Claude shivers in a surprise snowstorm. We had to rush to get all the nets up because if the olives freeze then their oil is ruinedish.

Philippe examines a rifle, one of the pillars of his spiritual life on Corsica. For a goatherd and cheese maker, he and his family live very comfortably.

The neighbor watches the belts that roll the immense stone that crushes olives in the ancient stone mill. The gears used to be turned by water from a diverted stream, but they are now run by motor.

I was editing photos last night in preparation for a project and noticed the similarities among these three.

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by Mike

This guy was hanging out at the work site, helping to carry pieces of lumber here and there. He asked me to take this photo, as is the case with most photos of people I’ve taken so far. This was the only shot I took of him.

by Mike

These photos are from an old hotel that was operating as an art gallery and cafe or something. We drove in rural areas this morning and since it was Sunday people were dressed up in their Sunday finest for church. There’s definitely a colonial style to the clothing, to the buildings as well, and when I saw things like a dapper man with a cane, the effect of his bare feet was that I imagined we were driving through Southern plantations in the early 1800s.
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by Mike

Here are more photos from the walk around town today.

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by Mike

We went for a walk around the town today, we actually saw most of it in about an hour. The man above was designing a sign for a studio that he’ll paint directly onto the wall of the building. He was stenciling it very exactly with a pencil and ruler, I’m excited to go back and see what he finally did with it.

by Mike

I’ve been reading up on how Haiti is presented in the media, and I thought I’d share some links about Haiti and storytelling.

This guy is a photojournalist who’s extremely sensitive to the power dynamics of storytelling:
“Please help me, who is not in Haiti, understand what is really going on. Please do not produce work that is a substitute for the beggar’s bowl. Please don’t demean me, the Haitians or yourself. Please let me hear and see an Haitian.”
He’s highly critical of his profession, and I find all his writing inspired.
To Hear or See an Haitian Once the Party Has Died Down at The Spinning Head

An article by Rebecca Solnit about the wording and emphasis of media coverage:
In Haiti, Words Can Kill

Eliza Gregory writes about being a white photographer objectifying non-white people:
Looking Back at a Picture I Wish I Hadn’t Taken

And finally, in a video from TED, Chimamanda Adichie talks about our tendency to reduce a group to a single story, and the problems that arise out of that act. Before seeing this video, I used to say that the most important thing I have learned from travel is that “Everyone has a story.” Now I realize that I got it a little wrong in a big way. It should read, “Everyone has stories.” The change is more than just pluralization, it’s the realization of multi-dimensionality, complexity.

My goal, going to Haiti, is to avoid taking pictures in a way that I deny the subjects their agency. This wouldn’t even be an issue (or a blog post) if I didn’t recognize in myself a tendency to do the opposite as a result of the media’s story arcs in my own thought patterns.

by Mike

Azure fell in love with a Corsican cheese, a cheese that doesn’t travel well. We were leaving in a couple days and she might never again see or taste the enchanting, goaty brocciu. Azure was sad, so I had to do something.

We asked a young man at the market if he knew a brocciu maker who might teach us to make the cheese. He told us to ask the widows who sit on the steps of the mayor’s office.

We rode our scooter to the mayor’s office and asked the old ladies where to find a brocciu maker. In the next village over, they said, lived a woman who made it for years.

We rode our scooter over the ridge and asked a man where Mme Albertini lived. She was his aunt, in fact, and she lived at the edge of town.

We found the woman, but she no longer made cheese – the process is too intense. Her cousin in the next village over, though, still made it.

We found the village and found his barn and Philippe was inside, milking the goats.

“Please,” we said, “Azure loves brocciu and needs to learn to make it herself.”

He looked at her and smiled: if we returned the next afternoon he would happily teach us everything. The next day, alongside his wife and daughter, he patiently taught us the generations-old recipe.

All we had to do was ask.

This post has been entered into the Grantourismo HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition.

by Mike

Even a year later this man’s look strips my facade to its frame. Can you feel it too? His worker, a young man, made room in the shop for our flat-tired motorbike, and he went to work silently.

I wanted a picture of the old guy, I had to have a picture of those nails, but I made myself a rule to only take pictures of people I talk to. Damn principle. He didn’t speak English, so with my (very) limited Indonesian, I attempted to have a heart-to-heart with the old man, to get to know him, to have a meaningful, cross-cultural exchange.

“You work here?” I asked.
“Yes.”

“How many years?”
“27.”

Ah, the clumsy conversational dance where all you can reliably understand is “yes,” “no,” whole numbers and “chicken.”

“How old boy?”
“16″

“Your son?”
“No.”

“How many years you Bali?”
“[Unintelligible, but he didn't say chicken].”

Someone else paid and he used his nails to flip though a wad of cash. I salivated for a photo. Enough chit-chat, time to go for the kill, but subtly of course.

“How many years?” I pointed to his hand.
“One.”

Hold up, only a one year commitment for those things? This is doable! We can do this!

“I photo you?”
“Yes.”

I love travel, don’t you? You can never predict what you’ll come across when you leave the beaten path. There are interesting old dudes out there, around the world, willing to take a second to chit chat with a foreigner.

This post has been entered into the Grantourismo and HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition.

by Mike

To accompany this photo I searched my journal for a piece of writing that might radiate a sense of place in Bogota, but in the two weeks we spent there I only filled ten pages and little of it describes the texture of the city. Some say, “Put away the camera and enjoy the place!” but the two acts aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, if measuring by regret (which is the only way to measure anything ever), I rarely regret taking the time to capture something but more often regret losing the first-person insight during a unique experience. With this in mind, sometimes I’ll simply list everything I’m noticing at a particular moment – sounds, smells, physical feelings, words, etc.

At the beginning of my first trip in 2001 I had to ask (our friend) Amy, “So, why does a person keep a journal?” I was on my way to Europe for the summer and had gotten a gorgeous hand-made journal from my then-girlfriend (I still count it as one of the most meaningful gifts I’ve received). Amy thought it was hilarious that I was asking for advice on what to write about in my own personal journal, but she ended up giving a pretty good rule of thumb: Write about stuff you don’t want to forget. It’s amazing, ten years later, to read back and say, “Oh yeah! I’d completely forgotten about that!” It makes me wonder what else I’ve experienced that might interest me, but I guess that can’t be easily mined.

Anyway, this picture is from a scenic little neighborhood in Bogota called The Candelaria. I think the photo captures the sense of place, even if my writing didn’t.