True Grit

Breakfast coffee in Konya, Türkiye. Ever wondered why Turks are legendary warriors? Here's the secret atop the fork I scraped through that stuff. Totally delicious (and chewable) coffee! 

 

Are Cultures the Sum of What Their Fish Won't See?

Freud taught, “Cultures are defined by what they ban.”

Fresh eyes see the invisible. 

Cartoon: 

Guy passing fish tank sez to its denizens, "How's the water today?" 

Fish think, "What water?"

On a morning stroll you veer around a trash dumpster and continue but that big green metal thing goes unlogged in your memory. Later you pass a fire hydrant, a couple of poles sporting graffiti, a woman carrying groceries, and you step over a puddle: none of them get  logged in either. The ordinary's as invisible to us as water to the thinking fish. 

Fresh eyes see the invisible. 

Here's  a busy Istanbul July mid-day... Could it be anywhere? Vienna? Boston? Kampala? Hong Kong? Maybe it's Ushuaia, Calarney, or Nome? Nope, the details in this one image rule all of them away. Perhaps  Havana? Well, this summer woman, sandaled, scarfed, and coated won't fit there. And the corn vendor's probably not a common fixture in any of those places. Yet... the details that we see are invisible to Turks. An Istanbul photographer'd ignore this moment... her brain'd dump it into a "commonplace" bin. 

Fresh eyes see extra-ordinary details: Stuff that's so Turkish that Turks don't.... perhaps can't ... see it. Their eyes are blind to the green bricks, a licensed cobbed-corn vendor, and the boys gyrating about their bundled-up caretaker (mother? nanny? guardian? herder?). Cultures are revealed by their unexceptional. moments.

Show this image to a guy from Central Pennsylvania and he'll wonder why that woman's scarfed then snuggly  buttoned into a winter coat while the many men are summer clothed. And the answer might take centuries to unravel.

To me Lancaster, my home in Pennsylvania, is like that - what it doesn't see my mind can't ponder. Just wondering... Are cultures the sum of what their fish can't see? 

Ladies Do Tea: Knowledge Versus Wisdom

Relearning Photoshop craft is 33% boring, 43% frustrating, and 24% fascinating. Is this like Physical Therapy:  PT for the mind? Is this a sort of MT? 

Nudged by friends to send them samples of Turkey thoughts... the gap between knowledge and wisdom's growing larger. Our 2011 visit created a legacy of thousands of images...which is a reservoir of knowledge. A handful of them got extracted back then and can be accessed on the right if you tap on keyword "Turkey". Hundreds sat, never again visited, as newer stuff sang its own  luring song. 

This little Turkey MT project triggers an urge to poke mental plungers through my brain's constipated dendrite piping. Y'know, to kind of clean the shit outta my mind's pathways. As you can see from these last few posts, I'm visiting previously worked images to crank down my habit of over-processing: To remove the way it blocks the bridge between knowledge and wisdom. 

Anyone recall The Lovin' Spoonful's...

Hot town, summer in the city

Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty

Been down, isn't it a pity

Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half-dead

Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head...

What's "Ladies Do Tea" tell me about Turkey?

As the curtain opens... 

1. Setting: It was around 3pm, the hottest part of any day - and on July 20th in Istanbul ... hot means HOT!

 

2. The set was the storefront of an ancient two story building on an off-street about a block from perhaps the world's largest bazaar. 

3. The set's details are wonder filled. On the first floor a step-down into a small business called "Corner Cafe", its name splendidly displayed in an elaborate, hand tooled, wooden frame, in English. Look at the detailed lamps, the aquarium  piled with fresh oranges, the lamp stanchion, and the permanence of the detailed  table and chairs. 

4. And the second floor window passes through to its mate on the far wall. Is that a private apartment up there? And is the café's interior narrow as its second floor? Yet it looks so upscale. Which implies that with little room for tables, that the Corner Café needs to make its money on markup rather than volume.

 

5. Or something else... See the window beneath the sign? That appears to be a fine silken sundress hanging on display. Is this something other than a café, or something less? Surely this single outdoor table cannot be the sole source of this place's revenue? 

6. Then there are the two separate stories: one of Ladies Who Do Tea arranging themselves downstage and another of the busy waiter. 

