Becoming less

Not too long ago when my son was four, he asked:
“Papa, what do you want to be when you grow up”?

I had no immediate answer.
Perhaps I don’t know yet. Although, probably the only answer is: myself.

I certainly haven’t figured out life but begin to sense it’s less about where I will be, but how. Less about the Zeitgeist and bucket list of things to do. Rather the block of marble to be chipped away from down to the core. Becoming less.

Less trash, more truth. Less Angst, more courage. Less wanting more, more letting go.

The other side of ego.

Ordinary miracles

“The whole world
is a series of miracles
but we're so used to them
we call them
ordinary things.”

Hans Christian Andersen

The next story

This gentleman and his wife life on a wild plot of land - tucked in between a beautiful forest and a highway, on the outskirts of Bucharest.

10 minutes away from my home, if I ride my bike fast.

They may be one of the last shepherds in the expanding capital.

I am dreaming to portray them once I have a bit of free time on my hands.

Fingers crossed, I said to myself for years. And just never did it.

Survival guide

”One day
You will tell your story
of how you overcame
what you went through
and it will be someone else’s
survival guide.”

Brene Brown

Inadequate charm

“Deep down we all have a sense of our own inadequacy about coping with life.
It is something that all of us hide from the world
yet it feeds the soul and endows our personality with charm”.

Charlie Chaplin

Silently, we walk behind the church, where a mass grave holds the remains of the victims of the church and surrounding places. I start descending steep stairs, deeper into darkness. As if someone opened the gates to hell, offering a stark warning not to go one step further or be swallowed forever, I whisper to myself, strangely with no fear, no tears, no sound. Shell-shocked, I know in hindsight.

There they were. Undeniable. The remnants of an estimated 50.000 people. The sight of intentionally broken baby skulls, burned into my soul. An absurd pile of rotting bones, skin and nails hanging loosely off beautifully elegant fingers, pointing at where used to be somebody’s eye. Spiders having a feast. The smell hit me deep, never to leave my core again. I tread carefully, not to step onto one of the bones that has fallen into the corridor, perhaps in a desperate attempt to reunite with the rest of its skeleton that wrongly ended up on another pile. I follow my strange compulsion to see every single compartment filled with the consequence of human agony, the wasting of human life, talent, dreams. As if my heart must bear witness.

The next day, we walk on a beautiful plateau where another 50.000 were killed. Perhaps it’s so green and fertile as it drank so much blood. A hundred or so of the bodies lie on the tables of what used to be a primary school, mummified with a white thick paste. Closing my eyes, I still see that elderly lady with her plastic cross on her chest. I take a photograph with my little primitive film camera, walking away with some white dust on my shirt, as I must have touched one of the bodies.
Then another mass grave in another town, freshly dug up to place the remains elsewhere with more dignity, where another 50.000 or so were discarded. On we move to the “1930 prison” in Kigali to speak with some of the imprisoned men and women perpetrators – with either grand excuses or little remorse, at the time. We later speak with two women who were mass-raped (loosing count after 100 times), left with a child who had soon died, themselves waiting, HIV-positive. I could go on for much longer – eight days can be a damn long time.
Safe to say I came back with tough questions I still haven’t found answers to. Seeing a tragedy with nothing redemptive about it. My mind heavier, heart wounded, soul confused. Thrown into the depth of what man can do to man, feeling how brutal the world can be, with no happy end. Was I previously perhaps simply too sheltered? I come from the land of the holocaust and should have known better, no? At age fourteen, alongside everyone else in my school, I was horded into cinema to watch Schindler’s List to understand what shall never be repeated.

And yet, in Rwanda, the age-old divine paradox was thrown into my face as hard as a rock. The question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient God. Well, it holy fucking can’t be. The old Greek philosopher Epicurus and countless others scratched their heads over it. I know the free will argument but that isn’t enlightenment or convincing enough to me. So I remain angry with God, if he’s out there, here or in the great beyond, the other side of eternity.

There are moments when I feel I am arrogant thinking my exposure to the traces of the Rwandan genocide amount to suffering, relative to what the actual victims of the carnage went through. Am I a trauma imposter? But then exploring the inferno, having been a witness, my truth is that I was touched so deeply that there is no denying. I lost a part of my childlike innocence, came back scarred, traumatised, with a sadness enveloping me that I can’t truly describe. For 5 years, there wasn’t a day that I did not think of Rwanda. Trying to forget by burying myself in law books and pretending to those around me I was fine. Pushed into a new stage of my life. It may explain my tendency toward darkness, death, daydreaming, delusion.

And I still struggle to find meaning in the injustice, try to walk a path using this experience as fuel for doing what is hopefully valuable to the lives of others. Serving UNICEF’s mission ain’t no naïve coincidence. It’s partly therapy and coping. And probably more self-centred than I’d like to admit. I can’t undo what others have done – but perhaps this is my humble silly attempt to find a raison d’être for life and this our universally flawed human existence.

Treasure ruin medicine

Rumi, eternally deep and uplifting, wise and optimistic, wrote:

“Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure”.

“Through love all pain will turn into medicine”.

Difficult to comprehend, challenging to adopt as philosophy
when engulfed in loss and tragedy. Yet, ultimately true.

Surviving shrapnel

I wonder how my grandfather felt when it was time to leave.
Not knowing what awaited him. If he would come back alive.
When, and how he’d be a different man, working alongside hordes of men sent to kill.

In 1943, my mother’s father had just graduated from medical faculty, aged 26.
Without much practical experience to speak of, he was requested to the brutal German front lines of the Second World War in the Soviet Union.

