Transformation

Photo©2014 Istvan Kerekes posted with kind permission

Behold, I Make All Things New

(Rev. 21:3-5)

Happy Day of Transformation!

Another Kind of Christmas: Close to the Earth

Woman and Child - Refugee Camp, Gaza City © Zoriah/www.zoriah.com
Note from the Photographer: A woman holds a child in Gaza City's Beach Camp, one of the world's longest-standing refugee camps. The poverty in such areas often makes you feel as if you have taken a step back in time.

And so it was that while they were there, 
the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him
in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger;
because there was no room for them in the inn.
Luke 2: 6-7 KJV

May the God of your Soul give you peace in this Season of Brotherhood and May Angels walk with you into the New Year.

Father's Day: The Gift ~ Li-Young Lee

To pull the metal splinter from my palm

my father recited a story in a low voice.

I watched his lovely face and not the blade.

Before the story ended, he’d removed

the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.

I can’t remember the tale,

but hear his voice still, a well

of dark water, a prayer.

And I recall his hands,

two measures of tenderness

he laid against my face,

the flames of discipline

he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon

you would have thought you saw a man

planting something in a boy’s palm,

a silver tear, a tiny flame.

Had you followed that boy

you would have arrived here,

where I bend over my wife’s right hand.

Look how I shave her thumbnail down

so carefully she feels no pain.

Watch as I lift the splinter out.

I was seven when my father

took my hand like this,

and I did not hold that shard

between my fingers and think,

Metal that will bury me,

christen it Little Assassin,

Ore Going Deep for My Heart.

And I did not lift up my wound and cry,

Death visited here!

© 2012 Istvan Kerekes 

I did what a child does

when he’s given something to keep.

I kissed my father.

Li-Young Lee, “The Gift” from Rose. Copyright ©1986 by Li-Young Lee.

About Istvan Kerekes

Photographer

In His Own Words

I have been a photographer since 2007. My favourite subject is The Man. I would like to show the souls behind the faces. Everyone has feelings, everybody loves and breathes. My subjects are usually ordinary people. My main aim is to show their personalities through my images. One of William Albert Allard’s thoughts on photos and photography is just like mine, I truly believe in it: “the good portrait is about the eye, the look, since the human soul is reflected in it the most purely.”When taking photos it is my heart that leads me. After I have tuned to the subject I act instinctively.

~Istvan Kerekes

Istvan’s website: http://www.kerekesistvan.hu/

*Copyrighted images are posted with kind permission of the photographer.

Tribal Woman

Rajasthan ©2012 George Koruth with kind permission

Closed Path

I thought that my voyage had come to its end
at the last limit of my power,---that the path before me was closed,
that provisions were exhausted
and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.
But I find that thy will knows no end in me.
And when old words die out on the tongue,
new melodies break forth from the heart;
and where the old tracks are lost,
new country is revealed with its wonders.

Rabindranath Tagore

 

About the Photographer:

George Koruth

George Koruth is a photographer based in India. His collection captures India's rich culture and traditions. One of his specialties is street photography. Be it a smiling child or a wrinkled old woman, you will find a unique collection of faces here. He also loves to showcase social issues and hopes his photographs can give a voice to those people who don't have any say in this world. George has done work for international magazines and websites and has been featured in Indian magazines.

Let’s Find a Way

Mindennapi Elet (Everyday Life) ©2012 Istvan Kerekes

Piglet's Song

Let's find a Way today,
that can take us to tomorrow.
We'll follow that Way,
A Way like flowing water.

Let's leave behind,
the things that do not matter.
And we'll turn our lives,
to a more important chapter.

Let's take the time and try to find,
what real life has to offer.
And maybe then we'll find again,
what we had long forgotten.
Like a friend, true 'til the end,
it will help us onward.

The sun is high, the road is wide,
and it starts where we are standing.
No one knows how far it goes,
for the road is never-ending.

It goes away,
beyond what we have thought of.
It flows away,
Away like flowing water.