7. And those ladies? See the new arrival there stage left in her elaborate scarf, ankle-long dress, and is she wearing a tag? Is she on break from a conference, convention, or forum? Is she visitor or resident of the city? Again, recall that it is the hottest hour of the day and look at her dark, long sleeves and head scarf. How warm? You know it's sunny: How? See in her left hand? She's about to drop her sun glasses. Is her costume a cultural uniform of some kind which armors her against streets hotter than a match head?

8. And then there's the other woman... in jeans! She's not head scarfed, yet wearing a sweater? So much going on in the silent film... How to explain the rules which must require these two distinguished ladies to flout the thermometer. And yet in a historically patriarchal society... to do it publicly without male companionship? 

9. How to tell they are distinguished? Their expressions, quality of their makeup, clothes, demeanor at a pricier café and their body language indicating both education and a familiarity with the place and their place in it.

10. And finally, there're the dramatic difference in the ladies' costumes. Hair scarves versus jeans? BTW, enlarge the image to look carefully at the new arrival's head, there's a large hair-bump covered in the back.

Is this a picture of a country well into cultural transition? Or are secularism and modernism in a tense struggle against tradition with victory unpredictable? That image's a rectangle of knowledge which makes it craft... the question: Does it ignite wisdom which makes it art? Hmmm.... 

A whole lotta MT's going on...

 

Drama!

 

To understand Turkey start with the dominant reality... the awesomeness of Islam. Almost everything in Turkey whirls about it. And symbolically... The Great Blue Mosque, without subtlety, tells the world much what St. Peter's Basilica proclaims from the other Rome... There is a huge difference between theocratic and political passion. Increasingly, Liberal democracy is in tension both with the legacy of St. Peter's in the West and this triumphal Blue Mosque in the East. 

Miss that point and neither Christian nor Islamic culture is penetrable. 

The Date • Duden Waterfall Park • Antalya Turkey

 

OK... IT's been a while since I've been able to do image making. Long story... short version - one day, a couple of years ago, I returned from a vacation and woke to discover that I could no longer work any Adobe products! Scary, huh? So I figured that page of my life had turned and the other pages filled my attention. Last March, friends at a party asked about my impression of Turkey, especially when they learned we'd visited that country back in 2011. The Turkey visit snagged my attention and I've tried to follow that nation ever since. 

Culture trumps everything! It overwhelms economics, politics, and and... virtually the commands of every institution. In fact causation works the other way... kneading a people's institutions to its own commands. To understand (if possible) others... Well, study their culture.

So I've returned to those Turkish images, this time to present a sense of an extraordinary people who live upon history's busiest land bridge... between Asia and Europe....and of course Africa. Moreover Turkey's in a tough neighborhood - surrounded by some of the world's proudest yet unique cultures. Turks are tough which means their culture is muscular. 

Anyway, I slowly reviewed Turkey pix I've already posted, and am beginning to seek more of the Turkish culture from other of the hundreds of images which sat awaiting my return. And once again there was "The Date". Frankly I think I over processed that moment in the past. This time an ancient adage seemed to silently scream, "†he eyes are the window to the soul." 

What's the back story here? Where are the clues? That's the way great poets and novelists work... Your turn... There is, I sense, a universal story of courting up there. You want to try to tell it? First person? Or maybe as a narrator? Or???? 

Or this story's narrative is totally in that young woman's eyes. There's a feeling that's got to be universal among women... Am I right ladies?

Enjoy... 

Majorette: PreSpring/PostWinter 1974

St. Paddy's Day • Holyoke, MA • 1974

Forty-seven years ago three boys climbed a tree. Today they're what? Late 50s? Forty-seven years ago a pretty red-head led her high-school band up the street beneath that tree. She was probably 17 then and they were maybe eleven? Did she notice them? Is this the only memory of that moment? 

Holyoke once boasted the country's longest St. Patrick's Day Parade. March in Western Massachusetts is brisk. St. Paddy's Day sits right in the crack between spring and winter. Temps that day were probably in the high forties with a medium breeze. Now those weren't ancient times. People had color TVs and there were games to watch warmly at home. And there were movies to see and malls to lurk. It wasn't a once-upon-a-time when parades monopolized BIG TIME mass entertainment. Even so, crowds still lined up to watch this majorette prance up Holyoke's main street behind a pick-up-truck float carting the High School's queen and court. 

