The numerous tattered wooden groynes, broken concrete slabs, and piles of housing bricks bear witness to nature’s relentless attacks. Many of these defenses date back to the period of time after the North Sea Flood of 1953, and in the area around Happisburgh (pronounced /ˈheɪzbrə/) they are really showing their age. Ragged wooden piles, twisted iron reinforcements, and heaps of concrete are all that remain of these monuments to Canute.

A managed retreat from the most vulnerable areas has been proposed. The plan would let the marshes regain their role as a buffer for the flood tides, but the local residents are resisting, asking for more money to be invested into the Sisyphean task of protecting the coast.

And yet, there is a stark beauty in the landscape / seascape. This delicate border of sand and flint cliffs form the ‘last ditch’ defense of the flat Norfolk hinterlands.

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When I was an EMT trainee I did a series of ride-alongs on the ambulances of the San Francisco Fire Department. I noticed that the majority of calls were for those referred to as “frequent fliers” or repeat patients of the EMS system–primarily poor, homeless, mentally ill, disabled, alcoholics and drug abusers. Their perpetual requests for emergency care are predominantly for non-life-threatening emergencies, and the constant attention costs tax-payers millions of dollars a year.*

I later realized that I needed to go back out on these calls with a camera. I feel it is important to capture the magnanimous dedication of the San Francisco Fire Department’s EMS Division and hope my photographs will (unofficially) support the Homeless Outreach and Medical Emergency Team (HOME) program—a collaboration between the SFFD and the Health Department that joins social services and medical care to help the recurrent patients get the help they need without having to call 911. In some cases I did not gain permission to show the patient’s face, and I needed to creatively block the shot. Most of the time they were willing when I told them why I was shooting.

This is a work in progress.

—

One night of repeats #1 …

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We rolled up on this man as he was being cuffed by SFPD. According to the caller who reported him, he was under the influence of narcotics and running around in circles in the middle of an intersection. He was determined to be under the influence of psychopathic narcotics and taken to San Francisco General Hospital.

Later in the evening we had a call at the Montgomery BART Station, where a man had a complaint of chest pains. We found him on the floor and loaded him into a chair and took him out to an ambulance for transport.

One night of repeats #2 …

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This shift started out with a multiple vehicle rollover accident on the 101/280 split. Accidents are common here as drivers race across all lanes to get on the 101 from the previous onramp from 280.

Later that night we had a call from an intoxicated homeless man who called about chest pains which really ended up being a scab on his hand. He was quite a character. He noticed my camera and played the air guitar for me. A friend of his came by, taunted him, sung along with him, and gave him a dollar and a slice of watermelon.

One night of repeats #3 ...

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This man was just woken up from an overdose. He wasn’t too happy to see us, but calmed down a bit when we let him know that he would have expired if we hadn’t been called by his friends. He was then transported for further observation.

Special Thanks for this project goes to:

• Paramedic Captain John Cavanaugh, SFFD
• EMS Division Chief Pete Howes,  SFFD
• Paramedic Captain Niels Tangherlini, SFFD, HOME Team Director

* “According to figures obtained from the Department of Public Health, in 2007, 108 individuals cost the city $4.6 million in ambulance and emergency room fees. That’s an average of nearly $43,000 a year for each person.” City finds funds for money-saving program, C.W. Nevius– SF Gate, page  B – 1  (1/6/2009)

Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com or use the Contact Form for more information on licensing these photographs and others on this issue.

“Serious sport is war minus the shooting.”

–G. B. Shaw

As one who believes geographical allegiances should be local rather than national and who has only the dilettante’s interest in competitive sports, I find the fanatical devotion characterizing the World Cup as amusing as the tournament itself. The World Cup produces intense feelings, which manifest themselves in a variety of aspects, including facial paint, lucky charms, bizarre costumes, wild inebriation and customized cheering. For most followers of the competition, the World Cup is an opportunity to feel a uniquely communal agony or levity, dependent on the outcome of a match to which the fan has had no part in, but who undergoes the winning or losing as if it were one’s own experience.

In Japan, this loyalty involved some ungodly match times due the time difference East Asia enjoys in relation to South Africa. When Japan advanced to the Round of 16 after defeating Denmark, 3 – 1, thousands of fans erupted into the streets to celebrate the victory. It was just after 5:00 AM on a muggy Friday morning and Hachiko Crossing, the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world, erupted in such pandemonium that the casual non-fan would be forgiven for believing that Japan defeated Brazil to win the tournament itself, rather than just the first of five rounds, a feat accomplished by fifteen other teams. Were such celebrations a spontaneous outburst born from low expectations? Was it a fit of pride, anomalous good news for a nation suffering through two decades of slow growth that has seen their economic cachet dwindling against China and other emerging East Asian markets? Or was it simply inevitable that thousands of young fans staying up all night drinking beer would want to get down and party when their team won?

To say the least, witnessing such an outburst in Japan is highly unusual for a culture famed for its social reticence. The Japanese may open themselves to others, but rarely do they thrust their joys so deliriously upon strangers. The peculiarly Japanese cartoon types— exuberant in blue superhero suits, Yukio Hatoyama gag masks, and bright blue afro wigs (blue being the team color)— worked the fans like deft cheerleaders, gathering crowds and stirring them into a frenzy. Thousands of people streaming from Shibuya’s teeming bars towards the central train station threw off their exhaustion to improvise a jig with strangers, actions they would view with bewilderment in more sober circumstances.

The atmosphere had that rare whiff of danger, as one might expect in an environment compounded by sleeplessness, alcohol, and a sports victory. Yet this danger did not seem so much physical as it did psychological. You could hear it being screamed and sung in wild cacophonous eruptions, “Nippon! Nippon! Nippon!”— a cry as aggressive as any outburst of “USA! USA! USA!” to those not given to national self-mythologizing. They say one man’s meat is another man’s poison; thus the peril, which sometimes requires the competitive energy of a sporting event to make evident, is nationalism.

Like nearly all countries, Japan has its share of right-wingers, nativists, and xenophobes. Though they are ostensibly a minority, their soapboxes and bullhorns, ubiquitous at train stations and embassies, mean they are politically loud. However, they seem to be a dying bunch, grumpy old men with long memories of losing a great war.

I was thus surprised then to witness Japan’s Imperial Flag brandished by a heap of twentysomething soccer fanatics. There it was billowing in the morning wind with all the suggestiveness of history dyed in the bright red rays emanating from a rising sun. You might call it beautiful if you didn’t know better but for those who do, it symbolizes Japan’s catastrophic attempt at empire: colonies in Manchuria and Korea, gory battles in Iwo Jima and Okinawa and of course, the apocalypses of Hiroshima and Nagasaki— the fluttering cloth becoming an object of collective pride for hundreds of young, intoxicated, impressionable young men.

But soccer teams, like governments, do not always succeed in what they set out to do. Promises cannot always be kept. Despite a plucky performance the Japanese team was eliminated from the tournament in a tense, hard-fought finish against Paraguay. Those fans screaming the loudest will have to process the humility in losing with their convictions of national pride. This synthesis can only bring them into the greater fold of humanity, which may be the point of the World Cup after all.

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Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com or use the Contact Form for more information on licensing these photographs and others on this issue.

IN 2009 Arnaud De Grave was commissioned to design a book cover for Labyrint, a Copenhagen-based publishing company translating French crime novels to Danish. Sent to Marseille to walk the path of the book’s protagonist, De Grave photographed the seamy underbelly of the dark city captured in Jean-Claude Izzo’s Total Kheops, a tale of “Lagavulin, jazz and beautiful girls”. Some of his results, which have hung in galleries across Denmark, are selected here.

For their next project, Caryl Férey’s Zulu, the action takes place in South Africa. A timely, but expensive location shoot for the up and coming publishing house was scrapped at De Grave’s insistence that he could recreate the macabre Johannesburg setting, where the value of human life is judged on a quid pro quo basis, simply by renting a studio and hiring a model. As one of the main characters of the novel, if not the heroine, De Grave captures the enigmatic soul of the dancer who performs her zulu war-influenced dances in smoky clubs shrouded in violence and mystery.

Zulu (Caryl Férey, 2008)

The cover shot is a close-up portrait of model Kristina Remne chosen for its austerity. Yet when the polished and reserved monochrome image on the finished cover is contrasted to the outtakes of Kristina dancing in the hellfire flash of the novel’s fiery climax, the viewer/reader begins – through De Grave’s work- to understand the clarity of the author’s vision.

Another selection of black and white imagery can be viewed at the BOP Association Gallery.

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Arnaud De Grave is a gonzo photographer / journalist currently living in Denmark. For information on licensing these and other images please contact Magnesium Photos

It had been ten years since I was last in Berlin and was marveling from the top of the Reichstag’s large viewing terrace at the immense facelift the city has undergone when I heard the collective voices of hundreds chanting screeds alongside the cries of an indecipherable (Ich spreche kein Deutsch) man using a bullhorn coming from the nearby Brandenburg Gate, the border between the old East / West Berlin. Curious, I left the tourists behind me at the refurbished Reichstag and approached the Pariser Platz as the crowd’s chanting crescendoed, erupting into cheers when I passed beneath the gate’s statue of Nike, the Greek Goddess of victory.

