Kevin Erskine: Supercell

Copyright @ Kevin Erskine / Hatje Cantz

Kevin Erskine (*1956 in Sharpsburg, Illinois) witnessed his first big storm at the age of 12. That was in Hoskins, Nebraska (population 284); it was a category 4 tornado with maximum wind speeds of 340 kilometers per hour. Impressed by the force of nature – „I guess my emotions were a mixture of both fear and awe“, Erskine says – he took up photography „and began to document the otherwordly beauty of the vast storm systems that passed over the family farm“, as Richard Hamblyn writes in his introduction. When Erskine had his first pickup truck at the age of 19, he started chasing storms with his large format camera. A selection of the supercells that he captured can be found in this impressive tome.

Copyright @ Kevin Erskine / Hatje Cantz

Erskine does not see himself a a storm tourist. „I do not chase tornados, I'm looking for the beauty in the storm," he was quoted on Spiegel online. And although his photos often look like being taken from very close, he doesn't really go that close: „I'm using lenses with an extreme wide angle. This makes the storms look closer than they were in reality.“

Copyright @ Kevin Erskine / Hatje Cantz

Richard Hamblyn aptly points out that Erskine documents what Emerson called „the ultimate art gallery above.“ With this in mind I began again to spend time with these beautiful, awe-inspiring photographs. I felt entranced, and my horizon enlarged. „As I started chasing this big weather I became addicted to the beauty of it,“ recalls Erskine. „The ever-changing winds result in unique sky sculptures again and again. Capturing this on a large-format camera is almost a humbling attempt to show the grandeur of Mother Nature.“

The other side of this grandeur is shown on the last double-page where one can see the damage caused by a category 5 tornado in Greensburg, Kansas, in 2007 – smart concept!

PS: Don't miss Redmond O'Hanlons wonderful story „Ascension“ on page 54. It starts like this: „Early one morning in Madhya Pradesh in central India a tourist went for a walk. And disappeared. Several days later one of the search parties found his camera ...“

Kevin Erskine

Supercell
Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2011

Socotra

Copyright @ Claudius Schulze

The other day, when surfing on the interent, I came across the photographer Claudius Schulze and his book „Socotra“ http://lonely-island.com/. I thought the shots stunning and couldn't take my eyes off them. At first I did not bother reading the accompanying text (and that is what I usually do for I want to know what I'm looking at), I simply looked and looked and looked. I surmise this had mainly to do with the impressive colours, and the extraordinary light ... and of course, as always, with reasons that I'm not really aware of ... and then there was also this absolutely fabulous shot on pages 104/105 ...

When I asked Claudius to send me a pic of his choosing (see the one above; I would have chosen completely different ones) and to let me know how it came about, he wrote: „I spent many weeks on the island working on the book. I lived with the natives, shared their rude houses and simple lifestyle. Up in the mountains, semi-nomadic bedouins live. They herd goats on the inaccessible slopes of the Hagghier around their villages. Once, I hiked for several days. When I stayed a night in a small hamlet on Skant they welcomed me with a feast. Late afternoon, the men went out to catch a goat for slaughter. They were running very swiftly over the slopes and I had troubles keeping pace. I will remember the moment for life - the biblical scene, the golden light, the gorgeous landscape – all added up to an intensive otherworldly impression.“

For more infos, go to http://claudiusschulze.com/

Bilder-Propaganda

Am 21. Juli 2010 erfuhren die Nachrichtenkonsumenten weltweit, dass das Foto, das am Wochenende zuvor auf der Website von BP zu sehen war und zeigte, wie Mitarbeiter in Houston, die auf zehn gigantische Videoschirme mit Bildern von den Ereignissen unter Wasser blicken, gefälscht war. Zwei der Bildschirme seien in Wirklichkeit leer gewesen, erkärte BP-Sprecher Scott Dean und führte aus, ein Fotograf des Konzerns habe das Bild mit Hilfe von Photoshop verändert. In der Folge wurde auch das Original veröffentlicht. BP-Sprecher Dean sagte, der Fotograf habe nur seine Photoshop-Kenntnisse unter Beweis stellen wollen. Die Mitarbeiter seien angewiesen worden, das Bildbearbeitungsprogramm nur für Veränderungen wie Farbkorrekturen oder das Erstellen von Ausschnitten zu verwenden.

