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Through the fjord with a bang
While the Maori section of the museum in Okains Bay offered an interesting picture of Maori traditional craft and culture, the colonial section looked a bit like a junk shop, a ‘brocante’, with a nostalgic making mishmash of early 20th century objects brought along by the white settlers. The painted drum in the picture, with…
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Coffee time!
The background of the impressive Maori figure on the painting we recognize as Okains Bay, the pristine bay that I showed you on this blog two weeks ago. Behind the Maori’s back we see two waka (traditional Maori canoes) pulled up on the beach. The first Maoris that came to New Zealand over a thousand…
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Okains Bay
Okains Bay is not just a magnificent bay on New Zealand’s South Island (see last week’s post). It is also the place of an old Maori settlement with still a considerable percentage of Maori population to this date. The photo shows the inside of the Whaakata, a traditional meeting house, now part of the Maori…
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Visions of virginal purity (2)
The beautiful Okains Bay on beautiful Banks Peninsula of New Zealand’s beautiful South Island. Sit down, drink in, close your eyes, dream. Photo of the week: Okains Bay, Banks Peninsula, South Island, New Zealand 2013
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Visions of virginal purity (1)
Wide vistas of an immense, deserted beach. But then, in the far distance, we descry three tiny dark specks, people smaller than sand fleas, blown off by the wind. Farewell at Farewell Spit. Photo of the week: Farewell Spit, North shore, Golden Bay, South Island, New Zealand 2013
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Waves, reined …
in rock by an ongoing play of sun, rain and wind in sand by the wind, and soon again gone with the wind in cement by an artist dreaming of capturing a fleeting moment in emulsion by light falling on a gelatine silver coated film Photo of the week: Rainbow Valley, Central Australia 2013
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The sheltering tree
Mozambique 1993, breathing more freely again after many years of devastating conflict and war. A tree. Branches and foliage spreading in a grand circle up around the trunk. In its shelter underneath some hundred women assembled, with children and a few men. There is a spirit of calm, of peace, of community about the place.…
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A roof of dense foliage
Without the supporting poles this living monument would soon collapse under its own weight. A tree with crutches, not to walk with but to remain standing. Excrescence or labour of love – impressive it is. Photo of the week: Nagamachi samurai district, Kanazawa, Japan 2008
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The woman in the trees
A sound was echoing through the forest but I couldn’t make out where it came from. Then, all of a sudden, I saw a nymph moving high up in the oak trees. Surprised I called out: “What are you doing there?” She gave me a big smile and shouted back: “Je fais une chose tout…
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Ensemble of limbs
Looking at the legs in unison in last week’s post I remembered this photo that I took once in a shopping mall in Sydney. Then too it had been the configuration of limbs that had incited me to take out my camera. The people spread out in the circle, on the chairs and sofas at the floor…
