Dancers at a traditional carnival to celebrate the departing winter and forthcoming spring in the village. The carnival is part of a centuries-old tradition called the shrovetide procession, which takes place in Eastern Bohemia near the end of winter and before Christian Lent. Experts trace the event, also known as Masopust, with its vibrant colours and masks, to pre-Christian paganism
Photograph: Petr David Josek/AP
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TRAVERSE CITY — When the Michigan Wolverines football team scored a victory at the Rose Bowl season semifinals on Jan. 1, Traverse City aerial photographer Tyler Leipprandt achieved his own triumphant accomplishment.
Leipprandt snapped an iconic photo of a U.S. Air Force B-2 stealth bomber flying over 95,000 fans at the Pasadena, California stadium during pregame activities. Minutes after posting the photo during half-time, the image was picked up by ESPN and quickly went viral. Before long it showed up on Pure Michigan and major news sites. Leipprandt said the photo has since had tens of millions of views.
“The cherry on top was the Wolverines winning the national championship,” he said. “People want to remember the season in one photo — and that was it.”
After serving as a teacher for 11 years, Leipprandt and his family located to Traverse City in 2020 where he founded Michigan Sky Media. Capturing the Rose Bowl shot had been at the top of his bucket list. He had already photographed scenes dangling from the top of the Mackinac Bridge and had taken numerous shots above the Wolverines’ home stadium in Ann Arbor. He also shoots for the Traverse City Record-Eagle lifestyle publication, GT Scene.
Once he learned the team would compete at the Rose Bowl, he set a plan in action. Getting his dream shot became a dance between coordination, skill and luck. Leipprandt first set about chartering a helicopter. The chopper company took on the job of obtaining permits for the flyover in accordance with FAA temporary stadium flight restrictions.
“It wasn’t until the morning of the game that we got the final approval,” he said.
Leipprandt was accompanied by his brother Marshall, an Air Force veteran, who would shoot video. They arrived at the stadium with five cameras, just 10 minutes before the flyover. Chopper doors were removed allowing the photographer to lean out for a clear view.
The Air Force plane flew at a speed of 300 miles per hour at 2,000 feet. The chopper hovered at 4,000 feet.
“The stealth bomber flew over the mountains. It was very hard to see in the air and we didn’t want to miss the shot,” Leipprandt said. “The helicopter drifted too far, then, we were over the field at the last second.”
Leipprandt snapped 50 shots. “Right after I took it, I said ‘I got it. I got it. I got it’ — hoping it was in focus and the aircraft was positioned in a good spot.”
He leaned back in the copter and breathed a sigh of relief.
The popularity of the image resulted in hundreds of orders pouring into his business. He said the entire family is working to fulfill requests.
“Taking the number one photo on my bucket list on January 1, 2024, leaves me scratching my head about what I’d do next,” he said.
Still, he has the spark of a new dream.
“I’d like to have a collection of Big 10 stadiums and come out with a coffee table book.”
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One of the more creative and rewarding social activities open to adults over the age of 55 is photography, which is offered in a social setting by Moose Jaw’s own camera club. Photography helps enhance cognitive functions including memory, keeps the brain healthy and active, and boosts creativity.
The Moose Jaw Camera Club currently has around 35 active members and meets on the second Monday of each month from September to June at 7 p.m. The meeting place is the Cosmo Senior Citizens’ Centre, located at 235 Third Avenue Northeast across from Crescent Park in Moose Jaw’s historic downtown.
The club operates with the mission of fostering an appreciation for photography as an art form.
“You’re capturing a moment in time when you take a photo. There’s a great satisfaction (in that) – at least for me there is,” said Wanda Hudson, the club’s membership manager and assistant programming committee member.
At the camera club, members come together to exchange information and share in a mutual learning activity. Newer photographers are given an opportunity to learn from seasoned and experienced members, and a range of optional outings help give focus to the learning experience.
Several of the club’s members even get the opportunity to have their works showcased on the east wall at Carol’s Catering, located at 820 North Service Road.
When members of the camera club were asked about their reasons for joining, the most common response was to interact with like-minded people. This included a frequent mention of the social aspect of the club, as well as the shared sense of camaraderie.
Other members were simply interested in photography, and many wanted to learn new camera techniques or methods.
