Howard W. French (http://www.howardwfrench.com)

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A Continent for the Taking

Africa first captivated New York Times journalist Howard W. French more than twenty-five years ago, but his knowledge of and passion for the continent has the depth of a lifetime association. His experiences there awakened him as nothing before to… read more

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I’m off to China soon, where I’m pushing to complete work on my Disappearing Shanghai photography project, which I hope to publish in book form in the coming year. I’ve been working hard on this, re-scanning hundreds of 6x6 negatives on a rented Imacon (expensive!).

There will be a rather different emphasis with this summer’s photography proper, with a focus on intimate interiors in both the old neighborhoods I’ve haunted for the last five years and in the newly built neighborhoods on the city’s periphery, where tens of thousands of people have been relocated.

I’ll be updating my website Click here to see it quite a bit over the weeks ahead. I’d also encourage people interested in my work to visit my Flickr stream. A good way to do so is through the link below:

Posted at 12:23 PM · Comments (0)

I never met John Updike, except in print.
In the February 5, 1996 editions of The New Yorker, he wrote this of my work:

“Last summer the dying Congolese novelist, playwright and poet told the Times correspondent, Howard French, “Africa is the only continent left that has not found its way. We have this incredible wealth, of resources and spirit, but outsiders like France are just robbing us, while blessing our dictators.”

Tansi made this statement in the remote village of Foufoundou, in his native African state of Congo, where he had found remission from the symptoms of aids by way of mixture of herbal medicines and incantations that mixed “African traditional healing and Christian evangelism.” Tansi told his interviewer, “I had been to hospitals in Brazzaville and Paris, but they had been unable to do anything for me. It wasn’t until I came here, following the voice of a prophet that my condition really began to change. I should have come long ago.” But his native herbal concoctions had not helped Tansi’s wife, Pierrette, who, lying emaciated and feeble on a mat, claimed they had made her mouth so sore that she could eat nothing but oranges. Two weeks later, both she and Tansi were dead.”

He was 47 and widely considered the leading writer of Central Africa. His miserable end betokens the misery of Africa, a continent beset by AIDS, famine, poverty, corruption, tyranny and genocidal massacre…” (the article continues at some length.)

There was an honor, naturally, in having one’s work mentioned by Updike. But there was something more, too, an odd coming together in this experience of two of the writers on Africa whose fiction had most affected me: Updike and Tansi. More about Tansi can be found on this site. As for Updike, his novel, The Coup, is not particularly well appreciated, but its a jewel of perception, of wicked humor and of observation — both of an imagined Africa, if that’s possible, and of the United States, whose provincialism, tawdriness and vacuous commercialism, the author lampoons without mercy.

Both of the offerings below come most highly recommended.

Link

Link

Posted at 12:15 AM · Comments (0)

I’ve created a new gallery in my photography website by the name of Echo Valley consisting of photographs from my “lao jia,” my homeland, in the deepest sense of the word, in north-central Virginia. There’s an accompanying essay in the “News” section of the website. Please enjoy.

Click to visit the gallery

Posted at 7:54 PM · Comments (0)

My photography of Shanghai is included, along with an essay, in a forthcoming book of essays bearing this title.

Posted at 2:09 PM · Comments (0)

My Disappearing Shanghai work has been selected for display in the Fourth Lianzhou International Photo Festival, from December 6-12, 2008 in China’s Guangdong Province.

The Lianzhou Festival is one of China’s two most important photography shows. Naturally I am very happy that my work will show. I’m trying to figure out how I can be there…

I am looking for ways to show Disappearing Shanghai in New York next year.