Leaving his anatomy books behind, he was to take care of the wounded and dying soldiers of the disastrous operation Barbarossa.

Fate and military order commanded he become part of the chess move which arguably sealed Adolf Hitler’s ultimate fate to face defeat.

In my late teens, I often visited my grandparents alone and sat down with my grandpa to hear stories from when he was young - mostly to hear about the war.
I felt a strong need to understand what he saw and did. How he felt. Get a personal glimpse into a not-so-distant German era, his past, and thus also my family’s, mine.
I was unable to fathom how this calm, kind and loving retired chief surgeon and director of the biggest hospital in town had once been young; and pulled away into hell on earth.

We would sit at the dining table covered by an impeccable white sheet. He’d tell me one story after the next, immediately engraved into my memory, just as he lit one cigarette after the next, interrupted by an occasional sip of coffee from white porcelain with fine golden rims.
The large window of the living room gave way to a beautiful view of a green valley as if the garden continued all the way to the horizon.
A bit of German Gemütlichkeit, just mixed with my brain being filed with images of horror of the likes of Dante’s Inferno.

With patience, perhaps as unsure as myself why I kept coming back to the same subject time and again, he’d descend into his memories…

“I don’t know how many legs, hands and arms I amputated” he said, “hundreds, mostly without anaesthesia”.
When arriving in what is Russia today, he was far from being a trained doctor. Yet he learned quickly that one would have to summon six strong men to hold the ill-fated soldier down whose life depended on a successful amputation.
“Drowning them in alcohol, if available, you have to saw without hesitation. When they get unconscious, you gotta be quick to get through the bone before they wake up.
If you don’t make it, they go insane from the pain, and stay crazy”.

He’d describe how, as the war went on, new recruits shipped to the frontlines got younger and younger. It was for him to inspect them before their first fight, declaring them ‘fit for battle’.
“I never got used to seeing teenagers the day after, looking a decade older, some with grey hair having suddenly appeared, dark rings under their eyes. Traumatized forever, mind scarred, having killed for the first time, witnessing death.”

Sometime later, the Wehrmacht had lost the battle for Moscow, and the invasion cost the German army over 830,000 men. I read that an estimated two million Soviet prisoners of war died of starvation during Barbarossa alone.
Just one part of the estimated 35 to 60 million war victims overall, including the ever so efficient Holocaust.
I still can’t fathom how my grandparents’ and their parents’ generation was responsible for these unimaginable crimes.

My grandfather spoke of the ultimate German retreat – long days and hours of walking in chilling winter winds and deep snow. More than once, he assured me he’d have died if it was not for a brave horse carrying him through the frozen landscapes.

Groups of men were evading planes hunting for fleeing soldiers. Uniforms that had caused unspeakable bloodshed and suffering to Russian soil and souls – all in the quest for Lebensraum, more land, for Deutschland.

By that time, he must have seen more souls leave their wrecked bodies than anyone can count.

One night stood out though.

With some 70 comrades, wrapped in darkness, shelter was found in an abandoned house surrounded by trees, with everyone collapsing on the cold bare floor from utter exhaustion.

“When we heard the whistling sound of falling bombs early morning, everyone made themselves as small as possible, praying the house won’t be hit”.

And then it hit. Exploding right in the middle of it, of everyone.
My grandpa, with cuts and bruises, slowly stood up, looked around.
He saw scattered body parts, blood and brains on the walls.
Burned flesh and bones, strangely tangled limbs.

As he took in the horror, he started to shout out, looking for movement, a faint sound, walked through the macabre pile of those who had just been as desperate as him to make it home one minute ago. Yet there wasn’t.
No movement, no sound, only death. Nobody he could help anymore.

“For three days, I walked directionless, unable to eat and drink, fixed on a single question.

“Why me?, why me?, why me?”

The cold must have been terrible.
In winter, my grandfather always kept the house at some 26 °C and would tell anyone, simply and plainly, “I never want to feel cold again”.

Not just a bit of an odd thing but a necessary luxury, understandable given his past.

Sometime later, having continued westwards, he was shot in the jaw, which got terribly shattered. A comrade named Janosch carried him through, last minute, to a Baltic harbour, saving his life.

When it was time to cross the freezing Baltic Sea, to finally reach German soil, seven lazaret ships departed from the shore of what is today known as Latvia or Estonia.

My grandfather was on one of them, severely wounded, exhausted, scared.
Five of the ships were bombed by planes as they drove through the waves and sank.

My grandfather said to me, with his eyes seemingly darkening, “One of the things I can never ever forget are the voices, these cries for help of those fallen into the ice-cold water. Thousands, slowing sinking, praying, nearing their death – and being unable to help”.

Back in a destroyed land that was busy rebuilding, he too, did his best to rebuild.
To move on despite trauma and a certain survivor’s guilt.
To make the best of the miracle of having come back, against uncountable odds.

He lived on to have nine children, built a huge house, became a respected doctor working day and night to operate, deliver babies, save lives.
Finding meaning in building, in working, in healing others.

The children, the long workhours, 100 cigarettes a day… perhaps partly to keep him occupied, push the ghosts of the past away?

And there was one more thing. Too much alcohol, too regularly… a well-kept family secret which I learned about only in my late twenties.
Being alcohol-dependent to get by perhaps did not fit in with a legend of a distinguished doctor who had on the surface and in public moved on just fine.
“Invited to retire” at the age of 59 by the hospital he helped build up and loved, plagued by guilt and shame.

