A Time Patrol Movie We lived in Kenya from 1967 to 1971. Years of absolute magic. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the Kenya flag, but to me, it still carries the magic of Africa. Mount Kenya in the distance. Altitute: 5,200ms. For the Kikuyu and other tribes it is the home of…
Tlalpan, Mexico city. (Windows do qualify, right, Dan?) Baggaersthof, Kortrijk, Belgium. Probably one the first social housing projects in Europe. In the mid-1600s, Lady Josijne Baggaert built 13 small cottages for needy women. My ancestors were born and lived in Kortrijk since 1531. It felt strange -and good- to imagine them passing by that door.…
China House, Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia. The “gentleman” with a beard is probably Hanuman, the King of monkeys, who helps Prince Rama rescue his beloved Sita in the Ramayana. “Acuérdate de Acapulco, de aquellas noches, María bonita, María del alma”. (Song by Agustín Lara) “Remember Acapulco, remember those nights, pretty María, María of the soul. “To…
“I miss you in Singapore”. Little India, Singapore. 2025. “This is not an entrance”. Magritte’s influence (“This is not a pipe”) from Brussels all the way to Montreal. 2023. West Africa, c.1964. My father trying to start the Johnson outboard engine on our boat ‘Avel mor’. (Sea Wind in Breton.) Old house, Montreal. Those old…
I had a house in Africa. Conakry, Guinea, West Africa, c.1962 “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.” Hong-Kong, 1956. (I wasn’t there but I was told.) “Local Fashion”. Montreal, 2023. The ad shows a proud model wearing Canadian fashion in the 60’s. I remember my mother wearing stuff like that when we lived in Holland.…
An African childhood movie I had an island in Africa. Well, not exactly ‘had’, but close. We lived in West Africa, where my father was the Air France country manager in Conakry, Guinea. There was a group of three islands called the islands of Los, half an hour away from the harbour. My parents were…
Paris blue. Buenos Aires, Argentina. Vienna. Ile Saint-Louis, Paris. There stood the house of Heloïse and Abélard in 1118. A story of love and passion in the Middle Ages… “Mais où sont les neiges d’antan.” At the Béguinage in Kortrijk, Belgium. An old convent founded in Flanders in 1238. The houses were built in the…
Shotgun 2 Iguana on the freeway around Cuernavaca, Mexico. Second in a series of shotgun art I took in January. The horse whisperer. The hands hold corn, the staple of many Precolumbian cultures… A Chinelo dancer profile. (See previous post) The dance of the jaguars is another popular traditional dance. ‘Musing’. Another good example of…
My father was born in Saint-Malo in Brittany, a city of privateers and pirates. His grandmother, my great-grandmother had a house in Saint-Servan, a suburb of Saint-Malo. The city installed electricity in 1925. My father once told me he remembered when his grandmother reluctantly switched from gas lighting to electricity. Shutters count as doors, right?…
Sugar cane harvest. I took all those, riding shotgun on a freeway past the small town of Cuernavaca, Morelos, Hernán Cortez’s last city of residence in Mexico. Jaguar dance mask. The dance of the jaguars is a very old traditional dance of the region. Sugar cane harvest again. Not a crop of the region, it…
Equinoxio 