A night to remember
By Chris Helgren
The weather was calm, the stars and crescent moon shone and the water lapped gently against the hull as three wreaths were tossed into the sea above the Titanic wreck, 100 years after she went down.
It seemed every one of the MS Balmoral’s 1300 guests, dressed against the cool night air, was crammed onto its terraced decks aft, craning for a view of the event. And at 2:20 when the wreaths went in, all was silent. As Philip Littlejohn, the Titanic historian later noted, these details mimicked what would have been happening during the disaster itself – a black night, no light bar that of the doomed liner, and when she went under, silence.
Taking it all in was Belfast writer Susie Millar, who wept at the handrails over the stern, watching as the wreaths floated into the blackness out of sight. She told me, “I thought of people in the lifeboats as Titanic sank, who didn’t know whether they would be rescued or not. It all happened (the memorial) in real time and I thought that people wouldn’t have had time to say all their goodbyes, it happened so fast. It was a night I’ll never forget”.
Rocking and Rolling on the Titanic Memorial Cruise
By Chris Helgren
In what resembles a Trekkie convention gone through a time portal, hundreds of passengers on the Titanic Memorial Cruise, retracing the Titanic’s voyage from Southampton 100 years later, now divide their time between promenading in the latest fashions of 100 years ago and debating the true color of Titanic’s funnels. Yellow, but what kind of yellow? Model maker Kenneth Mascarenhas and painter James Allen Flood don’t see eye to eye on the subject, and it’s suggested that fellow passenger Commodore Warwick should adjudicate the issue. After all, he saw the Titanic wreck in a submersible. However, Mascarenhas fails to take into account that the ship is now rusted through and covered with Oceanic mud, its funnels probably covered in barnacles.
Actually, there are plenty of things to do on board the MS Balmoral. I missed the “fluid retention and swollen ankles seminar” on Monday, but there’s been a parade of Titanic experts on show to fill us in on everything one would want to know (except the color of funnels). Sadly, due to the inclement weather, shuffleboard has been cancelled the last two days. As has a dance show, due to health and safety concerns. Many of my fellow passengers have been sighted hunched over, unable to promenade, green with seasickness.
The big drama yesterday was the helicopter evacuation of a BBC cameraman. Tour operator Miles Morgan said that the ship would swing back 20 nautical miles towards Ireland, within range of an Irish Coast Guard chopper. The ailing man was whisked upwards in a sling and we returned on our course, hopefully not late for our anniversary date. Captain Robert Bamberg assured everyone that would be the case if we continued at a speed of 15 knots.
“As a person I am not extra interesting” – Klimt
By Herwig Prammer
When you walk through central Vienna now you get the impression there are almost no other cultural events this year besides Gustav Klimt’s 150th birthday anniversary. Posters, postcards, sketch books, scarves, curtains, neck ties and gloves, umbrellas, cups and glasses, bottles and plates, boxes and containers on every corner are covered with his paintings. Copies of “The Kiss” even beautify toilet seats!
Originally I wanted to look at how Vienna pays tribute to this important Austrian “Wiener Jugendstil” (parallel to “Art Nouveau” in France) artist. But the growth of tacky commercialization of Klimt’s art has begun to taken center stage.
I learned this is mostly because the copyright time limit for Klimt’s art has recently run out and is partly due to his trend-setting work just being simply popular.
Empty spaces
By Carlos Barria
A year ago I went to Japan to cover the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed the country’s northern coast.
At the time I was shocked by the scale of the destruction and felt I needed to show the magnitude of the disaster. I tried to fill my pictures with as many elements as possible. I even took a series of panoramic-format photographs, for a wider view.
My pictures at the time showed spaces filled with pieces of houses, twisted cars and people’s belongings– the debris of daily life.
Then two weeks ago, I returned. I found myself walking in some of the same spots I visited originally. Things hadn’t changed too much; little seemed to be rebuilt. But all those spaces were clean and somewhat empty this time. It was hard for me to visualize houses or other buildings standing there, as they once had.
