It's been a while..

hum... still anybody reading out there??

if you guys think i'm lazying around, i'm not! i just have a bit too much on my hands right now...
in the meantime, here are a few parisian graffitis to decorate your desktops.. enjoy!

isn't she lovely...

click to see images - "x" to exit

Antigravity

Gravity

A whole new begining!

Well.. those of you who know me a bit will easily understand how unbelievable a piece of news this is for this kind of bold decision is quite unlike me, but there we go: I'M ENGAGED!!

Wow!... I even managed to write it!

It all started sometime around mid 2005, when Mary decided to come into my life.. through the window!
Of my web browser i mean.
And that's how we became pen pals for a while... until last year i decided to stop by and meet her as i was on my way around the world..
It only took a few days to realize that, well.. we really liked each other!

Weird thing, it is.. you know how, in your early teenage years you start to realize how beautiful women are, and how numerous they are! and how are you ever going to choose only one?!... until you start knowing them better, only to realize, to your great disappointment, that most are essentially a real pain in the neck and then you start wondering how you'll ever manage to choose one at all!!

And one day that One pops into your life and you don't know why.. you keep trying to apply all kinds of logic to it, but there's none.. all you know is that if you let this one go, you'll hate yourself for the rest of your life..

Well... i did let her go!

I went on with my travels and started freaking out about this nonsense relationship and eventually came to the conclusion that i had just been fooled by her soothing smile and i better forget all about it. Damn "commitment"!.. is there a scarier word out there?!

But no matter how hard i'd try, i couldn't forget.

Nor could she for that matter, and with much more courage than i would ever have had, she decided to face the devil and enter my life yet another time; and by the front door of my apartment this time!

Now, you don't get this kind of chance three times in a lifetime, and i had been foolish enough to let her go once; it was about time i kicked myself in the bottom once and for all and did something about it!!

On May 31st 2007, Mary and i decided to share our lives and live together in Paris... hopefully in the near future.. for now she's gone back home, temporarily this time.

We hope you'll share our joy and we shall keep you posted!

Mumbai traffic

My usual description of India to those who ask me about it is that even a UFO landing next to me in the streets there wouldn't come as much of a surprise!

For instance, when driving in India you should always be on the lookout for an elephant around the corner or a Boeing 737 illegally parked!

"The decommissioned aircraft was being driven through the city at the weekend when the driver got lost and then abandoned the plane." !!

Speaking of which..

Speaking of a violent civilisation.. my aunt Anita Dube's latest exhibition at the gallery Almine Rech, 19 rue de Saintonge, Paris 3, comes right on time for this blog and to give another view of our world - both abstract and yet quite explicit.

The show opened today and will be held until May 15th.

This is a violent civilisation...

Never cheap of a controversial discussion, i shall respond hereby to my friend Bobby's suggestion: "Post about gun control on your blog, and I will be happy to argue with you :)"

I met Bobby during my end of studies internship in Virginia Tech... this campus recently got some extra notoriety for being the theater of the most recent -and most deadly- university shooting in the US (unfortunately it tends to be so frequent that we have to be precise which shooting we're talking about)

So tell me why is it that, some 200 years after americans have had to "defend themselves against evil native indians" (hmm..), they still all should have guns at home and go shoot each other in universities, ghettos and other suburbs?!

And by the way, what is it about guns that so fascinates kids all the way to the remote buddhist regions of the world?!

May i illustrate by quoting Gil Scott-Heron's excellent song on the subject?

Peace out.

GUN by Gil Scott-Heron

Brother Man nowadays living in the ghetto
Where the danger's sure enough real
Well when he's out late at night
and if he's got his head on right
Well, I lay you 9 to 5 he's walking with steal.

Brother Man says he's 'fraid of gangsters
Messing with people just for fun
He don't want to be next
He got a family to protect
So just last week he bought himself a gun.

Chorus:
Everybody got a pistol, everybody got a 45
And the philosophy seem to be
At least as near as I can see
When other folks give up theirs, I'll give up mine.

This is a violent civilization
If civilization's where I am
Every channel that I stop on
Got a different kind of cop on
Killing them by the millions for Uncle Sam

Saturday night just ain't that special
Yeah, I got the constitution on the run
'Cause even though we've got the right
To defend our home, to defend our life
Got to understand to get it in hand about the guns

(chous repeat & solo break)

Saturday night just ain't that special
Freedom to be afraid is all you want
Yes if you don't want to be next
You've got a family to protect
9 out of 10, you've got a friend, you call the gun.

