THE SILK ROAD II: BUKHARA

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

ON FARAWAY STREETS

BASHFUL IN BUKHARA

BUKHARA (UZBEKISTAN) USSR 1984

You have been introduced to one of the monuments of the Silk Road city of Bukhara; now meet a few of its people.

MAGIC WATERS IN THE DESERT: LIMA, PERU

MAGIC WATERS IN THE DESERT

TROUBLES IN THE AMAZON

LIMA, PERU 

For an almost-summer weekend, something light from an almost-summer evening in Lima, Peru.

To wit, a light (and music) and water show from the Circuito Magico del Agua -- the "Magic Water Circuit" -- in a city in the desert.

Something like a third of the twenty-seven-million population of Peru is said to live in its capital, Lima, tucked between the Pacific Ocean and the mountains.

Meanwhile, out in Amazonian Peru, there has been since April an on-going protest over indigenous rights and mineral rights. Three weeks ago the government imposed a sixty-day local state of emergency.

President Alan Garcia, who proudly hosted the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) Summit last November, is keen to promote development. He is quoted as having said that "The riches of Peru belong to all Peruvians," and the benefits should not go only to the "small group of people who live there."

Back in the capital yesterday (May 29), Prime Minister Yehude Simon threatened to resign.

The Magic Water Circuit, located in the Reserve Park in the Santa Beatriz district of Lima, is open Wednesday through Sunday from 4 p.m. It perhaps becomes most magical as night falls.

More on the crisis, which has turned deadly, here (check under June 6, 2009). 

More PERU SCENES  

JFK ON THE GINZA

"JOHN F. KENNEDY" 

ON THE GINZA  

AN AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ICON ... IN JAPAN 

IN HONOR OF JFK, BORN ON THIS DATE 

IN 1917, IN BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS

PRESIDENT, JANUARY 20, 1961-NOVEMBER 22, 1963

In 1981, en route to China for my first visit, I had a chance to dash downtown to Tokyo for an hour-and-a-half, and grabbed it. 

I was back in the country where I lived for a year as a child, in the town of Sasebo, and where, at age eight, I had taken my first photographs.

And what did I see but an image of our slain president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in a store front window on the Ginza – being used to sell glasses.

Such is the power of icons and the mystery of iconography, and of cross-cultural exchanges. 

THE SILK ROAD I: BUKHARA

NADIR DIVAN BEG MADRASA 

Today, something from the world of Islam – something beautiful, and something a bit unusual. Shown above is a close-up of the pishtaq (a "portal projecting from the facade of a building") of the Nadir Divan Beg Madrasa in Bukhara, Uzbekistan.  

Bukhara is a Silk Road city, Persian-influenced, over two millennia old.   The UNESCO World Heritage Committee calls it "the most complete example of a medieval city in Central Asia." It was once "the largest center for Muslim theology in the Near East";  a madrasa (madrasah, medresseh) is a school, a school for the study of Islamic religion and thought. 

The Nadir Divan Beg Madrasa, built in 1622, was, the story goes, originally meant to be a caravanserai. This is supposed to somewhat soften the violation of the Islamic prohibition against the depiction of living creatures:  better on an inn for trading caravans than on a religious institution. 

But then, phoenixes (above) are only mythical, no?  And the human (man?) in the sun? As to the two white deer (one shown above), well, perhaps they may be called "stylized."

When I visited Bukhara in 1984 and photographed the madrasa, Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet Union. Uzbekistan has been independent since the end of 1991. 

OTHER WEDDINGS II

TO THE BELL TOWER 

OTHER WEDDINGS II 
QINGDAO, CHINA 

Red is the traditional color for brides in China. But though the young woman in this couple is dressed in white, in a "Western" gown, tradition has not been altogether neglected. Observe the touches of red. 

Here, in 1994, a video camera is also coming up the stairs to the heights of the Bell Tower. 

