sometimes colors and forms just grab me and for moments i stop thinking about the stories behind. those occasions i do cherish, even more as they don’t happen too often to me. in these rare moments i can see beyond simple shapes. but they are rare. travelling to sri lanka, i had david duchemin’s new…
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barrel door
a matching door for the fence blinds shown yesterday, this door is one of the rare cases where the recycling/upgrading path left the original structure well visible and self-contingent, not mixing in or adding other components. the fence, too, is a case of recycling: the net was beyond repair and unsuitable to catch fishes any…
metal structures, batticaloa, sri lanka
in sri lanka, plots are usually at least fenced with barbed wire. only the wealthy ones can afford real walls, often topped with bottle bottom fragments. To protect the owners from the curious views of the bypassers, the street side of the fences is usually equipped with blinds. traditionally they were made from palmyrah leaves,…
bad reichenhaller fotospaziergang / worldwide photowalk in bad reichenhall
as it generally is of interest for bad reichenhall locals, here bilingually with german as the first version: Im Rahmen des “2. worldwide photowalk” findet am 18.7.2009 der “Reichenhaller Fotospaziergang” statt. Im Rahmen eines gemeinsamen Stadtrundgangs mit Gleichgesinnten wollen wir Fotos machen und über alles reden, was mit Photographie zusammenhängt. Zur (kostenfreien) Anmeldung gibt es…
sofobomo 09: batticaloa fishermen
finally my sofobomo 09 theme has found me: the fishermen of batticaloa. since 2005 i try to spend the early morning hours of my missions to batticaloa on the beach, and over the time i got more and more acquainted with them. since quite some time i planned either a small exhibition or a pod-book…
the grave of s. thinusika, 8 years
in his comment on a bitter victory, thomas stated that there is no justification for terrorist attacks like the ones the ltte comitted. of course he is correct, still my answer contained a big ‘however’. to understand why many of the tamils did not support the ltte any more due to their murderous acts even…
the president’s funds
trincomalee internally displaced persons again, in front of their shed. one of the boys is sick, born with a hole in the cardiac septum. basic healthcare in sri lanka is free, and in some aspects of really high quality and excellent quality/circumstances ratio. however an operation in this case has to be paid extra, and…
idp bathroom, batticaloa
some people are not born poor, but made poor. the idps that now live in navallady, batticaloa, in the former tsunami buffer zone (no permanent house should have been there, the former residents were all resettled) had their homes in the trincomalee district. the civil war came, they were driven out of their houses in…
to be poor
taking up the topic of my recent post “eyes”, just a bullet list of what it means to be poor in batticaloa, sri lanka (but feel free to put in any other place): the husband (if present) works as a day labourer, earning barely enough to feed the family the kids leave school early to…
tata and grapes
sometimes when the eyes open, gestalt reveals itself. though i am sweating for many of my pictures, on quite some occasions i just recognize, see. and sometimes, i also like the framing and don’t feel the necessity to crop or modify otherwise. rare moments that i really cherish.
beach abstract
at the moment i feel a bit like this pants on batticaloa beach: totally worn out after more than 30 hours work and traveling with only some naps. at least the official part of this mission was successful, so no reason to complain. photographically it still has to be evaluated. more after having slept, promised!
dancing feet
still under pressure, this time at the airport already, on the way home. today i got sad news again about the refugee situation in the north of sri lanka – ban ki moon seems to have categorized the situation ‘apalling’ regarding the government’s treatment of the tamil civilians – and he seemingly has seen only…
eyes
no words at the moment – time presses. i hope the picture speaks for itself
giving something back
photographing in exotic locations usually means meeting people only once in a lifetime. photographing the not-so-well-off means that you even can’t just send a picture or two as email, and even when they write down their address – in the present case i couldn’t read it as i don’t know tamil. but in this case…
sad holiday for the tamils
dark clouds over the sea here in batticaloa, no sunrise – matching weather for a holiday that is a holy day only for the sinhalese. from some tamil houses we heard funeral music. a sophisticated way to express their sadness that they seem to have lost their case.
a bitter victory
here on the east coast of sri lanka, the only people celebrating a victory were soldiers and policemen, all of them members of the 80% sinhalese majority of sri lanka’s population. the photo above was taken in dambulla. the tamils almost all were quiet, only the members of the ruling party tmvp showing open contentednes,…
knocking on (fire)wood
risking the fact that it sounds boring to hear the same thing over and over again: being here on the east cost of sri lanka changes (again) my perspective. whilst at home wood pellets form the ever available and theoretically co2-neutral alternative for burning oil to heat the rooms, and that ever-ready central heating makes…
crisis? what crisis
dubai is amazing, over and over again. in the last months they have greatly improved their terminal, not being shy of any costs (of course, if have enough crude to sell). the neuw skytrain is a large chrome/light/water construction – really amazing. of course that beauty has a dark backside: flickr is censored, as are…
on the train again
starting my journey to the east coast of sri lanka always is a train leg to munich airport. now train for a long way was a authochtonous, down-to-earth affair, ‘deutsche bahn’, ‘österreichische bundesbahn’ and so on, where the nationality in the name quite often meant also basic facilities. but already decades ago it started to…
up-and-coming cyclists
trying to get at a new ‘airiness’ as well as combining photography with family undertakings, i had to resort to some shots without framing. of course the reject rate was a bit more than marginally higher, however one shot came out as good as expected: those armstrongs-to-be had the road for themselves on a sunny…
encounter in red
over at paul lester photography, paul praises david du chemin’s just published book ‘within the frame’. living in germany, i probably have to wait some more days until my copy arrives. the pieces david offered to read in advance sound as motivating as paul’s reflection of his first glance does, so waiting for a book…
traditional fence and horses
using the most modern electronic gadgets in form of a dslr and a laptop should be proof enough that i am standing with both feet in modern information society. still, forms and textures and colors from 100 years back in many cases enthuse me more than a big number of modern things. especially in everyday…
out of my depth
i just received the following email from a colleague/friend from batticaloa: … our cousins daughter’s 8 years old baby kidnap on 28th April 2009 on her school. after we search in batticaloa area but we didn’t find her,2nd day mother received a phone call from unknown person they request money to release her amount is…
let the music play
a lazy mothers day brought no new images, instead some hours at the lake (17°c, swimming is possible but no real joy). late in the evening now the flat is quiet, time to go through the pictures of the last weeks again. the rosserer pilgrimage still has some images worth converting from raw. the little…
form follows function
form follows function was by no means invented by an architect of the 19th century, no, the farmers everywhere had followed this principle more or less intentionally probably everywhere in the world. in this farmer’s garden from maybe 100 years ago, now rebuilt in a museum village in austria, this guideline shows up in many…