A while ago I found a slide-filled Kodak Carousel. Most were Ektachrome or Agfachrome -  films that probably aren't made anymore. I grabbed this shot with my Nikon, a machine that did not focus itself. Uh-huh, I had to do that. And you can see how poorly. Plus I had to set the exposure for what I think was even in bright sun light a lazy-slow-cool-contrasty film. Nailed it, right?

Yeah, I wish this decisive moment was tack sharp, but what memories are? How well can you access mental memory cards? Better than that one up there? Congrats to you. This image was a doorway back to that moment. A bunch of us carted lawn chairs, babies,  blankets, and coolers of food and beer to a stretch of cracking sidewalk in a town that was old even then. Yeah, I remember clapping and hooting and dancing and singing and laughing. Then driving to someone's home to keep going into the brisk Western New England night.

Life is fine today. We're happy, my wife and I. We have new, if different friends. Those olden days of parade parties haven't happened in a long time. Like Ektachrome, their saturation's faded inside my head. But... while memories are soft as that image up there, the shapes are warm, and smile making. And for an instant, I can look at those boys, that young woman, and understand something about boys and girls and parades and friends. And realize that the hazy picture's not the only memory of that moment.

Nice.

 

Unsustainable Moments

Eveready Diner • Rhinebeck, NY • October, 2008

 Once upon a time the United States was the only major industrial nation not rubbled by World War. No, not wars...  War! The gap between the first and second halves of the European Psychotic Break was a couple of decades... just enough time to reload and suck the Asian Pacific into its madness. And so it came to pass that world wealth got transferred here in exchange for jobs, finished capital, and consumer goods. 

The bargain was unsustainable. As bright, educated peoples restored their tools... like factories, dams, power grids, roads, rails, airports, institutions, and competitive sanity – trade imbalances shrank and inevitably turned against America. But the 50 or 60 year capital advantage created a golden moment for US consumers got drunken on their temporary possession of so much of the world's wealth. 

Speaking of unsustainability, American union monopsonists struck equally unsustainable deals with their monopolist employer/partners to achieve average wage heights built upon the myth of eternal world pauperism. US labor shared in the flow of world wealth to its shores with no threat from cheaper labor that lacked competitive tools. 

Now they have the tools. 

Ever heard of arbitrage? It means buying cheap and selling dear. Buy stuff made for less in Romania, sell it in London where incomes, hence prices, are higher. Like that. Today financial capital dispatches tools to low wage world spots to produce goods or services for a lot less than American companies whose workers have identical tools but with legacy high wage contracts (and government mandated additional labor costs) unavailable to Romanians, Ethiopians, Peruvians, British, or of course, Chinese. 

Investment capital is the most mobile factor of production. It moves at quantum speeds through digital pipelines. Errors in predicting arbitrage advantages are spotted and overcome, by computers, at light's velocity.  And while actual production and employment follow those directions with a lag... their vast movements are inexorable. 

See the October 2008 Eveready Diner up there? It's a relic of "Mid-Century" America's momentary competitive advantage. Unlike anytime before in history, regular people... typical families... drove there and in air conditioned comfort chose from enormous menus. 

October 2008 was about a month after America came aware that its financial iceberg had calved off over a quarter of its value. Access to financial capital got squeezed in what was to become known as the Great Recession. The lag between financial loss and real economic activity was about to bring down a curtain. The Eveready Diner (which may or may not be gone) stood on quaking economic ground - a 50s lyric of an unsustainable time when thanks to Europe's Psychotic Break - even the poorest consumers in the US were better off than their counterparts anytime in the history of history. 

A Shadow of the Ancient Ways: Paris 6

Brisk winter afternoon.

It was 1887 when the French erected this huge relic from the edge of the iron age. Maybe that will save it in this moment of statue and history smashing? Cultural churning's sparked a fashion for ripping stuff down. History's got veins of bad... so it's the 2020 fashion to rubble-ize all of it. 

But the Eiffel's neither a triumphal arch, nor a tyrannical warrior on horseback. Maybe the mob'll pass it by? Uh, well not so fast. The 19th century wasn't France's best. And it was ending after the Germans had smashed their armies leaving them with gaunt borders and, until 1871, the Prussian occupation of Paris. They needed what some called a tiara-of-accomplishment as 1800s sand tumbled to its hourglass's bottom. 

