Category: Asia
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Mind your step
Everyone who has moved around airports must be familiar with this phrase “Mind your step”. Seeing it, I immediately hear the proper voice with the right intonation warning me: “Mind your step!” But what is it supposed to mean here? Can it be a warning to those who are on the verge of leaving the…
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Blue Planet Sky
So this is what the girl in last week’s post saw through her camera, or rather it’s what I saw through my camera. Looking at the sky can be a nice activity, especially when there is some movement of clouds. Looking at the sky through a fixed frame is even more interesting. It makes you…
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Two-way masks
And what does the girl with the camera see up there? The answer to that has to wait till next week’s post. Here I’m interested in the girl with the mask, sitting in this spotlessly clean environment. I always thought that these worker’s masks were meant to protect oneself against fine dust and other unhealthy particles that can…
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The Swimming Pool
This pool owes its alienating effect to the fact that it’s actually only a baby pool with hardly 10 cm of water on a transparent floor under which people can walk by. It is a work of art by Leandro Erlich in the Museum of Contemporary Art at Kanazawa. I used the photo in my film…
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Backbone girl
Cleaning, cooking, fetching water, looking after the children, feeding and milking the family cow or buffalo, collecting firewood, all this and more is women’s work in many a traditional society. This Kumaoni mountain girl carries a tree home that she may even have cut herself with an axe, because in these parts women think nothing of…
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Women at the village pump
Such a common sight, but always inviting to pause for a while and enjoy. Here it’s a few women of the Gond tribe with their feet in the mud around the village pump, cleaning vessels and jars. The shiny silver of the traditional armlet, anklets and elaborate belt reflects its beauty not only on the wearer…
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Roadside entertainment
Moving images, stories told with moving images, invariably attract the attention of children, women and men. Most animals on the other hand, like the cow or bull here, can’t care less. Last week’s post spoke of the close relationship between man and cow in India, the last one almost being considered by man as a…
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Home again!
After a long day of walking around village or town in search of vegetable waste, paper, cardboard, anything eatable in short, a cow comes home. Is the cow holy in India? In a way, yes, at least to some extent. She’s part of the living, part of the family like a pet and one has…
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An endearing smile
The young lady has taken refuge against the blistering sun in the cramped space between wall and tree. Confronted with my camera, she sees the amusing side of her position and presents me – and you – with an endearing smile. Photo of the week: Ganj, Orchha, Madhya Pradesh, India 2007
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Clean sweep
In India, especially in and around cities and towns, one often gets the impression of life being lived on one huge garbage dump. A clean sweep, that’s what India needs (also to do away with its excessive political garbage by the way). The tableau on the picture compares favourably with that image. ‘Why continue sweeping,…