More remarkably though, I admire that he managed to sober up after several attempts, around the age of sixty-five.
How very brave and courageous taking down the shield that must have helped keep unbearable memories and demons at bay. Heroic, a personal triumph to me.

I have never been a drinker and for long have wondered why. It dawns on me that it might be a bit of a self-protective instinct, with my grandfather perhaps smiling from above, knowing it’s best not to get close to it.
There’re enough demons to battle, let’s not add another.

My Grandpa lived with three pieces of shrapnel in his skull, at times causing horrendous headache. He carried a bullet, lodged in his head, inexplicably stopped by the bone just before it could batter his temple.

Routinely plagued by severe insomnia and nightmares, every few months, he would wake up in the bathtub or corridor, bleeding from this head… having run and jumped face forward. Once more, he had sheltered from another bomb attack his wicked dreams had brought upon him. It never stopped, until he died peacefully at home surrounded by family at the age of 83, over twenty years ago.

When I went to Rwanda the same year he died, to come back deeply traumatized, I was about the same age as my granddad when he headed to the frontlines.

He hadn’t been a doctor yet just as I was not even half though my law studies – as if that prepared to also witness death and suffering, to walk around piles of dead bodies killed by man in the wake of conquering more land for their own.

Descending into the mass grave behind the Church of Nyamata, I studied as many bones as I could. Looking for movement, a faint sound. I walked through the macabre pile of those who had been desperate to make it home not that long ago. Yet there wasn’t.
No movement, no sound, only death. Nobody anyone could help anymore.
And for a very long time, I have been walking around fixed on a single question.
“Why?, why?, why?”

What I saw in Rwanda was not comparable in the slightest to what my grandpa faced and yet, I wonder now, why did I feel such a strong urge to go and bear witness?
Perhaps a coincidence but perhaps rather an unconscious attempt to feel, to comprehend, trying to decipher my grandfather’ pain and suffering? Coming from a country plagued by transgenerational, collective guilt, trying to repair, transform?

Today, I am convinced I received a lot of my grandparents’ trauma.
All four of whom carried more than anyone should in a lifetime, as did the generation before them, at the centre of the first World War. I inherited through blood, behaviour and family legends. 

My grandfather was injured by the war’s shrapnel. Forever tormented by dark memories, images, sounds and smell. Yet, to be fair, he was a complex character and not simply defined by trauma.
There was a lot more to him than his young years, the time in the war and survivor’s guilt; just as there was a lot more to him than his time as a retired grandfather.

He found an authentic way to live his life to the fullest.
With dignity, and some flaws. Finding meaning in building and healing, as best as he could.

I am a proud product of his building, healing, and legacy.  
And on my own path of trying to recognize and embrace my trauma,
so as to break the link and not pass on the weight to my own children.

To walk a path of meaning. With some flaws.
As best as I can.

Love after Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread, Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life..”

Derek Walcott
(foremost Caribbean poet of modern times,
Nobel Prize in Literature laureate).
Shared with me by Vincent F.

The image on the right is from my visual essay
taken at NY Metropolitan Museum of Art. See here.

Umbrella - mirror - pillow

Back in 2010, I had spent another weekend with wonderful Gakobwa.
Before returning to Burundi’s capital and my job as a human rights observer with the United Nations Peace Keeping Mission, I asked her if there was anything I could bring when I’d be back a few weeks later.

She didn’t hesitate.
“Yes, there are three things that I’ve never had in my life that I’d love you to bring”.
She continued: “An umbrella, a mirror and a pillow”.

Tears flushed to my eyes. Safe to say her wish was my command.

See her story here.

Unseen

You never know people’s invisible history. What they have gone through is often not revealed on their face, on their skin, in their eyes. Sounds shallow?

Take my friend, Alfred. We met in 2002 as interns at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. I was a young law student and he was about to graduate from law school in Canada. We went out, danced, joked, had innocent fun. Not long after, he got married, has two beautiful girls. Alfred is from northern Uganda.

It was at age 12 that he killed for the first time. After years of fighting in the war, his armed group was ambushed by forces loyal to the then president, Idi Amin, ending with Alfred’s capture. He spent some 7 years in detention, mostly crammed into a shipping container with dozens of other so-called rebels. He miraculously made it out, alive, all but a skeleton, barely able to walk a few steps. From there, he got to the Daadab refugee camp in Kenya, the largest in the world at the time. It was thanks to a UNICEF staff that he later went to Canada. He’d study criminology, then law… and return to the UN tribunal, first as an intern, and later to become an international war crimes prosecutor.

He now works as chief of child protection of a UN peace keeping operation - helping children used for, abused in war, as he was. I am proud to call Alfred my big brother.

Tears

There is a part of me that wants to capture some of the tears my children inevitably go through.

It’s a bit of a dilemma that one day may call child protection services into my house – and I’ll be doing my best explaining that I do it from a place of empathy. I swear!

Having grown up in the pre-digital era when film was a precious commodity – and the tears of the fifth of five children wouldn’t be seen anything documentary-worthy, I don’t have a single image of myself crying as a child.

Being a father now, it makes me wonder what my tears were about.

I feel our difficult moments truly shape who we are, often pull us to grow, lift us beyond what we were.

Or put differently, as Yousuf Karsh did, “Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.”

Perhaps I can compassionately bear witness and build another part of the visual legacy that will once show my kids how far they’ve come, as part of life’s exercise in courage?

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Mike Tyson - former world heavyweight champion

Princia

Princia, pictured in June 2010, 4 years old at the time, Jabe orphanage, Bujumbura, Burundi.

