During the period of African American slavery, exploited slaves worked as indentured servants and labour in the production of crops, such as tobacco and cotton.^[3] Additionally, masters turned a profit by leasing barbers to neighbouring plantations and local establishments to groom both slaves and affluent white men alike. As a result of the huge demand, many black men literally “cut” their way to freedom.^[4]

Quincy Mills explains, “Before the Civil War, most black barbers explicitly groomed wealthy white men, like businessmen and politicians. Black customers were not allowed to get haircuts in these black-owned barbershops, mainly because white customers didn’t want black customers getting shaved next to them… You might wonder, “Where did black men get their hair cut?” They got haircuts on somebody’s front porch, or in the yard, or in all these other spaces that were not commercial”.^[5]

Within the African American community the black barbershop was not only the place to get hair care services but the place where black people could be vulnerable, talk about politics and issues of importance in the community.^[6]  “In addition to its status as a gathering place”, Dr. Trudier Harris writes, “the black barbershop also functioned as a complicated and often contradictory microcosm of the larger world. It is an environment that can bolster egos and be supportive as well as a place where phony men can be destroyed, or at least highly shamed, from participation in verbal contests and other contests of skill. It is a retreat, a haven, an escape from nagging wives and the cares of the world. It is a place where men can be men.”^[7]

In fact, during the Civil rights movement black barbershops became places where African Americans met to organise protest campaigns and discuss racial politics.^[8] It was a Harlem barbershop where Stokely Carmichael gained an insight into African-American worldview and sensibility. In 1966 at age 25, he would become internationally famous when he launched the cry “Black Power” at a Mississippi civil rights rally.^[9]

Quincy Mills again, “With the rise of Jim Crow, public spaces were becoming less accessible to African Americans, so it helped that places like black churches, black barbershops, and, later on, black beauty shops and other businesses provided spaces where African Americans could safely gather, talk, and organize… there are a number of cases where activists retreated to a barbershop to plan a particular campaign, and there are tons of examples of African Americans coming to consciousness in barbershops. Black newspapers were available in barbershops and many barbers were quite politically active, so they would provide their own literature and reading materials”.^[10]

The most important figure in the barbershop is of course, the barber. As Ryessia Jones has noted, Black barbers often served as father figures for young children, especially males who do not have a relationship with their father. Additionally, the Black barber’s role in the community, often sees them obligated to act as “community developers”, promoting and participating in the exchange of “antidotes for illnesses” within the barbershop. Therefore, Black barbers have often emerged as informal leaders within the community.^[11] Wood and Brunson have noted a similar trend writing, “barbers offered the longevity of their businesses and sustained relationships with clients as evidence of their unique contribution to the community”.^[12]

In his photo essay of black barbershops, Jason Parham also explores the unique role of the black barber and the experience of the client. He notes a number of responses including, ““In a lot of ways, barbers are our therapists. The shop is where I learned what being a black man was about early on,” and “A haircut, for me, has become a restorative experience. At its best, it transforms — mind, body, soul.”^[13]

My only experience of a black barber shop was one called Phresh Cuts, in Plaquemine Louisiana. I had just eaten at the restaurant next door and as I went to get in the car I noticed the barbershop. I liked the aesthetic of the shop front and so I took a photo. As soon as I had clicked the shutter the door swung open and out came the barber. As I lowered my camera he yells, “What’re ya doing! Get over here!” With some trepidation I walked over to chat with him, while wondering if I had made some cross-cultural blunder and offended him.

But, within minutes he had me inside the shop introducing me to all his customers! There was a young African-American college football player whom I was told would be playing in the NFL in no time and, an up and coming hip hop artist. I explained why I was in this small town north-west of New Orleans, to which the barber replied, “you wanna make million”. Despite not having an approved visa or green card to work in the US, I excitedly responded, “Yeah! Who doesn’t want an easy million?!”

To make the million that the barber spoke of, I was going to need to make a music video for this self-professed up and coming hip hop star. Despite my enthusiastic response, the barber must have sensed my lack of faith in this young rapper’s lyrical prowess. He walked over to the stereo and started shuffling through a stack of CD’s, which I can only imagine were the mixtapes of every other up and coming rapper in county! Upon finding this young rapper’s latest album the barber started pumping it throughout the barbershop.

