Cairo, Egypt -- a Personal View Angle

The pandemic has given me time to organize my studio. In the process, predictably, I have found printed photos, documents and film negatives that I had stored away for quite a while.

A couple of days ago I was delighted to rediscover 35mm negatives from my trips to Cairo, which were for professional reasons. As in all my trips around the globe, I always found time to walk the streets for ethnophotography, or at least street photography.

Using my 1950s enlarger I decided to print a few of the photos, thinking that after almost 20 years much would have changed in that ancient city and some of the shots may be almost documentary.

The photo at the top of this page is a typical composition. Using ASA 60 film and a 1954 Canon L3 rangefinder camera, the feel is typical for film photography.

The hot summer evenings are hazy in Cairo. Yet the street walk remains delightful and gives the feel of walking in a different time, at a different tempo. I probably took this shot at the slow speed of 1/25^th second.

The modern and the traditional mix well if one has the curiosity to see and appreciate it. This young man on a bicycle and the movement of the car frozen at again slow shutter speed give a contrast to the leisurely walk of perhaps a family in the background.

The Nile and its tributaries have been the lifeline for Cairo since the beginning of times. This photo, with all the shades and tonal transition only film can deliver so smoothly is of a woman in a house boat. Again, a shot taken on a hazy evening just around sunset.

But there are also more luxury boats on the Nile. This one seems like a floating restaurant.

The city, its people and the traditional ways of going through the days are shown in the next two photos. First, a street sweeper who always takes his time – after all, there will be dust and debris every day, why hurry?

And a look at the rooftops probably from my hotel room. This was the era of satellite dishes that bloomed like wildflowers in the desert.

The museum is a central attraction. The sarcophagi, carvings, paintings, statues and other artifacts of Egypt’s rich history are there for a moment of transport into times we still do not fully understand and explain. While photography inside the museum is not allowed, this shot from the outside of the building give a perspective often not found in touristy promotions. The relaxed attitude of the soldier fits well with the heat and hazy surroundings.

Finally, the close quarter living that is so typical of ancient cities where over millennia layer upon layer the city has rebuilt and used every inch of its space to accommodate the growing population. To me, the photo of the horse and carriage, along with the buildings in shape of a honey comb represent the delightful times I have spent in Cairo.

June 4, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

Holiday Parade, Prescott Arizona, 2019

In my collection of classic mechanical cameras, I have a 1954 Kodak Retina IIIc made in Germany. It is a very compact 35mm camera with amazing lenses. But for me it is the watchmaker’s precision that gives me the pleasure of using it.

Here is the Retina with the lens retracted :

and fully extended:

Unfortunately, I had not used it for a decade or so. When I decided to take it out to the Holiday Parade downtown, I did a quick check of the functions. All seemed still smoothly working, except that there was some fluid leak on one of the shutter’s leaf. The retina belongs to yesteryears’ leaf shutter cameras, where the opening of the shutter is not through a horizontal moving cloth(or a vertical “guillotine” metal shutter like the Contax cameras) but there are a set (in this case 8) very thin steel leafs that open and close when the shutter release button is pressed. So, since the shutter seemed working fine (no hang-up of the leafs) I decided to take it to the parade.

The 50mm lens I used is a Schneider- Kreuznach Xenon 2.0, a fast and among the most famous German lenses of the golden age of B&W photography.  And surprisingly the 65 year old Selenium built-in lightmeter still works and gave me a suggested reading of 1/125 second speed and an opening of f8 for my ASA 100 B&W film.

 I was a bit early for the parade so decided to take photos of the attendees rather than the often uneventful marching of t e parade participants. After all, that would be true street photography contrasted to photojournalism or event photography.

… When I developed the negative all looked good. But when I printed my first frame, a delightful phenomenon became apparent:

This is probably my favorite shot on the roll. It gives a real feel of the people waiting for the parade to start. There is a lot of facial expressions and body language around the beautifully postured American Bulldog.   The contrast is perfect and the center of the frame has wonderful crispness and definition. But.. the left of the frame is off focus.

I printed another frame and the same phenomenon happened. Although the composition of high school band getting ready to march in the parade seemed enhanced by the blurry left side of the frame!