Not understanding what they were saying, and despite not having any clear idea what was actually happening, it was quickly clear that a great number of Palestinians, Turks, Syrians (identifiable by their flags) and others were extremely unhappy. I immediately began snapping photos and realized that I was more accepted within the surging Muslim crowd dressed in hijabs and kuffiyehs, felt more at home with the protesters, given free reign to shoot as I pleased by them than the stoic and disapproving police covered head to toe in riot gear lining the perimeter of the square.

Asking a Syrian woman boasting her birth country’s flag, I quickly got the details:

“These hundreds of people are gathered here in Pariser Platz beneath Brandenburg Gate today (Friday, June 4th 2010) to protest the Israeli raid on six ships comprising the the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla, carrying more than 600 hundred passengers. They killed nineteen people and injured hundreds. This is unacceptable. They must be stopped!”

Three Youths Hug the Pariser Platz Sign beneath Brandenburg Gate during the Gaza Protest

The attack, which occurred approximately 65 kilometers of the Gaza coast in international waters, has been condemned worldwide and has brought well-deserved attention to what some call at minimum an illegal blockade, yet one that the Likud government spokesman Mark Regev maintains “was totally within its rights under international law to intercept the ship and to take it to the port of Ashdod”. Much more than just another “incident” within controversial areas many are unwilling to wade into, the use of what the majority of the protesters deem to be unnecessarily deadly force against boatloads of international journalists and writers as well as the death of nine Turkish activists, has gotten the attention of Turkey, Israel’s biggest trading partner and up to now, most trustworthy regional ally.

Turkey, which has seemed to usurp the role of Mideast leader of late, may have the power to apply unseen pressure on their their Mediterranean neighbor, possibly more so than U.S. president Barack Obama’s so far unheeded advice to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lift the blockade against the Palestinians. They meet in Washington on July 6th.

None of the people here were willing to sit down at the nearby Starbucks to discus Israel’s claims to homeland security after the unilateral action by its military, which many of its own citizens condemned as overly harsh.

Just as soon as I had seen a fraction of the new Berlin (without the hundreds of cranes towering above last century’s skyline), where the multi-ethnic citizens use of freedom of speech seemed to equal or greater to anything I had ever experienced, I realized that more than just the usual protest, something massive was being stirred, an immense stand was being taken, with a greater number of countries involved than ever before, one from which we don’t emerge unaffected nor unscathed. I had a train to catch, an article to write and negatives to develop, but more than more of the same supposed unbiased reportage, I had to look deep to see that there was no clear understanding, no simple cut and dried answer, no unaffected people. The problem is growing and more and more people are becoming involved everyday, some violently, even fatally so. I have to ask myself if the answer really lies in more walls, borders and flags.

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Manny Santiago is a photographer / journalist currently circumnavigating the globe. For information on licensing these and other images please contact Magnesium Photos

“I’m an artist. When you tell people that they usually say, what’s your medium? I always say, ‘Extra large.’”

-Jean Michel Basquiat

Nobody as far as I know has written about the cultural significance of walls and too bad, for though their subject may be pedestrian at first glance, their prominence within history and art is undeniable. Jerusalem has a Wailing Wall where wishes are wedged into the stone by faithful worshippers. Israel has another wall built recently, used as a border to filter Palestinian people through security checkpoints in and out of Gaza and the West Bank. Berlin once had a wall utilized for similar reasons and Pink Floyd has a depressing album about one. China’s wall you can see from the moon and Jean-Paul Sartre’s most readable short story is called The Wall.

Walls have been with us ever since man has sought shelter from his environment. They have various necessary and symbolic functions, the most obvious of which is providing structural support for homes and business. While accommodating privacy they also separate us, shutting people away from each other. Walls are boundaries; they suggest limits, establishing private property, telling us where we can and cannot go. They can be white, padded, and locked if one is deemed insane. Should they be covered with squiggly marks done in aerosol paint, they jeopardize real estate values. Walls are intended to protect us yet too often in these terrified times they are adorned with barbed wire, their symbolism taking a ghastly, violent poise. We forget this, but walls are also potential canvases. Huge, inspiring, storytelling space.

While the kingdom of Morocco may be famous for its deserts, bazaars, and couscous, it may be the vividness of color that strikes the visitor on a level that might be described as ecstatic. Psychologists have long pointed out the connection between mood and color and that melancholy can be a consequence of grayness. Throughout the large cities and small towns of Morocco, windows, gates, and doors are gilded with reds, pinks, and orange. Although it can feel slapdash and improvised, if not whimsical, the effect of urban color on the spirit is deliberate and powerful.

Asilah, a small Atlantic seaside town just south of Tangier, annually commissions international artists to create large, painted murals. Some are representational while others are abstract: visible are elements of cave paintings, cubism, and Cy Twombly. Like most inner-city medinas in Morocco, Asilah’s central layout is a complex maze of plazas, streets, and alleys that takes some time to orient oneself. Throughout the medina these huge murals can be found, though the best ones are located by the main elementary school, which hopefully, is an inspiration to the passing children.

This is a wonderful thing. To keep art in museums– as opposed to the streets– is to suggest that art is ‘historical’, and thus has little relevance to contemporary culture. Worse, secluding its appreciation to privileged circles within the museum complex, society withholds art’s everyday effect from the ordinary citizen. To do this in Morocco, a country with double-digit unemployment, would be spiteful and absurd. The streets of Moroccan towns are never silent. In cafes men smoke and talk. Women converge to gossip on doorways and park benches. Home for many is a cramped dark place, so it makes sense the street would be a viable contrast in brightness.

Chefchaouen is another city remarkable for its color. Most of the town center has been painted a rich knockout blue since the 15th century. This bold use of a uniform color has a tremendous effect. It gives the city a visible personality. Moreover, it welcomes the visitor into its space effortlessly, so that old men in djellaba cloaks, children playing with water guns, cats lazy from the sun and you, yourself, have all become characters within this rich and beautiful canvas.

If one walks long enough (and in such surroundings one is inclined to walk all day), a person will eventually witness cracks in the walls, exposed brick and wood, childishly scrawled graffiti. Rather than imperfections, these marks seem to define character and age: not all dilapidation is bad, just as not all shiny surfaces are beautiful. In fact, the flaws insinuate the aura of collaboration between time, nature and human creativity as on evidence is the work of the stonemason, the carpenter, the journeyman laborer, and the eleven-year-old boy.

As the world moves closer in globalized sameness it becomes imperative that we adopt the flair for color so appreciable within the towns of Asilah and Chefchaouen. Doing so would bring people out of their techno-cocoons and into the street for games, talk, and friendship. There is no excuse. After all, we have plenty of wall space to fill.

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Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com or use the Contact Form for more information on licensing these photographs and others on this issue.

Tokyo’s Metropolitan Expressway — Shuto Kōsoku Dōro — is Tokyo’s answer to handling large volumes of traffic traversing the megalopolis.

The first sections were opened in time to showcase Tokyo for the 1962 Olympics. Not designed as an unlimited speed road, its main purpose was to ferry cars around at moderate speeds, unhindered by the non-car friendly Tokyo streets.

While some sections snake alongside rivers, or behind buildings at ground level, most of the road sections are elevated above ground, or tunnel under major areas such as the Imperial Palace or other surface roads.

Many sections of road deck are multilevel, often consisting of four or more layers. Because of limitations of the landscape, buildings, subterranean infrastructure (other roads and train lines), the often convoluted elevated sections, tunnels, dividers, ramps, interchanges, and tollbooths all conspire to enhance the legend of the Shuto as being a challenging road to drive, at any speed.

The Shuto also includes the Tokyo Wan Aqualine, a 15km straight-line blast under, and then over, Tokyo Bay (wan) to Chiba. The Aqualine used to be a ‘private’ road, built by private interests and with a toll value set at the wish of the operator. Like many private roads in Japan (such as the Atsugi Toll Road to Fuji-san), they used to be un-policed for speed limits. This open status promoted street racing gangs, sometimes badging themselves with ’250′ or ’300′ patches – representing their supposed topped-out kilometer-per-hour speed achievements on public roads.

Sadly, or perhaps for the better, speed limits on private toll roads are now policed — not before I was able to enjoy nailing the throttle on a Ferrari V8, roof down, in a vain attempt to chase down some hairdresser in his RX-7. I am not sure what sounded better: the five-valve V8 from Modena, or the Hiroshima rotary cracking and spitting fire on the over-run as we screamed through the tunnel section. At some ridiculous speed, I chickened out, and watched the RX-7 disappear into the distance.

