http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:CultureQuest&section=today deviantART RSS for by:CultureQuest en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:28:25 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://CultureQuest.deviantart.com/journal/27494519/ http://CultureQuest.deviantart.com/journal/27494519/ Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:24:39 PDT
My camera and I have captured thousands of images in the meantime, and I'll post the best of them as I get a chance.

Pam

]]> *CultureQuest http://CultureQuest.deviantart.com/journal/18788776/ http://CultureQuest.deviantart.com/journal/18788776/ Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:19:17 PDT
I'm back in Europe for most of the month of June. I'll be leaving Prague in a few days for Krakow, then on to Hungary for a week or more and then a few days in Paris. I'll post some images as I get access. It's so nice to be here, though shockingly expensive as an American given the drop in the dollar. It's architectural heaven for me here....

]]> *CultureQuest http://CultureQuest.deviantart.com/journal/17579592/ http://CultureQuest.deviantart.com/journal/17579592/ Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:59:54 PDT
I've been building a most splendid set of Favorites galleries, and so I wanted to share some of them and highlight some of the amazing work on DA.

I've been in a B&W mood this week, so I think I'll begin with a collection of spectacular monochromatic images I've been enjoying recently. I decided to limit myself to 15, though there are dozens more I will need to save for another day.

If you like these, visit these artists' DA galleries for more, since this is just a small taste of the rich imaging their bodies of works represent.








Many thanks to my DA friends for sharing their work and for their kindness in exchanging thoughts and ideas... ]]> *CultureQuest http://CultureQuest.deviantart.com/journal/17398520/ http://CultureQuest.deviantart.com/journal/17398520/ Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:38:06 PDT
I've been uploading some of my many street portraits today, mostly those from my time in China in 2005. While there, in addition to the standard, "de rigeur" tourist cities of Beijing and Shanghai, we visited some of the most interesting places I've ever been--and parts of China that most Westerners never get to learn about, much less to see.

So I'd like to introduce you (those of you to whom this is unfamiliar) to some of the many ethnic minority cultures of China. In addition to the dominant ethnic and cultural group, called the Han, there are officially 55 other ethnic cultures (and really hundreds more which are not officially recognized by the Chinese government). The primary cultural groups represented in my photos are from two provinces: (1) Xinjiang (the very westernmost province of China, bordering India, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and many other central Asian nations) and (2) Yunnan, in southwest China in the "foothills" of the Himalayas and bordering Tibet and Burma.

In Xinjiang, the largest ethnic minority are the Uyghurs (sometimes spelled Uighurs), a Turkic and Muslim group that is believed to be the second largest stateless cultural group next to the Kurds. Movements to break away and create East Turkestan in the last century were met with resistance by the Chinese, and the Uyghurs today still face a great deal of oppression and violence--as well as cultural displacement and attempts at assimilation--at the hands of the current PRC government of China.

We visited Kashgar, Urumqi and Turpan, three cities along the ancient Silk Road. The culture is bright, vibrant, and colorful, and the people were among the warmest and most open to outsiders (like our group of American educators) that I've ever met. They were thrilled to have me capture their images with my camera, and I find their gazes into the camera and at me to be deeply touching. These are the best portraits I've ever found, and I believe they truly capture the cultural souls of their subjects.

In Yunnan province, we spent the majority of our time in two small cities: Lijiang, home to the Naxi ethnic group and a remarkably picturesque and quaint city with a thriving old town, and Zhongdian (now renamed "Shangri-La" to bring in tourist dollars), home primarily to ethnic Tibetans and also home to the magnificent Songzanlin Tibetan Buddhist monastery. We spent a day in a Naxi village near Lijiang where we were welcomed into local homes and schools and had a chance to observe village life.

I hope you enjoy the portraits. I have no model releases other than the assent of these gracious people to allow me to take their photos, and I hope that my portrait gallery portrays them with the pride and respect that they and their cultures deserve.

Given the events taking place in Lhasa, Tibet, and other Tibetan cities in China and the Himalayas this week, I hope that these images will help all of us to reflect upon the need to preserve the dignity and diversity of human cultures in the face of political oppression, on the one hand, and the homogenizing forces of globalization, on the other.

I also will continue to add some more recent portraits from my visit a few months ago to western Turkey, particularly the town market at Selcuk and some street scenes from Ayvalik (a fishing town on the Aegean coast) and Bergama.

Comments are much welcomed. Thanks for visiting my galleries!

Pam

]]> *CultureQuest http://CultureQuest.deviantart.com/journal/16973181/ http://CultureQuest.deviantart.com/journal/16973181/ Wed, 20 Feb 2008 07:14:47 PST
What attracts us to photograph doors--particularly old doors in various parts of the world? So many of us seem to be drawn to this subject (see my own collection--more to come--as well as my collection of exquisite DA favorites). Mark (Red-Camera) and I have been having an interesting exchange about this, and he was wondering whether those of us pulled to this subject were more left-brained because we were attracted to the order, linearity and structure.

I love seeing the order and structure and geometry of human composition (and of nature), yet I am ultimately a person fascinated by culture and humanity and art and subjective expressions of those innermost feelings and beliefs... I am very much a "right-brain" dominant person when it comes to needing the big picture, the intuitive (in Jungian terms) symbolic, and so on--an INFP in Myers Briggs terms.

So I think that I'm especially drawn to "found" elements of order rather than so much feeling the need to impose order. And what fascinates me most about the doors and windows and architectural features I photograph would be the antiquity, the living history, reflected in them.

Brand new doors don't fascinate me at all. It's the peeling paint, the crumbling plaster, the multiple layers of color reflecting numerous generations of aesthetically-minded caretakers... as well as the idea of all those generations or even centuries of people who have passed by or through these portals and whose lives have somehow left their visible or invisible marks or remnants in that space.

A scratch from moving a piece of 20th century furniture; a scar from an ancient swordfight; the invisible imprint of a woman pressed against the door in an embrace by her lover leaving for war in yet another century; children running happily back and forth across the threshhold; families closing the door behind them in tragic sorrow when being forcibly dispossessed; bullet holes or gouges from bombing shrapnel; holes from having posters, notices and wreaths tacked upon them; hinges slightly askew from forced entry; the invisible layers of celebratory joy from street festivals....

...this is the way my mind works when I see these images.

If these doors could only speak, what stories could they tell us?

]]> *CultureQuest