Sunday, May 31, 2009

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.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

MAGIC WATERS IN THE DESERT: LIMA, PERU

MAGIC WATERS IN THE DESERT
TROUBLES IN THE AMAZON

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). 


Friday, May 29, 2009

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. 

Thursday, May 28, 2009

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. 

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

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. 

Monday, May 25, 2009

FULL MILITARY HONORS

HE'S NOT HEAVY... 

FULL MILITARY HONORS 
IN HONOR OF MEMORIAL DAY 

Sunday, May 24, 2009

MET ON A MOUNTAIN PASS

MET ON A MOUNTAIN PASS
NEAR KUNMING, CHINA

Dressing Up As Soldiers From Other Eras (1994)

Saturday, May 23, 2009

A RAINY DAY IN THE PROVINCES

A RAINY DAY IN THE PROVINCES
ON THE EVE OF PERESTROIKA
Lenin Billboard and Car, Rostov-on-the-Don (Russia), USSR, 1984, Photographed by Gwendolyn Stewart, c. 2009; All Rights Reserved
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)

Friday, May 22, 2009

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." 

Thursday, May 21, 2009

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.


Wednesday, May 20, 2009

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.

Monday, May 18, 2009

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.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

THE PETRIFIED FOREST
Photograph of THE PETRIFIED FOREST by GWENDOLYN STEWART, c. 2009; All Rights Reserved

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 ).

Saturday, May 16, 2009

RED STARS

RED STARS
Soviet & Chinese Communist Red Stars Photographed by Gwendolyn Stewart, c. 2009; All Rights Reserved
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?

Friday, May 15, 2009

WHITE SANDS

WHITE SANDS

WHITE SANDS, New Mexico, Photographed by Gwendolyn Stewart, c. 2009; All Rights Reserved

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

Thursday, May 14, 2009

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.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

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.

Monday, May 11, 2009

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 


Saturday, May 9, 2009

STALINGRAD TANK & BOY

STALINGRAD TANK & BOY



May 9 is
Victory Day in Russia, the equivalent of V-E Day for the U.S. and Europe, where it is celebrated on May 9 (different time zones).

Pictured above, a Soviet boy playing on one of the tanks in one of the memorials to the Battle of Stalingrad, one of the turning points of "The Great Patriotic War," or World War II. By this boy's time the city had lost the "Stalin" in its name, and as "Volgograd" now honored the river Volga and not the former Leader of the USSR.

It was 1984, and I was wandering around the Soviet Union for seven weeks by myself, exploring and taking photographs. By the time I arrived in Volgograd, I was quite cut off from the outside world.

So it was left to an angry woman in this city in which, as the Soviets saw it, they helped save the world from the Nazis, to inform me that President Ronald Reagan had threatened to bomb the USSR.

It was the summer of the Los Angeles Olympics, and the Soviets were staging a tit-for-tat retaliatory boycott of those Olympics. The U.S. had devastated them by boycotting their 1980 Moscow Olympics after they had invaded Afghanistan.


The Chinese in more recent years could not have wanted their Olympics more than the Soviets wanted theirs then, or Vladimir Putin wants the Winter Olympics in Sochi now.

The Cold War had newly heated up. Into this time of tension, Ronald Reagan let fall his "joke," in the warm-up to one of his Saturday radio addresses. He declared "Russia" an outlaw nation and announced that the bombs would fly in five minutes.