Grief, Grind, and Glory of Work

Last month the world heard the tragic news
that more than a thousand people working at a clothing factory in Bangladesh,
were killed when the factory they were working in collapsed.

Burma

The appetite for cheap clothing in the West is insatiable.
The people making the clothing  often pay the true cost of these items.
The scale of this factory in Burma is vast.
The sense that these workers are just part of an immense machine is
accentuated by the pink shirts they are obliged to wear.

Burma

Labor disgraces no man;
unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.  
- Ulysses S. Grant

Yemen

Whether it is men fishing,  nuns washing dishes, miners digging beneath the earth, or 
working in the heat of a steel mill, work is universal, yet intensely personal. Millions work in order to survive, and for them,
there is no debate about how to achieve a life/work balance.  

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

Shoe repair shop in India

Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.
- Horace

Burma

India

Your life is a journey, not a rest.
You are travelling to the promised land, from the cradle to the grave.
The Sunday at Home, December 7th 1854

Candy Factory, Kabul, Afghanistan

Mumbai, India

Gujarat, India

All happiness depends on courage and work.
- Honore de Balzac

Miners search for gems.  Hindu Kush, Afghanistan

The heights by great men reached and kept,
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

MKS Steelworks, Serbia

Japan

Working for long periods under extreme stressful work conditions can lead to
sudden death, a phenomenon the Japanese call karoshi. The word in China is guolaosi.

Landi Kotal, Pakistan

Bakery run by Afghan widows, Kabul, Afghanistan

Croatia

Many find their identity in the work they do. Some enjoy intense satisfaction in their work.
For others, the line between work and play is hard to find.

India

           Mumbai, India

Sugar cane farmer, Philippines

Everything yields to diligence.
- Thomas Jefferson

Drying coffee beans, Brazil

If a man is called a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or
Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.  He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of
heaven and Earth will pause to say, Here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.  
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Flower Seller, Dal Lake, Kashmir

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Food for Thought

  Food is our common ground, a universal experience.
- James Beard

 Pul-e-Kumri, Afghanistan

Food is a central activity of mankind and one of the
single most significant trademarks of a culture.

- Mark Kurlansky

Burma

What is food to one man may be fierce poison to others.
- Lucretius, Roman Poet and Philosopher

Calcutta, India

Tibet

The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water,
is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight…”
M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating

Bakery run by widows, Kabul, Afghanistan

All sorrows are less with bread.
- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

Mauritania

If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars  and all the heavens.
- Robert Browning

Croatia

Bread is the king of the table and all else is merely the
court that surrounds the king.
- Louis Bromfield

Afghanistan

Istanbul, Turkey

Food to a large extent is what holds a society together and
eating is closely linked to deep spiritual experiences.
- Peter Farb and George Armelagos
Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating

Rajasthan, India

Egg Vendor, Kabul, Afghanistan

Chef Wolfgang Puck,  Los Angeles, California, USA

Date Seller, Yemen

Honduras

The table is a place of communion for life’s large and small events.
Art Smith, Master Chef

Peru

Vietnam

Refugee Family, Sri Lanka

It’s the company, not the cooking, that makes a meal.
- Kirby Larson, Hattie Big Sky

Cambodia

Priyadarshini Park, Mumbai, India

If more of us valued food and cheer above hoarded gold, it would be a much merrier world.
- J.R.R. Tolkien

Monsoon Waters, Indonesia

Beirut, Lebanon

Burma

Mumbai, India

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
- E.M. Forster

The Lives We Live

The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.
- Flora Whittemore

Maimana, Afghanistan

Since the beginning of time, doors have
symbolized both great opportunities and thwarted dreams.

Varanasi, India

Morocco

The open door is a metaphor for new life, a passage
from one stage of life to another, and metamorphosis.
Closed doors represent rejection and exclusion.

Kashmir

The Door
Too little has been said
Of the door,
its one face turned to the night’s
Downpour
and its other
To the shift and glisten of firelight.

Bamiyan, Afghanistan

For doors are both frame and monument
To our spent time,
And too little
Has been said of our
coming through and leaving by them.
- Charles Tomlinson

India

Cambodia

Tibet

A door just opened on a street–
I, lost, was passing by–
An instant’s width of warmth disclosed
And wealth, and company.

The door as sudden shut, and I,
I, lost, was passing by,–
Lost doubly, but by contrast most,
Enlightening misery.
- Emily Dickinson

Kabul, Afghanistan

Mingun Pagoda, near Mandalay, Burma/Myanmar

West Kabul, Afghanistan

India

Los Angeles, United States

The door swings open:
O god of hinges,
god of long voyages,
you have kept faith.
It’s dark in there.
You confine yourself to the darkness
You step in.
The door swings closed.
- Margaret Atwood

Kabul, Afghanistan

Bamiyan, Afghanistan

Bombay/Mumbai, India

Kabul, Afghanistan

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Monastery at Rolous, Cambodia

Macedonia

The Door

Go and open the door.
Maybe outside there’s
a tree, or a wood,
a garden, or a magic city.

