Worldcrunch
I’ve shared photos before of a trip to central Turkey’s Göreme National Park, with its troglodyte cave-like dwellings and fairy chimney rock formations. Only recently did I dig up this image from a visit a few years earlier, and was reminded of how strange and powerful the landscape is.
On the unpaved roads of inland Indonesia, this worker was relying on the strength of his water buffalo to bring building materials to a construction site. A couple of days later on the same trip, I would get to see some even less fortunate bovines, in an indigenous Toraja village.
I had to be quick to snap a photo of this little fellow in Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies, before it dashed back into its burrow. I’d always assumed it was a groundhog, like those I’m used to seeing in the French Alps. But looking at it now, I’m quite sure it’s a […]
When I was a young man, a major folklore festival came through my hometown in eastern France, with musicians and dancers in colorful costumes from all over Europe. Spotting this photo 58 years later, I knew right away what I didn’t know when I took it: this perfectly rotund tuba player almost certainly hailed from […]
The red-brick Gothic castle on the Lithuanian island of Trakai looks like it’s straight out of a fairy tale. However the spell was broken when a full garrison of soldiers made their rowdy entrance in the courtyard.
The woman and the boy in the foreground were walking toward the members of my guided tour to try to sell knick-knacks. There were only two of them selling souvenirs in front of the Royal Tombs, and my fellow visitors and I had the whole Petra site pretty much to ourselves — which I’m told […]
Le petit oiseau va sortir…! “Here flies the little bird!” is what we say in France when we want our subjects to pay attention and look at the camera. That time in Manaus, one of the gateways to the lush Brazilian rainforest, these vibrant orange birds didn’t fly away just long enough to get this […]
I’m not sure the exact date, but it was the month of July when my then wife-to-be Claudine and I climbed the 400 steps of Notre-Dame, only to be startled by the sudden (very) loud ringing of the Parisian cathedral’s bells. Just a few months later, back in our native eastern France, other bells would […]
Sure, there’s the Taj Mahal. But at this moment in the Jain temple of Ranakpur, in northwestern India, everything an amateur photographer like myself could ask for fell into place: the whiteness of the marble contrasting with the visitors’ colorful garments, the rays of sunlight gently filtering in, the symmetry of the architecture, the depth […]
When it comes to international cuisine, I must confess that I’m not that much of an aventurier. Amid the street markets of Indonesia, like elsewhere, I would much rather take pictures of unidentified, deep-fried delicacies than take an actual bite …
All across Europe, you may stumble, as my wife and I did many times, upon discreet scallop shell symbols: They mark the ancient “Camino de Santiago” routes that lead to the Christian shrine of the apostle Saint James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The facade of the Casa de las Conchas in Salamanca is definitely […]
The fauna and flora of South Africa rank among the most impressive I’ve seen anywhere in the world. Near Durban in the east of the country, I caught them both on vivid display, as a tree filled with white ibis.
Fish, fruit, pottery, an endless selection of drain pipes: the massive open-air markets were a vivid memory from the northern Brazilian city of Belem.
My clearest camel memory from this same trip to Turkey 30 years ago was witnessing the millennia-old tradition of camel wrestling. Just a few miles down the road, near the Ancient Greek site of Ephesus, this fellow was in the mood for nothing of the sort.
This concert, courtesy of the Toraja people, provided a welcome balance to our day: My wife and I had just witnessed a traditional burial, in this village of southern Sulawesi — and it featured the pretty gruesome slaughtering of a water buffalo.
Some 7,000 kilometers away from my neck of the woods in eastern France, Martinique feels like home. In this French overseas region in the Lesser Antilles, people speak French, pay in euros … but perhaps the most strikingly familiar feature is the unmistakably French yellow mailboxes across the island.
Svolvaer is one of the first scenic stops upon entering the famous Lofoten archipelago of northern Norway. The fishing village, with its typical wooden red houses, offers a nice warmup to the insular (and chilly!) world of dramatic mountains and pristine bays.
For a moment, the streets of Sibiu turned into a fashion show — and that woman didn’t seem too convinced by the man’s dress sense … Was it the traditional căciulă sheepskin hat, or something else?
The “Five Wells Square” in the old Croatian city of Zadar is not a misnomer: For some reason, I could only squeeze four of them in that shot. Oh, well.
These wrinkly clay busts were sitting in the backyard of a Sardinian sculptor’s workshop. With the sun on their grimacing faces, this felt like the right image to share today as temperatures broke records across my native France.