While street racers have used sections for racing, notably the Wangan (Bayshore) sections, the Shuto gained global exposure with the 1998 release of Shutoku Battle, a Dreamcast console game known as Tokyo Extreme Racer for export markets, accurate for its representation of the Shuto’s layout and surrounding features of Tokyo; down to being able to see my old apartment as you raced past at high speed. I still wake in the middle of the night when hearing a loud exhaust, thinking perhaps I am still in my bed next to the Akasaka-Roppongi-Knot (‘ARK’), a particularly notorious set of bends known to claim the unwary.

Working nearby to the Shuto too, and while enjoying car talk at work one day, one of the senior managers — perhaps sixty years of age — commented that he too enjoyed fast cars, driving a Legacy Turbo. As a joke I asked, “So Tanaka-san, do you get up at 02:00 and go racing around the Shuto?”

“Of course!” he blurted out rapidly, looking at me as if I was mad to even ask such a question.

One notable site for all car types to congregate is the Shuto’s Daikoku Futo – halfway between Yokohama and Tokyo on the Wangan route.

With no other facilities except a gas station and some fast food sellers, it is perhaps a natural place to congregate, talk about rides, and enjoy the sounds of fast cars screaming overhead on the elevated sections.

The Parking Area (‘PA’), on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays is often full of interesting rides. Not only for legendary Japanese cars like GT-Rs, twin-cammed Toyota and fast rotaries, but bikes too, the Porsche, Ferrari & Lamborghini clubs sometimes show up, as do a regular smattering of bozosoku and general shakotan style aficionados.

On the access roads outside the PA, in front of the local koban, less responsible drivers have been known to practice their mountain drifting skills. The massive tire marks, rubber-marbles in the gutter, and the sometimes dinged guard-rail, are all obvious signs of some serious drift work.

YouTube has numerous postings, including bemused police in their koban, and their attempts to shut the drifters down.

The new Yamate Tunnel adds another 10.9km of fun to the run from Ikebukero to Meguro. It features some remarkable engineering, including a twelve-level climb from the subterranean run to nine levels above ground to join the Chuo Expressway at Hatsudai – this up-and-down roller coaster ride alone is worth the ¥700 entrance fee.

While I ride the Shuto two or three times per week, commuting on my barge-like Maxam scooter, the best time of course is as recommended by Tanaka-san in his Subaru: late evenings, or early mornings. Chasing the fire-breathing RX-7s and GT-Rs is a lot more pleasurable when I can forget the camera, and enjoy the wail of an Audi V8, a Nissan inline six, or a high-revving Mazda rotary next to me as we scream through the tunnels and wind through the many routes around Tokyo.

All at the recommended speed limit of course.

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Skorj is a photographer/journalist living in Japan. For information on licensing these and other images please contact Magnesium Photos

Popular culture would have us believe that carnivals are all about “normal” people stepping into the freakshow world of the grotesque. In television: from the Kelsey Grammer-voiced psychopath Sideshow Bob of The Simpsons to Heroes‘ (disappointing) season four, in film: Tod Browning’s cult Freaks and the David Spade classic Joe Dirt, in literature: Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land and Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love, the culture of carnies runs the gamut from the mainstream to the obscure.

Like any clan, they have their own language, traditions and mores. More than merely over-exoticized societal outcasts and an enticing option for orphans to runaway and join, carnies-as well as any other marginalized group of people- have existed in various forms since the beginning of time, and are a valid, largely self-sufficient subculture deserved of the begrudging admiration reserved for all those intrepid souls who still manage to eke out a living as nomads on the fringes of a prejudiced and sedentary world.

So when Australian-based Magnesium photographer Vitek Skonieczy found out about the small carnival that was setting up in the Western-Sydney suburb of Bass Hill, he decided to tell another story: one of the people who make up these extended families still roaming the outskirts of big cities worldwide for your entertainment.

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Vitek is a photographer/journalist living in Australia. For information on licensing these and other images please contact Magnesium Photos

On May 31th, 1901, after a lot of sweat and blood, just a few years before the October revolution, Tzar Nikolai of the Romanov dynasty opened the railway in the name of Russian empire, thus connecting St. Petersburg with the distant city of Vladivostok on the shores of Pacific Ocean. Soon the railroad was connected to European branches in the west and the Manchurian and Mongolian systems of the east, forming the longest man-made structure to the present day.

A hundred years since workers from east and west met in the middle, completing the railway and joining two continents, the Trans-Siberian railway continues to be a lifeline for millions in Europe and Asia alike. Most of the locals use the railway for just a few stops, some even on a daily basis, not knowing or caring from where the train comes or where it goes after they disembark.

The void between rich and poor is nowhere as obvious as in present-day Russia. The country owned by oligarchs and ex-communist political elite struggles to solve social issues, pressing on the backs of most cites and villages adjacent to the railway.

For days and nights, a vast composition leaps forward, splitting in half time-frozen cities and sleepy villages of Siberia. On each vagzal (Russian train station), the train is greeted by babushke (Russian grandmas) selling traditional dried meat and vodka rations to travelers. In small towns especially, the coming of the train is a big deal. It brings mail, supplies and loved ones together with news from the bright, distant capital. Traveling through six time zones provides enough time shared with a lot of people in a contained space, resulting in spontaneous, often deep conversations with practically every traveler with whom you are in a carriage. And the traveling folk here are truly colorful. You hear opinions and reflections of the citizens from all sixteen ex-Soviet states together with rich variety of Russian ethnicities, from Tatars and Buryats to the newest breed of Moscow businessmen. The idea that until recently all of these extremely different people shared one country, a few times larger than the U.S. or Europe, is mind blowing. Nowhere else in the world is it possible to sit and drink with a rich businessman exchanging stories with Armenian wine makers or Mongolian nomads, and often it turns out that they all went to the same university!

At the industrial city of Irkutsk on the shores of Lake Baikal, deep in the central Siberian plain, I separated from the main line (after a night on the Russian border), continuing southeast by Trans-Mongolian to Ulaanbataar, the capital of Mongolia. Since all points of interest for this story are deep in the Gobi desert, I swapped trains for Soviet-era army off-roader – the most common means of transportation here beside horses. Mongolia is an incredibly unique place. It is the only officially nomadic country, where by law land ownership is not possible. The name of the country’s capital portrays Mongolian spirit in every detail: Ulaanbataar means “big camp” in Mongolian. Yurts (mongol style tents) start at the very suburbs of the city. After rationing up with food and water for a ten-day crossing of the desert, I set out, leaving the Soviet style capital behind me.

Driving into the night through the desert, following the red marking on the GPS, never gets boring due to the extreme driving needed in combination with lone horse riders in traditional nomadic clothes that our car passed by every now and then. Considering the size, emptiness and lack of roads in the Gobi, this desert is surprisingly populated. Nomadic settlements are homogeneously scarce but everpresent. Hospitality, essential to nomadic survival, is equally extended to foreign travelers too. It is normal to spend the night in a yurt with a nomadic family, in exchange of food, alcohol and fresh stories.

The simplicity of their lives is amazing, considering these people live in one of the most extreme climates on the planet. Temperatures range from -40 Celsius in the winter to +40 in the summer, and the neighboring Himalayas make sure Gobi stays one of the driest regions in Asia. The desert’s emptiness is a perfect stage for crime, as I had opportunity to experience.

My vehicle got ambushed, resulting in a short chase. Thankfully, the whole thing ended soon after one of the jeeps behind us stopped due to a mechanical fault. I was told this happens very rarely, and supposedly, the majority of crime in Mongolia goes on in the capital, especially by the hundreds of homeless children roaming the streets at night, due to their extreme poverty.

Mongolia behind me now, it’s time to board the Trans-Manchurian train to Beijing. In Siberia you feel like you are in another time, in Mongolia you feel like you are on another continent, and in China, you feel like you are on another planet! Because almost all tourists and businessmen fly directly to China, official borders are adapted for local commuters in a true Communist heritage. After hours spent crowding on the border in the middle of the desert, I’m finally there. Covering three huge and very different countries, connected by the single rail track, passing different life styles, habits and religions, I was reminded of the true meaning of “traveling”, taken from us by planes, which forces us to spend time x-raying our shoes in airports instead of gazing through the windows for days, breathing in every millimeter of the road and contemplating all the shades of humanity, from Red Square to Tian An Men.

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Mario Topic – Trans-Siberian – Images by Magnesium Photos

In the film Messengers (Yasuo Baba, 1999) one of the protagonists says to our Lycra-clad heroine, ‘You look like a race queen.’ Parochially translated for American audiences as, ‘You look like a slut‘, this missive unintentionally sums up the role of race queens in the modern world.

A variation of the Formula 1 car racing European pit lane girls (who are supposedly present to hold umbrellas over drivers), race queens – or ‘campaign girls’ – are frowned upon in many Western countries as examples of sexism, and of cynical marketing for an otherwise male-dominated industry.

Contrary to the fall-off of sexist advertising campaigns for cars and the automotive industry globally, the race queen still survives in Japan. Major trade shows and industry events in Japan might have seen a reduction in their race queen populations recently, but this is more a sign of economic austerity over any update to sexual perspectives in Japan.

