From Worm To Catwalk

After the worm

2010-02-23T14:07:00.001-08:00

After the uncomplicated friendliness of South India comes the complexity
of British unfriendliness.

This country urges all to compete, treat your job like a sport. The Indians
work longer hours but look like they have more fun at it.

Be the change you desire said Mr Ghandhi.

And so I shall be.

What I have wormed

2010-02-18T09:52:00.000-08:00

New Delhi. Connaught Place is undergoing renovations and modernisation. There is a posh Metro station just round the corner. Eventually, when its finished, all four corners of this mysterious city will be available without fighting crazy traffic. In its place you will endure metal detectors, frisking and an X-Ray machine for your belongings. New Delhi is on high alert.

In the papers, more Naxal related deaths are reported every week. The government seems to have appointed some kind of unpopular deputised force to deal with theme but I don't pretend to understand the detail. People are dying. Villagers in Bihar are dying, stuck between the deputies who rape and pillage and the Naxals who are paranoid and carry out IRA style punishments for lack of loyalty. Its the same old story of power and shifting allegiances in which a poor community gets shafted by both sides.

Meanwhile, the TV stations pump out a relentless dirge of the same popular faces, the same Bollywood choregraphed dances transcribed to a new genre. India is obsessed with wealth, fusion but ultimately a rebranding which will change the way it is perceived.

It has been 16 years since I was last here and what you notice most is cars. Most of the new ones are Suzuki, Hyundi, Mahindra and Tata, probably in that order to my eyes.

The poor still exist here. Silk farmers are poor. They have (at least the ones I saw) great communities who help each other out and a clean environment (as long as you stay out of the river!)

Agra is fairly dull at first glance apart from the sublime (it is) Taj Mahal. My second favorite thing about the place was leaving it.

Looking back over three months of intensive meetings, arrangements and journeying certain things stick in the mind for no particular reason.

The chicken biriyani in RRR, Mysore. 80p and easily enough to live on (I practically did by choice!)

The generosity of the Indian people. Just amazing. As a tourist you get unwanted attention but its their country and they're curious. Sometimes I behaved badly or over reacted to the same old questions being ased over and over. It becomes like a verbal tax! But if you need something, for example someone's time, very few people I imposed myself on refused. I can's think of one in fact. Even people I offended (one security guard at the Sericulture Institute springs to mind) one smile fixes old grievances.

The higher up the greasy pole you go in this country the less you see of such open-heartedness, unsuprisingly. Even so, some very famous designers at Chennai Fashion week were happy to chat and be photographed in a way that I can't quite see Karl Lagerfeld entertaining such impromptu media intrusion (Karl, if you're reading this, you need to get out more.)

Anyway its late, sleep beckons as does about thirty hours fo picture editing and redrafting of notes.

Staying in a fairly upmarket hotel tonight but I miss my cell in the Dasaprakash and the daily adventure of going somewhere new to add another facet to this piece of photo-journalism.

Bengal tigers may be next. After pygmy hippos of course, but next after them. From 40,000 tigers to 1000 in the last 100 years. The last thousand won't last long unless somethng pretty major happens. I would love to have something to do with that.

Namaste!

Bad drawing?

2010-02-06T22:41:00.000-08:00

When drawing technique falters you make up shapes
out of laziness.

The successfully captured shapes compensate for the
inadequacies elsewhere.

The drawings of Klimpt, Schiele, Beckman and Kokoshka
used exaggeration in a controlled way to make express
emotional states.

This drawing shows what happens when your technique
fails through lack of use. Its the visual arts equivalent
of public tennis courts when Wimbledon's on.

We all think we're Roger Federer but the truth is usually
far from that!

A sense of place

2010-02-06T22:36:00.000-08:00

07/02/2010

These pictures are about a sense of place and life moving gently along. Taken in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, India, the world capital of hand woven silk a few days ago

Pace

2010-02-06T22:33:00.000-08:00

Everything can change when someone makes a tiny but real movement.

This picture illustrates this, taken in a hand woven saree shop in

Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu a couple of days ago.

The way to a man's heart

2010-02-03T08:33:00.000-08:00

Greetings.

Landing in India brought such unexpected relief it took
me by surprise.

Back in the land where a 100km bus ticket hours internet
access, super chicken fried rice and board can be had for
less than five quid.

Sorry Sri Lanka but there are more tasty bites in Kanchipuram
bus station than I was able to find in all Kandy, Vavuniya,
Colombo or Galle!!!

No offence like, just my experience.

Breakfast coffee dinner

2010-02-01T21:16:00.000-08:00

Breakfast finished at 0700hrs. ‘Where were you?’ asked the short Muslim waiter, his dark, close-set eyes affronted by my tardiness.

The alarm did go off at 0600hrs but after a sleepless night caused by too much coffee I slept through my omelette.

Two cold, hard-boiled eggs, took its place, the griddle being fired down until evening.

Yoga in the YMCA gym followed. Then pleasantries with Bandolet, the merry night desk man with sad eyes.

An unfamiliar bus route heralded a new spirit of adventure. Leaving familiar routines changes the way things look. That is why badgers use the same worn paths over and over again. They aren’t built for the disruption. I have no interest in being like them!

A chance meeting occurred with a clerk from the Indian Embassy. Apparently he speaks German, Japanese, French and of course English. He thanked me for setting him straight about asking the English too many personal questions before 10am.

European coffee and free internet access facilitated the re-nosing of the documentary screenplay we are writing.

A long trawl through the process of assigning economic value to carbon sequestration which will make (as I understand it!) unsustainable logging obsolete in developing countries, got me to my second latte.

Years ago a book on principled negotiation warned: never count on the good will of others – they may have none!

The fact is that when the rich want to hug bunnies they buy bunny farms. They don’t pay bunny huggers for vicarious hugs.

The point is that with a tangible value, carbon sequestration gives countries with nothing but natural resources to trade, more options. This is good news as they will not be forced to remove the trees which stop soil erosion, retain water, stop pollution by proxy, maintain bio-diversity and a million other benefits.

Being shaky on the detail and new to the subject does make contacting jaded scientists and field workers a nail-biting process but eventually, by putting yourself out there, you start to get it.

An email to the production company mentioning the above promised them a new 500 word screen play by tomorrow.

The big charity, which was unable to endorse the first screen play, will receive the same re-nosing. Take away what stops them from buying-in and you have a sale.

False starts are the only route from A to B unless you are Picasso or some other genius. Success is always there to be had, just don’t give up before you arrive (good self-talk champ!)

The long walk home featured a very worn but good statue of Queen Victoria outside the Sri Lankan Natural History Museum.

Crow manure made the journey smelly with a constant threat from aerial bombardment.

Finally, to Galle Face Green, where the sun set in a soup of water vapour, joggers, shy lovers, beach bums, kites and strollers.

A distant sign on a hotel roof-top beneath the World Trade Centre shone at a surprisingly high intensity compared to the dark cobalt-grey sky.

Mood lighting for Armageddon descended over the seafront promenade. Creamy halos piped dark heavy rain clouds while the horizon snuffed the deadened orange disc of the sun.

Throughout the little journey an endless variety of AK47s matched the bespoke interiors of rickshaws for improvements made by the owners.

The metal of one weapon looked like it had just left the factory and followed by hours of rubbing with gun oil. The equally unmarked plastic fittings were a bizarre orange brown colour.

Back at the café, behind the heavily militarised President’s Residence, I ordered rice and chicken.

The damp air and long absent sun flattened sound and shrunk the city. Any impressions of endless possibility or easy escape were replaced by the heavy toll of responsibility and consequence.

So our moods change.

The World Trade Centre, Colombo

2010-02-01T02:26:00.001-08:00

Japanese tourists swarmed over the Galle Face Green with so many cameras
all the soldiers could do was watch in despair.

The World Trade Centre is now at risk from featuring on Flickr.

The world holds its breath.

Welligama

2010-02-01T01:25:00.000-08:00

A twentyfour year surfing career ended in success at long last, after I
stood on the board for the first time in Welligama, south Sri Lanka.

To be fair, the twenty four years only included about three hours time in the sea
with a board.

The first time, 1986, it was a competition board, no waves (Venice Beach) and the removal
of all the skin from my nipples which sabotaged the attempt.

In Ireland, 2005, the sea was a washing machine and the apex of the wave
was indiscernable from the froth.

Welligama proved to me that if the board is moving the way it should its not
too hard to stand-up. A new set problems begin when you're up.

26/01/2010

2010-02-01T01:22:00.000-08:00

Trouble in Toytown

2010-02-01T00:39:00.000-08:00

Barbie in India dolls are being sold in a kiosk opposite the International
check-in in Chennai.

Is nothing sacred I thought to myself.

Harsh.

There is no reason why Barbie shouldn't travel or wear a saree for that matter.

But.

World domination is the somewhere on the mission statement of all successful brands.

Why I find that so distasteful has something to do with how selling Barbie dolls is more important to some folks than the perfect storm of over-population, poverty, fuel and food shortages, escalating conflicts and climate change.

It gets me down.

For Michael Douglas in Falling Down it was traffic which pushed him over the edge.

For me it was Barbie.

If the world doesn't want anything bad to happen to Barbie they must meet
my demands to avert the iminent environmental disaster.

Let's hear what Barbie thinks (see pic)

The Day After

2010-01-30T23:00:00.000-08:00

Photography can be humourless and forbidding.

These collages can be gaudy and indigestible.

My gut feeling is that if you take some quality raw material

and package it badly, you are creating something which opposes

the juggernaut of packaging in general by reversing the polarity.

The everyday is remarkable because it regularly mutates into the extraordinary.

If you don't feel comfortable with obtuse ideas or difficult to understand art

just take a look at what informs them. The world is full of injustice, murder and

deceit. Marketing wraps the horror in safe to handle cotton wool.

There is loads of brilliant journalism and TV documentary out there

but photo-journlism needs to find its second wind. We can get in and out

quicker than TV. We need to market ourselves as the champions of the unheard masses

because, to an increasing extent we have joined them. We are increasingly unseen and

unheard. We are seen as surplus to requirements and monlithic agencies produce slick

products which can be paid for in a nice predictable package.

Good, probing work, looking at the poorer sections of this world, 90% of it in fact,

doesn't sell flash cars for newspapers. Doom and gloom is avoided by the marketeers!

For more justice we need more photo-journalists to push harder to find an audience

for challenging stories.

We will only achieve this goal by showing why it is everybodys' interest to take an

interest in the uncomfortable truths which lie beneath the luxuries of Western

lifestyles. Maybe this is just ramblng nonsense. All I do know is, for example, that

the papers in India and Sri Lanka paint a pretty picture of themeselves living a

similar lifestyle to most middle class Europeans. I just don' see any evidence for

that. The majority of people living on the bare minimum have no voice and it bugs me.

Election Day - Sri Lanka - 26/01/2010

2010-01-30T22:56:00.000-08:00

23/01/2010

2010-01-30T22:53:00.000-08:00

Vavuniya

2010-01-30T22:00:00.000-08:00

24/01/2010

The temptation to spell Vavuniya with 'ia' instead of 'iya'
took me a while to overcome.

Leaving this northern town: sketch.

Sweet smelling incense permeates the air as people eat their breakfast.

A smiling waiter, only eighteen with no English protectively shoos
away a curious customer from my shoulder.

Cinnamon flavoured tea, unsweetened pancakes and 'gravy' arrive
fast.

Helmeted traffic police stand in the middle of the main street before the
sun rises higher, boiling the contents of their encased skulls like eggs.

Vavuniya is the North's trading post. This is reflected in the high density
of traffic and the proportionally large army presence.

