SkyBlueSky

Postcard from Sinop : Working in a Grey Area

Day 6 in Sinop and I've seen the sun for 2 maybe 3 hours. The sky is just grey, grey. I was working around the ports, shooting fishermen as they repaired nets and details on boats. I'm starting to get that panicky feeling when you're shooting a travel story and the weather isn't helping. Give me a storm, or sun - but not this pea soup. I'm about to head back and a fisherman calls me to join he and his friend on his boat. The boat's owner tells me his family came to Sinop from Crimea some 300 years ago. He shows me a Russian book from the 70's with pictures from the village where his family came from. He makes tea, the friend reads the paper and asks a few questions. We watch the dolpins as they surface around the harbour. He offers me more tea and I accept. We're just hanging out. Something I had forgotten how to do.

Returning Grandfather to the Sea

Monday marked the first day of the Taoist Nine Emperor Gods Festival. The festival, which is designed to worship 9 emperors who are thought to be 9 stars around the Big Dipper and children of female deity, Dou Mu, is celebrated at Taoist temples in Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar and Thailand. Oddly enough, it is not celebrated in China, where it originated in the province of Fujian. 

In 2010 I met by chance an elder of Tow Bo Temple on Cheong Fatt Tze Street (formerly Hong Kong St) in George Town, Penang. He invited me to attend ceremonies held on the ninth day of the festival, which culminate in a fantastic procession throughthe streets of George Town that ends at one of the Hokkien clan jetties on Weld Quay Road.

Tow Bo Temple is thought to be the oldest 9 Emperor Gods temple in Malaysia; scriptures at the temple date back to 1842. Families living in homes on either side of the temple, which have occupied them for five generations now, keep and maintain the float that the temple deploys in the procession.

Nine Emperor god worshippers are known by their white clothing and yellow sashes.

On the ninth day of the festival the 9 Emperor Gods are called to the temple and sent off in a boat. The ceremony begins with the raising of nine lanterns on a high bamboo pole outside of the temple. Inside the temple worshippers offer incense and food and pray. Then the temple's priest/medium calls in the Emperor Gods. Then the ceremony moves out onto the street, where arches are set up for worshippers to walk under.

While all this is going on members are beating drums outside; the atmosphere is electric and you can feel the spriritual fervor build. This helps worshippers who will be pierced though their cheeks enter a trance-like state which enables them to take the injury to their bodies dealt by quite large rods without bleeding. On the night I attended the ceremony about 6 or so devotees accepted the piercing. There's no wincing, there's no evidence of pain when the rod is driven through the cheeks of these men. It is, frankly, a little surreal to watch.

After the piercing the men are led down a sort of human chute of devotees, encouraged by clapping and drumming, and then they take their places on the temple's float. Lots of firecrackers are set off at the base of the street where it joins Carnavon, a major thoroughfare along which the procession, which includes floats from many other Nine Emperor God temples on Penang, will pass.

The procession is long and intense. Devotees follow along banging drums and in addition to their wheeled floats each temple has numerous male members carrying a sort of palanquin upon which a heavy boat rests. This boat figures in at the end of the ceremony. As the procession moves past other non-9 Emperor Gods temples (there are a LOT of temples in George Town, large and miniscule) the palanquin carriers do a sort of back-and-forth movement towards their entrances 3 times, symbolizing bows of respect.

At the pier, Tow Bo elders boarded a boat with the temples boat, which was loaded with paper offerings, joss sticks and sandlewood. They motored out to sea and set the boat ablaze. I boarded another boat with Tow Bo devotees and from that we watched the fire. We could see boats from other temples, also ablaze, floating in the distance. If the craft returns to land it is considered unlucky.

I have attended many religious events in Asia over the years. This was by far one of the most intense and exhausting.And rewarding. I hope this multimedia captures some of the intensity and raw emotion of that night.