Buoyed by their high status in the modeling industry in Japan, super race queens continue to generate large fan-bases in their own right, commanding high appearance monies, and often driving their own careers accordingly.

The 2010 Formula 1 season opened in Melbourne recently, with a series of very mildly dressed pit lane girls (‘more modern’ was the statement). The same weekend held the annual Tokyo Motorcycle Show at Tokyo’s Big Sight in Odaiba. Present in a bewildering array of skimpy clothes the race queens continued to pout, pose and preen for the cameras as they do countless times a year across Japan.

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If any threat exists to race queens in Japan, it will not be from a waning popularity in their hardcore otaku fan base, nor will it likely come from ‘safety concerns’ associated with their skimpy clothing, and it will certainly not come from any change in perception of the role of women in Japan. Any further demise in race queen populations will surely be a result of purely economic motives.

As for our Lycra-clad heroine in ‘Messengers’, in Japan at least, she triumphs, beats her derisive competitor and wins the heart of the leading man, making a lot of money along the way…

Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com or use the Contact Form for more information on licensing these photographs and others on this issue.

Text & Photography © Alan Dejecacion / Magnesium

For centuries the Mekong river and its tributaries have been the lifeline to the southeast Asian nation of Laos with its life-sustaining role as trade and communication route. Carving a 900 kilometer border between Laos and northeast Thailand, the Mekong continues to be the main highway for many where paved roads are virtually non-existent. Cut off from major markets by a lack of reliable surface transport (the Mekong is not all that navigable year-round), the provinces and nearby villages along the river banks have developed a small, fragile and largely insular economy of local production and services resting on a foundation of traditional subsistence.

The Mekong swells during the monsoon, bringing silt deposit and nutrients, thus allowing the area to thrive via rich soil for agriculture and great numbers of fish. The richest soils of the country are on the river banks and inland as far as the river silt is carried. For landlocked Laos, the Mekong and its tributaries are the all-important source of fish. In mountain streams, in rivers small and large, in flooded rice fields, people cast their nets and set their traps.

China’s ravenous appetite for hydroelectric power at home and its thrust southward into southeast Asia in search of trade is changing the very character of the river. This is true not only in China itself, but also for the livelihoods of people living downstream in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

This complex ecosystem, and the livelihoods of millions who depend on it, is threatened by China’s plans to build eight large dams on the upper reaches of Mekong in Yunnan Province. The plan will drastically alter the river’s natural flood-drought cycle and block the transport of sediment. Despite these serious potential impacts, construction of the upper Mekong dams has proceeded without any real assessment of the likely impacts to the river and its people.

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There is a universal drive for gambling that I am at loss for understanding. Some people bet on horses, dogs, on anything that is able to run more or less straight in a suitably controlled environment. Ostriches, even! However, these arrangements are really elaborate random number generators. Actually each different type of betting service that exists is basically a way of crafting “exciting” random number generators. If, for example, you go to a cock fight (as in Magnesium Photographer Alan Dejecacion’s Sunday at the Cockfight), you get a binary-based random number generator. On the other side of the scale, the odds of you winning the French Lotto is seriously against you: 7 balls within a set of 49. My mind turned into goo when I tried to calculate the probabilities. I soon found out on my trip to a little known town in India that there is no stupid way to buy and sell dreams.

Waiting for the shooting to happen

Shillong lies in the province of Meghalaya in northeast India. There the local people bet on random numbers using an original and unique random number generator: one group of old men shoot arrows at a target made out of straw tied against a wooden pole, then another group of men count the arrows. The bets are made on the last two digits, i.e. if you place your bet on 42, and the shooter manages to stick 442 arrows in the target, you win. If the shooters are having a bad day or drinking too much tea and miss, you can go drown your sorrow in booze. Simple. Fascinating idea.

Being in the vicinity, I felt the urge to investigate and have a look for myself. I was very excited about trying and find out about the whole thing. Not that the prospect of seeing old men play with archery equipment is not an exciting one, but I am more into people’s reactions than in the thing which causes the reaction. After some misguided directions from random strangers, I found the spot. Indeed, the place is fairly small and easy to miss, a patch of not very well tended grass, really. When I got there people were mostly busy trying to catch glimpses of some sort of action happening in the stadium on the other side of the river, where the clamour crowd was clapping and giving hints that some sort of important sport event was developing. My guess was cricket. Cricket is huge in that part of the world.

Shooting!

I wasn’t totally blown away by what I discovered. Indeed, the action was far from frenetic. There was the preparation phase when everybody carefully laid arrows in front of him, readied their bows and smoked. Then one of the men cried something incomprehensible, and everybody started shooting. Relentlessly yet calmly, and almost without pause, they sat or crouched behind some invisible line and shot arrow after arrow. Some didn’t even blink. When they ran out of arrows, everybody gathered around the target and started removing the arrows mingling within the bundle which were not properly stuck into the target. While the judges counted and sorted them by fitting them ten by ten into what resembles a barbecue grill, the archers took care of finding back their own misdirected arrows. Though I suspect that at some point they would also go retrieve their good ones, I have to admit that I didn’t stick around long enough to witness this.

Now the sorting begins ...

All this takes place without excitement, calmly, while drinking tea and commenting on the weather. At some point, while taking pictures, I found myself in front of one of the archer. He had stopped shooting and was waiting patiently until I got out of the way. He could have offered me a cup of the aforementioned tea! Where was all the fever of gambling? Where were the shaky hands, the screaming ladies waiting for some blood to be shed, waiting for that target to eat dust? Where is the damn arrow I should have had piercing my hat, à la John Ford?

I had some tea and on my way back I climbed on top of a building under construction to see what was happening in the stadium. It was a football match, not cricket. Luckily I hadn’t bet on that…

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Thessaloniki: this is where I was born. This is my hometown, a place loaded with memories which feed from nostalgia of all things passed.

Something inside makes me reluctant to talk about this city, as if I am afraid to ruin a deeper bond by using inadequate, crippled words. And so I walk around taking photographs of its surfaces as if throwing beacons, points to recognise my moments in time.

I saw the city ruined and changed, literally building itself anew on the ruins of its history. I remember the icy winds of winter nights, the dead empty streets of summer, the smell of the sea mixed with gasoline, all the houses my family moved. I saw the light disappearing from the streets as the buildings rose in height, the rivers of cars emerging, radios playing foreign stations on rainy days, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, the policeman ringing our doorbell asking why we didn’t hang the Greek flag on national holidays. Everyday things always in the early afternoon light, neighbourhood movie theaters with two features daily, music everywhere in the streets, strange music, brought by immigrants to this Balkan junction. A city with the ruins of three religions, staircases full of the smells of homemade cooking. So many first times, all the first times, my departures, my homecomings and then the night, terrifying at first only to become the only real thing, the essential fascination bare of everything unimportant.

But then again, this memory carpet often dwells on cliches, so let’s forget about them. I am still around, after all, and the city is changing once more. When I walk alone on its streets, trying to be a foreigner and a native at the same time before I press the shutter, I often wonder what the future memories for the new generations will be. The city persistently remains a colossal museum of accidents as every big city by definition is, and I think of what Walter Benjamin said “Not to find one’s way in a city doesn’t mean a thing actually. To lose oneself in a city — as one loses oneself in a forest — that calls for a quite different schooling”.

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Photography Curated by Sean Bonner

What is the mystery of photography? Why do we love the static image? What is it that these fragments of reality, frozen in time tell us? What is it about the photograph’s ability to transcend commonplace existence that has taken it from an unrecognized set of chemical reactions to the most popular and life-changing art-form the history of the world has ever seen?

Are we seeking knowledge of our place within the greater universal complexity? Or could it be that we are a conceited bunch of heretic animals in love with posing for and fawning over our own graven image? Is it not rather that we just love to command machines, fiddle with knobs, push brightly colored buttons and play with toys?

Ahh, toys. Ask most people when they started to fall in love with photography and many, if not most will hark back to the golden days of their childhood, when life was simpler, the sun shone brighter and film was, as the only option available, still cheap. Most photographers of today who were raised in the odd limbo generation of the 70s and 80s grew up on one or more of the futuristic Polaroid instant cameras kicking around the house. Or maybe you had the cartridge-based 110 film and disc cameras, invented by Kodak and popularized with the Kodacolor VR, or any number of short-lived point and shoot cameras, that weren’t toy cameras per se, but today can be found lining the discount bins of used camera resellers and garage sales alike, the world over.

When Fuji Camera introduced the Fujipet camera, marketed to a solely Japanese audience, this plastic camera would go on to introduce the hitherto western concept of leisure combined with the snapshot, for use by the whole family. From the instruction manual, “With the Fujipet Camera you can the pictures very easily just as you manipulate your knife and fork…The Fujipet Camera enjoys great popularity among children, mothers and all the members of the family and affords happiness in all homes.”

What about the Hong Kong novelty manufacturer Great Wall Plastic Factory, in first producing the Diana, which in turn spawned tens of hundreds of clones, that unwittingly launched the modern day toy camera revolution. They were just trying to make a fast buck. In doing so, they made history.