~ Benjamin Hoff ~

(The Te of Piglet)

 

About the Photographer

Istvan Kerekes

In His Own Words

I have been a photographer since 2007. My favourite subject is The Man. I would like to show the souls behind the faces. Everyone has feelings, everybody loves and breathes. My subjects are usually ordinary people. My main aim is to show their personalities through my images. One of William Albert Allard’s thoughts on photos and photography is just like mine, I truly believe in it: “the good portrait is about the eye, the look, since the human soul is reflected in it the most purely.”When taking photos it is my heart that leads me. After I have tuned to the subject I act instinctively.

~Istvan Kerekes

Istvan’s website: http://www.kerekesistvan.hu/

*Copyrighted images are posted with kind permission of the photographer.

Minotaur from Daniel Sousa (film)

1998, 8 minutes, 16mm
Sound Design by Dan Golden
Cello played by Judy Rubin

A loose interpretation of the Minoan myth, as seen through the monster's point of view. Abandoned in a labyrinthine island, the childlike minotaur has as his only companion a playful red ball and a multitude of mirrors. When he sees his own image he imagines himself dancing in perfect synchronicity with a mysterious other. But new characters are brought to the island, and they don't behave like his choreographed twins. Confused and frustrated, the creature has to learn to adapt to a world of uncertainty. But when he can't, the monster's true nature is revealed.

Technique: Most of the character animation was originally hand-drawn on a light table, cut out and mounted on rigid cardboard. This was done so that each replacement could stand up vertically within a three-dimensional set. The set was then lit with fiber-optic lights and shot in stop-motion, using a 16mm Bolex camera. Some of the animation was done as hinged cut-out puppets on glass, using a multi-plane rig.





Festivals and Awards


Anima Mundi International Animation Festival, Brazil
Melbourne International Film Festival, Australia
New England Film Festival, MA • Honorable Mention
Atlanta Film and Video Festival, GA • Honorable Mention
Humboldt International Film Festival, CA • Best Animation
Big Muddy Film Festival, IL

Has Anyone Seen the Boy?

Best Friends ©2012 Istvan Kerekes

Have you seen the boy?
"I had been looking for him for years...  I
remember him, full of love, generous heart, a
fiery passion." 
Some boys have a story to tell:
They get lost to us....

Has anyone seen the boy
who used to come here?
Round-faced trouble-maker,
quick to find a joke,
slow to be serious, red shirt,
perfect coordination, sly,
strong muscled,
with things always in his pocket:
reed flute, worn pick,
polished and ready for his Talent--
you know that one.
Have you heard stories about him?
Pharaoh and the whole Egyptian world
collapsed for such a Joseph.
I'd gladly spend years getting word
of him, even third or fourth hand.

There is a wonderful, magical energy in a
boy.  And the tragedy is that it can be so
easily lost.  It is a peculiar wildness of
heart. 
Have you ever met that wild heart?
He is so longed for and dearly missed.  Oh,
how we miss our boys.

~(Blue portion is from Rumi’s (Red Shirt))

Preface and Closing in gold taken from Here

Story of Red Shirt may be found here .

linked to Postcards from Paradise at Rebecca’s for Memorial Day

About the Photographer 

Istvan Kerekes

I have been a photographer since 2007. My favourite subject is The Man. I would like to show the souls behind the faces. Everyone has feelings, everybody loves and breathes. My subjects are usually ordinary people. My main aim is to show their personalities through my images. One of William Albert Allard’s thoughts on photos and photography is just like mine, I truly believe in it: “The good portrait is about the eye, the look, since the human soul is reflected in it the most purely.”When taking photos it is my heart that leads me. After I have tuned to the subject I act instinctively.
~Istvan Kerekes
Istvan’s website: http://www.kerekesistvan.hu/
Best Friends can be found on 1x.com
*Copyrighted images are posted with kind permission of the photographer.

In Times of Peace ~Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip

© zoriah/www.zoriah.com The owner holds all original copyright and licenses. Republishing rights for bloggers only, companies, organizations, NGO's and similar must first obtain permission before republishing. Contact www.zoriah.com/contact for more information or email info at zoriah dot com.

Damage from attacks on a Palestinian neighborhood in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip in March, 2006

At the moment, with journalists trapped in Israel and not able to enter the Gaza Strip to report, I will focus my attention on the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. If people have contrary views to mine and believe different sides of these issues need to be covered, I encourage you to get out there and do it. My assumptions were affirmed by friends living in Gaza that the situation there is quite desperate. My focus continues to be the human side of conflict and not the political side and I hope the images I am posting from Gaza will show how bad the situation is there even during "times of peace." I also encourage comments and will pay special attention to those posted by people who have lived both in Gaza and in Israel and understand both sides of this situation in reality and not just in theory. ~Zoriah

Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
~Excerpt Naomi Shihab Nye.