Click to my all-photography site

I am posting day to day stuff that I shoot on Flickr. Click to see my Flickr stream

Posted at 10:11 PM · Comments (0)

I’ve been away from the site for an unusually long period of time, in large part because I’ve been so busy with the relocation to New York, and the switch to my new job at Columbia. Things are settling down though, and nicely. All of the rhythms of life have changed abruptly for me, but the teaching has been very enjoyable so far, and as I get a few of the remaining wrinkles worked out, I’ll begin to busy myself with a lot of new writing assignments, some of which are in progress already, and some big new photography projects, as well.
I’ve managed to begin some interesting new work with the camera here already, and only look for the momentum to gather.
Mini-announcement, I am looking for models to work with to further the nude portraiture work that can be found on my howardwfrench.net photography site. If any visitor here is interested, please contact me directly.
Eventually, I hope to do a redesign of this site. In the meantime, I plan a lot more diary entries, more in a blogging vein.
Stay tuned!

Posted at 9:39 PM · Comments (0)

On Monday August 4, I leave China, ending five years of extraordinarily rich residence in Shanghai.
As I depart China, I am also leaving The New York Times, ending a fulfilling 22 year career at the newspaper, and joining the faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
For more biographical information, please refer to the “About” item on this page.
So what does this change mean for me? It means that I have to reinvent myself as a teacher. It’s actually a return to something I did very early in my working life, when I taught English literature in the 1980s at the University of Abidjan, in Ivory Coast.
It also means a return to my roots, sunk back in that same era, as a freelance writer. My plan is to stay very busy as a writer, and during the fallow portions of the academic calendar, the idea is to continue traveling and exploring the world. My first effort in this direction is a review of The Corpse Walker, by the Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, in The Nation, which can be found on this site.
In the near term, this will undoubtedly mean continuing to pay a lot of attention to China. I’ve invested a lot of effort in coming to grips with this country, including becoming fluent in the language and photographing the withering old neighborhoods of Shanghai in an in-depth and arguably unique way.
With its velocity of change, and a population that amounts to 1/5th of humanity, the China story will only get better, and I plan to be involved in it, both as a writer and a photographer. Stay tuned.
Other specific plans include more work in Africa. A trip back to the continent last year after several years away merely whet my appetite for much more work there.
I’m also thinking about India, about the Caribbean, where I worked in the early 1990s, about southeast Asia, and about that newest of all subjects of exploration for me, the United States.
My hopes also include a rapid conclusion to my first attempt at fiction, a big push to get Disappearing Shanghai into print in book form, and some embryonic non-fiction projects.
For people who are interested in my work, you will find regular updates on all of this right here.
Finally, before long, visitors will also discover a long overdue redesign of this website.

Posted at 11:49 AM · Comments (2)

I’ve just come across this link to a picture from my Shanghai gallery show of February 2008. Thought it was worth sharing. This is a show of one of the two rooms where the images were displayed. The other room, which can’t be seen here, contained much larger prints from medium format (Rolleiflex) photographs.

Click to read more

Posted at 10:55 PM · Comments (0)

2 New Solo Photography Exhibitions:
Robert van der Hilst “Shanghai: 1990-1993” and
Howard W. French “Disappearing Shanghai”
Exhibition Dates: February 16 - March 21, 2008

Opening Reception: Saturday February 16, 5 - 8 pm

m97 Gallery is pleased to announce two new photography exhibitions: “Shanghai: 1990-1993” by Dutch photographer Robert van der Hilst and “Disappearing Shanghai” by American photographer Howard French. Both photographers use their different camera languages to present us a grand picture of the people and streets of Shanghai beginning with Robert’s color Kodachrome works in the early 1990s to the recent past, and five years of Howard French’s black-and-white documentary work in the alleyways of Shanghai. The exhibitions begin on February 16, 2008, and m97 Gallery will hold an opening reception for the artists on Saturday February 16th from 5pm to 8pm.

