Praise from Argentina

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In October 2011, Maria Cristina Plencovich, Chair of Agricultural Education at the University of Buenos Aires, published a review of my "Ways of Perception" in The Journal of Agricultural Education & Extension. Here's her conclusion:

This book provides some rich background reading for professionals engaged in rural extension, facilitators and teachers, especially for those who do not have a strong background in theoretical or applied Linguistics. It provides precise and well-founded accounts of the many issues involved in visual perception, culture and communication, and also builds on ethical issues deriving from the main subjects involved in the study. It also challenges many assumptions about what we see and believe across cultures.

Finally, the author's major concern resides in interculturalism. It could be equally important to take some of his conclusions to mainstream cultures - even within the same country - and not necessarily assume homogeneity in nations/cultures, but acknowledge the existence of heterogeneity giving rise to a distinct integrated network of behaviours, beliefs, values, ways of seeing and attitudes within the same culture.

Peruvian Memories

Nati is the daughter of a couple who works at my hotel in Paracas. She is three years old and comes running, all smiles, towards me when I show up for breakfast - for she gets all her favourite things from me: chocolate, bananas, ice cream, and scrambled eggs (not necessarily in that order).

The Laguna Encantada in the middle of the desert near Huacho.

At the Laguna Albúfera del Medio Mundo

On the Panamericana between Huacho and Huaral

And then there are the incidents of which I have only mental pictures:

The short middle-aged guy in Huacho who upon seeing me lifted his hat, smiled, extended his hand and said: How are you? Pleased to meet you! and then, without further ado, went his way.

The Cuban lady who told me that she came to Lima with her daughter because plastic surgery (a nose job) was considerably cheaper than in Miami. How did you make it from Cuba to Miami? I inquired. At that time, in 1968, you could still fly out. In my case it was Curaçao, later Venezuela, and then Miami.

The stunningly beautiful 12-year old who helps her mother in the record store and tells me she wants to become an architect.

The old lady who passes by the restaurant where I have a Turkish coffee and a Turkish sweet called Mosaik, has difficulty walking. When about five minutes later I leave the restaurant I see her sitting by the side of the road. She says something to me that I do not understand but I assume she asks for money. I approach her and search for coins in my pocket. I'm close to her now and can hear what she is saying. She asks me to give her a hand for she can't get up by herself. She smiles while I pull her up and, bent forward, continues her walk.

And then there were my numerous chats with a variety of people. As Elizabeth, the manager in my Lima hotel was saying: Standing in line and not having a conversation with the one ahead of you or the person behind you is an impossibility for Latinos.

Nati in Paracas

Paris, Portrait of a City

How wonderfully fitting to begin a photo-book on Paris by introducing the reader to Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre's public demonstrations of his revolutionary invention: photography.

Paris, Portrait of a City presents the history of the French capital, "recounted in photographs ranging from Daguerre's early incunabula to the most recent images – an almost complete record of over a century and a half of transformations and a vast panorama soanning more than 600 pages and 500 photographs", as the publisher, Taschen, lets us know. Needless to say, that is impressive indeed. Unfortunate, however, is that the blurb refers to Paris as "the capital of love and photography". Apart from being almost beyond cliché, I keep on wondering what could make a city "a capital of love" ...?

Most of the photographs in this tome are primarily historical documents – they show us what was in front of the lens at a specific point in time. Most of them I had never seen before, and to some I felt immediately drawn to. Among the few that were familiar are the ones by André Zucca, and I'm glad they were included, see also here.

My personal favourites, however, are the ones by Robert Doisneau – Juliette Gréco at the place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, for instance, or his pic of the Point d'Iéna in 1945. But then there are also the "Lovers in the Jardin des Tuileries, 1989" by Jean Claude Gautrand, or his "Pyramide du Louvre, 1988", or the masterly "Quai de Seine, 1968" by Bruce Dale, or the many truly exceptional shots by Henri Cartier-Bresson ... and and and ...

Good books invite you to make discoveries, and Paris, Portrait of a City is no exception. The Lithuanian born Izis (1911-1980), for instance, who arrived in Paris in 1930 and who defined himself as a "specialist of places where nothing is happening". Well, rarely do we seem more mistaken than when we are attempting to define ourselves, just check out at his extraordinary shots of "Lovers on the banks of the Seine, 1949" and "Fair, Place de la République, 1950", (pages 454 and 455). And, have a look at Ellen von Unwerth's "The Red Balloon, 2007" (page 575) and the various impressive pics by anonymous photographers.

Paris, Portrait of a City is a most useful historical document, both visual and textual. It makes us aware of how people and places once looked but it also instills in us a longing for things past.