Just a few kilometers further North brings you to Jaffna and the battlefields
of the war which has terrified the inhabitants and more recently evicted most
of those not simply killed by ordnance, shrapnel and stray bullets.

Thousands of mines are being dealt with and the papers here have accounts written
by those who bothered to get accredited by the MOD to visit, telling how the machines
deployed to remove these disgusting devices from the ground before the feet of farmers, traders, children and mothers return to re-start their lives.

The I.D.P camps are close by too. Three cheerful MSF workers, all blond and
mildly jaded mentioned they had seen quite a few children with missing limbs
over their five month stint which was coming to an end as the mission wraps-up.

Soldiers show no interest either way when being photographed. War, boredom and
the heat seem to have given them a grumpy common sense when dealing with tourists
and the like.

The traffic cops hold out their hands in greeting as the sun finally breaks over
the roof tops. Children in white uniforms walk steadily in small groups, laughing,
well-behaved.

Earlier, a Hindu temple beckoned the faithful to pray with loud music at 0530hrs.

Shop keepers doused steps with water.

A man approaches, crying uncontrollably, saying he's been in an IDP camp for two
years and is trying to reach his family who live in Madras.

His heart gave out on a visit to Sri Lanka two years ago and after a stent
was inserted.

When he ran out of money he was sent to the IDP camp where he says foreign doctors
also treated his eyes. Travel was banned after the eye operation. Two years passed
and there he was penniless, heading n foot towards where a ferry leaves for Madras.

Ambushed by his tears so early, my wariness about con-artists was over-ridden
by his sobbing and I gave him enough money to get a bus and something to eat.

The Pan Asi Bank slots in to the unfussy market high street like a prone UFO.

Money moves mountains and wastes no time when the time is right. Vavunia is open for
business.

Opposite the shiny bank a dust covered black Ambassador sits parked beside a garish
blue wall. In the same yard, thirty ornate plastic chairs in fake gold and silver are stacked opposite a fully laden clothes line.

As the bus to Kandy pulls away my lungs a filled with fumes from a dirty generator exhaust.

Boys throw a cricket ball in a circle under a large spreading deciduous tree.

Men stand idle in a wood yard laughing.

A huge army encampment appears to the left with a razor wired fence. The road becomes
uneven and dusty.

A mile on and the perimeter fence breaks left. In the distance past the acres of cut grass stand large bushes, regularly spaced, looking like parked tanks.

It starts to get hot as the ticket collector takes his first fares.

I didn't ask what the man in the photograph had seen of the war.

From what little I've seen of the after effects, I have sensed how communities are effected on a subliminal level as they to come to terms with the evil that has visted their lives and the fact that life must goes on.

Two Hours after they stopped voting

2010-01-30T21:51:00.000-08:00

22/01/2010

Vavuniya was as far North as I got before the army sent me back for my
note from the Ministry of Defence.

Heading south hundreds of lorries carrying aggregate for new roads etc passed
us.

Kandy is smothered in smelly crow and bat dung. It is vile. The council
should be ashamed of themselves for allowing it to accumualte.

After getting ticked off by the police for (legally) photographing members
of the public turning up to vote, I headed back to Colombo.

This little collage was shot as the light faded.

The streets were quiet.

Too quiet, as a paranoid cop or cowboy might remark.

The toilets

2010-01-30T21:32:00.000-08:00

22/01/2010

A bespoke silk shirt (£8)and trousers (£8) with cheap (£20) leather shoes. UK price for this look?

A great deal more.

Price for taking photographs of a posh hotel toilet (UK sentence): Life imprisonment.

Where is the new Bob Dylan when we need him?

Be the change you desire said Mr Ghandi.

I don't have Bob's laranx is all.

Photographs and defying the misuse of the Prevention of Terrorism Act

is a start though.

In Sri Lanka security is understandably tighter but the fact remains that no

system is water-tight and the public bears the brunt of draconian Army interference

in every day life.

Back dated notes

2010-01-28T01:10:00.000-08:00

The traffic in Colombo is shocking.

One-way systems are not abused by drivers.

Vehicles signal first and then manoeuvre.

Drivers let each other out.

I all, its a shock after the free-for-all of Indian roads.

There are pavements with enough room to stay out of the road.

The novelty of this lasted a good couple of hours.

Unexpected obstacles like iron-bars jutting at head-height, wires,

broken drains gaping below are absent (although I did hit an army

anti-traffic thing with my shin!)

Tourist are treated with deference. Staring happens but it is

low-grade curiousity when compared to the bald, catching-flies

gawp of many parts of the Indian continent.

Arguments whcih appear to be on the verge of descending into physical

violence (I saw three punch-ups in the space of as many hours in Mysore once)

are nowhere near as prevalent. Maybe I just went to the wrong places.

Similarities do exist. The rickshaw drivers are wearyingly persistent and

shout 'Come here!' with a pushy tone I'm not too fond of.

As the plane lands you see a tidy runway.

Earlier you see the broken belts of islands of the North, vast lagoons

fringed by wide beaches, some of which are peppered with thousands of landmines.

Mile upon mile of green, green jungle follows which eventually shows long straight

roads with regularly spaced terracotta rooves at mile intervals.

Small holdings of paddy fields and coconut groves can just be made out.

Approximately the same size as Ireland, Sri Lanka has a better claim to be known

as the emerald isle. They might even have a few in the earth, I don't know. They have

rubies at any rate.

The bland pushes upward before Colombo. The famous hill country is sprinkled with

white fluffy all the way to where the cloud gives way to deep blue.

The low-key terminal ejects you into a covered foyer.

A bus with closed red-curtains shield the windows takes you out of the military part

and dumps you on the main road a few hundred meters away. There a similar vehicle

introduces Colombo for 200 rupees. 100 for the seat. 100 hundred for the bag.

The chaos of the city center does not materialize.

The usual flux of pedestrian and markets traders are there but without the frenzied

tempo of Madurai or Chennai. Its less noisy on every level.

The guest house run by a tired aluminium dealer with his anxious wife who never

leaves the house, tells its own story. An interior organized in the style of a rarely

visited but well-tended museum is seen

Fine plate black and white photographs of weddings and gatherings, bokeh blurring

and time fading the silver, browning the unwashed bleach still in the paper.

The lady of the house mentions the war has been going on ever since they were

married. This makes her look very worried for some unknown reason. She has never

been there (the North.) 'The war,' she says, explaining.

Sri Lanka

2010-01-24T04:48:00.000-08:00

Bullfight

2010-01-18T13:07:00.001-08:00

If you are paying attention the lack of chronological
order maintained by this blog will be annoying you.

My movements have been: finished off in Mysore at the
silk factory; went to Kanchipuram only to discover the
silk weavers of the famous pilgrimage town were on their
only week long holiday of the year for Pongal; the eclips
was a disappointment, no dramatic removal of daylight seen;
then the next day a tiring bus journey to Madurai, overnight.

A free tourist bus to the nearby annual bullfight left at
1000hrs. I discovered this after breakfast by accident. 50
rupee bakeesh saw my bag taken care of at he tourist office.
In 30 minutes we arrived to see 500 men grabbing the big
lump of a succession of bulls. There were lots of minor scuffles
and punchs thrown. At least one person died at this or another
bullfight. If you can ride the bull for 50 metres you get a T-
shirt. Prizes were also on offer but we were never told what they
were.

A senior American lady from San Francisco remarked that in
proving their manhood they stood a fair chance of losing it
all together.

Getting back to Bangalore was a potential wash-out. All buses
and trains were filled with pilgrims.

By chance,a very helpful guy in his early twenties wrote out
my only alternative. A station out of town would take me to Salem.
From here I would continue to Bangalore. The plan worked but took
13 hours.

Walking away from the out of town bus station in Bangalore I
recognise the road as the same one I had explored on my last
accidental visit.

The aforementioned lodge appeared in the distance. The drunken
night shift man grunted me into the building and overcharged
me by 200 rupees. When I repeated the quoted amount he lowered
it back to 300 rupees. Maybe the half-asleep policeman under the
desk had somehting to do with it.

Now I'm at Bangaor airport waiting to fly to Sri Lanka.

The Silk Factory

2010-01-18T12:54:00.001-08:00

Important work

2010-01-18T12:45:00.000-08:00

IMPORTANT WORK

The pictures with this and the previous post will form part of a new series of triptychs and montage.

After picking a subject, everyday life will be photographed at close range repeatedly over the course of one hour.

The best three (or the best set) will be laid out and messily captioned with aphorisms harvested from the subconscious.

The above description may sound horribly pretentious but the aim is to find new, evocative ways of showing what’s going on in the world. A repeatable approach will create a new, easy to understand language.

The small people seem to hold all the answers to the big questions, this is my feeling and what the work is about.

LAST NIGHT

Generator powered lights from huge jewellery emporiums appeared out of the darkness. Salem bus station, without generators, was in darkness. Another power cut was in progress.

Police had blocked the road leading to the bus station going in. Cursing under his breath, the spry, tight muscled driver pulled the large mechanical steering wheel through a succession of tight gaps. He hooted pedestrians on the crowded road but nobody paid him any attention. The people in Salem put a lot of faith in the skill of unknown drivers. Why, I wonder?

The dogs outside Bangalore city centre doze on the hot pavement during the day.

In the early hours of the morning they bark as you pass them. Everything you’ve ever read about dog psychology (a surprisingly large cache of information) comes to mind as you stride purposely towards them without rushing, avoiding eye contact.

The airport in this city is 50km out of town. A long night sitting in departures beckons.

Run down lodges, like unhappy families, are all different (I can’t remember where I read that quote about happy/unhappy families.)

Ranganatha Lodge is by the overpass on the west side of the city. Eight teenagers were to be found there at two o clock this morning standing in bare feet on a double bed, playing cards, loud and very drunk.

The third floor stank of rum. A friendly dog sat in the coolest part of the worn down marble stair case. Wagging his tail, he came down to greet my whistle.

Ignoring his slightly repellent flaking skin, I gave him a pat. What’s in a smile (or a wag?)

The north facing room fills with all the decent qualities of reflected sunshine by midday.

Disregarding the abandoned dreams suggested by the marble stairs and drunken guests, this lodge is a good place to write.

After six hours sleep, I took a rickshaw down to Coffee Day. Coffee culture is spreading quickly in this country the froth of expanding affluence.

The Indian juggernaut is charging ahead while the working classes watch from a dusty kerb (probably a crass whimsical observation but basically true.)

Mysore to Kanchipuram

2010-01-18T12:36:00.000-08:00

(An explaination of the new photos and words can be seen in the blog after this one)

Leaving Mysore by train you pass some nice houses. One of them belongs to the friend of a sugar cane farmer I have got to know. His friend is a coffee farmer or at least his business is to do with coffee. The house is a very nice walled house with balconies.

Roll past the affluent part and the landscape begins to undulate with government housing, a distant factory minting rupees, once great rivers and ruined bridges forded by JCB diggers, stabbed by toothy concrete pillars.

After that its coconuts, rice paddies, wheat and mulberry leaves all the way to Bangalore with the usual mix of tidy farms, derelict outskirts, filth and rubbish, stray dogs and children seeking wasteland far from adults.

The huge orange granite rocks reminiscent of on a less monolithic Ayres Rock scale. Rising from the lush, mildly sloping valley, graffiti defaces their surfaces with the words ‘Jesus Saves’ and ‘India Wake Up!’

West Bangalore shows her filthy slums, then real estate bulldozes the gnawed stumps of century old ruins, youths vault walls, squatting around plastic waste fires with cigarettes and rum.