(chous repeat)

Everybody got a pistol, this must be the NRA
Yeah 'cause when it's time to shine up
You know damn well they're gonna line up
Everybody...

And the philosophy seem to be
At least as near as I can see
When other folks give up theirs, I'll give up mine

Food for thought...

While Christianity and Islam tend to behave like cancers: propagating mainly by violence and destruction of their living environment, Buddhism and Hinduism tend to behave like AIDS: propagating by love and destroying their own defense mechanisms.

Yet all are lethal diseases.

The dual life of Mr Panday

Is this a portrait of my dad.. or one of modern India, caught between contradictory westernization and traditions... ?

Lucknow, India

Influences #1

Amongst the many photographers i look up to, there are a few whom i tend to always keep in mind... Martin Parr - the Eugene Ionesco of photography! - is definitely one of them..

i think his series on british homes somehow influenced me to take this shot..

Sainchand - Mongolia

..while this one surely comes from his hilarious views of tourists!

Xiahe - China

Be sure to check out Martin Parr retrospective on Magnum's website!

Black and white

Darjeeling - India

New shoes

I had been walking for hours and miles in the streets of Gdansk.. my legs were tired and my feet were numb, when i found that bench and decided to take a break...

She came out of nowhere.
She had just bought a new pair of shoes and she just had to try them on.
She sat right next to me without even noticing i was there.

And a minute later she was gone.

Sunrise

It's hard to review all this on my own and resist the temptation to share some of it with you!

Amongst the images I have kept in my mind during the whole trip, there was this spectacular sunrise on the Baikal lake... we had been up all night, starting with a bonfire and a bit of vodka to keep us warm, then later chatting by the stove..
when we began to see the sky turn to a lighter shade of blue, we went out for a walk by the lake.. it was freezing cold and it was hard just to keep my hands on my camera... but what a sight!

poor little Tatiana was walking around in her slippers, wrapped up in her bright orange hood and a blanket to keep from freezing.. i thought of using my fisheye lens and a bit of fill-in flash to add to the surreal atmosphere!

Travelling with a guitar..

To all those who've kept asking me if it wasn't too cumbersome to travel with a guitar, my response fits in the image below... there's nothing like a guitar to break communication barriers when language is not an option!

inside a "ger", in Mongolia

Scanning my way around the globe...

I've been pretty silent lately..

on top on catching up with my former life, i've started scanning my 300+ rolls of films.. and it's a lot of work!

the cool thing about shooting film is... "film?".. sorry: "film", some of you may recall is what your grand parents used to take photographs before cameras became convenient!.. in those prehistoric times cameras had no screen to display the photos and they had to be loaded with a roll of silver coated plastic film that reacted to light... never mind.

the cool thing about shooting film, i was saying, is that on top of carrying 20kg of films on your back all the way, you can't see anything you've shot until you get back home and have it processed.. then only you realize everything is blurred!

..where was i going with this?..

my point -somewhere down the line- was that during all this time i could only imagine the images i had taken, and try to remember my favorite ones... and it's an incredible feeling, a year after, to re-discover all the moments i had captured along the way..

most of them i had forgotten and they awaken tons of memories.. but it's funny also how some images have stuck so vividly to my mind to this day...

this guy for instance, that i met at Dr Pong, in Berlin... it was so bizarre to find him there.. and i only had my CL with a 100ASA film in it, in this dark place (smart me!).. i must have taken these 2 shots at 1/4th of a second or less, handheld.. and i was sooo hoping it would work!

say what you will but i never managed to shoot anything decent below 1/30th with a digital camera.

in crazy Berlin, everything is allowed, from derision to provocation.. or anywhere in between?

Phat come back!

This blog has been created for the sole purpose of showing off in front of my friends, there's no reason i should stop now!

The best thing about not skateboarding for a long time is that you don't expect to be able to do anything; every little success is raw pleasure!

Backside kickflip

Photo: Jean Feil

It's good to feel at home..

..or so i thought until i realised the mess my brother and his friend left in the appartment!

(and that's just after they "did some cleaning up"!)

The most in the world!

After visiting many of the most beautiful places around the world, you may excuse that my standards have reached higher levels and by now, i barely go anywhere unless it's at least the most something in the world...