Two members said they enjoyed the guest speakers who regularly attend meetings, and others mentioned the club’s activities. In one of the club’s previous activities, balloons were inflated and then popped, while members who had a camera set up on a tripod took a shot at capturing the exact moment the balloon exploded.
In one outing, Hudson recalled a memorable experience where she and a few members attempted to photograph the northern lights around Moose Jaw. After nearly giving up, the iconic lights began to glow at the exact time the members were packing up to leave. As a result of the night’s excursion, Hudson said she witnessed some of the most beautiful pictures of the northern lights she’s ever seen.
“There are all kinds of fun things we try. That’s where (members) get the hands-on (experience) and (try) new things they haven’t done,” she said.
This year’s upcoming events include:
“The last two (members) that signed up at our last meeting were a new couple that moved to town (and were) anxious to perfect their cameras, take pictures and learn things. I think they are retiring here, so it’s going to be a fun pastime for them,” Hudson added. The club offers an exceptional retirement hobby for anyone expressing an interest in photography.
More information can be found online at TheMooseJawCameraClub.com or in one of the club’s brochures.
To inquire about upcoming events or to apply as a member, contact either Wanda Hudson at 306-631-7440 or Leonard Ber at 306-693-7865.
In an impressive display of celestial photography, Miguel Claro, a renowned Portuguese photographer, authored a remarkable time-lapse video of a solar prominence eruption. His expertise as the official astrophotographer for the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve and as a Photo Ambassador for the European Southern Observatory is evident in his latest capture of solar activity from February 22, 2022.
A solar prominence is essentially a large loop of electrified gas that follows magnetic fields emanating from the sun, sometimes reaching great heights that dwarf the Earth in comparison. These plasma-filled loops are somewhat mysterious to solar scientists, who continue to investigate their origins.
Claro’s dedication on the day of the event led to him altering his camera setup in order to capture a wider view of the rapidly expanding solar event. The final time-lapse movie he produced presents about 2 hours and 15 minutes of solar activity in exquisite 4K resolution, offering a rare glimpse of our star’s dynamic surface and its colossal scale.
As the time approaches for the next total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, Claro’s work provides inspiration for amateur astronomers and photographers. However, it’s crucial to remember that photography of the sun requires the use of proper solar filters to prevent damage to both equipment and eyesight. High-quality telescopes with solar filtering capabilities, like the Unistellar Equinox 2, are recommended for those who wish to safely capture solar phenomena.
Summary: Miguel Claro, a professional astrophotographer, captured a significant solar eruption on February 22, 2022. This detailed solar prominence time-lapse highlights Claro’s skill and reminds future eclipse seekers of the necessity for proper solar filtration in photography.
FAQ Section for “Astrophotographer Miguel Claro Captures a Solar Prominence Eruption”
What did Miguel Claro capture on February 22, 2022?
Miguel Claro captured a time-lapse video of a solar prominence eruption. This video compresses around 2 hours and 15 minutes of solar activity into a high-resolution 4K movie showcasing the dynamic nature of the sun’s surface.
Who is Miguel Claro?
Miguel Claro is a renowned Portuguese photographer who is the official astrophotographer for the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve and a Photo Ambassador for the European Southern Observatory.
What is a solar prominence?
A solar prominence is a large loop of charged gas, or plasma, that extends outward from the sun, following its magnetic field lines. Such loops can reach heights many times the size of Earth and are a topic of study for solar scientists.
Why is proper equipment important when photographing solar events?
Using proper solar filters is essential to prevent damage to both the photography equipment and the observer’s eyesight. High-quality telescopes like the Unistellar Equinox 2 with built-in solar filtering capabilities are recommended for safely capturing solar phenomena.
How does Claro’s work relate to the upcoming total solar eclipse?
Claro’s work, particularly his recent capture of the solar prominence eruption, serves as an inspiration for amateur astronomers and photographers planning to observe and record the next total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. It also emphasizes the importance of using proper solar filtration to safely photograph the sun.
Key Terms and Definitions:
– Astrophotographer: A photographer who specializes in capturing images of astronomical objects and events.
– Solar Prominence: A large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun’s surface, often in a loop shape, composed of plasma.
– Time-lapse Video: A video created by taking a sequence of frames at set intervals to record changes that take place slowly over time and then playing the frames back at normal speed.
