Tag: black and white
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Adrift on the Nile
Welcome to Alaska said the bleary-eyed Egyptian man sitting at the next table, my tired smirk of a reply was enough of an invitation for him to slide his seat over and join me. It was still early, the chocolaty coffee was not strong enough and had yet to work its magic, I wasn’t feeling…
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Syria, Nine Grueling Years
Sitting in silence on a red sofa, gaze transfixed to a muted tv. January 2011. I had hardly left that sofa just watching history unfold via al Jazeera, this time I was squeezed between Syrian friends with tears in their eyes. We were in Syria and the revolution was in Egypt and of all the…
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The Rubbish Collectors of Istanbul
Faceless men and women, struggling up rain soaked cobbled hills clogged with traffic. Faces windswept and facing the floor. Ignored and cursed in equal measure. These wretched images as iconic in Istanbul as the minarets and monuments, stealthy tourists will often try and snap them as they haul a burlap load past shops with shelves…
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Finding Order in the Chaos
Finding Order in the Chaos Landscape Photography Despite having grown up in the countryside I have never really had much of an affinity for it; as a child I learned the names of trees and grass, I learned to swim in the river a couple of miles along the track, I fished it too or…
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Dogging At The Russian Church
A grey and grumpy Vitosha mountain stared down at me as I made my way along the wide scruffy boulevards of downtown Sofia, cobbled streets and tram lines glistening with a smattering of winter rain, the commies had gone but their heritage remains, a snub-nosed ageing tram proof of Sofia’s charming Soviet past, eager to…
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I’m not a violent man, but I punched him in the face.
It was one of those biting cold Damascus winter mornings, it had been snowing and the streets were sluiced in slush, I had been living in Mohajarin on the slopes of Jebal Qasioun, I splashed in and out of the dirty puddles as I trudged down the towards the Citadel and the Old city, I…
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The Brothers Kalaycioglu
Erol and Erdem Kalaycioglu work in a tiny split level workshop in the impoverished Tarlabasi neighborhood, the gentrification process of the city is now at their doorstep, the building next door now disappeared and the ugly sounds of construction drowning out the genteel sounds of craftsmen at work, Erol hobbles around making tea while…
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Vantage Point
So it seems street photography is a thing now, I guess the advent of social media and digital technology has thrust the genre tagged, tweeted and trending onto our flickering screens. So that’s nice. The emails generated from my last blog post showing more than a passing interest it seems and obviously I am very…
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My Gay Adventures in the Middle East
It was one of those balmy Beirut summer evenings, the smell of Nargila smoke mingling intoxicatingly with the car fumes along the corniche, I had strolled alone as I almost always do when visiting the dysfunctional Lebanese capital.
John Wreford Photographer 