Thanks in large part to Mr. T.M. Lee – inventor of the Holga – is it true that anyone can be a photographer?

Despite all signs to the contrary, it was not the original goal of Mr. Lee, nor any of the other manufacturers, to make toys, but rather to ensure that people were fascinated and interested in creative film photography. As the Chinese middle class grew due to economic reform of the 80s – and with it buying power and hunger for better technology – many cheaper products, like Holga, lost ground and were nearly completely lost in the shuffle toward the new paradigm of the 90s tech boom.

As artists, amateur photographers and institutions of higher learning got in on the ground floor of the Holga Revolution, business boomed for Mr. Lee and Universal Electronic- largely in part to the Austrian-based Lomographic Society licensing and repackaging the Holga (as done with the glass-lensed Lomo LC-A – often thought of as a “toy” as well) in marketable and highly profitable kits. He was amazed at the resurgence of his twenty year-old baby, remarking it was “out of my imagination!” and smartly thought to capitalize on this newfound “Toy Camera” popularity by diversifying into a wider range of products. Add-ons for the Holga or completely new cameras (the Micro 110, 6×9/6×12 Pinhole, 3D Stereo, Twin Lens Reflex, a whole range of 135mm cameras, fish-eye lenses, color flashes, etc.) became profitable ways to expand into areas previously unimagined. The future was very bright indeed.

To ask what is the future of photography is too big for anyone to take on except in bite-size chunks. One might be well served to look back to the origins of capturing images for answers to why images- and especially those taken with shoddily-crafted plastic parts which often “leak” light, vignette uncontrollably, and capture images so randomly that the photographer would have no guarantee that any exposure will come out at all- have transfixed us deer-like in the headlights of a tsunami of cause and effect. Many of which have such wide ranging societal repercussions that we would be smart to admit no one really has any idea of what’s happening, let alone what’s on the horizon.

To extrapolate digital photography as a direct result of the Toy Camera boom, to say that Holga created the digital point and shoot in your mobile phone, to credit Hong Konger novelty and flash manufacturers with the digital paradigm as well as their own eventual decline, is not too far a stretch. What will emerge from the next few digital decades, after the Hipstamatic iPhone filter fad has worn off? A perpetual backlash against time-tested, though also time-consuming, archival methods or as Mr. Lee experienced when the unpredictable wave of economic tide turned the middle class Chinese off his product and hipsters on – a rebirth of interest in film and more importantly, sales?

Read the continued Interview with Holga Limited’s Christine So here.

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Only a few man-made structures lend themselves to automatic inclusion in science-fiction movies. Locations so out-of-this-world they have to be used as phantasmagoric shooting locations. San Diego’s Geisel Library, half the Statue of Liberty, the Bradbury Building…

On the Northern outskirts of Tokyo, the list also includes a drain. Also known by the fabricated name “G-Cans” (not an abbreviation of anything in particular), the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel however is no ordinary drain, but a series of enormous, interconnected, underground facilities. Massive holding tanks, surge suppressors, huge pump rooms, networked tunnels, control rooms, inlets, outlets, overflows, and more – all fifty meters underground.

With one hundred kilometers of flood control tunnels, the overall project was started in 1992, with the G-Cans section finishing in 2009. Designed to provide flood control for the northern reaches of the greater Tokyo metropolis, the G-Cans element alone is massive on an unimaginable scale.

Photography: Ken Lee / Magnesium. Nikon F100 35mm and XP2 Super.

The two billion dollar G-Cans project is nearly six and a half kilometers long, with an interconnecting series of holding silos, varying in size up to sixty-five meters tall and over thirty meters in diameter. The largest holding tank is the massive “cathedral” – one hundred seventy-seven meters long and seventy-seven meters wide. Its roof is supported by sixty massive pillars, designed to provide both strength and low resistance to the swirling waters.

The basic design function of G-Cans is to re-channel potential flood waters from one watercourse to another, balancing and regulating the water flow to ensure flood surges and river breaches are kept to a minimum. As well as natural water flows, a turbine hall, equipped with ten megaWatt of Pratt & Whitney pumping capacity, can move over two hundred thousand liters of water per second into the adjacent Edo River. That’s enough water to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in just over one second.

Photography: Skorj / Magnesium.

Construction of the main tunnels utilized a conventional Tunnel Boring Machine (“TBM”) and a two-layer lined tunnel – supporting framework and internal smooth sleeves for water flow. Ground water freezing was undertaken with large-scale expander insertions into the surrounding rock, with condensate forming on their many coupling heads, the now-removed expanders resembled alien spawning stations.

Standing meters below the previous high-water mark, with the sound of compressors and dripping water in the distance, is a remarkably surreal experience. The damp languid air adds to the feeling of potentially being swallowed up by a flooding wave as it careens through the tunnels, sweeping everything to its doom along the way. Fifty meters below the surface, fifty meters below the suburbs, with the kids playing soccer on the fields of Saitama above our heads, riding bicycles through the tunnels as we explored really added to the off-world feeling.

Since completion, the tunnels, side chambers, and main “cathedral” hall have been used in making a Tetsujin 28 film, a Range Rover commercial, numerous other TV spots, and some of the photographs here were used in the source rendering for a computer game.

While the main tunnels are now off-limits for access, the control room, above-ground infrastructure, and main cathedral are sometimes available for tours during the non-typhoon season. Bookings are available for Japanese speakers via their main website.

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To me, the name Burma always conjured up images from George Orwell’s Burmese Days or Rudyard Kipling’s poem Mandalay. While in the 1920s, Orwell spent five years as a police officer in Burma when it was still part of the British Empire, Kipling never actually made it to Mandalay. Though I had no desire to spend five years in South East Asia’s poorest and most corrupt nation, I sure was determined to make it to Mandalay.

First stop: Yangon, the former capital. As soon as I left the airport, I knew Burma would be very different from what I had experienced in Viet Nam, Laos or Cambodia. Outside, the taxi drivers were eager to get me into their battered and beaten up taxis, happily showing off their betelnut stained smiles and wearing longyi, a traditional Burmese long skirt-like garment, similar to a sarong. One of the first things I noticed, besides the many and very large potholes in the road, was the lack of motorbikes. As it turns out the military junta had prohibited them, together with trishaws and bicycles, some twenty years ago.

The city itself wasn’t unlike many of the Asian towns and cities I had visited already. Bustling with activity, smoggy, humid and stifling hot. When the government supply of electricity gets cut off, which happens frequently and seemingly totally random, the private shop generators start up, almost in unison. The sound is deafening. At night at around 9 o’clock, the restaurants close, the lights go out and the city turns almost black and very quiet.

After a few days Yangon, I gathered the courage to take the overnight bus to Mandalay, a thirteen hour ride through the middle of nowhere and a pretty dangerous one. There are no street lights, the roads are in bad condition and a lot of vehicles, not surprisingly, drive without lights. As a matter of fact, the only well-lit places along the way appeared to be the well-guarded prisons. After a long and bumpy ride I found myself at a dusty parking lot at five AM where I quickly hopped into the back of an old Mazda pick-up.

Like Yangon, I noticed that Mandalay also had its fair share of broken up dusty roads, but none of the charming yet crumbling colonial architecture of Burma’s former capital. Though the view from Mandalay Hill definitely made up for the city’s general lack of character. Despite the presence of motorbikes and bicycles- which are still allowed in Mandalay- the city felt more like a small town. I ended up spending two days with Mr. Htoo, a trishaw driver, who energetically pedaled me all over town. I visited temple after temple, which were undeniably beautiful, but what I enjoyed most was our conversations at the teashops. While sitting on tiny little plastic stools, sipping tea and eating deep-fried Indian snacks, we talked about his family, life in Burma, his hopes and dreams as well as his losses.

Those losses are obvious, after having been colonised by the British for many years, occupied by the Japanese during WWII, the Union of Burma gained independence in 1948 and never had the chance to rebuild and stabilise itself as a democracy when in 1962 General Ne Win led a military coup d’etat. The Burmese have lived under this military junta ever since, and have been denied basic human rights. Human trafficking, child labour as well as forced labour are rampant. There is no freedom of speech and an estimated thirty to fifty percent of the Burmese live below the poverty line of roughly a dollar a day as a direct result of the ruling military junta.

As for hopes and dreams, general elections are scheduled to take place this year, though an exact date has still not been confirmed. Burma last held an election in 1990, when the National League for Democracy’s Aung San Suu Kyi was set to become prime minister. However, the ruling generals led by Than Shwe dismissed the results and have remained in power ever since.

Aung San Suu Kyi has spent fourteen of the last twenty years under house arrest and it’s highly unlikely she will be allowed to play a role in the upcoming elections. Though currently still under house arrest at her home in Yangon, she remains the symbol of hope for those who oppose the junta.