Robert van der Hilst’s early color work from “Shanghai: 1990-1993” captures the early roots of this large metropolis as it readies itself for the great thrust forward towards modernization. Bringing a strong sense of color and composition to his work in the streets of Shanghai, Robert’s color Kodachrome photographs, now viewed some 18 years later, bring a sense of historical reflection after the past two decades of breakneck development in China’s financial capital. His subjects and sceneries are at once both familiar and foreign to the viewer. The subtleties and textures of Robert’s works, as well as the overall appearance of the city and its people are captured by the Dutch photographer as he first encounters a city poised on the edge of a newfound greatness. First traveling to Shanghai in 1990 on assignment for Vogue Magazine to feature a reportage of the city, Robert became fascinated by his first encounter with China and later made a total of seven trips to Shanghai in the course of three years.

American photographer Howard French’s “Disappearing Shanghai” series, is an intimate journey through many of the forgotten lanes or Nong Tangs of Shanghai. Documenting the bustling back alleyways of the now highly-developed metropolis of Shanghai, Howard’s black-and-white photographs offer a contemplation and reflection on the fading architecture of the old lanes and the people living in the shadow of Shanghai’s modernization. As the Shanghai bureau chief for the New York Times, Howard has managed to capture intimate scenes of normal people and their lives in the old lanes of Shanghai whose days are clearly numbered. As quoted in the New York Times, Howard says “ Over and over again, I have been asked by the people of these neighborhoods what is my purpose in taking pictures of these lives? Am I trying to show a bad side of China? To make fun of poor people? I have no trouble answering, and my reply is effective more often than not because it is sincere. ‘I take pictures in your neighborhood because there is something very beautiful about the lifestyle you have,’ I say. ‘Things may not be perfect, but there is a very special kind of community you have, and soon places like this will all be gone.’”

Robert van der Hilst lives in Shanghai and Paris, and is currently working on a large-scale photography project titled “Chinese Interiors”. He has worked as a photographer in Europe, South Africa and North America and his monograph “The Cubans” was published in 2001.

Howard W. French is a senior journalist for the New York Times and has been Shanghai Bureau Chief for the Times since 2003. He has won “ the Publisher’s Award” seven times and currently lives in Shanghai where he is also at work on his first novel.

For additional photographs, interviews or other media queries, please contact m97 Gallery at: info@m97gallery.com or by phone: (+8621) 6266.1597. Tuesday-Sunday 10:30-18:30.

m97 画廊 ｜ 上海
摄影双个展 ：
罗伯特·凡德·休斯特 《上海：1990－1993》 与
傅好文 《 消失的上海 》
展出日期：2008年 2月16日 – 3月21日

开幕仪式：2月16日 星期六 下午5点 – 8点

m97画廊荣幸地宣布摄影双个展：荷兰摄影师罗伯特·凡德·休斯特《上海：1990－1993》与美国摄影师及记者傅好文《 消失的上海 》即将开幕。罗伯特九十年代初拍摄的柯达彩色照片和傅好文最近五年的黑白纪实照片从不同角度为我们呈现出了上海在这两个时代的不同风情。本次展览将于2008年2月16日开始，开幕仪式定于2月16日星期六下午5点至8点，届时艺术家会莅临现场。

罗伯特·凡德·休斯特的早期彩色摄影作品《上海：1990－1993》展现了一个当时正摩拳擦掌准备朝着现代化大都市进程飞跃的上海。他的色彩和构图强烈的彩色照片让观众有机会在经过了十八年飞速发展后的今天欣赏到这座中国财经中心当年的历史样貌。荷兰摄影师与当时处于转型时期的上海的碰撞造就了这组细节与质地丰富，并且充分反映了当时的城市和人的生活形态的照片。那些曾几何时的人与风景立刻带给观众一种既熟悉且陌生的感觉。1990年罗伯特被巴黎《时尚》杂志派到上海来拍一组照片。那次旅程让他立刻迷上了中国。之后的三年里他曾七次返回拍摄。

