Tag Archives: photography

Real Life Adventures: The Lost Photos in a Blizzard Guy

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmop7EAY1Zg]

Last Friday, I met Todd Bieber, a dude who found a canister of film while skiing in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. In a male Amelie sort of twist, he developed the photos and set out to find the photographer by making a Youtube video about the contents. The video was witty, honest, poignant in its recognition that this adventure was much too fantastic to continue. Suddenly, it had racked up a million hits and Bieber was swamped with emails postulating on who the photographer could be. After a few months of fruitless leads, a breakthrough: he received an email from the photographer and immediately booked a ticket to Paris to return the film to the girl who had lost it.

This is the tale that Time magazine described as “YouTube’s greatest adventure,” crafted by the person that ABC News described as “a real life international man of mystery.” Like many others, I was forwarded the first video last winter, and left enchanted by the idea that two strangers could connect through the help of millions of good Samaritans on the internet. But was it really true? After all, Bieber is a director for UCB comedy and a writer for the Onion, and the story just seemed too perfect to be genuine. So I mulled over the ploys that people use to get attention these days, and forgot about the video entirely.

Until I stopped by the Park Slope Food Coop one evening and glanced up at a flyer. Film Night: An Evening of Personal Documentaries. Found: Lost Pictures of New York Blizzard. And there he was, sitting right next to me, wearing a red flannel shirt, dark rimmed glasses, and some scruffy facial hair. The standard hipster uniform. He gave a nervous introduction, and it was clear that he was not used to public speaking, but his face brightened as he told us the rest of his story.

So, they met in Paris. They did not fall in love and get married and live happily forever. Bieber had brought his girlfriend along anyway. The meeting was actually kind of awkward.
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Stuart Franklin’s Political Ecology

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Photography: Stuart Franklin

The entry on our school calendar was unassuming and inconspicuous—”Franklin, Journalism.” The description in our student guidebook was even more humble, simply a thin line that read “Stuart Franklin, English photographer.” I glanced at it and the night before, on a lark, I decided to google the name to see Franklin’s previous work. Much to my shock, I soon realized that Franklin was a world-renowned Magnum photographer, the man who had taken the photo of Tank Man in Tiananmen Square. Yes, That photo.

On the appointed day, we eagerly gathered in class, where a bespectacled chap carried himself with distinction to the front of the classroom. “Dr. Stuart Franklin, Political Ecology,” read his first slide. The student next to me poked my shoulder—wasn’t this class supposed to be about journalism? What’s political ecology? Are we sure this Dr. Franklin is a photographer, and not someone else with the same name?

As it turned out, Franklin is a man of many talents, not only a career photographer for Time and National Geographic, but the recipient of a PhD in geography at Oxford University. He now publishes and teaches courses in political ecology and photography at Oxford.

The burning question: what is political ecology? As he defined it, it is the analysis of complex political economic relationships between society and land- or marine-based resources or products. It’s political economy + environment. It’s a network of cultural interactions with the land around them. Food chains and the working conditions of migrant workers are two topics that might fall into this lens of analysis.

Convinced? Skeptical that this is just another newfangled invention of concatenated existing subfields? Regardless, Franklin took us on a fascinating trip around the world, as we looked at slash-and-burn destruction in Indonesia and Afghans fighting in a bread queue, all photographed in pristine condition. The following are some of his thoughts on photography, politics, and the luckiest break of his career.

There was an uprising that spring. A lot of factors were in play, but it was mostly due to increasing flows of information and the large amount of corruption going on. Young people were finally getting annoyed by corruption by people in power, and so they came out to the streets. It was a huge moment for the Chinese to demonstrate, and I asked if I could go to Beijing. My plane ticket was paid for by Magnum, but when I got there, Time put me on assignment and I ended up just staying there.

The epicenter of the action was Tiananmen, and at that point, I had been working as a photojournalist for about 10 years, and I was a pretty hardened war photographer. I knew that I had to get close to Tiananmen, so I found the Beijing Hotel, and I parked myself there.
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Recipe: Potstickers, Politics and Pork

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Photo: Valeria Necchio

Last week marked a new lunar year, so in conjunction with my UNISG classmates, we held a Chinese New Year celebration, with all the Asian-style dishes you can possibly concoct (using the limited supplies found in Italy). There were all the classic, prosperity-bringing foods, like fish and tangerines, along with Thai-style noodles, pork with black bean sauce, and a heaping bowl of deep-fried squid. Yum, bring out the Sriracha!

For the occasion, I decided to make jiaozi (餃子) and nian gao (年糕). Now, I am pretty pro at making potstickers (although I haven’t figured out how to pleat them one-handed yet), but usually I just buy pre-made wrappers. Hey, stop judging, it takes long enough to mince the filling, fold and cook everything! However, in the bountiful land of Italy, packages of jiaozi wrappers are a little more difficult to come by. I could spend the day going to Turin to search them out, or alternatively, make them from scratch. It probably would have taken the same amount of time. In the end, cost won out and I decided to tackle making wrappers by hand.

So, I skyped my mom and asked her for a wrapper recipe. Now, you have to understand that when you ask Asian moms for recipes, they tell you something like, “Oh, that’s easy. First, you take two spoonfuls of X and a bag of Y, then you mix in some Z and add a cup of water, then steam it until it’s done. Is that clear?” Wait, what do you mean a spoonful? Is that a tablespoon or a teaspoon? And a bag, how much is that? “Oh, I mean a Chinese soup spoon. And you know—a bag! The brand of flour I always buy, I just use the whole bag.” Whoa, hold on, so when you say a cup of water, what kind of cup is that? “Oh, I always use this cup [gestures], the porcelain one with the flowers on it.” Um, okay, what about the steaming? How do you steam this? “What do you mean, how? Don’t you know how to steam things? Ai-yah, college-educated and brains are still empty!” At this point, we both throw our hands up in dismay.
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Mutato-Archive: Celebrating the Beauty of Heterogeneous Fruit

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SwissMiss pointed me to this gorgeous poster from the Mutato-Archive, a collection of misshapen and irregular fruits, vegetables and roots. With an eye for color and careful selection, Uli Westphal took dozens of photos of gnarly tubers, trident-shaped carrots and Siamese mushrooms. In other words, the set is a stunning display of natural diversity.

Too often, produce is bred to be perfectly uniform, symmetric and well, monotonous. Anything that shows a little too much character is often thrown out at the supermarket. What a shame! At least the EU has finally abandoned a law that bans the sale of irregularly-shaped but still nutritious produce. Maybe it’s not always about looks after all.
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