Feeding Our Hungry World

Part II 

Fisherman on Inle Lake, Myanmar/Burma

 

Afghanistan

 

The sea’s our field of harvest,
Its scaly tribes our grain;
We’ll reap the teeming waters
As at home they reap the plain.
- John Greenleaf Whittier

 

Pago, Myanmar/Burma

 

Barley Fields, Kandze, Tibet

 

Rice paddies, Tibet

 

 

Tawi-Tawi, Philippines 

 

 

Goa, Western India

 

 

Cultivating Potatoes, Bamiyan, Afghanistan

 

 
Weligama, Sri Lanka

 

It is estimated that 20% of the world’s population depend upon fish for their survival.

 

Half of the world depends on rice.
 

 

 

Myanmar/Burma 

 

 

 

 

Sri Lanka 

 

 

 

Yemen

 

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous
and the storm terrible,
but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
- Vincent Van Gogh

 

 

India

 

 

Cambodia

 

 

Japan

 

Mali

 

Philippines

 

The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the
terrestrial globe.  Its breath is pure and healthy.
It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely,
for he feels life stirring on all sides.
- Jules Verne

 

Sri Lanka

 

Dal Lake, Srinigar, Kashmir

 

Burma/Myanmar

 

In 40 years, the global population is expected to swell by
2 billion, so rice, today the fastest growing staple which
feeds more than half the world’s population, will become
increasingly important to global food security.
- Pamela Whitby, BBC, The Race for Rice, 2011

 

Rice paddy fields, Banaue, Philippines

 

 

 Nepal 

 

The first farmer was the first person.
All historic nobility rests on the possession and
use of land.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

Rice paddies, Thailand

 

Rice has fed more people over a longer period of time
than has any other crop in human history.
Rice: Then and Now”
by R.E. Huke and E.H. Huke

 

Java, Indonesia
Woman working in a field devastated by volcanic debris and flood waters

 

Farmer, Baluchistan, Pakistan

 

Nepal

 

Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
let fortune’s bubbles rise and fall;
who sows a field, or trains a flower,
or plants a tree, is more than all.
- John Greenleaf Whittier

 

 

 
Niger 

 

 
Bamiyan, Afghanistan

 

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens.
They are the most vigorous, the most independant, the
most virtuous, and they are tied to their country
and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.
- Thomas Jefferson

 

 Pakistan

 

 Luzon, Philippines  

 

 Shibam, Wadi Hadhramaut, Yemen

 

Afghanistan

 

 

 Lancaster, Pennsylvania

 

The Amish farm as they have for hundreds
of years.  They believe that working with the soil,
raising livestock, and growing their own food is
cooperating with God’s purposes.

 

  The bounty of harvests in Kashmir

 

 

Agra, India 

 

 
Niger

 

 

The Farmer

Each day I go into the fields

to see what is growing

and what remains to be done.

It is always the same thing: nothing

is growing, everything needs to be done.

Plow, harrow, disc, water, pray

till my bones ache and hands rub

blood-raw with honest labor—

all that grows is the slow

intransigent intensity of need.

I have sown my seed on soil

guaranteed by poverty to fail.

But I don’t complain—except

to passersby who ask me why

I work such barren earth.

They would not understand me

if I stooped to lift a rock

and hold it like a child, or laughed,

or told them it is their poverty

I labor to relieve. For them,

I complain. A farmer of dreams

knows how to pretend. A farmer of dreams

knows what it means to be patient.

Each day I go into the fields.
- W.D. Ehrhart

 

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance
and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

 We invite you to take a look at our redesigned website at:
http://www.stevemccurry.com

 

We appreciate your comments and suggestions! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feeding the World

 

  

 Weligama, Sri Lanka

 

It is estimated that 20% of the world’s population depend upon fish for their survival.

 

Half of the world depends on rice.
 