The JROTC young man in front of the PolyJohns gives an old time photograph feel:

And the caption of the narrow town street, with the mountain range in the background demonstrates the quality of the lens:

So, I was delighted by this travel back in time in B&W. I will use the Retina again soon as I cleaned most of the dried fluid material with lighter fluid. Will see if the minimal weight of the deposit will still affect the synchronization of the leafs that may be the cause of the blurred segment on each frame. 

If that does not work, I will use this camera for “special effects”…

PS/ The picture at the top of the page also shows the blur. But it certainly adds movement to an otherwise very frozen composition where the man is lying down in the middle of the closed street waiting for the parade to start.

December 8, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

In Retrospect, Things Look Nicer Than They Once Did (Photos Are No Exception)

Looking through my photographs is like closing your eyes to remember. Sometimes you recall moments of which either you have no recollection, or you rediscover what you once had experienced.

Either way, and for the space of reliving that memory, you feel grateful.

... During my search, I found a photo that I did not recall taking. It was many years ago in Vienna, late in the day, when a Turkish dancer showed her skills (and a few other things) dancing in the street near Stephansdom. I recall taking other photos of her with my Nikon F2 but not this one. In retrospect, I perhaps like this one better than the one below that has been published a few years ago:

So, decided to look for other street dancers photos I had taken over the years and which were not used on my blogs or published in my books. Indeed, I was able to find one more, this time from Barcelonetta. 

Again taken with a Nikon F2, this photo of the dancers has been posted and published:

But there was another one that I did not use since the lighting was not optimal. Yet, I do like the warm presence of the crowd around the dancers.

Maybe with time and age one discovers more delightful aspects of photos that once did not look attractive.

Hmm, maybe the same attitude applies regarding people, places, ideas, tastes and smells....

Anyhow, I have a few other photos of street dancers previously posted here: https://liveingray.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-fluidity-of-frozen-movement.html

November 16, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Veterans' Day 2019, Prescott, Arizona

Veterans’ Day is celebrated in many cultures to remember those who defended the mother (or father) land.  In the UK and the Commonwealth they wear the poppy on this day; in France and Belgium they wear the Bleuet de France, a blue cornflower that is a national symbol representing solidarity with victims of war, orphans and widows of veterans of war. While Italy and Ireland do not have a national holiday to remember veterans (although there are various activities to salute those who served in their armed forces), Israel observes the Yom Hazikaron in a two-day memorial dedicated to her fallen soldiers and to victims of terrorism.

And there are many other countries where the fallen for the survival of the land and culture are officially remembered at least once a year.

Prescott, Arizona has a large population of war veterans going back to the Korean War. Every October 11 there is a parade and celebration on the city’s downtown square where thousands gather to honor their heroes. November 11 parade is also a street photographer’s favorite events, although when it comes to war heroes and their families much effort is made to not infringe on their privacy.

My goal is always to tell a story and not capture people off guard.

My other interest is to use tools (camera, film and lens) that are not common or not popular. I like to push the abilities of these tools (now at least 50 years old) and be surprised when they perform better than expected or in a way that I had not intended to capture the moment.

So, this time I took an Olympus OM-1 (not OM-1n which is newer) and a Vivitar 135mm Close Focusing telephoto. This lens belongs to B&W photography “cult members” who value this unusual lens for its uniqueness in focusing almost as a macro lens. I have used this lens for portraiture years ago when I used to run a mile of film per month through my cameras. It has been seating lonely on the shelf for a while so I decided to take it for an outing.

Here is the lens on the camera surrounded by some of the 8x10 prints I made:

And the details of the lens surrounded by my various “expression mode facilitators” in my studio…

… A Veteran, dressed as Batman, was walking around the city square providing an opportunity for eclectic photo framing. The photo at the outset of this entry is a typical street photography capture, as the Batman shook the hand of a policeman on his immaculately cleaned motorcycle. I took this shot from at least 50 meters away and did some cropping (or enlarging) of the policeman and Batman. 

Here is the cropped area and handshake:

Clearly the Vivitar lens is not very sharp for such usage even when set at f8 aperture and 1/250^th sec speed.

Still, it has that warmth and tonal range that only film can provide and why folks like me still get those looks in a crowd as people ask “is that really a film camera? I did not know they still made film.”