Stacked residential suburbs filter into half built new flats going in from the West. Going out travelling wide quiet streets lined by older detached houses have new Suzukis and Mahindra SUVs parked behind gates, a tale of two cities.

On to Chennai and industrial expansion. A rickshaw takes you to the main bus station, the bus a hulk of rattling metal with bare dials and no power steering.

A driver calmly navigates impossible traffic while exchanging gossip with three associates who sit uncomplaining on the hot metal engine cover.

18km to Kanchipuram, you pass huge Hyundai factory and mile of gigantic containers parked at an unlikely angle. Past the barbed wire, vast hangers, neon branding and security guards leant back on chairs squat in the dust of the working class slums.

Neon signs from enormous engineering colleges glow from lofty parapets. Hospital training colleges are as common as lamp posts. The night shifters stalk lit-up electricity stations

Cows eating abandoned stacks of sugar cane for Pongal look up as drivers hitching rides home alight from the moving buses, jogging into the night. Desolate neighbourhoods slotted into the armpits of a polluted bread basket for foreign investment and lucrative gloom offer no encouragement to linger.

Out of this comes the town famous for its hand woven silk, Kanchipuram.

A mess of wide dirty streets, disintegrating palm leaf roves and rickshaw drivers drinking tea beside sleeping dogs and rising mosquitoes.

The hotel manager suggests I visit the ATM to pay a 200 rupees short fall.

I tell him where to go.

Gorilla in the mirror

2010-01-13T21:27:00.000-08:00

My story about Polo the gorilla made The Mirror
back in blighty.

Nice start I thought!

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/01/12/billy-no-primates-polo-the-gorilla-is-desperate-for-a-mate-115875-21960901/

The Silk Factory

2010-01-13T05:31:00.001-08:00

Finally, Sri Rattihalli came through with access to the silk factory.

Ironically, it was 13 December when I filed the first picture
for this photo-documentary.

One month ago I sent the MD of the Govt. Silk Factory
Sri Baladevakrishna a letter, an email and a couriered
letter. He claims he received nothing at all from me.

Several unsuccessful telephone calls were abandoned when Sri
Balakrishnadeva couldn't understand me or didn't know what I
wanted. Finally my hotel manager gave him a call.

After that an interview with the factory director, Sri Rattihalli
was arranged.

Another interview followed the first. A letter was faxed to Sri
Rattihalli who faxed it to Baladevakrishna.

A period of gestation followed as did several more calls to Sri
Rattihalli. Another interview was schedules and requests made for
a more detailed outline of the photo-documentary, a fax from Rex
Features confirming their association with me and a list of the
titles expected to publish the final piece.

Last Monday everything was done. Sri Rattihalli told me he go to
Bangalore on Tuesday to finally get Sri Baladevakrishna final answer.

In the meantime, numerous searches unearthed various photographs of the factory's
interior taken by local or national newspapers.

I called Sri Rattihalli on Tuesday afternoon to ask how it went in Bangalore.

He said he had forgotten to bring it up and had left Sri Baladevakrishna's
office.

I phoned Sri Rattihalli at 0730hrs this morning.

His phone was switched off. By 0800hrs he was unavailable.
0830hrs busy. 0900hrs he picked-up and said it was all on.

The day went OK. The decisive moments were mild. The geometry
distorted by workers wanting to chat and see the back of the
camera which is understandable. They have a tough job and
take home between 13-25,000 rupees a month. Their pension
works out at 2,000 a month. Without the help of their children
retirement would be hard.

Leaving the factory I found myself smirking. If a friend had been with me
I probably would have had hysterics. So much water under the bridge.

But I got the pictures.

What makes Henri Cartier-Bresson great issn't just his geometry and delight.

A conviction that what he was doing had value gave him the sense of detachment required to dissect life into emotional boxes.

His work resonates because it is true to life.

No tricks, just eye and heart on the same plane.

Impatience is a complicated emotion.

Steve Davis

2010-01-12T02:36:00.001-08:00

Three trips to this place have yielded a technique
for photographing crowds of slightly aggressive
market folk called: prowling.

You stalk slowly like a panther, maintaining eye contact
if necessary and concentrate on the picture being on
the page, waiting, waiting, waiting, until its publishable.

Three goes of this, that's at least six hours of sweaty
passive confrontation and the results improved as did my
faith in the whole process.

Very interesting as Steve Davis might remark.

Drawing

2010-01-12T02:01:00.000-08:00

Henri Cartier-Bresson said that taking photographs
was a faster way of drawing.

It is true to say that some things happen faster than
the eye can capture.

Going back to drawing after a long break, I did find the
process to have parallels with photography.

The intense meditative scrutiny required
is mirrored by the act of seeing a moment and
framing with balanced geometry.

Balance and harmony are imprinted on our genetic
memory in the same way that a bees know how to construct
their honeycomb.

The act of forgetting yourself with a drawing is natural.

Forgetting yourself in public while taking photographs, that
is to disregard the eccentricity of stalking members of the
public, has its problems.

Cartier-Bresson dismissed this 'bad-behaviour' as 'too bad!'

Police all over the world are turning the screws on
civil liberties.

Do we want to live in a world where in the name of freedom
nobody can photograph anything without permission?

Doesn't all this control of the graven image sounds familiar!?

And as for eccentric behaviour, well, it was once a celebrated
British trait.

Not now I feel.

Shame.

And daft.

Subconscious

2010-01-12T01:50:00.000-08:00

The subconscious mind has a part to play in art and
journalism.

We can make very quick decisions about the wrong or
right way to act.

This photo-montage has been guided by my subconscious.

The photographs were taken casually on the way to a job.

My guide, Vijay told me that there internecine violence
between Muslims and Hindus has seen the proportion of
police to civilians rise significantly.

The silk reeling community appears to be divided by the
railway line.

Muslims to the South and Hindus to the North.

The bull-cart montage probably has its roots in
yoga earlier this trip.

Something about savouring the moment.

Silk family

2010-01-11T00:05:00.001-08:00

The Reddy family live in a village outside Ramanagaram.
Narayana Reddyand his wife Venkatamma have been farming
silk worms for the past 16 years. The couple have worked
hard to bring up their three daughters Shilpa 22, Latha
19 and Nandina 17.

Shilpa is a housewife and has a daughter. Latha studies
commerce at the local college while Nanindi is taking
11th standard, a pre-university course. She hopes to join
the police but will first have to complete written and
physical examinations.

The Reddy's own their small detached house and rent a field
locally for mulberry leaves. They pay 6,000 rupees annually
on top of 80 rupees a day for irrigation, 60 rupees a day
for a labourer and 3,000 rupees annually for fertilizer.

The family tried rearing silk worms from the eggs but were
unsuccessful. Now they buy four day old worms from the
Government Sericulture Institute. They are paying 800 rupees
for worms producing 60kg of worms.

Each cycle of mulberry and worms takes two months. Their annual
crop will fetch 72,000 rupees at today's price. Weather, time of
year and the unforeseen make it a precarious existence. They have
made it work so far. 'It is our fate to work' Venkatamma told me.

The unmarried daughters were positive about village life.
While expressing no desire to move to a city they agreed that
they would go there if their future husbands decided to move.

The work is steady but both plants and worms need attention all
but two or three days a month. Between the third and fourth moult
the worms are inactive for a 24 hour period. Lime may also be
sprinkled on the worms to arrest their development. This is used
when circumstance force them to be away from the farm.

Neighbours help each other out in times of difficulty. Calves,
plots of vegetables and chickens all add to the villages
productivity.

Venkatamma says her monthly housekeeping comes to 5,000 a month.
Ater bills the family produces just enough to cover their needs.

Vijay, a sugar cane producer, translated my questions to the family
to the local dialect. We were given sweetened milk before we left.
The whole family smiled as we left, the two unmarried daughters
holding hands, giggling in their bright sarees.

Nandini and friends

2010-01-07T00:20:00.000-08:00

New Year's Eve

2010-01-01T23:06:00.000-08:00

Having an afternoon to kill I visited the Central Sericulture Research and Training Institute. I completely forgot to photograph the moths breeding there, which should have been easy. Not using a macro lens for this project (only the 50mm) meant I wasn’t too displeased. This story is to be carried by unguarded moments from the lives of the people who work with silk. Scientific reportage is something else!

Ravendra M.Mattigatti was assigned to show me around. A nervous, taciturn man, he revealed to me, after a round of leading questions, that he his wife had recently given birth to a son. He also had an appointment to get to. It wasn’t a fantastic liaison but he did know his stuff.

Some facts. There are three main species of silk worm currently involved with silk production. Tasar (indigenous), Muga, farmed in Assam,producing more expensive golden silk and finally ‘exotic’ worms from China, which are high yield and often mated with indigenous Tasars to increase yields.

One o the remits CSRTI is to keep worms disease free. They do this breeding the moths (which live only three days) in controlled environment. The eggs hatch in a growing house with controlled humidity, protected parasitic Uzi flies by mesh and a series of self-closing doors.

Larvae are fed on tender leaves. In twenty four days the tiny creatures are ready to pupate. The detail here may be shaky due to what was lost in translation but my primary aim is to give the general idea of this process not scientific data.

For every 100 laying moths, 80kgs of cocoons can be produced. This requires 1,500kg of mulberry leaves to feed the voracious larvae.

Mulberry leaves harvest at roughly 50 metric tonnes per hectare which sell at 2 rupees per kg. That works out, by my maths at 2,000 rupees per tonne.

Once the so called ‘chalky worms’ are big enough to be freighted, they are sold on to the farmers for fattening-up and pupation.

Confusingly, Ravendra contradicted his earlier data by telling me it costs the farmer 350-400 rupees per hundred lays, which will produce 40-50,000 worms.

If 50,000 worms make 80kgs of cocoons, that means that even with a 10% mortality and failure rate, 1kg should contain about 700 cocoon which is clearly wrong. As I said before, I’m not describing the scientific data, but the experiences I had while following the trail of silk.

Anyway, just for a ballpark figure, I estimate that roughly 400 rupees (in the roughest sense!) of chalky worms can be converted into 225kg of cocoons. That will fetch 45,000 rupees at market at the current rate.

The cycle carries over one month. It is a labour intensive process, involving feeding, moving, filtering and checking individual worms for progress, otherwise it would seem like a handsome return on you initial investment.

The danger for small farmers is the industrialisation of the whole process. The 1,500 farmers in Ramanagaram could all be out of business if the arrival of one big factory brought down the price of 1kg. This is already happening in the silk threading process, with the government investing in a South Korean threading machine which I hope to see next week.

A second visit to the cocoon market was needed to improve on the first set of images.

Later the same day, I made the two and a half hour bus journey, arriving past ten, the town whipped hard rain.

After an anxious, wet, 20 minute search in the back of a rickshaw, I found a room the last hotel.

Watching New Year’s Eve celebration on cable, a red-highlighted European was shown being led away by police over and over again.

Earlier, in the back of the bus, I had finished a collection of Kenneth Anderson man-eater stories.

I smiled when I read his haughty reference to the bad-end the ‘careless and over-confident’. Having narrowly avoided a long night standing in the rain and a kidnapping days earlier, I took note.

The Silk Market (again)

The hardest trick to carry-off, when hundreds of curious eyes are following your every move, is not to be noticed.

Yet, as unbelievable as it sounds, it can be done.

After a shave, I left the hotel at 0630hrs, having trusted my bladder to be an alarm clock.

The hotel manager sat on the step, smoking a cigarette. The air was cool and fresh after the rain and the sun still below the horizon, promising a fine morning.