The place that adults fear
By Toru Hanai
March 11 is here again in Japan.
A year after the tsunami devastated Higashi Matsushima city in Miyagi, seven-year-old Wakana Kumagai visited the grave of her father Kazuyuki with her mother Yoshiko, brother Koki, and her grandparents.
I first met Wakana last April, just weeks after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and huge tsunami devastated Japan’s northeast Pacific coast. The school year begins in April here in Japan, and Wakana was carrying her new, shiny red school backpack as she visited her father at a temporary graveyard that housed those who died from the tsunami. She gracefully bowed to her dad, showing off her new bag and her dress she wore for the first grader’s ceremony as if she were at a ball, and told him that she just attended her school for the first time. Her graceful bow struck my heart.
One year from that day
By Toru Hanai
It will soon be one year from that day – March 11, 2011.
Greetings among friends who meet after a long absence begins with, “Where and what were you doing on March 11?”
On March 11, 2011, I was photographing Prime Minister Naoto Kan during a committee session at the Parliament building in Tokyo.
At 2:46 p.m. the world started to shake really slowly.
I felt fear as the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck, not only because of the intensity of the shaking but also the duration of it.
I was absorbed as I continued to take pictures of the prime minister reacting to the quake.
38 days and 10 years in Afghanistan
By Erik de Castro
As I write this blog, I am on the 38th day of my current assignment to Afghanistan as an embedded journalist with U.S. military forces. I have been assigned here several times since 2001 to cover the war that is still going on 10 years after the al Qaeda attack on U.S. soil. Mullah Omar, popularly known as the one-eyed Taliban, was the first member of the Taliban I met back in 2001. He held press conferences almost daily at the Afghan embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan a few weeks before U.S. forces and its allies attacked Afghanistan to remove the Taliban government.
Ten years and several trips back to Afghanistan later, I still haven’t seen a lot of Taliban fighters. My present assignment is the time I’ve experienced the most encounters between the combined U.S. and Afghan forces and the Taliban.
It is remarkable how the Afghan soldiers and Taliban fighters are more aggressive now. The insurgents, though they know their artillery is no match to that of the Americans, are daring enough to attack at every opportunity, be it with small arms, RPGs or, on occasions, IEDs and rockets. Most of the time, it is a “hit and run” kind of attack wherein they flee after firing some shots. Such eagerness, however, could cost lives.
@Erik
Good work in catching the images of the conflict which the American warriors family are never going to forget in generations. Good work indeed.
However, as a journalist you did not learn that the local residents as you named them were TALIBANS.
It has been the destiny of Pashtuns, labeled by the yanks as talibans, to have the last encounter with Imperial forces of our times and to degrade them before they retire to oblivion. It is so sad that the USA had to fall into the same trap as the Brits and later the Soviets after them. During ten years the USA has lost the status f a super power, has gone broke and is unable to raise money for infrastructure reapirs at home and give employments to GI’s who suffered humiliation after humiliation by serving in the orient.
Rex Minor
Learning to smile again
By Toru Hanai
Six months after Japan’s massive earthquake and tsunami, I went back to visit six-year-old Wakana Kumagai who lost her father in the disasters in Higashi-Matsushima, Miyagi prefecture.
I photographed Wakana when she visited her father’s temporary grave at a mass burial site in Higashi-Matsushima on April 21, after attending an entrance ceremony at her elementary school. I was struck by how positive and optimistic Wakana behaved.
Five months later, Wakana bowed her head in prayer with her mother Yoshiko and brother Koki at the exact spot where the car of their late father Kazuyuki was found. The family crouched in prayer at 2:46 p.m. as Japan marked exactly six months since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
“Your daddy got out of the car and went towards where he thought you were to find you,” Yoshiko whispered to her children as they prayed at the site.
