James Lockhart Perry's Blog, page 7

Stambul

For someone brought up on Christian churches, East or West, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or Protestant, the simplicity of the great Islamic mosques of Istanbul can be both over- and underwhelming.

We’re reminded of a church Across Market in San Francisco, where the saints’ statues crowd the aisles as thickly as a New York subway station at rush hour. Or the top of the Duomo of Milano, with its hundreds of wise old men raining down marble benedictions on the city.

Of course, no one really knows what any of the truly ancient saints looked like, so the chances are, you’re praying to a likeness of the sculptor’s father, best friend, or some wealthy patron with a wad of commissions to hand out. Still, western churchgoers always seem to be asking some ancient saint or Christ figure to intercede with an angry, or at least impatient God.

And then you arrive in the Sultan Ahmet Camii or Blue Mosque in European Istanbul, and all you find is a huge, empty cavern. Beautiful carpets, fascinating tiles and lights, a lovely altar of sorts, and nice stained glass windows (although the Venetian originals are long gone). But no human likenesses of any kind–you just have to do your own talking to God.

Architecturally speaking, the dome itself is the main event, of course. At the time of construction, when Ottoman Turks ruled the world, the domes of these mosques represented an astonishing achievement of world-class science and mathematics. Give or take an earthquake or two, they have withstood the test of time just as well as most great western cathedrals with their long, airy naves and flying buttresses.

It is a fascinating bit of history that the basic design for these grand buildings came from the Byzantine Christian church across the park from this mosque, the Aya Sofia. And that the Kaaba in Mecca is said to have been built by Abraham, the father of both the Jewish and Christian faiths. It makes one wonder about all of the wars fought and still waiting to be fought between Islam and Christianity.

Still, even a Christian looking for a saint to talk to can’t help but admire the beauty and simplicity of an old man reading the Qur’an and gazing out a window at one of the great human cities of the world while kneeling next to the only decoration in the room, a functioning grandfather clock. Time might be passing, but you’d never know it.

Filed under: Asia Tagged: Turkey

Ghetto Novo

The word “ghetto” might have been the name of a pair of foul-smelling foundries located in the outer reaches of Cannaregio, a key Sestiere, or district, of Venice. When the Doge Leonardo Loredan and the Serenissima exiled their 700 Jews there on 29 March, 1516, the moniker stuck. From the start, ghettoization meant a nighttime curfew, punitive taxation, and restrictions on employment. And whenever the Most Serene Republic’s mobs misplaced their serenity and needed a scapegoat to terrorize, the Jewish Ghetto provided an easy target.

The worst popular libel against the Jews (along with apostates, sinners, prostitutes, and youths with acne) was that they had brought on the bubonic plague that spread north from Italy and engulfed Europe in the 14th century. The math is complicated, and the statistics require some heroic assumptions, but more than 50 million Europeans died from the disease—anywhere from 20% to 50% of the population of any given country. Venice lost a third of its population and was destroyed as a military and economic power.

The truth was that Venetian fur traders had brought the plague back from the Crimea, where they were competing viciously with the Genoese to control the traffic in Russian pelts. The Mongols besieged their settlement and, in the first recorded instance of biological warfare, catapulted their own dead plague victims over the walls of the city. When the Italians fled to their boats, they took with them the rats, and the rats brought along the fleas that carried the infection. Within a decade, thanks to the power of Venetian and Genoese trade, Europe lay prostrate under the most violent medical epidemic in history.

And so the Jews had to pay. Yet everything is relative, and, compared to the Cossack massacres and Russian pogroms then erupting, Venice looked like a paradise. So the ghetto grew in population, wealth, and learning until 1797, when Napoleon abolished the restrictions. And then it grew even farther until, in 1944, the Nazis emptied it altogether into the death camps of Poland.

All of which makes it odd today to see well-armed Italian troops operating out of a command post on the Campo de Ghetto Novo. For a change, they’re there to protect and not oppress the 500 members of the local Jewish community. On the other hand—and it might mean nothing—we’ve never come here when it wasn’t gloomy and raining.

Filed under: Europe Tagged: Italy

Poses

You would have thought you were on a movie set. We followed a dowdy, middle-aged couple all the way down to the Library of Celsius in the Ephesus ruins, as the husband juggled his over-sized camera and barked staging and posing directions, while the wife shoved her airspace rivals out of the way. A quick freeze into casual Rita Hayworth, a fleeting forced grin, a snap of the shutter, and they were barreling off through the crowds for their next movie-poster spectacular.