Kurz darauf berichtete die Washington Post von weiteren manipulierten Bildern auf der Website des Konzerns. Wiederum war es ein Blogger, der die Fälschung entdeckt und veröffentlicht hatte: Ein Foto auf der Webpage von BP zeigt das Cockpit eines Hubschraubers. Der Blick durch das Fenster zeigt Einsatzschiffe auf dem Meer, die, so muss man anehmen, mit Aufräumarbeiten beschäftigt sind. Das Foto vermittelt den Eindruck, dass sich der Helikopter in der Luft befindet, doch das tut er nicht: Die Farbabstufungen wirken unrealistisch, zudem hat der Blogger in einer Ecke des Fotos einen Teil eines Kontrollturms ausgemacht und daraus gefolgert, dass sich der Hubschrauber bei der Aufnahme gar nicht in der Luft, sondern am Boden befand. Und genau so war es auch, wie BP schließlich zugab.

Spiegel online bezeichnete diese Manipulationen als "PR-Panne", die Wiener Kronen Zeitung sprach vom einem "PR-Debakel" und man darf annehmen, dass wohl die meisten Betrachter dieser Fälschungen diese Einschätzung teilen. Doch eine solche Sichtweise ist irreführend, ja sie ist falsch, denn Bild-Fälschungen sind, im Kontext dieser Ölkatastrophe, zuallererst Lügen und die Leute bei BP, die dafür verantwortlich sind, sind keine PR-Leute, sondern zynische Lügner. Aber ist das nicht sowieso das Gleiche?

Nun, die Wahrheit ist bekanntlich ein weites Feld. Angesichts der Tatsache, dass wir alle wissen, dass mit Fotos gelogen werden kann und häufig auch wird, ist es jedoch einigermaßen erstaunlich, dass wir Fotos überhaupt trauen. Und zwar so lange, bis jemand kommt und uns beweist, dass wir uns getäuscht haben.

Für den ganzen Text, siehe hier

The conjugational formula

The concept of connotation is often explained by the conjugational formula devised by Bertrand Russell in a 1950s radio interview: I am firm; you are obstinate, he is pigheaded. The formula was turned into a word game at a radio show and newspaper feature and elicited hundreds of triplets: I am slim; you are thin; he is scrawny. I am a perfectionist; you are anal; he is a control freak. I am exploring my sexuality; you are promiscuous; she is a slut. In each triplet the literal meaning of the words is held constant, but the emotional meaning ranges from attractive to neutral to offensive.

Steven Pinker: The Stuff of Thought

Intercultural Competence

Millions of people, be they business men, diplomats, teachers, laborers, students, immigrants, refugees or aid workers, nowadays live for longer or shorter periods of time in another than their culture of origin. The once clear definitions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ are being blurred (for many); we’re confronted with new challenges, intercultural competence is demanded.
So how does one acquire such competence?

Here is the approach of Knowledge Must, a company with offices in Delhi, Berlin and Chengdu:

„Intercultural competence is something that cannot easily be taught in a lecture-style classroom setting alone. We want our clients to become more aware of cultural differences through a holistic combination of education, training, experience, travel, and work. Ancient scholars such as the Chinese sage Confucius already understood the importance of experiential education: "I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand". Only personal experience through all senses results in a sustainable understanding of other cultures. Learning by doing is the ultimate in intercultural learning!“

Interested in learning more? Check out their site:
http://www.knowledge-must.com/

Moments in Time

The only permanent thing is change, the Buddhists say. I must admit that I'm rarely aware of it. What helps to become conscious of it is looking at photographs that were taken just moments apart. The ones below were taken by Blazenka Kostolna on 9 October 2011 in Sargans, Switzerland – the weather forecast had predicted a rainy day.