So a scant decade later, Gustave Eiffel built his tower as a Freudian-wand to re-engorge French pride. Which makes it the greatest historic monument to nationalism. Gustave himself called his tower a "300 meter flagpole." Uh-oh, will that ignite internationalists'-history-looting blowtorches? After all, they've declared that nationalism is definitionally about racism. Especially in Europe where - unlike the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand -  national borders were set to exclude diversity. 

Mobs are usually lazy with short attention spans. It'll probably take more determination than they've got to pull this gigantic gadget down: unless their backers can implant a correct load of explosives under each of its footings. Hmmmm... Can you imagine shadowy rooms of black-clad,  Guy Fawkes mask-muffled plotters? 

I've worried before about the future of the future, especially since tens of thousands are toppling history's past. 

Is There A Future for the Past?

Is my Hagia Sophia picture-portfolio's value about to spike?  Dunno... Got a ton of haunting pix from inside the Hagia Sophia's de-plastered walls. The ancient Christian paintings are moving. However Koran's not supportive of images of most kinds within the walls of mosques. Sooooo.... 

Are we witnessing the collapse of the frame of a fragile world? As Hitler demonstrated, crisis presents opportunities, and I suspect there's a vacuum of consensus concerning historic preservation, certainly that seems to be the case here in the US. 

"Is there a future for the past?" Sorry I cannot recall who wrote that, it's just stuck in my mind, like one of those tunes that won't stop playing. Y'know? Istanbul's a nagging example of the adage that every great success is built upon unstable and painful rubble, huh?

Beneath every Rome lies a Carthage, Athens, and Dixie.

P.S. Just as it's piquing me to wonder if there is a future for the past? Um, whuddabout the vice versa? Hmmm... Or izzat the same thing? Or... I'm off to quietly have a head explosion. Aaargh!

The Rooftops of Paris 5

About a block or so from the Bastille

Sort of across the street from the pictures in my last posting, I found this early morning shot. Gotta' admit that it's captivating. How the hell'd they pull this off. Those are 18th century buildings I think. Their lower floors are discreet as a nun's skirts. But up top?

Anyone able to translate this culturally, historically, and of course linguistically? Blow it up and look carefully at these tags. See the one on the upper left? That's a cartoon cop car - upside down - with "police" in English. There's a 1984 slashed vertically in the center and, well I give up. Gotta' admit this is totally fascinating art (I know Andreas, I'm eating some crow here).

The sunrise was just perfect, like a spotlight on stage. And the palette is eye popping. It's a shame the it was too early to pop into the Café on the first floor. I wonder if the decor is classic French? Look at all the chimneys. And were there... are there... elevators? If oui, then when did they get installed.

So much history piled up here. These are the architectural shots I totally love. The way that builders elbow their way into spaces so that each generation plops its cultural flag along a streetscape, but in the case, a generation got in there with paint!

And I wonder which generation? How old are these graffs? You think 60's? 80s? The fading suggests nothing newer than the 90s but Wudda-I-know? Is this political, or just fun? And at who's expense (see my last post)? Do they add to the somber inheritance of those buildings? Or subtract?

If someone cared, I expect they'd be gone. Yet, how'd they get up there, and how'd they get erased? And would erasing them be a Taliban sort of desecration.

Enquiring minds wanna know.

Paris Chic 4

Model: Marti Armstrong

A grey, damp, chilly parisian winter morning. 

As my friend Andreas Manessinger knows I'm uncomfortable with graffiti. Bur a visit to Pompeii's softened my resistance since that ancient town's walls are covered in the stuff. My disapproval's leaning against an acient... maybe even primal... instinct for humans to scrawl, paint, scratch their presence onto history. How much do graffs differ from the plaques under statues, the etchings onto stone monuments, or for that matter, the carvings dug into tombstones? Is it fine for a minor politician to have his/her name chiseled onto to stone, like the guy who wrote that he made the Partheon left this huge inscription across the top of the portico:"M*AGRIPPA *L* F* COSTERTIVM*FECIT".  Which in English sort of means, "M. AGRIPPA L.F. COSTRTIUM*MADE IT"!