– Solar Filter: A special filter designed to safely observe and photograph the sun by reducing its brightness and blocking harmful ultraviolet and infrared radiation.
Suggested Related Links:
– European Southern Observatory
– International Dark-Sky Association (While not the direct link to Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, this is the main organization for dark sky preservation, which may be of interest.)
Roman Perkowski is a distinguished name in the field of space exploration technology, specifically known for his work on propulsion systems for interplanetary travel. His innovative research and designs have been crucial in advancing the efficiency and reliability of spacecraft engines. Perkowski’s contributions are particularly significant in the development of sustainable and powerful propulsion methods, which are vital for long-duration space missions. His work not only pushes the boundaries of current space travel capabilities but also inspires future generations of scientists and engineers in the quest to explore the far reaches of our solar system and beyond.
MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) — Jenna Wells meets the veteran photographers taking part in the ‘Veterans in Focus’ exhibit at the Milwaukee VA Medical Center showing the healing power of recreation therapy.
“I use a digital camera in a helicopter or aeroplane,” says Edward Burtynsky. “It’s moving fast and it’s bouncy and shaky, and I’m taking hundreds of pictures, because if something comes your way and you don’t get it, you’ll never get back to it no matter how good the pilot is. You need to be ready to make that picture when it happens. If you miss it, that’s it.”
The 68-year-old Canadian photographer, the great chronicler of how heavy industry is transforming our planet, is at home in The Blue Mountains, Ontario, explaining how he went from setting up painstaking shots on a tripod with a large format camera like early pioneers such as Ansel Adams, to embracing new technology. “All of a sudden, it was eureka,” he says. Yet the precision he learned as a young man still informs every image, and it’s something that a generation that has grown up with camera phones wouldn’t understand. “In the late ’80s, it cost me about $60 to take one picture. I would walk around with an eight-by-ten camera, sometimes for two or three days, and not take a picture, if the light wasn’t right. But I would make notes: ‘OK, come back here at six o’clock’.”
The hard part – the fun part – he says, was finding a photograph worth taking; the rest was a puzzle to be solved about the best conditions in which to capture it. “It’s impossible to imagine why anybody would even care to have that discipline today. It’s so easy to make pictures and there’s no cost to it. I used to catch myself doing that – then I’d say, ‘Stop. You know better than that. Wait for the right moment’.”
This goes some way to explaining something that will become obvious when the largest ever show of Burtynsky’s work – Extraction/Abstraction – opens at London’s Saatchi Gallery next month. The images on display are some of the most “painterly” artworks one is likely to see anywhere this year. A river in Ontario is turned fauvist orange by iron oxide, salt pans in Gujarat dissolve into geometric patterns, and compressed oil drums recreate the density of the abstract expressionists.
They’re beautiful – and Burtynsky has sometimes been criticised for that beauty, because they are a document of how earth is being poisoned by industry, from the snow swirl of phosphates in a pond in Florida to the psychedelic toxic spillage that is destroying the Niger Delta.
Oil Bunkering #9, Niger Delta, Nigeria, 2016
Credit: Edward Burtynsky/Flowers Gallery, London
For more than 40 years, Burtynsky has been homing in on humanity’s environmental impact, beginning in the early 1980s, when on the back of a Canadian government grant of about £10,000, he spent four months travelling North America, “just me, my car and my camera and my thoughts”, photographing rock faces blasted for rail lines to cut through them. From the beginning, he recognised it was a “big enough idea” for a life’s work. Now he is one of the foremost artists to have captured the effects of the “Anthropocene” – the age of man’s dominance over the planet.
He understands the anger of radical climate activists who go so far as to advocate sabotage against the infrastructure of the oil industry. “It’s a well-placed anger,” he says. “We can’t let a small group of very wealthy people, who have an interest in maintaining that wealth, control the outcome of all life on the planet.” But nor, Burtynsky insists, should we be naively thinking “we can in one short period of time transition from fossil fuel dependency to alternative energy: it’s impossible.” Such a shift must avoid “destroying the fabric of society. If we destroy economies, and people can’t put a roof over their heads, then the environment doesn’t exist. It’s like, who cares? It’s my survival. If that’s the last pigeon and I can eat it, shoot the pigeon. Cease and desist is the naive position.”
