Drama ? Comedie?
“Eu consider că nu există nicio deosebire între dramă și comedie. Mie mi se pare că este vorba de același lucru, dar care este privit din alt unchi de vedere. Sunt convins că orice întâmplare poate fi povestită în așa fel încât să stoarcă și lacrimi și hohote de râs. Mi se pare că e o trăsătură specifică poporului român acest “a face haz”, câteodată chiar de necaz.
Țin minte, m-am întâlnit odată cu un neamț care îmi povestea o excursie a lui în România pe la mânăstirile din nordul Moldovei și cum i s-a stricat lui motorul și a trebuit să se ducă la nu știu ce autoservice. Și eu tot așteptam, povestindu-mi, să văd care e poanta. Nu era nicio poantă: era o tragedie shakespeariană tot ce povestea el. Și mi-am dat seama câtă diferență este între un astfel de punct de vedere asupra vieții și altul povestit de un român care îmi povestea un accident, leșinat de râs, în care el își rupsese un picior, ălălalt trei coaste… Zice: “Da’ nenoricitu’ de ală care-a stat în spate nu mai avea niciun dinte-n gură și nu-nțelegeam ce spune!”. Și el îmi povestea toată această dramă, acest accident, dar, cum să spun, luat pe partea cealaltă. Totul era de un haz nemaipomenit, cum ăla vroia să le spună ceva și nu putea că-și rupsese doi dinți sau trei dinți din față. Și mi-am dat seama ca viața poate fi privită – nu doar din două puncte de vedere – dintr-o infinitate de puncte de vedere.” – Amza Pellea
Snaps and thoughts !
These are just some snapshots of Dubai International Airport. Couple of days back I spent almost twelve hours there. Huge and beautiful airport with everything your heart desires readily and easily available for decent prices. Luxury brands available at every turn of the head, luxurious hotels here and there, restaurants and bars that serve all the food and drinks you ever want. People , like ants, going by their business, running to catch a flight or spending some money from the budget they have for their vacation on things they don’t really need , or looking for that place where they can enjoy the difficult to understand pleasure of inhaling the smoke out of a fine cigarette while gently sipping some caffeine.
And yet, you start getting a quite uneasy feeling when you know that , despite having all the life’s small pleasures there, at your wallet’s desire and possibility, you are stuck in a bubble, you don’t smell the wind and you don’t really feel the sun burning your skin. You can not go anywhere until it is facilitated to you.
Probably, seeing the speed of evolution in technology and in peoples dreams, during our lifetime , we will get closer to having colonies, trying to continue life in the vast universe our planet is a grain of. Would I be able to adapt to such a life? Would I ever want to live such a life? Not sure…and I am glad that I might actually not need to find out (or at least I can hope I don’t need to find that out) .
Piatra Neamt – Unforgettable !!!
I am sorry for the poor quality of this night shot. I was lazy to carry a tripod that evening. My ISO was way high and I was in a cable-car.
Snaps
Just some snaps I shot while traveling around the region this past month. Was nothing planned…just took my camera and shot these images in the little time I had to spare.
While I enjoy all these images, I particularly like the second one…I was lucky enough to capture more than I hoped for in that one shot. From joy and laughter to indifference and weirdness.
I hope you all enjoy them as well. I would love to know your thoughts on these images. It is constructive to hear what you all have to say.
Sold Future !!!
I’ve been away for a while now…for almost a month I didn’t do much on my blog. Through some accidental events, I’ve managed to get me involved in some electoral campaign for a candidate for the Mayor’s chair. So for almost a month I took part in a messy spectacle of honesty , compassion and vision on one side and stupidity, egos and ignorance on the other side. Lucky I chose the good side (unfortunately not the winning one…but at least I didn’t had to lower me to an intelligence level I wasn’t comfortable with).
It is unbelievable how miserable and dirty the 21st century politics can be in Romania. We fought ,in the 1989 revolution, for freedom and for democracy, for the wright to vote and express freely our believes. I see now that all was in vain. In a community of a bit over 3000 people , in Romanian country side, people are treated by their mayor as a country was treated 22 years ago. Threat and intimidation found a home under the leadership of a 72 yo man that behaves like a tyrant (a stupid one also). Scared people being held from the neck by a gang of cruel, ignorant, stupid and greedy middle aged and senior citizens. I honestly don’t want to say that I am ashamed I am Romanian, but now I see why I just don’t fit in anymore, why I feel like a stranger in my own country.
It is embarrassing to see parents selling their votes, selling their children’s future for a miserable 50 USD. How can these parents look their children in the eyes and tell them they care for their future? Don’t these irresponsible fathers and mothers want the best for their family?
Even worst is that these kind of situations are easily found all over the country. And remember we have aspirations to one day be an integral part within European Union, we like to think about us like a modern state with democratic values. (democratic values my ass *pardon my language*).