And that differs from tags, how? When it's kid that tags a wall, that's conceit but when old Agrippa does it... 

Okay, there's a place for autographs - but the front of my city home isn't one of them. The "graffiti artist is stealing some of my property value. Theft's theft, huh?Should it necessitate major repair it's Grand Theft.  In the U.S. most municipalities have some sort of laws allowing the protection of personal property from thieves which can trigger (yeah, pun intended) an owner who is legally armed. Now it probably should not come to that especially since a spray can ain't a weapon equivalent to Dirty Harry's Magnum revolver. Still, I'd be cautious about spitting paint onto most private homes today. 

My first trip to Europe decades ago was a major shock... so much graffiti. Rome is a stinking dirty mess of the stuff. So too Holland, Spain, and most recently France. While both Austria and Germany sported less of the stuff, it was still a pox. I guess to avoid the possibility of retaliation, most U.S. graffiti seems to get painted upon public buildings and surfaces.An exception seems to be RR cars that scoated heavily. 

L.A., Baltimore, DC and NYC seem to have the least self respect among American cities I've visited recently. Philly's got bad neighborhoods along with the largest Jersey cities. Generally speaking the smaller the American town, the less scribbling's on walls. Maybe because the taggers are less likely to be anonymous? Amsterdam was the first place that I visited where street markets sold kits filled with small spray cans in color coordinated six and ten packs. These came with shoulder straps so the 'artist' could both access them easily, and run quickly. 

Which brings me back to Paris - which is almost as dingy as Rome. The romance of its reputation eludes me. Why, even as they remodel buildings, they sell facades which cover the remodelers for giant billboards to sell products! Block long and stories high boards  that are a form of graffiti themselves. The crumbling street in the scene above is a major boulevard just off of the Bastille. It is as if Parisians have lost a sense of dignity. 

Much of the city is not merely tacky but lurches toward the vulgar. Odd, since I'd never have equated Parisian tastes with vulgarity. In the sense of style, Parisians have convinced us that they're the gold standard. I'd expected high tailored men, and haute ladies. Nope... that kind of fashion walked the streets of Rome, Vienna, NYC, and Valencia. 

But... But... look how the street rubble works in those portraits of Marty up above. I love the contrast. Hmmmm... 

Parisian blocks have most in common with the ruins of Pompeii. Who'd have thought?

Paris 3

Exercise 3: (Color Management, HDR, Composition)

Bike messenger stops for Parisian winter lunch

Street photography's a hunting experience. You look for game, shoot it, then lug home the trophy to mount. As I wrote in the last post, I'm studying Photoshop. In this exercise I worked on three dimensions of an image:

(1) See the cyan shift in this image. I stole the color map from the art of a movie poster, then worked it into the final image to reinforce winter mood in contrasty morning light.
(2) To peer into shadows and hi lights while giving objects a 3D feeling I employed Photomatix to dig into both shadows and highlights and,
(3) Worked subliminal cubist lighting onto the image. Blow it up and squint to see how both shadows and lights sweep from all directions such that there is no spot which lacks a pathway or line directing eyes toward the messenger's face.

Visual tyranny :-)

Oddly, artists as a group are among the most hostile toward tyranny. Good for them. But yet, they are also control freaks within their scores, frames, plots, and edits. Art is about communication... It's expression reduced to essence. Reduced? How about - compacted?

Artists share thoughts and feelings wrapped in ambiguity. Strip away the ambiguity and they become illustrators. Which isn't so much a title but an insult to many. So art critics and experts make livings by stripping off those outer layers, explaining to the rest of us what great artists mean to say. How they came to say it. And how all of that should influence those who visit the art that the learned analysts are unravelling.

Through their own filters of course.

Paris 2: Églese Saint-Séverin

Yes - this image is over processed. And your point is? Heh heh...

Églese Saint-Séverin, Paris - Circa. 11th Century

Over the last five weeks I've returned to class. I'm taking 3-4 hour daily on-line Photoshop classes. The application's so immense and while I'd first entered it about 20 years or so ago, my study lacked the discipline necessary to explore huge modules particularly involving color management, frequency separation, actions, channels, Etc.. There are a range of tools, particularly brushes, gradients, and exotic layer management. Yeah, I've read dozens of books, articles, and even specific tutorials. But in each case, I used those texts to overcome  specific problems rather than mastering the nature of how things fit together dynamically.

