The French news magazine L’Express have just published an assignment I made for them in February on Ogyen Trinley Dorje, His Holiness, the seventeenth reincarnation of The Karmapa Lama in Sarnath, northern India. The Karmapa is head of the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism and predates the Dalai Lama’s lineage. This particular incarnation is disputed however and another candidate, Trinley Thaye Dorje has also been proclaimed and enthroned in another part of India. There’s a reasonable discussion on the succession issues here.
In any case, the assignment gave me a three-fold opportunity.
Firstly, I had the pleasure of meeting the Karmapa, a shy and I thought rather melancholy figure – a bird in a gilded cage if ever there was one – whose keen interest in photography was restricted to photographing the outside world from his window. The child of nomads, he ‘escaped’ from his Chinese hosts first to Nepal and then to India from where he was supposed to conduct a european tour this summer only to be thwarted by the refusal of the Indian authorities to grant him an exit visa. Which has of course nothing to do with Chinese pressure.
Secondly, I had the chance to go back to one of my favourite cities, Varanasi – one of its many names – I think the most intriguing of all north Indian cities.
Thirdly, I had the pleasure to work with Marc Epstein, the charming Foreign Editor of L’Express with whom I managed to put the world to rights over long walks along the ghats of a city we both hadn’t visited for a couple of years. I managed to explain the relative intricacies of cricket to a Frenchman who was curious of all the sporting activity along the river and made him an honoury Tottenham Hotspur fan for his trouble. For this of course, I apologised in advance: an inevitable entrée to a world of pain and disappointment…
Some pictures…
India - Sarnath - Ogyen Trinley Dorje, His Holiness, The seventeenth reincarnation of The Karmapa Lama at the Vajra Vidya Institute for Buddhist studies
India - Sarnath - Ogyen Trinley Dorje, His Holiness, The seventeenth reincarnation of The Karmapa Lama at the Vajra Vidya Institute for Buddhist studies India - Sarnath - The hands of Ogyen Trinley Dorje, His Holiness, The seventeenth reincarnation of The Karmapa Lama at the Vajra Vidya Institute for Buddhist studies India - Sarnath - Ogyen Trinley Dorje, His Holiness, The seventeenth reincarnation of The Karmapa Lama at the Vajra Vidya Institute for Buddhist studies India - Sarnath - Ogyen Trinley Dorje, His Holiness, The seventeenth reincarnation of The Karmapa Lama at the Vajra Vidya Institute for Buddhist studies India - Sarnath - Buddhist prayer beads sit on top of a page of sutras at the Vajra Vidya Institute for Buddhist studiesIndia - Sarnath - Disciples listen to a lecture by Ogyen Trinley Dorje, His Holiness, The seventeenth reincarnation of The Karmapa Lama at the Vajra Vidya Institute for Buddhist studies
India - Sarnath - Detail of the feet of a disciple listening to a lecture by Ogyen Trinley Dorje, His Holiness, The seventeenth reincarnation of The Karmapa Lama at the Vajra Vidya Institute for Buddhist studiesIndia - Sarnath - Buddhist monks reading a newspaper at the Vajra Vidya Institute for Buddhist studiesIndia - Sarnath - Buddhist monks reading and chanting sutras at the Vajra Vidya Institute for Buddhist studiesIndia - Sarnath - A young monk rushes back to his place during a sutra chanting session at the Vajra Vidya Institute for Buddhist studies UK - Sarnath - Two Buddhist monks study a text at the Vajra Vidya Institute for Buddhist studiesIndia - Sarnath - Ogyen Trinley Dorje, His Holiness, The seventeenth reincarnation of The Karmapa Lama, Stuart Freedman (l) and Marc Epstein (r)
Tewfic El Sawy, aka The Travel Photographer Blog has once again very kindly featured my work on his site. This time, it’s the work on the idol makers that I wrote about here a month ago.
I was a little saddened to read this week that India’s oldest car maker, the Kolkota-based Hindustan Motors, said reduced demand and accumulated losses had wiped out over half its net worth.
Since the liberalisation of the Indian economy in the 1990’s India’s roads have been filled with gleaming new cars. I do sincerely hope that Hindustan’s most famous vehicle has some mileage in it yet.
The Ambassador is such a feature of the Indian landscape that it’s demise is almost unthinkable. I think it’s by far the most reliable and sturdy vehicle on the Indian roads and, by dint of its ubiquity, it can be repaired almost anywhere very quickly. Usually by a combination of hammers, tape and brute force.
The extraordinary Raghubir Singh who it is my great regret never to have met, used the car as a device in his wonderful, A Way into India.