His expression and body language clearly indicated that he thought his powerplay would pay off. That he would thoroughly convince me that not only was his request an advantageous one for me to accept, but that this young rapper was indeed on route to stardom.

Sadly, for both the barber and this young rapper, today wouldn’t be the day that we became millionaires. I thanked them for the offer of a potential million but explained that my schedule for driving from L.A. to New York simply wouldn’t allow enough time to come up with a treatment for the video clip.

We got a photo together (which you can see below) and I opened the door to leave. “Hold up”, the barber said, as he popped the CD out of the stereo. “Take this”, he said, as he handed me the album of the young rapper, “Listen to it and see if you come up with any ideas”.

The following photos are from the drive from Houston, Texas, to New Orleans, Louisiana.

Building new navy ships would be a priority for Adolf. New ships for the Swedish navy, for decades, had been built near the forests where the raw materials grew. This meant there were ship yards all over the country. But Adolf began to concentrate this far-flung activity in just a handful of shipyards. The most important of these, the centre for maintenance and new construction, was the navy yard in Stockholm. Adolf’s goal, two new ships to the navy every year, renewing and enlarging the navy as part of his program of military and territorial expansion.^[2]

The Vasa, once completed, was a floating fracas. It represented a conflict within the Swedish navy over how warships should be used. Traditional officers believed it was better to take an enemy ship into the Swedish fleet than destroy it. Therefore, they wanted a ship which could carry a large crew, armed with pikes and axes. Gustav Adolf on the other hand was a keen artillerist. He saw the future of sea battles as artillery duels. For him, the cannon was the primary armament, and so he preferred more guns and bigger guns. Thus, he ordered the Vasa (and ships like it), to be heavily armed.^[3]

The Vasa was launched on the 10th August 1628. The festive atmosphere saw the quay packed with people, whilst the water teemed with small crafts carrying people. Such was the occasion that the crew had been allowed to bring their families, as it was the ship’s maiden voyage. The Vasa was freed from the land, four of the ten sails were set, and a salute was fired. There was little wind as the ship set off, but as it passed the gap in the bluffs at Tegelviken, a much stronger gust pushed the ship so far over on its port side that water poured in through the open gunports on the lower gundeck. Vasa began to sink.^[4]

Within minutes, the Vasa had sunk to a watery grave 32 metres below the surface. The masts stuck up above the surface, and many grabbed a hold of them. Others were picked up by the small craft that had followed the Vasa. In the end only 30 of the crew and guests survived. Most of the dead were trapped inside the ship.^[5]

In the early 1950s, Anders Franzén, a fuel engineer in the Swedish navy and amateur archaeologist, started searching for the lost ships of the Swedish navy. One of those at the top of his list was Vasa. It was not until the 25 August 1956, that a small piece of black oak stuck in a coring device that Franzén had dropped into Stockholm’s harbour. That winter, Franzén met Per Edvin Fälting, the navy’s most experienced salvage diver, who had worked extensively in the harbour. In early September, Fälting descended to the lightless depths and explored by touch. Walking across the bottom, he ran into a vertical wooden wall, and found at first that it had a row of square openings. Climbing up, he found another row. It was an old warship, with two gundecks.^[6]

On 20 August 1959, all was ready for the initial lift. For more than 18 months prior to this, a small team of commercial divers plugged holes where bolts had rusted away, fitted covers over the open gunports, and rebuilt the bow and stern to make them watertight. Steel rods were fastened across the hull to help hold it together. Navy divers had also dug six tunnels under Vasa and pulled massive steel cables through them to suspend the ship in a basket. But it wasn’t until Monday, 24 April 1961, at 09.03 when the tops of a few eroded frames peeked out of the water. Soon, the carved heads of four warriors emerged, followed by the outline of the whole ship at last.^[7] 