During my days spent with her and the other kids, she would stay close to me, her mesmerizing eyes following my every step. The loveliest of companions one could ever wish for.

Going back for another visit to Jabe in April 2017, I had to learn that she died a few months earlier after having been living with her larger family for some time.

With no follow-up system, things don't always go right.

RIP, beloved Princia.

Nomad gardener

Being a world citizen means that I am feeling comfortable everywhere, but perhaps not truly home anywhere?

I used to think the choice is being a nomad or a gardener.

But having children and working with UNICEF, on the move every few years, I feel I can help them grow on the move… and live as a nomad gardener.

“We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us.”
— Ralph Hattersley

2 a.m.

It had been a long week. Friday evening after having written lengthy reports at the UN, I was eager to go out. Into my beloved New York Subway. Getting intentionally lost. Searching for visual diamonds, glimpses of human beauty, revelation. To feed my soul.

Yet tonight, somehow nothing seemed to work. I walked for eight exhausting hours, trying luck and patience, working the surroundings, stalking travelling strangers. My back ached, eyes and feet burned. Things refused to fall into place and I was about to admit defeat.

Then foolishly against odds and better judgement I press on, taking another train up the Bronx. Riding further away from home in neon-lit darkness, anonymity. I balance from one car to the next until I find a group of guys with their cool hats, dribbling a basketball. Trying to make the best of their nightly adventure, tired just as myself. And finally I get a shot.

Balance, movement, depth, perspective, focus, reflections, graffiti, light and dark – squeezed into a single rectangle at a 160th of a second. And the memory of a small triumph, perseverance. That’s a wrap for me. Well after 2 a.m. I was dead tired. And smiling.

Lover, not pro  

Often I get asked why I don’t make photography a bigger part of my life, going “professional” – whatever that may mean. Perhaps I’m just scared and have entirely missed my destined career.

Yet, one thing is certain. I know it’s a true privilege to capture only what makes me feel, be alive. What I value, what intrigues me, what I need to understand, what I want to breathe, what I dream of when awake, what I hope to carry with me – knowing I can’t, and what I cannot not share. I make photographs and write as if my soul depends on it. Because it does. Because if offers meaning and significance. When I chose to. No need for no dollar signs in my eyes. Ain’t trying to sell anything - keeping my creative sovereignty.

So yes, I am and want to remain a lover, be unprofessional, inexpert, non-certified, unofficial. No badge of honour, and thus no box. Just me putting my eyes and heart on one line, doing a gentle click. And another one. To my own humble liking.

Requiem for a tiny shelter

I was in Burundi again, this time to get married, with our families present.
There was no way I’d be in the country without seeing beloved Gakobwa. So my wife and I spent a week in her small village.

The very last night, the sun having set, a cold evening breeze brought in dark clouds.
The kids from nearby looked for cover from the thick raindrops that suddenly started falling. A beautiful boy and his little brother ended up standing in the entrance of the simple house I had built for Gakobwa a few years earlier. In an instant, holding my breath, I raised my camera and pressed the shutter. It was the last light of day, a fleeting moment before everyone disappeared into their own homes.

Looking at this image, I find comfort knowing that the shelter given to my friend had become a refuge of sorts for these children as well. Not just this time, when the rain fell, but any time when advice was needed, another story to be heard, a joke to be told. The image to me, portrays a moment of love – love that would not have been present without Gakobwa, without her indomitable spirit.

I would return to Burundi again some four years later, with my children. It felt like introducing them to another grandmother. When I returned to the country again, Gakobwa had died a few months earlier.

Buhiga, her village, would not be the same to me any more. I looked for her house, needed to understand how she passed away, who was with her in her last moments, where she was buried. The truth is quite simple, and sad.

Her tiny belongings were quickly taken over and away while the house was demolished. Some of the neighbors feared her spirit was looming around to cause malheur. The fears of witchcraft held by adults vis-à-vis Gakobwa followed her even after her death. But then, she had always been surrounded by children. They had never been afraid of her, never took offense in her tiny stature, her hands oddly wrangled from a past leprosies. They could feel that she was kind, loving, and crazy funny.

It is often the grown-ups who have all the irrational suspicions and let their low instincts gain the upper hand. It’s the children who see things are they are, know who is good and who is to be avoided. Nothing lasts forever, especially mud houses.
That seems to be the circle of life.

Gakobwa was buried in an unmarked grave in a corner of the local cemetery, close to the church, by the priest alone.

My friend may be gone from this world and her house might be back to dust and dirt – yet for me, she lives on.
Some of the laughs and smiles she gave me are now a visual trace in my deepening wrinkles.
In my dreams, she walks around her tiny house and the paths under the banana trees, cracking jokes with the children.
And I am one of them.

Thoughts off war

after
all has been
said and done in
battle and barbarity
the use of rape, hate, tears
arms forced for armed forces
daggers drawn dusk and dawn
lost is the limited absence of war
to gain unlimited absence of peace
for waste of human life, love, laughter
time and again, a wicked game of man
heart on fire, head in pain, hands in cuffs
ultimate ultimatum, the ultima ratio first
from crying war cries to crying in a war
at the very end of the belligerent day
trial and error, trial of the error
all in all soon all is all lost
for only the dead
have seen the
end of war
in the life
after

No speech

Glad I made this photograph.
Whenever anyone asks me why I love my wife, this one takes away the need to engage in a really long speech. Look at the image for one second only and you’ll know why she’s a keeper.
Doomed without her. She who sees me as a whole and not the mess of me, as I tend to. She found me, not the other way around. And being found means one was lost for a while.

