Turkish Bus

This Turkish bus served ice cream upon departure, tea and cake every couple of hours and had Bugs Bunny playing on a loop on the back of the seat TV screens. Our best bus ride ever.

Turkish Water

 

 

Isabel's Turkish Haircut

My Turkish Haircut

We went on holiday to Turkey this summer. This is my Turkish haircut.

The Lodz Ghetto: Walter Genewein

From top to bottom, pictures by Walter Genewein, Mendel Grossman x 2 and Henryk Ross

 The Litzmannstadt Ghetto in Lodz, Poland is the subject of Dariusz Jablonski's 1998 film Fotoamator/Photographer.

The film looks at the photographs of Genewein, a German accountant, honing in on the faces of those imprisoned there. The pictures are accompanied by commentary from Arnold Mostowicz, a Jewish Doctor, together with extracts from Genewein's work and correspondence. It is a chilling film, one in which there is a constant backdrop of fear and suffering as Genewein goes about his business of capturing the banality of everyday camp life. The director's technique of zooming into the faces in the photographs amounts to a radical filmic cropping and is stunning in its simplicity and effectiveness. Genewein's pictures are often referred to as "benign", but Jablonski succeeds in making them profoundly tragic and revealing of the true nature of the ghetto - or perhaps it is just the feelings of the subjects for the photographer that we see. Unfortunately, there are few decent images up on the internet but you can see some here, at the Lodz  Ghetto website.

You can see a snippet of Fotoamator/Photographer here.

Because of its nature, the Litzmannstadt was more photographed than other ghettoes. Henryk Ross, an official Jewish photographer had his pictures gathered together in the Henryk Ross Lodz Ghetto album, while Mendel Grossman secretly photographed the Ghetto in all its brutality . You can see Mendel Grossman's Lodz Ghetto pictures here. 

Biography of Mendel Grossman here. An extract is below.

Mendel obtained a job in the photographic laboratory of the department of statistics in the ghetto, the office in which all the true information concerning the ghetto was collected. Covered by its official status, the staff of the department accumulated written material.

They did not only record dry facts, as statisticians usually do, but wrote down every rumour passing through the ghetto, every change in the distribution of food rations, every event no matter how unimportant. They also collected photographs, ostensibly to demonstrate models of products of the ghetto workshops, and identification photographs for work permits. The laboratory had a good supply of film and printing paper, and also served as an ideal camouflage for Mendel’s real job.

He spent most of his time in the streets, in the narrow alleys, in homes, in soup kitchens, in bread lines, in workshops, at the cemetery. The chief subject was people. He did not seek beauty, for there was no beauty in the ghetto, there were children bloated with hunger, eyes searching for a crust of bread, living “death notices” as those near death, but still on their feet were called in ghetto slang.

He photographed conveys of men and women condemned to death in the gas-vans of Chelmno, public executions, in one incident, a whole family passed through the street dragging a wagon filled with excrement, a father, mother, son and daughter, the parents in front pulling, and the children pushing from the sides.

Mendel stopped but did not take out his camera, he hesitated to photograph the degradation of those people. But the head of the family halted and asked Mendel to photograph, “Let it remain for the future, let others know humiliated we were.” Mendel no longer hesitated, he gave into the urge which motivated so many Jews to leave a record, to write down the events, to collect documents, to scratch a name on the wall of the prison cell, to write next to the name of the condemned the word “vengeance.”

Panayiotis Lamprou's Portrait of his British Wife

So the National Portrait Gallery has its portrait prize shortlist up and Panayiotis Lamprou's portrait of his wife with no knickers on is the one that catches the eye - mainly because only a detail is shown, and then you have to click on the image to get the full image in all its shocking glory. That extra clicking seems to add a dimension to the picture, to give it some weird peepshow feel, almost like one of those old pens with a picture of a girl in a bikini on, but when you turn the pen upside down, hey presto, the bikini disappears.

 The Guardian has a short commentary. Especially interesting are the  Guardian comments. These muse on the Bristishness of the artist's wife, the omelette pan to her side, the tip of her pelvis, the shape of her genitals and the fact that she is shaven, and what will happen when her children see it - the last point I'm not sure I get because I'm presuming she's not going to be teaching her children about the the shamefulness and disgrace of nudity - it might be something a bit more relaxed and healthy than that. I'm with the Get over it school of thought - it's not porn (but once it might have been) and it's not that good a picture. Or is it? I'm not sure anymore.

And then is she really British? British? And if not, why is he putting that into the title (and wouldn't English work better)?

Full list of the Shortlisted Portraits are here. I fancy the Jeffrey Stockbridge twins, which reminds me of oh-so-many-things, but especially Roger Ballen's Dresie and Casie.

This is what the Guardian site has above the Lamprou Portrait.


Warning: clicking on the picture reveals the full image, which is explicit and may offend

All this somehow reminds me of this story where amother of boys complained about a topless sunbather.

She had initially asked the woman, an assistant in a fashion store, to cover herself up as her ample breasts and the act of rubbing cream on her body had "troubled her sons aged 14 and 12."

Amar, Akbar, Anthony

The picture I posted on Monday by JR of a rabbi, imam and priest reminds me of Amar, Akbar, Anthony; a classic 1970s Hindi film where 3 brothers get separated and are brought up by a Hindu, Muslim and Christian.

If you like this kind of thing, you can see the whole film on youtube (if you really like this kind of thing, you can buy the DVD). And if you like this kind of thing a little bit, but not 3 hours worth, just check the two songs out.   There's Rishi Kapoor in a green elf suit singing Parda Hai Parda, a song about taking off the veil ( check out the camp stoner Qawwali band and random two girls sitting behind the bad Muslim dad) and Amitabh Bachchan jumping out of an Easter egg to channel Rishi Kapoor's dad in the glorious My Name is Anthony Gonsalves. And if you don't like this kind of thing at all, ah well...