Dressed in rain wear and newly vaccinated against whatever bugs might live in a sunken ship, a team of archaeologists descended into the black sludge that filled Vasa in April 1961. When they finished five months later, they had recovered more than 30,000 fascinating objects from 1628 and begun to understand what life might have been like aboard a Swedish warship. By the time all of the excavation and diving was complete, over 40,000 objects had been found, including almost all of the parts of the ship itself which had fallen off over the years. It would prove possible to reconstruct Vasa more or less completely, inside and out, and to know something of the people who made up the crew, their possessions, and their lives.^[8]

The Vasa now sits in the climate-controlled Vasa Museum. To best preserve the Vasa, the temperature is kept between 18-20°C. Stabilising humidity and temperature has meant a stabilisation of both structural and chemical changes in the ship. This means it will be around for generations to come.^[9]

The following photos are from our time in Stockholm.

-Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson was born in Chanteloup-en-Brie, Seine-et-Marne, and from a young age developed a strong fascination with painting, particularly Surrealism. In 1932, after spending a year in the Ivory Coast, he discovered the Leica – his camera of choice after that moment – and began a life-long passion for photography.^[1]

His camera could be wielded so discreetly that it enabled him to photograph while being virtually unseen by others. A near invisibility turned photojournalism into a primary source of information and photography into a recognised art form. This reputation began a visual journey that would revolutionize 20th-century photography. In 1933, he had his first exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York.^[2]

In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his first book, Images à la Sauvette (published in English as The Decisive Moment). In it he explained his approach to photography. He states, “For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.”^[3]

Cartier-Bresson’s concept of the “decisive moment” — a split second that reveals the larger truth of a situation — shaped modern street photography and set the stage for hundreds of photojournalists to bring the world into living rooms through magazines such as Life and Look.^[4] 

He photographed dozens of luminaries: his pictures of a convalescent Matisse during World War II, of Sartre as a boulevardier and of Mahatma Gandhi minutes before he was killed have become icons of photographic portraiture. But he was also the archetype of the itinerant photojournalist during the heyday of photojournalism immediately after the war, before television became widespread, when millions of people still learned what was happening in the world through the pictures that ran in magazines like Life and Paris-Match. Part of Cartier-Besson’s skill was his practice to immerse himself in places before photographing them, to blend into and learn about their cultures.^[5]

Two years after the Second World War ended, Cartier-Bresson was one of the co-founders of Magnum Photos. Along with Robert Capa, George Rodger and David “Chim” Seymour, they created Magnum to reflect their independent natures as both people and photographers. Magnum also them the ability to work outside the formulas of magazine journalism. Copyright would be held by the authors of the imagery, not by the magazines that published the work. This meant that a photographer could decide to cover a famine somewhere, publish the pictures in “Life” magazine, and the agency could then sell the photographs to magazines in other countries, such as Paris Match and Picture Post, giving the photographers the means to work on projects that particularly inspired them even without an assignment.^[6]

It was important for Magnum’s photographers to have this flexibility to choose many of their own stories and to work for long periods of time on them. None of them wanted to suffer the dictates of a single publication and its editorial staff. They believed that photographers had to have a point of view in their imagery that transcended any formulaic recording of contemporary events.^[7]

This is illustrated in a memorable 1962 memo addressed to “All Photographers”, as Cartier-Bresson attempted to remind the photographers of their place in the world:

“I wish to remind everyone that Magnum was created to allow us, and in fact to oblige us, to bring testimony on our world and contemporaries according to our own abilities and interpretations. I won’t go into details here of who, what, when, why and where, but I feel a hard touch of sclerosis descending upon us. It might be from the conditioning of the milieu in which we live but this is no excuse. When events of significance are taking place, when it doesn’t involve a great deal of money and when one is nearby, one must stay photographically in contact with the realities taking place in front of our lenses and not hesitate to sacrifice material comfort and security. This return to our sources would keep our heads and our lenses above the artificial life, which so often surrounds us. I am shocked to see to what extent so many of us are conditioned – almost exclusively by the desires of the clients…”^[8]

New York is one of those places where millions of “decisive moments” exist daily. It is why you could call it, street photography mecca.