美国摄影师傅好文的《 消失的上海 》系列是一段在被遗忘的弄堂中游走徘徊的私人旅程。他拍摄都市中的背角街道，深切关注着现代化进程阴影下的老街和生活于其中的人。身为《纽约时报》上海分社社长的傅好文捕捉了平凡人与时日无多的老房子之间的亲密关系。 正如他在《纽约时报》中曾写到：“街坊里的人们曾多次问我，我拍摄他们的生活场景，目的是什么？是不是要显示中国的阴暗面？或嘲笑穷人？回答并不难，因为我的答复是真诚的，所以常常为人所接受。‘我在你们的街头拍照，是因为你们生活方式中一些美好的东西。’我说，‘任何事物也许都不十全十美，但这是一个极其特殊的地方，不用多久，这一切恐怕都会消失了。’”

罗伯特·凡德·休斯特生活在上海和巴黎。目前正在拍摄大型摄影作品“中国人家”系列。他曾在欧洲，南非，美洲等地从事摄影工作。1991年出版摄影图书“The Cubans”。

傅好文为《纽约时报》高级记者。自从2003年以来担任该报驻上海分社社长。曾七次荣获报业人士最高荣誉奖项“the Publisher’s Award”, 住于中国上海。目前正在上海创作一组人体艺术照片以及第一部小说。

如果您需要更多相关摄影作品，约见或者其他媒体需要，请联系m97画廊，请电邮至：info@m97gallery.com 或者电话至（＋8621）6266.1597. 开放时间：每天 上午10:30 - 下午 18:30

Posted at 8:07 PM · Comments (1)

The details of my two shows featuring my Disappearing Shanghai work have finally come together after lots of intensive labor. The Shanghai invitation is copied below. A smaller version of the show opens at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum of Washington University, in St. Louis, on February 8, 2008. I’ll be visiting St. Louis early the following week to give a talk there.
Details can be found at: http://kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu/exhibitions.html
Visitors to my other, all photography website, whose link is in the upper right hand corner of this page can get a sense of my work through the Disappearing Shanghai gallery posted there.

That website is in the midst of a badly needed redesign, but some of the images from my two shows can be found there nonetheless.

By the way, I have less than 200 copies remaining of the catalog from my October 2006 Berlin show of Disappearing Shanghai. It’s nicely printed, and the price is $20 plus handling, a virtual steal. Get them while you can!

Posted at 12:10 PM · Comments (0)

Happy New Year everyone.
I’ve endured an enforced absence from the web for a while due to unexpected complications in switching web hosts. That’s all happily behind me now, though, and I’ll be updating this site with new material steadily in the weeks ahead. I’ve just posted the majority of the pieces I’ve written for the Times and the IHT over the last few weeks to the Writings section, and will be adding fresh new material on a daily basis to the other sections, as well.
My documentary photography project Disappearing Shanghai, has reached maturity, and will be making its premiere in China with a show opening February 16 at gallery M97 in Shanghai, alongside the work of the well-known photographer, Robert van der Hilst.
A smaller collection of this work is also showing at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, at Washington University, in St. Louis, opening on January 29, 2008.
Click to visit the museum

Click to see Disappearing Shanghai
Click to visit M97
There are still 50-image catalogs available of an earlier version of my show, which premiered in October 2006, in Berlin, and they can be ordered through this site, or by contacting me directly at: globetrotter@howardwfrench.com.
While pulling together the definitive gallery version of Disappearing Shanghai, I’ve turned my photographic attentions in a totally new direction, and am building a portfolio of fine art nudes, which begin to make their appearance on my all-photography site howardwfrench.net as of today.
Click to see this gallery
If you have an interest in modeling, please contact me directly at globetrotter@howardwfrench.com.
There’s also a permanent link to my photography site in the upper right hand corner of this page.
Prints of the nudes as well as prints of my documentary work are available for sale through the link above.
Finally, there have been several publications of my work since I went offline. Newsweek Select featured it in late December, as did Shanghai’s “Hint” magazine. Stay tuned.