Go and open the door.
Maybe a dog’s rummaging.
Maybe you’ll see a face,
or an eye, or the picture of a picture.

Go and open the door.
If there’s a fog
it will clear.

Go and open the door.
Even if there’s only
the darkness ticking,
even if there’s only
the hollow wind,
even if nothing is there,
go and open the door.

At least there’ll be a draught.
- Miroslav Holub
translated from the Czech by Ian Milner

Yemen

Vietnam

The closing of a door can bring blessed privacy and
comfort – the opening, terror.
Conversely, the closing of a door can be a sad and final thing -
the opening a wonderfully joyous moment.
- Andy Rooney

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

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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Fusion: The Synergy of Images and Words

Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, Rangoon, Myanmar/Burma

 Everywhere I go in the world, I see young and old,
rich and poor, reading books.
Whether readers are engaged in the sacred or the secular,
they are, for a time, transported to  another world.

Myanmar/Burma

Ever since Gutenberg invented the printing press which enabled
everyone access to books, artists have tried to portray the relationship of readers and books.

Myanmar/Burma

Garrett Stewart’s book, The Look of Reading:
Book, Painting, Text, explores the relationship of
reading and art.He points out that a wide array of artists from Rembrandt to  Picasso and Cassatt
and dozens more,over the past 500 years
have painted people reading and the “look of reading” on the subjects’ faces.

Shanghai, China

Rome, Italy

Spanish Steps, Rome, Italy

Chiang Mai, Thailand

  We are familiar with words describing images, but not so
familiar with images describing words and the
impact reading has on our lives.

Istanbul, Turkey

Reading a good book is a universal activity,
and people read while they do just about everything else.

Afghan soldier takes cover from bombardment at Kandahar Airport

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus
formerly Victoria Terminus, Mumbai/Bombay, India

Ujjian, India

We read to know we are not alone.
- C.S. Lewis

Havana, Cuba

Lourdes, France

Washington Square Park, New York

Venice, Italy

Rome, Italy

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
– Jorge Luis Borges

Istanbul, Turkey

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
- Emily Dickinson

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 –Extended to 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

On and Off the Wall

Street Art | Graffiti, Murals, Posters, and Signs

 

Inside a bell at a pilgrimage site, Mingun, Myanmar/Burma

 

Graffiti has existed since ancient Greece and Rome.  It expresses political and cultural views, and many consider it an art form.

 

 

Myanmar/Burma

 

 

Havana, Cuba

 

When there are cultural and political shifts, it is sometimes possible to see the earliest indications  by literally looking at the “writing on the wall.”

 

 

Havana, Cuba

 

 

Berlin, Germany

 

 Posters are found in public places all over the world. They are  designed to attract the attention of passers-by and entice them to purchase a particular product or service, make them aware of a political viewpoint, or attend a specific event. If suddenly it were decreed that they all must disappear, it would seem that all color had disappeared from the urban landscape, and the cities would appear a mournful gray.
- Max Gallo

 

 

Poster Studio, Mumbai/Bombay, India

 

 

Venice, Italy 

 

 

Anand, Gujarat, India

 

 

Dentist’s Clinic, Ujjain, India 

 

 

New York, NY

 

 Throughout the world there have been murals on walls as long as there have been people to scratch them, paint them, etch them, carve them and make them.

 

New York, NY 

 

 

Street art on the pavement at Seventh Avenue & Bleecker Street, New York
 

 

From the prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux, France, to the ceremonial and celebratory murals of ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome,
India, and Mesopotamia, the history of murals is long,  rich and varied.
  

 

Los Angeles, California

 

  Ancient murals often depicted activities in which the people of the time engaged, from religious ceremonies to
scenes of hunting and gathering for sustenance.
- Kaizaad Kotwal

 

Mujahid, Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

Kunduz, Afghanistan

 

 

Young men admiring Movie Poster, Pul-i-Khumri, Afghanistan 

 

 

Poster Vendor, Kabul, Afghanistan 

 

 Posters are mirrors because they reflect and sometimes distort the culture and the customs of the time. 
- Max Gallo

 

 

Metro Station, Paris, France

Nice piece in PhotoShelter blog:
http://blog.photoshelter.com/2011/07/steve-mccurry-the-iconic-photographs-unboxing.html

 

 

Children at Work

The Sahel, Africa

 

In developing countries one in six children from 5 to 14 years old is involved in child labor.

 

 

 

Ship-breaking yard, Mumbai, India

 

 

Lhasa, Tibet

 

 

In the least developed countries, 30 percent of all children are engaged in child labor.

 

 

Marpha, Nepal

 

 

Worldwide, 126 million children work in hazardous conditions, often enduring beatings, humiliation and sexual violence by their employers.