 

 

Myanmar/Burma 

 

 

Sri Lanka 

 

 

Yemen

 

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible,
but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
- Vincent Van Gogh

 

India

 

The sea’s our field of harvest,
Its scaly tribes our grain;
We’ll reap the teeming waters
As at home they reap the plain.
- John Greenleaf Whittier

 

Cambodia

 

Japan

 

Mali

 

Philippines

 

The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the
terrestrial globe.  Its breath is pure and healthy.
It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely,
for he feels life stirring on all sides.
- Jules Verne

 

Sri Lanka

 

Dal Lake, Srinigar, Kashmir

 

 

Burma/Myanmar

 

In 40 years, the global population is expected to swell by
2 billion, so rice, today the fastest growing staple which
feeds more than half the world’s population, will become
increasingly important to global food security.
- Pamela Whitby, BBC, The Race for Rice, 2011

 

Rice paddy fields, Banaue, Philippines

 

Phokhara, Nepal 

 

The first farmer was the first person.
All historic nobility rests on the possession and
use of land.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Rice paddies, Thailand

 

Rice has fed more people over a longer period of time
than has any other crop in human history.
Rice: Then and Now”
by R.E. Huke and E.H. Huke

 

Java, Indonesia
Woman working in a field devastated by volcanic debris and flood waters

 

Farmer, Baluchistan, Pakistan

 

 

Nepal

 

Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
let fortune’s bubbles rise and fall;
who sows a field, or trains a flower,
or plants a tree, is more than all.
- John Greenleaf Whittier

 

 

 Niger 

 

 Bamiyan, Afghanistan

 

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens.
They are the most vigorous, the most independant, the
most virtuous, and they are tied to their country
and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.
- Thomas Jefferson

 

 Pakistan

 

 Luzon, Philippines  

 

 Shibam, Wadi Hadhramaut, Yemen

 

Afghanistan

 

 Lancaster, Pennsylvania

 

The Amish farm as they have for hundreds
of years.  They believe that working with the soil,
raising livestock, and growing their own food is
cooperating with God’s purposes.

 

  The bounty of harvests in Kashmir

 

Agra, India 

 

 Niger

 

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance
and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

 We invite you to take a look at our redesigned website at:
http://www.stevemccurry.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sentinels of the Earth

 

The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands,
translated from French by Stuart Gilbert

 

Chinar Trees, Kashmir

If you would know strength and patience,
welcome the company of trees. 
- Hal Borland

 

Ayutthaya, Thailand

 

 

Cambodia

 

 

I hear the wind among the trees
Playing the celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

         
            

India

 

Thailand

 

 

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky
- Khalil Gibran

 
 

 India

 

Every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of
gold and silver.
- Martin Luther

 

 

France

 

 

Agra, India

 

Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the
listening heaven. 
- Rabindranath Tagore,
Fireflies, 1928

 

 Cambodia

 

Trees are much like human beings and
enjoy each other’s company.
- Jens Jensen, Siftings, 1939

 

Canada

 

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a
claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something,
that quality of air that emanation from old trees,
that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
-  Robert Louis Stevenson

 

 

Korea

 

 

Niger

 

I never saw a discontented tree.
They grip the ground as though they liked it, and
though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.
They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind,
going and coming like ourselves,
traveling with us around the
sun two million miles a day,
and through space heaven knows how
fast and far!
-  John Muir

 

 

Grand Canyon, Arizona

 

And see the peaceful trees extend
their myriad leaves in leisured dance
they bear the weight of sky and cloud
upon the fountain of their veins
- Kathleen Raine, Collected Poems

The Sahel

 

Nepal

  

  Planting trees early in spring,
we make a place for birds to sing in time to come.
How do we know? They are singing here now.
There is no other guarantee that singing will ever be.
- Wendell Berry

 

Thailand

 

Cambodia

 

Believe one who knows
You will find something greater in woods than books.
Trees and stones will teach you
that which you can never learn from masters
- Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)  

 

Morocco

 

Cambodia

 

 

Dust Storm, Rajasthan, India

 

A few minutes ago every tree was excited,
bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling,
tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm
like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent,
their songs never cease.
Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life,
every fiber thrilling like  harp strings, while incense is ever flowing
from the balsam bells and leaves.
No wonder the hills and groves were God’s first temples…
- John Muir

