The Life of Things

Vietnam

While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
- William Wordsworth,
Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

Burma

 

Italy

 

Burma

 

Italy

 

India

Portraits often seem pregnant with speech, or as if their subjects have just finished saying something,

or will soon speak the thoughts that inform their faces, the thoughts we’re invited to read.
Landscapes are full of presences, visible or unseen; soon nymphs or a stag or a
band of hikers will make themselves heard.

Nepal

But no word will ever be spoken here, among the flowers and snails,
the solid and dependable apples,
this heap of rumpled books,
this pewter plate on which a few opened oysters lie, giving up their silver.

India

These are resolutely still, immutable, poised for a forward movement that will never occur.

The brink upon which still life rests is the brink of time, the edge of something about to happen.
Everything that we know crosses this lip, over and over,
like water over the edge of a fall, as what might happen does,
as any of the endless variations of what might come true does so,
and things fall into being,
tumble through the progression of existing in time.

Burma

But the still life resides in absolute silence.
― Mark Doty, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy

Cambodia

 

Laos

 

Italy

 

Cuba

 

Burma

 

Burma

 

India

Italy

 

Italy

Thailand

Still Life
Cool your heels on the rail of an observation car.
Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour.
Take in the prairie right and left, rolling land and new hay crops, swaths of new hay laid in the sun.
A gray village flecks by and the horses hitched in front of the post-office never blink an eye.
A barnyard and fifteen Holstein cows, dabs of white on a black wall map, never blink an eye.
A signalman in a tower, the outpost of Kansas City, keeps his place at a window with the
serenity of a bronze statue on a dark night when lovers pass whispering.
- Carl Sandburg

Kansas, United States

 

Burma

 

Cambodia

 

India

Still Life
Sublime, serene
Found arrangements
Formal compositions.
Which is which?

Right as Rain

During the year I shot the monsoon assignment, I learned to see it as a critically important event, 
and not the disaster it had first seemed to my Western eyes.
Farmers experience the monsoon as an almost religious experience
as they watch their fields come back to life after being parched for half the year.

Varanasi, India 

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s annual monsoon rains have arrived at the southern Kerala coast,
a top weather official said on Tuesday, brightening prospects of higher farm output by aiding
farmers to plant summer-sown crops such as rice, soybean and cotton on time.
- June 6, 2012

Goa, India

Rain is grace;
Rain is the sky descending to the earth …
– John Updike

India

For half the world’s people, good monsoons, those rain-bearing winds of
Asia and the Subcontinent,  mean life and prosperity.
Poor ones are marked by famine and death.

Bangladesh

The rains fall on one horn of the buffalo, and not on the other.
-Indian Proverb

Kabul, Afghanistan

Java, Indonesia

Nepal

Northern Territory, Australia

Tokyo, Japan

Tibet

It is no use to grumble and complain; It’s just as cheap and easy to rejoice.
When God sorts out the weather and sends rain – Why, rain’s my choice.
- James Whitcomb Riley

Sri Lanka

Indonesia

Cambodia

The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.
- Lucretius

Porbandar, India

India

Dalit women cleaning streets, Mumbai, India

Burma

Only He shakes the heavens and from its treasures takes out the winds.
He joins the waters and the clouds and produces the rain. He does all those things.
- Michael Servetus (1511-1553)
Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer

Cambodia

Monsoon History
Shirley Geok-lin Lim
The air is wet, soaks
into mattresses, and curls
In apparitions of smoke,
Like fat white slugs furled
Among the timber
Or silver fish tunnelling
The damp linen covers
Of schoolbooks, or walking
Quietly like centipedes,
The air walking everywhere
On its hundred feet
Is filled with the glare
Of tropical water.
Again we are taken over
By clouds and rolling darkness.
Small snails appear
Clashing their timid horns
Among the morning glory
Vines.

Bojonegoro, Java, Indonesia

Monsoon Festival, India

For months there is no rain, and then there is too much.
Half the world’s people survive at the whim of the monsoon.

Two men try to cross a monsoon swollen river after the bridge was swept away, Goa, India

Solitude and Silence

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition.
– Octavio Paz, Nobel Laureate

Mali

Language… has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone
And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.
– Paul Tillich

India

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private:
and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.
-C.S. Lewis, Weight of Glory

Kashmir

In this wired age of non-stop communication with
little or no time for reflection and contemplation,
many find it necessary to carve out time in order to have the opportunity to be
creative, innovative, and imaginative.

Tibet

 

Costa Rica

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

– Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Kashmir

The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude.
– Voltaire

Sri Lanka

Religious figures from Moses to Jesus, Mohammed
and the Buddha all found great value in solitude.

Iraq

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone;
if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom;
for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.
– Arthur Schopenhauer

Umbria, Italy

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.

- May Sarton

India

Canada

Silence is more musical than any song.
– Christina Rossetti

Maimana, Afghanistan

Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life.
Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it.
- Khaled Hosseini,  Amir in The Kite Runner

Bamiyan, Afghanistan

Work is not always required.
There is such a thing as sacred idleness.
– George MacDonald

Thailand

Mexico

Nepal

In Silence there is eloquence.
– Rumi

Unpublished, Unseen VI

Istanbul, Turkey

 Over the past thirty years, I have taken nearly a million pictures. 
Many of them have been published in my books, in magazines, and
seen in my exhibitions,but a majority have never been seen.
Here are a few of those unseen pictures.

Baluchistan, Pakistan

Sicily, Italy

Tibet

 

Yemen

Lhasa, Tibet

Afghanistan 

Gujarat, India

Mizoram, India

Japan

Havana, Cuba

Havana, Cuba

Bangkok, Thailand

Chang Mai, Thailand

Italy

Cape Town, South Africa

Kali Gandaki, Nepal

India

 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 – 24, 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

September 17 – October 15

Houston, TX

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

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

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.

 

 

 

 

Mother and Child

Woman and child at a Horse Festival in Tagong, Kham, Tibet

Artists have been depicting the special bond between mothers and their children for hundreds of years.

Nepal

Loikaw, Myanmar/Burma

Germany

Zagreb, Croatia

Kham, Tibet

Relationships can be difficult to describe, and sometimes an image tells the story better than words. Painters from the Renaissance to the Impressionists to Mary Cassat, Diego Rivero, Van Gogh, and Picasso each depict something special and unique about motherhood. One of the most powerful and unforgettable photos depicting a mother and her children in the history of photography, is Dorothea Lange’s photograph of a destitute mother and her children taken in 1936.

Dorothea Lange said in an interview about the picture, “She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me.”

Montenegro

Vietnam

Afghanistan

“Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime…”
-William Shakespeare, Sonnet 3

Ghazni, Afghanistan

Mumbai, India

Kamdesh, Afghanistan

Kabul, Afghanistan

A woman waits at the gate of presidential palace to inquire about her missing son who had been a soldier in the Afghan Army

“A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.”
- Agatha Christie

Children at Work

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

Nepal, 1983

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

Boy working in candy factory, Kabul, 2006

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

An eleven-year-old boy working in gold mine, Mindinao, Philippines, 1985

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.

Tibetan Girl, 2002

 

Children work in an opium field in Badakhshan, Afghanistan. 1982

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

Niger, 1995

Boy sells flowers in busy road, India 1993

Young Welder, Bombay, India, 1994

“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

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