The following photos are all shot on Ilford HP5 Plus 35mm film.

-Mark Twain

Varanasi is one of the most magical and surreal places in all India, if not the world. Due to the sacred nature of the Ganges, this makes Varanasi is one of the holiest cities in Hinduism. It sees pilgrims from all over India come specifically to wash away sins in the sacred waters, to cremate their loved ones, or simply to die here, hoping for liberation from the cycle of rebirth. ^[1]

Varanasi, also called Benares, Banaras, or Kashi, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. A symbol of Hindu renaissance, Varanasi has been a centre of learning and civilisation for over 3000 years. It is often associated with promotion of spiritualism, mysticism, Sanskrit and yoga. Additionally, Sarnath, located just 10km away, is said to be the place where Buddha preached his first sermon after enlightenment. Thus, knowledge, philosophy, culture, devotion to Gods, Indian arts and crafts have all flourished in Varanasi for centuries.^[2]

Today, Varanasi has the finest river frontage in India, with miles of ghats, or steps, for religious bathing; an array of shrines, temples, and palaces rises tier on tier from the water’s edge. The sacred city is bounded by a road known as Panchakosi; devout Hindus hope to walk that road and visit the city once in a lifetime and, if possible, to die there in old age. The site receives more than a million pilgrims each year. In addition, thousands of domestic and foreign tourists flock to the city annually.^[3]

Sadly, today the Ganges has become well known for pollution rather than the ability to spiritually cleanse and purify the soul. Amrit Dhillon has written,

“The Ganges flows for 2500 kilometres from the Himalayas through four states where 400 million Indians live through to the east coast where it empties into the Bay of Bengal. As it passes through 100 towns and cities, it absorbs all their human and industrial waste. Experts estimate that more than 3000 million litres of untreated sewage from these towns along the Ganges are pumped into the river every day. By the time it reaches Varanasi, whose untreated sewage (or most of it) is also pumped into the waters, it becomes a sewer and the sixth most polluted river in the world.”^[4]

In 2009 the World Bank agreed to lend India $1bn over five years to clean up the Ganges. The funding was part of the Indian government’s multi-billion dollar initiative to end the discharge of untreated waste into the Ganges by 2020.^[5]

Unfortunately, the future is not looking promising for the Ganges. In a journal published in 2018, Chaudhary and Walker noted that for decades the Government of India has attempted different strategies to clean-up the Ganges, but with limited success.^[6] This is reinforced by another paper Dwivedi et al, notes,

“Current data analysis showed that Ganga water quality is deteriorating day by day and at several places even in upper stretch of Ganga the water is not suitable for domestic uses…the increasing trend of trace and toxic elements is alarming and the prolong exposure to polluted Ganga water and/or consumption of Ganga water fishes may cause serious illness including cancer.”^[7]

So, what is the answer? Chaudhary and Walker contend, “long-term cultural shifts in human behaviour and interaction with the river needs to change”.^[8] Only time will tell if this change becomes reality.

The following photos are from my time in Varanasi.

Vigeland was the son of a master carpenter and from an early age displayed an artistic flair for woodcarving. At the age of 15, he moved to Oslo to apprentice to master woodcarver T. Christensen Fladmoe. However, Vigeland’s heart was never in wood carving. He yearned to be a sculptor. In 1886, Vigeland’s father died and he returned to the family farm in Mandal. Vigeland spent the next two years working on the family farm. In his free time made sketches of things he wished to sculpt.^[1]

In 1888, Vigeland returned again to Oslo intent on becoming an artist. The two most famous sculptors in Oslo at the time were Brynjulf Bergslien and Mathias Skeibrok. It was not until 1889 that Vigeland visited Bergslien and showed him his portfolio of drawings and sketches. Impressed with Vigeland’s work, Bergslien contacted his friend, Lorentz Dietrichson.  Dietrichson was professor in Art History at the University of Oslo. Realising Vigeland’s talent, both Bergslien and Dietrichson contacted friends and acquaintances in order to provide Vigeland with financial support.^[2]