 

Italy 

 

Trees, proud standing people
stretching fingertips to the sky, reaching, praying
glorious attention, breathing light.
strength
shelter
timeless confidence
bending and firm
comforting
rooted chorus line
dancing with the moon, the wind, the clouds
framing bursts of stars
tender rugged celebration
absorbing and releasing life
each holy branch holding
the power of the Universe.
There.
-  Wallace Stevens  

  

 

Stronger by Weakness II

 Stronger by weakness, wiser men become
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view
That stand upon the threshold of the new.
- Edmund Waller

 

Lhasa, Tibet 

 

Every wrinkle is but a notch in the
quiet calendar of a well-spent life. 
-  Charles Dickens

 

 Croatia

 

 

France

 

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. 
-  Frank Lloyd Wright

 

Tibet

 

It takes a long time to become young.
-  Pablo Picasso

 

Myanmar/Burma

 

Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.
- Garson Kanin

 

 

Afghanistan

 

Old age has its pleasures, which, though different,
are not less than the pleasures of youth.
- W. Somerset Maugham

 

Paraguay

 

 

Preah Khan, Cambodia 

 

Warning

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin candles, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth…
- Jenny Joseph

 

Cuba

 

Those who love deeply never grow old;
they may die of old age, but they die young.
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher

 

Tibet

 

The answer to old age is to keep one’s mind busy
and to go on with one’s life as if it were interminable.
I always admired Chekhov for building a new house when he was
dying of tuberculosis.
- Leon Edel

 

 Shanghai, China

 

 When we’re young we have faith in what is seen,
but when we’re old we know that what is seen is traced in air and built on water.
– Maxwell Anderson

 

  Brazil

 

 

Vrindivan, India

 

 

The great secret that all old people share is that you really
haven’t changed in 70 or 80 years. 
Your body changes, but you don’t change at all.
- Doris Lessing

 

 

Afghan refugee, Pakistan

 

 

Porbandar, Gujarat, India

 

Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom.
-Plato

 

 Macedonia

 

 

Yemen

 

A man’s age is something impressive, it sums up his life: 
maturity reached slowly and against many obstacles, illnesses cured, griefs and
despairs overcome, and unconscious risks taken; maturity formed
through so many desires, hopes, regrets, forgotten things, loves. 
A man’s age represents a fine cargo of experiences and memories. 
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wartime Writings 1939-1944, translated from French by Norah Purcell 

 

Rajasthan, India

 

 

Pakistan

 

 

Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries
for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who
have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably
enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigour. 

With such people the grey head is but the impression of the
old fellow’s hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but
a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.
-  Charles Dickens

 

 

Shanghai, China 

 

Please visit our new website:  http://www.stevemccurry.com

The Firmest Friend

 

 The poor dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend.
- Lord Byron

 

Johannesburg, South Africa

 

Dogs are our link to paradise.
They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent.
To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be
back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring.
It was peace.
- Milan Kundera

 

 

Ireland

 

 

Kham, Eastern Tibet

 

 

Varanasi, India

 

The dog … is the god of frolic.
- Henry Ward Beecher

 

Angkor, Cambodia

 

 

New Delhi, India

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

With eye upraised his master’s look to scan,
The joy, the solace, and the aid of man:
The rich man’s guardian and the poor man’s friend,
The only creature faithful to the end.
- George Crabbe

 

 

Porbandar, India

 

The bond with a true dog is as lasting as the ties of this earth will ever be.
- Konrad Lorenz

 

Bagan, Burma

 

 

Rome, Italy

 

I read the Odyssey because it was the story of a man who
returned home after being absent for more than twenty years
and was recognized only by his dog.
- Guillermo C. Infante

 

Marseille, France

 

 

Vietnam

 

 

India

 

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have
known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
- James Thurber

 

 

 Texas, USA

 

Histories are more full of the examples
of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.
- Alexander Pope

 

India

 

