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glimpse: ORCHESTRATED CHAOS

 

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latest glimpses
one photo, one text

a world, a pen, a camera

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In the end, the journey wasn't all that much about traveling.

My soles brought me places, but immersion taught me places, taught me people and lives.

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latest

To all you gifted gift-givers

landscapes
Asia 

Y? Because¡

 

 

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as seen on

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As months became years and then yesteryears, the initial journey became a nomadic lifestyle.

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reads

read my mind

(words with the occasional photo)

hurling little answers at big questions

what the road wrote

 rattling trains of thoughts going just about nowhere 

very short, very true stories

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selected

life

A Homage to Education

empowerer, character-builder, freedom fighter

Education happens – wittingly or unwittingly, willingly or unwillingly – all around us, in all of us, all the time, lifelong. Our teachers don’t always look like teachers: they can be social milieus, inner monologues, nature, culture, travel, or anything that makes the brain spin.  read more

travel

Volunteering vs. Voluntourism

sss

self-organized engagement vs. vacation packages – structures, results and ethics

...organizing your grassroots engagement independently, might not only help your own experience and wallet, but also the community you work with. read more

life

Absolutely Relative: Colorful Matters between Black and White

Matter of fact or matter of perspective?

What often appears universal truth is more often veiled by the intangible and intelligible colors of opinion. read more

shortest stories

Gunpoint

 

They asked for water. When I turned back around, three shotgun muzzles were pointed at us. I would have cursed the map right then, but there was no time, and my tongue was in my stomach. read more

Why let any guidebook, travel blog or superficial advice shrink your leaps of discovery to baby steps in their footprints?

 

 

 

 

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photos

the world from my angle

(photos with the occasional word)

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selected

urban

North America

from the back alleys to the avenues and back

From across the pond a child had dreamt what are memories now.  see more

essays

INTO SPACE

solo exhibition, Paris 

Self-domesticated kings of the smallest corner of the universe, we hide inside our makeshift womb in a fetal curl and snip away at the umbilical cord that connects us with our surroundings, mother nature and father space. see more

essays

The Moment Next Door

noteworthy normalities hidden in plain sight of destinations extraordinaires

All too flattened by the genericness of mass-experience, it is time to make space for the moments next door. see more

people

Outside Job

 

when your office isn’t anywhere near an office

 

...nobody robbed us of our freedom; it was an inside job we signed up for. Outside jobs, by contrast, are not always a deliberate choice and oftentimes the harder labor, but they come with a certain spatial freedom... see more

essays

That Candid Moment Before the Mask

perfect imperfection before the stage is set

… portrait candidness is the short-lived obliviousness before the stage is set and it thrives on the imperfection of anticipating the "picture perfect" moment. see more

b/w

landscapes

nature of light and darkness

 

Nature is monochrome underneath, and this is what she looks like… see more

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glimpses

UNSEEN, UNHEARD  | What if you were unseen, unheard? Where would you look for solace, whom would you call upon?  see more

SUNFLOWER CEMETERY  | And when they ask us why all the sunflowers are dead, we’ll just tell them the truth. That this cemetery is really a cradle. see more

DEATH BIRTHING LIFE | You are not gone. Because when you went, all of you stayed here. Peekaboo. You didn't need that white marble heaven after all, or an ending repackaged as eternity. You just changed once more, effortlessly. see more

LIVES I’VE NEVER LIVED  | When I see you and the place you call home so tenderly, it reminds me of a life I’ve never lived, a dream I’ve never dreamed; but my longing is painless, my melancholy sweet, my smile pure.   see more

Miles astray the tourist highway the beauty didn't vanish. And beyond beauty there was something raw and real behind those easy facades – challenging discoveries, unsung heroes and cultural normalities that were ever new, different and hypnotizing.

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countries

glimpses of elsewhere intertwined with narratives & notions

(words & photos)

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selected places / stories

Africa | South Africa

Kamhlushwa / Humans Living Passions – Community Enrichment from Within

meet the extraordinary Imagine Scholars

 

As founder Corey Johnson puts it: “I’m incredibly proud of all the huge successes, but the real goal is to create good people." explore

South(east) Asia | Nepal

Himalayas / Hiking Alone, Astray & Everestless

when you set out to see Everest, but Everest doesn’t care

 

And after a while, seeing or not seeing Everest became a mere matter of perspective. explore

Europe | France

Paris / Gold & Grime

a love true enough

 

Oh Paris, who wouldn’t want to move in with you? Smitten with a romanticized ideal, yes perhaps, but doesn’t the feeling make it true, or at least true enough? explore

South America | Brazil

Rio de Janeiro / No Hard Feelings

distinguishing between place and experience

 

...my harshest criticism towards many travelers, and especially the ones armed with blogs, is that they don’t distinguish between a place and their experience there. explore

South(east) Asia| Indonesia

Jakarta / Beautifully Ugly

well worth the visit: inner beauty and authentic travel

 

We all adore the world’s Venices, Grand Canyons, and Machu Picchus, while few postcards leave the Jakartas. But they are the places that grow on you and stay in you. explore

There was a diverse complexity and a unifying simplicity at the heart of the human condition. Lives differed vastly from one place to another, but the more so within one nation, region or group. Everywhere one can find the same distinctions: optimists and pessimists, introverts and extroverts, folks lending hands and those using elbows, dreamers and doers, dreaming doers. These conspicuous similarities, our universal differences, unite us as one species of monkey merely disguised in a human wardrobe. In the same breath, our distinct experiences assemble unique minds, feelings and memories - our very own worlds.

"Are the people who live there unhappy with their situation,” I asked upon looking down from the futuristic gondola onto a mishmash of sheet metal and dirt roads. "Why? They have a roof and something to eat. It suffices them,” were the kid's exact words.

It's not so much the place itself that becomes a love affair to one or a footnote to another. It's your experience there, the people you share it with, the little coincidences, which ultimately write a narrative you merely co-author.

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about

Inspired by a slow, immersive and messy journey around the world, MilesAstray is a mongrel of photography and writing.

But, as much as I believe that happiness is an individual pursuit, social ties seem like the one universal remedy for most worries in the world.