Prayer in My Boot ~ Robert Larson Images

Prayer in my Boot
By Naomi Shihab Nye

For the wind no one expected

For the boy who does not know the answer

For the graceful handle I found in a field
attached to nothing
pray it is universally applicable

For our tracks which disappear
the moment we leave them

For the face peering through the cafe window
as we sip our soup

For cheerful American classrooms sparkling
with crisp colored alphabets
happy cat posters
the cage of the guinea pig
the dog with division flying out of his tail
and the classrooms of our cousins
on the other side of the earth

how solemn they are
how gray or green or plain
how there is nothing dangling
nothing striped or polka-dotted or cheery
no self-portraits or visions of cupids

and in these rooms the students raise their hands
and learn the stories of the world

For library books in alphabetical order
and family businesses that failed
and the house with the boarded windows

and the gap in the middle of a sentence
and the envelope we keep mailing ourselves

For every hopeful morning given and given,
and every future rough edge

and every afternoon
turning over in its sleep

~Naomi Shihab Nye

About The Photographer:

Robert Larson

A Journey To Haiti

“When I walk, I walk”~Jeanmary Michel

In January of 2010, I met a 27-year-old man in Port-au-Prince named Jeanmary Michel. We were strangers walking down the street together. It had been a difficult trip, and up to that point the reaction that most strangers had to my presence was hostile. This man simply looked at me, smiled and said “Whatsup?” He then continued on his way as if he had no desire to receive a greeting in return. I said hello, and asked where he was going. He said, “When I walk, I walk”.

I had traveled to Haiti in the days after the earthquake to photograph a historic moment for the world. I was in over my head. This stranger sensed my frustration and offered to show me whatever I’d like to see and to make sure I was safe. I agreed, and we spent the next 5 hours walking through the city on foot or riding in the back of taxis. I experienced more with him in 5 hours than I had in the last three days. We agreed to meet up the next morning and do it all over again.

We stayed in touch after I returned home to Los Angeles. In February of 2011, I received a grant from the Gilhousen Family Foundation to travel back to Haiti for two weeks and continue my photography project. This project had now been named Waiting for Haiti. I called Jeanmary, and we made arrangements for me to stay with him at his house so that I could experience the day-to-day life of a Haitian family. We emailed back and forth; composing a list of places that I would like to photograph, and he made a list of things he wanted me to see to better understand his country. Over the course of that last trip, Jeanmary and I became best friends. We had opposite backgrounds and perspectives, and we saw Haiti through each other’s eyes.

The more I learned about Haiti and the stronger our friendship grew, the more clear it became that these pictures meant a lot to both of us. One place that we repeatedly visited was the morgue at the General Hospital, in Port-au-Prince. Seeing the same decomposing bodies in the same place year after year and how they are carelessly stacked and slowly putrefying in the inefficient freezers; we felt deeply compelled to understand why the country functions the way it does. Jeanmary bought a notebook and began asking questions of his fellow Haitians, starting with the staff at the morgue. There were many places I could not go without him as a guide and translator. At the same time, having a foreigner by his side and a new sense of confidence opened doors for him that have always remained shut to the general Haitian population. We collected as many images and notes as we could in the short amount of time that we had.

In 2012 I will return to Port-au-Prince with the resources to help Jeanmary and myself share our story, his story, and Haiti’s story. Together with a talented and passionate production team, we will film Haiti in the way that it is. We will show the reality of a beautiful and mysterious country that has been left by the wayside. Through Jeanmary’s eyes, the film will show what a large natural disaster and subsequent flooding of foreign aid money really mean to an undeveloped and highly corrupt country. Haiti has a complicated story; its history is full of mistakes that many promise to never repeat. This project is an ongoing study of the country's future through the life of a man who calls it home.

Robert’s Website for this Project: Waiting for Haiti

Robert’s Other website:  robertlarsonphotography

All Photographs in this post are ©2011 Robert Larson All Rights Reserved. They were posted here with the permission of the Photographer. Thank you.