Carthago delenda est. “Carthage must be destroyed.” As I was wandering the ruins of the ancient capital (near modern-day Tunis) I had Cato’s famous oratorical phrase stuck in my head … Clearly a remnant of my Latin-learning years!
There are things photographs capture well: the lush hills that flank the Li River, the fishermen on their frail-looking bamboo rafts, the strange rock formations you get to see along the way. But this moment remains in my memory for what you can’t see: my (mostly Chinese) fellow passengers on that cruise boat who seemed […]
This shot dates back from the very first of my 11 trips to Greece. My wife (whom you can see in the car) and I had driven our Simca Aronde from France through Italy, then onto a ferry, and up the Epirus mountains — to finally park smack in the middle of the ruins of […]
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” Now unlike Ernest Hemingway, I never actually lived in Paris as a young man, or otherwise. I was a visiting 20-year-old […]
When I recently pulled out this shot of the Spanish countryside in the 1960s, it reminded me of my childhood when I would watch farmers work in the fields of Burgundy in eastern France. In case you’re counting, that was the 1930s.
In the lobby of my hotel on the shores of the Black Sea, locals in full folkloric attire were dancing to traditional tunes. It felt strangely familiar, having had my own experiences preserving the music and folklore of my local traditions.
I found striking cityscapes all around the world, from the feng-shui buildings of Honk Kong to Rio de Janeiro’s lush bay and the odd-looking houses of Indonesian villages — but to me there’s nothing quite like Turkey’s “fairy chimneys,” the ancient troglodyte structures of the country’s Cappadocia region.
Before we were able to feast on these luscious oranges and grapefruits of Florida“s many roadside stands, my wife and I had gotten off to a rather bumpy start in the “Sunshine State.” Landing in Miami, the first item on our list was to find our hotel. I knew it was “on the seafront” and […]
The many beautiful Roman Catholic churches in Lithuania’s capital are a sight to be seen … as are the glorious beards of certain priests strolling the city’s streets.
We often flocked to Italy for Spring, as weather there tends to be better than in my sometimes rainy neck of the French woods. But mornings can be a bit cloudy — nothing to worry this woman at the center of the picture, who was diligently setting up deckchairs, waiting for the sun to warm […]
In the background, one of Treptower Park“s massive monuments commemorating Soviet soldiers fallen during World War II. In the foreground, real-life Soviet soldiers still trooping around the USSR-occupied section of Berlin.
La Paz“s airport delivers on its name: El Alto is indeed the highest international airport in the world. Luckily neither my wife Claudine (pictured here in the foreground) nor I suffered from altitude sickness during our often elevated travels through Bolivia and neighboring Peru.
I’m not a religious person. As a philosophy teacher, my go-to thinker was Spinoza, who once wrote that religion was created “to deceive the people and to constrain the minds of men” But I guess that if I had to pick one faith, the smiles of Buddhism I discovered throughout my Asian travels would be […]
Port Grimaud, near Saint-Tropez in southern France, has it all. Canals, bridges, islets … It’s just missing a couple of gondolas.
Fruit vendors were a common sight when we drove through Brazil“s Minas Gerais state. My wife Claudine didn’t have to wait long: It took this woman no longer than three minutes to expertly slice this fresh pineapple.
In the westernmost point of British Columbia, we found the “Mile 0” marker of the Trans-Canada Highway. Though we covered a lot of Canadian ground, we never made it the 4,860 miles across to the “Mile 1” marker in St. John’s, Newfoundland Labrador. I’m not sure whether it makes more sense to call the starting […]
Sarajevo’s Baščaršija square is known as “Pigeon square.” There are moments when the birds are everywhere. In this shot, you may have to look a bit harder to spot them.
Our travels didn’t exactly involve many days at the beach. But as we drove in the Turkish heat, we paused here and there so our 13 year-old little mermaid Cécile could splash around. Times like these, my wife Claudine and I regretted never having taken swimming lessons when we were kids.
Our trip to South Africa took us to Kruger National Park, where we got great views of zebras, crocodiles, giraffes — you name it. But we got closest of all to this little guy in a Durban hotel room.
I said it before: I took pictures of places (more than of people) to remember where I went. But looking at this photo now, rather than focusing on the panorama of Lithuania’s capital, I wish I’d chosen to see my wife Claudine more clearly…