New light through old windows

I saw this photo opportunity and couldn't help but do the comparative... New lights through old windows, but tomorrow morning the window below will be shut once more - the party would be over. But for a glimpse of a time, life was back again to the house.

World Hepatitis Day - hép attitude positive

Hep(atitis) might not be a "hip" desease, but it is there, and many people suffer from it. With world Hepatitis Day on the 28th of this month (that would be today!), please do visit the facebook page of the "world hepatitis day - Lebanon"... Snapshots of the page attached! Free testing will be offered as 1 in 12 people in the world has either Hepatitis B or C....

For a lifeline - sorry, lifetime - of happiness!

Now isn't this cute?... Spotted right at the top of the
teleferique.... It was "booked" by a couple. A classy, cute, and
romantic way to start your lifeline - sorry, lifetime - together!
Mabrouk, whomever the happy couple is!

Mix and mismatch around town....

In case you missed it, nature is now in 3D... Or some other high definition performance format, otherwise, well one could simply interpret the Puk at at face value - they change their shape (but of
course with "same great taste" - they all say that!).
Hmm, and coming up shortly for Ramadan Carole Samaha managed to morph into Sabah (our "other" Lebanese diva in whose chorus a certain "Feyrouz" used to sing!) - read all the juicy gossip in the yellow press - me I am just commenting on how Carole Samaha used to be a great actress, but now has lost it because she is acting as "Carole Samaha"... Yes, in the past I have done a week-long shooting with her and she was fresh, innocent, funky, but also fat and chubby and totally complex-free... Somewhere along the line "something" went wrong. Or right... Depending on how you look at it.
The only reason I am including the sleep comfort ad is because it advertises water-proof indoor furniture... Do they know something I don't about global warming?
Ksara has a continuation of its "Every bottle tells a story" - except that they told the best ones last year which leaves you with the drunk gossip... And since they are no Hemingway the drunken rants in
question are no match to "the old man and the sea".
It's big, it's cream colored, it is egg based, and right there in your face.. And by God it is repulsive! Whomever did the Wadi El Akhdar new Mayo ad should be bannished from the advertising world, or should get promoted (apparently the worse ads you do the better your career chances are).
And for the last two ads? Well, I just love what they are selling - whatever it is. Name of creative director: Salavador Dali... :)
Enjoy!

Thank you for smoking

Photo credit: Beirut Drive by shooting
The anti-smoking campaign - which has an execution also in a narguileh pipe in the form of a hanging rope is running in prallel (and in Dbayeh right behind!) the new Mouassal campaign. If you catch the
angle correctly, you can see BOTH at the same time on the way back.... I am not sure which is more effective to be honest. One of the main sponsors of the campaign is LBC - who at the time of Star Academy 1 ran a footage of the male contestants smoking on the balcony at the same time. When a viewer called to complain (the viewer was someone very close to me) Roula Saad from the academy answered "yes, so what? I smoke too"....

Fill in the blanks....

I am not sure what the principle is - how do you fill in the blank
bottle?... And do you have to be tipsy while doing it? But visually,
this is a stunner!....

Fady Chahine has a view to a kill!

Well, he just graduated with a super project (it was about Beirut/NTSC if you remember!), and now Fady Chahine is armed and dangerous - and on the loose - please provide him with a well-earned job... After all, the devil lies in idle hands!....

Honk for inspiration....

 Photo credit: Beirut Drive By Shooting

Research credit: Toom Extra

I am NOT saying the ad was stolen, I am just saying I just did a mental association between the Le Charcutier Aoun "trolleymania" ad about the caddie being a "truck" with all the kitsch paraphrenalia and the new Jammal Trust Bank ad (which I STILL love) - and if Darine is any reference - so does the rest of the blogging community.... But, I think, somewhere, somehow, the Aoun ad was a precursor to the other on a creative level.

"Jumping" into conclusions... new sports and Puma

Just because these ads have been running in Lebanon for a long time - and just because I love them so much - and because it makes it feel OK if you are not an olympic standard athletes, I am blogging about them.... So you are ace at darts? Bowling? Karaoke? Well, as long as you "move it" - as long you get out and about - as long as you "score" somewhere somehow (pun intended), you are indeed an "afterhours athlete".... I am not sure if farthest pee counts, but well, it seems many other sports are included in the process. Any awards for "daftest blogger"?