Yet They Behold The World

Simenfalva © 2011 Istvan Kerekes

My heart is so small
it's almost invisible.
How can You place
such big sorrows in it?

"Look," He answered,
"your eyes are even smaller,
yet they behold the world."

~ Rumi ~

 

About the Photographer

Istvan Kerekes

In His Own Words

I have been a photographer since 2007. My favourite subject is The Man. I would like to show the souls behind the faces. Everyone has feelings, everybody loves and breathes. My subjects are usually ordinary people. My main aim is to show their personalities through my images. One of William Albert Allard’s thoughts on photos and photography is just like mine, I truly believe in it: “the good portrait is about the eye, the look, since the human soul is reflected in it the most purely.”When taking photos it is my heart that leads me. After I have tuned to the subject I act instinctively.

~Istvan Kerekes

Istvan’s website: http://www.kerekesistvan.hu/

*Copyrighted images are posted with kind permission of the photographer.

Narcissus

 St. Louis, Mo. Series ©2011 Thomas Hawk

"When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else."—Georgia O'Keeffe

Narcissus – Poem by Jane Hirschfield

NARCISSUS:  Tel Aviv, Baghdad, San Francisco; February 1991
by Jane Hirschfield

And then the precise
opening everywhere of the flowers,
which live after all in their own time.
It seemed they were oblivious but they were not,
they included it all, the nameless explosions
and the oil fires in every cell, the white petals
like mirrors opening in a slow-motion coming-apart
and the stems, the stems rising like green-flaring missiles
like smoke, like the small sounds shaken
from those who were beaten—like dust from a carpet—
into the wind and the spring-scented rain.

They opened because it was time and they had no choice,
as the children were born in that time and that place
and became what they would without choice, or  with only
a little choice, perhaps, for the lucky, the foolish or brave.
But precise and in fact wholly peaceful the flowers opened,
and precise and peaceful the earth: opened because it was asked.
Again and again it was asked and earth opened—
flowered and fell—because what was falling had asked
and could not be refused, as the seabirds that ask the green surface
to open are not refused but are instantly welcomed,
that they may enter and eat—
As soon refuse, battered and soaking , the dark mahogany rain.

—Jane Hirschfield From  THE OCTOBER PALACE

Historical Context of Poem:  BBC On This Day

About the Photographer

Photo by Karen Hutton

Thomas Hawk

Introduction

Sometimes I like to think of myself as a photography factory. I see my photographs mostly as raw material for projects that might be worked on at some point later on in life.
When I'm not taking or processing the pictures I'm mostly thinking about the pictures. I'm trying to publish a library of 1,000,000 finished, processed photographs before I die.
The absurdity of my obsessive compulsive view on photography is not lost on me. But it is the absurdity of life that I find most beautiful of all. Where Sisyphus had his stone I have my camera and a bag full of lenses.
Document, explore, lather, rinse, repeat. Photography for me then becomes a kind of hyperactivity, loosely arranged and presented. My work is less about individual images and instead more about the power of a massive amount of excessive and disjointed images where stories, characters and places sometimes stay and other times reappear or disappear entirely for no good reason at all.
Most of my images are Creative Commons licensed, non commercial with attribution.  If you'd like to use any CC licensed images for non commercial or personal purposes feel free.  If you'd like to use any of my images commercially, please contact me.
"Don't think about making art. Just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they're deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol

Nurture

Lollipop Shopper ~ Chinatown NYC ©2011 Blindman Shooting

Nurture

From a documentary on marsupials I learn

that a pillowcase makes a fine

substitute pouch for an orphaned kangaroo.

I am drawn to such dramas of animal rescue.

They are warm in the throat. I suffer, the critic proclaims,

from an overabundance of maternal genes.

Bring me your fallen fledgling, your bummer lamb,

lead the abused, the starvelings, into my barn.

Advise the hunted deer to leap into my corn.

And had there been a wild child—

filthy and fierce as a ferret, he is called

in one nineteenth-century account—

a wild child to love, it is safe to assume,

given my fireside inked with paw prints,

there would have been room.

Think of the language we two, same and not-same,

might have constructed from sign,

scratch, grimace, grunt, vowel:

Laughter our first noun, and our long verb, howl.