This financial support allowed Vigerland to work in Bergslien’s studio, learning from the master. Before he had even completed a year under the tuition of Bergslien, Vigeland had exhibited his first piece, “Hagar and Ishmael”, at the annual Salon d’automne and won. Throughout the 1890s and 1900s Vigeland travelled throughout Europe for further study, all the while making sketches for large public monuments. ^[3]

It was an agreement between Vigeland and the City of Oslo in February 1921 that would see his ideas for a number of large public monuments come to fruition. The agreement saw Vigeland given a vast studio at Frogner in the outskirts of Oslo. In return, Vigeland would give the city all of the work he had already made, as well as everything he would produce until his death.^[4]

Commenting on the park today Jarle Strømodden says,

In the park we find a theme which is both visualised in the whole, but also in the details. Interpreting Vige­land is not the easiest of tasks: the artist never, or only very rarely, gave titles to his sculptures. Rather, there are descriptions of what we see. He did this on purpose, in order not to steer viewers’ expectations in any specific direction. When looking at the park from a bird’s eye view, one can easily see that the outline resembles a latin cross , with the main axis from the main gate, across the bridge, towards the monolith, and ending with “The Wheel of Life” as the apsis.

The fountain marks the cross. The sculptures can be divided into groups – the bridge, the fountain, the monolith, and the two smaller groups such as “The Wheel of Life” and “The Clan”. Looking at the number of sculptures in the park, we may say that relationship is a common denominator. We see the visualisation of life, from conception, birth, growing up, living together, and finally, death. However, death is not the end: the subject matter is cyclical, and that is most obvious in the sculptures surrounding the fountain, but also in the single “Wheel of Life”.^[5]

These photos are from my time in Oslo, including the Viking Ship Museum, the Fram Museum, The Norwegian Maritime Museum and the Ski Museum. All worth a look if you’re in Oslo!

During a particularly dry March month in 1974, Yang Zhifa’s production unit started to dig a well to water their crops. But this dig would prove to be unlike any they had ever undertaken. As they started to dig, they discovered some uniquely coloured red soil about 2-meter underground that wasn’t common to the area. As the men continued to dig, they found some old terracotta, which was not entirely surprising as pieces of terracotta had been found in this area before. It wasn’t long before the men were hypothesising that they had found an old kiln. Yang explains,

“At first the digging went well. The second day we hit hard red earth. The third day, my hoe dug out the neck of a terracotta statue without a head, but the opening at the bottom was about size of a bowl,” he recalled.

“I commented to my workmate that it was probably the site of an old kiln. He advised me to dig carefully, so that we’d be able to dig out any old jars and take them home for our own use.”

Much to Yang’s surprise though, they soon realised that they had found a statue. The more they continued to dig, the more the discovered. They uncovered more statues as well as some bronze arrows and crossbows. At this point the stories of the different parties involved start to conflict with each other.

Yang contends that it was his time in the army that gave him some knowledge of ancient objects, which led him to take the following action. He continues,

“People had always said that the tomb of the Qin emperor covered an area of just over 9 hectares and that our village was about two kilometres from the mausoleum. These objects could be of historic interest. So, I called some women and harnessed up three two-wheeled carts to transport them to the Lintong district museum several kilometres away…If they aren’t of any historic interest, I’ll throw them into the river, have a wash and go home.”

The alternative story comes from Zhao Kangmin. Zhao was the curator of the Linyi County Cultural Centre/Museum. This museum was very close to where Yang Zhifa and his team discovered the Terracotta Warriors. As soon as Kangmin heard about this discovery and made his way to the site where the Terracotta Warrior statue had been discovered. (Exactly who Zhao was is another one of these points of conflict. By some accounts he was a local cultural official with no formal education in archaeology, but rather, was self-taught. Others, like state run media, identify him as an accomplished archaeologist.)

Zhao explains the story this way,

The farmers saw the terracotta fragments, but they didn’t know they were cultural relics, and they even broke them…It was me who stopped the damage, collected the fragments and reconstructed the first terracotta warrior.”