A technical note:

I shot with 3 cameras - Canon EOS 1 Mark II fitted with a 70-200mm 2.8 IS, Canon EOS 5D Mark II with a 35mm 1.4 and Ricoh GRD3 which proved to be especially adept at capturing close in shots in a tightly packed crowd. I generally shot at ISO 800-1600 on the Canons and 400-800 on the Ricoh. I also had 2 OP/TECH USA Rainsleeves in my bag which came in handy when we had an hour-long deluge towards the end of the procession. When I met up with my contact at the temple he told me that big rain happens "every year at about the same time in the procession" -- so if you plan to attend this year, be forewarned.

Thank you to elders and members of Tow Bo Temple for their warm hospitality.

The Kits are Alright

(And dogs, too)

We just took our latest addition to the family over to the vet for spaying. In so doing I was reminded of some pro bono work I did last August for my good friends at Lanna Dog Rescue in Chiang Mai.

I first became acquainted with this organization, which seeks to control the size of Chiang Mai's stray dog and cat population through education, reduced cost neutering for pets and mass sterilizations for strays, back in 2006. At that time Lanna Dog was also rescuing, housing and facilitating the adoption out of strays. The organization has since moved its focus away from housing strays to reducing their numbers. Lanna is also working to eradicate rabies in Chiang Mai and beyond, and is active in the campaign against the dog meat trade in Thailand.

It is a well-run organization staffed by volunteers who work like, well, dogs, with results that should be evident to anyone who visited Chiang Mai five or six years ago. There are noticeably fewer stray dogs out and about, and those who are "half-homed" (looked after and fed by a single person or a neighborhood, but not kept in a yard or in a house) are in much better shape than they used to be.

On this day Lanna Dog was staging a sterilization at Wat Suan Dok. As of last August the organization had sterilized some 5,000 dogs in Chiang Mai -- quite a contribution to the effort of keeping the city's stray population down, when you consider that in one year one female dog can give birth to 20 puppies. It costs Lanna Dog about 550 baht to spay a 10-kilo dog, which gives you an idea of the massive fundraising involved in this kind of effort.

When I arrived mid-morning things were in full swing -- an open building to the side of the wat served as a makeshift clinic where two vet hunched over operating tables. Meanwhile volunteers registered pet owners and tendied to post-surgical patients. By 11am there were about 36 dogs and cats in queue for surgery.

Banners hung around the space read:

"Be Responsible and Sterilize Your Dog"

"Dogs are Friends Not Food"

"An Overwhelming Dog Population Leads to Culling for Consumption"

The latter two phrases refer to Thailand's role in southeast Asia's booming cross-border dog meat trade. Dogs are eaten in northern Thailand; there's a dog meat market in Chiang Mai. But more than that, Thailand is a source of dogs that are trucked to Vietnam and China for consumption. Many of these dogs are stolen, others are bought from their owners or minders for the price of a plastic bucket, still others are strays that are picked up off the street. Lanna hopes to make a dent in the trade by shrinking the supply -- thus the mass sterilizations.

This particular sterilization day was part of a program Lanna was undertaking with Chiang Mai Municipality and Thailand's Department of Livestock called the Human Dog Management Project. It is an alternative to shooting strays -- which is more common in Thailand and in Malaysia than you probably know.

One thing that impressed me was how smoothly the "clinic" ran -- an orderly and efficient assembly line with a very human touch. The tenderness volunteers showed to recovering patients was really touching. While the dogs and cats slept off their anaesthetic volunteers took advantage of the opportunity to clean ears and cut nails.

My wife and I have had dogs and cats for almost as long as we've been married; every cat and dog adopted has been homeless. So I have a soft spot for causes like Lanna's. But as a repeat visitor to Chiang Mai and one who has developed relationships with locals I view the city as a second home. The efforts of Lanna Dog's volunteers have made the city a more pleasant place to be, a more liveable city than it was 6 years ago. For that I thank them.

As anyone working with Lanna Dog would tell you, strays needn't be viewed as a nuisance to be eradicated -- with the right care and treatment they can become valued community members.