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful,
we must carry it with us or we will find it not.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Annoyance

“People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”

Isaac Asimov

Field beyond

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there”.

- Rumi

Queen Coco

salute to you, my beloved
resilient survivor of cancer, twice
and waves of civil war, ethnic clashes – numerous
far-sighted, witted writer, poet, collector and teller of stories
our voice of love, forgiveness, source of wisdom, beautiful mind
peaceful rebel, defender of women’s rights, benevolent matriarch
gifted tamer of spirits, keeper of secrets, master of prayers
unfathomable clairvoyant of prophesies, oracle of mine
big-hearted mama of four and generations of adopted
mother of my wife, grandma to my children
once again, salute to you, my beloved
as I am honoured to call you
belle mère

Moral departure

“A thing may be morally neutral and yet the desire for that thing may be dangerous.
The painless death of a pious relative at an advanced age is not an evil.
But an earnest desire for her death on the part of her heirs is not reckoned a proper feeling, and the law frowns on even the gentlest attempt to expedite her departure.”

C.S. Lewis from “The Inner Ring”

Villain or hero

May I present PrettydaDon.

My drug-dealing, knife-wielding, gun and cash-carrying rapper friend. Met him while endlessly roaming the streets and shady back alleys of the Bronx in the warm sweaty summer of 2011.

A million visual impressions, characters, smells.
The borrow felt like a safe refuge for my soul - plagued by too much glitter, shine and façade of the Mid-town East Side.

He may not be the obvious popular choice for a son-in-law. Yet, he showed nothing but kindness with me.

It reminded me of the truth that every villain has a heart, just as every hero has great flaws. Wonder which tracks he’s wandering now.

“Nice people with common sense do not make interesting characters.
They only make good former spouses”.
Isabele Alende

Trois allumettes

Trois allumettes une à une allumées dans la nuit

La première pour voir ton visage tout entier

La seconde pour voir tes yeux

La dernière pour voir ta bouche

Et l’obscurité tout entière pour me rappeler tout cela

En te serrant dans mes bras

- Jacques Prévert

Not a single story

Photographers are sometimes – rightly – seen as portraying the African continent as a uniquely dark and gloomy part of the world.

A place, where poverty, war, famine and the rule of despots eternally prevail.

To me, it’s important that injustice, inequity and human rights violations are brought to light – bearing witness as a contribution to leveraging change.

Yet, the complex realities of Africa mean there are so incredibly many more stories to be told and cherished.

The continent holds immense beauty, humanity, imagination, innovation, originality, strength, and wisdom.

Offering a billion tales. Of brightness and potential. Of progress and promise.

It’s not a single story. It’s an entire universe.

Powerful Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks of the danger of a single story. Check out her wisdom here.

Decisions

Between two words
choose the quieter one.

Between word and silence
choose listening.

Between two books
choose the dustier one.

Between the earth and the sky
choose a bird.

Between two animals
choose the one who needs you more.

Between two children
choose both.

Between the lesser and the bigger evil
choose neither.

Between hope and despair
choose hope:
it will be harder to bear.

by Boris Novak
shared with me by beloved Pia & Tim S.

Less alone

I have not found a book that intersects the realms of photography and philosophy as convincingly as “The meaning in the making” by the formidable Sean Tucker.

Eloquently, wisely, deeply, he speaks to the why of creating art; that truthful art speaks to our common struggle – the one of the human existence. And by doing so, it reminds us that we are all very similar in our pain… and can thus feel less alone.  

Thank you, Sean, for sharing your truth – making me feel less alone.

Insane

“And those
who were seen dancing
were thought
to be insane
by those
who could not hear
the music.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Birthlove

If the house was burning and there was one and only image I could save from the fire, it may be this one. It’s one of my favorite photographs capturing a short 125th of a second… filled with a whole array of deep emotions.

Pure love, utter relief, boundless gratefulness, absolute connectedness, complete tenderness – in the immediate aftermath of a new human being having come to life only minutes earlier, all in one. Well, and they happen to be my wife and daughter, which ever so slightly adds to my humble delight.

“Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other. ”  Rainer Maria Rilke

Streetlove

This quote comes to mind for this asphalt set:

“Modern art
= I could do that
+ yeah, but you didn’t”.
C. Damrauer.

World turn-away

Put me in a busy public place with my camera in hand and I’ll happily spend days observing people, guessing their thoughts, dreams, plans and destinations.

Ever so often, I feel that while all of us chose to wear different masks when in the presence of others, we are more similar than not in our ways and worries, wants and wishes.

Or to say it more elegantly, allow me to quote Khaled Hosseini’s beautiful words:

“Everyone is an ocean inside. Every individual walking the street.
Everyone is a universe of thoughts, insights, and feelings.
But every person is crippled in his or her own way
by our inability to truly present ourselves to the world.”

Freedom

“Freedom fighters don’t always win, but they are always right”.
Molly Ivins

Goddess

I.
fortunate
am I to live by
the side of a Goddess
whom clouds bestowed
the finest chocolate upon

II.
naturally painted to perfection
by strong gentle African sun and waters
spiced up by travel, stories, encounters
first tiny wrinkles telling tales
of adventures lived across continents

III.
what is more to come the wind will tell
when time is right and fate is sealed
evermore hope I do for my humble soul
to live by the side of my black Divinity
for eternity on this side and next

IV.
as for heaven as I dream it
won’t be heaven
without thy my goodness
grand and gracious
Goddess

Life infinity

“When I consider the small span of my life
absorbed in the eternity of all time
or the small part of space
which I can touch or see engulfed
by the infinite immensity of spaces
that I know not and that know me not
I am frightened and astonished
to see myself here instead of there...
now instead of then.”