Most people aren’t this rude or ridiculous, but the exhibition did set us to thinking about posing. We take thousands of photos to get the few we post, and many of them include each other. But generally, it helps if the pose or the clothes or something about the individual somehow fits into the scene. 

We weren’t always so picky. We have 100 photos of Glinda in NY Yankees baseball cap grinning out of some of the most spectacular scenery in the world at Petra in Jordan. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think we’d superimposed her like the gnomes in the movie Amélie. But nowadays, unless Glinda is near-prostrate with the heat (see photo), we make an effort to liven up our how-we-spent-our-summer-vacation slideshow with some kind of interest. It’s the least you can do for your long-suffering friends and neighbors back home.

Now that we’re paying attention, we’ve found that some people actually do a very good job with their posing. In fact, they’ve turned into our latest favorite photo subject.

Filed under: Elsewhere, Europe Tagged: Croatia, Turkey

Posing

You would have thought you were on a movie set. We followed a dowdy, middle-aged couple all the way down to the Library of Celsius in the Ephesus ruins, as the husband juggled his over-sized camera and barked staging and posing directions, while the wife shoved her airspace rivals out of the way. A quick freeze into casual Rita Hayworth, a fleeting forced grin, a snap of the shutter, and they were barreling off through the crowds for their next movie-poster spectacular.

Most people aren’t this rude or ridiculous, but the exhibition did set us to thinking about posing. We take thousands of photos to get the few we post, and many of them include each other. But generally, it helps if the pose or the clothes or something about the individual somehow fits into the scene. 

We weren’t always so picky. We have 100 photos of Glinda in NY Yankees baseball cap grinning out of some of the most spectacular scenery in the world at Petra in Jordan. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think we’d superimposed her like the gnomes in the movie Amélie. But nowadays, unless Glinda is near-prostrate with the heat (see photo), we make an effort to liven up our how-we-spent-our-summer-vacation slideshow with some kind of interest. It’s the least you can do for your long-suffering friends and neighbors back home.

Now that we’re paying attention, we’ve found that some people actually do a very good job with their posing. In fact, they’ve turned into our latest favorite photo subject.

Filed under: Elsewhere, Europe Tagged: Croatia, Turkey

Acropolis

As the King of the gods, Zeus controlled the thunderbolts and could do just about anything he wanted. But on the subject of his compulsive womanizing, he ran in terror from his wife Hera. After one particular tryst with the brainiac Mitas, he grew so concerned that he naturally swallowed her (don’t even think about it, boys). A furious migraine ensued and was only cured by splitting open his skull. Out popped the goddess Athena, already fully grown, armed, and dangerous.

When the citizens of a minor seaside Aegean settlement were looking for a patron, Poseidon tried to bribe them with salt water and trade. Athena, by then a confirmed virgin, offered a single olive tree. For reasons lost to antiquity, the Athenians went for the tree and all the billions of those tiny, shriveled, salty black fruit that eventually came from it.

But patronage did not come cheap. The Parthenon (i.e., Virgin) temple cost a fortune and, with all the other monuments in town, caused one rebellion after another by the vassal cities the Athenians taxed to pay for it. And the structure only lasted a short while as a temple anyway. The Greeks turned it into a treasury, the Christians into a church, the Ottomans into a mosque and then an ammunition dump—which explains how, on 26 September, 1687, a Venetian bomb blew off the roof and walls.

For centuries, the structure just sat there, as travelers and vandals picked off bits and pieces—or, in the case of the British, massive chunks. Whatever you might think about tourists, it was the official Greek discovery of the trade that led them after World War II to suddenly discover preservation. Which is the reason you can hardly get a photograph these days without scaffolding to mar the view.

But you just can’t have everything.

Filed under: Europe Tagged: Greece

Dubrovnik

Mention the Pietà, and most people think of Michelangelo’s delicate 1499 masterpiece in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The Virgin Mary holds the crucified Jesus in an embrace that is equal parts sadness, beauty, and piety. But there are dozens of Pietàs across Europe, all evoking similar emotions.

The statue that sits above the Stradun—the main street through the old town of Dubrovnik in Croatia—is a special case. This Maria, sculpted by Leonard and Petar Petroviċ in 1498, gazes down in a mood that can only be described as aghast.