If you find yourself in Chiang Mai on a Sunday look out for the Lanna Dog Rescue table at the Old City walking market. Buy a t-shirt or drop a few baht in the donation box. Or contact the organization to earmark a special donation. You can, for instance, elect to sponsor a sterilization or help Lanna to purchase needed medical equipment.

Every little bit helps.

Final Days

In early 2010 I made a trip to Sichuan province and took a quick side trip to Chong Qing. The trip was really more to explore Chong Qing's food scene; it was after photographing a noodle dish that I stumbled into the riverside neighbohood of Yu Zhong.

Red banners strung across lanes and across shopfronts and homes and the Chinese character for "demolish" painted on buildings -- sights I became familiar with as a resident of Shanghai during the late nineties, an intense period of reconstruction there -- announced that the neighborhood was slated for demolition. Wandering its alleys I found buildings dating back to the late Qing dynasty -- the port of Chongqing's first post office, for instance -- and incredibly, amidst the destruction that had already begun, signs of life.

I spent the next day and half photographing Yu Zhong -- its historic buildings and its remaining residents. The neighborhood was rundown and, no doubt, many Yu Zhong dwellers welcomed their impending relocation to new high-rise apartments on the outskirts of the city. 

Yet others expressed doubts and fears. Many, with only days remaining until their relocation, still had no idea where they would be sent. Some were angry that the compensation they would receive from the Chongqing government was inadequate to move both themselves, their families, and their household goods to their new homes. Others were unhappy about the hour and a half, or two-hour commute that would be required for them to get back into the city to jobs near where they'd lived. One elderly woman, a doctor of herbal medicine who'd been treating patients from her Yu Zhong shop for more than several decades, expressed quiet resignation. She wouldn't reopen her business from her new home (yet undetermined), she said. "I'm too old to start over."

During my last afternoon in the neighborhood I met two Chongqing university students wandering around taking photographs. Taking pictures of old buildings, especially in a neighborhood as rundown as Yu Zhong, is not something you see a lot of young people in China doing. Why were they there, I asked. "We don't know it now, but I think in twenty or fifty years we feel regret for this," one told me.

Yu Zhong's redevelopment was just one part of ex-Chongqing chief Bo Xilai's grand makeover of the city. When I took these photographs no one could have predicted the events that have since unfolded there. But all of the residents of Yu Zhong knew they were nothing more than bit players in their city's, and China's, massive redevelopment.

I view this collection of photos as Part One of a complicated story. I have wanted to make a trip back to Chongqing to track down a few of the residents I met in Yu Zhong. Unfortunately, to date neither the timing (nor the funding) has not worked out.

Please click on "captions" for detailed explanations of the photographs.

Close

..but no cigar as they say. But I was very pleased to have been selected as a finalist (in three categories) in the Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year. The organizers have been kind enough to post the winners here.

If you happen to be in London (or you're feeling particulary generous and would like to send me) an exhibition of the finalist (including your's truly) are on display at the Mall Gallery through April 29.

Congrats to all the winners. See you next year!

Welcome to the Machine!

I am excited to announce that I have just signed up with photographers agency / portal Wonderful Machine. Check out my profile here.

Also, I've updated my commercial and editoral website. Jump over here and scroll through the galleries.

Berjaya Times Square - Be there or Be..

 
Join me tomorrow October 23 at Berjaya Times Square for the Futuromic Imaging Fair. From 2pm to 3pm I will be presenting some of my work, walking through my approach to photography, and talking about my new friend the Ricoh GRD III.

 
(above lanterns in Penang. One of the images I will be showing shot with the GRD III).

 
The Futuromic Imaging Fair starts today and runs through Sunday. Plenty of photoshoot opportunities, and giveaways. You can even get your camera and lens cleaned for free!

 
If that doesn't make you smile -nothing will.

 
We'll be looking for you there. A quick note - the event will run in real time - not Malaysia time - so by 2pm October 23 we mean 2pm October 23 (got it?). Cool. See ya!