top of page
a glimpse
Baku / Azerbaijan · 2018 skins of time
______
Azerbaijan’s identity remains unidentified. Influences prick from all sides at the continental crossroads. Diversity is a messy beauty.
______
a glimpse
glimpse: MUD VOLCANO DEMEANOR | Unlike their lava-spewing and hot-tempered cousins, mud volcanoes have a pretty bubbly and cool demeanor. So cool even, they invite you in for a bath. If you want to hang out, you’ll find more than half of them in Azerbaijan, where nearly 400 gather for a true mud volcano fest. Just don’t meet them that one day they actually explode – unless you like barbecues with sky-high open flames.
glimpse: HOME SWEET HOME | Home sweet home, 40,000 years ago. Art and storytelling were born here, carved into our living rooms. We’ve come a long way since then, rocky too, and anything but linear. For the longest time, our house, dinner and gadgets were simply what was there; we reaped the land, nature’s gifts. Some 200,000 years of roaming and cave life. 15,000 years of agriculture, give or take. Our first cities popping up around 7,000 years ago. 1878, year of the light bulb; 1886, year of the car. 1900s: vacuum cleaner, A/C, first powered flight, plastic, coffee filter, crossword puzzles, bra, robots, insulin, frozen food, TV, electric guitar, pen, nuclear reactor, microwave, bikini, credit card, contraceptive pill (we’re now entering the digital age in the late 1950s), microchip, laser, HTML, internet, LCD, cell phone, PC, disposable contact lenses, WWW (in this chronological order, among many more). 2000s: don’t get me started – you see where this is going and it’s going faster by the day.
Gobustan / Azerbaijan · 2018 mud rider
Carpet Museum, Baku / Azerbaijan · 2018 green carpet
Baku / Azerbaijan · 2018 blue clouds
places / stories
__________
places / stories
_____
Baku / The Formula 1 Formula
Baku / Azerbaijan · 2018 after the race
Baku / Azerbaijan · 2018 Ferrari
Baku / Azerbaijan · 2018 walking into the restaurant's mouth
I didn’t know they had a Formula 1 track in Baku, much less that the circus was in town. I just happened upon it, as one does who travels prior to research, who builds conceptions and misconceptions and opinions from scratch rather than assembling the premade kits on sale. The race was a grave nuisance to anybody who could count to 1. If you’ve seen one round, you’ve seen all. That’s why they call it Formula 1. It’s a circuit for Chrissake. A circuit that strangled the old town and there was only one perforation that led in. It was a hole in time more so than in space and once you slipped through it, there was a Baku on the other side that was its own yellowed ghost, silent as a soul.
Baku / Azerbaijan · 2018 open air room
Baku / Azerbaijan · 2018 door to a world
Baku / Azerbaijan · 2018 megalodon
Baku / Azerbaijan · 2018 glued motion
Baku / Azerbaijan · 2018 hamster wheel
Baku / Azerbaijan · 2018 working towards the night
_____
Gobustan / Mud & Man
Gobustan / Azerbaijan · 2018 taxi pilot
Gobustan / Azerbaijan · 2018 Lada gets you anywhere
Gobustan / Azerbaijan · 2018 mud eruption
Gobustan / Azerbaijan · 2018 blob
The more you experience, the more there is to experience. It’s some hexed simple math. Every experience kicks in ten doors. Sometimes it even uses a sledgehammer, or worse, a key. That’s how you cause the finest mayhem when you have the key to something. But as you travel on and beyond, you pay a couple of firsts. You’ll never run out of firsts, rich as you are, but it becomes more and more obvious that you’re skimming. These bubbling mud volcanoes were a first and so were the scrawny petroglyphs. Two firsts for the price of one if you can jam them into the same afternoon. All you need is a flying Lada taxi.
But was it art or storytelling or note or clue or graffiti or child?
_____
Gobustan / Azerbaijan · 2018 us, then
And with all my culture and intelligence, and devices, I couldn't have drawn it better myself. Au contrairest.
_____
Gobustan / Azerbaijan · 2018 cow in stone
Gobustan / Azerbaijan · 2018 tracing nature
Gobustan / Azerbaijan · 2018 an inspired art class
related
_____
related
photos | people
Human Shake
what a fine blend we are
This collection is a blender, so watch out that you don’t end up in it one day. see more
photos | people
The Observer Effect: Momentary Momentum
in-between instants
...the camera’s skill to freeze the momentary momentum in-between scenes is nothing short of miraculous and reminds me of a quirky phenomenon in the quantum realm: the observer effect. see more
photos | urban
Central & West Asia
concrete statements vs. architectural niceties
My mind was drawn to the socialist idealism, my heart to the democratic warmth encoded in these urban blueprints. see more
photos | landscapes
Asia
neon-rice & snowy white
In a realm so contrasting that it juxtaposes the world's highest peaks with some of its most paradisiacal beaches, there's naturally much to see: gargantuan caves, neon green rice paddies, bizarre monoliths, brackish lagoons, blue lava and a volcano inside a volcano to name but a few. see more
elsewhere
bottom of page