Copyright @ Blazenka Kostolna

I had originally chosen a different set of images to be displayed. Blazenka however had other priorities – and since these pics show how she sees me, I've decided to put on her selection.

Binyavanga Wainaina

„Harried reader, I’ll save you precious time: skip this review and head directly to the bookstore for Binyavanga Wainaina’s stand-up-and-cheer coming-of-age memoir, “One Day I Will Write About This Place.” Although written by an East African and set in East and Southern Africa, Wainaina’s book is not just for Afrophiles or lovers of post-colonial literature. This is a book for anyone who still finds the nourishment of a well-written tale preferable to the empty-calorie jolt of a celebrity confessional or Swedish mystery“, Alexandra Fuller wrote in the New York Times. Needless to say, this made me start reading this book with quite some expectations. Were they met? They weren't. Still, this is a good book and definitely worth reading.

Because of its language, its humor, its freshness, its insights. I will come to that in a minute but let me first explain why my expectations were not met. I find detailed accounts of what happened, say, twenty or thirty years ago simply not credible (and also not very interesting). Moreover, I do not warm to made-up stories in „a memoir“ – and to write one at the age of 40 a bit premature. On the other hand, I could have known that before starting the book (it is called a memoir, after all), so why complain?

After quite some pages into the tome, I started to wonder whether others experienced a similar mix of indifference and fascination and learned in the Economist that „a lot of the book consists of previously published essays and travelogues“. That might partly explain why I did not really feel drawn to the author's Kenyan school days, his failed attempts to study commerce in South Africa, his travels around Kenya and to Uganda, where his mother is from. Nevertheless, I like Wainaina's writing style (although I find it more suitable for shorter pieces) and came across lots of fabulous descriptions and insights. Here are some examples:

„Sometimes we like Moi because he fumbles, like all of us. He isn't booming like Kenyatta, or polished and slick like Charles Njonjo. His English stumbles; his Kiswahili is broken and sincere. We have no idea what man and mind he is in his home language, Tugen. That is a closed world to the rest of the country outside his people. We are not curious about that world. We make a lot of jokes about him.“

„It is good to be home. There are potholes everywhere. Even the city center, once slick and international looking, is full of grime. People avoid each other's eyes ... Some people look at my budding dreadlocks and hurry away. I spell trouble: too loud looking and visible. A street kid gives me a rasta salute, and I grin back at him as he disappears between people's legs, a bottle of glue in his mouth, his feet bare and bleeding.“

„If there is a courtesy every Kenyan practises, it is that we don't question each other's contradictions; we all have them, and destroying someone's face is sacrilege. If South Africans seek to fill the holes in their reality through building a strong political foundation, we spend a lot of time pretending our contradictions do not exist.“

When travelling around Kenya, the author comes across „a sign on one of the dusty roads that branches off from the highway, a beautifully drawn picture of a skinny red bird and notice with an arrow: Gruyere.“ Since Gruyère is the name of a Swiss town and a famous cheese, I wondered what this was all about. Binyavanga Wainaina was equally curious and decided to investigate. After a twenty minutes drive on a dusty road, he reaches a tiny village center. „Three shops on each side, and in the middle a large quadrangle of beaten-down dust on which three giant wood carvings of giraffes sit, waiting for transport to the curio markets in Nairobi. There doesn't seen to be anybody about. We get out of the car and enter Gruyere, which turns out to be a pub.“ The owner is Swiss, his wife is Kamba. „We chat, and when I ask her what brought her husband to Mwingi, she laughs. 'You know Europeans always have strange ideas. He is a Kamba now; he doesn't want anything to do with Europe.'“

Binyavanga Wainaina
One Day I Will Write About This Place
Graywolf Press, Minneapolis 2011
www.graywolfpress.org