I returned from a fourteen day trip to Oman in early January – my second journey to a fascinating country in the span of two years. Unlike in December 2009, this time I happened to spend most of my time taking pictures of the daily life of ordinary people.

I must say that I have not explored the country as extensively as I would have wished, but where ever I went, a beautiful soft light graced the early mornings and evenings. Drenched in this soft curtain of light, not only did the ordinary man with a mighty heart stood tall, but also the dramatic and rugged mountains, the sandy dunes and the safire-blue ocean  seemed astounding! So, indeed  I did frame several compositions with the use of prime lenses.

However, if I were to choose just three images which would define my style; particularly in terms of using ambient lighting, composition and the point of interest in a photograph, I would say… here they are! This is it!

There are number of reasons for me to say so, but I may boil them to two.

Firstly, each image took me more than thirty minutes of careful observation filtering fleeting thoughts about light, simplicity in composition and the point of entry in to the picture.

Secondly and most significantly, I anticipated in patience to capture the ‘decisive moment’ as Cartier- Bresson would call it, where all the elements of a photographic composition falls place in a fraction of a second.

The three images I share here were taken at the Friday Market in Nizwa, a historically significant town in the interior, which indeed becomes a busy place during the week-end. Since it was a overcrowded and hectic location, it was not easy to get the right composition “in a fraction of a second”. The overwhelming tendency was that one or the other distracting element will either be in the foreground or in the background of the subject.

I wanted photographs that were documentary in style and at the same time dramatic in its aesthetic narration – a blend of, so to speak, photojournalism with fine art.

A street scene

Image 01:

This is a photograph of a trader and his team of four people, discussing their day ahead right before the selling began. The early morning light, the composition in terms of portraying the concentration of a man with his fellow men, is one of my personal favourites.

The Red Door

Image 02:

This photograph was taken inside the Nizwa Souq. The beautiful red fort door was just opened for people to access the narrow bazaar corridors with little shops on either side trading spices to earthenware. I waited for someone to cross the door towards the direction of the main light source, in this case coming from the right side of the frame.

A composition in a – sort of – tight frame, as two people would be a distraction to the eye. After spending some twenty minutes observing the scene (without talking any pictures), suddenly I noticed two people entering the frame from two different directions. I had to decide. I waited for both men to overlap each other to give me one unified shape. An image, if I took a second before or later, that may not have made it worthwhile to share.

The man in a purple dress

Image 03:

When a majority of the men in Oman wear a white dress, it is always interesting to detect someone with a coloured dress, a rare combination. The ambient light, the overall structure of the building and moreover the man in the purple dress harmonized this image.

So….I hope you like them.

*Access my Face-book page for a few more images from the trip.

If you have visited my With-Light Facebook page, you might have not failed to notice an album I’ve named as Studies on Light. Back then, I made brief comments on a selection of black and white photographs; thoughts  I would like to complement with this post with images in colour.

In visual arts,  no other aspect has gained as much attention, or required a special artistic skill as when it comes to ones mastery in the use of Chiaroscuro – the use of light and darkness in creating a certain mood or composition. Since the very first photograph was made in 1826, the very nature of this medium of thoughtful art was dependent upon the quantity and quality of light that passes through a sophisticated lens and the captivating image it left upon a light-sensitive surface.

Everything what one saw from that moment on in terms of shape, texture and even felt was nothing but the effective manifestation of light and darkness, carved out by light in its unique imprint; a ‘dancing of shadows’.

Consequently, light and darkness provided the means by which the illusion of three dimensionality was given to a two-dimensional art-form.Therefore, in admiration of bygone masters of light, I thought to share two photographs that were taken in extreme low ambient lighting; experiments of a kind.

Last week, I spent a few days in Leiden, the Netherlands. The birth place of Rembrandt van Rijin, without doubt the greatest painter and printmaker hereto. However, Leiden did not have any noteworthy landmark to celebrate Rembrandt compared  to the city of Delft and Vermeer. As a fact, Rembrandt supposedly lived twenty-five years in the city before he moved to Amsterdam by the end of 1631.

Leiden in June 2011

In the year of 1970, the Leiden city authorities came to the conclusion to destroy his birth house, as the office quarters that was located in there then, failed to pay its taxes – a justification for its demolition that followed that is utterly wearisome. His paintings were literally cut off or brutally censored, when he was alive and his house flattened to the ground centuries after his death; both in the hands of respective city authorities. Nothing remains, except for a memorial plaque at the location to which right opposite a cement made statue stands, which is inspired by Rembrandt’s famous early works such as ‘Artist in his studio’ 1626.

I am indeed an avid admirer of his works.

Rembrant's Memorial

Leiden is a beautiful place also famed for its landmark windmills. Among the nineteen wind mills in and around the city, the ‘De Valk’ or ‘The Falcon’ particularly stands out, which is a tower corn mill dating back to 1743.