~© 1989 by Maxine Kumin, “Nurture” from Selected Poems 1960-1990.

About the Photographer:

Blindman shooting

I have come to realize that my art has diversity with powerful individual vision, that chronicles the life of individuals. People draw me into their lives to tell their story to anyone willing to listen and validate their reason for living. My attraction to story telling grew as my life developed behind a camera. I discovered that its not how a photographer looks at the world that is important, its their relationship with their fellow human beings and these moments of connectivity that are frozen in time for all to see.
last thought for the photographer, "Whatever you look to see outside, is waiting inside you".

Oh Sweetest Song

Sapa, Vietnam © 2011 Alfred Pleyer

Song
How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

~ Rilke ~

 

Vietnamese Lullaby

About the Photographer:

Alfred Pleyer

Alfred loves to travel and photograph.

He hails from Austria.

You may find more of his amazing photographic captures on

http://500px.com/niklens

According to Alfred the following is true:

Citizen of the World

Living without a cat...

I Belong to group.as

I am involved in
Public Circles Project

Chop Wood, Carry Water

Smiling Worker in Udaipur © 2011 Alfred Pleyer

WORKING TOGETHER

We shape our self
to fit this world

and by the world
are shaped again.

Vegetable Seller in Kathmandu, Nepal © 2011 Alfred Pleyer

The visible
and the invisible

working together
in common cause,

to produce
the miraculous.

Heavy Load © 2011 Alfred Pleyer  Taken in Kathmandu, Nepal

I am thinking of the way
the intangible air

passed at speed
round a shaped wing

easily
holds our weight.

A Leg Up © 2011 Alfred Pleyer

So may we, in this life
trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine,

Vegetable Seller in Kathmandu, Nepal (redux color) ©2011 Alfred Pleyer

and look for the true

shape of our own self
by forming it well

to the great
intangibles about us.

~David Whyte ~

© The House of Belonging

 

About the Photographer:

Alfred Pleyer

Alfred loves to travel and photograph.

He hails from Austria.

You may find more of his amazing photographic captures on

http://500px.com/niklens

According to Alfred the following is true:

Citizen of the World

Living without a cat...

I Belong to group.as

I am involved in
Public Circles Project

Yellow Glove

Automat © 1927 Edward Hopper

Yellow Glove

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
What can a yellow glove mean in a world of motorcars and governments?
I was small, like everyone. Life was a string of precautions: Don’t kiss the squirrel before you bury him, don’t suck candy, pop balloons, drop watermelons, watch TV. When the new gloves appeared one Christmas, tucked in soft tissue, I heard it trailing me: Don’t lose the yellow gloves.
I was small, there was too much to remember. One day, waving at a stream—the ice had cracked, winter chipping down, soon we would sail boats and roll into ditches—I let a glove go. Into the stream, sucked under the street. Since when did streets have mouths? I walked home on a desperate road. Gloves cost money. We didn’t have much. I would tell no one. I would wear the yellow glove that was left and keep the other hand in a pocket. I knew my mother’s eyes had tears they had not cried yet, I didn’t want to be the one to make them flow. It was the prayer I spoke secretly, folding socks, lining up donkeys in windowsills. To be good, a promise made to the roaches who scouted my closet at night. If you don’t get in my bed, I will be good. And they listened. I had a lot to fulfill.
The months rolled down like towels out of a machine. I sang and drew and fattened the cat. Don’t scream, don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t fight—you could hear it anywhere. A pebble could show you how to be smooth, tell the truth. A field could show how to sleep without walls. A stream could remember how to drift and change—next June I was stirring the stream like a soup, telling my brother dinner would be ready if he’d only hurry up with the bread, when I saw it. The yellow glove draped on a twig. A muddy survivor. A quiet flag.


Where had it been in the three gone months? I could wash it, fold it in my winter drawer with its sister, no one in that world would ever know. There were miracles on Harvey Street. Children walked home in yellow light. Trees were reborn and gloves traveled far, but returned. A thousand miles later, what can a yellow glove mean in a world of bankbooks and stereos?