 

Bhutan

 

 

Jaipur, India

 

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers,
is contained in the dog.
Franz Kafka, Investigations of the Dog

 

Near Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka 

 

 

 Rome, Italy

 
 

California, USA

 

The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in
this selfish world, the one that never deserts him,
the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog.
- George Graham

 

 Paraguay

 

If you think you’re a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else’s dog around.
-  Cowboy Wisdom

 

 

Gruffy, our family dog, Newtown Square, Pennsylvania

 

We invite you to visit our new website:  http://www.stevemccurry.com

Passion of Italy

              Rome, Italy

 

My exhibition in Rome at the Museum of Contemporary Art opened December 3, 2011, and will run through April 29, 2012.   
As part of the exhibition,  I was commissioned to photograph locations all over Italy. 

Here are a few of those pictures:

 

Venice, Italy

 

 There is no more magnificent absurdity than Venice. To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself,
but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius.
- Alexander Herzen

 

Rome, Italy

 

 

Rome, Italy

 

Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
- Denis Diderot

 

Sicily, Italy

 

 

Vatican City, Rome, Italy

 

 

When you do things from your soul,
you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
― Rumi

 

 

Sicily, Italy

 

 

 Rome, Italy

 

 

Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
-  Georg Wilhelm

 

 

Sicily, Italy

 

Sicily, Italy

 

 

 Rome, Italy

 

 

Whether you say Gioia di Vivere in Italian, or Joie de Vivre in French, or other expressions which
attempt to capture a passion for life,   you know the difficulty
of expressing the intangible in words.  I hope these pictures reflect the vibrant joy of life in Italy.

 

Rome, Italy

 

 

Rome, Italy

 

To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.
― Mark Twain

 

 

Rome, Italy

 

My mind to me a kingdom is,
Such present joys therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss.
-  Sir Edward Dyer

 

Rome, Italy

 

 

Rome, Italy

 

 

Rome, Italy

 

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
- John Keats

 

 

Venice, Italy

 

Nothing in the world that you ever heard of Venice, is equal to the
magnificent and stupendous reality.
- Charles Dickens

 

 

Selected Media Coverage

http://www.vogue.it/en/people-are-talking-about/art-photo-design/2011/12/steve-mccurry

http://www.video.mediaset.it/video/tg5/tg5_la_lettura/265739/steve-mccurry.html

 

We invite you to take a look at our new website: 

http://www.stevemccurry.com

The Colors of Italy

My exhibition in Rome at the Museum of Contemporary Art opened December 3, 2011 and will run through April 29, 2012.   
As part of the exhibition planning I spent several months photographing locations all over Italy. 
Here are a few of those pictures.

 

Venice, Italy

 

 

A man who has not been to Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.

 -  Samuel Johnson

 

 

 

Venice, Italy

 

 

 

 

Venice, Italy

 

You may have the universe if I may have Italy.
-  Giuseppe Verdi 

 

 

Rome, Italy

 

Open my heart and you will see,
Graved inside of it, “Italy.”
-  Robert Browning 

 

Sicily, Italy

 

 

Gubbio, Italy

 

For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery—
back, back down the old ways of time. Strange and wonderful chords awake in us, and vibrate again
after many hundreds of years of complete forgetfulness.
- D.H.Lawrence

 
 

Venice, Italy

 

Report of fashions in proud Italy,
Whose manners still our tardy-apish nation
Limps after in base imitation.
-  William Shakespeare

 

Rome, Italy

 

 

Perugia, Italy

 

 
 

Venice, Italy 

 

Camino, Italy

 

In Italy
by
Derek Walcott
Published in the New Yorker Magazine

Roads shouldered by enclosing walls with narrow
cobbled tracks for streets, those hill towns with their
stamp-sized squares and a sea pinned by the arrow
of a quivering horizon, with names that never wither
for centuries and shadows that are the dial of time. Light
older than wine and a cloud like a tablecloth
spread for lunch under the leaves …
April 21, 2008

 

 

Camino, Italy

 

 