Most of us identify Netherlands with windmills even though it was not invented there. The first recorded windmill originated in Persia around 600 A.D. a technology that has made its way to Europe vis á vis the Crusade. Ever since, windmill science was given a boost by its Dutch and English counterparts.

Instead of fixed mill blades that were to be found in Persia, the European mill blades were made to rotate with the the wind to utilize maximum energy. Furthermore, the Dutch have created multi-story towers, so that the millers could live where they worked. ‘De Valk’,  now turned into a wonderful museum has seven floors with interesting insights to the life and work of a miller in the eighteenth century.

Inside the mill

Like the tea pluckers of Sri Lanka who cannot afford a cup of quality tea, the miller too could not afford a loaf of bread though he pounded flour all day. As he was  given a 1/24th or 1/16th of the quantity of grain he had milled, he had to sell it to the local backer to raise money for all his other needs.  As a result, millers often lived in the verge of poverty.

The miller's kitchen

The living quarters

If you refer to Rembrandt’s early work, you could locate landscapes littered with windmills, a landmark he did not miss being a Leiden miller’s son, himself.

I am writing this post from Vienna, Austria.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to visit a gallery dedicated to the life and work of Adolf Frankl in  ‘Judenplatz’ or in the Jewish square. Adolf Frankl was a painter – one among the very few survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. For a start, I will turn to write a few lines about the location itself, where his Art Forum is located; in others words to dwell in a few historical facts important to appreciate the life and the work of the artist at large.

The Art Forum in Judenplatz, Vienna.

The Jewish square  in Vienna, not far from the St. Stephan‘s Cathedral, and only five meters away from the house, is where once Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart used to live in the year of 1783 – the same place, where Vienna put up its centuries of ghettos for its Jewish community.

During the late 13th century since, this was the heart of social, religious and financial life of the Vienna Jewish community. If you were Jewish and lived in Vienna then, you were only permitted to do money lending against a payment of an interest, but not to practice craftsmanship nor own property or to do farming. This anti-Semitic political climate reached its zenith in 1420/21 and culminated in a terrible anti -Jewish pogrom.

Following years of systematic prosecution, Jews were witch-hunted in the Austrian capital, during which 210 Jews were burnt at stake at this very square. To escape such unprecedented torture in the hands of the catholic and state authorities, many of them converted to Christianity or committed mass suicide, immolating themselves along with their Synagogue – their place of worship. At this point the Jewish ghetto population was a recorded 1400 people, only.

A many a time since restored synagogue is also located at the Jewish square, right in front of Adolf Frankl’s Art Forum. Later in the 19th century, the ghetto in the square was completely demolished using the very same stones, with which the University of Vienna was built (1873-1883).

Well, now back to…. Adolf Frankl.

Through my paintings I have created a memorial for all nations of the world.

No one,
regardless of religious, racial or political convictions, should ever again suffer – such or similar – atrocities!

- Adolf Frankl -

© www.artforum.judenplatz.at

The Art Forum displays, selected drawings and painting of  the artist in regular turns. Until his death in 1983, Frankl has drawn two thousand drawings and two hundred paintings using all the material he had his hands on; ranging from serviettes to note pads etc.etc. His paintings – the majority of them – stand out for their strong and vibrant colours, colours used to underline the most terrible events he himself underwent under the Third Reich and in the concentration camps, which he survived (see http://www.artforum.judenplatz.at/index.html to learn more about him and his work).

Adlof Frankl  insisted over and over again, that his chief motivation  to draw and paint was to keep the terrible experience of the Holocaust alive, in order  to prevent such atrocities in future in all nations.

An exhibit at the Art Forum: uniform of a political prisoner who was  in a concentration camp

65,000 Austrian Jews were murdered between 1938-1945 in concentration camps.

Adlof Frankl was tattooed with number B14395, ‘B’ standing  for  Brikenau.

“Arrest of Jewish family in Bratislava on September 28,1944.”

Adolf Frankl 1903-1983. Aquarelle, about 1946

© www.artforum.judenplatz.at

”It was upsetting to realize that only very few people were prepared to do anything to help the oppressed.Most of them just watched the inhuman assaults as they took place. The picture shows a group of Jewish citizens from Bratislava being brought to the ”Little freight rail-road station.”

The preservation of his work and funding of the gallery completely depends on the eldest son of Adolf Frankl, Thomas Frankl and family  along with other generous donations. Thomas Frankl is therefore willing to place his father‘s legacy at the disposal of interested cultural institutions for exhibitions worldwide.

So, if you find yourself in Vienna, take a couple of hours to visit this exceptional gallery, where you will be warmly welcomed and guided by Nesica, its curator.

I should begin this post by apologizing that I have not updated my blog for nearly two months.