It is not a tome that you read in one go (because of the wealth of information provided), it is a tome to again and again come back to.

Paris

Portrait of a City

Taschen, Cologne 2011

http://www.taschen.com/

Photo-texts

This is an academic book, I'm not an academic, and my interest in academic books is remote – so why do I then bother introducing an academic book? Because I take from books what I like, and sometimes what I need, and in my experience good stuff can be found anywhere, and that includes academic books. Moreover, I'm very interested in the combination of words and images.

Andy Stafford's Photo-texts: Contemporary French Writing of the Photographic Image is based on nine case studies from the 1990s' French-speaking world (from France, North Africa and the Caribbean) and "attempts to define the interaction between non fictional written text (caption, essay, fragment, poem) and photographic image."

Since I'm not much into who wrote what, where and when, and since I do not really have the stomach for differentiating for the sake of differentiating (this is my view of most academic work), let me give you some of my personal nuggets (arguments that made me ponder previously neglected aspects; that however does not mean that I necessarily agree with them) of this tome:

"The book will answer, in very simple terms, the question posed recently by W.J.T. Mitchell, 'What do pictures want?' with the simple answer (in respect of photography at least): language."

"... a photograph, photographs, photography, have a radical provisionality in relation to language, which says that, within 'reason', any photographic image can be changed, to 'mean' something else, including the polar opposite of its original 'intention'; that, to quote Régis Debray, '(o)n ne peut pas faire dire à un texte tout ce qu'on veut – à une image oui' ..."

"Apprendre à 'lire une photo', n'est-ce pas d'abord apprendre à respecter son mutisme?" (Régis Debray).

"How to decide, now, what is 'good'? And perhaps this will be a function of the photo-text: a distinction of the good from the babble of contemporary photographic practice."

"... photography does not belong to history; it gives history; (...) the truth of history is to this day nothing but photography." (Eduardo Cadava).

"For Flusser, the battle to 'break' the magic circle which photography forms around us is a battle to recognize the automatic nature of the photograph, to accept that we can only think currently in 'photographic categories', in short, not to allow the apparatus, the camera, to enslave us to the perceived magic of the photographic image."

"Il n'y a aucune innocence à presser le bouton (...); sa banalisation extrême nous fait oublier le sens d'un acte dont il faut réapprendre combien il implique notre présence au monde et le rapport que nous entretenons avec lui. (...) Il nous faut (...) y éduquer le regard." (Anne-Marie Garat).

"... what matters in photography is what it does, not what it is."

I readily admit that the selection of these quotes has been rather arbitrary – the ones I consider pretentious nonsense: "écriture et photographie n'ont pas à se completer l'une l'autre, mais à s'éloigner autant que possible l'une de l'autre, si elles veulent peut-être se recontrer" (Gilles Mora), I did intentionally leave out. And I could of course have chosen quite some others. May the ones presented here arouse your curiosity!

PS: The notes and the bibliography alone merit the acquisition of this work. A richer source on the topic of photo and text is difficult to imagine.

Andy Stafford

Photo-texts

Contemporary French Writing of the Photographic Image

Liverpool University Press

Liverpool, 2010

Barranco, Lima

These pics were taken in January 2012 in Barranco, Lima.

A suite in Huacho

In Lima, I regularly visit a restaurant that serves comida criolla, buy Salsa and Merengue CDs (the place where I find them reminds me of places in Bangkok - lots of small stalls that sell everything you can think of at bargain prices), visit bookstores and go for long walks.

My initial plan had been to go up the coast by bus and not to travel more than four hours per day. That however proved not that easy for most of the buses that travel long distances do not stop, and the ones that do "para en toda esquina". And so I decide rather unhappily to embark on the nine-hour trip from Lima to Trujillo.

The day of my departure, I wake up with yet another diarrhea and decide to cancel my trip. Instead I opt for a taxi and head for Ancon, a seaside place just outside Lima. Beto, my driver, seems to be fond of it, I'm not - a very small beach full of umbrellas is not my idea of fun. We continue to Huaral which lies inland, is busy and noisy and, I later learn, has a high-security prison. When we ask for a nearby beach, we get lots of conflicting opinions but a shopkeeper points out a place called Rio Seco, home of a fabulous beach, restaurants, hotels, "hay de todo", she says. When on the Panamericana again we spot the sign Rio Seco we get off the highway and, a couple of meters later, arrive at the beginning of a dirt road. We are doubtful whether this is the right road to a tourist place and ask a worker who passes by. Yes, this is the road to Rio Seco, he says. Are there any restaurants etc? we inquire. There is nothing there, he says.