Sicily, Italy

 

 MACRO Testaccio Pelanda
Piazza Orazio Giustiniani 4
ROME

December 3, 2011 – April 29, 2012

EXHIBITION WEBSITE: 
http://www.stevemccurryroma.it/allestimento.php?lang=eng 

 

Venice, Italy

 

If there is a gratification which I envy any people in this world it is to your country [Italy] its music.
This is the favorite passion of my soul, and fortune has cast my lot in a country where it is in a state of deplorable barbarism .
- Thomas Jefferson

 

Spoleto, Perugia

 

Italy is a dream that keeps returning
for the rest of your life.
- Anna Akhmatova

 

 

We invite you to look at our new website:  http://www.stevemccurry.com

 

Some Media coverage of the Rome Exhibition:

http://www.vogue.it/en/people-are-talking-about/art-photo-design/2011/12/steve-mccurry

http://www.video.mediaset.it/video/tg5/tg5_la_lettura/265739/steve-mccurry.html

Afghanistan: A Look Back

Early Days | The Soviet Invasion

1979, 1980

Nuristan, Afghanistan

 

I slipped into Afghanistan across the border with Pakistan in 1979.  I went with a couple of guides who did not speak English.
I certainly didn’t speak Dari or Pashto so our only form of communication was improvised sign language.
I was woefully unprepared. Among my belongings were a plastic cup, a Swiss Army knife, two camera bodies, four lenses,
a bag of film and a few bags of airline peanuts.

 

A photograph I made of a helicopter that had been sabotaged by the Mujahadeen. 
This was near an army garrison which had defected en masse. New York Times, December 27, 1979

 

Two government collaborators executed by Mujahadeen near Jalalabad

 

 My naiveté was breathtaking, yet my Afghan guides protected me and treated me as their guest.
It was my first experience with the legendary Afghan hospitality.

 

  Fathers and sons fought side by side

 

Evening Prayers 

 

 Planting land mines in Logar Province to thwart the government troops’ advance

 

 Young boy joins guerilla movement in Nuristan

 

 Praying along the Kunar River

 

I went back when the Russians invaded.
I traveled with many different mujahadeen and militia groups.
We mainly traveled at night to avoid being spotted by the Soviet helicopters.
Most of the time we walked, but a few times we were able to borrow horses.

 

 Mujahadeen mourn loss of their brother-in-arms

 

I was always astonished at the continual pipeline of weapons and supplies going into Afghanistan from Pakistan around the clock.
Rockets, mortar rounds, ammunition, were carried in by camels, donkeys, and fighters.
It was only later that we found out the staggering amount of money supplied by the U.S. to make it happen.

 

When I went back over the border into Pakistan, I had blisters, saddle sores, and filthy clothing into which I had sewn rolls of film,
which were among the first images of the conflict.

 

 Fighters carry a disassembled Russian anti-aircraft gun to move it to a
position overlooking the valley

 

 

 

 

 

 

   I visited a government garrison at Asmar District, Kunar Province,  where three hundred soldiers defected to the Mujahadeen.
 New York Times, December 29, 1979

 

Christian Science Monitor, January, 1980

 

 

 

TIME Magazine, April, 1980
I took these pictures in Nangahar Province.
My coverage over several trips for TIME, was the basis for
winning the Robert Capa Gold Medal award.

 

 Strategy session in Kunar Province

 

Stern Magazine, 1980
Mujahadeen using goat skins to cross rivers

 

International Herald Tribune, 1980

 

Commanders meet with tribal elders in Nangahar Province

 

Paris Match, 1980.
I made this photograph of government soldiers in Kunar Province.

 

 Men used weapons from swords and axes to ancient guns and rocket propelled grenades

 

Over the years, I went back more than dozens of times on assignment for National Geographic, Time Magazine, ABC News,
and other news outlets.  I have spent time in Afghanistan during invasions, retreats, truces, and relative peace.
Almost every time I returned, the power centers had shifted. In a great game of musical chairs, elders, warlords, criminals, and
mullahs’ power grows and diminishes as predictably as the phases of the moon.