Among all the other obligations, the photo essay on war-torn Jaffna –which is on-line and now accessible under photo essays – had consumed much of my time than I initially planned for.Collecting materials, in order to verify the facts and most significantly to relocate the people depicted in the essay –since most of them are constantly on the move– asked for more work.

Well then, let’s get back to the focus of this blog post.

Today, I paid a visit to the Jewish Synagogue here in Essen, Germany; one of the significant land marks of this once industrial city. Following two years of “reconstruction”, the “new” synagogue was reopened in July 2010 and it was the first time I was in there, since.

The press release commenting on the event dated 25th of July 2010, read…”and, yes, laughter is also permitted in the House of Jewish Culture: The more than 2000 square meters of exhibition space on the mezzanine include not just reflections on the terror of the holocaust but also a showing of a Ben Stiller comedy film. Young people can go on a tour of the world via multi-touchscreen and key moments of the building’s history are also shown in an innovative fashion.”

If only you have visited this ninety-eight-year-old enchanting building prior to its new-opening, will your heart reel in finding that most of the significant museum objects that once stood there were “missing”. They had been all removed and worse, the museum staff did not know where to. Particularly, the insightful (and even rare by standards) exhibition wing, which was located in the loft and was dedicated to explain the historical, political and economical contexts to the rise of Nazism in the 1930s in Germany had vanished into thin air.

The painfully restored and carefully displayed exhibition objects depicting the life and work of people long lost, abstracted from the day-to-day living room, to intellectual life and political activity is now reduced to hip projections to locate Jewish neighborhoods in New York and in other far-off places.

Descriptions which once offered to gain a glimpse of the epoch that was marred by recession, protest and war have been swiftly replaced by a sporadic and stereo-typical display of objects depicting what it is to be Jewish, today. A pitiful manifestation as to how historical understanding is reduced to rubble, making way to a celebration of identity, and only identity alone.

Seven million Euros had been squandered in this project with the intention that “the conversion will send out a new impulse for the political discourse about German-Jewish life,” according to Edna Brocke, the synagogue’s director.

I disagree with her!

In doing so, I think it’s worthwhile that I share three of the photographs I found in my archive, which I have made during one of my previous visits to the Synagogue dated in January 2008 and hopefully speak for my words here.

This bicycle, was one of the most extraordinary museum objects that I’ve come across in an exhibition, which once belonged to a resistant fighter who had fought against the Nazi regime in the 1930s. It had been frequently used to smuggle political leaflets into the factories situated in the Ruhr valley in organizing an opposition to the Nazi regime and the brown helmets.

These suitcases originally belonged to those who were not successful in fleeing Nazi prosecution.

“In 1933 a steady, though initially small scale emigration of Jews from Germany began. As a result of increasing persecution and in particular after the November pogroms of 1938, it became a mass exodus.

Following the outbreak of war on September 1,1939 leaving the country became extremely difficult and in autumn of 1941 no longer possible. Those wishing to emigrate had to overcome numerous bureaucratic obstacles. Money and other assets could only be taken out of Germany at a great loss. The few countries willing to accept German Jews, above all the United States, Great Britain, Argentina and Palestine, had immigration quotas and expected immigrants to be either affluent, have a particular profession, or able to provide proof of a guarantor.

Jewish organizations aided the efforts toward emigration. Jews from Essen emigrated mostly to nearby Belgium or the Netherlands. Although some 60 percent were able to emigrate, many later found themselves in countries occupied by the German army during the war and were subsequently deported to the concentration and death camps.”

-Description quoted from the Essen Jewish Synagogue, back then-

I am so pleased to inform you all that I am having a completely redesigned new web site – well, yes I am in for a brand new launch to mark a new start as a freelancer!

A simple and user-friendly site with selected photographs, which I have made between 2007 to 2010.

The chosen photographs are presented to you in three categories:

1) Photo Essays
2) Journeys and
3) Commercial.

The Photo Essay albums will include two assignments,

I. “For a better life”
II. The day in the life of a plantation worker.

Well, in comparison to the essays, Journeys contain some of my old work, which was posted in my old site.

The Commercial category with which I will finally conclude will give you a sneak-peak to what I do to earn my bread and butter.

So, since this is my first blog post, I am determined to try my best to make it sound one too – simple, concise and inviting.

As much as my time permits, I intend to use my future posts to share my evolving thoughts on photography, a medium rapidly expanding and changing.

One can say – without any exaggeration – that just like the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century had brought the masses of people in to the world of literacy, the birth of digital photography and its increasing affordability continues to draw many across the globe into the vizier of a new visual medium bringing in important and fresh perspective to the life around them.

In that spirit, I will use my blog also to share some of my other images, which will not qualify for the gallery, precisely since I have taken them for various (other) reasons: curiosity and experimentation to name but two.

Well, so far for an opening and hope to write to you soon.

Now, cheers again for the new site !!! …..and hope you’ll like it.

And, thank you Nadeesha for the great job !!!