The creators of PS are stunningly bright. The depth and breadth of their imagination is stupefying. In one sense, I'm learning to accomplishing things I can already do, but in minutes rather than hours. But in another sense I'm discovering pathways for my imagination to explore. 

This isn't easy. There's so much to remember, and memory's not easily mastered anymore. But application's the best way to master anything. Right now the new tools are determining what I'm doing... Soon, I expect, I'll set them to do what I determine. It's the ancient horse/rider thing you see in this and the last post. The beast is galloping now and I'm holding on. By summer's end, the reins will be totally in my hands... 

Um, hope so.

But right now, every project is a chance to experiment. And yeah... Guess that means BIG PROCESSING, huh? I'm like a kid splashing about in the first pool of summer.

Paris

When a feeling speaks for itself, best not to interrupt?

West-World's Top Dozen - 2020

Source for this ranking? Forbes Magazine and Others

Images expand when clicked upon. OK?

Sequestered at home by fiat, the mind wanders/wonders... "It's artists' jobs to ask questions. Answers though are above their pay grades."

I'm just sayin':

"Did my heart not listen, or was it my head?"

12 Makes Ambani $59.7 Billion

"Life's heirlooms are tiny as a heartbreak."

11 Larry Page $61.1 Billion

"If your heart is in your dreams, no request is too extreme."

10 Carlos Slim Helu (and family) $63.5 Billion

"If you're looking for sympathy, you'll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary."

09 Amancio Ortega Gaona $65 Billion

"The death tax is a victory of political romanticism over economic reality."

08 Larry Ellison $66.4 Billion 

"The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for." - Ludwig Wittgenstein.

07 Vladimir Putin $70 Billion

"How thick is the line between social and economic justice?"

06 Mark Zuckerberg 76.34 Billion

"In depicting subjects by their parts, people can be reduced to their dignity." - Paul Strand

05 Amancio Ortega $77.1 Billion

"Everything is the way it is because it got that way.

04 Warren Buffett $$88.8 Billion

"The unreality of reality."

03 Bill Gates $108,2 Billion

"A proposition has two parts. You must state a thesis. And you must prove it."

02 Bernard Arnault (and family) $109.2 Billion

"Yes, but what of the forces of brightness?"

01 Jeff Bezos $111.5 Billion

"What didn't happen is a hole in history."

* Wish I could recall the sources of each of these quotes, only three are mine. 

Meaning

Go on, explain this. It's a fact I snapped.
A room with all of its furnishings. All of them.

"There was nothing else? No bed, chair, sofa, sink, window... Nothing?"

"Nope, just this."

"Where'd you find it?"

"Don't recall."

"What's its story?

"That's the point. This is its story. All the words in its sentence."

"So? What's it mean?"

"There's everything in that frame.... Every clue."

"Look, I need more. What's this about?"

"Imagine a fluffy white cloud in a blue sky. Then imagine it seems like something."

"Um... alright."

"Now, take away blue. Take away white. Take away fluffy. Take away sky."

"Well,  OK... and?"

"There's no '...and'. Nothing more: Just imagine."

"But... imagine what?"

"We're hard-wired to sense patterns... Meaning. We order order to appear."

"Yeah? So whudda-hell's that room's gotta do with clouds?"

""Ahah! My point! Exactly my point! Very good. Thanks."

Outrospection: The Street King

King Mohammed VI, Rabat. Morocco

“We cannot expect the camera to suck in, with light and shadows, the photographer’s emotions.” - John Updike

“Information is a porridge of opinion, theory, and truth heated by feelings.” - Ted Byrne 

•••• •••• ••••

Familiarity grinds down dimensions all around us so that we don’t notice the normal. Our brains are lazy pieces of meat which exert energy only upon the unusual; person, event, thing, or idea. The rest, the usual, is veiled leaving us heedless to the infrastructure of life.

Travel cracks the shell of expectations. It forces us to notice, not so much the habitual of others, but why our expectations are un-synched with theirs. To the degree that what we expect to surround us… doesn’t… our brain goes, "Yo!". 

“Look,” it murmurs, “that trash bin up above's got a huge picture of their king! Why, we’d never do that.” And then… and get ready because here’s the epiphany… then the brain wonders, “Why wouldn’t we proudly paste a colossal image of someone we revere onto a big, dirty, dented, every-day, metal garbage can?” 