OTHER WEDDINGS I

AT LENIN'S FEET

OTHER WEDDINGS I  

BACK IN THE USSR  

As June is almost here, and with it the wedding season in the USA, two weddings from other countries, other cultures: In today's photograph a newly married couple in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk comes in 1984 to be photographed at the foot of the Lenin statue in the heart of town.

FULL MILITARY HONORS

HE'S NOT HEAVY... 

FULL MILITARY HONORS 

ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY 

IN HONOR OF MEMORIAL DAY 

MET ON A MOUNTAIN PASS

MET ON A MOUNTAIN PASS

NEAR KUNMING, CHINA

Dressing Up As Soldiers From Other Eras (1994)

A RAINY DAY IN THE PROVINCES

A RAINY DAY IN THE PROVINCES

ON THE EVE OF PERESTROIKA

LENIN BILLBOARD & CAR

ROSTOV-ON-THE-DON (RUSSIA), USSR

Thinking Again About Communism, III

The USSR on the Eve of Perestroika: "To Us the Most Precious Is the Preservation of Peace" -- V.I. Lenin," the slogan on the billboard says. The year is 1984.

Lenin had died in 1924. (More in HERE BE GIANTS)

THE FALL OF COMMUNISM II

SHIFT CHANGE 

Katowice Coal Mine, Poland, 1981 

THE FALL OF COMMUNISM II

Speaking of the fall (or not) of communism ("All Rise," May 21, 2009), we are in the primetime of the twentieth anniversaries of the fall of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe.

The year 1989 saw the second "Springtime of Nations." In astonishment, and uncertainty, the outside world, and even the political actors within the various members of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, watched as events unfolded and limits were pushed.

Now, twenty years later, the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, serves as a stand-in for all the regime changes that year. And the violent climax of the downfall of all the Soviet-bloc regimes in Eastern Europe came on Christmas Day, in Romania, when the just-deposed former leader Nicolae Ceausescu -- and his wife -- were executed by firing squad.

But the Polish story should not be overlooked.  Timothy Garton-Ash believes "to this day that the Round Table - that is to say, the negotiated revolution - was a particularly Polish discovery, and is in a way Poland’s gift from 1989 to the world."

The backstory includes the founding of the Solidarity trade union in Poland in August 1980, and its rise and rise until it was crushed in December 1981. When I took photographs all over Poland in the summer of 1981 (including the coal miners in Katowice, above), it was obvious how entrenched Solidarity was in the workplaces, and in society more generally.  At its height, there were said to be ten million members, out of a population of thirty-some million.  

That summer, and into the fall, there was nervous speculation as to whether the Soviet Union would invade; it was the era of Leonid Brezhnev and the Brezhnev Doctrine ('what we have, we hold'). But in the end, on December 13, 1981, Poland's own leaders imposed martial law.  Lech Walesa and other Solidarity leaders were thrown in jail.  

Solidarity came back to life again after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Moscow and seemed to embrace the possibilities of reform in other communist countries besides his own.  Still, as Garton-Ash testifies, "You have to remember that nobody knew what would happen next and nobody knew what the Soviet Union would accept." 

ALL RISE: OBAMA & THE FALL OF COMMUNISM

ALL RISE 

The 16th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party 

OBAMA & THE FALL OF COMMUNISM
THE FALL? WAS WHEN EXACTLY? 

Today, in Washington, D.C., President Barack Obama made a rather strange statement for someone who is supposed to be so bright, and who is in charge of the national security apparatus of the U.S. 

Here is the wind-up: "Fidelity to our values is the reason why the United States of America grew from a small string of colonies under the writ of an empire to the strongest nation in the world." 

Okay. Then: Enemy soldiers… strong alliances …  

Then, "It's the reason why we've been able to overpower the iron fist of fascism and outlast the iron curtain of communism, and enlist free nations and free peoples everywhere in the common cause and common effort of liberty." 

