Worldcrunch
It took 14 tourists — including my wife and I — to eat a gigantic omelette made with a single ostrich egg. But when it came to riding one at this South African farm, I thought better to let my fellow travelers make fools of themselves!
Whenever I go back to the boxes of slides from my two trips to Syria, in 1972 and 1996, and look at the archeological wonders, I inevitably ask myself: Is this still standing. Sadly, the answer is usually “no.” Years of civil war and looting have left the ancient capital of Apamea with a similar […]
In rural Russia, in a rustic dacha very similar to this one, the man who’d become the first person in outer space was born. The town of Gzhatsk, midway between Moscow and Smolensk, was renamed in 1968 to honor Yuri Gagarin.
This recent photo of nestling storks at an open-air museum in eastern France’s Alsace region shows that even 85 years after the stork brought me … I still can be quick with my camera!
That’s not snow: During the summer, Lake Tuz in central Turkey dries up, revealing a thick layer of salt. My wife Claudine and daughter Cécile were gearing up against the August sun as we pulled our Peugeot 404 over to the side of the road.
This is the capital of Belize, the tiny state in Central America. Unlike colorful cities in neighboring Mexico and Guatemala, I remember the capital Belmopan as a particularly uninspiring subject, its drab streets dotted with banks and jewelry stores — and this one theater.
On two separate trips, we visited the Hofburg imperial palace you see here in the bustling center of Vienna, as well as the emperors’ exuberantly baroque summer residence at Schönbrunn. Even if this photograph is better, my memory is quite clear that the summer palace was far more stunning in person.
My wife and I were able to enjoy the view on the snowy Sierra Nevada mountain chain from our room at the picturesque Hotel Los Angeles, in southern Spain. You can check out any time you like.
-Analysis- MADRID — Virtually everyone now uses the Internet before, during and after they travel, whether its downloading an app to become familiar with a particular destination or sharing your holiday photos on Facebook or Instagram. The information revolution has indeed revolutionized both the way we prepare trips, and how we experience them. As such, […]
These veiled girls enjoying recess greeted us as we passed by their Islamic boarding school in the capital of the world’s biggest Muslim nation.
As even the Catholic Church sells off its jewels to hungry hotel developers, the few remaining real Venetians wonder if their city is finally slipping away for good.
If you wanted to take a break from wandering the streets of Aleppo, in a then peaceful Syria, you could buy tea from this colorful vendor about to set up shop.
This rock formation in Guilin, southeastern China, reminded me a lot of similar karst caves in Ardèche, in my native France. This one’s name is translated as, Elephant Trunk Hill. Do you see it?
The twisted Trinity Column in Sopron, northwestern Hungary, is what they call a “plague pillar.” It was erected to give thanks, in the late 17th century, for the end of one of the various recurrences of the Black Death that struck central Europe over the years.
You’d expect the mountainous Epirus region, in northwestern Greece, to be somewhat dry. But the shores of the beautiful lake Pamvotis bring some welcome greenery to the inland.
Some photos speak for themselves, others can use a little explaining. Though I took this shot almost 40 years ago, seeing it brought back some vivid memories: For starters, our meal at “Chez Hans,” housed in a former church in County Tipperary in the south of Ireland, was delicious. Despite its Franco-German sounding name — […]
I was in Denmark multiple times, usually on our way to get up north to Sweden and Norway — and never disappointed by the scenery along the way. This shot stands out for the tree leaning over the stream and the vivid green contrasts, though I also did my best to catch the blond cyclist […]
To help me remember where I’ve been, along my 60+ years of travels, I have amassed a decent collection of rocks, pebbles, bits of bark — in addition to my 20,000 slides. On the floor of this extraordinary Jain temple in northwestern India, a tiny fragment of marble was waiting for me to pick it […]
The setting and timing of this shot coincide perfectly with the release, half-way around the world, of the seminal surfer album Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. But this summer in Romania was also just a year after the rise of Communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu. We didn’t know it then, but he would become one […]
I stumbled upon a parade in full traditional attire in the lush gardens of Suzhou, in eastern China. What I like most about this shot is the pair’s symmetrical contrast with the man and woman in contemporary uniforms just over their respective right shoulders.
