Category: Europe
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Bird’s-eye view (2)
Both fair ladies have chosen to dress in black – completely or principally -, in stark contrast with their white skins. The one sits free and relaxed on the edge of the pavement. The coffee cup next to her makes it likely that she works in the gallery behind her back and that she has…
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Bird’s-eye view (1)
As you can see, I was interested here in the black and white pattern of the floor in this courtyard. It is made of small round pebbles, a kind of simple mosaic that can be observed in some places in Greece. This particular courtyard is inside the monastery of Panormitis on the island of Symi.…
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Like a dream in transit
Planes came and went. Lost in thought I was looking at the loading and unloading that was going on outside in front of me. Suddenly the shape of a young woman slid into my field of vision and stayed there, at arm’s length. Before I could think “Move on please, you’re blocking my view”, I…
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The universe in a forest
I took this picture in the same forest as last week’s pictures. I was intrigued by the lit up green patches – leaves and reflections of leaves – in the middle of this very dark pool of water. But only when seeing the photo afterwards on the screen I started noticing all the other little…
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Primaeval forests
Streams and pools of water in deep, dark forests heighten their primaeval atmosphere. It takes my thoughts back to ancient times, hundreds of millions of years ago, when life originated on our planet; life that slowly evolved since then. In the right corner of the photo one can see a part of my own shadow.…
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Coincidence
I walk under a porch towards a square and see a tree. The porch neatly frames the tree. A woman crosses the square and something I can’t see catches her eye. She slows down, stops, one foot in front of the other, and takes a picture. My eye, the woman, the tree: three points in…
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ENOIKIAZETAI
In the spring of 2013 I happened to stay for a day or two in Livadia, a medium-sized town in Greece, in the vicinity of Mount Parnassos. I had time to explore the city and it struck me that the cafes and terraces were teeming with people, young and old. “They don’t let themselves get…
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The time path
At the beginning of this millennium the Swiss city of Neuchâtel laid out a path through time in the nearby woods – Le Sentier du Temps. Its starting point was meant to mark the origin of our planet Earth and the end point our present time. Each step of one meter was equal to one…
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Equestrian statues
Statues of national heroes on horseback, I don’t think much of them. Not of the statues, nor of the heroes. They generally make me yawn with boredom, or at best incite me to ridicule. So when I saw this equestrian statue in Vienna, I felt an urge to search for the right angle to make…
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Kind-hearted nationalism
Swiss alpenhorns are relics of the past. Just like the smoke signals of Red Indians, they once were used to communicate swiftly with inhabitants of nearby valleys and mountain slopes, long before the invention of the telephone. But their main purpose seems to have been for herdsmen to call their free-grazing cattle back to the…
καιρός remembered 