– Blaise Pascal

Uplifting heartbreak

There is a bridge in a place called Sighet at the northern Romanian-Ukrainian border.

The mostly women and children fleeing the war in Ukraine have walked over it day and night since the end of February 2022.

With a few portable belongings, they go into an unknown future. A foreign land, leaving fathers, grandparents behind, school friends, homes and what was a “normal” life not long ago.

Their Romanian neighbors continue to place little stuffed animals on the crossing, awaiting the children who turn into refugees as they pass the red line.

I have seen a child take one.

The experience of standing on the bridge when visiting UNICEF-supported operations on the ground has imprinted on me an oddly conflicting feeling.

A human gesture so very heartwarming, and so excruciatingly heart-breaking, at the very contradicting same time.

Grace and light

Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart
suddenly you flare in my sight
a wild rose blooming
at the edge of thicket
grace and light
where yesterday was only shade
and once again I am blessed
choosing again what I chose before.

by Wendell Berry

Ze German wizin

1.       I just left Kindergarten
2.       driven by Wanderlust
3.       in a Volkswagen on the Autobahn
4.       following the Zeitgeist and 99 Luftballons
5.       living in a Bauhaus, Jugendstil
6.       fully Kitsch style, all in Gemütlichkeit
7.       with my Doppelgänger
8.       as my Ersatz Leitmotif
9.       in the Gestalt of Beethoven
10.   and so I read Schiller to Händel
11.   while eating Bratwurst
12.   with Sauerkraut and Strudel
13.   then at Stille Nacht, Angst befalls me
14.   like a Blitzkrieg, with Sturm und Drang
15.   uber overwhelming like a Putsch
16.   dosed with Schadenfreude
17.   scary as a Poltergeist
18.   knowing I am no Wunderkind or Übermensch
19.   tormented by Weltschmerz, kaputt
20.   resort I must to Realpolitik

Sharing back

There is something special about sharing printouts with people who were kind enough to offer their time, grace and love, being at the other end of the camera.
Handing over a photo sometimes simply means it all becomes more of an exchange. Yet more often, I have found it to be a truly deep, meaningful, transformative experience.

When I photographed terminally ill patients in a hospital in Burundi to tell a story of sex work and HIV/Aids, I was in awe with the openness and generosity in people who knew their days were numbered. Little did I foresee that when I returned to the bedside of this man a few days later with some printed images, that he’d radiate with deep gratitude:

“I have nothing else to pass on but now I have this image I can leave with my family. To remember me”.

It made my heart sing and broke it at the same time.

It was the same with the swinging girl in the Orphanage of Jabé in Bujumbura, Burundi. When I handed her the prints, she was seemingly thunderstruck, speechless.

I grasped only later that she must have felt that at least one adult noticed her, saw value in her moment of play and joy, accounted for. It dawned only on me that it was likely the first and only photograph of herself, ever and for some time to come… and that a simple printout may be so much more special for a child than for any other, that has been abandoned, left behind.

Edward Steichen famously said: “A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it”. He was right, it’s never the photographer, alone. It’s the souls, the humanity, the dignity of these three people that give these images – at least to me – both their raison d’être and emotional depth.

It was similar with this beautiful homeless man in the streets of New York.
He had some of the gentlest eyes I have ever had the fortune to see. He graciously allowed me to portrait him, one cold winter morning.

I promised I’d find him again and share some prints... and think he didn’t fully expect I would. I walked around Spanish Harlem on my way to work at the United Nations for the next six weeks with the photos ready in my backpack.

Until one morning, when we finally ran into each other.
He hugged me crying, making me cry.

And I got it, I think. He felt seen by a fellow human being. I had kept my promise and it was as if it allowed him see his own dignity highlighted, still intact, the beautiful human being that he is. He was not unnoticed in the often so anonymous streets of the city.

Unicat

Normally, I am not into cat photography… but then this young refugee who turned up in the office was too cute to pass.

Glad to report he has found a permanent home.

And isn’t this why we’re all here? To find love and feel at home?

Lovetrain

“To the world
you may be one person
but to one person
you may be
the world”.

Dr. Seuss

Lizard brain monkey mind

I love train stations. Seriously, I proposed to my wife in New York’s Central Station.

What powerful metaphors for our lives. Countless arrivals, farewells, tears and joy.
A few drive the trains; most are simple travellers, passengers of space and time.
Many seem in a rush, heading into their own directions and destinies, facing their drama, dull and destiny. You see thieves and vagabonds, smart glasses and bow ties, high-heals next to Birkenstocks, all in close vicinity.

In more recent years, a visible change has crept in though, irrepressibly, sadly, I find, at the risk of sounding old. Like an army of pacifiers, smart phones have taken over, with few resisting their constant temptation. Instead of looking at each other, making any contact, we are holding in hand relentless distraction, on literal display. And to ourselves, all illusion holds up, for only rarely cracks to appear. Before we can sense any grief, pain, sadness, shame… one disappears into the bright-lit screens to forget. Dopamine takes over – contemplation and clarity gone astray. And as we barely look up, life goes on and by.

We need less people on Instagram, more in conversation. We’d be better off with minds thinking – or doing nothing – instead of conveyor belt consumption. We need to remember now is better to feel and reflect than tomorrow; to dream of our loved ones, smile to those around us, make new friends. To quiet the lizard brain and tame the monkey mind.