And no wonder. From the days of its founding, Dubrovnik has suffered one vicious war and rampage after another. In 1991, in the Yugoslav Wars, the Croats were the victims, as the Serbs and Montenegrins poured artillery fire down onto a helpless population. In the Second World War, it was the Croats enlisting German help to massacre the Serbs, Jews, and Roma under their control. In 1944, Tito’s Communists used Daksa Island in the harbor as a dumping ground for the bodies of their enemies. And the Stradun bisects the old town only because it was originally dug as a channel to keep the Romans and Croats from tearing each other apart.

If the ethnic and religious catastrophe of Yugoslavia has taken centuries to develop, the key variable might be the inexorable growth in the efficiency of the weapons. Basically, Croats are still Catholics, Bosniaks are still Muslims, and Serbs are still Eastern Orthodox. But you’d never notice the difference from wandering around and talking to the smattering of fluent English speakers. Most young people dismiss even the recent brouhaha as ancient history. Their elders say very little at all.

My first time in Yugoslavia, just before the latest round of mayhem, was remarkable for the change we noticed in crossing the Austrian-Yugoslav border—there wasn’t any. But whereas the Austrians were shouting at each other, the Yugoslavs were reaching for their weapons. Apparently, they found them. Again.

Filed under: Europe Tagged: Croatia

Tourists

My favorite lame travel joke used to be: “If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium.” On the current voyage, the new one is: “If you’ve seen one Acropolis, you’ve seen ’em all.”

Except… The Greek word technically refers to the summit of a hill, with or without a temple on the top. Only if you’ve seen one Parthenon, one Ephesus, or one Olympia, have you really seen ’em all.

Anyway… Speaking purely as a photographer, you come to the point where you’ve shot so many photos of seemingly interchangeable ruins, that the tourists stop getting in the way and in fact become the best part of the show. And that show never ends.

Filed under: Elsewhere, Europe Tagged: Greece, Italy, Turkey

Talking to Zeus

Something about the lone Adonis on this precipice atop the Temple of Zeus on the Athenian Acropolis seriously intrigued me—to the point that I took 20 shots in uncooperative lighting to get the photo. There was no visible means of access to his perch, which only added to the mystery. In my most fertile imagination, he was summoning the King of the gods to come down and irrigate the land, multiply the crops, feed the multitudes, and restore the soul of the world…

But he was probably just calling his girlfriend.

Filed under: Europe Tagged: Greece

Acropolis

Something about the lone Adonis on this precipice atop the Temple of Zeus on the Athenian Acropolis seriously intrigued me—to the point that I took 20 shots in uncooperative lighting to get the photo. There was no visible means of access to his perch, which only added to the mystery. In my most fertile imagination, he was summoning the King of the gods to come down and irrigate the land, multiply the crops, feed the multitudes, and restore the soul of the world…

But he was probably just calling his girlfriend.

Filed under: Europe Tagged: Greece

Tourism

Our friend Rick Botts has a favorite joke: “Don’t be a sheep and follow the herd.” [The joke being that sheep flock and cows herd, so if you’re a sheep following the herd, you are by definition a chronic non-conformist.] He told us this after I confessed to spending an hour in a medical encyclopedia searching for the proper term for tour-bus phobia (still searching, in case anyone has a suggestion), an affliction we normally suffer from.

Yet there we were in Ephesus, in outer Turkey, climbing off a bus and feeling sorry for the tour-guiding profession. One massive bomb in Istanbul Airport, one feeble military coup, one bogus crackdown by President Erdogan—and the touring business vanishes. With a 70% drop in revenues, all the guides are going back to school to become English teachers. It almost—but not quite—makes you empathize enough to sign up for the leather, glass, and rug factory tours.

It isn’t as though just anyone can make a living herding sheep around ruins and making up stories to keep them from wandering off and getting lost. Turkey requires months of training along with fluency in English, the universal tourist language. The European Union even has a standard, EN15565, the European Standard for the Training and Qualification of Tourist Guides [Ouch!]. Yet when tourism collides with politics, your career goes poof.

It’s all a gentle reminder of just how precarious life is for the vast majority of global citizens who don’t call themselves Americans or Europeans.

Filed under: Elsewhere Tagged: Turkey