There's a word, "introspection". Why is there no word, "outrospection"?

I don't travel to understand others. Comparison seeds curiosity!

Once upon a time, the grammar of photography was limited to nouns. It described in images of fact. Over the past century we’ve learned to use modifiers and with powerful digital tools we can release adjectives and adverbs. 

Photographic travel art turns ordinary into information: so we can judge… in both directions. 

Oh, BTW... One great thing about being King, no one ever asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" 

Although an entire country quietly wondered about his answer to that question. 

PS: King Muhammad VI has been controversial, so it is possible that the statement up there in the image might not be one of patriotic support. But given the laws re. critiquing the Monarch... Well, maybe this is the subtlest way to do that? Regardless, it's an image that prods at outrospective questions... :-)

Morocco VIII: What's A Ksar and Why?

February 13, 2020

As always, click upon any image to enlarge it

Plate 64

The highway toward Marakesh from Ouarzazate winds through craggy southern slopes of the  High Atlas mountains cut deeply by the Ounila river.

Plate 65

A half hour into that Valley the town of Ben Haddous sits across the river from ruins of the Ksar Ait Ben Haddous. Every North African town has a mud and straw kasbah. This one, nestled against the mountain slopes, is among the most impressive. 

Plate 66

*****

Built around one of the steeply abrupt rocky hills that dot these vallies, Ben-Haddous's surrounded by an array of farms, mountains, and rivers. It’s believed that the town, as opposed to the Ksar, was established in 757 and that its founder, Ben-Haddous, still lies buried in his tomb behind this  decaying walled city. The site was also one of the many trading posts on the commercial route linking ancient Sudan to Marrakesh by the Dra Valley and the Tizi-n'Telouet Pass.

*****

Plate 67

*****

The Ksar of Ait-Ben-Haddous is an ighrem (fortified village) along the former caravan route between the Sahara and Marrakech. The word ‘Ksar’ refers to a large group of close-together kasbas (homes) and barns behind defensive city walls which are reinforced by corner angle towers and pierced by two baffle gates.

*****

Plate 68

*****

Unlike the town, but like Ouarzazate’s seraglio (See Morocco VI), the oldest ksar constructions do not appear to be earlier than the 17th century. However their structure and technique were propagated from a very early period in the valleys of southern Morocco. The site was also one of the many trading posts on the commercial route linking ancient Sudan to Marrakesh by the Dra Valley and the Tizi-n'Telouet 

Plate 69

Ksar Ait Ben Haddous is around 1,300 square meters. Made of red clay bricks, it has many long and narrow alleys tangling up in a unique geometric shape. Some structures are modest, others resemble small urban castles with their high angle towers and upper sections decorated with motifs in clay brick - but there are also community areas which include a mosque, a public square, grain threshing areas outside the ramparts, a fortification and a loft at the top of the village, a caravanserai, two cemeteries (Muslim and Jewish) and the Sanctuary of the Saint Sidi Ali.

Plate 70

*****

Plate 71

The earthen buildings are very vulnerable due to lack of maintenance and regular repair resulting from the abandonment of the ksar by its inhabitants.

*****

Plate 72

*****

Plate 73

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About 98 families lived in the Ksar until the 1940s. Nowadays, only five still live. there, most moved to modern structures in the bustling town across the river. The large houses in the lower part of the ksar however, with well conserved decorative motifs, are regularly maintained. Workers return daily however to shops that serve the entire area’s lively-hood: tourism and the movie makers from Oouarzazate.

Plate 74

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Plate 76

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The architectural style has adapted to the climatic conditions all in harmony with natural and social environment configurations.  The inclination during restoration to introduce cement has so far been unsuccessful. Only a few lintels and reinforced concrete have escaped vigilance, but they have been hidden by earthen rendering.

Plate 77
Note the graffiti on the front of this shop. This was a set for the movie Gladiato

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Plate 78

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Scholars conclude that Ksar of Ait-Ben-Haddous represents the Berber culture of southern Morocco, which itself has become vulnerable as a result of irreversible socio-economic and cultural changes.

Plate 79

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Plate 80

Up next - Morocco IX: Marakesh