Monday, October 30, 2006

Day 36 - Path


"A photograph is a secret about a secret.
The more it tells you the less you know"
Diane Arbus

Friday, October 27, 2006

Day 34 - "Fragment"

Day 33 - "One by day"

Starting from today, I will post only one image per day. I think it is better this way.
And I will use quotes any time I will find a good one.
I will start with something said by Rodney Dangerfield:
"The only normal people are those you don't know too well"
And I cannot end today's posting without sharing an old Chinese saying:
"Enjoy yourself. It is later than you think..."
Finally, today's playlist: KOYAANISQATSI by Philip Glass

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Days 32 & 33 - "On The Beach"


This is not an image created by me. I don't know who did it. It was a color print in a magazine. I scanned it and transformed it as you can see. This image is one of my all time favourites. It tells a whole story, it tells more than it shows... it makes you think about many things...


Saturday, October 21, 2006

Days 27 & 28 - "The Queen" (2)











Friday, October 20, 2006

Day 26 - New images on ww.stern.de


Today 14 new images from my work were published on the website of STERN magazine under the title "In The Mood".
This is the ninth time I am published by Stern. Many thanks to Claus Dirk & team there.
For me, everything started with Stern...

Saturday, October 14, 2006

There is no excuse, China

http://www.mounteverest.net/news.php?news=15182

"There is no excuse, China: Nangpa La video shows border guards sharpshoot refugees"


09:13 pm EST Oct 13, 2006

"At first they said they didn't know. "I've seen the reports about this, but I've no knowledge of the specific situation," Liu Jianchao, a ministry spokesman, told a news conference in Beijing about the shootings at Nangpa La.

That's when the pictures showed up.

Only hours later, China admitted. But now they claimed self-defense. A Xinhua report said that the people trying to cross the border attacked the soldiers, who were then "forced to defend themselves."

Fear of monks and a child

Not a chance, reported Romanian climber Sergiu Matei. ”The Chinese militias were hunting Tibetans onto the glacier...shooting them like rats, dogs, rabbits - you name it.” And Sergiu has video to prove it.
Taipei Times wrote 2 years back about a China/Tibet incident, "the cowardice of the Communists is apparent. How truly timid and insecure they are to fear monks and a child."

The Nangpa La refugees were mostly kids led by a young nun who was shot dead and a number of young adults. Out of the group of 70 people, 40 escaped but 30, including a large number of children still remain unaccounted for.

The video clearly depicts that the Tibetans had their backs to the soldiers, were unarmed, and offered no resistance. The nun who died, Kelsang Namtso, appears to have been shot in the back. During the shooting, a mountaineer in the cameraman’s group can be heard saying: "They are shooting them like dogs."

Czech climber's deja-vu

The video also shows a refugee hiding out in the expedition toilet tent, as described by Serguei in his earlier dispatch.

Serguei told International Campaign for Tibet: "He was terrified and shaking. I couldn’t think of what to say so I asked him if he was going to see the Dalai Lama, and when he heard those words he put his hands together in prayer. We hid him in the mess tent for several hours and when it seemed to be safe, I took him back onto the pass."

In their press release, the International Campaign for Tibet organization writes that a Czech climbing expedition leader, who also witnessed the shooting, Josef Simunek, said: "We felt as though it was 20 years ago in our country in the Communist time, when Czech soldiers killed Czech citizens in their escape over the ‘Iron Curtain’."

International Campaign for Tibet demands a full accounting by the Chinese government and assurances of the safety of the children now apparently in the custody of the Chinese military.

The silent Genocide

Before the Chinese came in and took over Tibet (July 1949), Tibet had 5 million people and was a sovereign state independent of China. One million Tibetans have since been killed, and 6,000 monasteries have been ruined. Today the Tibetan people are a minority in their own country. All the better jobs go to the Chinese people living in Tibet. The voice of Tibetan culture is now merely a rasp in the wind, its colorful history a shadow of the past.

