka, Sartre, Simone De Beauvoir, Camus, Shackleton, Lincoln, Evita Peron, to name a few. I was moved when my husband surprised me with a stay in the hotel where Oscar Wilde lived and died. And I rushed to Cuba, during the Bush junior era, to have a drink in just about every hole Hemingway been.
Historia is something about eternity, loss and survival. One's own, one's species. Past species. Extinct. Finished. Except not really, we carry the past and we push the past forward whether it is a good practice or not.
When I was young it impressed me that my grandfather was born in 1900, and saw the invention of electricity and phone and trains that became evil, and planes and television, the man on the moon and so many wars: the first in which he was an officer in the Austro Hungarian war; the second in which he was a slave, the 6 day war and Yom Kippur war in Israel, to where he moved to, escaping the Communist regime.
I immigrated to Israel just before the Yom Kippur war, and since then I have seen the birth of the world wide web, the technological revolution right by my house, living at the time in Palo Alto and Mountain View. My office remains in Palo Alto, in an old victorian in which Joan Baez grew up. I seen gay marriage come through, I have seen a black president in America, I have seen death, war, and genocide continue, despite the never again intentions.
I still think my grandfather's view of change was far more vast. Often I want to tell those who died and I have known, how things turned out. I don't have images from all the places, I carry them mostly in my memory and my mind's eye-my imagination. The past informs my present and enriches it, sometimes its heavy, often it keeps me awake and alert.
The Pantheon: A light through the world’s Dome
Monemvasia, The Peloponesses, Greece
Petra, Jordan
The Jewish Quarter, Rome, Italy
The Taj Mahal
The Pyramids, Gyza, Egypt
Siem Reap, Cambodia
The Spynx
India
Egypt
Jewish Quarter, Rome
Jerash, Jordan
Petra, Jerash
Morocco
Nabateans, Cave Messages, Wadi Ram, Jordan
The Acropolis, Athens, Greece
Terracota, Army
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Ancient Clock, India
The Wall, China
Bibi Ka Maqbara, India
Qutub Minar, Delhi, India
Colosseum, Rome, Italy
Taj Mahal, India
Varanasi, Indian
Petra, Jordan
Pamukkale, Turkey
Herod Atticus Amphitheater, Athens, Greece.
Buenos Aires, Memorial Sculpture over the Torture Stadium, Argentina.
Medusa, Basilica Cistern, Istanbul, Turkey
Agora, Athens, Greece
Epidauros, Greece
Orcadas Base, Argentine Antarctica
: art, practice, craft
Without art, without skill, our soul would die. A woman's, a man's desire to create, to express, to build, to invent, keeps the rest of us alive, vibrant, bewildered, sometimes angry, alert, inspired.
What remains after we are gone: a poem, a dance, a painting, a melody, a voice, a building, a temple, a play, a book. Poor and Rich we engage in art, and no matter the culture one comes from, art runs a fabric of connection and abstraction of the human spirit in its community and reaches out in the same way to strangers, visitors, invaders, and across centuries. We engage art for every occasion and for every emotion: in sadness and mourning, in joy, in envy, in anger, in fear.
We take art to the streets, and it becomes our happiness. Street musicians, muralists, dancers, not to mention outrageous fashion and body art communicate something about who we are. We take art to the outside of our home and our city buildings, decorating it with painting and paintings of abstract designs and murals.
Art is like a balm, and outside art, the art of the mentally ill, the prisoners, the developmentally disabled, the outcasts, the untrained hand, reminds us that ultimately we are all the same.
Etymologically, Technology's root derives from Techni, the Greek word for Art, and in that way, technology is related to creativity and here we are, we can connect in so many new ways. Technology in bad hands, just like everything else, whether in our hands or someone else's can wound.
In my travels, I am drawn to the art of the street and the texture it adds to every corner. I spend time listening to local music old and new, I search for the dance, the movement of each culture with its body.
I don't like to be too particular about what is and what isn't art. For me handmade crafts in a village with no resources is art. An intricate embroidery, a hand weaved basket, a painted cloth, a carved face, pass over a message about a place, about its tradition. When I take it home, and I have met the crafter, I take a memory with me, a piece of it that now has become a cell in my own existence. And so I search for something that can connect me to a place, a person, a future. This is just my taste. Not a perscription.
image: Buenos Aires mural, 2017. Matt, from BA art, took me around the city to some remote neighborhoods for an expedition. Her pensive sadness is so profound, observing and quiet.
image: Tel Aviv, 2016. Coming home for a visit involves surprises.
image: China, Shanghai, 2004, She seemed proud to show me how she played.
image: Tel Aviv, Rokach house, circa 1887, one of the first homes built outside of Jaffa. Sculptures: Leah Mintz, Rokach's grand daughter, who also restored the house. My wedding party took place in the garden.
image: Tel Aviv. It reads: "How do you Know?" The rest I didn't photograph, so I don't know.
image: Buenos Aires. Masks we all wear.
image: Dalia at her house. I have known her since I was a child. My mother and Dalia were in the army together. She was born in Deganya, a kibbutz in the Jordan Valley, one of the first kibbutzim established in Ottoman Palestine, in 1909. Dalia is a painter.
image: Buenos Aires mural on private house. The little girl living there picked the theme. We all have a heart and it beats. There is a door and a window into it.
image: Torres Del Paine, Chile, Michael's tattoo. It depicts Chile's national tree, Araucaria Araucana. 100-130 feet in height. Also known as the Monkey Puzzle Tree or the Monkey Tail tree. It lives a long time and is described as a Living Fossil. It is endangered. Micha and I walked the French Valley trek slowly, behind the group. We talked about life. The tattoo is a good depiction of the Tree of Life: an endangered longevity.
image: San Telmo, Buenos Aires. A few tourist streets, and a source of pain for immigrants who occupied the neighborhood by the flooding river in old times. The houses are built from corrugated iron walls. I don't know how the locals feel now. Yolo: you only live once.
image: Buenos Aires, we are animals after all.
image: Kerala, India, 2007. A Kathakali dancer. I watched him apply the colors and prepare for the dance. He was exquisite, serious. Seen breathing. He let me watch the preparation.
image: Barracas neighborhood, Buenos Aires. Matt told me it is the largest mural in the world. The artist painted all the people who live there. Most still live there. By the polluted river.
image: Old person in the Barracas, Buenos Aires, 2017. The Barracas area used to house a slave quarter among other things.
image: India, Jaisalmer, 2001. The tsunami occurred a few days later on the other side of the country. The little girl danced around and around to her father's music playing. She circled her little brother with the most graceful little steps, holding a perfect rhythm to an infectious music. I have no idea how she felt.
image: Burma, 2016. On the way to Inle lake, during the water festival. The little girls danced in front of their mothers' shop without an audience until I showed up.
image: mural, Buenos Aires. Is it the Critic? We all have one.
image: Tel Aviv. Goes without Saying. My Mother and my Husband.
image: San Francisco, near the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. On the street.
image: mothers of the "disappeared". They did not wear scarfs, but white cotton diapers. The people were never found, but the Mothers group, split into two fractions and has fallen into political infighting and accusations of corruption.
image: Bali, Ubud 2014. The Ogoh-Ogoh festival. Demons carefully crafted by each village only to be carried in a parade and than destroyed. Elaborate and complex as the spiritual pollution they are built to represent. I found it interesting, how heavy and laborious it is to carry them across town, the young kids laughing, profusely sweating and exhausted, in humid, impossibly hot weather, much like we carry across life our own demons-the fear, the disgust, the envy, the malice.
image: Tel Aviv. That's how I feel when I read the news.
