Konny. Paris, 2013. No more landlord arson. San Francisco. 2016. Butte-aux-cailles. Paris. 2018. Klim, I gather? Liverpool. Or is Berlin? (Mexico city. 2019) I told you a hundred times, stop picking your nose. Butte-aux-cailles, Paris. Zabou. Near Mission St, San Francisco, 2016. Overtagged, alas. “Let’s go urgently to the House of buttons. In Polanco! Jules…
I could start with a small Renoir. Emil Bührle collection at the Maillol museum. 2019. Claude Monet in his workshop at Giverny. The workshop has remained very much the same. The paintings have been replaced by – very good – copies. Most of the originals are at Orsay I believe. “Love your world”. Latin quarter,…
Angkor Vat means, in Khmer: “the capital that became a Buddhist monastery”. The temples of Angkor are a blend between Hinduism and Buddhism. The faces carved out everywhere? I am not sure whether they represent Brahma or Buddha. Or one then the other. A good example of Asian capacity of “Fusion”. The jungle reclaims the…
This is not a virus. It is an alebrije. Mexico City. Around February when one could still go to a restaurant for a family lunch. 🍺 Machu Picchu, 1976. (c) my wife. Before we met. Machu Picchu is still on my bucket list. Found these old slides in a box this summer. Bought a new…
Dora Maar by Dora Maar. Paris. Mid 30’s. Amazing expo at Pompidou, July 2019. Dora Maar, born Henriette Dora Markowitch in Paris in 1907, was a French photographer and artist who rose to fame in the 30’s. She knew only the best players of the time. Unfairly “catalogued” as “just one” of Picasso’s many lovers,…
Andiamo. Let’s go. “Andiamo” is possibly the first Italian word I ever learnt… Italian is a bit of a mystery to me. Never took a single class. Never lived in Italy. My parents had a few Italian friends in West Africa. I remember Ambassador Sciascia. Who spoke perfect French. Did I pick Italian in the…
Lev Davidovitch Bronstein (1879-1940), “nom de guerre” Trotsky, was a Soviet revolutionary, the founder of the Red Army, assassinated by orders of Stalin in 1940. His museum in Mexico city is privately run by his descendants, grandson and great-granddaughters. (Photo: (c)ourtesy the Trostky museum, Mexico city. The back of Trostky’s last house is, strangely enough,…
Originally posted on Notes from Camelid Country:
Ethical tourism is tricky. If ever it did, the ‘take only pictures, leave only footprints’ brand of travel ethics doesn’t stand up to scrutiny during the era of climate crisis. The severely negative impact of mass tourism has blighted both historic cities and pristine natural habitats, and driven exploitation…
My sister and I spent most of our childhood in Africa, West and East, from 1959 to 1971 with a brief interlude in Amsterdam. What you learn as a child stays with you always. Above: munching elephant in Uganda, Murchison Falls, source of the Nile, 1969. White rhinos, Uganda, 1969. The term “white” is a…
Pete the pelican, Akumal, Yucatán peninsula. Dic. 2019. A stairway to heaven. Cobá, Yucatán. (Note: Technically the eastern part of Yucatán became a full-fledged state, called Quintana Roo, in 1974. Cancún, Tulum, are in “Quintana Roo”. Yet, geographically, historically and culturally it still is Yucatán, the land of the Maya. Cobá, near Tulum, is one…
