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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

a new chapter



The canons are fake, but look real enough. A perfect smoke ring drifts away from one - a happy accident that catches the attention of a row of photographers, clicking away with giant lenses and memory cards filling up. I hold my breath, the tip of my finger completely itchy at this point until I hear the thud of hooves, and smell them approaching. You have to click earlier than you want to, that is the lesson.

A young soldier stands with his hands behind his back, to keep us from crowding the field or touching the barriers too much. A nod, a step forward, a stern word. The photographers cram between each other, crouching on the ground and shooting between legs, standing on platforms. I hover in a little corner, picking my shots, smelling the sulphurous air.

A few weeks later, back from the lab I see them. Here are chaotic moments, twisting in a great sweep of history, framed by our mundane, modern world.


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