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

The highest proportion of child laborers is in sub-Saharan Africa, where 26 percent of children (49 million) are involved in work.

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

Kandahar, Afghanistan

 

 

An estimated 1.2 million children — both boys and girls — are trafficked each year into exploitative work in agriculture, mining, factories, armed conflict or commercial sex work.

 

 

Mandalay, Myanmar/ Burma

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

Bamiyan, Afghanistan 

 

 

“Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together,  and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.” -  Grace Abbott

 

 

 

Pul i Khumri, Afghanistan

 

 

 Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

Pul i Khumri, Afghanistan

 

 ImagineAsia’s Storybook Project for Afghan Children

The mission of ImagineAsia, a 501c3 non-profit organization, is to work in partnership with local community leaders and regional NGO’s to help students in Afghan communities receive fundamental educational materials and resources. 

IA  has started to translate Aesop’s fables into Dari for the children of Afghanistan who have never had a book of their own.  Translated and illustrated by volunteers, these stories will reach families in remote areas of the country.

For thousands of years the fables have revealed universal truths through simple allegories.  The stories often use animals to  teach lessons that are easily understood by people of all ages.

Here are some sample pages:

The Lion and the Mouse –  illustrated by Jason Melcher

 

 The Boy Who Cried Wolf - illustrated by Kate Raines

 

Pitcher and the Crow -  illustrated by Lois Andersen

 

 

An Afghan Folktale – The Silver on the Hearth – illustrated by Kate Harrold

 

 

Tortoise and Hare –  illustrated by Kate Harrold

 

 

The Donkey and its Purchaser – illustrated by Kate Harrold

 

 

The Sun and the Wind – illustrated by Annie Zimmerman

 

 

 The Fox and the Goat – illustrated by Jason Melcher

 

 http://www.imagine-asia.org/

 

Sources: http://www.unicef.org, http://www.ilo.org, www.crin.org

Open and Closed

 

 

Vietnam

 

Since the beginning of time, doors have symbolized both great opportunities and thwarted dreams.  The open door is a metaphor for new life, a passage from one stage of life to another, and metamorphosis.  Closed doors represent rejection and exclusion. 

 

 

Kashmir

 

 

The Door
Too little
has been said
Of the door, its one
Face turned to the night’s
Downpour and its other
To the shift and glisten of firelight.

 

 

 Bamiyan, Afghanistan 

 

 

For doors
Are both frame and monument
To our spent time,
And too little
Has been said
Of our coming through and leaving by them.
- Charles Tomlinson

 

 

 India

 

 Cambodia

 

 

Tibet

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

Mingun Pagoda, near Mandalay, Burma/Myanmar

 

 

Porbandar, India

 

 

 West Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

India

 

 

Los Angeles, United States

 

 

 The door swings open:

O god of hinges,

god of long voyages,

you have kept faith.

It’s dark in there.

You confide yourself to the darkness

You step in.

The door swings closed.
- Margaret Atwood

 

 

 Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

 Bamiyan, Afghanistan

 

A door just opened on a street–
I, lost, was passing by–
An instant’s width of warmth disclosed
And wealth, and company.

The door as sudden shut, and I,
I, lost, was passing by,–
Lost doubly, but by contrast most,
Enlightening misery.
- Emily Dickinson

 

 

Bombay/Mumbai, India

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 Dhaka, Bangladesh

 

The closing of a door can bring blessed privacy and comfort – the opening terror.

Conversely, the closing of a door can be a sad and final thing.
 The opening a wonderfully joyous moment.

- A. Rooney

 

 

 

 Monastery at Rolous, Cambodia

 

 

 

 

Macedonia

Unseen, Unpublished Portraits

 

  Chad

 

 

“A true portrait should today and a hundred years from today, be the testimony of how this person
looked and what kind of human being he or she was.”
– Philippe Halsman

 

 

 

 

Tibet

 

 

As human beings we are fascinated with each other and how we look. Diane Arbus talked about the gap between intention and effect as revealed in portraiture. People put on make-up and adorn themselves because they want to create an effect and give a certain impression, but often other people look at them and say it’s tragic or comical or curious or funny or odd.  Portraiture can be that kind of sharp critique.

 

 

 

Marrakech, Morocco

 

 

Tibet

 

 

Most of my portraits are not formal situations; they are found situations.

 

 

 

Tibet

 

We go to another culture to observe how other people live. Sometimes you look at somebody and they have a strong presence, a look, a certain kind of attribute that comes out in the face.

 

 

 

Cambodia

 

 

 

 

India

 

 

 

 

Burma/Myanmar

 

 

A good portrait is one that says something about the person.  We usually see parts of ourselves in others, so the good portrait should also say something about the human condition.

 

 

 

Kunduz, Afghanistan

 

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

 

Mumbai, India