Crossing the road, a non-descript edge of town highway, I flagged down a rickshaw pick-up, hoping to cadge a cheeky ride to market. The driver stopped and with a gruff, matter of fact gesture, invited me to squeeze into the front.

Feeling very pleased with my self, I jumped out and gave the driver 20 rupees which he accepted unceremoniously as his due.

The next 50 minutes were spent fussing about catching arrivals with huge sacks of cocoons on their backs with the sun rising behind them.

Taking a tea break, I reflected, not for the first time, on the weaknesses of the Canon 5D for this work. The viewfinder is truly appalling. The chip very good.

With a rangefinder, the viewfinder six times as bright and perspective falls naturally with out the

misleading interference of a lens and mirror.

This means that the geometry of the frame is has a far greater impact on the senses and whatever happens in front of you is easier to see.

The barrier a rangefinder camera creates between you and the subject is (by my reckoning alone) probably 5 times less than the bulk and distortion offered by today’s professional SLR’s, which are truly industrial in their design and purpose.

As geometry is an expressive tool and unguarded moments need to be experienced to be captured, the SLR is blunt instrument compared to the Leica. Also the Leica’s focusing and depth of field are more versatile and useful.

The technique I use for disappearing in the spotlight is to bore the subject into indifference. Several rounds of the market were made, avoiding conversation, playfully parrying contact and invitation and keeping mum. Eventually, this oddity starts to lose its novelty. By the time the auction started everyone was pretty sick of me and didn’t give me a second glance, apart from the usual gaggles of old friends wanting to pull the silly puppy about a bit.

I’d call this process an art and having studied it in earnest for the past four years, would consider myself well-versed in the improvisations and patience required. It represents an interesting examination on human nature to me and has lost none of its appeal.

The morning passed-off a success. I improved immeasurably on my previous visit and was lucky with light, travel and accommodation.

The careless and over-confident approach can win. Just don’t push you’re luck!

Elephants forgotten

2010-01-01T23:01:00.000-08:00

You are driving a bus along a narrow road. It is raining. The car in front indicates right.

A motorcycle is approaching. What to do? Well, apparently, in the book of the Coimbatore to Mysore bus driver in question, you overtake the car.

As darkness descended, the driver then lost control of the rear-end, following a light shower of rain.

Our prospects of arriving in Mysore alive appeared bleak.

Earlier on the bus passed through another bleak prosect: elephant and tiger country. The spine of the foothills which fuse the borders of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka provide sanctuary for these soon to be extinct beasts.

If that sounds like a pessimistic prediction, just read any Indian newspaper. Tiger and elephant poaching is endemic. The rural poor, quite understandably, see these beasts as an opportunity to make big money fast.

Inversely, for real estate, it is a good time to buy following the banks disaster.People with capital are buying land and building flashy flats for the young and ‘confident’.

Conservation is paid lip service to in the form of established National Parks, but the animals which spill over into land occupied by farmer communities are harshly dealt with.

As India prepares to launch its first nuclear submarine in the next three years, the creatures with which the world identifies the spirit of this hard-working nation are being swept under the carpet in favour of engineering, real estate and industrial expansion.

An obsession with being ‘as good as Europe’ which includes regular colour pieces in newspapers gauging the country’s progress towards that ‘goal’ has caused a black-out on all things distressing. The gaps are plugged by political scandal, celebrity hubris, cinema and cricket.

My feeling is that the changes happening, fuelled by an explosion of new money are instigated by a tiny section of wealthy investors who are irresponsibly harvesting a fast buck.

As somebody who believes that wildlife and bio-diversity represent a greatly under-valued portfolio, it is beyond my comprehension how India could want to be seen as a world beating polluter who wiped out wild Asian elephants and Bengal tigers.

Having said all that, talks are happening in the next few days to clear an ancient migratory route between Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, compensating farmers and everyone else with a grievance, meaning less elephant human conflict and habitat protection.

So it's not all bad news!

Notes from memory

2009-12-30T07:40:00.000-08:00

The roads in India are OK. They get you with rattling windows on buses, seats that
scrape your knees and insane driving.

After a brief chat with a silk saree salesman, the decision was made to head to Satyamangalam in Tamil Nadu. From Mysore you travel due South over a huge range of foothills where elephants and tiger are still able to survive.

The point of the three and a half hour trip was to find a specific South Indian hand woven saree design. This proved harder than I first imagined. The footwork and language problems meant that usually a guide was employed.

K.C. called me over to his office by the bus station. He showed me a couple of silk weavers but they were really small satellites of Bangalore i.e no original designs, no great history to speak of.

That evening, I boarded the bus to Coimbatore, a big industrial city a further one and a half hours South. There at least, there was an opportunity to see more silk emporiums.

The next morning, after seeing three chained elephants lead a Hindu festival of blowing horns, floodlights and crowds on my arrival the night before, I walked donw to the first of two multi-level silk emporiums. Each dedicated an entire floor to silk sarees. The first had only just opened and it made a clean frame of two assistants waiting for the first customer (I must have been a disappointment!)

Business was brisk in the second, the result of it being wedding season, which, conveniently for the proprietor, is every two months.

Sisters and mothers sat on chairs sat on chairs overflowing with excitement, shouting their reactions to each saree brought by the incredible uniformed staff.

The brides, barefoot a large cushioned sampling area below shelves stacked high with colourful silk, held-up each saree beneath their chins. It was a happy twenty minutes spent watching the endless cogitation. Bored well-behaved children hung on the legs of the adults, uncomplaining.

The staff, ladies in blue sequinned sarees, the gents in brown and khaki shirt and trousers, were models of calm, serviceable, salesmanship.

Gradually, a picture of how the journey silk embarks upon after being secreted from the glands of a worm, is forming.

An idea of the money involved has also come to light. The silk farmers told me that the market price for the cocoons is currently at around 200 rupees per kg. The threaders are getting around 1,500 to 2,100 rupees per kg of unprocessed silk thread.

There are between 1,500-2,000 silk farmers in and around Ramanagaram, Karnakata.

Each day at the Government silk market, registered silk growers bring in between 30-50 tonnes of silk, white and yellow (the white is an exotic silk, the yellow an indigenous hybrid.)

From there, the silk appears to end up in Bangalore for dyeing. After that a variety of places set about weaving it. Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu, Coimbatore's hand-weavers, the famous, beleaguered Varansi weavers and the Governments silk factory in Mysore.

A note here, that after a letter, a couriered letter, an email, five telephone calls, a call from the manager of my hotel and finally a fax and one more call from me, I seem to be on my way to receiving permission to take pictures inside the incredible old-fashioned Mysore plant.

As I prepared to return to Mysore, descending the stairs of the overpass, I saw a poor man begging with a sheet over his head, whose entire foot and hand had been eaten away by leprosy, a disease cured with a few pennies worth of medicine if caught early enough.

Across the street the happy sisters were probably still deciding how to spend 40,000 rupees on a garment one lucky girl would only wear once.

Christmas Day

2009-12-25T22:37:00.000-08:00

It was my second hot Christmas Day running. Last year was spent in a fishing village in Ghana. This year swimming in the Lalitha Mahal Palace Hotel pool. The place was built by the Maharaja of Mysore to host the Viceroy of India.

In the morning I had a look at St.Joseph's Cathedral. Gav midnight Mass a miss.

Sweet, reverant atmosphere.

Going back to the Lalitha Mahal Palace Hotel, what a life tht Viceroy must have had. Being served coffee from a silver pot, sitting in a cool granite hall before bagging a troublesome leopard in the hill to assuage the grovelling locals. We were born 100 years late.

The wealth they had then, that is those in power and their circle, didn't filter down into masses.

Now, if you read an Indian paper, you'd think the middle class, with its huge disposable income, was alive and well. That may be misleading. All the national papers want to talk about is how you can buy wine and gouda cheese. How couples live together. How European India has become. This is all lies. Most Indians I meet are skinny and scraping by on less than 500 rupees a day, if that. The guys at the silk factory, long term employees ith over 25 years service, were on a tenner a day.

This obsession with sweeping what doesn't project a positive image of the country under the carpet is blind, politically lame journalism.

If you're rich you don't care!

The zoo

2009-12-25T22:36:00.001-08:00

MYSORE ZOO

Having stayed in the scientific quarters of Moscow Zoo on a job, worked closely with Dublin Zoo and liaised with the Zoological Society of London Zoo, I could be described as an aficionado of zoos.

In 2003 I visited the Bronx Zoo to see their scientifically
designed Amur tiger enclosure. The idea was to make confinement as least stressful as possible for the cats. Dunkin Donuts served good coffee down the road. Hard to believe I know from a scum chain. Not stewed filth, but fresh hot and tasty. And the chocolate and custard donut was also superb.

Delhi Zoo, was a disappointment. Sprawling, uneven, confusing and in a poor state of repair, it is an unsatisfying experience. The architecture is dull. The enclosures old, ranging from far too large to equally cramped e.g. the pacing, psychotic looking jaguars.

Bangkok Zoo, I can only remember the massive portrait of the King outside.

True, I've never zoos from the other 18 or so countries I’ve visited but I regret it now.

Mysore Zoo is only a fifteen minute walk from the palace if that.

The gates are rather grand, (large, carefully mortared orange granite boulders) As is the perimeter wall, all faded in the Raj dynasty style.

After a poor show in Delhi I expected to be disappointed but I wasn’t. It has to be the best sequential display of animals I have ever experienced.

The path way takes you through each exhibit. You can’t get lost. A cleverly positioned hanging garden splits the zoo in half, joining the first half of the tour with the second. It is a wide pleasant avenue of about 300 metres long with benches and shade.

‘Hey now’ shout the peanuts sellers at he gates. Hundreds of school children throng around two narrow channels.

The art deco-ish hexagons jutting from the orange granite walls conceal the ticket office. Once bought I lingered at the edge of the crowds hoping to be spotted by security.

Very soon a Sikh security guard grabbed me and shoved me into one of the lanes, removing children with the shouts and waving arms I save for nasty street dogs.

You enter a peaceful courtyard. A well-preserved colonial tidiness prevails. A scooter shed stands adjacent to spacious administration buildings where I imagined calm secretaries patiently worked at manual typewriters on tidy desks.
The schoolgirls not in uniform wore their best sarees. Another security guard appeared, unhappy with their presence beside he quiet off-limits courtyard. Wearing combat overalls, brandished a truncheon, he chased them away yelling threats.

The picnic area is the first thing you come to. Large and charming, shaded by a canopy of the most delightful broad beamed trees, with tiny dense leaves, I knew this place was under an entirely different style of management. This zoo was somebody’s dream. Maybe I’m overselling it. It was a feeling I had.

Fenced ceramic sculptures of blue cranes punctuated a clean blue-tiled space.

Masses of well-behaved children eating biriani from paper plates. Most stared at the
European, some shyly, some cheekily, whispering to friends.

Then immediately, you are with the giraffes. Three healthy looking animals in a large, grassy space. Not as big as the open plains of Dublin Zoo but not a joke either.

I am guessing that this is basically a Victorian designed zoo and the emphasis is on the viewing publics pleasure rather than the exhibits stress levels. Things are evidently changing. A new enclosure was being built on a grand scale further on.

The giraffes has no hiding from the gaze of the public. Being no expert, I’m not able
to comment on whether this is right or wrong but I do know they are skittish. Given the choice they’ll stand as far away from you as possible unless you bring food.

The there are bid houses. The Vitorians failed here. Too small. Miserable. The gene pool of rare species has to be preserved somehow. Zoos are a necessary evil until humans wake-up to the fact that we need biodiversity. I suppose your average Knightsbridge Sloane may disagree. I mean you can always get your rabbit skin dyed to look like leopard skin.