I really just feel sorry for the children that, trough no fault of their own, are caught in the middle of all this and see their dreams and aspiration blown away by the stupidity of the political class, by their parents unwillingness and incapacity of gathering information and getting educated and wisely choosing the people that represent them in the local administration and all other political institutions. The same parents are crying they have no jobs, they have no food on their table…but at the same time they vote for the same people for 20 years, for people that got them in this state of survival in the first place.
The images in this post are shot during this campaign. These are children from Rosiesti village in Vaslui, Romania. (the village I was referring to in the first part of my post)
Rain
“Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams”
Innocence !!!
“Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of to-day. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul.”
The Local News Broadcast…!!!
Out there in the country, this is the fastest, not always the most reliable (actually a bit like Fox News at times with the small differences that these grannies are not misinforming always in a deliberate manner) and definitely one of the best way to keep yourself up to date with the local breaking news. In a small village were the newspapers get at least a week after the publishing date, and in most of the houses they watch some sadly entertaining tv channel, it is really worth taking a walk with this sweet old ladies just to find out about the village priest and his mistress or about the neighbor’s daughter and the mayor’s son, or even about the new candidate in the coming elections for the Mayor’s seat.
Roads to Nowhere … !!!
And I mean that literally …Roads to Nowhere…!!! Yesterday I spent my whole day in the middle of nowhere and these were a few of the roads going there…!!! Small little villages looking almost forgotten by the rest of the world were even the mobile signal is so scarce that I had to go up on the highest hill in the area to use my 21st century technology. I had even bought the only one bottle of water available in the local shop. So…yes….they were just Roads to nowhere…!!!
Inhumanity and Cruelty
At the beginning of 2011 I started working on a project to support a campaign initiated on the local web media and forums against the inhuman conditions exiting at that time in some of the biggest pet shops in Doha, Qatar. Unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to finish it as I left the country . As per what information i managed to gather after that, it seems that the local authorities did a very good job addressing the issue and there have been radical improvements . I can just hope they continue … I inserted in this post just a very few of the images I have managed to capture for the project)
Just Moving Forward – I Answer to Me – Rambling Thought
I often think of what would I change in my life if I had one single chance to go back in time ? And that is a tricky one…because we are human beings and we all share “devilish” human traits like pride, greed, insecurity etc (or so some people would argue…). I is a bit of a moral philosophy question. Maybe I would want to become smarter, richer, maybe just fix mistakes I’ve done so I can live happily ever after with my childhood first love and so on. I can find hundreds of tempting tweaks that I could play with surfing on the insane idea that I would change my present for better. And then I stop and wonder if all that would change it for better? would it change it at all? That Is the big mystery for me and I hope many others. ( I hope it is a mystery for many others just not to be labeled as crazy for writing this thought on my blog for the world to see…!!!)
The thing is…I don’t think I would want to change something! I don’t think I would want things to have been different because I wouldn’t be anymore my present self, would I? All I have been trough in my relative short,at times miserable, but mostly mediocre life, made me the person I am today, and I am a bit afraid of whom I would be if my past would be tempered with. And even if, trough some obscene absurdity, I could go back in time and I would decide to change something, I really doubt something would change because the universe has a wired way in finding the symmetry and the order that is deeply embedded in the physics of its existence and all will result in the same present I live today.
So probably it is better to let my mental self follow my physical self forward trough the fabric of space and time; A unidirectional and inevitable way of life, not dwelling on the past, just learning my lessons and moving on with my insignificant existence, being aware that the only arguable certainty that I have is that “I AM NOW”.
Finally ART – Masters (as I decided to name this photo)
I have decided today to listen to the advise of 2 Rivers Photos on a comment he made on my Black & White post I’ve pressed couple of days ago and give this image its own post.
Since I started to post my images online on WordPress, Flikr and other sites, this image received today one of the best compliments that a photo can receive. A mid 50′s lady, *rosearodoe*, herself an excellent photographer and one of my Flikr contacts, was genuine in letting me know that this made her smile.
Like I always said, it is great to know that people appreciate your photographing technique, composition or other such qualities, and it is always appreciated when comments in that direction are received, but when you get a smile out of somebody, when you get some sort of feeling out of somebody regardless of what you felt when you took that shot…then is when you know that you might just be one small step closer to calling your self an artist and your work ART…
My passion for photography is refueled by the feelings I manage to bring out of those few ones that still look at my photos. Is is wonderful to know that this simple black & white moment, immortalized as seen trough my lens, had a meaning to a complete stranger. Thank you *rosearodoe*.
MUSIC – The Strongest Form of Magic
This child was mesmerized by the music played on an iPod that my friend had given to her while on a long train ride. I don’t believe she has seen one before or ever listed to any music on such a small and “wired” device. She was motionless for more than an hour, watching the little colored screen as the magic tunes played. I had to pull my camera out and capture that unique first in the little girl’s young life.
Black & White
I was trying to think of a clever name for this post. I got stuck at the thinking part…just couldn’t find something “clever” enough. Anyway I hope you enjoy these photos regardless….
As usual , your comments , critique and opinions are always appreciated.
