Tag: Cities
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Bastion walls
Bastion walls This is not the image that comes into your mind when you think of cosmopolitan Mumbai, brimming over with life. It looks more like a closed bastion that has armed itself against the seething waves of dangerously high tides. I love old walls with their weather-beaten faces. They breathe history, tell stories, let…
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Holy tiles
Holy tiles Compared to the ISKCON temple of last week’s post, this nearby little roadside shrine looks rather cheap and shabby. Still, it probably represents Indian popular aesthetics better than its majestic neighbour. It has taken me awhile but I have come to appreciate this kind of simple religious display. The daring colour combination (like…
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AESCON
AESCON When I walked into the compound of the ISKCON temple at Chowpatty in Mumbai, I must confess I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. I don’t think much of ISKCON’s aescon but this temple is worth looking at. Beautiful materials, good craftsmanship, no trouble or expense spared. It activated my own aesthetic consciousness…
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Two or three
Two or three Sometimes I can be perfectly happy with two, at other times it has to be three. So it seems. If it had been two I would not have annoyed you with this picture, would not have taken it in the first place. Three makes all the difference here. See how beautifully they…
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Venice upside down
Venice upside down It’s always a lovely sight: the washing lines laden with clean laundry, stretched taut between houses on opposite sides of narrow streets in the old quarters of southern Europe. But might we ask you to be a little more considerate of others next time, dear lady (or gentleman) doing the washing, when…
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Ensemble of limbs
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…
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Kerala revisited
Kerala revisited When I think of Kerala, images from the early years of my life as a filmmaker-anthropologist come to mind. In the 1970s and early 1980s, my connection with India centred on Kerala. Spread over numerous visits, I spent at least a year there, if not longer. And although I have been back to…
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Grassphalt
Grassphalt Living is adapting. Nature is good at it. Humans can manage quite well too, but at what price! In their ambition to rule the world they often don’t know where to draw the line. Photo of the week: Lyon, France 2008
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Gimcracks and knickknacks
Gimcracks and knickknacks or: a girl’s paradise An entire shop full of trinkets against a background of pink wall cloth and a tiger-like stripe pattern on the floor: a truly mouth-watering temptation! In Dutch we have the nice word ‘snuisterijen’ for this kind of trinkets, containing the two vowel sounds ‘ui’ and ‘ij’ that non-native speakers…
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Under the Sony roof
Under the Sony roof Why this photo appeals to me: Photo of the week: Sony roof, Berlin, Germany 2005
καιρός remembered 