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Japan is a country of two faces, the public and the private. The public or “façade”, called tatemae, fronts what is public condemnation of the love / hate relationship with its criminals, whereas the private or “true sound”, called honne, is where a hidden awe reserved for the societally taboo calls home. Very rarely in a strictly stratified society such as Japan are these social phenomena ever witnessed simultaneously. One of these rare public displays of private truths can be seen on display at one of Tokyo’s most famous festival: Sanja Matsuri.

Prior to the start of the Sanja Matsuri in the touristy and historical Asakusa area, there is the Miadashi, which takes place at four a.m., and is when the portable shrines, called Mikoshi, are taken out of the barns where they are stored the rest of the year. The only people allowed to participate are directly connected to either the temple itself or live within the adjacent neighborhood, most of whom are members of the local crime syndicate, aka Yakuza.

After retrieving the mikoshi from storage, and just before daybreak, the police block off the entire temple grounds with eight-foot high plastic walls while all the various teams, featuring gang members represented by their various colored happi coats and fundoshi (ropelike underwear), many tattooed with dragons and tigers, line up just outside the barricades. Once the selected teams take out the first few mikoshi, all the other teams march into the temple grounds like little battalions and then attempt to commandeer the mikoshi from the other teams, as if pirating an enemy ship.

In any other typical matsuri, one team parades the mikoshi as best as they can in an organized fashion around the neighborhood, stopping for breaks every twenty or thirty minutes. It requires strength, patience and rigorous coordination by the captains to keep everything moving smoothly down the street. Participating in the local neighborhood’s matsuri by carrying a mikoshi is far more difficult than it looks.

At the Miadashi of Sanja Matsuri, it is more like a war than a parade. The teams run around the temple with the mikoshi- often weighing one ton or more- like rugby squads, recklessly driving the mikoshi across the temple grounds to the holiest spots, at which point they lift them over their heads and shout to the gods. Happening simultaneously, collisions are inevitable, and occasionally topple everyone over, yet all the while each team battles for control of the opponent’s mikoshi. Fist fights breaking out between two opposing members or entire teams are common, which quickly turn into something a westerner might imagine like a bench-clearing brawl after a baseball batter gets beaned by a pitch.

Generally closed to the public and completely out of the control of the police, whom merely stand by and watch, attempting to keep the chaos confined within the temporary walls- this past year’s festival was notable for its excess of rain and mud, which despite the cold and dark early morning hour, didn’t phase the eager and serious faced participants. Managing to find a small hole in the barricade around the back of the temple Magnesium photographer Brian Scott Peterson was able to gain access to the inner sanctum. Describing his experience he said, “There were police everywhere, and nobody dressed in anything but traditional garb. It was unbelievable that I was able to go unnoticed, but I had my Leicas and my finger constantly on the shutter. I got pinned up against walls, caught in the middle of violent teams. I was tripped over, got wet and muddy, but it was fun.”

The festival is over by 7:00 or 8:00 a.m. and the mikoshi are all handed back to teams made up of average citizens who go on and join the parade around the neighborhood like the whole thing never happened.

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Japanese women have one of the longest life expectancies in the world, yet there is a neighbourhood in Tokyo where many go to find promises and prayers on even more years. The secret to this Japanese fountain of youth is not some sacred spring or historical holy visitation however- the key to longevity in Japan is apparently to be found in something as simple as red underwear.

Sugamo, located in Tokyo’s northern metropolitan Toshima ward, is one of the areas of the capital commonly known as shitamachi, literally “downtown.” While in the west this might conjure up images of sparkling avenues of retail excess, theatrical name drops and glittering nights of cocktail hedonism, in Sugamo it simply means that the buildings and the outlook of the people have not really changed much since the 1950s. This is an area of post-war traditions and frugality where people rarely leave their immediate surroundings. Consequently, the area has evolved its own booming micro-culture that caters to the older generation in much the same way the fashionable areas of the city attract and enthrall the young. Indeed, Sugamo is often called the Harajuku of old ladies (Tokyo’s Harajuku district is famous for its cutting edge fashion and youth culture).

The heart of Sugamo lies in the the Togan-ji Temple where the statues of Toganuki Jizō and Arai Kannon promise cures and blessings on long life and health. All the attendant paraphernalia of religious observance abound: monks beg alms and offer prayers of longevity in return, health foods and lucky charms are sold, and in the temple grounds itself the statue of Arai Kannon is purported to offer those who rub it with a wet cloth a miracle cure in the corresponding area of the body. The worries of age are also a rich source of income for charlatan healers and medics who set up stalls in the temple grounds, and along the main shopping street known as Jizō Dori.

Perhaps the area’s most famous purchase is its iconic red underpants however. Red is a colour believed to offer those who wear it vigour and freedom from sickness, but this is just one of the many items available in the stores on Jizo Dori. Unlike other shopping streets in Tokyo, this is not a place where brand names count for much, unless of course you are a dedicated follower of the latest name in mobility scooters or want designer walking canes. The items for sale are generally cheap and familiar, the fashion is large-sized and low chic and everything is designed for the comfort and patronage of the older generation.

For Sugamo, however, business has never been better and while it will never be “fashionable” the growing number of older people in Japan is sure to keep the streets and temples of Sugamo popular for the foreseeable future. Far from the bright lights and neon of the Tokyo’s stereotypical image, these streets offer a unique insight into “old” Japan.

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Sydney is a city unlike any other in Australia. It is a modern metropolis with a population of more than 4 million inhabitants, most of whom live in the city’s surrounding suburbs. The city itself is like a smaller version of Manhattan – tall skyscrapers with long streets and avenues. On a clear, sunny day, Sydney is a city of light and shadows. Swathes of sunlight illuminate parts of the urban labyrinth, and the people who make their way through it. The shadows constantly shift – what was covered in light a moment ago is now swallowed up by the darkness.

The best time of day is early morning up until ten, and anytime after three in the afternoon until the sun sets. Between these times the sun is directly above the city. The harshness of the Australian sun in the middle of the day has to be seen to be appreciated – it is unlike anywhere else in the world.

Another feature of Sydney’s streets is the abundance of sunlight reflected off glass-covered buildings. This soft, reflector-like light creates surreal landscapes, but again, these moments last no more than 15 minutes as the sun arcs it’s way across the sky. The seasons also play a large part in how the reflected light unveils itself onto the streets below, with different parts of the city lit up at the same time of day depending of what time of year it is. I chase this light every day the sun comes out, and I always get surprised by an undiscovered corner lit by it’s softness. It is one of the reasons I love this city.

Located on the east coast of India, sixty kilometers from the Orissan capital of Bhubaneswar, lies Puri, one of the great pilgrimage sites dating back to ancient India.

Held annually on the “second day of the bright fortnight in the month of Asad” (June-July) according to the Vedas, Rath Yatra- the Festival of Chariots of Lord Jagannath- takes over the small coastal town, as upwards of a million devotees flock there to commemorate the journey of Jagannath- Lord Krishna incarnate- from Gokul to Mathura.

The throng fills the Bada Danda, the grand avenue, and pull three richly decorated wooden chariots- each towering over ten meters- resembling temple structures and containing the presiding deities of the main temple, Lord Jagannath, Lord Balarama and Goddess Subhadra, two kilometers through the packed streets, from the 12th century Sri Mandir temple to the temple of the trio’s aunt, Gundicha. This is the only day when devotees, who are not regularly allowed in the temple premises (such as non-Hindus and foreigners), can get a glimpse of the deities as they parade through the Bada Danda.

As a glimpse of Lord Jagannath on his chariot is very auspicious, thousands risk their lives fighting the enormous crowd. Those few who are able to touch the chariot or even the ropes with which it is pulled (considered by some to be the threads of salvation itself) are thought to be lucky enough to confer the results of countless pious deeds. After a nine-day sojourn at the Gundicha temple and countless festivities, the divine summer vacation is over and the three deities return to the temple of Lord Jagannath.

Indian Poets and scriptures have repeatedly glorified this special festival. There is a famous song still sung in the Orissan language, which says that on this occasion the chariot, its wheels and the grand avenue all become one with Lord Jagannath himself. It is said that when the British first observed the Rath Yatra in the 18th century, they were so amazed that they sent home shocking descriptions of the irresistable force of Jagannath, thus giving rise to the term juggernaut.

Though many foreign accounts of the festival have been dismissed by Orissan scholars as the incorrect and disrespectful statements of infidels, one such Friar Odoric (ca. 1321 AD) is quoted in Hobson Jobson as stating, “Many pilgrims who have come to this feast cast themselves under the chariots so that the wheels may go over them saying that they desire to die for their God and the car passes over them, and crushes them and cuts them asunder and so they perish on the spot.” The fact remains, however, that many Hindus believe that a death under the wheels of the chariot would bring them salvation. An issue of the Puri Gazetteer of 1929 mentions some suicides occurring in this fashion while scholars admit that evidence exists that points to many instances of people lying down their bodies before the chariots, allowing the wheels to crush them.

These days thousands of gun-toting policemen, para-military personnel, bomb squad and anti-terror squad personnel are deployed en masse with elaborate arrangements made, which in an effort to try to control the million strong crowd whipping itself up into a religious fervor, while also attempting to diminish the scores of pickpockets and other criminals that prey on the faithful, turns the entire city into a locked down fortress.