A sad looking Tawny Eagle perched in its twenty foot wide ‘Tweetie Pie’ bird cage.

A nine year old kid frowned at it, wearing an orange shirt with tiny tassles at the cuff and a ring with an opaque red stone.

The mottled wood owl was a riot of russet, cream, beige and burnt umber, staggeringly exotic with a real sense of celebrity, undiminished by the cramped bird-house.

The flamingo cage was spotless. The birds looked very pink and healthy. Even the mud was raked.

A Congo African Parrot. A Toucan. Big red & green macaws from Brazil, huddled high, missing home.

The tiger enclosure is the showcase of the zoo. I counted eight altogether, one outside the rest behind bars in cells behind it.

What you see is a huge twenty foot deep moat behind which is a large semi-circular island, covered in uncut grass with four or five mature trees.

The diameter is roughly 75 metres. The large alpha male padded slowly about with his head lowered.

There has never been an occasion when I haven’t been impressed by the aura of a healthy tiger. This one was a great specimen, sleek, graceful and dignified in its bearing.

One of the great white hunters waxed lyrical about the beasts he’d had spent so much time destroying. ‘A complete gentleman of endless courage.’ In the wild they live alone coming together only to mate.

Behind the moated island the tiger house is a beautiful building entirely unsuited to house eight fully grown tigers. It has a Raj style grandeur, a colonial opulence, rusted steel fitting that sooth the hungry bourgeoise eye, designed with the cleverness of the engineering clearly there for you to see. The crank that lets the tiger in to each cell. The grand wall of the damn made from roughly hewn granite.

The symmetry of the edifice is really a conceit installed to flatter the vanity of the Maharaja and to awe his humble subjects. But enough of that. They need to modernise it and turn whats left into a visitor centre with some science for the kids.

Oh, I forgot to say one large male tiger was missing a tail. And that they have tow or three white tigers. Round milk-blue eyes. Black pupils.

Tapirs. Plenty of space. The huge Gaur. Another celeb. The alpha male has a the bull neck to end them all. He is about seven foot at the withers.Chewing placidly, he looks like the kind that would never start a fight but would always finish it. I would like to know how tigers get on hunting the big males.

Chimpanzees. Children alway love them. Another clean enclosue badly in need of some science to stop the creatures from going crazy. The only really disturbing thing I saw during my visit was round the corner where a very large, moated and electric fenced enclosure contained only one completely bad adult male, a kind of chimp zombie. He nodded repetitively and imagined I sensed in him a rage that would tear anything that came into that enclosure to shreds.

I’m not anti-zoo. Mysore Zoo is brilliant but they need to spend more on scientifically designed environments and less on sweeping up.

Lion tailed maquaws. A solitary gorilla in another huge, empty enclosure. A massive alpha male with mange looking like a warlock from H.G.Well’s The Time Traveller.

Himalayan black bears sittingin a comfortable shady glade. A Dhole, a wild dog, curled at the end of a tiny enclosure. A huge well, 15 feet in diameter, with a rusty steel dome to prevent children from disappearing.

Big swamp deer from West Bengal. Tiger food.
Asiatic jackal, fox-like, curious as a hungry stray dog, A 20 foot diameter enclosure, to prevent them from hiding themselves away.

Eight Asian elephants at feeding time as the sun sank in the sky dappling them in a flattering dusty orange light.

Massive space for the family, over 150 meters in diameter with lofty coconut trees and an elegantly ornamented house.

Alpha tusker eating alone. The keeper wandering, tugging ears, old friends.

A granite bandstand. Turquoise roof in the cool interior.

Nocturnal cages. The jungle cat. Like a impossibly large, lithe moggy. I’d never seen these before and to be honest, I want one. Thick fur the colour of Belgium beer and honey.

Coming to the end of the 3KM walk, you come to the leopards. Juveniles, eight in all in two side by side cages, they were having a lot of fun, chasing, showing off unnerving power and agility. The two mature cats laid back and tolerantly pawed-off the irritating youths. Jaguars. Then two more leopards, one orange.

African elephants. Alpha male chained by the foot for feeding, don’t knowwhat the story there was. Again, stacks of room.

The duck aviary was enormous. I can’t understand why a bird like a tawny eage doesn’t merit the same privileges.

Hippos. Two pools.A reptile house, closed by the time I passed, but salt water crocs visible.

The rock python the real star of the snake area. The king cobra was hidden under a pile of bark and confusingly described as a rat snake.

Cassowary? Ostriches. Then you’re out of there, back on the street, dodging traffic, passing silk shops.

Threading on thin ice

2009-12-24T00:36:00.001-08:00

I don't know the age of the boy in the photo. I am in the process of finding out.

Google: http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_the-age-of-labour_1146284 - At present, the Child Labour Prohibition Act puts

the age limit at 14 years while the Juvenile Justice Act says the age limit is 18 years. As per the Shops and Establishment

Act, the limit is 15 years. India is a signatory to Unicef's Child Rights' Convention which defines a child as someone under

18.

Journalism for From Worm to Catwalk began. I was rushed by the crowds tht gathered every time I put a camera to my face in

the market, the silk farm, the silk threading factory.

The drive to Ramanagara takes about two hours. On the way a variety of pretty shrubs and flowers decorate the partition of a

dual carriageway.

Huge billboards advertise diamonds, golf courses and silk sarees. Smart detached houses merge into tidy roadside

hovels.Traffic volume is low and potholes few. Speed bumps are many and often appear without warning.

I saw: women crossing with water jugs on their heads; farm silos; stacks of hay; palm leaf barns; a sign saying 'Welcome to

Sugar City'; a lorry with a broken front axle surrounded by men; a skinny elderly couple in the back of a lorry; a large red

house with a rock garden; a Lavazza sign outside a hotel; a family hanging laundry in a partially built house; strawberry

ice0cream ads; pineapple ice-cream ads; butterscotch ice-cream ads; the gates of the College for Folklore; Welome to Silk

City, Ramanagara, my final destination.

The driver chatted-up a silk farmer outside the market where cocoons are sold to threading factories.

A short drive with Suresh took us
to his brother's house. Clean,
spacious, simple. A sweet, welcoming
bunch of people, they opened their
doors a a matter of course, with no
question asked.

Suresh's brother Bamniku Shivaya, showed
me the room where he farmed his silk
worms. A large mosquito net covered
two-thirds of the room. Beneath is two
seven foot high bamboo racks contained
several trays, stacked like coasters.

In each tray, wriggling silk worms fattened
up on mulberry leaves.

Questions. How much is each cocoon worth?
Silk is measured by the Kilos. How much per
Kg? Roughly 200 rupees. How many cocoons per
Kg? Between 600-700. How many families in the
village producing silk? 75. How many in the
entire town? 1,500. How much silk is sold
at market every day? 3 tonnes. How many metres
of silk per cocoon? 800.

Mother then made me a nice cup of tea. After
drinking it I said goodbye, briefly met a lively,
toothless grandmother and her sweet grandson.
Her house boasted a heavy local stone courtyard
with carved wood pillars. Over 100 years old.

We headed back to the silk market where cocoons
are sol in ten foot trays, looking like a stacks
of fat decapitated canaries. The market staff
either didn't like being photographed or wanted
to'help'.

I will need to return and bore them with my presence
before trying again. I need a certain level of
invisibility.

There is haggling, tossing the cocoons, caressing the
texture. There is weighing and squabbling. Most
importantly money changes hands and the cocoons are wheeled
away, in huge sacks, often by bicycle, to their doom.

The larvae are alive. In each cocoon, a pulsating life form
is rapidly transforming into a winged creature. Once sold
they will be boiled alive before their protective cloak is
wound off strand by strand leaving then dead and naked.

Each saree is in fact a deconstructed mausoleum.

After the busy market and a chat with the manager, an
employee escorted us to a silk threading factory.

This is the stage of the process I am most fascinated by.
I have seen it and I still don't understand how they do it.

The low brick building stands at the end of a dirt road in
a poor village. Outside a woman in an orange saree loaded
wood into a stove. Inside pots water bubbled on the wood
burning stove. Two young men took turns to carry boiled cocoons
to the silk threading machine. Rows of spindles gather the thread
from filthy looking sinks below. Young women with pruned skin
search elbow deep in hot water for the ends of the thread. This
is then put through the eye of the threader above. Then it is reeled
off. How the end is located in a tub filled with dead larvae and
rubbery silk waste is still a mystery to me.

The light was poor and contrasty. I made a few experiments but time
meant I would need to settle for what I had. Our guide didn't want
to hang around. Just before leaving I looked in the tiny space
behind the main threading machine. I saw a boy in an apron clearing
up the dead larvae and rubbery silk waste. In took one frame and was
immediately led away by our guide who had been watching me closely.

I will be going back to see if I can find out more about the child
working in a smelly, dark, steamy factory in bare feet for what
only be 50 rupees a day.

...and the Ugly

2009-12-21T21:23:00.000-08:00

Unsavoury.

The Bad

2009-12-21T21:20:00.001-08:00

Bitter.

The Good

2009-12-21T21:16:00.000-08:00

Sweet.

f1.4

2009-12-21T09:30:00.000-08:00

Chennai fashion Week ended last night. The event had everything you'd expect from a high class international
function.

The VIP bar was free for all four days. It must have cost a fortune. I'll admit that the extravagant wealth on display at the event jarred with the sights I saw from the train there each day (OK, so I did occasionally take a rickshaw.) You see filth. Stagnant rivers which looked like they would kill anything that fell in. Shanty towns with palm leaf rooves. Kids playing heaps of rubbish outside their hovel. Following my gaze, a trendy teenager beside me in the carriage commented, 'dirty,' rocking his head.

It would be unfounded to suggest that something is wrong with India. Seeing people subsisting from rice paddies while just up the road people are living like any other first world millionaire is just, frankly, weird.

Coming back to Mysore today I saw the new high rise flats of Bangalore as the train passed through the city. They have a kind of Soviet modernity, some featuring
high story walkways between the blocks. Very Bladerunner. The then train rolled past an area of mud, stagnant water and huts where naked children played with stray dogs.

Getting off the train between Egmore station, which is near the beach (ish) and Guindy yesterday, I didn't bother buying a ticket. The queues were enormouse. The tickets just 6 rupees. The rickshaw fare 150, but traffic and potholes made that an unpalatable option.

Anyway, I finally got nabbed. Stupidly I assumed they would check tickets on the train and stepped off feeling happy wth a hatrick of dodges. At the end of the platform three ticket inspectors were taking no prisoners. I made a show of
looking for my 'ticket' but eventually resigned myself a fine of 250 rupees. It still seemed like value for money in view of the alternatives. A small crowd watched me get done.

A small detail here, unsavoury as it is, is that the flood gates of gastrinal problems, the latent threat of India at all times, had finally opened. A four day course of anti-biotics and electrolytes cost just 50 rupees. Thats me loving India
again. None of your GP, letter, blood test, prescription malarky.

The cognisant pharmacist diagnoses, reassures and pre-empts questions about prognosis in a way British GPs do not. How I loved that pharmacist and his calm, understanding counterside manner.

Before going to Le Meridian I had taken something to bung me up but held fire on the anti-biotics. Give it a few days, the symptons being mild.

Another calm, undestanding man ordered me rice and chicken soup when he heard I felt sick. I ate it gratefully like an exhausted swallow accepting tit-bits while resting on a ship far out at sea. Weird analogy but it does describe how I felt.