It extends to industry, too. “The whole greening of the economy means we’re gonna be mining more than ever,” he says. “Lithium mining, cobalt mining, and then copper, nickel, iron ore, all of those things are key – I just went to photograph a rare earth mine – because we need the material to build the batteries and the cars and motors and all the things that are going to electrify our world.”
Edward Burtynsky
Credit: Seth Fluker
He’s chatting over video call from his house in one of Canada’s top skiing destinations, where almost for the first time this winter, there has been snow. Up to now, “it’s just rained,” he says, “an insane amount of rain.” The blizzard, though, has put his plans for the day on ice. “I was supposed to go see my mom,” he says, but instead, “I’m just gonna stay home and eat what’s left in the fridge.”
Burtynsky’s mother Mary turns 100 in July. She is a survivor of the Holodomor of 1932-33 in Ukraine, one of the most heinous crimes of the 20th century, in which millions died of famine under Stalin. Grain from the region was used to feed the rest of the Soviet Union, but not distributed locally. “My mother talked about going to bed hungry,” he says, “and eking out [food] day after day.” She watched people starve to death. During the Second World War, her village was occupied by the Nazis and she was sent to Germany as slave labour, ending up in a displacement camp in Canada after the war. She later became a committed voice for Ukraine’s independence from Russia.
It was Burtynsky’s father, Peter – also a Ukrainian immigrant – who gave his son his first camera and later set up a darkroom at home that ignited the teenager’s passion for photography. By day, he worked on the welding line at the General Motors car plant in Toronto. It would lead to his death, when Burtynsky was just 15. His father developed cancer, the photographer believes, from working with PCBs – electrical insulating oils that are carcinogenic and can be absorbed through the skin. “Almost all of the men who worked on that line died,” he says. “He got cancer when he was 40 and then had a kidney removed, but by the time he was 43, it came back again and he died when he was 45.”
Burtynsky later got a summer job removing the PCBs from the factory to earn money to study photography. Throughout his father’s illness, Burtynsky had taken work alongside school to help support the family. “When my father was dying, he said, ‘you’re the oldest male in the family, this is your family now’. By the time I was 20, I had probably done 20 different jobs.”
Detail from Rock of Ages # 15, Active Granite Section, E.L. Smith Quarry, Barre, Vermont, 1992
Credit: Edward Burtynsky/Nicholas Metivier Gallery
Burtynsky gained early success, winning gallery representation in New York when he was still in his 20s. But he soon realised that even artists he admired had to take other work to earn a living. He opened a photographic laboratory in Toronto that is still going strong today – but for several years, it sucked up all his energy, until a collector finally asked when he was going to produce more photographs. Burtynsky had an idea of shooting stone quarries but couldn’t spare the time. “And he just said, ‘I’ll pre-buy whatever you do.’” It restarted his career.
It’s important to be able to sell your work, he stresses. “I didn’t want to rely on grants. I didn’t want to rely on individuals.” But does the commercialism of the art world limit his capacity to be radical? “There is a class of art – call it the Jeff Koons or the [Damien] Hirst [class], where the game of the billionaires is creating a store of value in art, and somebody’s telling them, you need 10 per cent of your assets in art because it’s got a great return.” That’s not him, he insists. “I’ve always kept my work at a very accessible point in terms of dollars. Some galleries say, ‘We’re gonna really restrict the work you’re making, release five or six images a year, that’s it, but we want six figures or more to sell the work.’ I’ve always eschewed that. I’ve always put the pressure on myself to stay true to the way I want to work.”
In the early 1990s, larger prints of Burtynsky’s work could be snapped up for around £1,500; these days the smaller prints sell for roughly ten times that. But larger prints and what are regarded as iconic works can reach high prices, up to $100,000 (around £80,000) at auction. The market for his pictures helps him to travel the world, to rent a helicopter if he needs to, or hire assistants in environments where he doesn’t speak the language. Burtynsky’s “pretty persistent” when it comes to getting access, though some projects still elude him. He’s never been able to get into the Grasberg mine in Indonesia, for instance, where gold is extracted at an altitude of 10,000ft. And years of trying to get permission to shoot the Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia led to the Ministry of Industry expressing concern that his work is not very positive towards the industry.