"…outlast the iron curtain of communism.…" 

Oh, yes? The People's Republic of China, ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, has fallen? (and the regimes in Cuba, and North Korea, and Vietnam…?) 

Twenty-five years ago, President Ronald Reagan came back from his first trip to what he had been pleased to call "Red China" and spoke of the "so-called Communist China." This in 1984. 

In the fall of 2007, at the time of the most recent Chinese Communist Party Congress, I showed an American in Beijing a copy of the photograph above, taken at the previous Congress, the 16th (November 2002). He looked at the giant hammer and sickle and said, Oh, Russia. 

Whatever one may think of what has happened since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Communists have not ruled there since December 1991, while in China they go on and on.  So far.

BUDDY GUY

BUDDY GUY 
HIGHLIGHTS 

A concert photograph from back when, in honor of blues legend Buddy Guy's role in Bertrand Tavernier's film, In The Electric Mist, made from the novel, In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead, by Grand Master James Lee Burke. 

The book and the movie are set in Louisiana, where Buddy Guy was born, and the past is, Burke and Tavernier tell us, still very much with us.

CHINA THEN & NOW: MAID & CHILD

CHINA THEN & NOW

MAID & CHILD, NANJING 1981

In 1981, the People's Republic of China was on the cusp of major change. The Third Plenum of the Eleventh Congress late in 1978 had seen Deng Xiaoping's return to power and a new line proclaimed. When I first went to China almost two and a half years later, the new line had begun to be implemented, but ordinary people were not yet sure that it would triumph, and the new policies endure.

The first, sometimes tentative shoots could be seen in, for example, "free markets" -- as in a farmers' market in Yan'an. Under Mao Zedong the exploitation of labor had been frowned on, but in Nanjing I found a lower-ranking cadre who had a maid for his small child (above).

Cremation had been promoted in Mao's "New China." Burial in graves was discouraged as wasteful of scarce land. Yet in Ji'an in June 1981 I came across an early-morning funeral procession, which quickened its pace and tried to escape notice when discovered.

More generally I recorded both the distinctive city scenes and historical sites and the everyday activities of farming and eating and buying and selling and transporting goods to market and living life.

Now these photographs and many others taken in 1981 and since are being collected in a book: HERE BE GIANTS.

AS THE WHEEL TURNS -- TO CHINA?

AS THE WHEEL TURNS --

TO CHINA?

NANJING, CHINA, 1981 

More and more there is talk about China becoming the new giant in the automotive industry (for example, in today's Washington Post). 

So, a look back to the reality on the ground, literally, just over a generation ago, in 1981 in Nanjing. Private cars were forbidden. The blue creampuff above doubtless belonged to one official -- cadre -- or another, or more properly, to the official's work unit. Curtains in the windows encouraged privacy.

Somebody Important must have come in that car.

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

The Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, including its Blue Mesa trail, will benefit from some federal stimulus funds ($441,000 from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, it is reported ).

RED STARS

RED STARS

Twenty years ago today the Communist giants met, in Beijing, for the first time in three decades. Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made the trip to China for talks with Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader, and Zhao Ziyang, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

The leaders met in the Great Hall of the People. In the ceiling of its vast auditorium is the red star of communism (above, right). The Soviets were the seniors in revolution, the Bolsheviks having taken power in Russia in 1917; the People's Republic of China was not founded until 1949. As can been seen in the sample of a Soviet red star (left), the USSR placed special additional emphasis on its contribution to the victory over the Fascists/Nazis.

Gorbachev was himself a star when he came to Beijing -- to the outside world, certainly, for the reforms he had undertaken back in the USSR -- perestroika and glasnost'. He also had admirers among the Chinese, including some of those demonstrating in Tiananmen Square, the heart of Beijing, when he arrived.

The story of the Sino-Soviet rapprochement brought the international media, and the Tiananmen demonstrations provided a dramatic story just waiting to be broadcast. The dénouement was the crackdown of June 3-4, 1989.

