WorldcrunchBertrand Hauger is a graduate of La Sorbonne Nouvelle school of bilingual journalism, and joined Worldcrunch after working briefly as a reporter in a local newspaper in his native eastern France. He now serves as Worldcrunch’s deputy editor-in-chief and director of content.
The step pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, 30 kilometers south of modern-day Cairo, is the oldest remaining pyramid in the world. I pulled out this slide after reading recently about botched restoration efforts that could threaten the whole structure.
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.
You can travel the world for more than 60 years without being an aventurier, per se. Still, we got pretty close from the relative comfort of our Amazon cruise where we saw this passing moment of indigenous life in the Brazilian rainforest.
Since turtle shells are used in traditional Chinese medicine and their meat is considered a delicacy there, this bit of Guangzhou’s street market is definitely not a pet sale.
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…
Like their Easter Island counterparts, the giant statues of Tiwanaku, in western Bolivia, are shrouded in mystery. For example, the stone used for this “Monk” monolith comes from a quarry nearly 100 kilometers away.
For millennia, Aleppo was a city of riches, a significant stop on the Silk Road. Sadly, many parts of the Ancient City — including its famous souks — have now been destroyed in the ongoing Syrian Civil War.
On the waterfront of Salvador da Bahia, a fellow Frenchman was busy bargaining for a plate of Bahian acarajé. The body language of sidewalk commerce is understood all around the world.
The capital of the southeastern Italian region of Puglia boasts one of the largest ports on the Adriatic. On this scorching hot summer day, both human and cargo traffic was quiet. On the same trip, on the west coast of Italy’s boot, was a different story.
Taking pictures of Lady Liberty with my telelens wasn’t even the highlight of this crisp October day in New York City: A couple of hours later, on nearby Ellis Island, I had the surprise of seeing my last name among the list of immigrants featured on the Wall of Honor.
Taking pictures at the vibrant marketplace in Otavalo, Ecuador required more than just pointing and shooting: I also had to avoid getting trodden on by one of the many, many pigs for sale.
In the Thai capital, I remember being treated to a lavish meal involving a variety of authentic Thai dishes, all the while watching a traditional dance performance. Here, the famous — not to mention peculiar — “fingernail dance.”
Reykjavik isn’t only the world’s northernmost capital, it’s also one of the quietest. Overlooking Iceland“s beautiful Faxa Bay, the unassuming city of then 110,000 souls looked very peaceful all these years later, with its peculiar-looking church rising in the distance.
The United Kingdom isn’t exactly renowned for its gastronomy, but I (lifelong French bon vivant ) have a special fondness for English pub food. Here in Cornwall, southwestern England, you could feast on delicious seafood — provided you first got past the local pirate.
Looking at the fading colors of this Wroclaw memory, you couldn’t really tell that at that time, Poland was in the early stages of one of the country’s worst economic and political crises. A year later, it would culminate in students uprising and ensuing repressing, around the same time as the Prague Spring in neighboring […]
When my wife and I toured northwestern Spain in the early 1970s, we made sure to visit the Roman aqueduct of Segovia. Two years later would mark its 2,000th birthday.
Can you guess what is traditionally kept under these woven bamboo baskets, on the Indonesian island of Bali? I’ll give you a hint: In French, they go “Cocorico“!
What would be a good soundtrack to this picture of my then four-year-old daughter Cécile, posing in a flower market in southern France? Though I’m more partial to classical music, Sidney Bechet’s “Petite Fleur” seems a better fit than, say, Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” …
We were in Seattle just about a month before a certain movie hit the screens. I slept through it all.
This family was looking at musicians playing outside the beautiful Jain temple of Ranakpur, in western India. Only after pressing the shutter did I realize the kid had noticed me, and was smiling at my camera.
Two peaceful windmills in the Spanish countryside? For Miguel de Cervantes” colorful character Don Quixote (a favorite of mine), these would be ferocious giants — and he would promptly proceed to attack them!
After six decades of good old film photography, I decided a couple of years ago that it was time to switch to a digital camera. One of the first series with my new gear was in Albania — this particular photograph under the watchful eye of Albanian soldiers.
-Analysis- From Washington to Tehran to Pyongyang, the world’s attention this week has been consumed by nuclear diplomacy (and lack thereof). Talk of bad manners and misbehaving politicians, in light of such high stakes, might seem beside the point. And yet … Yesterday, in a closed-door meeting at the White House, special assistant Kelly Sadler […]
Fellow travelers were posing next to Queen Elizabeth Park’s famous “Photo Session” statues, with the city of Vancouver as a backdrop. I added a layer to this already self-referential work of art: The shadow on the bottom right, next to the bronze statue of the photographer, is mine.
The only thing more impressive than beholding the ancient troglodyte structures of Turkey’s Cappadocia region, was realizing that yes, some people still actually lived in them!
The language situation in Canada“s predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec can lead to baffling bilingual signs like this one at the Montreal airport.
Romania is one of the richest countries I’ve set foot in when it comes to religious heritage. The central European state has history-packed cathedrals, exuberantly colorful churches — and in this case, beautifully peaceful monasteries.
Our trip to Sicily came just as legendary Italian magistrate Giovanni Falcone was launching the widest-ranging anti-Mafia probe ever. This light-hearted moment in Palermo reminds me of the famous photo of Falcone and fellow magistrate Paolo Borsellino, each assassinated soon afterward by the Mafia.
My trip to Nepal was definitely one of the most dépaysants, as we say here in France. This open-air cremation in front of Kathmandu“s famous Pashupatinath Temple was certainly not a sight a Western traveler like me is used to seeing.
These “birds of paradise” flowers are native to South Africa. And indeed, they thrive near the Drakensberg mountain range. Alas, these one are not of the Mandela’s Gold variety — the rare yellow form named after the anti-apartheid leader a year before we went there.
The Mevlana mausoleum in Konya, central Turkey, is considered a staple of Islamic architecture — and rightly so: I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many minarets!
There’s something almost Géricault-esque in the pyramidal structure of this shot, and the way these seals meld with the rocks of Ballestas Islands, off the coast of Peru.
I guess for some, it’s a jungle out there in Manhattan.
From afar, the northern Sahara town of Ghardaïa, Algeria looks very quiet — and very dry. But once you get to the shade of its main square, you can relax, sit back and watch the camels grunt about.
I once visited a foie gras farm in southwestern France, years before goose liver became one of the world’s most controversial delicacies. Désolé, but foie gras still is a péché mignon of mine.
Wandering the narrow streets of Peniscola, a village in eastern Spain, I stumbled upon this quaint — if kitsch — house. Not only did it get me wondering how long it took to plaster all the shells on the facade, but I could almost smell the plates of seafood paella that came first!
This photograph of a mechanic working in the rain in the coastal Moroccan city of El Jadida was shot from the hip. Discovering this image also takes me back to a trip 20 years earlier in Tunisia, one of the only times I ever needed to get my car repaired in 60+ years of travels.
Pious men keep on praying.
-Analysis- PARIS — #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have made the past year a crucial one for women’s rights. Or at least it has, from our Western, Oscar-Night point of view. As the world celebrates its first International Women’s Day of what we can glibly call the “post-Weinstein” era of the feminist cause, a recent Reuters […]
These are the Indonesian guards of His Majesty’s Kraton Guard Regiment, keeping an eye on the Royal Palace of Yogyakarta. But unlike some of their counterparts I chanced upon across the globe, they weren’t that imperturbable: The fellow on the right gave me a long, hard sideward glance as I took his picture.