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

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

Varanasi, India

Everybody Has a Story

Kabul, Afghanistan

Sidon, Lebanon

Six billion of us walking the planet, six billion smaller worlds
on the bigger one. 
Six billion stories, every one an epic, full of tragedy and triumph,
good and evil, despair and hope.
- Dean Koontz

Baalbek, Lebanon

People are hungry for stories. It’s part of our very being.
Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too.
It goes from one generation to another.
— Studs Terkel

Druze Elders, Lebanon

All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by.
-Harvey Cox

Rajasthan, India

 

Scientists who study the brain tell us that we are
hardwired for storytelling and
understanding the world through stories and metaphors.

Père Lachaise Cemetery, France

 

Shalimar Bagh, Kashmir

 

If history were taught in the form of stories,
it would never be forgotten
 - Rudyard Kipling

Maimana, Afghanistan

 …Without a story you have not got a nation, or culture, or civilization.
Without a story of your own, you haven’t got a life of your own.
—Laurens Van der Post

Poet Khalil Khoury, Iraq

People did not wait until there was writing before they told stories and sang songs.
— Albert Bates Lord

Golden Temple, Amritsar, India

Near Al Hudaydah, Yemen

 

Texas, USA

Their story, yours and mine — it’s what we all carry with us on this trip we take, and
we owe it to each other to respect our stories and learn from them.
— William Carlos Williams

Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, USA

Jimmy Swaggart, Louisiana

 

La Fortuna, Honduras

The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
— Muriel Rukeyser

Rajasthan, India

Flechtingen, Germany

Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes Interview, Beverly Hills Hotel, USA

We are lonesome animals.
We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome.
One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say and to feel
‘Yes, that is the way it is, or at least that is the way I feel it.’
You’re not as alone as you thought.
— John Steinbeck

Brazil

 

I will tell you something about stories, (he said)
They aren’t just entertainment.
Don’t be fooled.
They are all we have, you see,
All we have to fight off
illness and death
- Leslie Marmon Silko

Pristina, Kosovo

Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan

To be a person is to have a story to tell.
—Isak Dinesen

Vrindavan, India

Story behind the picture

The woman in the picture has been a widow for seventy years.
Her husband died when she was 14 years old.
Living in a community of widows since that time, she has made a living as one commissioned to pray for others.
After I made her picture, she invited me to join her for tea.
She spends her days in prayer for people who give her a few rupees.
She lives joyfully, and shows no sign of sorrow, self-pity, or resentment.

E X H I B I T I O N S

CHRIS BEETLES FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHS
3-5 Swallow Street
London W1B 4DE
September 7 –October 15, 2011

PETER FETTERMAN GALLERY
2525 Michigan Ave #A1
Santa Monica, CA 90404
September 10 – December 1, 2011

 

OPEN SHUTTER GALLERY
735 Main Avenue
Durango, CO
September 9 – December 14, 2011

  

LAURA RATHE FINE ART

Houston, TX

September 17 – October 15, 2011

 

MACRO
Museum of Contemporary Art
Rome, Italy
December 1, 2011 – April 29, 2012

 

Ways of Seeing

 

Windows, Mirrors, and Reflections

 

 

 

Tibet

 

 

I can’t play bridge. I don’t play tennis.
All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn’t seemed time for.
But what there is time for is looking out the window.
- Alice Munro

 

 

Kashmir

 

 

 Shwedagon Pagoda, Burma/Myanmar

 

 

Kashmir

 

 

“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.”   – John Berger

 

 

Burma/Myanmar

 

 

Hazara Boy, Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

Thailand

 

 

India

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

 Mirrors have been the subject of ancient myths, folktales, literature, and superstitions for centuries.
They are often used as a metaphor for insight into one’s self.   

 

 

Kunduz, Afghanistan

 

 

Beirut, Lebanon

 

 

Tibet

 

 

 Yangon, Burma/Myanmar

 

 

Mirror
 
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
- Sylvia Plath

 

 

Jalalabad,  Afghanistan

 

 

 

 Havana, Cuba

 

 

Pakistan

 

 

 Burma/Myanmar

 

 In Greek mythology, Narcissus, looking into a pool of water, did not understand that
he saw his own reflection, and fell in love with himself.

 

 

Agra, India

 

 

“I became startled by the extraordinary difference between something whose surface is completely invisible which only makes itself present by virtue of what it reflects, and a window, which doesn’t make itself apparent at all…” 
-  Jonathan Miller

 

 

 

 

India, Kumbh Mela

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gatherings, Protests, and Celebrations

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts …
- William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”

 

Young Monks at Tashi Lhunpr, Xigaze, Tibet

 

New York City, USA

 

Croatia

 

Via Condotti, Rome, Italy

 

Mumbai/Bombay, India

 

Druze elders, Lebanon

 

Debating Monks at Bylakuppe, Karnataka, India

 

One of Mumbai’s laughing clubs, India

 

Peshawar, Pakistan

 

Kashmir

 

Shia Mosque, Kabul, Afghanistan

 

Rajasthan, India

 

Monsoon Festival, Kathmandu, Nepal

 

 

Kumbh Mela Festival, India

It is wonderful, the power of a faith like that, that can make multitudes upon multitudes of the old and weak and the young and frail enter without hesitation or complaint upon such incredible journeys and endure the resultant miseries without repining.
- Mark Twain

Temporary pontoon bridges across the Ganges River help to facilitate movement of some of the thirty million Hindu devotees who will take part in the Kumbh Mela Festival,  Allahabad, India.

 

Thrissur Pooram, Kerala, India

Thrissur Pooram is the most extravagent and colorful festival in Kerala.  Attended by tens of thousands of devotees, the festivities include dozens of caparisoned elephants.  These Indian elephants are loved, revered, groomed, and given a prestigious place in the state’s culture.

Thrissur Pooram, Kerala, India

 

Ganesh Chaturthi festival, Chowpatty Beach, Mumbai, India

 

Yangon, Burma/Myanmar during the Thingyan Festival

 

Jokhang Palace,  Lhasa, Tibet

 

Niger

 

These young Wadabi men are taking part in the Garawal, an annual marriage ritual performed by the tribe. In this event, dramatic make-up is applied to the faces of the men, who dance and make exaggerated expressions in an attempt to attract new brides.

 

 

 

 

Children at Play

Tanks become toys in Kandahar, Afghanistan, 1994

No matter how dire the situation, how dangerous the environment, children need to play.

Children play on an anti-aircraft gun near Beirut, Lebanon, 1982

Whether it is splashing in puddles or climbing on abandoned tanks, their world of make believe is almost as important as food and shelter.

Boys playing football in flooded pastures, Bangladesh, 1983

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

Children play next to an abandoned freighter, Sitwe, Myanmar (Burma), 1995

Two children play a game by a road, India, 1993

Young Cambodian boys play in the ruins of Preah Khan near Angkor Wat, Cambodia, 1999

Young monks at play, Burma, 1994

Yemen, 1997

“Child’s play is the exultation of the possible.” – M. Buber

Children of War

Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone.

“It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower

AFGHN-10083, Afghanistan, 1992

Kabul, Afghanistan, 1993

Luzon, Philippines, 1986

Beirut, Lebanon, 1982

Kuwait City, 1991

A landmine victim, Pul i Khumri, north of Kabul, Afghanistan, 1992

Shepherd boy at Al Ahmadi, Kuwait, 1991

Kandahar, Afghanistan, 1985

Child with Dutch Soldier, Afghanistan, 2002

Tamil Tigers recruits during training, west of Batticola, Sri Lanka, 199

Kabul, Afghanistan, 1992