Well, are they?...

This, rather very serious question, was asked by FOAM - one of the most respected photographic institutions in the world - in its quest to foresse the future of phography, other questions had to do with truth in photography, analogy versus digital media, what is the ideal insitution for photgraphs will be, and other pertinent mindteasers about what photography will be like, and what its mission will be in the forseeable and not-so-forseeable future.
Well, the reason I decided to post about this, is that, as a blogger - I often wonder how important or meaningful my contributions are. Naturally, I am not a photographer (never mind me having published a whole series of photographic books and edited other such books!) and my technical info on photography is next to nil, but at some point I feel people take some of my opinions seriously.
Just yesterday, I was in a heated debate with a photographer, journalist and sociologist and at some point she told me that "I had no credentials to discuss any of this" (I am an agriculture engineer at base) so my reply was simply that if those "sociologists, psychologists, etc... were not capable of spreading the results of their researches then why shouldn't I step forward and fill that gap - credentials or not credentials.
But my retort essentially means, "just because I am able to spread my message, it makes my message legitimate" - which of course is not true (it is akin to saying, just because I should louder, my message is more worthy of attention).
So... Are we (as bloggers) the curators of the 21st century?

UPDATE: As if by sheer force of telepathy I found this in Guardian newspaper - including this passage about "From Here On" from Sean O'hagan: "I found myself longing for more curatorial selectivity, more quality control. I was reminded of some words of warning from the internet-historian, Andrew Keen, in an intriguing forthcoming film on digital culture called PressPausePlay. Keen speaks passionately about the downside of digital democratisation: "When you leave everything to the crowd, where everything is democratised, when everything is determined by the number of clicks, you are by definition undermining the seriousness of the artistic endeavour," he says. "There is no evidence that we are on the verge of a great new glittering cultural age, there is evidence that we may well be on the verge of a new dark age in cultural terms … where the creative world is destroyed and where all we have is cacophony and self opinion, where we have a crisis of democratised culture." There was a glimpse of that possible future in From Here On. It was not a pretty sight."

Is this the latest Aou el Abed joke?

Well, just because I was out of town does not mean I did not keep up with what was going on.... Hmmm, this whole Abou El Abed thing seems so dubious to me! First, in a country where the whole culture is based on coffee - and I don't mean Starbucks (remember "Four bucks is dumb") who needs a coffee drink when you can have the real thing?... And the name? Well, we ALL know what Abou El Abed is related to - and it's not coffee - but more like the latest pornogrpahic joke. So as it is the innuendo is very bad, then comes the line "ah ya abaday" - to my knowledge it is written wrong just like BHV wrote it in another ad. So with a corny product, a ridiculous name, and a badly written headline.... I think I need a coffee (helwe law sma7t).

Jammal Trust Bank: Ma tel7a2ne makhtoube....

Photo credit (for last photo): Houda Kassatly from her book "La poesie des cammionneurs"
What I like about certain topics is that they can be treated from so many angles. You can look at them from an academic point of view, or simply explore their Kitschy aspect - graffiti is one such topic that comes to mind, I always saw it from an anthropological stand point but it never stopped me collaborating with Ashekman to explore its street edge. Another topic of the kind is the words that truck drivers paint on their lorries. Houda Kassatly might have explored it brilliantly in her book "La Poesie des Cammionneurs" but it is Jammal Trust Bank that did a TV ad about it - which is actually quite cute! - the rest of the campaign does not capture the same funkiness (but the try is worth meantionning - specifically with the Egyptian movie mock poster)...
But just to give credit where credit is due, the theme of the lorries has been very recently exploited (or rather under-exploited) in Le Charcutier Aoun supermarket campaign - the same one where everyone personalizes his caddie, and guess who was on the helm on one such caddie which bore the usual paraphrenalia of good luck charms but a truck driver himself. Oh, and the Egyptian movie poster has also been explored by Intermarkets in their "Ana Hurra" (I am free) campaign to signify that they have no affiliation to any international agency.
Sorry, it turned out to be a bit of bashing for the campaign in the end, but I do think that the truck bit was quite cute (and if anyone is asking what the headline means - it goes - "just as the market is, you do your driving" which is a Lebanese slang idiom to signify that one has to adapt to the times).