Allegations of poor crowd management were heard from Orissa State Congressional President Jayadev Jena, after a stampede in 2008 after six people died and dozens were injured, in which he stated, “the police take care of the important people and care less for the common devotees.” Despite such problems, Puri’s Rath Yatra remains one of the world’s most spectacular religious festivals and a remarkable congregation of over a million people.

View Uchjin-Adrian Storeys other work on Magnesium HERE

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Being in a church for a funeral service and thinking about a clown might be weird. Looking around and seeing actual clowns would be surreal.

Many people tend to equate clowns with the circus, but there was one man who took clowning around from its origins in the Commedia dell’Arte- with which he shared his Italian origins- and into the world of the Pantomine, eventually culminating into the modern clown seen all over the world today. That man was Joseph Grimaldi, born in London in 1779, the son of a ballet master. An invalid from the years of intense physical effort his act required, he was introduced to the stage before he was two and retired at forty-five years-old. The rest of his life was spent in poverty, yet comedians – and particularly clowns – are, perhaps surprisingly, a group of serious folks and many came together to finance their inspirational father’s remaining years. “Like vaulting audition, I have overleaped myself and pay the penalty in advanced old age. It is four years since I jumped my last jump, filched my last oyster, boiled my last sausage and set in for retirement,” Joseph Grimaldi would say in 1828 at Covent Garden, London, during a show meant to raise money for his benefit. He passed away some years later, after being carried home by his friend George Cook from his spot close by the chimney of a pub he frequented daily.

Nearly two hundred years later, clowns still memorialize him on the first Sunday of February. It is indeed a surreal experience attending a church service for a pantomime clown. Stranger still when, as hinted, many of the congregation are themselves clowns, in full costume and make-up, drawn to this service from all over the world. Young and old, though mainly old, gather at the All Saints’ Church in Dalston, East London, to remember and celebrate the life of Joseph Grimaldi, the clown Joey.

Though it might surprise most people to hear that this still rolls on, Grimaldi’s legacy continues to live.

“A little old woman,
her living she got by selling hot codlins,
hot, hot, hot.
And this little old woman,
who codlins sold,
tho’ her codlins were hot,
she felt herself cold.
So to keep herself warm she thought it no sin to fetch for herself a quartern of ……..”

“Gin” the crowd shouted.

“Oh, for shame!” the clown answered mockingly.

Famous routine song of JOSEPH GRIMALDI (1779-1837)

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Along with two other photographers, I am sitting in a rented car. As we sit parked on a sparsely lit dock in the south of Japan, we are watching the sun rise. Even before our arrival it feels like a unique journey; short-hop commuter flights, business hotels, a rented Honda rep-mobile, plotted routes on topographical maps, ramen dinners and konbini breakfasts.

It is 04:30, and after having driven through the early hours from Nagasaki to a remote fishing village in search of our boatman, we are ready to embark on the final leg to our ultimate destination – Hashima. An abandoned island-city, Hashima remains untouched in the nearly forty years since its 5000 or so occupants vacated by boat, taking with them only a few scant possessions.

With mining operations established in 1810, on an island less than 500 metres long, Hashima’s well known legacy includes it once being the most densely populated place on earth, housing what was Japan’s tallest building, and its first large-scale reinforced concrete apartment block. The erroneous claim of this island city being shelled by the US Navy in World War Two, ‘as it looked like a battleship’, contributes to the legend of Gunkanjima, or Battleship Island, evident in the popular local nickname for Hashima.

Coming across a few fishermen, who are enjoying their last cigarette before returning home, we are gruffly told our boatman is on the other side of the dock. Approaching him within earshot of his companions, he mumbles nothing more than our departure time, and walks off. At sea, our boatman’s demeanor changes immediately to a jovial, entertaining host arranged at the behest of our sponsors, telling us stories of the sea, and of his Hashima. Forty-five minutes later, he lands us on Hashima, and three of us scramble ashore with a day’s supplies, cameras, and more film than I have ever carried.

After giving us his promise to return before sunset, our boatman maneuvers off station, leaving us alone with the silence of Hashima, awed, and not really sure of what to do next.

Photography: Ken Lee / Magnesium. Nikon F3 20mm and XP2 Super.

The feeling of being in some far off post-apocalyptic land is immense. To experience a place where every way you turn is abandoned desolation, immediately overwhelms; you do not need to imagine what it would be like to stand in a once occupied city after a plague, The Bomb, or at the end of time.

Everything from the hospital, the school, factories, apartments, the bathhouse, the gymnasium, and the shrines stands vacant. Dark canyons of fallen lumber fill the streets, collapsed roofs abound, the detritus of a modern life is scattered under your feet as you walk – washed from the buildings by the wind, the rain, and the sea.

With little more to hear than a plaintive sea bird, and ominously the occasional clattering sound of falling masonry and concrete, we step over telephones, sake cups, toothbrushes, broken toys, milk bottles, and curiously, dental tools, all laying under foot as we scramble over what were once streets, and through the vacant buildings.

It is tempting to try and extract a man-against-nature message when coming to Hashima. The message here however is simply one of isolation, the feeling of vulnerability, and the opportunity to travel back in time to explore the lives of a coal mining island-city; to experience a snapshot of life in Japan from the 1960s and 1970s.

I cannot speak for my companions, but over the course of a day on Hashima as we document what we see, I go from being a photographer intent on making some serious commentary with my work, to gawking like an American tourist in Paris.

With the declining need for coal in the 1970s, Mitsubishi closed operations over a period of a few short months, ferrying the inhabitants back to the mainland with not much more than what they could carry. What they left behind in 1974, is the Hashima you see now.

Photography: Skorj / Magnesium. Polaroid Type-665.

With the passing of ownership and control from the Mitsubishi Mining Corporation to the local Prefecture Office, a 220 meter public walkway has now been opened on the south end of the island. Twice-daily tours, either as a stand-alone Hashima access ticket, or as part of a regional historic pass, are now available. Hashima, as we experienced it, will most likely disappear with the expected advent of the eager day tripper.

Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com for more information on licensing these photographs and others on this issue.

For more on abandoned Japan, click here.

Pulling up just before sunrise at the Salton Sea, California’s biggest lake, is a surreal experience. It is eerily quiet at this time of day, with only the sound of the lapping water, a few desolate cries of waking birds and the noise of Polaroid cameras as we pull the film through the rollers.  It reminds me of Cormack McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic tale The Road, with artifacts littering the area: abandoned and (partially) destroyed mobile homes, a chair in the water, a lone boot, a pink sink, a bent BBQ. One is left to wonder what has happened.

Salton City © Nathalie Farigu

At the beginning of the 20th century, when farmers settled in the Imperial Valley, there was a need to tap into the Colorado River for irrigation purposes. The California Development Company dredged two intake gorges just north of the Mexican border without using floodgates. For three years, the system worked well, but in the summer of 1904 the flow of water stopped when intakes became clogged with silt deposits from the river. At that point another intake gorge was created, and once again, a floodgate was omitted. This human error resulted in a massive flood, when in 1907 the Colorado River began to swell from heavy rainfall and snowmelt. The enormous volume of water breached a dike in the Imperial Valley, resulting in the two rivers carrying it all into what became then known as the Salton Sink, and creating the Salton Sea.

Bombay Beach

As a consequence of not having an outlet, the Salton Sea gets saltier every year; water is lost through evaporation, disappears and the salt stays behind. At the moment, the Salton Sea is about 25% saltier than the ocean. One can consider this ghastly place as one of the country’s largest ecological disasters: massive fish die-offs are common, due to a lack of oxygen in the water, and the presence of many parasites. The shores are lined with bones from dead fish.

It’s difficult to imagine now but in the 1950s the Salton Sea was a happening holiday spot, and the area brimmed with activity. As the sea transformed, its popularity waned. Developers started their exodus in the 1970s, and high water levels in the 1980s flooded many business and private properties, leaving them abandoned and in decay.

Massive fish die-offs at Bombay Beach.

After a day of driving around the Salton Sea, and a pile of Polaroids spread out on the car dashboard, we head down to the Ski Inn for a greasy patty melt. While at Bombay Beach’s only eatery, another word comes to mind besides “disaster” when trying to describe what we saw: dreamscape, horrific and beautifully surreal at the same time. Right now it is not apparent what will happen to the communities around the Salton Sea, but despite the evident decline, there are pockets of life at places such as Bombay Beach. As California’s needs evolve, a place may be found for the Salton Sea, a place that has yet to be defined.

Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com for more information on licensing these and other photographs on this issue.