So, I wanted to see how the lens did in the tonal range transition. Here is a newspaper photographer with a fancy digital camera. She was kneed down in street as the parade passed by, and I captured part of her between two spectators. I wanted to see how the dark and unfocused human borders would transition.

Here is that shot:

Finally, I suppose one has to show some parade when covering a parade… Here is my take, with a long- haired Veteran (Vietnam perhaps?) and a fancy hat en lieu of a poppy!

October 12, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Pioneer Cemetery, Prescott Arizona

It is where many "old timers" are buried. Some of the gravestones show dates in the mid-1800s. It is well preserved and maintained, although some of the graves have seen the unkindness of the passage of time.

It is located on a small hill off of a busy street. But once there all seems calm and quiet. I love taking walks there with my dog who is most interested in the labyrinth and holes gofers make on the grounds. I think he has sniffed every hole making me worried that a gofer would eventually decide to teach him a lesson and bite his nose!

Here is a grave one may say typically affected by the Southwestern plant grow, mainly the Prickly Pear Cactus. There are a few like this one and somehow I find it most fitting to the environment.

And then there are always surprises. I found these two angels lonesome and away from any grave I could detect. Why were they there? Was there a grave under them that had been effaced a bit by the winds and the sand storms?

But, like other times in my life, I tried to ask very few question when I met angels with broken wings....

October 11, 2019
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Victoria Falls, Elephant Soup and a Kodak Moment in Zimbabwe

These are the photos from Zimbabwe, mostly from Victoria Falls and surrounding area that I wanted to bring out of the darkness of my classified files. They are not the artistic photos I try to capture about people and their environments, but I think these is some humour in these photos worth catching a smile through.

In fact, these are no people in these photos, so that is in part why, as a street photographer, I classified them away.

Ok, the opening photo is that of Victoria Falls. Of course it is a very large area and these are thousands of angles to look at the falls, but this one has enough of dramatic shades, clair obscur and effaced corners that I decided to start this entry with its panoramic spread.

Of course, most of the food is meat and most of the meat is game in Zimbabwe. Sometimes it is game that we had seen roam around the street during our own walk! Here is a photo I previously posted of a warthog near our hotel

And here is the menu from that night…

But I had never seen a recipe for an elephant soup! Here is the humour printed on a chef’s apron:

At closer look, one can see how important it is to follow the steps. I was fascinated by the addition of a rabbit…

But, if one does not have a refrigerator large enough to store all the ingredients, one can easily try that soup here…

With the local beer, of course.

Finally, a moment of nostalgia for a photographer who still uses film. Indeed, Kodak film is history for many, and for the young generation of all things electronic, a total unknown. I was delighted to see the Kodak sign still standing in this weathered bus stop.

September 29, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

One Flew Over the Beach in Capetown, South Africa

This morning I posted a few photos of wildlife from the Kruger National Park in South Africa after going through some photos I had left unpublished.

Among these were also photos from Cape Town. One photo has a special place in my memories of that town – I was taking photos of folks on the beach with a Minolta Autocord medium format TLR camera. The 80mm lens is fixed so all photos had to be taken from a close proximity.

In order to not identify people, which is always a challenge to a street photographer, decided to take contre-jour shots thus having the sun behind the subject hence leaving their faces obscured. I took a few, but nothing special. Then I saw this couple having lunch sitting on the grass near the beach and from the side of my eye saw a lady selling hats. She was dressed in traditional African clothing and wearing a straw hat advertising her merchandise.  I focused a meter or so behind the lunching couple and waited. Sometimes one has to anticipate scenarios based on the environment and hope that the one clicking chance he has to capture the scene will be timed just right.

So, the hat lady passed exactly behind the couple as I expected. And I thought I clicked just at the right moment.

When I developed the film, I saw a strange shadow above the hat selling lady’s head. Intrigued, I decided to print that frame even though there seemed nothing very special in the captured moment.

To my surprise, my timing for depressing the shutter had been better than I anticipated. Obviously a pigeon flew over the scene at that very moment and I did not notice it. Here is the cropped and enlarged unanticipated inclusion to the otherwise well choreographed scene I had organized:

Now this otherwise pedestrian photo had that je ne sais quoi that makes street photography so unpredictable and sometimes because of that, delightful.

September 26, 2019

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019