Part of the difference between floating and going down.

~~~

Naomi Shihab Nye, “Yellow Glove” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
Source: Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Far Corner Books, 1995)
Linked to Share the Joy Thursdays with
 Meri’s Musings

Haiku My Heart ~ Just Like Me

Bali © 2011 Alfred Pleyer

You are my soul’s twin ~

nose, eyes, smile so familiar,

My heart’s guiding light.

~noelle renee 9.29.11

 

About the Photographer:

Alfred Pleyer

Alfred loves to travel and photograph.

He hails from Austria.

You may find more of his amazing photographic captures on

http://500px.com/niklens

According to Alfred the following is true:

Citizen of the World

Living without a cat...

I Belong to group.as

I am involved in
Public Circles Project

 

For More Wonderful Haiku

Please visit Recuerda mi Corazon

A Sense of Belonging

Kjerreveg © 2011 Arnestad

A good old-fashioned cart track that takes us back in time, which is also enhanced by the black / white term. The subject is taken from Hvaler. The picture is signed by art photographer Thomas Russ Arnestad.

Everyday

You've left the big storms
behind you now.
You didn't ask then
why you were born,
where you came from, where you were going to,
you were just there in the storm,
in the fire.
But it's possible to live
in the everyday as well,
in the grey quiet day,
set potatoes, rake leaves,
carry brushwood.

Black Oak © 2011 Arnestad

An old and classic oak tree on a field right besides the Norwegian University of Agriculture in Aas, Norway. This is a well known landmark in the region.

There's so much to think about here in the world,
one life is not enough for it all.
After work you can fry bacon
and read Chinese poems.
Old Laertes cut briars,
dug round his fig trees,
and let the heroes fight on at Troy.

~Olav H. Hauge

Drops in the East Wind, 1966

 

*Olav H. Hauge (1908–1994) lived all his life in Ulvik, a village in the west of Norway on the Hardangerfjord. He translated many English and American writers into Norwegian.

About The Photographer:

Thomas Russ Arnestad

About Arnestad Photography

Arnestad Photography (NO 990 983 267 MVA) presents the photographic work of Thomas Russ Arnestad (b.1979, Oslo).
He works as the Head of Photography at Inviso AS, the largest real estate photography company in Norway. During low season he performs ad-hoc photographic work for numerous clients. Besides interior photography he also shoots a lot of landscape, architecture, cars, products and travel images to name a few.
His interest began, as for many others, with the fascination of light and the beautiful impact it has on the nature surrounding us. From there on, it´s been a long journey to get where he´s at now. His nature and landscape photography, is today as then, a form for recreation and an excuse to spend some time alone.
Recent photos have been targeted into more specific projects and series than before. This is the way to go for getting more thought and substance into the photography for Arnestad.

~Linked to Meri’s Musings Share the Joy Thursdays~

Haiku My Heart: A Waggly Tail

The Big Trick © Andre du Plessis

 

Wild Waggly-Tailed Dog

 

Mom's All Mine: Donna & Dalina © Andre du Plessis

The View from Mom’s Sweet Shoulders

All

in

A

Day’s Bliss

 

~Noelle Renee 9.15.11

 

For more haiku my heart visit rebecca’s blog at recuerda mi corazon.

About the Photographer

Andre du Plessis

"To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them." -Elliott Erwitt.

I wish that I had more time to devote to photography. However, when I get that chance, the sheer enjoyment of it always makes up for those weeks of waiting.  My preference has evolved from experimental to street, and finally to people.

In people photography I have found what I need, and so far it has been a very interesting journey.  My preference for B&W derives from my days in the dark room, which started when I was about twelve. I once won a Jobo colour kit in a photography competition at school, but asked for the money instead in order to buy a new monochrome enlarger and lens.

When it comes to photography I see in shades of grey, and I cannot see this changing soon. I am sure that my choice of subject matter has evolved in parallel with this realisation.

I am passionate about the various peoples of that continent that I belong to, and in bringing pictures of ordinary folk in their ordinary houses to this forum (1x.com) I have started to appreciate how powerful a medium photography actually is, and the responsibility that accompanies this.

*Andre du Plessis hails from South Africa and currently lives in London where he has a medical practice. You may find more of his phenomenal pictures on 1x.com

*The Photos posted here was published with the kind permission of the photographer. All Rights are Reserved ©. Thank you.