Feeling stronger I allowed myself to be ripped-off one more time on the final 500 yards to Le Meridian which the sun and a sore back discouraged me from walking. The hotel's man on the gate greeted me like an old friend, the way I'd imagine Michael
Caine wold be greeted at The Savoy. Feeling like a fraud I made myself scarce downstairs in the conference room, computer onin the darkened corners of seated area either side of the catwalk.

From Worm to Catwalk really feels exciting now. It felt exciting last night. There were lots of awkward moments. It became clear early on that I was not shooting the event as news. I made myself conspicuous by hanging around and photographing the most mudane things and the most unimportant people. The security staff.The public queueing. Anybody walking down the dramatic swirling stairwell. People buying alcohol. Models looking bored or interacting. I got on a few people's nerves and on Saturday night kind of had a row with the designer who's backside I really should have been kissing the most.

Puneet Nanda is the head designer of India's 'first fashion brand' Satya Paul. His show on Sunday was all about silk, sarees and dresses. Abroad he s known for scarves. Prices range from $50 to very, very expensive.

He kindly agreed to let me shoot the fitting sessions for is dresses late on Saturday night but as a condition, I had to give him low res copies of all the pictures.

At first I refused, arguing that the way it was shooting meant that I would get perhaps one frame from every 100 worth using. I didn't want him seeing my dirty laundry.

Whenever (in my fifteen years experience) a well known powerful person does you a favour they demand a handsome reward.That's just the way it works. Another pitfall of the relatonhip you build is any assumed like dislike.Its just an irrelevance. They see you as being useful to them. Otherwise they would have nothing to do with you.

All this admittedly bitter, paranoid diatribe was bubbling up as soon as the demand for everything I shot had been made.

Experience alwys says shut up and walk away. Don't sour the relationship. Take a toilet break. Say fine. Deep breaths.

Instead I launched into a defence of a free press, free from controls and conditions. It was balls. He had me by the balls infact. I backed down as soon as he responded negatively and started to back away, getting ready to kick me out.

He didn't even want to the use the pictures and said so. I just felt violated. His argument was that I was seeing his dirty laundry. That is: handing out dresses to models telling them to walk slowly in a saree, flirting in the early hours of Sunday morning. It didn't wash. Anyway. We're all friends now!

I shot the fitting. I can't ay the pictures were exactly what I imagined. The process was new to me. Hovering around for five days with the same people, hardly interacting, photographing their intimate, often private moments and not going away.

There was one Romanian model who made me laugh. I think she as part Indian. She approached me to say was intimidating her by observing her daily routines so closely. I explained how I wanted to see the reality and frame the decisive moments. I also told her I wished I could be invisible. She spent the next evening pretending she couldn't see me. That was when she wasn't bollocking the guy that did her eye make-up (she's the one holding up a mirror just snatched away from her bemused, camp Indian assistant.)

I got bollocked for getting too near the changing area, I think I mentioned that. Probably the prettiest model scowled slightly to my left whenever I pointed my lens her way. I think she felt I was a using photography as a front for seeing girls in their knickers. In this instance at least she was wrong.

The big night came and I got shots of the girls waiting to go on the catwalk. My favourite frame was of the guy steaming the silk sarees before the show.

The catwalk stuff is OK. Shot on the 50mm at f1.4 from the end and the middle. Decent but no cigar.

What I do have now is a keener sense of what a picture is.Its like getting to the quarter finals of the World Cup. You're a different player. Its exciting.

I couriered a letter to the Government silk factory last week and need to call them tomorrow. The its off to my first silk worm farm. I've decided o buy a magnifying glass to show the worms clsoe up rather than use a macro lens.

I din't mention the chats with British/Mauritian head-piece designer Louis Deloitte if thats the right name (sorry if its not) Sofia the Brit Bollywood actress, the free food and drink (no alcohol - plenty of it though) countless encounters with professional networkers, a stack of business cards each night, Paul the PR guy, the best I have ever met. He did exacty what it should say on the tin. Shame on you UK PR. More models being catty then sweet as they do. I felt a bit sad when I left.The organiser put a request in to see all the pictures and then have them put on a CD. Rather than go through that again I said 'fine, no prolem' and smiled nicely. The I left. The same over weight rickshaw driver approached me as I stepped out of the hoel gates onto the motorway hell around the airport. 200 rupees in advance. I knew he's still ask for more. He did. He had a home made collage of the Staue of Liberty in the back of the rickshaw. Customised handle bars and spotless. A gem amongst the crap. Drove me home at ful throttle tailgating everybody and risking everything just to be in front.

This whole feature is being shot on the 50mm.

Fascinating. A journey on more than one level.The world looks different.

Little Chef

2009-12-18T23:16:00.000-08:00

If a Little Chef breakfast is eight quid and a train to Aberdeen is around eighty thats ten breakfasts a ticket right?

Here in Chennai the spit and sawdust place I use serves a superb dosa and omlette for 30 rupees (with tea.)

A ticket to Chennai, second class from Mysore, cost 160 rupees. That's five breakfasts.

Of course by the time you reach the railway station after your Little Chef breakfast you will probably have vomitted it down your shirt. The dosa omlette breakfast on the other hand sets you up for the day. The staf and clientelle pleasantly mock your attempts at Tamil. Dysentry is a problem in India but its going to happen eventually so it would be unfair to take that into account.

Coffee in Le Meridian is 200 rupees. A bus to the Jolly airport near Rishikesh cost 10 rupees for a 20km journey. That's twenty bus rides for one coffee. Night rates for rickshaws in Chennai level out around 200 rupees for 5km. 150 if you are an efficient haggler.

Enough silk to make a shirt costs 250 rupees in Mysore. It's another 200 to have it made. 450 rupees buys a bespoke pure silk shirt. That's roughly five or six quid. Or two and a bit cups of coffee in Le Meridian.

Last night I stayed up until three in the morning with twenty young, beautiful women. Pictures to follow.

Maddening Chennai

2009-12-17T05:51:00.000-08:00

It is raining in Chennai. The local mosquito population has exploded.

Yesterday I made my way to the airport. Lack of internet access meant I had relied
upon the vague directions given by seven or eight rickshaw drivers.

It must be terrible for them now. They sleep in the back of their machines for a start and risk malaria and dengue fever.

At the airport I discovered that I had gone 6km too far. Taking a rikshaw to Le Meridian Hotel, the city scape presented conflicting sights. Flower beds being carefully weeded opposite a ditch filled with foul black water. Men with no legs crawling unperturbed at the roadside begging. Modern motorway inerchanges. Cheap eateries with ubiuitous white tiles and rudimentary furniture.

Awaking from this kaleidoscope of lie being lived Le Meridian suddenly appeared behind gated high walls. Dooor men prevented the rickshaw from sullying the forecourt.

In a flash I was apparently teleported into America. The staff remained Indian and they do servility with earnest dedication.

The brass handled double doors let me into a cavernous lounge and reception area.

Next week I will be with the poorer end of this equation. The silk farmers.

The pictures tell the rest of what I experienced.

Administration

2009-12-14T09:54:00.000-08:00

Due to the ban on photography at the silk factory I need to write to the
head office in Bangalore before going ahead.

Here are a few portraits I sho yesterday in the buold uo to starting properly.

Heading to Chennai Fashion Weeks in the morning then back to Mysore.

The Maharaja's Palace

2009-12-13T23:45:00.000-08:00

The silk industry in Mysore was initiated by the Maharaja of Mysore in 1912. The silk products were used exclusively by the royal family and armed forces.

I didn't know about this last night but still was drawn to photographing silk sarees as they floated past the illuminated palace.

A quick visit to a trade fair over the street proved highly amusing. Extraordinary variety of craft and household products, gaudy religious figurines, plastic flowers, balloon sellers, a ferry around a duck pound.

The factory workers all seem very contented. The place is absolutely spotless and the system, right donw to the embroadered serial number on each finished swathe, showing a level of organisation and simplicity I haven't experienced before.

Every worker I spoke to had at least 20 years service.

Start at the beginning

2009-12-13T02:20:00.000-08:00

Being a Sunday the silk factory in Mysore is closed. I took a
rickshaw to have a look with the charming and knowledgeable
Vicki translating for his cousin who drove the thing with the meter on.

The factory has big new sheet metal chimney. Next door to the security
guard's office there is a dark room with a wooden cabinet full of
trophies for best fabrics.

My first picture of this series happened when I walked into the gift
shop where a few well-off women were browsing over a thirty foot long
polished dark-wood counter.

Moving a bit closer I snapped the guy as he folded away a sample.

Vicky gave me the names of four villages which are producing silk in this
area. Unfortunately I will have to restrict myself to the factory as the
catwalk shows start in Chennai on Tuesday or Wednesday and I need to be there.

Using silk as a metaphor I will show the chasm that exists between the various players in India silk production.

From Worm to Catwalk has started!

Back on track

2009-12-12T08:55:00.000-08:00

Embarrassingly I thought the train from Delhi to Mysore took 24 hours. Not 40.

It's 1440 miles or something like that. It meant that I didn't write some important emails. No wi-fi on Indian trains. Fortunately a valuable associate bailed me out and saved the day.

A bastard journey. Uncomfortable for all but the most fleeting moments. Standing in the open doorway of the trundling 'express' I watched India pass under my feet as a long procession of Bisleri mineral water bottles and polluted streams. The route is new to me. The train through Kerala never seemed so depressing. India looked polluted, unloved and frankly abused from my doorway.

The countryside is all gone. Every inch is mapped out by electricity pylons, decayed roads and small farming plots where colourfully dressed women slave, squatting together like giant M&Ms in the distance.

I didn't see one monkey the whole way. After the glut of primates in Rishikesh this came as a surprise. No wild mammnals to see at all in fact. Then the rubbish stacks higher as you approach denser populations. Blokes hack goss from their throats somewhere in the carriage.

Crossing to Mysore from Bangaore was a strange kind of relief. There was less rubbish. The farms looked cleaner and greener. Less tractors and more elegant terraces of hand planted wheat and rice. Goats herding on rokcy outcrops. Interesting crops I couldn;t identify. Mysterious walled areas with smart lawns disappearing behind glades of coconut palms.

Mysore rolled into view as the sun sank under threatening cloud. The crowds gentler. The city the one I started this idea with, full of silk shops as I turn right to the palace.

Cleaning uo after three days on the road. Waiting for a chicken tikka masala after sykeping to cover my tracks over missed emails.

From Worm to Catwalk begins tomorrow.

Signing off from my one night of luxury in the Park Lane Hotel, Mysore.

John was in egg 9

2009-12-05T04:23:00.000-08:00

I am drinking ayurvedic antacid which is vile.

Two nights of heartburn has seen me on porridge, soup and beansprout salad today.

You pay a price for curry sauce.

Yesterday I visited the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram with Chris, Tracy, Sarah and Ali who are all staying at or near my hostel. It's officially closed but a caretaker lets you in for 50 rupees. Stunning set-up. Carefully landscape paths cut up the steep hill passing egg-shaped huts for erstwhile students (including The Beatles in 1968. John was in egg 9.)

The place is now buried under dead leaves and spiders. A well-staffed army of monkeys greet you from the perimeter wall. Inside you don't see so many, just a few hanging around the caretaker's first floor flat which I assume he is squatting.

The place has an atmosphere similar to the hotel in The Shining. The sheer scale of it is astounding.

A crowning glory is supplied by three or four ceramic egg shaped meditation booths on the roof of the 100 metre long multi-storied pyramid which one assumes was used to house guests. Everything is decorated lavishly with Indian style arches and lattice work.

The jungle has reclaimed many of the spaces which were once tended garden and as dusk falls you feel a slight anxiety knowing that the adjacent hills do contain a few leopards (if you can believe what you hear.)

