WorldcrunchAs you may remember, I used to conduct a traditional French music choir in my hometown. This shot was from a memorable trip abroad, to Wales, where we’d been invited to the famed Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod folk festival. The tall and handsome man signing autographs like a celebrity was not only a strong tenor […]
Ten years had passed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union when my wife and I returned to Russia. The people were clearly hooked on the newfound entrepreneurial freedom, big and small scale alike. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World.
When the famous pelicans of Mykonos get tired of all the attention, do they take a break and fly down to the calmer shores of Cyprus? See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World.
Glimpsing through the crack of the imposing brass doors was as much as we were going to see of the Royal Palace of Fes: Visitors are (still) unfortunately not allowed in. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World.
Starting in spring, to protect passersby from the heat, Seville deploys its sails-like awnings along the calle Sierpes, the city’s main commercial street. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World.
I’m an analog kind of photographer: I started taking pictures in the 1950s, when film was still somewhat expensive — meaning that even though I now own a digital camera, I’ve never really gotten used to taking lots of shots of the same subject. But some of the world’s wonders, like the Taj Mahal, are […]
On the northwestern coast of Wales, my wife Claudine was pacing the ramparts of Harlech Castle, looking out toward the peaceful Welsh countryside. Some 700 years ago, watchmen walking the same path would have been looking at the sea, which has since retreated. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World.
The sap harvested from these Pará rubber trees on the Indonesian island of Java coagulates in the yellow collection cups, and voilà, here’s your rubber latex. Or as we say in France, caoutchouc ! See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World.
Sunda Kelapa, the old port of Jakarta, was the perfect place to snap some portraits of Indonesian stevedores at work. Balance is everything. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World.
Sorry, little spider monkey of Crococun zoo, near Cancun: My favorite zoo is still Hamburg’s Tierpark Hagenbeck. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World.
Like elsewhere in Syria’s largest city, parts of the Great Mosque of Aleppo, where this man was praying peacefully more than 20 years ago, have since been destroyed.
I’ve had my fair share of beautiful sunrises and sunsets, but watching the Grand Canyon get more and more red, in the serenity of the rising sun, stands out in my memory.
The city of Rust, in eastern Austria, stands near the border with Hungary. This geographical and cultural proximity was particularly visible in the way the women dressed, on their way to the market.
This Batak woman, in a Toraja village of Indonesia, was balancing a rice bowl on her head during the traditional dance performance. A beautiful moment, followed by the not-so-beautiful moment of the ritual slaughter of the unsuspecting water buffalo in the background.
I crossed the Arctic Circle on several occasions — but always under the same polar sun and blue sky.
Once the fish had been caught, the fisherman’s wife in Nazaré would put them directly on the grill for breakfast. Bom apetite!
As Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte would say: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” Resting for a second on a column in the sanctuary of Olympia, my wife Claudine snapped this shot of me most probably chewing on a twig or a toothpick — for I was one of the few French philosophy teachers in the […]
Dante Alighieri is buried in this tomb, in Ravenna. The story of the quarrel surrounding the 13th-century poet’s remains, disputed between this city in northern Italy where he was exiled, and his native Florence, is long and fascinating.
The majestic Andean condor is one of the largest birds in the world. After this one displayed its impressive wingspan, an elderly animal-rights activist from our organized tour, got into a heated discussion with the owner of the bird. She wanted to buy the condor in order to set it free.
When I visited the prehistoric site of Stonehenge in southern England, it was still possible to walk among, and even touch, the megaliths. Not for long, though: A year later, the damage to the standing stones caused by erosion forced the authorities to start keeping visitors at a safe distance.
The 1960s was a momentous period for the French island of Corsica, caught between opening up to tourism and dealing with a growing nationalistic movement. But in Ajaccio on that sunny spring day, it was just fishing business as usual.
The quaint fishing harbor of Polperro, on southwestern England“s Cornwall coast, is having a hard time delivering on its promise: Unscrupulous parking lot owners have been known to capitalize on car park fees.
These half-timbered structures of the Den Gamle By open-air museum in the Danish town of Aarhus remind me of some houses in the eastern French region of Alsace and across the border in Germany.
The Sorbonne University, in the center of Paris, is the second oldest university in the world. No, not behind Oxford — behind Bologna. I took this shot of the Chapelle Sainte Ursule de la Sorbonne more than 50 years before my grandson and partner-in-crime went to one of the university’s branches, just a few hundred […]
I was lucky enough to see some of the world’s greatest treasures at a time when there were few fences and rarely entrance fees. But even when there were limits, like here in Hadrian’s Villa near Rome, they were of little concern for my daughter Cécile.
The Palmeral of Elche in southeastern Spain is the biggest palm grove of its kind in Europe. Its shades of green made it the perfect place for me to experiment with color film for the first time.
The Bay of Fundy, on the Atlantic coast of Canada, boasts the highest tides in the world … and apparently some of the tallest suds as well.
For centuries, the thick walls of the Saksaywaman citadel have been looking over the valley of Cuzco, the historic capital of the Inca Empire.
This stone calvary in western France’s Brittany region depicts scenes from the life and death of Jesus with incredible attention to detail — and someone on Wikipedia was kind enough to explain it all exhaustively.
Taking pictures of license plates allowed me to remember where I took this or that series of photographs without having to write it down. When you’re dealing with over 20,000 slides, it comes in handy.
The famous German philosopher Immanuel Kant spent most of his life in Königsberg, in what was then known as Prussia. HIs mausoleum has seen borders and names change: The city is now a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania called Kaliningrad.
Can you spot the little red riding hood playing in L’Aquila’s Fontana delle 99 cannelle (“The Fountain of the 99 Spouts”)? Luckily, the landmark fountain suffered only minor damage during the deadly 2009 earthquake.
It was rather quiet when we got to the indigenous town of Otavalo, in northern Ecuador, and I was able to take my time photographing a woman using a big spinning wheel. The image ended up looking something like a Flemish painting.
The statue of Notre-Dame-des-Neiges (Our Lady of the Snow) marks the top of the Bavella Pass, in central Corsica. In this photograph, the serene but somewhat austere statue stands in stark contrast with our playful daughter Cécile posing under the road sign.
In Philadelphia, a group of U.S. Marines were petitioning to change the Constitution and make any desecration of the American flag a crime. That hasn’t happened, though the debate over national symbols is apparently still very much alive across the Atlantic.
On the first of our many trips to Greece, my wife and I drove down to Mystras in the south of the country. Abandoned in the 19th century, the town’s churches, castle and fortress walls stand as a reminder of Byzantine grandeur.
Under the authoritarian regime of Josip Broz Tito in then Yugoslavia, lots of shop windows were empty. Roadside vendors were a more reliable source of food there, with watermelons being a staple of domestic agriculture.
With my RDA-made Exakta Varex camera, I tried my hand at some macrophotography. I processed the film myself in a home-made darkroom.
In between visiting the wonders of the nearby city of Jerash and the desertic Wadi Rum valley, we stopped for the night in Jordan’s capital Amman. And scenes like this one in the hotel lobby were as memorable as the country’s ancient ruins and wondrous landscapes.
I’ve already told you about the fishermen’s wives of Nazaré, and the seven petticoats they’d wear traditionally in this Portuguese town. The fishermen“s costumes are just as interesting. Although granted, they do look a little bit like pajamas.