Posted at 3:12 PM · Comments (0)

China’s Xinmin Weekly ran this article about my Shanghai photography in its 11/2-11/11/2007 edition. (Sorry for the late notice.)

Qiu Xiaolong, a native Shanghainese and celebrated author of Detective Chen novels, wrote an essay to accompany the images.

我感谢傅好文为留住上海历史和文化记忆所做的这一切努力，因为充满了”我们对这个城市和人民的共同热爱”。

撰稿／裘小龙 摄影／傅好文

认识傅好文（Ｈｏｗａｒｄ Ｆｒｅｎｃｈ），是因为他对上海这个城市的”情结”。如他在一个电子邮件里所说的，这也是我们共同的”情结”，在我的小说和诗 歌里，在他给《纽约时报》和《国际先驱论坛报》撰写的文章里。接着却有新的发现：他的上海激情不仅仅洋溢在文字里，也在摄影中。最近我在校看《红旗袍》的 清样，与他说起，就像因为窗外一个偶然的意象，福克纳开始创作了《愤怒与喧嚣》，”文革”年间，因为父亲书柜里一张劫后余生的老照片，我在许多年后萌发了 写这本书的冲动。他获悉后，立刻给我寄来了他许多关于上海的摄影作品。

我喜欢摄影，仅在业余意义上，他却是专业，作品曾多次获 奖，去年在德国办过一个摄影展，名为”消失中的上海”，最近还要在上海办一个，也是有关这个城市的。我很难从专业的角度说什么，但他的作品给我带来一种诗 意的震撼，就仿佛自己也给摄入进去，身临其境般地获得了全新的经验和观念。

从一种角度说，摄影有与诗歌相通的地方，都要在寻常的 生活场景中发掘出不寻常的一瞬间。诚然，摄影者不可能像诗人那样直抒胸臆，只能通过镜头中的一切来激发读者（观众）相应的情感和思考。我们来看看傅好文的 照片，标题《不再下注了》，下面一行短注说，”麻将间，经过了漫长一天。”作品呈现出一间相当拥挤，显然综合了厨房、客厅、饭厅功能的房间。居中一张麻将 桌，仍乱摊着麻将牌，旁边是放烟灰缸的茶几；前面一张饭桌，还搁着一缸子菜；左侧叠放着冰箱、微波炉、茶壶，紧挨一张不再用来写字的写字桌；右侧竖着一架 老式移动梯子，可以小心翼翼地爬上加搭出来的小阁楼，阁楼墙上悬挂日光灯、黑底白字的电钟，时针指着５点４７分。灯光洒在麻将桌上，成了整个画面的聚焦， 恰到好处地与朦胧的前景与后景形成对照。打麻将的人都已离去了，桌上仅蹲着一只白猫。

这样的场景对打麻将的人来说，应属司空见惯。典型的一幕老里弄房子场景，再普通不过的市民生活方式。只是在摄影者对这个城市独特的观照角度中，在快门按下的”决定性一瞬间”，才发生意义。

我这样说，因为我就是在这种老房子中长大的。家里还要拥挤一些，房间的功能除了客厅、饭厅，更要加上卧室，只有一张桌子，要兼顾写字与吃饭。左邻右舍住房 条件（甚至到现在）也都差不多，大伙儿挤在公用厨房、客堂，一起做饭、聊天，偶尔也会在过道里摆开餐桌、牌局。我还想到一个朋友，他家里也有这样一个加搭 出来的阁楼。那还是在７０年代初，他给我钥匙，让我白天去他的阁楼，一个人躲在里面读书；真有好几个早晨，在爬上梯子前，我看到了就似乎是这张照片中的场 景，唯一不同的是桌上摊着纸牌。这张照片使我感到亲切而又震动，倒又不仅仅因为怀旧。回想起来，还隐隐感到其中隐含的不同生活方式和价值。或许，因为空间 局限而密切起来的人间关系，人们到处都能在生活中发现、享受欢乐的精神，条件艰难却依然生动的知足——用孔子的话来说，”居陋巷不改其乐”吧。这似乎也可 以说是上海文化中正在消失的一种特色。