Salinas #2, Cádiz, Spain, 2013
Credit: Edward Burtynsky/Flowers Gallery, London
It’s “hard to be positive” about climate change, he says. “We were slow to respond to the scale of the problem. Time is not our friend any more.” What does he make of Just Stop Oil protesters targeting galleries? “Museums are repositories of things from the past that we find valuable and want to preserve, and things in the present that we feel are important and want to preserve. To use that space for protests is damaging to the cultural fabric. It’s strictly for headlines, and, you know, here’s something that society finds valuable – and I’m going to disrespect that value. I don’t agree with it.”
Finding fault with how museums support themselves, too, has to be considered carefully, he believes. “Cultural institutions often live off the graces of individual donations, government support, corporate donations,” he says. “Culture has never been able to sustain itself.” At a certain level – such as having a loan with a particular bank, or an insurer with links to fossil fuels – “they are all implicated”, and indeed, so is each one of us. “The choice is hard. At a certain point, if every artist and arts organisation worldwide turns down hugely valuable funding, there’s an undeniable risk of them being starved out of existence.” He suggests that protesters’ energies “be shifted to the doorsteps of the most egregious”.
What of those who believe that global warming is overhyped or not even happening? “The problem, I find, is that it got politicised,” he says, and “the political system is, whatever the Left says, the political Right just has an allergic reaction to it and says the opposite. I’ve always said, Left or Right, it doesn’t matter, when a hurricane comes, everybody gets flattened.”
Burtynsky: Extraction/Abstraction is at the Saatchi Gallery, London SW3 (saatchigallery.com) from Feb 14 to May 6. Edward Burtynsky — New Works is at Flowers Gallery, London W1, from Feb 28 to Apr 6
A celebration of everyday life, from people going about their shopping or going to a football match, is going on display in a new photographic exhibtion.
A personal collection from Phil Loach, originally from Dudley and a professional photographer for newspapers in the Black Country, has been put together with an associated book.
The photographer passed away suddenly last year, his family said.
His work had been accepted for the book but he died before it was published, they said.
“He was a photographer through and through, and even around the house there was always a camera within easy reach,” said his wife Dot Byrne.
Starting at the Dudley Herald in 1969 he later worked at the County Express in Stourbridge rising to become chief photographer.
He also worked at Newsquest’s Stourbridge, Halesowen and Dudley News titles, and later for the Kidderminster Shuttle and Bromsgrove and Redditch Advertiser newspapers.
During his almost 50-year career he photographed a wide range of people including royalty, politicians, sports stars, and showbiz personalities.
He also took thousands of personal photographs and created a large private collection of documentary images.
His work had been accepted for publication by Café Royal books – an award-winning publisher of documentary photography, Mrs Byrne said.
“It didn’t get published while he was still with us, which is a big regret because it meant so much to him to have his work accepted,” she said.
“After Phil passed I really wanted to make sure that the plans that were in place came to, to make sure that his work was seen, and what he’d wanted to do was done,” Mrs Byrne added.
“He was a people-watcher, he loved photographing people in everyday situations,” Mrs Byrne added.
“He was an observer, he saw things that other people wouldn’t see let alone have the nerve to photograph.”
The show will run from 13 to 24 February at the RBSA Gallery, St Paul’s Square, Birmingham.
The Black Country 1970s-1980s is published by Café Royal Books.
More of his work can be seen in the archive which he left behind on his website.
There’s a lot of accepted wisdom in photography that’s actually without merit, whether it’s information from outdated textbooks or experience passed on by people who misunderstood photographic principles (or, indeed, both of the above).
I recently came across this video on YouTube by Mads Peter Iversen, an award-winning fine art landscape photographer from Denmark. Taking aim at everything from “landscape lenses” to lens compression, Iversen’s video is titled “Stop This Photography Nonsense!” and sets out to correct some of the misinformation as he sees it.
“Within photography there are a lot of sayings that are often being presented as facts or a rule, and they’re just being repeated again and again and again – but in the end they are simply just nonsense, and we will be better off if we simply just stop saying it,” he says.
The video is embedded below, and is well worth a watch! I won’t spoil the other nonsense on his list, but I’d like to share some of his thoughts on the old “underexpose to preserve highlights” rule…
“The next nonsense I think we should stop saying is that you need to expose to the left, or you need to underexpose, because it’s easier to recover the shadows than it is recovering the highlights.