Most climbers, except for a number of east Europeans were reluctant to speak up about a murder taking place right before their eyes. Some commercial expedition leaders even actively persuaded climbers to keep quiet. ”Big expedition outfitters will never speak about that," dispatched Serguei's climbing mate, Alex Gavan. "Otherwise they will be banned from the Tibetan side of the Himalayas. And this will mean no more bucks for them anymore. And they don't want that, of course. It has indeed nothing to do with the spirit of mountaineering (which has been lost in those commercial outfits) but with the basic human values.”

No more excuses, China

This indifference however also mirrors the world. For who will speak out against the Tibet genocide, asks the Taipei Times journalist:

"As long as the world is content to make money in China and ignore its human rights violations and the commission of genocide, China will thumb its nose at the UN. But appeasement is dangerous. The power of knowing they can simply destroy a people while the world checks its wallet will only encourage the Chinese Communists to pursue other plans of aggression. Who will speak out against this genocide?"

The day before Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, demanding the mass extermination of the Jewish inhabitants there, he explained away his actions to his officers by saying with a laugh, "Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?"

Apparently, we still do. One week ago a Tibetan nun was shot in her back as the world watched. No more excuses, China. There's only one thing that will justify the blood on Nangpa La: Give Tibet back to its people".

You can watch the terrible images here:
http://www.protv.ro/filme/
imagini-n-exclusivitate-din-himalaya-cu-execu-ia-unui-tibetan.html#4200

And read more here:
http://www.savetibet.org/news/newsitem.php?id=1039

Friday, October 13, 2006

Days 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 - Mourning Days



Today I have seen terrible images with the Chinese border guards shooting down Tibetan Pilgrims... It happened at 5.700 meters altitude in Himalaya, near the border with India.
The crimes were filmed by a Romanian cameraman - from PRO TV - and were wittnessed by a large number of alpinists of different nationalities from the camp. But all other alpinists watched the entire incident as if they were attending a theater play or a movie. Nobody took a camera to record the tragic event.
It was a sunny sharp day with crystal clear skies and immaculate snows. The row of Tibetan Pilgrims was advancing slowly in their way over the border to India to meet Dalai Lama. The Chinese soldiers - wearing fancy black sunglasses and smoking cigarettes start shooting them. One Pilgrim went down, but the row silently continued its march. Then a second pilgrim went down. Then another one. After this massacre, the Pilgrims were anyway arrested. One Pilgrim escaped and managed to hide himself in one tent from the alpinists camp. The Romanian cameraman gave him warm clothes, boots, fed him and kept him undercover from over 12 hours. The Chinese soldiers and their prisoners passed through the alpinist's camp. The soldiers were in a good mood, self content and relaxed as if nothing happened. After the soldiers and prisoners left the camp, the Romanian cameraman helped the Pilgrim to find the shortest way thorugh the mountains to India. The Pilgrim left the base.
The Chinese government released a statement saying - against all evidences - that the Pilgrims attacked the border guards thus forcing them to open fire in self-defense. The Pilgrims were poor people and half of them were teenagers between 14 and 18 years old. It seems that two of them were killed and another one injured. The Chinese soldiers inspected the bodies and left the two dead Pilgrims in the snow. Everything was filmed.
It seems that this footage shot by the Romanian cameraman is the first filmed evidence - in 47 years - of the genocide led by Chinese authorities against the Tibetan people.
For this I will post here two squares - one black and one white - for seven days.
This is how I can honour the memory of the two dead Pilgrims and of many others killed by Chinese authorities daily.
May their souls rest in Peace.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Day 18 - "Afterlife"


Day 18 - "The Lost Girl"

Sunday, October 8, 2006

Day 16 - "Naked Rooms" 2







Days 14, 15, 16 - "Naked Rooms"










Thursday, October 5, 2006

Day 13 - "Toxic Light"

Tuesday, October 3, 2006

Day 12 - "Simple moments"


Monday, October 2, 2006

Day 11 - "The House Of The Rising Son"

Sunday, October 1, 2006

Day Ten - "Other voices, other rooms"