对于我来说，在傅好文众多的上海摄影作品里，正是脉动着城市的这种精神：夏日的傍晚，一家 三口在路边用餐，椅子、凳子、竹躺椅，却没有餐桌，孩子光顾着瞅前面的稀奇玩意儿，不肯吃饭，母亲一边呵责，一边把碗端到他嘴边，父亲抽着烟，回过头来看 一眼，都那么自在，就像在家里一样；一个废品回收者，踩着堆满杂货的三轮车，车前一大块牌子像黑板，写满要从街头巷尾回收的废品，慢吞吞驶过狭隘而拥挤不 堪的小街，恰如闲庭信步；一个在街头修自行车的工人，没有生意上门，索性放倒塑料折椅，躺下身子，摊开报纸仰面阅读，让写满了磨难的额头埋在了新闻世界 下……

关于这个城市，傅好文在柏林摄影展的序言中这样写道：”在上海，这些正迅速消失的居民区所最吸引我的地方，正是弥漫其中的 亲密无间。这里，人们知道相互的名字，愿意停下步子来谈一谈生活的痛苦和欢乐、季节的变迁、世代的更替。老人和孩子受到大伙的照顾，人们在屋子外面吃饭， 空气中混杂着上百家厨房的芳香。在街头，随时随地都会冒出小市场，可以买到各种各样好吃的东西。人们关爱地饲放鸽子，让中午的天空布满白色的翅膀。”

他写得诗意洋溢，还真让我想到周邦彦的名句：”雁背夕阳红欲暮。”当然，他清楚地意识到，尽管快速消失中的上海老城区充满了魅力，同时也充满了众多问题。 他的视角决不是单一的。或许又是一种巧合吧，在美国生活了近２０年后，在那些有关上海的小说中，我自己也这样想象着。

这里我所想 到的与他镜头中所摄到的，相对应关系或许并不一定那么直接、精确。用读者反应理论说，人们自身的经验各异，感受难免有差别。举个例子，照片的注说，”漫长 的一天后”。我的第一个反应却是：”漫长的一夜后”。换句话说，是清晨五点三刻的场景。我老房子所在的里弄里，方城之战多在夜间展开，而且常通宵达旦。

不过再仔细看，他的注也可能是故意含混。麻将牌局夜以继日，打麻将的人一味沉溺其中，要说成漫长的一天自有反讽意。现代社会如此充满多样性和复杂性，摄影作品也不得不是多义性的。其中意象层层叠加，更丰富了内涵，诸多细节完全可以有不同的解释。

再看照片中的中心意象——麻将。我不会麻将，说不上好恶。然而，对那些憎恶麻将的人来说，会有什么样的感受呢？打麻将的人已不在，却仿佛更突出了存在，在 一夜的激情与挥霍之后，如同”春潮带雨晚来急，野渡无人舟自横”的意境。在光的中心，静寂；仅有一只猫映衬着所有的输赢得失，背景中的幢幢阴影。

是的，使这一切静物生动起来的，是蹲在麻将桌上的白猫。这确实是神来之笔。如布列松所说的，摄影不能干涉拍摄的对象，无法像诗歌创作那样随意添加细节。这 里，谁也都没有办法让一只猫蹲在桌子上静静面对镜头（尽管在作品构图、光影和角度的选择上，摄影者还是加入了自己的观念，多少介于王国维所说的”有我”与 “无我”之间）。这是摄影者与被摄影的物体中间相互发现的一瞬间，偶然性的捕捉，无法干涉或复制。猫俯身在一盘麻将残局上，俨然君临天下，神情神秘莫测， 显得悠然，又有些慵懒，凝视着，批判着－－－－我们仿佛也突然融入了猫的视角，观照着这个城市的一幕独特场景。