 

 

 

 

 

 Many families left their destroyed villages to live with relatives
in other regions of the country

 

Nari District, Kunar Province

 

 

As much as outsiders have tried to “re-form” the country in their own
image, Afghanistan  has been able to absorb the blows of superpowers, and
remain essentially the same.

 

 

The interesting thing  is that the people trying to change it,  change more than the country
does even after Herculean efforts of  governments, NGO’s, and coalitions.

 

 

 

 This village was destroyed by government forces in the Spring of 1979 because they had
given refuge to Mujahadeen.

 

The viciousness of the Soviet attacks forced millions to flee their homes for Pakistan and Iran, and
contributed to what the Afghanistan scholar, Louis Dupree, called “Migratory Genocide.”
By 1986, five million Afghans had left their country.

 

 

 

Forty-six percent of all casualties were caused by bombings from airplanes or helicopters.

 

 

 

We invite you to see this blog on our new website:  http://www.stevemccurry.com

 

More Fun and Games

 

Wodaabe Tribe, Niger

 

Laughter is by definition healthy.
- Doris Lessing,  Nobel Laureate in Literature

 

 

La Fortuna, Honduras

 

 

Shanghai Circus, Shanghai, China

 

 

Moscow, Russia

 
 

Perugia, Italy

 

If music be the food of love, play on.
- William Shakespeare

 

 

Havana, Cuba

 

 

India

 

 

Rajasthan, India

 

 

Lucknow, India

 

No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called games.
- W. H. Auden

 

 

Bekaa Valley, Lebanon

 

 

 Mersin, Turkey

 

Could we look into the head of a Chess player,
we should see there a whole world of feelings,
images, ideas, emotion and passion.
- Alfred Binet

 

Jodhpur, India

 
 

 Peru

 

 

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

 

 

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

 

Some people believe football is a matter of
 life and death.
I’m very disappointed with that attitude.
I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.
- Bill Shankly, English soccer manager.

 

 

Maningrida, Australia

 

 

Tibet

 

 

 Young Shepherd during Holi, Rajasthan, India

 

We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.
- Immanual Kant

 

Istanbul, Turkey

 

Until one has loved an animal,
a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.
- Anatole France

 

 Mumbai/Bombay, India

 

 

 

Buzkashi, Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

Yangon, Myanmar/Burma

 

They say golf is like life, but don’t believe them.
Golf is more complicated than that.
- Gardner Dickinson

 

Bangladesh 

 

 
 Yemen

 

You must invent your own games and
teach us old ones how to play.
- Nikki Giovanni

 

 

Burma/Myanmar

 

 

Burma/Myanmar

 

 

Street Performers, Mumbai, India

 

 

Varanasi, India

Fun and Games

 

Tibetan Refugee Settlement, Bylakuppe, India

  Tibet

If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed

himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become
unstable without knowing it.
- Herodotus

 Lhasa, Tibet

The true object of all human life is play.
Earth is a task garden.
Heaven is a playground.
G . K. Chesterton

 Gubbio, Italy

Burma/Myanmar

You can discover more about a person in an
hour of play than in a year of conversation.
- Plato

Tokyo, Japan

 Spoleto, Italy

Mumbai, India

 Rajasthan, India

Play is a uniquely adaptive act,
not subordinate to some other adaptive
act, but with a special function of its own
in human experience.
- Johan Huizinga

Pul i Khumri, Afghanistan

 Wrestling Match, Kahan, Afghanistan

Los Angeles, California

Games lubricate the body and the mind.
-Benjamin Franklin

Nova Scotia, Canada

Play is the exultation of the possible.
- Martin Buber

Kabul, Afghanistan

 Bangladesh

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the
seriousness of a child at play.
- Heraclitus

Mumbai, India

 China

It is requisite for the relaxation of the mind that we make use,
from time to time, of playful deeds and jokes.
- Thomas Aquinas

 Bamiyan, Afghanistan

Myanmar/Burma

Rajasthan, India

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