Angkor Angkor

Siem Reap, Cambodia

We cruise along in the wet heat, doubled over in laughter. No traffic lights, the vehicles govern themselves and we make do. From slideshows to gallery openings to peer reviews to spicy bowls of noodle soup, to long nights of pool and beer, we weave through the dusty streets, navigating potholes and trying not to marvel too much at the scenes floating by and causing an accident. I bring Miss Adrienne Grunwald with me and she falls in love and tries to come up with ways to stay.

I see and hold my far-flung friends and we share stories. The weird, sad, freaky, side-splittingly hilarious, private ones. Not the ones in pictures. This is so precious to me. My favourite time of the year.

MJR Print Editions ~ Ying Ang

So my little story zine is here, freshly printed and ready to be consumed! Come say hi at Look3 Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville to get yourself a copy or else you can try to chase me across various American states over the summer… but no promises… 🙂

Welcome to the Zoo

Visa pour l’image avec MJR collectif de photographes, 2009

For my companions

Perpignan, France – Late night in the south of France

I had an important conversation tonight. It came as a reminder of many things. An anchor, even.

Simply, it was about people… and heart. Conducting your actions with truth and honour, doing justice to your companions and having the clarity to look people in the eye and communicate compassion, loyalty, sincerity, strength and being able to show them the importance of who they are.

To hold them up to the light and show them the beautiful transparency that they are capable of when they aren’t afraid to truly see the nature of their heart. To recognise the family of your wider brethren of friends and strangers. To be happy for the successes of the ones who hurt you, to understand that people come before business and that to love is to understand. To live up to your name.

Truth and Honour. All else is false.

MJR Destination

 
Flight plan locked in. Headquarters acquired.
Destination: Visa Pour L’Image, Perpignan, France.
August 29 – September 04, 2009
MJR photographers representing:
 

© Mustafah Abdulaziz

 

© Matthew Craig

 

© Ying Ang

We ate the birds

We ate the birds. We ate them. We wanted their songs to flow up through our throats and burst out of our mouths and so we ate them. We wanted their feathers to bud from our flesh. We wanted their wings, we wanted to fly as they did, soar freely among the treetops and the clouds, and so we ate them. We speared them, we clubbed them, we tangled their feet in glue, we netted them, we spitted them, we threw them onto hot coals, and all for love, because we loved them. We wanted to be one with them. We wanted to hatch out of clean, smooth, beautiful eggs, as they did, back when we were young and agile and innocent of cause and effect, we did not want the mess of being born and so we crammed the birds into our gullets, feathers and all, but it was no use, we couldn’t sing, not effortlessly as they do, we can’t fly, not without smoke and metal, and as for the eggs we don’t stand a chance.

We’re mired in gravity, we’re earthbound. We’re ankle-deep in blood, and all because we ate the birds, we ate them a long time ago, when we still had the power to say no. 

 – Margaret Atwood

 

© Mustafah Abdulaziz/ MJR

 

© Mustafah Abdulaziz/ MJR

 

© Mustafah Abdulaziz/ MJR