What you sow

Sow a thought, and you reap an act;
Sow an act, and you reap a habit;
Sow a habit, and you reap a character;
Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.
Samuel Smiles

Games People Play

They are playing a game.
They are playing at not playing a game.
If I show them I see they are,
I shall break the rules and they will punish me.
I must play their game,
of not seeing I see the game.
R. D. Laing: Knots

Documentary Photography (2)

I felt attracted by the book title - Aftermath: War Is Only Half the Story - looked at a few pictures on the internet, and thought the project, and the pictures, interesting. I imagined it to be a work of documentary photography on the long-term fate of victims of conflict. And, in a way, it is but …

It starts with a text entitled “the journey is the destination” (I later found out that this wasn’t the title but the motto for the following text carried it too), the subtitle says: “Jim Goldberg was interviewed by Kirsten Rian”, there is however no interview to be found but a text that consists of two sentences that, when they end, immediately begin again and stretch over several pages: “Muzaffar ‘Alex’ Jafari writes about his journey on foot from Afghanistan to Greece via Iran. Now Alex is in school and supports himself by working in a call center’. These two endlessly repeated sentences are accompanied by a selection of photographs that, unfortunately, come without captions. Whatever the intention for this was, I’m not terribly interested to know. I liked however how most of the pictures were composed although I wasn't entirely sure how some of them were related to “the journey is the destination.”

Then comes a well-told and interesting story by Andrew Stanbridge about the hills with bomb craters in northern Laos. The craters are a legacy of intense bombing in the 1960s and 1970s. American forces dropped more than two million tons of bombs on Laos during the Vietnam War. The pictures, again without captions, that follow this text are however not of Laos but of Africans (?!).
Then once again comes the above mentioned text by Andrew Stanbridge. Then pictures of Laos, thankfully with captions, are displayed. One photo shows rebar. Why would anybody think a photo of rebar worth selecting for a book? Well, the caption says it all: "Rebar made from melted down bombs". A powerful message.
Then, for the third time, Andrew Stanbridge’s text, this time followed by pictures. I had no idea what they showed. No captions, no additional information, mostly scenes in black and white that seemed to show places inside, or nearby, buildings.

The book left me somehow at a loss. Then, on Google, I found a helpful text by Simon Winchester. Here it is:

“Founded by photographer and writer Sara Terry, the nonprofit Aftermath Project documents the long-term repercussions of conflict that are so often neglected by the popular media. Terry, whose work has been widely exhibited at such venues as the United Nations and the Museum of Photography in Antwerp, initiated this project after her extensive documentary work on postwar Bosnia. Through grant competitions and partnerships with other institutions, Aftermath disseminates reportage on postconflict rehabilitation and attempts to create new avenues for peace. War Is Only Half the Story presents the winners of the Aftermath Project’s first annual grant competition: Jim Goldberg, whose project The New Europeans records the struggles of asylum seekers and immigrants; Wolf Böwig, whose The Forgotten Island: Narratives of War in Sierra Leone (second place) is recounted through the eyes of five-year-old Morie, the sole survivor of an attack on Bonthe Island; and runners-up Andrew Stanbridge (postwar reconstruction in Laos), Asim Rafiqui (the hidden costs of war and peace-building efforts in Kashmir) and Paula Luttringer (a survey of sites in Argentina where women and their children were abducted between 1976 and 1983). The imagery in this volume represents some of today’s most challenging and diverse documentary work.”

Thanks for letting me know. It’s unlikely that I would have guessed that this is what my eyes showed me. I must however admit that the “attempts to create new avenues for peace” eluded me.

AFTERMATH

War Is Only Half the Story

Jim Goldberg, Wolf Böwig,
Paula Luttringer, Asim Rafiqui, Andrew Stanbridge

Aperture, New York, 2008

http://www.aperture.org

Instantes

Si pudiera vivir nuevamente mi vida.
En la próxima trataría de cometer más errores.
No intentaría ser tan perfecto, me relajaría más.
Sería más tonto de lo que he sido,
de hecho tomaría muy pocas cosas con seriedad.

Sería menos higiénico.
Correría más riesgos,
haría más viajes,
contemplaría más atardeceres,
subiría más montañas,
nadaría más ríos.
Iría a más lugares adonde nunca he ido,
comería más helados y menos habas,
tendría más problemas reales y menos imaginarios.

Yo fui una de esas personas que vivió sensata
y prolíficamente cada minuto de su vida;
claro que tuve momentos de alegría
Pero si pudiera volver atrás
trataría de tener solamente buenos momentos.

Por si no lo saben, de eso está hecha la vida, sólo de momentos;
no te pierdas el ahora.
Yo era uno de esos que nunca iba a ninguna parte sin un termómetro,
una bolsa de agua caliente, un paraguas y un paracaídas
si pudiera volver a vivir, viajaría más liviano.

Si pudiera vivir nuevamente
comenzaría a andar descalzo a principios de la primavera
y seguiría descalzo hasta concluir el otoño.
Daría más vueltas en calesita,
contemplaría más amaneceres,
y jugaría con más niños, si tuviera otra vez vida por delante.
Pero ya ven, tengo 85 años y sé que me estoy muriendo.

Jorge Luis Borges: Instantes

On Bureaucracy

The police post was manned by about fifteen gendarmes, all armed to the teeth. One was polishing a submachine-gun. The commandant turned out to be a big Southerner of about six foot five. He summoned me into his office and inspected my documents minutely. What was my reason for being here? I displayed my research permit, a most impressive document, covered with photographs and stamps. He was clearly very unhappy a I tried to expound the essential nature of the anthropological endeavour. 'But what's it for?' he asked. Choosing between giving an impromptu version of the 'Introduction to Anthropology' lecture course and something less full, I replied somewhat lamely, 'It's my job'. Subsequently, I came to realize what a highly satisfactory explanation this was to an official who spent most of his life in pointlessly enforcing rules that seemed an end in themselves.
Nigel Barley: The Innocent Anthropologist

Money Democracy

Some time ago, I wrote a piece on Barack Obama and his intercultural competence:

http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/cultural-services/articles/barack-obama.html

Once it was published, I sent the link to the Obama-campaign. Ever since, I receive regular and informative emails from the campaign manager, David Plouffe, and from Barack, Michelle, and Joe, that never fail to encourage me to donate to the campaign.

Never was it so clear to me that democracy American-style is entirely about money. Democracy of the money, by the money, and for the money, Kinky Friedman (I think) once remarked.

As Horst Herold, the former head of the BKA, the German FBI, once said. I paraphrase: There is no democracy (where the people are supposed to rule) in capitalism, in capitalism it's the money that rules.

Ich weiss nicht

Ich bin, ich weiss nicht wer
ich komme, ich weiss nicht woher
ich gehe, ich weiss nicht wohin
mich wundert, dass ich so fröhlich bin
Meister Martinus von Biberach
(Fassung Hanno Kühnert)

Fürwahr, ich weiss nicht, was mich traurig macht
William Shakespeare: Der Kaufmann von Venedig