Running, discus throw, long jump, javelin throw, wrestling … After learning all about the Ancient Olympic Games, my wife was enjoying a well-deserved break in the shade, sitting on the ruins of the sanctuary of Olympia where the very first competitions were held.
It’s sometimes easy to forget that the Batak houses of Indonesia’s North Sumatra are not there only for the tourists’ viewing pleasure — people actually live in them. All you need to do is take a little walk around the impressive facades to get a glimpse of the Batak’s way of life.
Even a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, people were lining up in Red Square to get a glimpse of Vladimir Lenin: the Communist leader’s embalmed body remains on display inside the mausoleum.
That’s the beauty of shooting with a telelens: From the top of the famous Space Needle, I was able to see details of downtown Seattle — more than a mile away.
Minsk is a former Hero City: a Soviet title awarded to 12 cities for their “outstanding services to the Motherland” during World War II. The honor came with an obelisk.
A man busking in the shade, a charming archway … Going through my archives, this picture looked so familiar that I thought I’d already shown it here on Worldcrunch. But I was actually thinking of a different photograph that I took, as luck would have it, during the same tour of the Baltic states, in […]
Nirvana comes at a price — and a weight: 5.5 tons of gold, to be more precise, in the case of the Golden Buddha, in Bangkok’s Wat Traimit temple.
If I asked you to think about Hong Kong, the first images that would come to mind would probably be of rush-hour traffic and vertigo-inducing skyscrapers. But my wife and I were surprised to discover its many bays and soft white sand beaches.
I’ve taken shots of fishing boats around the world. There were the ever colorful luzzus of Malta and the Phoenician-inspired shapes of the vessels of Nazaré, The traditional fishing boats here in the southern French port of Cassis are called “pointus,” for their pointy shape.
I live in France near the border with Germany. The proximity has meant that my wife and I have visited Germany 32 times — yes, 32. On these trips, we were able to discover many of the country’s hidden jewels, such as this church, St. Bartholomew’s, on the western shore of Bavaria“s beautiful Königssee lake.
LJUBLJANA — I have been traveling for a few weeks now, on a journey filled with inner dialogue. Searching first for long-desired destinations, I was soon digging deep into my childhood. It was a walk toward the past — a backtrack of the images and sensations that were important in forming my personality. Doing it […]
I don’t often photograph people. I prefer to take pictures of places, mostly to remember where I went. But I did click photos of these two Catholic women on the Italian island of Sardinia. They were too photogenic to pass up the opportunity. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
At low tide, the port of Belem, in northern Brazil, looked like a scene from The Birds. Blame it on the nearby Ver-o-Peso market — and the rotting remnants of fish the birds were feasting on. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
The lights were dimmed inside the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. So when my wife moved a bit during the shot, it gave her a bit of a surrealistic blur next to this 17th-century Dutch genre painting. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
We French call our country “la France.” But when we speak of “le France,” that’s the SS France — once the biggest ocean liner in the world. In my 60 years of travels, I’ve found myself twice in its wake: here in the late 1960s, off the pier of Cannes in southern France; and some […]
Is that you, Rübezahl? See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
Near Guilin, my wife and I hopped on a short cruise on the Li River. The makeshift houseboats built from discarded modern materials were interesting to look at, but clashed with the scenic surroundings of sugarloaf hills and gorges in southern China. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
Hard at work under the Tunisian sun, these men were playing their small part in restoring some grandeur to the mosaics of the ancient city of Carthage. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
At some point during the late 1970s, I started experimenting with a different brand of film — Agfacolor — over the next decade or so. Good thing I usually stuck with my usual Kodachrome: The tones on this Agfacolor shot of a picnic, on a Sardinian cliff, have not aged well at all … See […]
Not far from Belem, the gateway to the Amazon River, my wife and I (together with our fellow travelers from our organized tour of Brazil) stepped into the rainforest for a short walk — just enough to get a taste of it without having to fight off any anacondas. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s […]