“Yes you can blow the highlights, but you can most certainly also blow the shadows, and there aren’t as much detail in those underexposed shadows as you would want to think there is. Yes, these days we do have amazing noise reduction software, but you still need to just make a proper exposure – it’s actually really that simple.
“So as I’ve explained in other videos, you need to expose to the right but you do not want to clip the highlights. Overexposing the photo and clipping the highlights are two different things. You can most certainly overexpose a photo and then bring down all that information in post-processing, so you actually do want to overexpose the photo but you do not want to clip the highlights.
“And it’s very important that we put those two things together in the same sentence: overexpose, but don’t clip the highlights. Because then you actually get more information onto your sensor you can then bring it down in post-processing and you then have a cleaner photo.
“To get a proper exposure is very very simple… there’s no right or wrong histogram, there’s just an optimal exposure. And right now as you can see as I decrease my shutter speed I get a darker and darker and darker photo. And obviously I don’t want to underexpose it – yes I can bring it up in Photoshop or Lightroom, but then I just get a noisy photo.
“I just want to make a proper exposure to begin with, which is about here, so underexposing a photo on purpose because it’s easier to bring out the shadows is just nonsense. Just get a proper exposure from the beginning, expose to the right, but don’t clip the highlights – it’s that simple.”
Check out my video that explains what is exposure in photography. And since Iversen doesn’t like calling them the best landscape lenses, take a look at the best wide-angle lenses that can also be used to shoot landscapes!
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For these Sunday posts in January, I want to listen to how people with immigration or refugee experiences find sustenance and purpose in difficult times.
The women in Rania Matar’s photographs are self-assured, reflective, and beautiful. Some appear downcast or mournful; others are slyly amused. Some gaze directly at the camera; others stare into the distance or look inward, eyes closed. Around them are signs that all is not right in the world – razor wire, broken glass, ocean trash, the moldering carpet of a once-glorious theater. In various poses, the women claim the spaces around them – climbing, reclining, floating, peering through archways, standing atop ruins, or simply posing with confidence. The one thing they are not is passive.
To back up a step, I’ve been fascinated recently with the artwork of Rania Matar a Lebanese-Palestinian-American photographer who splits her time between Boston, New York, and Beirut. I found her work through Sukoon, an excellent journal of Arab-themed art and literature founded by my friend Rewa Zeinati. Rania’s subjects are primarily Lebanese, Palestinian, and American women. I couldn’t help but view her work in light of the violence in Gaza and Lebanon, and I reached out to ask if she would talk about her portraits.
She immediately explained that “portraits” doesn’t fully capture her collaborative approach. She and her subjects choose locations together, explore them together, and, in her recent work in Beirut, frequently find settings that reflect the impacts of decades of war.
“We always go somewhere and end up somewhere better than we expected,” she said in a phone call. “There’s an element of risk-taking, whether we’re climbing into places or getting in the water. I’m in awe of how much these women are willing to do.
“In Lebanon, there’s an element of danger that’s part of life, period. So, taking smaller risks during the shoot seems to connect with our relationship with the place.”
Rania was born in Lebanon and left when she was twenty, nine years after civil war broke out in 1975. She began her professional life as an architect, but grew serious about photography after 9/11, wanting to portray her daughters and other Arab women with more nuance and humanity than the “us vs. them” narratives she saw in the media. The work led to multiple exhibitions, a Guggenheim fellowship, and four books. Her most recent project, “50 Years Later – Where Do I Go?” explores the ongoing fallout of the Lebanese Civil War.
“It defined who I am,” she said. “I left the country because of it, and I feel like history keeps repeating itself. Now these women who are the age I was when I left are often scrambling to leave the country. Every person has a personal story in relating to their country, but it’s also part of a collective story. Even the women who don’t live in Lebanon anymore, they keep coming back, like I do.”
Her father was Palestinian, and I asked how the war in Gaza has affected her art. It’s too soon to tell, she said. But no violence is ever fully isolated. The destruction from decades of war, the devastating 2020 explosion at the Port of Beirut, and her father’s death last year all find expression in her photographs, she said.