Zhao Ziyang lost his post, and lived out his life under house arrest. His memoirs are just now being published.

Mikhail Gorbachev went back to Moscow to continue his attempts to reform the USSR. The USSR dissolved into its constituent parts ("Republics") at the end of 1991.

Jiang Zemin was brought from Shanghai to be the new General Secretary, and Deng Xiaoping remained the power behind the throne unto death. The People's Republic of China  is due to celebrate its sixtieth anniversary on October 1, 2009.

Arguments raged about which path to reform was superior, the Soviet or the Chinese. Which was the brighter "Red Star," Gorbachev or Deng?

WHITE SANDS

WHITE SANDS

A PLACE OF BEAUTY, AND OF THE "TRINITY" SITE OF THE FIRST DETONATION OF AN ATOMIC WEAPON (WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, NEW MEXICO)

A SUNNY DAY AT REAGAN'S WHITE HOUSE

A SUNNY DAY AT RONALD REAGAN'S WHITE HOUSE 

AMERICAN PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN HOSTS EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT HOSNI MUBARAK AT THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, JANUARY 27, 1983

This week President Reagan's unabridged diaries go on sale. They reportedly offer an "unvarnished look at people ranging from Pope John Paul to Mother Teresa to Mikhail Gorbachev." It should be interesting to look up the date of this meeting (above), and see what kind of comments Reagan offers (there is an official transcript of the report on their meeting and brief Rose Garden Q&A session).

Ronald Reagan left office in January 1989, and died in June 2004. Hosni Mubarak is still president of Egypt.

MAO ZEDONG SLEPT HERE

MAO ZEDONG SLEPT HERE 

THE BEDROOM IN MAO ZEDONG'S CAVE RESIDENCE IN YAN'AN, CHINA

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the final stage of which was a campaign fought north to south by the People's Liberation Army. This was a victory years in the making.

As we have seen with more recent guerrilla movements, weak governments which cannot control their peripheries can be threatened by rebel groups which seize power in the borderlands or "badlands."

So it was with the Chinese Communists, who escaped the "bandit extermination campaigns" waged by the KMT, or Nationalist, Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek by making the daring, desperate, Long March (1934-1935), which brought the remnants of Mao Zedong's forces to Yan'an, China.

There a residence could properly be a home in a cave carved into the hillside, and the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) leadership shared a compound of such houses.

THE HORSE MAO RODE IN ON

THE HORSE MAO RODE IN ON 

MAO ZEDONG'S HORSE ON DISPLAY

IN THE MUSEUM IN YAN'AN, CHINA

Yan'an was the site of the revolutionary base Mao Zedong and the other leaders of the Chinese Communist Party established at the end of the Long March (1934-1935). Mao's horse (see above) seems to have been lovingly preserved. A white horse.

MOTHER & CHILD & HORSE: LIMA, PERU

MOTHER & CHILD & HORSE 

LIMA, PERU 

PERU SCENES, the video-slideshow, is now up on YouTube.

From travels in LIMA, URUBAMBA, OLLANTAYTAMBO,

MACHU PICCHU, and CUSCO, PERU, at the time of the APEC Summit

1. The Ghostly General

2. Looking for the "Leader of the Free World" at the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) Summit, Lima, Peru

3. Bring Me the Head of John the Baptist

4. Standing Guard over Machu Picchu

5. Mother & Christ Child

6. Mother & Child & Horse

7. The Lovers

8. Santa Claus & Mrs. Claus

9. A Family Dinner Out

10. Standing Guard over Lima at the Time of APEC

11. Playing Out the Leaders

12. Our Car & Their Car

13. A Stony Beauty

14. Night Falls in Machu Picchu the Town

15. Mt. Salcantay 

More PERU SCENES 

HERE'S TO THE LADIES

HERE'S TO THE LADIES 

"Any nose

May ravage with impunity a rose."

-- Robert Browning

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY