Only With The Falling Of Dusk
57 minutes ago
Friday, 6 August 2010
Thursday, 5 August 2010
Harold Chapman's best shot
Beat generation … Peter Orlovsky and Allen Ginsberg in Paris's Place St Germain-des-Prés in 1956 Photograph: Harold Chapman
It was 1956, and I was working in a crummy nightclub in London, waiting on tables, collecting dishes, trying to take photographs. I overheard all these conversations about how fantastic Paris was – "That's where it's at, man," everybody said.
So I hitchhiked there, planning to photograph everything in Paris for a book; a ridiculous ambition – it would have been the size of four telephone directories. At a bookshop called the Mistral, I found the address of the Beat Hotel – though it wasn't called that then. It was just a 13th-class hotel, absolutely rock-bottom quality, at 9 Rue Git-Le Coeur that everybody told me was full of crazy people: poets, artists, writers.
I lived there until 1963, taking photographs with my ancient Compax camera, which I'd picked up in a junkshop. I would pile a load of coats on top of my bed, and dive under them with my developing tank. Then I developed the photographs in the wash basin, and hung the films out to dry with coat-pegs on a piece of string. It was a very haphazard method, and I lost a lot of great photographs to it; but my philosophy has always been to save what is good, and forget what is lost.
Among the many writers I photographed were Allen Ginsberg and his partner Peter Orlovsky. One winter day in 1957, they took me for a walk: Ginsberg translated the French street names for me and pointed out the beauty of the architecture. In the Place St-Germain-des-Prés, they decided to sit down on this double-sided bench. I took this picture, just one frame. (I was very economical – film was very expensive.)
Ginsberg and Orlovsky had just moved to Paris, after all the aggravation surrounding the obscenity trial of Ginsberg's Howl. He has this smile of wonderment on his face, as if he's looking into the future, thinking of the voyages around the world he's going to make, the poems he's going to write. Orlovsky has a look of angst. Pessimism and optimism make the perfect balance for a couple to live together – which they did, on and off, for many years.
From the Beat generation, I learned that I could just do anything: they had broken all the rules. I didn't need to worry about composition or anything like that. I based the rest of my life on that understanding. People used to say: "You're crazy – you'll never sell those photographs." But The Beat Hotel has become a cult book. One copy sold several years ago for almost $2,000. So I had the last laugh.
CV
Born: Deal, Kent; 1927.
Studied: "I've had no education whatsoever: I successfully ran away from every school I ever went to. I studied photography just by doing it."
Influences: "The French street photographers – Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, Willy Ronis. And Bill Brandt, for his fantastic contrasts."
Top tip: "I can only repeat the advice that Cartier-Bresson once gave me, 'Be honest to your subjectivity.'"
empireofthekop Liverpool Echo : News: Liverpool FC owner Tom Hicks wants out of owning sports clubs http://bit.ly/9Zok74 #lfcfollowback #fb
exilestreet @empireofthekop Shouldn't that read that sporting clubs want Tom Hicks out of owning them?
Chris Carter - Tip Top Boss
This is basically just a TipTop Z8000 sequencer controlling a Z-DSP module, a Z2040 VCF & a Z5000 VCDSP module. The audio source is a Boss DR-220E Dr.Rhythm, which is also triggering the Z8000 sequencer from its programmable Trig output. Other modules used were a MFB Dual LFO- to change the direction of the sequencer and a Doepfer Dual VCA modulated by two Doepfer VCOs to add a little ring-mod'ish timbre.
This is part of my CCCL project.
aka: Chis Carter's Chemistry Lessons
http://chriscarterchemistrylessons.blogspot.com
aka: Chis Carter's Chemistry Lessons
http://chriscarterchemistrylessons.blogspot.com
Chris playing around with his Boss DR-220E Dr.Rhythm that he scored for 30 quid on eBay the other day - jammy bugger!
Clever graphic
With a sly inversion of the traditional AIDS red ribbon, Dana Arnett created an immediately recognizable, yet distinctly bunny-like identity for the Playboy AIDS Foundation.
Does Saudi have world's biggest amphetamine habit?