关于他的摄影作 品，傅好文在《纽约时报》中曾写道，”街坊里的人们曾多次问我，我拍摄他们的生活场景，目的是什么？是不是要显示中国的阴暗面？或嘲笑穷人？回答并不难， 因为我的答复是真诚的，所以常常为人们接受。’我在你们的街头拍照，是因为你们生活方式中一些美好的东西。’我说，’任何事物也许都不十全十美，但这是一 个极其特殊的地方，不用多久，这一切恐怕都会消失了。’”

在上海经历的巨大变迁中，傅好文所关注的，不是物质主义意义上的繁华竞 逐，而是在城市重新发展过程中消逝的传统生活方式与价值，尤其涉及到社会的底层，这一切正在摩肩接踵的高楼群下黯然失色。他摄影作品的意象因此唤起我们身 上相应的复杂感受，我们进而也获得看世界以及自己的新视角。

或许像卞之琳先生当年对我说的那样，要写诗歌评论，最好自己写诗。对于傅好文的摄影，我也只能作为一个非专业的爱好者，用自己较习惯的读诗方式写下一些感受。不过，在中国传统文学批评中，也有诗中有画，画中有诗的说法，所以也可以这样来说摄影吧，

作为在他摄影作品背景中生长起来的一个读者，我感谢傅好文为留住上海历史和文化记忆所做的这一切努力，因为充满了”我们对这个城市和人民的共同热爱”。（作者系旅美作家）

Posted at 12:50 PM · Comments (0)

Yes, I am a huge Boston Red Sox fan. I was in Fenway for Carlton Fisk’s walkoff homer 32 years ago today. And I watched, riveted, as the Sox pulled away from Cleveland today, and then stomped them.
I’m waiting, meanwhile, for someone to write something that breaks with the facile conventional wisdom on Manny Ramirez, a hero of this team and of this post season if there ever was one.
There was endless grief after Manny stated a few days ago that the world wouldn’t end if the Sox didn’t prevail. There was always next year, he said.
Wasn’t he right, though? And is there any clearer turning point in this series than the back to back to back home runs in Game Four, of which Manny’s was the last?
The Sox lost the game, but they showed the kind of fight and spirit that the remainder of the series would be made of. And then there was the Manny quote.
They Sox called themselves Idiots four years ago on their way to the first World Series triumph in decades, and Manny, using his own formulation, did as much again. Only a team as loose and comfortable with itself, as fearless of failure as this bunch could have come back from down 1-3 against the strong Indians, and Manny’s quote said it all.

For a great read about Manny and the Sox and baseball in general, read:
http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2007/10/19/announcers-being-announcers/

Posted at 11:36 PM · Comments (0)

This photography site has just run a feature about my Shanghai photography, and can be seen here:

Click to see F Blog

Posted at 1:53 PM · Comments (0)

Two magazines have featured my photography in the last couple of weeks.

New Weekly magazine (China) ran several of my Shanghai photographs in its October 1, 2007 edition. The images were featured as part of a special, all-photography issue that looked at how foreign photographers, many of them quite famous, depict China. I was very honored to have been included.

The Polish arts magazine, Autoportret, also featured my Shanghai work in its Autumn edition.
http://www.autoportret.pl/

Posted at 2:02 PM · Comments (0)

The online magazine, Small Swords, has just published an interview with me about my work. It can be found here:
Click to read more
My new, all-photography website, Glimpse is here:
Click to visit
I will be posting “No Longer Available” notices soon for several of my most popular prints from the Glimpse website’s Disappearing Shanghai collection. A dwindling supply of catalogs of my Disappearing Shanghai October 2006 show in Berlin, as well as beautifully made, specially-priced boxed collections of archival prints of my photographs are still available via the Glimpse link above.

