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srinagar, 30.05.2009
the boy died on tuesday due to his injuries from last friday. i was on the way to kupwara, the last "town" before the border to pakistan when i got the news. i rushed back to shoot the funeral, but at the time i arrived at the martyr's graveyard the body was already buried and only a crowd of azadi-shouting kashmiris was left. no reason to shoot that again, i think i already have thousands of pictures of shouting and screaming boys and men. it's what you see here almost everyday and though it's still fun to shoot is from time to time it's getting more and more boring.
yesterday i spent some time with the mourning family and followed the procession to the graveyard, part of a muslim religious ritual which always takes place on the 4th day after the funeral...again and again, so much suffering, so much screaming, so many tears...
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Srinagar, 23rd May
Yesterday was tough...
what started as a quite normal friday in kashmir ended up in a mess, with one guy propably dead.
after the friday prayers the stonepelting stared as usual but i wasn't in the mood to shoot that shit again, so i wen't for a walk around the city. the sound of exploding grenades drove me back to the protestsite where the kanjang was in full swing, with lots of angry boys shouting "azadi"(freedom) slogans and throwing stones at the security forces. they fired back with shockgrenades and teargas and so it went on and on until one of the police-guys shot a teargas-canister stright at one of the guys - directly in his eye.
at that time i stood only ten meters away from that guy, i could even see the canister - and what it did to the boy....i just can't forget the scene:
all the blood, how his body collapsed, the canister still in his eye.
i felt paralyzed for a eternity, although it might have not been longer that a second, then everything happened very quickly....the other boys got the body, all shouting "allah akbar", running to the mainstreet, getting into the back of a truck, blood and tears everywhere, hospital, next hospital, the family arrives, breakdowns, trying to photograph what's happening....
since leaving the protestsite it's no longer about thinking: at this point it's just a mere reflex to press the shutter and when i finally rode back home i couldn't have said if i got anything...
i always feel numb when i come back from this kind of situations, unable to realize all the things that happened so quickly. and also unable to answer the question why i'm doing this...if it makes any difference, if photography or my photographs are able to stop all this...or at least to raise awareness ? kashmir is not even a war, it's 'only' a conflict..
but when only conflic's can cause so much pain, how must it be in a war, where this happens to thousands of people ? thousand times this suffering and pain, all the grieve and screams and tears: i'm just unable to comprehend that...
i atually wanted to write about some other things, about the time in a centre for mentally and physically challenged children in the north of the valley, about how much i enjoy kashmir when sitting alone on a riverbank somewhere in the mountains bordering pakistan,
about the relativity of winning a photoprize and my life today when i would have been born in kashmir some 30 years ago...
but today it seems so pointless to write about all that...
the photos below are a first edit for my application for the w. eugene smith grant, so some pictures from my last trip are included as well. if you have any suggestions, just let me know.
despite all the things already mentioned,
all the best
andy
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srinagar, may 15th
the last couple of days were quite depressing, with no good shots at all and a constant feeling of being tired, despite enough sleep. just bought some nescafe, but that doesn't seem to work out either...
the following 25 frames are from the last four days, in which i made a short-trip near to the line of control to shoot the elections (or better the election-boycott) over there, some street in srinagar and finally a health-camp set up by an local ngo (koshish, which means effort in urdu) i used to work with already last year...they were makking some kind of basic health-care reserach - and treatment camp as the government simply isn't able to do that on it's own...
Srinagar, May 16th:
despite the standstill regarding the project everything is fine out here: my urdu is getting better each day and some fruits and i'm well off again, altough i missed the fridayprayers in the jamia masjid and with that propably the weekly rocks-and-teargas-session in downtown.
but i'm a bit tired of shooting this stuff every friday and i want to focus on other issues which might display other, mayybe more private aspects of the conflict. so i'll leave srinagar on monday, heading north (back)to kupwhara where a kashmiri ngo is working on conflict-and health related issues.
all the best from K
a*
so, here we go:
1: propably the most interesting picture of all: you can watch my beard grow with every new blog-entry ;-). next to me is muba, friend, guide, fixer and mum in one person. with the glasses he looks like a high-school teacher, but in his past we was actually working in some other kind of buisness.
anyway, behind us lies the line of control and with that, talibani-country pakistan...
