spring2life take2

Writing this, I am sitting already in the airport on my way to home. These were intense weeks, less so in the photographic sense, but full of discussions on how to tune the setup of the new water supply project in order to achieve best acceptance and sense of ownership of the beneficiaries. There are many things to take into account, not the least the difficult mindset of people that had been pushed around for many years during the civil war in Sri Lanka.

For some time I will be posting some more pictures from Sri Lanka, but there will be an abrupt change when I do the switch to images from Germany – snow and temperatures below 0° C will give a different impression.

Without any double-butted alloy frames, rock-shoxx suspension forks or Rohloff gear-shifts, those men transport loads of more than 50kg of firewood on their (India-made) bicycles over paths that would make nice competition dirt tracks on the northern hemisphere. And if necessary they cross flooded parts of roads, where only the really sturdy vehicles will go. Kudos!

Again a field visit today, meeting the people of a small village in the Valachenai area, north of Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. When traveling back, this bus crossed our way.

The assembly took place in the classroom of the local school, and especially the women – in the middle the chairwoman of the Woman Rural Development Society – actively participated in the discussion, as this project plans to release them from hour-long walks to get water during the dry season.

Yesterday I did a field trip with my colleagues from Sri Lanka, checking the rainwater harvesting tanks they have set up in the current project. Of the beneficiaries usually the husbands were working in the paddy fields, while the women and kids were at home. One lady was busily repairing her universal tool, used mainly for cutting mangos from the trees, and she agreed having her portrait taken.

It was not raining when I took these images in one of the fish markets of Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. Unfortunately now it is – just natural, it’s monsoon time – and even more unfortunately is that my room has so many leakages in the ceiling that I barely know how to position my bed to find a dry place to sleep. The moskito net is unusable due to its position, the luggage already closed so that I can leave the room reasonable quickly if the situation deteriorates.

Checking the image files, I found a matching scenery for yesterday´s timber trader, this time from Colombo.

Found in Oddamavadia, east coast of Sri Lanka. Same time, same moskitoes, fleeing.

Found these today during our travel from Colombo to the east coast of Sri Lanka, and was captivated by forms and colors.

To post these I have to sit fully dressed on the balcony of our guesthouse, while the monsoon rains pattern on the roof and the moskitoes are agressively searching for fresh blood. Short post, for a given reason.

Well, I dropped the idea to fill the next posts with pres. Rajapakse’s pictures – too depressing. Those street sceneries I found in the town of Galle, on the southern end of the island. People here really can have a sense for harmonic colors.

To take up the topic that I’ve started with a project contribution on Martin Storz’s Public Eye Blog: Yesterday was the inauguration ceremony for Sri Lanka’s president Mahinda Rajapakse. There are some doubts about the elections and their preliminaries, and whilst many of the people in Colombo welcome his presidency in the light of him having ended 30+ years of a bloody civil war, concerns about the way this country now is governed by the Rajapakse family remain. For more details just have a look at the wikipedia. Optically his inauguration was impressive, to say the least. Thousands of his portraits were distributed throughout the city of Colombo, together with flags of Sri Lanka, – a personality cult hitherto unknown in this country – and chains of lights now illuminate his posters at night (and I didn’t bring a tripod!).

Today’s images are only a starter, I have yet to decide if I make up a small gallery of the best of the rest, or if I serve them one-by-one.

Update: I just had to learn that the English Wikipedia, unlike the German Version, does describe Pres. Rajapakse in an almost exclusively positive way, highlighting his achievments in fighting the worlds no. 1 terrorists. This should ring a bell with you… Maybe better also look at the pages of Amnesty International and Reporters without Borders.

To take up Martina’s last comment

: Yes, Colombo takes up many European, or better Western, patterns. Though being an officially Buddhist country, without a separation of state and religion as we know it, especially the business parts of other relgions, like Christmas here, get incorporated and playfully put on stage. Of course this shopping mall is more for the well-offs, but as everywhere, they set the trends. The Sri Lankan influence however is clearly visible in the shapes of the decoration: tusks, as they are venerated for example in the temple in Kandy.

Seen on Duplication Road, Colombo.

Walking the streets of Colombo – something the better-off people in Colombo would always try to avoid – led me into a bounty of sceneries, and even a shy guy like me, who doesn’t want to bother people with his camera out of respect for their privacy, found more than enough food for his lens.

Some of the street scenes reminded me of Carl Weese’s recent cyclus “Two walls”. And the weariness after a sleep-deprived night between Europe and Asia did not stop me, maybe focused my visual sense even more.

Dubai Airport is astonishing again and again – whenever I come there it seems to have grown, expanded, become more luxurious. But I can’t help feeling also some backward orientation: The whole thing seems to live in the firm belief that our utmost materialistic and oil-based economy will continue without end, pursuing the American belief of “bigger is better”. The United Arab Emirates will probably be the last ones to suffer under ending oil reserves, but if all others do, an air traffic hub of these dimensions may be useless, the investment invalidated, the concretized money missing for the necessary investment in the change of the oeconomical system. But it seems that Dubai Airport will continue to grow with yesterday’s dreams, simple because they are the most proficient means to seduce people to spend their money in short-lived (in-)utilities.

Found in Munich Airport, posted from Dubai – there is free WiFi access all over the airport.