Whatever the exact story it wasn’t long before the authorities in Beijing were notified and a full excavation of the site was ordered. Within months over 500 Terracotta Warriors were uncovered.

Today, there have been over 8,000 different life-sized statues found including soldiers, chariots and horses. We now know it was Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor, who ordered the construction of the Terracotta Army in 246 BC after he (then aged 13) ascended the throne. Its purpose was to be an afterlife army for Emperor Qin.

But what happened to Yang and Zhao?

By one account, the museum built on the site of the mausoleum offered Yang a job signing autographs for visitors, but he still never received any official recognition of his discovery.

Similarly, for Zhao, he also took to signing autographs. But, he did so in the museum he had worked in beside four terra cotta soldiers and a horse that he had reconstructed in the 1970s. Not content with simply signing his name, he would sign postcards and books for tourists with an extravagant description: “Zhao Kangmin, the first discoverer, restorer, appreciator, name-giver and excavator of the terracotta warriors.”

Quick Facts

 Over 700,000 laborers worked around-the-clock for approximately 40 years to complete the terracotta army and tomb complex.

Each warrior has unique facial features, no two figures are exactly alike.

As a way to mark their own pieces of work and to ensure the standard of quality, each craftsman carved his name into the pottery figurines he created.

The construction of the Terracotta Army did not follow its original plan. Due to the sudden death of Qin Shi Huang in 210 BC, the tomb had to be sealed ahead of schedule. According to historical records, all the craftsmen who participated in the mausoleum project were buried alive in the burial pits around the tomb in order to keep the secrets of the Terracotta Army from being discovered.

The following photos are from our time Xi’an and visiting the Terracotta Warriors.

“I’ll try not to gush too much… it’s right up my alley; dreamy melodic pop with a twist”

(Dean Hanson, Ball Park Music, 2018).

‘Bury Me’ is the new single by Butternut Sweetheart, produced by Sam Cromack (Ball Park Music). ‘Bury Me‘ is a melancholic yet head bobbing journey. The launch show for for this latest single was at Cobra Club at the Bank Hotel in Newtown. You can check out my blog for the first single launch of ‘Paper Cut’ here.

Butternut Sweetheart is the musical project of Sydney based multi-instrumentalist, producer and my mate, Luke Moseley. Although officially formed in late 2018, Butternut Sweetheart has been percolating below the surface for years. Created purely as an avenue for artist expression, Luke pushes musical boundaries by creating a sense that the songs have evolved from dark, smouldering embers of a dying fire. Making the listener ask the question ‘Is that a guitar? Is that a keyboard? Is that human?’

Inspired by difficult to define artists such as Unknown Mortal Orchestra, tune-yards, and Melodies Echo Chamber, Butternut Sweetheart songs are a warping mélange of electronic and organic production and the centrepiece of this project. Organic source material is manipulated to make it sound electronic (eg. making a piano sound like a synthesiser). Similarly, electronic sounds are made to seem organic (using synths to sound like they have a voice).

Up until now Luke forged his path as tour manager and guitar tech for Australian icons such as Rufus Du Sol, Sarah Blasko, The Paper Kites and Matt Corby. Butternut Sweetheart are supporting Ball Park Music on tour in May & June this year!^[1]

Make sure you hit ‘play’ on the track above and check out what the launch looked like!

The first settlers arrived in Iceland around 900 AD. At this time, it is estimated that the edge of the glacier tongue of Breiðamerkurjökull was approximately 20 km further north than it is now. But, circa 1200 AD, the climate began to cool and the glacier advanced until about 1890, which resulted in the glacier reaching a point only about 1 km from the coast at Jökulsá glacial river.^[2]

However, in the 1930s, Breiðamerkurjökull began to retreat and became a vivid warning of the devastating consequence of climate change. So, although Jökulsárlón looks centuries old it only appeared when Breiðamerkurjökull began shrinking, which in doing so, has now given Iceland its deepest lake.^[3]

