Category: Middle East
-
No fire, no smoke
No fire, no smoke No smoke curling up out of the kitchen chimneys.The sultans have long gone,their palace has become a museum.And the tree, delighted at having been saved,happily twists its branches this way and that. Photo of the week: Chimneys on Sultan’s kitchen, Topkapi palace, Istanbul, Turkey 2003
-
Light upon light
Light upon light Rays of the setting sunilluminating spacewithout and within.Light …Space …Peace … Photo of the week: Sultan Ahmet Camii, Blue Mosque, Istanbul, Turkey 2003
-
Priene
Priene The temple of Athena in Priene was built in the Ionic order, clearly recognizable from the shape of the capitals with two volutes (scrolls). In the course of time the whole temple had collapsed or was destroyed. All the pillars were down and their drums were spread around. Only in the sixties of the…
-
Drum field
Drum field After last week’s Gerasa-Jerash, another example of past and present next to each other, 24 centuries apart. In the foreground, drums of pillars of the temple of Athena in the ancient Greek city of Priene, Turkey. In the background, the neatly organized agricultural fields of the plain below. Archaic Priene had a sea…
-
Gerasa-Jerash
Gerasa-Jerash Only a stone’s throw away: Walk down the South Decumanus road of Roman Gerasa into present day Jerash – or vice versa – and you bridge a time span of two thousand years in just a few minutes. Actually this switching in time is nothing extraordinary. It happens with every visit to historical monuments…
-
Attractive simplicity
Attractive simplicity Happiness is hard to find when living in abject poverty. Or at the other end of the line where one bathes in abject luxury. Fortunately there is a middle ground where true happiness can be found. Running into a rudimental little terrace after a hike around a lake. Listening to a man playing…
-
Migrating birds
Migrating birds The play of reeds, water and light in last week’s photo pleased me because of its abstract nature. In the same way Devrim Erbil must have been pleased by the sight of a chaotic swarm of migrating birds and took it up as the subject of his painting. Abstraction inspired by nature. Photo…
-
And her name is freedom
And her name is freedom She saw me looking intently at the reliefs on a wall of Persepolis. She asked if I liked them. She was sitting on a bench and offered me some nuts. I sat down next to her and we started talking, about the art, about my country, about hers. She was…
-
Selfie girls
Selfie girls 1979 – ….They are waiting for the moment that the second date can be filled in – and the chapter of the Islamic Revolution in Iran be closed.The generation of the young seems ready for it. As for them a new chapter starts tomorrow. The chapter of a free and secular Iran. Photos…
-
Learn young …
Learn young … Growing up in the 1950s in the catholic south of the Netherlands, my primary school was run by friars. For girls there was a convent school. Seeing these white-hooded, charmingly looking girls I get visions of hundreds of schools full of them, condemned by the Mullahs to become budding little nuns in…
καιρός remembered 