With the cold, dark and short days I am also leaving the country of the “Perchten” (and zombies as well) behind. I am on my way to Sri Lanka again, this time as volunteer expert for an acquainted NGO that works in the field of drinking water supply. The east coast of Sri Lanka, where our area of work will be, nowadays is a much quieter place than 18 monthes ago, when we finished our last project in Colombo.

The old and new president of Sri Lanka is taking his oaths on Friday, so this again will be a story of masks, so to say. And yes, Sri Lanka too has a tradition of masks, connected to healing rites. Perhaps I can have a look at some examples there in the National Museum – the masks “made for tourists” are quite different, however not so much tending to blood-thirst aspects.

I am traveling light, without laptop, so posting will be flaky, depending on the occasion. Nonetheless I do plan to post

Martina had correctly pointed out, that one of the shown masks looks like from a horror movie. This is really a dilemma. Transforming old rites into present times of course always incorporates contemporary elements. This is nothing special, as many of our Christian rites are based on pagan elements. But here, with the “Perchten” masks, it has sometimes an amusing effect: The mask in the first image is quite traditional, carved from wood, visual elements I assume being autochthonous – but then the name: Harry Potter is supposedly nor bavarian nor alpine…

And the masks in the second image evoke more associations to “Paura nella città dei morti viventi” (City of the Living Dead) than to any local traditions. But this is the very presence, and when talking to the mask owners, you hear nothing but praise and pride about these hotchpotches out of gore movies.

Once upon a time, in pre-christian, pagan times, the people in the alpine valleys were living precarious lives. Winter was an especially hard time, threatening the families with cold, vast amounts of snow, a frozen soil and dark, very long nights. In that time they developed rites to fight their angst, and some of them were kept alive – despite Christianisation – until now. One of these is the driving out of the winter, installed here as the “Perchtenlauf”, where youngsters in masks run from farmhouse to farmhouse, dance with a lot of noise, and get invited for some hard liquor.

The expression of the masks has changed, adapted to the presence and the influence of the media, and so has the production process of these masks. Once an occupation for winter evenings, now it became professionalised.

Expect some more images from an exhibition of “Perchten” masks over the next days. And because there are no Perchten masks to drive a away those f… spammers, I have installed a captcha plugin. I hope it doesn’t drive away all the commenters…

The cold and already snowy October weather had only been an interlude, for now it’s pretty wam again. But in the city the colors have lost their power, their radiance, and this creates a certain feeling of alienation here.

Wordless Thursday. Too leached out for writing.

Found in the woods adjacent to the bog with the hunting stand. Sometimes high tech units like this gas pipeline just matters to integrate with the natural surroundings…

Those alpine wetlands always have been agricultural land. Of course harvest was low in form of sour grasses not suitable for the modern turbocharged cows, and so it was decided to drain the area. Started more than a decade ago, drainage is now in full effect and the land dry enough even for heavy machines with rotary mowers. With this transition the land lost its quality as habitat for deers, roes and the like – and with it, the hunting stand got useless.

This scenery, found in a villa quarter, could very well be perceived as staged, but I am not shure about this. It certainly was soothing for my eyes not to see monoblocs in the garden but very old fashioned chairs, and willow baskets instead of their chinese injection casted counterparts. In fact it looks so perfect that it raises the suspicion of being carefully arranged in rustic style – very fashy among the “immigrants” from other German areas to Bavaria.

After that switch back from the Business Boosting Time aka. DST, during the week a lot of my photography has to happen in the dark hours. It took me a long time to become content with the amount of noise in high iso images (this one was taken with ISO 1600), and it seems that now the manufactures have greatly improved the sensors also of the APS-C cameras. But the available improvements of the new models don’t trigger any purchase reflexes any more. What might be interesting would be a better high-eyepoint viewfinder and a more discerning focusing screen – both of it are not part of the feature set of any of the new models. Good for me, as there’s no reason for in-depth considerations or even purchase decisions.

Instead I continue to always carry my camera and try to submerse into a state where seeing doesn’t get interrupted by gear.

No, this is not a comment on the election results, I swear.
But look – there’s red in it, and blue…

I simply couldn’t resist

Resist I can however to comment on the results of the U.S. elections. Which is anyhow the best thing to do as I would lack words.

So I close my eyes, ears and mouth and nurture the sensitive and fragile plant of my creativity, trying not to dung it to death with cynicism or pure despair.

New chances can be triggered by railway construction works, too: As “my” train is canceled for some weeks, I had to get up earlier, only to find a familiar place in new light. I don’t know what makes the Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) do rent their emptied, service-deprived stations preferably to gambling saloons (my guess: money, what else), but this seems business seems to be booming in a way that the time slot for cleaning is somewhere around 5 in the morning. So the Casino’s door was open and their primary tool was there on display. For everybody to learn, but then, the ability to learn is maybe not the strong point of their customers.

The weeks before All Saints Day, cemeteries in Germany are buzzing with busy (and business) life. But when daylight fades and night takes over, all that teeming subsides and graveyard and church fall back into the normal silence – quite different from the sceneries Carl Weese shows from the Cemetery Tour in Washington, DCCT. Highly recommended, both the photography and the activity, taking away a bit of the gravity of the graveyard and both bringing life to the graveyard and the graveyard to life.

For November 2010, the new wallpapers are ready, available as usual in the “Wallpapers” section (hmm, where else…)

Update: Typing with fingers on autopilot is … Carl pointed out that I had incorrectly written Wash. DC instead of CT. Corrected now.