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Surya
Surya A stream of men, women and childrenmeanders between the Surya temple shrines.A thousand years, day after day, ever different,always the same, as the sun that comes and goes.Aeons … a millennium … today. Photo of the week: Surya (Sun) temple, 9th cent. AD, Katarmal, Uttarakhand, India 2021
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Uttarayani Fair
Uttarayani Fair When Surya (Sun) enters the Capricorn zodiac (14 January) it’s time for the festival of Makar Sankranti, in Uttarakhand also known as Uttarayan. That’s the time when the town of Bageshwar, at the confluence of the Saryu and Gomati Rivers, really comes to life. The biggest mela (fair) of the year in the…
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A wall in Kazimierz
A wall in Kazimierz Broken, mutilated, spread around in disarray,dug up from layers of dust and sand: memory fragments of the departed,fit together as a jigsaw puzzle. Memorial wall to the dead,for the eyes of the living. Photo of the week: 16th cent. Jewish R’emuh Cemetery wall, Kazimierz, Krakow, Poland 2007
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Memento mori
Memento mori When walking around in a graveyard we may be content of still belonging to the realm of the living, but it also inevitably reminds us of our own mortality. This is certainly the case in the graveyard of the Portuguese Jews near Amsterdam. Many of the gravestones carry images that denote death: an…
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Anno Mundi 5490
Anno Mundi 5490 The Jewish cemetery at ‘Ouderkerk aan de Amstel’ near Amsterdam is called Beth Haim which means House of Life. This tells us something about the Sephardim philosophy of life – and death. The picture shows a detail of a partly submerged gravestone in which we see a shepherdess with her cattle. A…
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Watery grave
Watery grave I saw this sculpted marble gravestone at the cemetery of the Portuguese Jewish community in ‘Ouderkerk aan de Amstel’. The Sephardim Jews had started settling in Amsterdam in the 16th century and their cemetery in nearby Ouderkerk dates from 1614. I used to pass and visit it regularly on my walks along the…
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Death and decay
Death and decay Two headstones, one a bit more pointed than the other, are each covering a corner of two gothic church windows, one a bit more pointed than the other. A harmonious rhythm of corresponding forms that subconsciously may have caught my eye. But I took the picture in the first place because I…
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Cross on stilts
Cross on stilts I.I climbed up to an elevated cemeteryand saw a cross on stilts.Raised for a still better view?For the pursuit of heaven?Or just for fun? II.I descended the steps into a pitch-dark tomb. Groped for my camera, managed to put on the flash and took a picture. The photo shows what I couldn’t…
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Of light and loss
Of light and loss I like visiting cemeteries. Gravestones, a name and two dates, sometimes a picture of the deceased. Sometimes other testimonies of loving memories which in all their simplicity and – often – cheap taste can be touching. Gravestones remind us of the dead underneath, but they also tell us something of the…
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Necropolis
Necropolis Buried in the earth, flat, seated, wrapped in cloth, put in a coffin, embalmed, thrown in a river, fed to the vultures, burned,… Of all animals human beings are the only ones that do something special about the dead. Trying to do justice to their deceased loved ones and to their own feelings of…
καιρός remembered
… the right moment, position chosen, shoot …
καιρός remembered 