Truly amazingly put…..Love the pics…
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Palmer-Pho tography/132257203539723
Where were you on 9/11?
By Larry Downing
It’s a simple question understood by anyone alive on September 11, 2001; an unwanted reminder for those who witnessed the confusion of America’s day of crisis as uncertainty stretched beyond its borders and illustrated to the world man’s capability of reaching out and doing harm to others.
That September day started quietly as early Fall leaves gently landed on top of the morning shadows of New York, Washington D.C. and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, but turned horrible after passenger jets and skyscrapers fell out of the sky holding thousands of souls trapped inside evil fires.
(Rescue workers carry mortally injured New York City Fire Department chaplain, the Rev. Mychal Judge, from the wreckage of the World Trade Center in New York City September 11, 2001. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton)
Four commercial jetliners loaded with travelers and fuel were hijacked in flight and then used in a choreographed death wish by determined men who took control of the nation’s course and momentarily dictated its history. All of it captured in high definition on television and on the internet.
Another anniversary date remembered forever with pained hearts and needing nothing more than a mention of a place, a name, or a number to start a personal discussion of the events on that day. December 7th… Dallas… Bobby… Munich… Challenger… Oklahoma City… Flight 93… Flight 11… Flight 77… or Flight 175…
I was a junior higher, 7th grader to be exact. The memory is somewhat hazy but I remember being in in one of those classrooms with wooden desks and wooden floors. I was in English class with a teacher I really disliked. It seemed like any other morning until the principal came on the loud speaker in an urgent tone asking teachers to turn on their TVs. He said nothing else.
This is the moment I remember most. My teacher ignored his call and kept teaching, and I went through the day as usual. There was an unusual air of silence that day. I couldn’t figure out why. I would hear that we had been attacked, but to what capacity I did not know. Who would attack us? I didn’t see tanks scrambling down the roads. Soldiers evacuating citizens — business went on as usual.
When I got home that afternoon I finally was able to understand the enormity of what had happened after switching on the TV. I remember the confused and dazed looks. Bizarre.
My senior year, about 5 years after that day, my high school choir took a trip to NYC for a tour. I was finally able to walk the grounds where the buildings once stood, it didn’t help that it was raining. The cleanup was still in progress and you could still see the aftereffects.
10 years after that day, as a college graduate and fresh photojournalist, its interesting to see how 9/11 has changed our society and how Americans are addressing that day in history.
On 09/11/2011, I had a day of rest, enjoying the Black Swamp Arts Festival and music, photographing lightly and taking in life while observing festival-goers around me.
I think we’re nearly ready to move on and look to the future but we are never to forget the tragic events of 9/11 and how it has affected our society and the decisions in Washington.
A Holga view of 9/11
By Shannon Stapleton
The 10th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center has been causing me some anxiety for some time now.
We were told that magazines, newspapers and all other outlets for pictures regarding the 9/11 attacks would need to be filed and completed by mid-summer for deadlines. For a long time I didn’t cherish the thought of covering another anniversary let alone trying to find new ways to illustrate something that for some time I have been trying to avoid. Having been there first hand on that dark day in history I truly dislike having to go down there at all and usually do my best to avoid World Trade Center site area.
It brings back bad memories and I am not a fan of how it has become such a tourist stop when they visit New York. I truly understand the significance of the day and why people would want to come but looking up at the sky or at a fence covering a big hole in the ground is something I will never understand. As jaded as that may sound I will say that once all the politics, union negotiations and property disputes were settled, they have, and continue with time running out, made significant progress for the Ground Zero memorial. Ten years to figure that out seems to me like a long time but who am I.
I am convinced by the idea of illustrating 9/11 differently, but not so much by the Holga lens, seeing the results. It’s a trick, and I think it just doesn’t work. Especially since I like so much Shannon’s usual photographs!
Lucas
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Resident Photographers Blog Expert
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