PAN gl'AM the new Tarek Chemaly on 7UPstairs Publishing

When I managed to put my hand on an old atlas, a study book that was used in the Netherlands many decades ago, I immediately felt the compulsive need to do a book based on it. Originally I had thought of a politically undertoned project, but little by little the glamour swept it. So enjoy this graphic/anthropologic exploration of the world of travel, pin ups, and atlas maps in the time before flying became the nightmare it has become today. Many thanks for Mr. and Mrs. Bos without whom this project would never have seen the light.

My father's balcony - Riyas Komu shines in Art Zuid

Art Zuid is a must see currently in Amsterdam. Anyone who is anyone in the art world is there - Rodin, Dali, etc.... But also some new established artists such as Sylvie Fleury or Subodh Gupta. The surprise of this European Union prize winner show (which was opened by the queen herself who took the whole walk apparently) was the inclusion of some newcomers who still are not the stars of the moment such as Riyas Komu. I specifically refer to him because of his moving "My father's balcony" a wooden structure/scuplture which dates to 2006 and which celebrates the multi-religious ethnicity in his hometown where people coexisted pacifically in a rural setting. Chilren and adults alike were climbling the stairs to get to the balcony, making the structure an even more lively space. But the work remains very moving and solemn piece altogether.

Fi(at) 3ndat 7awd zhour?

Photo credit: Qin Zhi Lau

These Fiat 500 were parked in front of the Hilton hotel (yes, the same one I just mentionned about John Lennon) and hmmm.... How can one put it mildly? They had trees growing out of them. Sure, it was not accidential as is the case with other photos found on the net - when the car is abandoned and nature takes over - but rather in a more "planted" way.... Still, they are eye catching. Of course, they would look cute in a living room..... If you happen to have a house as big as a Hilton that is. And I am not sure Exotica sells any....

A room with a view - a view with a room

Photo credit for bed-in picture: Bettmann/Corbis

The sign on the building says: "The bulding on view from John Lennon's room is finally up for hire" - the "room" in question is the one he and wife Yoko Ono took during their honeymoon at the Hilton Amsterdam and in which they staged one of their bed-ins. All what one can say is repeat Braco Dimitrjevic's work: "This could be a place of historical importance."

A side order of fries.

The original "the potato eaters" is by Vincent Van Gogh, the parody comes from a shop that sells fried potatoes... But the master coup was finding the postcard that illustrates the same scene... After such investigative work, I guess I deserve some fries... But to quote that dialogue from Pulp Fiction:

Jules: What do they call a Whopper?
Vincent: I dunno, I didn't go into a Burger King. But you know what they put on french fries in Holland instead of ketchup?
Jules: What?
Vincent: Mayonnaise.
Jules: Goddamn!
Vincent: I seen 'em do it. And I don't mean a little bit on the side of the plate, they fuckin' drown 'em in it.

For your info, mayonaise costs 35 cents extra.

Ruud Gullit for Beter Horen - listen well!

Photo credit: esportmag.com



Even with my limited football knowledge, and my basically lack of Dutch language - I could not but immediately fall for this ad. Dutch football legend Ruud Gullit has a hearing problem (above is the image of Gullit in his heighday) and goes to Beter Horen to fix the problem.... Naturally the sales person recommends him the solution and adds that "now he will be back like he used to be"..... Seriously funny.
Oh and it is quite comforting to know - that not only the blogger behind this page who wears a hearing aid - but also international sports stars as well.

Care for a drink?

Photo credit: Wijn's blog

"Wijntje?" - literally "have cup of wine with me?" and figuratively "care for a drink?" - is the slogan chosen by new television station TLC (most likely meaning Tender Loving Care) and which is destined - no points for guessing - to women. The ad is all over the place and always manages to catch you offguard - drink responsibly (as it may affect you bike ride back home - this is Holland everyone has a bike!).