Here for example, just this morning, a train took me on the southern outskirts of Paris to a fascinating grey building, packed with grey corridors along which are aligned dozens of absolutely identical grey offices containing grey computers... judging by how packed the train was with people eager to get there, i was already sensing this was going to be special, but there i was now and i couldn't help thinking : this got to be the most boring place in the world!

And the good thing is that i'm now going to have heaps of time to explore and appreciate this new -and yet so familiar- environment of mine!




More seriously, the most scary thing of all is how quickly i got thrown back to my parisian life, finding everything unchanged exactly as i left it a year ago, and honestly, if it wasn't for this blog, i would doubt myself that i ever travelled anywhere and that it wasn't just one big fantastic dream!

The earth is round..

...I checked it for myself: after 11 months of travelling east, i finally made it back to my starting point!


Heaps of thanks to the many people i've met and who've helped me in a way or another and became part of this adventure.. special thoughts for

• Mark Nickels
• Claus Heuwinkel and Lina
• Daniel Etter
• Owain Jones
• Liva Krieke
  
• Laura the queen of the R's
• Natalia Ermilova
• Albina
• Vladimir V'yurkov
• Gene Kamushin
• Liliya Filonova
• Sergey
• Assunta and Egidio
• Silvia Gi
• Terry
• Ci Ren Djoma
• Bharat Sherstha and his family
• All my family in India!
• Mary Raja
• Jon West
• Marta Karwowski
• Jana Tegtmeier
• Cedric Zuwala
• Paula and Pablo
• Sebastian Gruenewald
• Katharine Davis
• and all the people i've met even more briefly at some point on the road...

It's a strange feeling when such a big project is finally behind you... it's like "so now what?!"

But i know there still will be more to come.. and i'll keep you posted!

The walls of Buenos Aires..

The last few days in Buenos have been pretty hectic and i found myself caught in a strange remake of Cube! But in spite of not seeing too much of the city, it was a great time and i mostly owe it to our hostess Katharine Davis.. thanks Katharine :-)

So just a last few walls before i say good bye to Buenos Aires...

and this was actually a window, but it still looked cool..

.. good bye Buenos Aires!

My album is out!!

Quick! Go get it!!!


(it's actually the Argentinian artist Charlie Garcia... but you'll have to admit it's somewhat striking!)

On to the final destination!

..there were a few more days of carnaval after that but i decided it costs me way too much in films so i decided to move on this time!

The funny thing after traveling for a while is that you hear yourself say things like "oh it's only 14 hours of bus!"... so 14 hours later i arrived in Cordoba, fresh as a... i don't know! how fresh can you be anyways after 14 hours in a bus?!

After a few hours of walking around Cordoba, i decided that Rosario was only a mere 6 hours away... so i went straight on!

I hung around Rosario for a day, but sunday isn't the most lively day of the week in a provincial Argentinian city... and on monday morning i was in line for the last bus ride of this travel.. 4 hours to Buenos Aires; my port of acclimatation before returning to the real world!

And can you believe it? I didn't tell anyone i was arriving to Buenos Aires, but as soon as i got there they were already all parading to celebrate my arrival!

On top of of the scary witch look -some of you may not have recovered from yet- i've been called "Jesus Christo" by everyone over the past month, with an enthousiasm i couldn't bear anymore! So as part of my reintegration process into the real world i decided it was about time to get trhough a quick relooking...

and guess what.. there was a face underneath all the hair!

well.. it's not much better but at least it'll last me another few months!

The scary old witch!

Shoot.. barely a week before a get back and i haven't given any news in a while!

so... where were we?!

After shooting like a maniac all the colourful mountains in the area, i was about to move on to new adventures.. when a young indigenous went "WHAT?? you can't leave just a day before the biggest cultural event of the year!!"

Absorbed as i was by the crazy landscape, i didn't realise that people had come from all over for the up-coming carnaval... so i postponed my departure a bit..

And sure enough, the next day people started to parade and dance all over the place, giving a totally different feel to the most quiet village of Purmamarca..

and before i could say a thing, i was transformed into a terrible old witch!!... (sensible souls please skip the picture below!)
my friend Basti who manages to look good in any situation got out of this in a much more decent way, i must say!

..then it went darker and the music went louder and last thing i remember it was somewhere around 6 in the morning and i collapsed in my dorm bed!