We continue to Huacho, a desert town by the sea, that reminds me of Asia - chaotic, loud, colourful, and not much decent architecture. It has a population of about 70'000, two nice clean beaches, book and record stores, a big hotel outside of town with a swimmingpool and a very friendly and helpful supervisor by the name of Soledad who offers me a suite for half the regular price - this is my idea of paradise (it does however come with what must be the slowest internet connection in Peru).

I'm not really into history, I say to Soledad when she mentions an Inka-site worth visiting, I'm more interested in how people are living today. What do people in Huacho do? Where do they go, say, on weekends? To the beaches, and to the Laguna Encantada, for instance.

And so I go to see the Laguna Encantada and come back enchanted. There are two other lagunas, Soledad says, one is the Laguna Paraíso, the other the Laguna Albúfera del Medio Mundo ...

PS: There is Swiss time, and there is Peruvian time. I do not understand Peruvian time but it is clearly different from Swiss time. More flexible, I'd say. I'm however not flexible, I'm Swiss (in Switzerland, unpunctuality is considered a character defect), and so I try to reeducate my moto-taxista (moto-taxis have three wheels and can be compared to Tuk Tuks but are less comfortable) who is always late - and I do of course fail miserably.

In Paracas

Paracas is a rather small place full of tourists who all go by speedboat to nearby islands to watch penguins. I would love to watch penguins but do not see myself in an orange vest squeezed with 31 others into a boat and being sped across the water in order to watch them. Instead I take a taxi to the next town which turns out to consist of a military base, fish factories, and gasoline tanks.

On the outskirts, there are heaps of rubble on the side of the road that is facing the sea. These are remnants of the earthquake in 2007, my taxi driver informs me. Why didn't they put them on the other side of the road? I wonder. He unhappily shrugs his shoulders.

I have dinner with a young Swiss couple who are travelling around the world. The guy eats the same dish as I but it's only me who spends the night commuting between bed and toilet.
The next day, his girlfriend alerts me to three young boys who are cleaning the beach from garbage. Now, look at what they do, she says. Next to the heap of garbage, the boys dig a hole in the sand, put the garbage in and then cover it with sand.

I'm going to see an archeological site. My taxi driver, himself a descendent of Inkas, shows himself impressed by the Inkas' organising ablitities - these however do not seem to have survived: When the TV in my hotel room does not work, I inform the reception. She will send somebody up, the receptionist says. 45 minutes later nobody has shown up. I go tell her again. This time she wakes up a girl who had been sleeping in the storage room and now stands rather helplessly in front of my TV. Let's leave it to tomorrow, I suggest. I will call the guy in charge, she responds and disappears. 20 minutes later I go to check and find the girl half asleep behind the reception. The guy's not answering the phone, she says.

The Reserva Nacional de Paracas "fue creada con el fin de conservar una porción del mar y del desierto del Perú, dando protección a las diversas especies de flora y fauna silvestres que ahí viven ... Es la única área marítima protegida del Perú". I loved it (alone the desert colours!) and visited it three times during my week in Paracas.

I feel like having a tortilla de verduras but can't find it on the menu and so I ask whether they can make me one. The owner, a resolute woman in her forties, says, sure, we can do that but does not look too confident. The couple at the next table smiles in my direction and the lady explains that her buddy knows very well how to do tortillas. They politely refuse my suggestion to move to the kitchen but the lady starts to elaborate in detail how the tortilla needs to be prepared. When she is about in the middle of her explanation, the restaurant owner, who until then had listened attentively, disappears into the kitchen.

Shortly afterwards, my dish is placed in front of me. Save for a few slices of tomato, I can't detect any vegetables on the tortilla but seem to spot ham and things I can't really place. You can count yourself lucky that I'm not a vegetarian, I smile in the direction of the restaurant owner. What exactly, besides ham did you put on it? I did it how the lady had explained it, she said. Onions, potatoes, and then added a bit of everything like, yes, ham and chicken and ... How is it? she inquires, good? Acceptable, I say. She nods in agreement.

The couple behind the reception of my hotel are both sporting a T-shirt that says Manager. They are in their mid-forties, I learn. Are both of you the manager? I ask. I'm doing the administrative work, the woman says, my husband is the captain of the speed boat that goes to the Ballestas Islands. I'm doing this now for 30 years, every day, the captain says and adds, I was born in a boat. No, you were not, his wife says.

At the bus station I hear an announcement that the bus will be thirty minutes late. Are delays a regular occurrence? I ask. Almost all of them are late, I'm told, one in three thousand is not. Mine departs late and arrives early.