Starting Again

This blog is changing from one focused on my year in Beirut to one that will still be about photography, but will revolve around my life in Baltimore. It will continue to feature my photography and my writings about photography (with occasional diversions).

So, rather than starting a whole new blog, I am going to continue posting in this particular bit of cyberspace, but the blog's name will change (once I think up a new one). You'll always be able to find it at this web address, regardless of its name.

Thanks for visiting!

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I saw the movie "4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days" the other night. It's by a Romanian director, Cristian Mungiu, and depicts a few days in the life of a woman helping her friend get an illegal abortion in 1987. It is unrelentingly bleak, but mostly well-crafted and compelling. [Nicolae Ceaucescu, Romania's ruler from 1965 until his overthrow in 1989, had outlawed birth-control and abortion in 1966 in an attempt to increase the population.]

Although I enjoyed the storyline, I also found the little details of life under that authoritarian regime very interesting and familiar. In 1990 I took a trip to Turkey and Bulgaria with some friends from Cairo, where we were living. Bulgaria's communist leader had only very recently been removed by opposition forces and later in 1990 the Communist Party gave up the reins of power and free elections were held for the first time since 1931.

But when we were visiting there was still a shortage of food in shops, we could get very little at the few restaurants, pro-democracy protests were still being held and the general look and feel of most places we visited was institutional and bare. It wasn't all desolate, though. In Sophia we randomly met a man who spoke English and we went to visit his mother and sister's young daughter at their flat in an area of colorless high-rise apartment buildings. Inside the flat was a whole different world. It was warm and vibrant, they offered us what must have been precious fresh oranges, chocolates and some homemade fruit liqueur. For a glimpse at what we saw, here are a few photos from that trip.

Comments

[frances]

Just found you. Typical. I was looking for a picture of the British Council in Beirut and came across your lovely photos of Beirut - and you have left.
Ah me. Anyhow, I shall enjoy your past posts for nostalgia's sake and be interested to see your newer work.