One of her most arresting photos, to me, shows a woman standing on the backs of seats in an ornate but decrepit theater. The woman, Rhea, is a performance artist, and the setting is the Piccadilly Theatre in Beirut, a prominent arts venue in the 1960s and 70s. Despite repeated plans and promises to restore the theatre, it continues to decay.
And yet, for all the loss the photo portrays, there’s something disruptive, even playful, in the way Rhea strides atop the seats in a flowing dress, her arms splayed as if considering taking flight.
“Too often we see women from the Arab world portrayed as oppressed or illiterate,” Rania told me. “To me, they’re goddesses. In this work I’m making, these women have nothing oppressed about them.”
Another young woman contacted Rania online, embodying contradictions she found fascinating. She wore a black head covering yet wanted to be portrayed to the world. Her Instagram profile read “Follow me, I’m toxic.” They met in a high-rise apartment overlooking the Mediterranean coast. The woman, Alae, holds a small mirror that captures her focused gaze while the cityscape lies beyond. Just to the right of her mirror is the grain silo damaged in the 2020 explosion, a site of horrific destruction bathed in warm sunlight and set against the tranquil sea.
I asked Rania the question that has animated this blog series: What gives you sustenance, artistically or personally, during difficult times? But I also realized the question was unnecessary. Like my Ukrainian friend Olesia Markovic, my Afghan neighbor Atiqullah Ayubi, and the exiled Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut, Rania answers not through ideas but through her life. Her work, and the trust she builds in creating it, shines light against dehumanization.
One last thought. My favorite work of Rania’s is not a photograph but a short video she posted at the new year. (Take a quick look–but then come back!) In it, a woman appears quivering in a mirror lying in shallow water on a sandy beach. A wave washes over, turning her reflection into a shimmering blur. Her likeness begins to reappear until another wave washes over.
It delighted me with all the possible metaphors at play: We’re united in an ocean of humanity. The only constant is change. Clarity may last for only an instant. And celebrating that flicker of clarity–that stunning flash of light in the water–is worthwhile.
But I’m also reminded that what you see depends on where you stand. So I wanted to know what Rania sees in the video.
“To me, it’s about the new year and things beginning and ending,” she said. “But it’s also about the Mediterranean and about erasure and erasing. I kept relating it back to what’s happening in Gaza. I felt like it works on different levels.
“I’m hoping that people can see that in a lot of these images. I don’t want them to be sad pictures of destruction. You see enough of that. For me, it’s also about creativity and being present in the moment and having agency over it. It’s about putting your imprint on the place.”
Photos courtesy Rania Matar. See more at raniamatar.com.
Rania’s photo by Helena Goessens.
Stéphane Duroy spent nearly two years in the late 1980s photographing west African immigrants in Paris, in particular in the Îlot Chalon, a district behind the Gare de Lyon that had been home to different waves of arrivals in the city – Italian, Chinese, Moroccan – for two centuries. His series Harlem-sur-Seine – the title an ironic reference to the progressive jazz-age integration of the 1920s – won him a World Press Photographer award.
Revisiting that series now, in a new book of Duroy’s pictures, is to be cast into a place of extreme dereliction. From the early 1980s, when the Îlot Chalon had become notorious as the centre of the heroin trade in the city, the Parisian authorities had partly demolished the housing in the area, in an effort to make it unliveable, and prepare for urban renewal that involved a number of chain hotels and an extension of the station. Two drug-related murders in 1984 were used as the pretext to accelerate this policy. A New York Times report from that year suggested that the area, deliberately abandoned by the authorities, was home to 6,000 squatters, most of them Senegalese, who “coexisted with gangs and drug dealers”.
Duroy’s pictures got inside those precarious lives to suggest a whole language of desperation and survival. Children look out from bare rooms at bulldozers; washing is strung from windows of condemned blocks; men pound punchbags in improvised gyms; the cafes and the boucheries and the boulangeries are all boarded up. Sometimes, as in this picture, it is surreal detail that tells that story: the women’s improvised shower caps may protect them from Parisian rain, but the sodden phone book and the resignation in those eyes appear to render that day’s mission once again redundant.
Stéphane Duroy: Photo Pocheis published by Editions Actes Sud (€14.50); a retrospective of Duroy’s work is at Galerie Vu, Paris until 23 February