Glaciers cover about 11% of Iceland and are scattered throughout the island. Unfortunately, all glaciers are getting smaller due to climate change.^[4]  The melting of glaciers is one example of the disastrous effects of climate change, but there are plenty of others. Such as, rising sea levels, shifting precipitation patterns, drought, stronger hurricanes and storms and changing eco-systems as a variety of species are forced to move (which could result in their extinction).^[5]

Oddur Sigurðsson, a geologist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office who has studied them for 30 years, has stated, “All glaciers in Iceland are retreating at an unprecedented pace.”^[6] While Thorsteinn Thorsteinsson, a glaciologist at the Icelandic Met Office commenting on the melting trend has said, “Glaciers all over the world are melting. In Iceland, we are losing 0.34 per cent a year…They will be gone in 200 years if global warming continues like this.”^[7]

In 2014, the Okjökull glacier died and it wasn’t to first to do so. There have been estimates that prior to Okjökull’s death, up to 10 other named glaciers had died. But Okjökull was the biggest, so far. As reported by the Reykjavik Grapevine,

“Over a period of years, Okjökull melted faster than snowfall could accumulate into new ice. The glacier became thinner each year until, eventually, the ice in the bowl of the shield volcano stopped moving. No longer shifting under its own weight to create glacial currents, Okjökull became still—a once-living mass that glaciologists refer to as “dead ice”.”^[8]

There are those who believe the change in glacier sizes are all part of the natural process. During my time in Iceland I spoke with our glacier guide who said she doesn’t believe in climate change and that the world has always changed temperature. Tómas Jóhannesson, the head of Veðurstófa’s glacier group, says that misses the point. Again, as quoted in the Reykjavik Grapevine,

“The history of Iceland shows alternating cool and warm periods. This has always been the case. But anthropogenic, man-made global warming is now of such a magnitude that it’s pulling our climate outside of the natural variations. We’ve had ice ages, and warmer periods than now, which demonstrates that the Earth’s climate goes through large changes. We know that Iceland was completely ice covered during the ice age. We know roughly the causes that led to the ice age, and what forcing in the energy flux from the sun was required to create an ice age, or an ice-free Iceland. The forcings that humans are creating through emissions of greenhouse gasses are of a similar magnitude. And so, we expect similar results. We can expect very serious consequences from our disruption of the climate.”^[9]

So, is there any hope? Dr. M Jackson, Geographer and Glaciologist, thinks so. As she says,

“If climatic conditions are conducive to ice growing, ice will grow. But ice needs a specific set of things, including cold temperatures, time, and snow. We look at the temperature projections for the next 20 years, and there seems to be an upward trend, so that is not going to be great for glaciers, and a lot of glaciers are going to disappear.

Is that a permanent thing? No. Can glaciers grow back? Yes. Is there a lot we can do to slow the process of glacier change? Absolutely. We know that they are really sensitive to climate, and that should tell us that we need to amp up how we work with our climate. Glaciers are incredibly important. They are worth saving. Somewhere in that process of saving glaciers, we are going to save ourselves.”^[10]

The following photos are the second in my series from from our driving completely around Iceland on Route 1 (Icelandic: Þjóðvegur 1 or Hringvegur).

The late 1970s saw T. M. Lee establish Universal Electronics Industries. Initially he planned to produce capacitors, but they soon moved onto producing flash units.

In 2017 Manami Okazaki has interviewed Lee and wrote,

Lee, who had studied locomotive technology, began winning praise for his WOC 250x flash, which caught the attention of Agfa, a German company that was interested in establish­ing a factory in Hong Kong to manufacture flash units.

 “They asked me to reform our factory, and set very strict regulations,” says Lee, when we speak in his office in industrial Hung Hom, Kowloon. “Of course, they were a very famous company, so we accepted their demands.

“At the start of the 1970s, there was only our com­pany and one other making external flash units in Hong Kong, but at the end of the ’70s, you know how many factories were making flash units? Thirty more!”

Japanese camera maker Konica put a sudden end to that explosive growth with the Pikkari, a camera with a built-in flash, a concept other manufacturers then copied.

“At the beginning of the 1980s, so many factories closed very fast, only two or three companies remained,” recalls Lee. “At that time, we moved from Kwun Tong to Hung Hom, and we employed 200 workers. We dismissed so many workers – more than 100.”

