Vietnam (Post 1 of 2)

Vietnam was a port where we lived with the constant specter of the "American War" or as we are used to hearing it, the Vietnam War.

I travelled extensively throughout Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and was given constant reminders of our past actions in the country. One of the most poignant and propagandistic of these moments was in the War Remnants Museum; this museum featured a plentitude of disturbing and dark "truths" about America's action in the war. What was particularly disturbing was seeing propagandistic language merge with curatorial convention. Photographs that we are used to seeing (and were captured by western journalists) were re-captioned for exhibition. A photo of a man being removed from his home was captioned "a girl pleads with GI's to "please not kill my father"". There was also a horrifying floor dedicated to the damage caused by our use of Dioxin based chemicals like Agent Orange to deforest Viet-Cong controlled jungle.

Below are a few photos from the museum:





Above you can see the type of images culled from the enormous milieu of images representing American policy in the mid 20th century. A bias perhaps?



A wonderful installation of Larry Burrow's "Yankee Papa 13" (Photo Essay from Time Magazine here: http://ti.me/KTRzgc)


The museum was very simply stacked. It laid a political base ground floor, then began to examine the conflict itself as visitors went to the second and third floors.





I'll be writing another post that has more images from the city itself as well as our journey by motorbike through the countryside to the Cu Chi tunnels.

Dusting off the blog and starting to post again.

In no chronological order I am going to begin posting images that are from the over 15,000 that I made while on Semester at Sea last semester. I'll be interspersing these posts with writing or poems that I made by hand while on the ship.

Well, onward with the blogging! Look for the next post to be far more travel centric.

More night photographs.

More photographs from my nighttime walks and errands.





This one has the same interesting play between blue and yellow that the front of the car dealership in the last post had going on:

Cadillac Dealer

So I've driven by this shuttered Cadillac dealer time and time gain, but something about the way that the light was hitting the front of it today made me stop. I went up and looked in the windows... Their American Flag was still in place, how sad.





Here is the front of the dealership, I was especially struck by the contrasts of color on the face of the building.

Hawaii Pictures!

Below are images from the last week I spent in Hawaii. All are from the Big Island, with the majority being taken in the Kona area or Volcano National Park.

Walking around at night.

Before the rest of my post, I wanted to share 2 photos I made with the new Fuji X100. This is how well it performs at 6500ISO!



I made these while walking around La Jolla, California. One of the things I enjoy about my walks at night in La Jolla is the fact that the town is virtually empty after a certain time. Businesses close and the enclave is totally quiet, which I believe comes through in the photographs I've made of it. Also, there are quite an eclectic range of shops and architecture, which makes for fun walks.


Anyways some pictures from home:


San Diego Airport @ Baggage Claim.


My taxi home.


The photos below are from Gillespie Field. It's a small private airport that one of our friends was taking a flying lesson at.

Revisiting some old work.

I've been combing through my street work as inspiration for shooting on the streets of all the places I'm going on Semester At Sea.

First up: New York, New York.

























A shot I really like from Beverly Hills:



Montreal:
















San Francisco:













San Diego: