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Democratic Kampuchea
Democratic Kampuchea or the invention of hell Angkar, the mysterious name (meaning ‘the Organisation’) behind which Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime hid, had changed the name of Cambodia to Democratic Kampuchea. During their four-year totalitarian rule, the population was forcibly ‘re-educated’ and indoctrinated according to Angkar’s radical communist ideology. A collection of slogans and orders…
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Angkar, Angkor
Angkar, Angkor Two similar images, two similar words, but referring to two very different memorable episodes in the history of Cambodia. Angkar (“the organisation”), being the name the Khmer Rouge used for its own leadership. Between 1975 and 1979, Angkar’s regime of terror caused the death of approximately one quarter of the total population of…
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Mama, look!
Mama, look! A tree, a plant, so incredibly huge – how is that possible! The sense of wonder begins the moment you get closer to the base of a giant sequoia and try to imagine its circumference. Then you look up along the trunk and see that it goes on forever: the top must be…
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Living monuments
Living monuments Americans are used to everything being big: skyscrapers; paper cups for cola or weak coffee in ‘large’, ‘larger’ and ‘largest’ sizes; and trees of a size unrivalled anywhere in the world. As we walk amongst the giant sequoias, we suddenly feel very small and insignificant. But it is not just their enormous size…
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Death anonymous
Death anonymous A graphic photograph of intersecting lines on a white background. Simple and minimalist. What more is there to say? We find ourselves in a small, snow-covered cemetery in the mountains. The wooden cross is extremely simple. The two beams aren’t even aligned on the same plane. The crossbar is simply attached to the…
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White on white
White on white The bathtub in the snow reveals that we are here on a mountain pasture in winter. The cows are in their shed down in the valley. The marmots are hibernating in their holes underground. And the people have closed their summer chalets and have moved to their homes lower down. The virgin…
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The lonely slipper
The lonely slipper or Shiva and Parvati in a courtyard “Shiva is man and Parvati is woman; they are the causes of creation. All men have Shiva as their soul, and all women are Parvati. Shiva has the form of the male sign, the lingam, and the goddess has the form of the female sign,…
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Floating Baobab
Floating Baobab The decisive moment for this photograph didn’t come until after it had been taken. It occurred to me that it might be interesting to rotate the photograph 90° anti-clockwise, and that is what you see here. It suddenly becomes intriguing: it looks as though the tree is floating on a perfectly still surface…
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The Pachinko temple
The Pachinko temple During my walks through various neighbourhoods of Kyoto, as I made my way from one beautiful temple, garden or palace to the next, I would occasionally come across buildings like the one in the photo, and I wondered what sort of place this was and what went on inside. One afternoon, I…
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The art of tea
The art of tea Looking at the photos in each of the last four posts, I highlighted a concept that is central to Zen or – in broader terms – to traditional Japanese culture. With the photo of the display in the Tokonoma I brought the word ‘harmony’ into focus, but ‘respect’, ‘purity’, or ‘tranquillity’…
καιρός remembered
… the right moment, position chosen, shoot …