Ali had to leave early and as it wasn't dark and the path not too lonely we let her. Big , mistake. She was the victim of an attempted assault by a rickshaw driver on her way home. I apologised to her this morning (she escaped shaken but unharmed) for what I now see was a really bad error of judgment. While not wishing to be overprotective, sending single women off close to dusk in fairly secluded places is at best ungentlemanly and at worst negligent.

Today I picked up the photos for the exhibition. They were all unuseable. I had to go back to the dubious Meenakshi brothers as my super new guy with his working Fujicolour machine was off and not contactable. The Brothers surpassed themselves this time with their shoddy service and useless printing technique. All aforementioned softness of colour emulsions was destroyed in a demented storm of high-contrast magenta and blue. They exist only to serve those who know no better. And impatient fools!

The prints were used for proofs, edited down from 146 images to 40, then torn to pieces.

I gave the final edit of 40 frames to the Fuji guy who has reappeared.

There are a couple of exciting frames.

I feel vindicated and hungry.

An exhibition, motorbikes, new techniques

2009-12-03T05:17:00.000-08:00

Two weeks in and I have an exhibition planned here in Rishikesh.

It'll be called 'Sketches of Rishikesh'. Need to find a location.

The point of coming here was to prepare mentally for the From Worm to
Catwalk photo-documentary.

Yoga and shooting a thousand frames on film, street photography, have
swept out the cobwebs.

The photos have been impulsive, stabs at ideas and sensations. The XA2 has a
35mm lens and you practically never miss what you're pointing it at if you just
shoot from the hip, no viewfinder.

The teacher in yoga tonight said 'try to observe not judge' during the class. That is
exactly what I am aiming for in photography now. Develop a patient, unhurried eye with a calm steady gaze.

The programme exposure (on the XA2) does mean that it will use low shutter speeds sometimes. Once you can deal with that its a proper sketch book.

The Minlota I have, an unheralded plastic body with an MD lens on it, 50mm f/1.7
has a good viewfinder. Looking through it, a demanding geometric
conumdrum presents itself. You can't hide from deficiencies in perception, calmness, etc. Its unforgiving.

As Nobuyoshi Araki siad, all cameras have their own voice. He archives his pictures not by time frame but by camera. I lie the XA2 and the Minolta for their different qualities. The XA is mercurial, invisible and captures impossible moments. The Minolta is precise, small not to unduly disturb, with an infectious acuity.

The 5D is the ultimate challenge after all this wild freedom of expression. To do justice to the (admittedly surperceded) incredible chip, you must shoot clean, expose well and move like a stalking tiger. I got told off for wading in boots in the sacred Ganges yesterday so carried away was I by the idea I truly was invisible like the tribe in Emerald Forest. Suitably afronted I moved away.

Lats night I arranged accreditation for Chennai Fashion show. 50 shows! Lots of big
names. Parties. Great! Just praying they give me the backstage pass I need and that there is plenty of silk on show.

Rode motorbikes again today. Tried a backstreet. Fear gradually dissipates but.. fearful for some young fellow travellers in their twenties who came out to try the bike for the first time. Funny how we never fear for out own safety quite so fatalistically as we do for others!

Really upset a guy who was having a sports day for kids in a charity school in the vicinity. Felt bad when I saw how pissed off he looked telling us for the second time to move off

They all got the hang of it obviously so I needn't have worried. The kids still got their sports day.

Yoga again this evening after a three day break due to head injury. Hospital yesterday to be sure. Dreamy place, palm tress, lawns, flower beds, sweet scented air.

Feeling of bewildered peace after yoga tonight. Good feeling. Just glad the concussions fading and strength returning. Haven't been able to take pictures: vertigo.

As Tommy Cooper once said...

2009-12-01T02:36:00.000-08:00

Guy walks into a bar. Screams 'ahg!' It was an iron bar.

That was me. The roads forced me into the gutter. Rickshaw, motorbike, hand-cart, lorry. No space. So I leapt from death and used my momentum to propel me over a deep open drain on to the safer grill beyond. In one motion I hoped to progress twelve feet. My progress was halted by the unseen iron bar poking out at head height.

After that I felt off colour. Not sure if it was the dahl and radish I had at a filthy roadside diner. Not sure if I had way too much sun. There is colour on my face.

My ear infection offered a bit of yellow residue this morning. Feel off colour. Balance shaky.

Events are few. Last night I sent an accreditation request for Chennai Fashion Week in Tamil Nadu. This completes the From Worm to Catwalk cycle. Varanasi beckons, followed by Mysore silk farm. Turns out (fairly obviously) that Jammu is too cold for silk production through the winter months. Shame. I yearn to go to a politically restless place. Sri Lanka elections are happening at the end of January and although I fancy it, I can't see it going smoothly.

More motorbike practice today. The extra time on the bike only reveals more holes in my technique. My imagination fuelled with potential disasters at each turn. A compelling machine. Like playing with a 'tame' tiger.

Don't know the Arsenal score. Am I being too optimistic to think that, peversely, we win 2-0 without our best players?

Included with this blog entry a few of my sketches with the film cameras I have with me. An exhibition here should cost 50 quid. 100 prints. Then I can mail that home and show it as soon as I get back. Genius. Nice prints. Such fun shooting film. Soft, faithful colours.

The world coming into focus.

Actually no. Just saw the Arsenal result. Sick. Vile. At least there are no Chelsea fans here!

Boiling frogs

2009-11-29T22:55:00.000-08:00

Chris the 6ft 4 Aussie guy said taking pictures is like boiling frogs.

He was referring to the way I creep up and snap before being noticed.

In the same way, if you put a live frog in a saucepan of cold water (as you do)
and heat its a toss-up between it jumping out or being boiled alive.

Photography is about knowing when the frog will jump.

You can stop hiccups using this technique. You concentrate and when you think
you're going to hiccup you say: I'm going to hiccup. Except you don't. You're
cured.

This technique has amazed many people down the line. But its still nothing compared
to legend of when Chris 'Party Boy' Pontious put a guy to sleep somewhere in a pub somewhere near Co Kildare. Apparently they couldn't wake him for days. So the
story goes. Some kind of Vulcan shoulder squeezing technique I think. He was
banned obviously.

I like the Upper Ganges. The river seems pretty clean. I paddled yesterday. Nice.

I'm heading for Jammu in three days.

Oh, and I can ride a motorbike. I felt like Steve McQueen on the sweet Enfield 500cc.
Didn't fall off. Stalled once but only because I forgot what gear I was in. Very impressed with myself.

Yes. No.

2009-11-28T05:20:00.000-08:00

That was the funniest conversation I had today. The shopkeeper saw me
hanging around 'Yes?'I pointed to where the screw was missing on my camera
'No!'

I had the exactly the same experience next shop. 'Yes?' 'No!' I think
maybe you had to be there.

Its been a brilliant day for pictures. Not because I took any good ones.
Just the eye is coming back in. Its like in tennis when you start to see
the ball, exactly like that.

Motorbike lesson tomorrow. Enfield 500cc. In a carpark. Maybe with Chris
the Australian graphic designer. Might go for a roll up into the hills on
it if I feel confident. They are so cool.

16 years back then I was here last Indian seemed properly wild. Its so
civilised now I feel disappointed. Where are all the acid heads? The
people I meet are so wholesome. I guess the bad boys are all in Goa looking
very sunburnt. Not that acid's great. Its just nice to see a bit of rebellion
out there not homogenity. Sheep. Baa. They wander the continent shepherded by
Lonely Planet.

My favourite guy in Rishikesh storms around on his Enfield 500cc. Nice chick on
the back. Small multi-coloured bum bag. Rock climbing sort. I respect those wild
bastards. Like Tomaz Humar who died not too far from where I sit two weeks ago. Broke his back climbing solo on Langtang Lirung, Nepal. Sounds like an icy hell. Still, at only 23,700 feet... That guy inspires me. He believes in his ability. Its great.

This is a great country and its changing fast. Pretty crazy though. The papers
obviously hate Pakistan. They slag them off every day. The guys who made the attack
on Bombay are on their way to jail now more or less. The process has been criticized
for being tardy.

The situation with pollution and trash is out of control. But by the farms up the hill there is a recycling plant. Not much but it exists!

The bke guy says he'll sell me a 10 year old Enfield 350 for 25,000 rupees which is
322 English pounds. Its so sexy I can't take my eyes off it. Unpainted chrome tank.
Uncluttered black frame. Terrible brakes and breaks down frequently.

Yes its love.

Yoga

2009-11-27T04:57:00.000-08:00

Two hours yoga puts you in the perfect state of mind.

The Swami Chi(apologies if terminology is wrong) gave my instep
a squeeze when I told him my lower back was stiff and immobile. The
spot he squeezed hurt. Quite a lot. Apparently if I massage that spot every
day my back pain will disappear or improve.

I will probably get the best sketch scanned or printed tomorrow and I'll copy
it up for the site. I'm talking a photo I've taken with the Olympus XA2, the 'sketch-book'. There's the head of a cow almost filling the frame, the huge Rishikesh suspension bridge in the back ground and a monkey peeking over the cow's head. In the left of frame another monkey is jumping along a fence. Its front-end is out of frame.

I aint saying these sketches are masterpieces but they interest me. Bring in surreal
elements, strong composition and the random element too, not using the viewfinder, poking it in where it looks or feels alive.

Again, a Leica is the tool. The big old pro DSLR makes people feel like they're about to end up in Newsweek. I don't have a problem with attention but these cameras distance you from the subject. They are obviously expensive. Poor people react to that. Or maybe I react. I don't know why, but a taped up Leica softens the blow when you take a picture. Its like a cars 'face'. It's more Morris Minor than Lambourghini to look at.

I'm stuck with the 5D for Silk to Catwalk. Sorry to bang on about it.

Leica=spy
SLR=diplomat

Hotels

2009-11-24T22:19:00.000-08:00

Hi

It is amazing that despite the existence of several very nice hotels the kerbside is crowded with people sleeping rough.

Rishikesh is full of Sadhus who wonder about India taking handouts and sleeping rough. I was told there are more than two million of them. Very hard life.

Passed a hospital last night called 'Home for dying destitute people'.

Plenty to photograph as an agency photographer in this area. Next two days in Nepal they are having the animal sacrifice Olympics. Unlike the Olympics the festival takes place every five years. There are many other differences, the most obvious one being its not all that sporting. At least the fox or the bull has a chance. I understand that the bunny-huggers see things differently and everyone gets all serious. Meanwhile 20,000 people get evicted in Waziristan and the same bunny-huggers don't raise an eyebrow because they don't have long fluffy ears.

Yesterday I worked pretty hard. I did yoga in the morning (yawn) and then found a way down to the river near my cell. Nice cup of tea with a mountain view and the Indian Times which has some dodgy front pages and today didn't even mention the slaughter of 50,000 buffaloes just over the border. The AP guy must have had a few hits but would not have expected the Indian Times to be a no-show. Instead they used a Reuters set-up picture of hands round a small fire In Kashmir. Weird? Bonkers? That's news editors for you (with a few notable exceptions).

Looks like going to Jammu might be a bad idea as 20,000 terrorists are heading from training camps in Pakistan to India. Why and what for is not told. The Indian army say they are up for it. I don't mind photographing a few dead bodies to add to my black-tea kitty but the idea of having my shoulder blown off by an old English SLR rifle makes me think twice. A few dead Indians in Kashmir might not even make a picture, just a line. Unless they get a really high score, say 500. Call me sick and callous but I've sat in those meetings and you can't upset marketing too much with too many 'irrelevant' death stories.