Izu is the teardrop peninsula jutting out into the Pacific ocean a little over one hundred kilometers from the mass of gray concrete that is the Tokyo megalopolis. Izu is morning mists, bambooed hilltops and wooden inns nestled in the moist salt air wet from the steam of a hundred hot springs poking through the lush volcanic soil. Izu is where Tokyo’s trains from the 60s go to rust and die, happy recipients of the second most rainfall in Japan. It’s a romantics romance and though proximally near, the makeup of Izu makes for an Alice-through-the-looking-glass kind of trip. For, after all, it is the metamorphosis one undergoes in getting there that is arguably the most important part of the trip. Photographer Jon Ellis is interested in capturing the process of “getting there”, rather than what might be done once arrived.

Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com for more information on licensing these photographs and others on this issue.

Jon Ellis will be participating in the four-person exhibition Fragments of Tokyo from 2/8/10 – 2/14/10 at Place M in Shinjuku. If you are in Tokyo please visit the gallery (click the link below).

The Hon. Peter Garrett, Australian Federal Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, taken at a recent ‘Earth Hour’ event.

The spotlight on Peter Garrett began in 1973 when he became the singer of the Australian rock band, ‘Midnight Oil’. The band, and in particular Garrett, were a thorn in the sides of all the governments during the bands lifetime between 1973 and 2002. Known for his activism on environmental issues and the rights of indigenous Australians, Garrett’s most famous and wide-reaching stunt took place during the closing ceremony of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. Garrett, and the rest of the band, came on stage wearing tracksuits bearing the words ‘sorry’. This statement referred to the Howard Government’s refusal to apologise to Australian Aborigines, known as the ‘Stolen Generation’, who as children were removed from their families by Government agencies.

In 2007, Peter Garrett was appointed by new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, as the Minister of the Environment, Heritage and the Arts. In 2009, Peter Garrett, along with Penny Wong, the Federal Minister for Climate Change and Water, attended the Copenhagen Climate Conference. The duo became quite the celebrities at the conference, thanks to Peter Garrett’s radical past and Penny Wong’s status as the first openly gay minister in an Australian Commonwealth cabinet, and as being the first Asian-born minister as well.

Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com for more information on licensing these photographs and others on this issue.

The major problems facing the human race are massive as ever and show no sign of abating anytime soon. Resource wars are becoming the norm. The environment needs a breath of fresh air. American obesity is getting serious (picture a muumuu-clad Homer Simpson when his fingers were too fat to dial the phone). Despite the overwhelming negativity slowing most forward-thinking legislative bodies, there seems to be a palpable worldwide trend toward cleaner living. Maybe it’s the economic recession talking or perhaps people are finally getting the idea that spending and consumption can be controlled to the gain of everyone, even those invisible third-worlders starting to demand their fair share of the world’s resources over in…wherever they are.

Smoking too appears to be declining. Even in Asia, where cigarettes are cheap- ¥300~¥350 or about €2.50 / $3.50 per pack. Yet despite all efforts to the contrary, the culture of cigarettes persists. Cigarettes have an attitude about them. Smoking is (still) cool. Smokers have a swagger. We see this in movies, on television and in advertisements that target youth. Just watch Jon Hamm’s implacable Don Draper chain-smoke at his ad agency in AMC’s historically correct Mad Men for examples of mid-1960s societal mores amid the peak of doctor-endorsed smoking and compare to now. What America was in the Madison Avenue 60s, Japan was in the opulent 80s. A commonly heard phrase of the time being, “65% of men smoke and 35% of women smoke, which means 100% of Japan smokes.”

Slowly but surely times have changed. Unless the boss says otherwise, smoking in the office is basically a no-no. The same goes for almost any enclosed indoor space, at least in California, New York, Hawaii, (despite the U.S. leading the charge against the tobacco lobby, no national legislation has been enacted, leaving the decision up to state and local governments), most of Europe and elsewhere where the government has moved to reduce health risks caused by second-hand smoke. More than two-thirds of the German population does not smoke. Less than one-third smokes regularly. Men smoke more (32% of the total sum of men smoke while only 22% of women puff). Consumption of cigarettes among youth is declining not due to smoking bans, but rather information campaigns alongside a shift in the characteristic affectations of role models.

In Denmark, the small popular bars called bodegas packed nightly with patrons would die- especially the ones with names on little brass plates in front of stools at the bar: ‘You cannot sit there, this is Lars’ chair.’- if these regulars stopped showing up to get their daily dose of booze simply because they can’t top it off with a share of nicotine.

And that is where it all goes wrong. If the bar is under forty square metres, then you can smoke inside. The sane man in all of us says, “The smaller the room the more prone it would be to become really smoky and dangerous.” But talking to the man in the street about these places was surprising. “It’s fair that smoking is prohibited, so I can bring my wife and kids without stinking afterwards,” iterated a few patrons while lighting stick after stick and discoursing on the matter. None of them was very concerned about the health of the bartender. ”Who cares about him? It’s his choice to be here…”

Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com for more information on licensing these photographs and others on this issue.

In a show of defiance against the gray economy, southern Florida continues to attract millions of visitors for fun in the winter sun.

In the 1980s it was the destination of choice for underage binge drinking, recreational drug use, and casual sex.

These days Florida attracts nearly one in four US retirees.

Due to its year-round warm climate, low tax burden, and glut of golf courses, Florida now leads the country in percentage of residents over the age of 65.

The health of Florida’s economy is now more than ever reliant on the wealthier retiree until the real estate market can recover, a likely distant reality.

Upwards of 300 people gathered in Tokyo’s Shibuya district Saturday, January 24th to protest the ruling Democratic Party of Japan’s (DPJ) stated intention of granting local voting rights to permanent foreign residents in Japan.

More than 40 countries worldwide grant varying degrees of suffrage to their permanent foreign residents, including New Zealand and Uruguay, which offer full national voting rights. Among those countries which grant full or partial suffrage are Denmark, Finland, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Opponents in Japan have expressed increasing concerns that a large number of foreigners would use their voting rights for purposes that might put national security at risk, despite failing to show how local suffrage would allow this to happen, as only ethnic or nationalised Japanese can run for or hold public office in Japan. Some right wing groups have even claimed that local suffrage would allow foreigners to “take over the country”.

Recently several prefectural assemblies have reversed their support of local suffrage for permanent foreign residents in Japan saying that in the past they had shown support for the move only because it was unlikely to happen.

A hand painted sign worn by a protester screams, “Banzai”. The sign proclaims it is a poem about the DPJ and former president of the the current ruling party, Ichirō Ozawa’s evil deeds. It also mocks the Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama for his alleged Oedipus complex, accusing both men of servility to the Chinese and of destroying Japan’s future.

A videographer for Offmatrix Channel, an internet group sympathetic to the protestors, broadcasts the protest live to the internet.

Despite claims that this would deny rights to long-term residents not currently holding Japanese passports, many of whom were born, work and pay taxes in Japan, as well as being completely culturally Japanese, the movement claims to not be “anti-foreign” in its beliefs.

An elderly gentleman with bowed head proclaims his “firm opposition” to local foreigner suffrage.

One of many protestors wrapped in a Japanese flag.

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Warning! The following may contain images that are disturbing or graphic.

Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com for more information on licensing these photographs and others on this issue.

Photos by Derek Arnwine / Magnesium Photos
Text by Jim O’Connell / Magnesium Photos

Today, we’re featuring a set of photos by Magnesium photographer Derek Arnwine.
Derek’s been living in Tokyo for as long as anyone can remember. He lives in one of the suburbs outside Central Tokyo, in one of the places “where people actually live and work” around Tokyo and has for many years.

Derek is a talented photographer in all of the ways you’d expect, but with a twist; He knows how to operate his camera of course, knows how to compose a shot, but what sets him apart is the amazing effect he has upon his subjects—they all smile.

It’s not just the practiced smile that people summon when being photographed, but real, joyful smiles with a glint in their eyes. Derek brings out a sense of delight that is infectious. He doesn’t sneak his shots to capture candor or try to blend in, not that he could as a six-foot-one foreign man with a hearty laugh. He simply has a way with people.

Derek’s been shooting a project for some time that I’ve enjoyed watching develop, a project he calls “Gokurousama“.

The word may be a mouthful, but the meaning is simple, so simple that it’s too often forgotten these days—it means, basically, “I appreciate what you are doing. Thank you.” It’s what you say to the people who do their jobs, especially the times they might go out of their way, outside their job descriptions, to make their service a little bit more accommodating.

That’s what Derek captures with alacrity. Nowhere to be found are the stereotypes of slacking temp workers or overwrought salary men. He seeks out the people at work and captures the pride with which they go about it, be it train conductors, garbage truck drivers, locksmiths or the girls who serve his bagels and coffee. (He does seem to take particular delight in his bagels and coffee, or perhaps it’s the girls?)

There’s another thing worth noting about his work: He’s licensed it as Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial, which means that if you are working on a project that you won’t be making money from, such as your personal blog, you are welcome to use his work and even remix it into a new creation. Just don’t forget to credit him and perhaps offer your own gokurousama, in hopes that he keeps up the splendid work.

If you are interested in using these in a commercial work, these photos are a small selection from a much larger body of work that is all available for licensing. Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com for more information.

Mr. Arnwine is also available for commissioned editorial, travel, corporate and portraiture photography.

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