Perhaps this is why I love to hunt for little visual treasures in the midst of our accelerated culture; as a requiem for a time when things were slower. Looking for when people seem to be just human beings, plain and simple. When we just are, not distracted. When we are here, not elsewhere. When we are breathing in the present; reminding those around us who look up, too, that we are, for better of for worse, still human.

“If your train's on the wrong track every station you come to
is the wrong station”. - Bernard Malamud

Snowflake tango

“To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake it is necessary to stand out in the cold.”
The older I become, the more strongly these simple words by Aristotle resonate.

Pain and inner growth, pain and deep fulfilment, pain and true meaning - they lead an intricate dance; a tango where one needs the other, one won’t be without the opposite. They seem to exist within the same atom, holding each other in unfathomable balance.

Clearly, I need to become better at accepting, welcoming pain and discomfort in my life. And recognize the same pain in others, and thus the world. For only then I can truly see grow my heart and soul, guided by purpose and responsibility, not convenience.

It’s embracing both the dark shadows and the bright highlights that the path to be taken every day will slowly emerge, as I try to walk it.

“Yesterday is ashes; tomorrow wood.
Only today does the fire burn brightly”.

– Eskimo Proverb

Haunting beauty

Some of my photographs seem to haunt me.

This intriguingly beautiful girl whom I came across by pure chance or kismet on a long arduous 14-hour road trip in the adventurous south-east of the Congo is one of the souls that I seem eternally bound to.  

She looks at me with her grace, beauty, magnificence and innocence from a large fine print as soon as I open my front door. Forever will I wonder how she is, where she is, what she feels, what and whom she becomes.

A supermodel, a teacher, a mother, an engineer, a market seller, a doctor? All at once?

Endless possibilities are hers, I hope and dream.

I miss you, wonderful little girl.

Please know you have an eternal admirer half around the world.

Second time

I deeply admire Viktor Frankl.

The Holocaust-surviving Jewish-Austrian psychiatrist founded logotherapy –  the school of psychotherapy describing that the search for a life's meaning is the central human motivational force.

He said:

“Live as if you were living already for the second time
and as if you had acted the first time
as wrongly as you are about to act now”.

As Frankl eloquently points out, it seems there is nothing which would stimulate a man’s sense of responsibleness more than this maxim.

It invites to imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and amended.

Such a precept confronts him with life’s finiteness as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and himself.

Man, I should get a tattoo of that.

Hanno

My parents’ first child died.
23rd December 1969.
Aged four months.
Immediate, irreversible, irreplaceable.
Found one morning.
In his crib.
Already cold.
Gone. No return.
Full stop.
Never to grow up.
Frozen in time.
In a few black and white photographs.
Never to walk his own path.
Or trace one for others. Me.
He would be in his 50s, now.
Can’t help, keep wondering.
So many questions.
Never answered.
What is the void he left?
Just empty space, silence?
Was it filled with tears, regret, anger, love?
Or dreams of what could have been?
A hole no one else could fill?
And will I ever meet you?
Like an epiphany, an old friend?
What will you tell and teach me?
What will we laugh and lament about?
Hannes Norbert, I have never met you.
Love and miss you still.

Nobody wait

“How wonderful it is
that nobody
need wait
a single moment
before
starting
to improve
the world.”

― Anne Frank
Tales from the Secret Annex
From a Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables,
and Lesser-Known Writings

Habeas corpus

Every year, globally some 15 million people pass through pre-trial detention.

These men whom I photographed in a police cell in an East African country a good decade ago were held far beyond any legally admissible time.

The place was so dark my camera could hardly gather a half-decent exposure.
Unable to lie down at once, forced to sleep in shifts, the weakest were sitting next to the buckets full of shit and piss. They were let out once a day for a few minutes only.

The excessive and arbitrary use of arrest, police custody and pre-trial detention, are a serious threat to human rights. In some places, over 80 % of the detained are awaiting trial. What does this mean? It means these people have not been sentenced, may be perfectly innocent… yet are condemned to linger in the shadows, susceptible to corruption, abuse and torture.

The men, among whom I stood for a while as the human rights observer that I was at the time, pleaded with me to take a photo. To document their conditions, show it to the world. They understood a simple image of their plight would be more powerful than any written account I might produce.

I often wonder how they were marked by the experience, when and how they got out, where they are now. And if things have changed.

And then I try to remember the good Martin Luther King Jr: “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope”.

Masquerade dropped

“The closing years of life
are like the end
of a masquerade party
when the masks
are dropped.”

Cesare Pavese
(novelist, poet, essayist, translator, literary critic… who took his own life aged 41).

You’re beautiful

Over 10 years ago now I met a young woman in the NY Subway. She blew colourful bubbles in the neon-lit underground carriage driving us through Brooklyn.

When I approached her asking permission to take her image, she was ever so gracious – and accepted my compliment on her “hairstyle”, confirming it was from cancer treatment. Her positivity, enjoying the ride, making everyone’s trip more charming – to me all offered a magnificent mixture of courage, perseverance, dignity and beauty.

These are moments I feel blessed using my camera as a passport, asking to be allowed into someone else's world, even if for an instant. And then, aren’t short moments all that life is made of? Perhaps we should all blow more bubbles in our daily routines.

Beautiful woman – or shall I call you bubble fairy – I don’t know your name or where you went that night. Please know that I hope you are still roaming the Subway – happy, sharing your humanity and kindness. From my heart, I wish more power and life to you.

Nothing

“If you don’t
want to be criticized,
do nothing,
say nothing,
be nothing”.