I came back up the hill and found my yoga drop in place. Very popular full of wholesome types and a very cool Swami Chi.

By four I walked with the 5D into town to flex a digital muscle in preparation for the Worm to Catwalk project. I've been shooting from the hip with the Olympus XA2, waiting for things to happen, getting close and the speed and discretion is unbeatable with any other camera. The whole SLR approach feels clunky and contrived in comparison. Leica is the happy medium and I'll be returning with a M9, an M6, a 50mm & 35mm next year to repeat from Worm to Catwalk with film and digital rangefinders.

Agency photography would be OK if they let you be a journalist. Playing catch up to a scribe who thinks you a golden retriever carrying a toy is no fun. Declan Walsh is a god to me. He will probably inspire me to go to Afghanistan eventually and the fact that I failed to sell the flack jacket and lid is ominous or (more truthfully) my own fault!

I shot a little feature on Rishikesh market. Just to get in the mood, talking to shop owners, allaying their fears. One guy, drunk, passed by and shouted "You are foolish man!" before having an argument with a clothes stand.

I walked back in the dark. Everyone in bed before 11pm and the boy on reception looked a bit hurt I had kept him up when I rolled in at 1130pm.

I was supposed to go to yoga at 6am this morning but I was too knackered. I missed-out on being taught yoga by a guy who's over 100 years old which is a shame.

The guys in the shop standing front of the candle sell electrical supplies by the way. There was a power cut.

Invisibility

2009-11-23T22:33:00.000-08:00

When you are taking photographs intended to express an inner
movement you need to concentrate.

It is necessary to separate yourself from the interfering impulses of
social propriety and allow the experience to guide the process.

Sport and news photography use essentially the same ingredients. The main
difference is that any sense of propriety is usually an irrelevance in that
context. Shooting a man arguing with his brother about chickens in a quiet Indian
village alone is a different prospect. But you must have the same attitude.

I'll probably pretend to be invisible for the next two months. Experience shows that
if you are quick people rarely have too much to say about pictures. Loiter and make a nuisance of yourself and you will be heckled.

The other difference is that this type of photography, photographing life, is more like Test cricket than a one dayer or 20/20. The analogy really works. You really do need to bat away all the meaningless, occasionally seductive experience until that glaringly bad delivery, that gem of a moment offers itself. You need to gather all your stength around that moment and hit the ball out of the ground. Composition would be the opposing fielders. Get your geometry right.

Hair, boots and carp

2009-11-23T07:07:00.000-08:00

Peace man. I'm like in Rishikesh? Which is like cool?

The man in the photo is Dave a local barber. One of the
original 'don't get high on your own supply' fraternity, Dave has neither cut
nor washed his hair for 56 years. Apart from when he's in the holy water of the Ganges. Not the same as Wash & Go though is it Dave? Everyone has their hair like Dave's. He's kind of the yogic Nicky Clarke if that makes sense, though being a vegetarian Dave would never wear an appalling tight blue leather jacket with go fast stripes. I think, all things considered, he's probably a worse hair dresser than Nicky but carries his filthy shawl off better than the tosh Clarko ponces round Mayfair and Knightbridge wearing. No offence like.

Up the hill today to see an ashram I thought was built but wasn't. Not sure how 13 1/2 hours has elapsed since I did yoga this morning (with Dave obviously). Nothing that intesting happened. I've flexed a photographic muscle. Decided to photograph all the interiors of the market stalls tomorrow night, the shops, the workshops, they look great. Make modern art installations look drab and sickly.

Oh, the shoe guy mended my boot in maybe two minutes, three tops. Proper stitching. I've been looking at my boot (I walked the 6km back) under each street lamp checking his work. Childishly impressed by his craftsmanship. Bit of a rip-off at 4p though so after much haggling and the help of the local police I got him down to 3p. Harsh maybe and there was no need to use a rifle butt, but you can't let it go can you?

I guess I'll do a load of walks to the drop in ashram. That's 6km a day and a yoga session. The silk story will start in just under two weeks when I will be making a stupid and possibly unpleasant journey to Jammu in Kashmir. If I don't find what I'm looking for I'll go and meet a pre-arranged shoot of the weavers in Varanasi and then set up the silk worm shoot in Mysore.

I read Silk by Alessandro Baricco last night. Brilliantly written. Highly readable but not exactly a bundle of laughs. He paints life like he's wearing ear plugs. He should try mixing his metaphors and stop be all Japanese about his writing. If he has made that journey over land, through Siberia, I take my hat off to him. Seems unlikely though. How else could he describe the journey in two solemnly repeated paragraphs. The guy is up himself. Brilliant but up himself. I think I missed the point though. Its a fable. A poem. I'd compare it to Enya's music. Nice once in a very long while. But not lived in like Muddy Waters. When he's singing about sex you know he's horny.

This is what this place does to your mind...

The Ganges is full of bloody great carp. I fed them 7am this morning with rice cakes. There was a big white one that must have been about thirty pounds. Long and lean like a barble with big shoulders like a carp. I think they might be holy so sadly the beach caster must stay in my rucksack

Olympus XA2

2009-11-22T03:21:00.000-08:00

Bizarre.

I dumped the DMC-GF1. Sold it on ebay. It just didn't have it. I tried kidding myself about it of course. But At the end of the day, too much magenta, too fiddly.

The low light quality of the files was a joke. The depth of field with the 20mm was so flat, even at f/1.7, it ruined pictures.

So I bought an XA2 from Nicholas Cameras, 15 Camden High Street, London. Last minute purchase before getting on the plane (Thursday). John, the guy in the ramshackle (the place is definitive) shop, all old large format bodies and clapped out film, sold me at sixty quid. Way over priced but it came with a 3 month guarantee. Good job because the electro-magenetic shutter is slightly faulty. Not a nightmare but I have missed few. Monkeys looking at their reflection above Rishikesh.

Making many sketches with the camera. Totally vindicated bringing it. The click and the zone focus plus all the magic of film really makes sense. I think I can get all the film processed for about 30p a chuck over here and it costs about a quid a roll which makes shooting 50 rolls over the next two months economical, scan when I'm back.

The trip has gone like this so far: Slept on the plane. Watched Moon. Quite good. Left all my film on the bus outside New Delhi railway station. Hurrying. Stopped in the first hotel I came to opposite the station. Booked a ticket to Haridwar Junction. Met a girl on the first bus that stopped there who shared her rickshaw after Rishikesh and her yogi gave me a card for the Ashram they attend.

First night cost 300 rupees, just under four quid. Ate porridge up the road this morning (Sunday). Walked into Rishikesh which is mountainous with the Ganges flowing powerfully over a wide rocky riverbed. There is white water rafting and plenty of yoga ashrams. The steps down to the river are nice, usual array of hawkers, other tourists. Photos happening all around but disciplining myself to wait, wait wait!

Move to ashram tomorrow for two weeks yoga then off to Jammu to find the first silk factory.

India still feels remote and wild, civilized but eastern which is a relief. I had a horror it would be McDonald's and Coke everywhere. There are more factories, more cars, more modern buildings but its still India.

Ch, ch, ch, changes!

2009-11-17T16:55:00.001-08:00

Today has been weird.

First I saw a photo of a hippo eating a crocodile in the paper.

Then I get an email from Keo Films saying can I come in for a chat on Friday.

I'll (probably) be in India on Friday.

Its ironic that the day a croc killer hippo is in the paper is the same day someone emails me wanting to talk about a documentary about hippos! Pygmy hippos anyway.

If I do go to India it will be without the Panasonic DMC-GF1 which is still a toy. Even a Canon 20D kicks its arse. And thats a pre-history camera.

Funny how life turns out. So much for Nobuyoshi Araki's 'advice'.

DMC-GF1: The Answer

2009-11-16T02:22:00.000-08:00

One of the questions this blog has set out to answer is can the GF1 from Panasonic be used as a documentary camera.

The answer is a resounding: No.

The camera will be used for From Worm to Catwalk because the emotional charge that pushes the button is the subject. Not image quality.

Plus this camera can be easily used with a bright external viewfinder.

The size of the camera is convenient and discreet. If you want to be in National Geographic get an M9 or a D3s.

The aperture closing down apperas to slow down an otherwise snappy shutter release.

The chip has way too much magenta in it, cannot handle blue overcast days, degenerates in shadow areas and doesn't shoot fast enough to compete with a Leica.

Thats by a country mile friends.

The photo essya will be post-produced in Nik Silver Efex and CS.

Digital analogous software replaces quality files.

Quality is being removed as a crass tool to cover up lack of content.

Emotion will take the place of incredible files. The visual side will be sketched roughly with software.

A digital projector will be used for the exhibition. Green issues.

The sheer number of images taken will be another issue.

Images collected like a humming bird moving from flower to flower.

Something happens. Look! Shoot! A fight or flight reaction.

The final product should be have a rhythm impossible to attain with a cumbersome camera.

Next year I will shoot the same subject again with an M9 and run the exhibition concurrently with this years.

Peace

Decipher

DMC-GF1 focussing

2009-11-06T10:59:00.000-08:00

Good news.

As far as I can tell the focussing stays put once adjusted on the manual setting.

No hunting. Almost SLR shooting speed. No discernable shutter lag.

Henri Cartier-Bresson is said to have pre-focussed his Leica for speed.

The Leica wins shutter response but you won't be far behind.

The Summar 50mm on my old Leica IIIc is showing f/8 at 2.5mtr giving a depth of focus from 2-4mtrs.

Stick that in the GF1 and you'll be getting 20mm depth of focus on the tiny chip. Everything will be in. The benefit of such fast a wide-angle lens is losing the background when asked in daylight. You'll never compete for bokeh with a standard 50mm on a 35mm camera though, even shooting at f/2.8, almost two stops slower than the Lumix f/1.7 20mm.

So you can shoot using the external viewfinder and concentrate on experience and geometry.

Peace and love

Decipher

Crustacean sensation DMC-GF1

2009-11-05T11:42:00.000-08:00

Panasonic DMC-GF1 first test.

The shutter releases immediately once you have focus locked which is easy and quick.

It was possible to capture the seagull above the lobster proving the shutter is making it snappy.

If I hadn't pre-focussed the shot would have been missed.

An accessory viewfinder was used in preference to the screen which is useless for documentary photography (an old 35mm Helios).

Aperture priority was used without compensation. A more extensive trawl through instructions may or may not reveal faster ways of shooting but it's alright!

A Leica would beat this camera for speed and sex appeal.

As a tool for documentary photography the DMC-GF1 has many strengths though. Its small. Its fast. Its pretty simple and the f/1.7 lens is sharp enough wide open.

RAW files will be examined in the next post but the JPEGS look good and tolerate moderate manipulation.

Your experience comes first when working with this camera.

Coupled with an external viewfinder it got my mojo working!

Peace and love

Decipher

Silk worms

2009-11-04T16:39:00.001-08:00

My first Google search takes me to a webpage from the Central Silk Board.

There's a Sericultural Research and Training Institute in Pampore (Jammu & Kashmir)

The British Foreign Office say Jammu and Kashmir are unsafe and advise against road travel to and from.

I go Google Pampore and get www.pampore.com which I wasn't expecting after the terrifying safety advisory!

"Land of Gold (Saffron)."

This one page is a days worth of research material.

A photo essay on silk production in Indian shot with a Panasonic DMC-GF1 in the day and an old Minolta camera, f/1.7 50mm lens with Koday 3200 TMAX at night.

"The photographs you take are a reflection on the camera you are using". - Nobuyoshi
Araki

Peace and love

Decipher