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“Tirso de Molina”

Two Bulgarian gypsies busking in Madrid’s city centre.

“Cotton candy”

Serving out the good stuff at EPFL’s Vivapoly 2009 festival. Taken with a Lomo LC-A.

“Vidy”

Spring in Lake Leman, taken with cross-processed 35mm film.

“Painting in”

A worker paints himself into a frame in Lisbon

“Sun tanning at Vidy”

My two buddies at Vidy, enjoying a perfect summer’s day.

“Reading on the waterfront”

Water dominates the urban landscape in Stockholm

“Fair at Bellerive”

“Grand Pont”

Lausanne’s main bridge, taken with a Lomo LC-A on bog standard 35mm 200 film.

Dossier: Silk City - Living in Hanoi

This exhibition was featured in Fnac Lausanne during the month of March 2008.

Hanoi is a bustling and vibrant city. While it’s sister in the South, Saigon, quickly adapts and absorbs Western ways of life, Hanoi remains a city steeped in a unique culture. The whole city is dominated by anarchic urban planning and unusual ‘tube houses’, zero traffic regulations and mopeds, diesel fuel and greenery.

The sidewalks hint at the lush rainforests some kilometres away, and the oppressive heat is thick and humid. A city which has grown on the banks of the Red River, flowing around existing ecosystems. The very centre features a breathtaking lake, Hoan Kiem, with a central islet, connected by an old Imperial style bridge. The fury of the red, dragon like construction serves as a strong reminder of the Chinese legacy of the Vietnamese people, part of a crossroads legacy that characterises them uniquely.

It’s hard to overstate the penetration of the moped in the Vietnamese psyche. Extremely useful, as well as an exhilarating and definitive way to explore the city, citizens rush around on mopeds, commuting in smart business suits or going to market loaded with crates of vegetables that dizzy onlookers who try to contemplate the amazing feats of two-wheel balance.

I went to Vietnam as a volunteer. I taught English at the Hanoi School for the Blind, building on my existing experience as a language tutor. Nothing could have prepared me for an experience which was eye-opening for me, filling me with admiration for the blind community in a wider sense. My students took down notes furiously, punching small protrusions in the paper through a plastic grill. Writing from right to left to then take out the paper and skim through what they had written from left to right. A formidable sight was to see was the student orchestra. Expert hands blurring over intricate instruments, brows frowned in concentration. My camera clicking discreetly in the background, taking pictures they are condemned to never be able to see.

“Rumpelstiltskin”

A balcony in Lisbon.

“Constantinople in Madrid”

A Greek Orthodox Church in Madrid, Spain. Cross processed film.

“Portrait: Hanna”

My contribution to an exhibition dedicated to the Lomo LC-A camera held in Kharkhiv, Ukraine, July 2009.

A friend captured with the iconic Russian camera in Lausanne, Switzerland

“Portrait: Nana”

“Olives”

Mouthwatering food at a market in Catania, Sicily

Dossier: Rendezvous with the White City

Belgrade is a city on a privileged hilltop, cutting into the vast Pannonian Plains ahead as the mighty rivers Sava and the Danube lap its ancient shores.

It has changed hands many times in the past, as a result of its advantageous tactical situation and its strategic location at the intersection between the West and the East.

I had a chance to revisit this city which, despite not being the city of my birth nor the city I grew up in, I still nevertheless felt attached to from a family origin which felt close to me. I dove into the bubbling culture of Serbia interpreted through its window to the world, Belgrade.

This is a country which has suffered greatly in the past and has time and time again got up to keep on moving. Belgrade is a city with visible scars from the past, the latest of which are from the shameful 1999 NATO bombing. The ruins of some government buildings are still standing, grotesque monuments to stubborn national defiance. The signature Kalemegdan fortress, a park on the point of confluence of the river Sava into the mighty Danube, is a layer cake of all the different cultures which have claimed the White City as their own. From remnants of Roman fortresses to Ottoman towers, every major civilisation in the region has left an imprint here.

The Serbian people have taken the past in their stride and swiftly incorporate tragedies into national folklore and black humour. The character is riddled with paradoxes and contradictions.

A taxi driver drove at furious speeds through anarchic traffic at night, berating people who didn’t want to comply with new regulations that made wearing seatbelts obligatory. His own was, of course, unfastened.

One of the hallmarks of Serbian culture is a concept first described by occupying Turks: inat, which as a concept roughly translates as hard-headedness but experiencing it will quickly show the inadequacy of the English language to put into words such legendary stubborness. Belgrade is definitely a European city, but Western European civilised boredom has yet to be hammered into the people, as I learned when a friend of mine bribed a police patrol with a brand new pair of shoes in his trunk to dodge a hefty speeding fine.

The Cathedral to Saint Sava is a monumental construction, the biggest Orthodox temple in the Balkans, whose blinding white walls reach for the sky among a sea of grey concrete. While still under construction (which started in 1932 but was interrupted for various reasons since then), the shell of the building is strongly reminiscent of the Byzantine heritage which lives on in the Serbian Orthodox Church. One massive dome, representing the heavens, sits ominously over an interior of immense space. The Church has seen somewhat of a resurgence since the fall of the communist regime and is closely linked with a strong national sentiment. The average Serbian makes the most of every religious festival to eat and drink as much as possible.

The Communist past resurfaces every once in a while with a trundling Yugo car rumbling past, which although less common in Belgrade, remains a widely used method of transport in rural areas. Street vendors display planks of wood studded with old Communist medals and honours and a chic establishment close to the river Sava sells a retro-kitsch assortment of Tito inspired memorabilia.

