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photos
the world from my angle
(photos with the occasional word)
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photos
Framed by candor and rawness, but not caged in by any one genre, style, or color pallet, these photos depict a beautiful and strange planet filled with nonsensical but mostly lovable creatures, distinguished by their stark contrasts and tied together by their fundamental similarities. Collectively, these galleries document today's challenges, which are often painfully easy to ignore with our ill-conceived sense of safe distance – far away and down the road – but that we must face, together, now. Yet, they show another vital angle in times of polarization dominating the political discourse and media outlets readily catering to consumerist audiences with an appetite for sensation: a lens pointed at everyday life that never ascends to newsworthiness – a soothing testimony to the utter normalities of a mass-middle carrying on ordinarily. That’s why at every corner a prominent spotlight is reserved for the moments next door: noteworthy normalities hidden in plain sight of destinations extraordinaires, unsung heroes disappearing in the shadows of headlining happenings, modest neighbors of guidebook icons. From Argentina to Zimbabwe, Manhattan mingling with Mangroves, poverty vis-à-vis worry-free.
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categories
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a glimpse
glimpse: UNSEEN, UNHEARD | What if you were unseen, unheard? Where would you look for solace, whom would you call upon?
glimpse: MIDST OF WINTER | Bare black arms reaching for the pale white sun, the last summer green not quite forgotten under the steel blue dome.
glimpse: ALLEY ANGLES | Walking down my road, the most intriguing angles unfold not ahead, but on the sides; not along the grand avenue, but in the back alleys.
glimpse: STENCH | It’s hard to describe what it’s like to stand only meters away from one of the largest seabird colonies in North America, gazing at ten thousands of nesting birds blanketing the cliffs, while wings and shrieks fill the air all around, but if I had to put it in one word I’d say: smelly.
glimpse: I SPY | I spy with my little eye a lie. Can you spot it?
glimpse: ♫ | There is something very raw and honest and democratic and loving about busking. Giving out his innermost intimate, the artist is stripped of sheltering masks, naked, vulnerable, exposed to the judgmental and cursory gaze of passing strangers who hide in the anonymous darkness of their unbroken steps. The artist asks for nothing in return. He does not beg or insist. He trusts. The artist must be a lover. A lover of art and a lover of people.
glimpse: SKY JELLYFISH | Floating at an average altitude of 120m above sea level and feeding on nothing but air, the common sky jellyfish is a bizarre life form. With a bell size of about 13m in diameter, it is roughly five times bigger than its largest cousin in the ocean below, the lion’s mane jellyfish, but specimens with bell sizes of up to 15m have been discovered along coastlines around the world. Tentacles can reach lengths of 150m, while the largest ocean jellyfish ever found measured just about 36m. Sky jellyfish are highly venomous, poisoning the atmosphere for relaxation-oriented beachgoers in touristy areas and causing severe distress due to their parasitic relationship with noisy and gas-hogging motorboats.
glimpse: WHAT MAKES A DRUG A DRUG | Drum sounds and good vibes are in the air and so is weed. Montreal. The summer sun has finally kissed the long winter goodbye and it’s time for Tam-Tams, an informal weekly music festival. The police tolerate the cannabis, as long as it isn’t consumed in front of kids. Marijuana isn’t legal here yet, but almost. Next month Canada will become the third country in the world to legalize weed; Trudeau following in the footsteps of legendary down to earth Uruguayan ex-president José Mujica and former Soviet Union country Georgia. After all, whether you find a substance on the index or on your supermarket shelf depends on the arbitrary label put on it by lawmakers. Alcohol and tobacco, two highly addictive and hazardous substances, are legal, while marihuana has been demonized and banned for the longest time, despite its medicinal value. Weed, shrooms, ayahuasca, opium, mescaline, cocaine, heroin – all these are plants or derived from plants and several of them have been in medicinal or recreational use for thousands of years. But the reason they’ve intrigued some is the same reason they’re feared by others: their ability to alter our perception and state of mind, shoving us out of the driver’s seat and take over control of our consciousness.
glimpse: TOUGH SILK | Tougher than Kevlar and stronger than steel on a weight-for-weight basis, spider silk is one of the most resilient materials in nature. But its true strength lies in the production process: as a protein, the molecular structure of silk is entirely made up of abundant elements, assembled in the low energy furnace of mere body temperature with the only byproduct being water. No wonder that this wonder of nature is a compelling candidate for biomimicry.
