Worldcrunch
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.
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.
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.
Some of the stunning stained glass panels from France’s Cathedral de Chartres date back to the 12th century. And if I was able to see — and photograph — them, I’ve got to thank the people who had the good idea of removing and stashing them away during both World War I and World War […]
LAUSANNE — “We struck off, heading for the horizon with a fever we thought could be cured by accumulating kilometers. But it just riled us up even more. Still, moving quenches something. It eases our melancholy at not having done anything with our lives, at having been born too early and having failed at everything. […]
My wife Claudine wasn’t immune to the charms of the stunning red coral jewelry made by artisans in the northwest part of the Italian island of Sardinia. If memory serves, she bought a bracelet at that very shop. With time, the brand of film I was using back then gave my Sardinian series, fittingly enough, […]
I speak German, so I’m no stranger to the way some languages will simply slap words together. Stopping at this yurt-looking visitor office on my drive up north through Norway, I eventually realized that the apparent gibberish Polarsirkelsenteret meant “The Polar Circle Centre.” Still, neither German nor Norwegian has got anything on neighboring Finnish. I’m […]
Marvel all you want at Californian surfers, but this one-man Li River retailer on his bamboo raft is the real deal.
Just a friendly walk by the pier? Perhaps. The machetes, or “coupe-coupe” as we French call them, are a multi-purpose tool, and were ubiquitous through much of our Central American travels. But looking back at this scene was also a chilly reminder that Guatemala was, and still is, one of the most violent countries in […]
The remains of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus can be found in present-day in the southwest Turkish city of Bodrum. It was once one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World before it was destroyed by earthquakes. Tant pis ! Some 700 kilometers north is Ankara’s tomb of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first […]
In my 60+ years of driving, I was never involved in any kind of serious accident — barely a flat tire. Not everyone is so lucky. This was the scene a day after a bad turn along the coastal road from Fréjus to Cannes in southern France. I never did find out the fate of […]
My wife and I were ahead of the times with this selfie from the early 90s in the Butchart Gardens near Vancouver.
Show this picture of red lanterns in the gardens of Suzhou to any Tintin reader, and there’s a good chance it’ll remind them of the cover of The Blue Lotus.
Mauritius has developed a certain fascination for the craft of ship modeling. In the island’s massive-miniature workshop, some 3,000 people make sure that every tiny detail, from mast to hull, is faithful to the original vessel of the past.
Neither Mormon, nor Amish — just some actors bringing 19th Acadia back to life in the open-air museum of Village Historique Acadien in Canada’s New Brunswick.
Our first and only visit to South Africa was three years after the end of Apartheid. In Durban, we stayed in five-star style at The Royal, the city’s oldest hotel, which first opened in 1845.
My daughter Cécile has a troubling history of playing with archeological treasures. Though in her defense, at the time tourists were allowed to roam freely among the ruins of Ostia, the harbor city of ancient Rome.
Our various road trips through North Africa almost always included encounters with caravans of Berber nomads and their camels, making their way to bigger cities to resupply.
In the puszta grassland valley of eastern Hungary, this csikós wrangler was just warming up before performing an incredible stunt show on galloping horses.
Glastonbury Abbey, in southern England, is held by some as King Arthur’s final resting place — the mythical Avalon. When I photographed his fabled tomb, I was experimenting with a different brand of film that, as the decades went by, turned the green grass a strange tinge of blue and the red sign pink.
To beat the gloominess of a rainy winter afternoon, I put aside my book and went through my sunny slides of Turkey. This one shows the road leading to the Library of Celsus in Ephesus.
Conical hats are not limited to China. In Indonesia, where they are called caping, they protect workers from the sun — and make colorful souvenirs in the stalls of Bali“s markets.
Over the years, I took pictures of license plates — they’d help me remember where I went without having to write things down in a notebook. But there was a different, more personal reason for photographing this motorbike plate on the Greek island of Corfu: “Ety,” short for Etienne, was what my mother called me […]
The Courtyard of the Maidens is one of the most popular destinations in Udaipur, in the Indian state of Rajasthan. With its marble elephants and its lotus fountain, the garden was a perfect oasis of peace and quiet in the middle of the bustling city. For maidens and thirsty travel photographers alike.