Distinctly Slavic is the fixation on chess. Taxi drivers will send you away rather than interrupt a tense endgame. However, the food is a cultural element which displays the past in all its glory. From gelatine meat one could find in Russia to a Serbian salad more at home in Greece, to goulasch from the Hungarian neighbours and burek and grilled meat from the Ottoman Empire, Serbian food is a strong and varied experience worth going to some trouble for. The passion for grilled meat and the economic status of the country keep meat prices low and a Mediterranean outlook on life means that one can find food stalls in the wee hours of the morning (for a pittance by European standards), grilling army sized quantities of succulent meat for hungry clubbers. Serbians pride themselves on their food.

But even more alive than their passion for food is their passion for basketball. Yugoslavia’s legendary basketball team has historically been one of the strongest teams on the planet, if not the strongest, taking home three world titles and five European titles. A routine Euroleague game pitting Partizan against Barcelona’s strong lineup had the most furious stadium I have ever experienced. The seating arrangements were non-existant - people crowded into corridors and hung off the stands to cheer and jeer in a unified cacophony of cigarette smoke and fire and brimstone slogans.

The stadium was small and outdated, the ‘Pioneer’ Arena, a throwback to a Socialist past, but every last centimetre of it was used.

A small ditty was graffittied on the crumbling wall outside:

Tako je

Kakvo je

Ali bar ga imamo

“It is how it is, but at least we have it.”

“Hugo!”

“Barquillo”

“Portrait: Ivo”

“Ouchy Marina”

A dog looks on at the activity in the nearby Marina.

“Skatepark à Vidy”

Lausanne’s skatepark

“Portrait: Bière à St. Paul”

A beer at St. Paul in Paris.

“Cross processed pedalos”

“Stubborn”

The canals in the Flon district of Lausanne, where an Argentine dogo refuses to budge.

“Portrait: Sylvie”

“Rue des Rosiers”

A bustling Jewish community in the Parisian district of Le Marais.

“Capoeira”

“Stuck”

A scene from the island of Hydra, in Greece.

“Birdbath”

Stone pillars strewn through Lausanne mark the passage of the old river underneath the asphalt.

“Bellerive”

“Lunchtime at Renens”

“Almost”

Just late to the train at Lausanne, Switzerland.

“Night time in Wasastad”

A scene from Stockholm’s Wasastad district.

“Caleta de Famara”

A heart throb of a village on the northernmost point of the volcanic island of Lanzarote.

“Obsidian lizard”

A sharply black lizard on the volcanic island of Lanzarote.

“Cross processed cow”

Cross-processed slide film frame of a cow just outside the university in Lausanne, Switzerland.

“Llama”

At the Knie zoo in Bellerive.

“Magician”

A street performer in the Rastro in Madrid prepares a new show.

“Figuritas”

Turn left off the busy, touristy, flea market of El Rastro in Madrid and you end up in a place where locals sell antiques and odd bits and pieces in a supremely elegant fashion.

“Cow Parade Metropolis”

The Cow Parade passes through Madrid.

“Mercado de San Miguel”

A recently refurbished market in Madrid, Spain, bustles with Sunday activity.

“Nana”

A boathouse in Ouchy, Switzerland.

“Les Vosges”

Dinner at Places des Vosges, Paris.

“Portrait: Cowboys”

A graffiti background in Atocha, one of Madrid’s up and coming districts.

“Femés”

A hilltop town on the volcanic island of Lanzarote, on the Canary Islands. Whitewashed architecture and low lying buildings are a hallmark of Lanzarote, a trend imposed by world renowned architect César Manrique, himself a native of the island, to protect Lanzarote’s heritage from global tourism.

“Just ignore it”

What on Earth is going on.

Dossier: Jean-Claude, from Haiti

I met Jean-Claude outside the MACBA, the Contemporary Art Museum in Barcelona, Spain. He showed me where he lived, which is a makeshift cardboard shelter propped up against one of the building’s outcrops and his canvases.

Jean-Claude is a very talented painter and artist. Despite living on the street, he gets by selling his colourful and bright depictions of market scenes from his home country of Haiti. The furiously alive and energetic depictions of life on the island stand out vividly against the brown and ochre shades of the streets in El Raval.

I ask him where he kept his paintings at night. He tells me, in the thick molasses tones of his Haitian French, that he and his mates keep an eye on each other at night. I wave at the handful of other people sitting against the MACBA. He tells me that the money he makes selling paintings goes straight back into buying canvases and paints to keep him going.

Jean-Claude’s stoicism impressed me, most of all. Despite living on the street, he consistently produces canvases with so much energy and life, thick brushes of memory, longing and melancholy, with a passionate Caribbean vibe.

He starts to elude questions as I tentatively try to explore his history and his past. We sit in silence for a few minutes, watching locals become entranced by the brilliant colours of a distant land on display. I get up to leave as the sun starts to set lazily over the melting pot that is Barcelona. We exchange a cordial handshake and a farewell.

“Bienvenue chez moi, monsieur Adrian”

“Rathaus teens”

Gothy teens hang out in front of Munich’s Town Hall.

“A conversation overheard”

Under the arcades near the Plaza Mayor in Madrid.

“Chueca”

Madrid’s Chueca district is at once a synthesis of antiquated excentricites and cutting edge alternative cultures.