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somewhere over the rainbow (and other stories)

  Exactly two years ago I found myself flying through a corner of a rainbow, and landed in Oaxaca, Mexico. It was the last film festival I traveled to, a brutal and sweet experience in the harshest of realities, trying to wrap my arms around the slipperiest industry and failing magnificently. Surrounded by fresh faces and eager eyes I ran from the rooms and into the street time and again, wandering off with the camera in my bag as a companion. I took pictures of a blind man that sang on the same corner every day, of wedding parades, of an old woman waiting to see the dentist.  Literally somewhere over the rainbow, I met the ugliest answers to questions I had been dragging my feet towards for years. Cramming the most delicious food into my mouth, joking at the nightly rooftop cocktail parties, grinning like the Cheshire Cat it was all coming to an end. Actually, it had ended before it even started though - and on the plane back to New York and finally Moscow the bone-crunching undertow

strangers to the conversation


No matter where you go, there is that musky smell of stagnation. In Brooklyn or Moscow, the airport, the bar, the breakfast place, the street corner - faces are waiting for something. It feels like the entire world is in limbo, counting out the seconds before the other shoe drops. Eyes drift sideways, trying to peek around corners - to somehow predict what tomorrow will bring. Of course, there are a handful of random exceptions. There are people looking up, looking in, looking back, closing their eyes, putting their fingers in their ears and listening to something else. No sickening headlines. No propaganda. No marketing. No clickbait. They become invisible, strangers to the conversation.

In this desperate time, we would like to imagine that we are all connected. It is a kind idea, but it is a generous one. In truth, we are either harnessed to screens or out in the cold.

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