Seneca

And I think the singular Kurt Cobain would have added:
“They laugh at me because I’m different; I laugh at them because they’re all the same.”

Le retard

Quelquefois
il serait mieux d’être là.
Un peu plutôt.
Parfois un instant, parfois une heure, un jour.
Mais pourquoi en parler ?
Car c’est déjà trop tard.
Dommage.

Drinking demons

“For every complex problem
there is an answer
that is clear, simple,
and wrong.”

H. L. Mencken

Laissez (moi) Passer

I have a diplomatic passport.
Yes, it means I’m informed, immortal, important, irresistible.

And sure, since you’re asking, I can go through walls, into palaces, no questions asked.

All my impossible wishes are graciously granted from princes, presidents and principals, carefully headed by monks, ministers and mistresses.

As a specialist in everything, I like to grace my surroundings with grand speeches, rants and monologues – lucky you if allowed to hear any of it.

Needless to say, I have a world-spanning global perspective, thus ever so rightfully looking down on everyone else.

Let’s face it, false modesty is just another way to lie.

Logically, I delegate profane details to others.
The deplorable monkeys below.

Strange enough, I am told, when the little monkeys look up the tree,
all they see is an ass.

Artiste parisien

As I walked past the outside Louvre corridor, I couldn't help but notice a young man drawing with a pencil.

His intense focus and passion reminded me of the beauty and power of human creativity.

It felt like, under the Paris morning light, I was watching a becoming master at practice, learning to breathe life into the lines and shadows that brought his artwork into relief before his eyes, and mine.

Bon courage, good luck and continue to grow, young man, fellow artist.

One day, your œuvre d’art might be shown inside the Louvre.

And I will claim I knew you when you started out.

Stories beyond

“Death steals everything except our stories”

Jim Harrison.

I to IV or more?

It is absurdly tragic to contemplate there was a World War Two.

Humanity had a first terrifying feast of death and destruction from 1914 to 1918 involving all major European nations of the time. Far too many young men killing other young men they had never personally met and thus couldn’t possibly hate. Then, barely a generation later, the same part of the world – my great grandparents’ generation of Germans decided to push the continent into hell again.

Explain that to a rational mind. How come that individually, universally, we simply want the best for our children, families, loved ones, close communities.
And yet, we slide into conflicts, time and again because well, somehow the leaders that be want more land, more power, more prestige, more legacy.

It is scary to think we may not be much wiser these days, with weapons readily available and polished, capable of destruction engulfing the planet many times over.

Einstein didn’t only see clearly through the laws of physics, he also sinisterly, rightly said:
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” True, and abysmally scary.

Fear + understanding = all good

"Nothing in life is to be feared.
It is only to be understood.”
--Marie Curie

While I still have a very long way to go in understanding the things that I fear, I will try to teach my kids that. And perhaps we can find comfort of being scared together.

Against tribe or yourself

“The individual
has always
had to struggle
to keep
from being
overwhelmed
by the tribe.

If you try it,
you will be lonely often,
and sometimes
frightened.

But no price
is too high to pay
for the privilege
of owning
yourself.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Myself world

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.
Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

―Rumi

Daydreamer

Unfortunate are the ones who only dream at night.

Such little escape for soul and phantasy.

It is not the dreams, like elusive whispers only we can hear, when alone, which beckon us to paint with novel color on true inner candid canvas?

Close your eyes and see more. Have your mind dance in daylight - you may discover a kaleidoscope of desires and promise.
And then, perhaps, walk off in a new direction as that wall just disappeared, only now.

What’s at stake may just be everything.

Unter unseren Füßen modert zwar stinkend der Abfall des Viertels, liegen die Überreste der Zivilisation. Aber darauf kommt es gerade nicht an. Nicht mehr. Jetzt geht der Blick nur noch nach oben Denn über uns, über uns tanzen jetzt ungestüm eine Hand voll kunstvoll zusammengesetzter Drachen. Virtuos durchkreuzen ehemalige Plastiktüten ihrer wahren Bestimmung folgend das kräftige Blau des Himmels. Sie lassen nicht die Zeit still stehen. Nein, sie können viel mehr. Übermütig fliegen sie eine ferne Zukunft herbei. Und aus kleinen geschickten Drachenlenkern werden Ingenieure, Schreiner, Lehrer und Ärzte. Meine kleine Freundin ist die nächste Kadja Nin geworden. Auf dieser Anhöhe steht schon seit langem eine bunt bemalte Schule, wimmelt es von Schulbüchern und Bleistiften. Die Kinder, sie erschaffen ein neues Land. Es sind Neugier, Mut und Hoffnung, die in ihren Augen leuchten. Das können ein paar lästige Rauchschwaden nicht verdecken.

Und egal, wie lange es dauert, bis es so weit ist, denke ich zum Abschied winkend, eines steht schon jetzt fest. Fliegen werden sie hier. Von meisterhaften Kinderhänden gehalten. Fliegen werden die Drachen über Bujumbura.

Paper and a pencil

“Poetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone.
A piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready.”

Eugenio Montale

(Str-)Juggling UNICEF dad

Trying my humble best
to be a present father
while attending to a demanding job
feels like eternally juggling
on unstable, shifting ground,
trying to smile even when things get tough.

And just like juggling,
it’s more of an art than a science;
both the parenting and doing my humble best
for children with UNICEF.

Have yet to find the exact map,
the clear step-by-step guidance.

Promise to let you know when I have!

Among grown-ups

“I have lived a great deal among grown-ups.
I have seen them intimately, close at hand.
And that hasn’t much improved
my opinion of them.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
in
The Little Prince