Posted at 4:45 PM · Comments (0)

The Shanghai weekly that goes by the name The Bund in English (外滩 画报 or Wai Tan Hua Bao in Chinese) ran a cover story in their Lifestyle section on my Disappearing Shanghai work in their editions of June 28.
It is a five-page spread, in all, with nine of my images, including two full-page reproductions.
The paper also ran an extensive interview with the photos. It’s not online, though, so I can’t share this here. This comes on the heels of the Berlin magazine Tip’s publication of some my Shanghai images.
All of the images can be seen on my new website. Click to visit the site.

Posted at 7:03 PM · Comments (0)

I’ve been back for a while from an exciting and productive African trip and have been busy at work writing up the stories that will flow from the reporting there.

There’s other big news on the photography front. My new, all photography website, Glimpse, is finally up, open and online and I invite fans of documentary photography to visit it: Click to visit the new website

The catalog from my October 2007 Berlin showing of Disappearing Shanghai is still available, although I’m down to a little over 100 copies now, from an initial printing of 1000. It’s $20 plus shipping. Order yours now!

One more item on the photography front. The New York Times Travel section is running an article and slideshow featuring my Shanghai photography in its editions of Sunday, June 10, 2007. Please have a look: Click to read more

Posted at 5:46 PM · Comments (1)

I’m traveling for the next few weeks in Africa, hence the sporadic updates here. I’m in Ethiopia now, and have been having a fascinating time, about which I’ll report more in future dispatches.
For anyone interested, you can follow my footsteps through pictures I’m posting on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aglimpseoftheworld/.
Once I’m in a position to do so, I also intend to post galleries from each of the countries on my itinerary right here.

Posted at 4:41 PM · Comments (0)

The following entry appeared today on Mike Johnston’s photography blog, The Online Photographer , which I’ve followed admiringly for a good while.
Thanks very much, Mike, and thanks to all of the others who commented, or who have taken a moment to look at my flickr stream (Click to access my Flickr stream)

Some of the commentators inquired about prints. A nicely produced catalog of my Berlin show is available for $15 plus handling, which strikes me as a very good deal. Numbered, gallery quality prints are also available on request.

A Mysterious Photographer

“A Glimpse of the World” (Howard French): The local tailor.
Danba, Sichuan Province. October 2006. Rolleiflex 2.8, Ilford Delta.

For me personally, one of the important outcomes of the “Jonathan Greenwald: Conscientious Street Photographer” thread was a modest comment that included a flickr link from someone calling him- (or her-) self “A Glimpse of the World” (hereinafter referred to as Glimpse, with male pronouns, and apologies from me if the latter is incorrect). Glimpse apparently prefers not to be known, but has amassed an impressive amount of unusually fine work on flickr—I’ve returned to his page three times over the past few days, each time discovering more to look at. He practices a sort of street/travel/environmental photography in various cities around the world, and has a fine eye for honest documentary and found portraiture.

You’ll notice that he switches formats (35mm and medium format), cameras, and films, and mixes black-and-white and color. I normally find that photographers who do this create an obstacle for themselves that’s difficult to overcome, with the technical inconsistency fracturing the integrity of the message. (It’s difficult enough to create, and conform to, a consistent style in photographs.) While I still have some reservations about Glimpse’s work in this respect—at least as it’s presented on flickr—I think his vision survives the self-imposed handicap pretty well. See what you think.

Posted by: MIKE JOHNSTON

Mea culpa: A number of commenters have (correctly) identified Glimpse as Howard French. I don’t know why my reportorial/researcher abilities abandon me whenever I get on flickr, but it’s happened before. For some reason I seem to have a congenital lack of affinity for the flickr interface—the pictures are too small, navigation confuses me, and I never seem to know exactly what the heck I’m doing. I swear I looked for Glimpse’s identity on flickr for 15 minutes before concluding that it just wasn’t there, hence the title of this entry. What can I say? Write it off to my incompetence, I guess.

Posted at 12:31 PM · Comments (0)

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