2: that's kashmir. and although i'll never be a great landscape photographer, i assume you can guess how beautiful it is over here...
3. kupwhara, the end of the world or at least nearby. i came there to cover the mentioned election-boycott and this is what i've found...empty, deserted streets...goddamn boring !
4. try to make the best out of it...
5. one more try
6. the only people in kupwhara, seen on the day before the boycott.
7. the healthcamp, organised by koshish, a local ngo. i don't think i can use any of the pictures for my story, but at least i supplied them with some photographs from their work..
8 - 17 healthcamp
18. a streetscene in srinagar. the building in the backround got bombed and burned down during the peak of the militancy in the mid 1990's and is nowadays again used by local shopkeepers. i like the image as it tells something about the history here in kashmir...
19. a kashmiri men is reading an article in a local newspaper about the antielection protest which took place in sopore, some 60 km north of srinagar. i actually went throug that town when we went back from the LOC, but bad luck, i missed it...
20. a streetscene in downtown srinagar. it's shot with my backup-lens, a 24mm 2.8 manualfocus nikkor, which is propably older than me. but i like the oldschool look, especialy the flares...
21 - 23 some more street from srinagar. the traffic in the city sucks!!!!
24. an old kashmiri men is sitting in the ruins of a bombed building in srinagar, selling cigarettes and biscuits. nature is slowly crouching back over the ruins and with that covering the scars of the past.
25. ahhhh, i hate to look at this frame. it makes me nervous, my eyes can't find a place to rest, but to some extent that what's it's all about here in kashmir...the impossibility of finding freedom and peace.
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salaam aleikum. after some 6 months i'm finally back in kashmir and pretty busy with visiting friends and organizing some stuff for the next weeks. feels definetly good to be here again, although the ride up to here by train and sumo was one of the worst trips i've ever made...got some bad food in delhi and spent almost the whole night vomiting in the toilet of the train. anyone who ever travelled with an indian train know's that there are far more comfortable places to spent your nights in...well, no reason to complain, i'm finally back and it feels just right to be here again.
although this time it's different than half a year ago during the uprising: the athmosphere in the city has somehow changed, you can almost see it in the faces of the people which seem to be just more friendly and relaxed than some months ago...but yet the mood is changing with everyday i'm here.
it's the foremath of the elections and the seperatist leaders called for a election-boycott and a 50 hour strike, beginning this evening.
so again, the strange athmosphere, this kind of invisible tension in the air is coming back and i find it pretty difficult to catch it visually.
there is nothing particular going on, it's just this feeling in the air than something might and propably will happen in the next days, although no one knows what and to what extend.
kashmir is a weird place with a sometimes challenging duality of life or however you may call it. on my first friday i was roaming around in one of the hot spot areas where usually after the friday prayers some protest is going on. so it's possible to walk in one street and watch the normal life going on as people go shopping and the kids are playing cricket and just some streets further down the road there will be stonepelting and the well-known smell of teagas in the air...
but at least for that day i refused to shoot the protest again, i'm trying to work out a different approach this time. i had a interesting conversation with balazs gardi about the possibility of showing the conflict without the usual indrigents which i used in my story last year as well, as there are barbed wire and lots of crying and shouting people...
i don't wanna sound cynical, but guess there's nothing easier to shoot than protest as the only difficulty is to get yourself into the situation (and respectively out of it again), but the images literally just jump into your camera.