Here’s a recent image of mine of an ‘Ambi’ parked on a quiet street in Tamil Nadu with a rather lovely garland hanging from the mirror
India - Tamil Nadu - A garland of flowers hang from the mirror of an Hindustan Ambassador car in the town of Swamimalai
I have written before about the increasing use of private security and the erosion of liberty in public space so I was interested in a piece in today’s Guardian, ironically, the result of a Freedom of Information request:
It seems increasingly clear that unelected, untrained and under qualified security guards from private companies (operating for profit) are deciding who has freedom to walk the streets and carry out perfectly legal activities … like taking photographs in a public space.
Interestingly, the article asserts that both the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) and John Yates, Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, have warned that police risk losing the support of the public through the inappropriate use of section 44.
Surely not.
I first photographed the burgeoning private security industry in the late 1990s for several magazines and over the years have continued to have assignments to do so.
UK - London - A private security 'operative' patrols South London council estateUK - London - A security guard at a gated community monitors a bank of closed circuit television screens.
As the Labour government loses power and its party leader, the front runner to take the reins is David Miliband. I made a large story about him for the Times Magazine a little over a year ago.
UK - London - David Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Member of Parliament for South Shields, Tyne and Wear at his home in LondonUK - London - David Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Member of Parliament for South Shields, Tyne and Wear at his home in LondonBelgium - Brussels - David Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Member of Parliament for South Shields, Tyne and Wear during a live broadcast with a TV channel in the European Parliament, Brussels, BelgiumUK - London - David Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Member of Parliament for South Shields, Tyne and Wear at a meeting at his official residence with the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Mr Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Hussain QureshiUkraine - Kiev - David Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Member of Parliament for South Shields, Tyne and Wear with his staff on Board the Queen's flight bound for Kiev, Ukraine for talks with the Ukranian governmentUK - Birmingham - David Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Member of Parliament for South Shields, Tyne and Wear at a meeting in Birmingham with the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Mr Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Hussain Qureshi and members of the British Pakistani communityBelgium - Brussels - David Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Member of Parliament for South Shields, Tyne and Wear during an informal meeting with the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair in his office in the European Parliament, Brussels, BelgiumBelgium - Brussels - David Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Member of Parliament for South Shields, Tyne and Wear during an informal meeting with the Serbian Foreign Minister, Vuk JeremichBelgium - Brussels - David Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Member of Parliament for South Shields, Tyne and Wear holds his head in his hands during a live broadcast with a TV channel in the European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium
So, as two further national newspapers swing their support away from Gordon Brown, all indications a week before the election point to a hung Parliament controlled by the Tories. My views on this are complicated: when all the parties represent the Market and the status quo there IS no choice, however my formative political years were formed under the Thatcher government and so I reserve a particular dread for the Bullingdon Club‘s entry into Number 10.
I haven’t photographed elections – or much British politics – for a long time. I do however remember a particularly depressing April dawn dropping rolls of film off at Der Spiegel’s office after photographing John Major celebrating victory in 1992.
Subsequent years of PR-dominated press conferences and stage-managed photo opportunities made me less interested and I turned my attention to the world outside the UK. I do occasionally get to photograph politicians however. Here’s one of the Man that would be King taken a couple of years ago on assignment for the Times Magazine.
UK - Oxfordshire - David Cameron, Conservative Party Leader and Conservative MP for Whitney in his constituency office
I leave my final thoughts to one of my favourite essayists, Emma Goldman, whose views on the subject echo my own:
“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal…”
So, I made it through the Ash cloud after all and spent six days on assignment in Israel. Lovely job in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem: travel and food. Nice. I hadn’t spent much time in Tel Aviv before and really enjoyed the experience. Jerusalem was another story however. I’d forgotten that this can be the rudest city on the planet and with some notable exceptions (pretty much all the taxi drivers – notably, Benny and Salim the unfailingly helpful staff at the Addar, Samir at Pasha’s and half a dozen lovely stallholders at Mahane Yehuda market – especially Itzack and his boys), I had to really dig in and grit my teeth. What is it about Jerusalem that makes people so rude and unfriendly? Maybe I caught it on a bad couple of days – I tried, I really did but it was a bit of a slog. I had just had a particularly unpleasant encounter and was packing up for the day when I was beckoned over by a friendly fishmonger. Moses insisted that I sit down and take his picture and that we should pose together…
Israel - Jerusalem - Me and the friendliest man in town
A real gentleman. Moses, you’ll probably never read this but you restored my faith in the city and it even made up for the hour and more grilling I had at the airport the next day (note to self: next time use the empty passport – not the one with the Saudi, Afghan, Lebanese and Pakistani stamps).