While Universal struggled to survive by selling flash units to professional photo studios, Lee racked his brains for a new product. Recognising that China was beginning to open up, Lee wanted something to sell to consumers there who were looking for foreign products. He would develop an affordable camera for the masses, he decided.

The concept for the Holga was very simple. A cheap and accessible camera that would have the bare necessities for photo mechanisms. This simple construction meant that the Holga, as Lofico notes ‘was prone to a number of optical distortions such as vignetting, blurring and light leaks – what was seen as “imitations” in the technical sense’.

Sadly, for Lee, the Holga didn’t take off as consumers were more interested in the 35mm than 120mm. Lee attempted to shop the Holga around overseas with less than positive results.

But everything changed when, As Okazaki notes,

‘American photo­journalist [David] Burnett used a Holga to shoot a presidential campaign. A dramatic monochrome shot of Democratic candidate Al Gore won him the 2001 White House News Photographers Association’s Eyes of History contest‘.

It was from this moment, that word about the Holga started to spread. Its popularity and cult status started to grow, and the Holga found itself being utilised in places one never thought it would be utilised. For example, Teru Kuwayama, a New York-based photojournalist, has used the Holga to shoot in war zones and during humanitarian crises.

Sadly, as reported by Okazaki, “In 2015, Holga closed its factory, which had, in 1990, been moved to Changping, in China’s Guangdong province, and most of the tooling equipment was thrown out. Lee kept the equipment to make the 120-format camera, though, “as a souvenir”.”

When I bought my Holga, I didn’t know the history of the camera. I was in a camera shop in L.A. buying 35mm film and happened to see a stand full of these plastic toy looking cameras. As I chatted with one of the store clerks and asked about the Holga, he told me that they were stopping the production of these cameras. So, for $50 USD I bought a Holga 120N and a bunch of 120mm film.

Below, is a selection of shots from the Holga on Kodak TRI-X 400 and Kodak Portra 400.

On November 29, 1873, Amelia Edwards arrived in Cairo, Egypt. Her mission, to explore the Nile and document everything she saw.  Upon arrival in Cairo, Edwards and her team sought out a vessel to travel up the Nile. During the time it took to acquire, Edwards and her team spent the time exploring, studying and documenting their surroundings, including the Giza Pyramid Complex.

By December 13, Edward’s had managed to acquire a dahabeeyah. Their Dahabeeyah was a shallow, flat bottomed boat with 2 masts; an upper deck with cabins and lower deck area for crew. It could be used by raising the sails or by rowing. They set off from Cairo towards Abu Simbel arriving January 31, 1874.

Edwards’ time at Abu Simbel would prove to be crucial in her growing love for ancient Egypt, though the experience was a negative one. During her 18 day stay at Abu Simbel, Edwards participated in a number of excavations, including great temple of Ramesses II. But it was the looters, thieves and destruction of these ancient sites that had a profound impact on Amelia and changed the course of her life.

Throughout her journey Amelia recorded everything she saw in copious detail. This led to the publication of A Thousand Miles up the Nile, which was first published in 1877. In her book Edwards’ articulated her fear of how tourists from throughout Europe were destroying, defacing and looting graves and monuments.

Her concern for the preservation of these antiquities and of the cultural heritage of ancient Egypt was so great that it led Amelia to devote the rest of her life to this cause. She championed the cause of archaeology and Egyptology as well as encouraging protection for the historical sites and artefacts, through her writing and lecturing.

This endeavour culminated in 1882, with Edwards founding the Egypt Exploration Fund. To help promote and advance the Fund’s work Edwards continued to write and lecture, even embarking on a tour of the United States from 1889 –1890, up until her death in 1892.

Arguably, Edwards is one of the key figures in the 19^th century who encouraged interest in ancient Egypt, including the Pyramids of Giza. So, although her voyage up the Nile was not a common journey for a woman in this time period, I’m personally thankful for the work of this strong willed and adventurous women.

The following photos are from Giza and our time in Cairo.