Captagon pills and a cup of cocaine displayed by Lebanese anti-narcotics forces in June 2010.
The Middle East leads the world in amphetamine seizures but governments in the region have been slow to admit there is a drug abuse problem, hindering efforts to fight it.
All intoxicants, including alcohol, are forbidden by Islam, yet "immense volumes" of illegal amphetamines are being seized in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, according to Matthew Nice, a drugs expert with the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The World Drug Report 2010, published by the UNODC, shows Saudi authorities confiscated 12.8 metric tons of amphetamine in 2008. A total of 24.3 metric tons of amphetamine were seized worldwide that year, with 15.3 metric tons seized in the wider Middle East.
"I can't emphasize enough the size of this," said Nice, whose specialist area is amphetamine-type-stimulants. "Fifteen metric tons is absolutely huge, it's absolutely phenomenal.
"We're really struggling because the information base is so limited. It's definitely just the tip of the iceberg," he told CNN.
Experts working in the region say abuse of all kinds of drugs is a growing problem.
Professor Jallal Toufiq, founder of the Middle East and North Africa Harm Reduction Association told CNN: "There is a worsening of the drug situation in the whole region, with no exceptions.
"We have to be very careful about this because there are no trend studies, but if you collect indirect indicators, I can tell you with certainty there's an increase in drug abuse in the region.
"We can show it in terms of treatment demand, social expression, related crime, HIV and Hepatitis C increasing in these countries -- all these kinds of indirect indicators."
But he added that a lack of research and data collection on the ground make it hard to identify the scale of the problem.
"In the Middle East and North Africa region there's a huge void in terms of data and information," he said. "For many countries there's a lack of political willingness because people just don't want to deal with this."
The kinds of drugs being abused varies across the region.
Use of Cannabis, commonly known as marijuana, is widespread, while Libya and Bahrain in particular have large numbers of heroin users, according to Toufiq.
Lebanon, with its lively nightlife and clubbing scene, has a higher incidence of designer-drug use, for example ecstasy, he said.
But the Middle East particularly stands out when it comes to seizures of amphetamine.
"We've been watching [the seizures] increase, but it started exploding around 2006 when we started seeing huge jumps in the drug that's uniquely known in [the Middle East] as Captagon."
According to the UNODC, Captagon is the brand name for a pharmaceutical drug developed in the 1960s to treat Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Production was discontinued in the 1980s.
Pharmaceutical Captagon contained a synthetic stimulant called fenetylline. These days, narcotic manufacturers in south-eastern Europe are taking advantage of Captagon's reputation as a stimulant and producing counterfeit Captagon tablets, stamped with the Captagon logo, but containing amphetamine -- a controlled substance -- as well as other chemicals, including caffeine.
Although there is little data on drug use in Saudi Arabia, Dr. Ali Al-Haqwi of King Saud Bin Abdul-Aziz University for Health Sciences, in Riyadh, has researched attitudes to drugs in the country.
"When I ask people the most commonly abused drug in our community they say alcohol, followed by amphetamines," he told CNN. "Peer pressure is a very significant factor encouraging people to get involved."
Toufiq said governments in the region were now waking up to the extent of the drug problem. "They were in denial for years, but things are changing because of social expression," he said.
"There's no more censorship of what's going on in the societies in the region. It's coming out that there's a problem and it's perceived and seen now, so you can't hide it anymore."
But Toufiq told CNN that although there is a new political willingness to tackle the drug problem, years of neglect means a huge lack of trained personnel in the field, and a focus on targeting traffickers rather than reducing demand.
"You have very highly qualified people in supply reduction, in military and customs, but not in demand reduction or the medical approach side," he said.
"There's a very poor response in the field of treatment. There are some initiatives, but there is nothing at all in the field of prevention. Prevention in the Middle East and North Africa region is a catastrophe."
Mark Tutton @'CNN'
Fugn hilarious...
(Click to enlarge)
A visual diary documenting a flight from New York to Berlin (with a layover in London) by
A visual diary documenting a flight from New York to Berlin (with a layover in London) by
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