so this time i'll at least try to get some different pictures out of the situations, let's see if it works. keep checking out the blog to see me fail ;)
well, despite my little uncertainity about my own abilities to achieve my goals everything is fine ove here. i just visited some friends of mine, one of them has just become a mother of a little kashmiri, a handful of a human being, just 18 (and by the time you read this already 19) days old. This time I've attached some private images as well to give you a little idea of how a typical kashmiri home in Srinagar looks like. It"s a bit like in south Germany, although the people are sitting on the ground and eat with their fingers...The last images is me at dal lake, one of the most beautiful places on earth and one of the reasons why i fell in love with kashmir ;)
So, enogh for this time, i gonna go out and shoot a bit of rainy kashmir with my now sealed d700, with which i'm slowly becoming some kind of familiar.
enjoy life and i'll try to update the blog with some images from the strike / elections / protest as soon as i can.
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Hello guys. here are some pics from pahar ganj, the main backpacker area i'm currently staying at. it's unbearable hot, something around 44 degree with constant hot winds blowing through the samll alleys and the nowadays unpaved mainroad of main bazaar. you constantly have to drink about 6 liters of water a day to fight the dehydration and don't think i have to use a toilet ;)
despite the heat, everything's fine and the way it used to be here in pahar ganj. i spent most of the nights sleeping on the rooftop of a friends house which is propably the only way to escape the heat (at least if you can't afford a/c).
in a couple of hours i'm on my way to kashmir where i should arrive tomorrow afternoon...freinds told me the situation has calmed down since i left 6 months ago, but today my fixer told me about a strike because of the election-boycott by the main party in kashmir. so let's see how things develop in the cause of the next couple of days and week, in the foremath of the indian elections....
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some new pictures from my "imagine afghanistan" project...
today i went out with open eyes and mind and was promptly invited for some coffee and even a donut from the nice guy on the third frame.
it works, even in germany...
town hall of hannover
in a subway station
mr. merlin, who kindly invited me for coffee & donuts
in the outskirts of hannover
skyscraper in hannover-linden
running # 1
running # 2
shadow
animal farm...
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some streetpics...
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finally found the time and motivation to upload some old stuff i shot in the last weeks. i had a go at flashlight & fashion-photography and was pretty much lost for words by the girl behind the deer antler...
the panorama-shots are actually crops from a 35mm lens and the remaining pictures are just some random shots from berlin and hannover
berlin, on a golf course near the potsdammer platz.
Click here to see the making-of shot by milos
love deers
milos in berlin, near the dome
nice light in linden south
FASHION I
again
FASHION II
pan-shot II
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After working for three weeks at my old newspaper and absolutely no motivation to do anything photographic besides that, I'm finally back in Hannover and even found the time to take some frames of a friend of mine. It felt good to do some "free" shooting again: no composing of people, no regulations.
simply light & time...
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sorry guys, no news in the blog so far.
i'm currently working at my old newspaper, earning some money with photographing donations and abandoned animals in the sanctuary. pretty boring, but today is my final day at the office so there should be an update in the next couple of days..
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i started shooting analog with a nice little leica some weeks ago, so here are the first results. it was may first-time scanning as well, do don't mind all the dust and remaining scratches ;-). in the following weeks i'll try to upload some more analog stuff, but as scanning is the propably most boring job in the photo-workflow it might take some time 'til i can motivate myself to go to the scan-lab again...
the pictures below were all taken in hagen, my hometown, while waiting for the train back to hannover at the central station. a rare guest at this time of the year, the sun, went out and so i shot some frames.
all of them are taken with leica mp, 35mm summicron, trix400 and something like 1/1000s and f16...
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this frames are just a little attempt to photograph things as i would do it in places such as afghanistan, pakistan, kashmir and so on.
it's an ever-again frustrating experience of being "blind" in a photographic sense in his own place but having a visual overkill in the places mentioned above.
in the cause of the next months i'll try to photograph one of the propably most boring cities in germany in a interesting and hopefully "diferent" way...
well, here we go.....
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merlin
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srinagar kid
in the tube
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on the way back to hannover
milos
linda
hannover highway
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so here we go...
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