Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar.

A year on, a year older

Today I turned thirty. I spent most of it wandering the streets of central Bangkok. A new decade, a new part of the world for me.

The day of my previous birthday, I was pulling into Juba—the soon-to-be-independent capital of South Sudan—on the bus from Kampala.

Juba to Bangkok. Of what I saw today, the two cities couldn’t be more different. Only the lean-to houses lining a railway track resembled something similar.

A year ago, I was expecting a struggle to begin a career in the world of the news photographer. A year later, I had lived that struggle through some of the biggest stories of 2011: South Sudan’s referendum and subsequent independence; the war in Libya; drought in the Horn of Africa, seen from Kenya and Somalia; and finishing up with the elections in DR Congo.

Now, I can’t help but wonder what I’m doing here, a world away from all that. It’s become hard to take a holiday.

Segregation It was with more than a little trepidation that I took this assignment in Belfast. Not because of “The Troubles” (and I still can’t get over the understatement in this term), but for photographing something that looks so familiar, something so much like where I grew up, and what I took for granted. Since I began making a living out of photography back in January, much of my work has been centred around events, and all of it in Africa - from Libya, through the Sudans, to Kenya and Somalia. They have been stories of conflict, of voting, of famine and drought. And if I was working on quieter stories, it was still “exotic”; a different scenery, and different peoples, for the largely western audience that views (and buys) my work. Here in Northern Ireland, the terraced houses reminded me of Sheffield. The faces looked the same as those who I grew up with. I wouldn’t have that “safety net” of the exotic on this assignment. I was working with a journalist who I first met in Libya, as we crossed the border from Egypt. The story was for a weekend supplement of Le Monde, and would have roots in a civil war that took place in my own country as I was growing up, but which I realised I knew less about than many other conflicts in other corners of the globe. What shocked me the most were the “Peace Walls”. We talk about—and deplore—the Israeli wall that separates the Palestinian Territories from Israel, segregating two peoples. But these exist in Belfast today. Under the shadow of it, gardens are covered in netting and mesh, resembling small prisons, to protect them from bricks and other missiles thrown over from the opposite side. I had seen the same thing in Hebron. And these are not relics of the past, now that peace talks have brought about a relative calm. People here say that the walls are still needed, to keep two opposing communities apart. Integration is a long way off yet. » Read Belfast, en paix mais toujours divisée — Le Monde des religions » See the tearsheet in my portfolio
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Segregation

It was with more than a little trepidation that I took this assignment in Belfast. Not because of “The Troubles” (and I still can’t get over the understatement in this term), but for photographing something that looks so familiar, something so much like where I grew up, and what I took for granted.

Since I began making a living out of photography back in January, much of my work has been centred around events, and all of it in Africa - from Libya, through the Sudans, to Kenya and Somalia. They have been stories of conflict, of voting, of famine and drought. And if I was working on quieter stories, it was still “exotic”; a different scenery, and different peoples, for the largely western audience that views (and buys) my work.

Here in Northern Ireland, the terraced houses reminded me of Sheffield. The faces looked the same as those who I grew up with. I wouldn’t have that “safety net” of the exotic on this assignment.

I was working with a journalist who I first met in Libya, as we crossed the border from Egypt. The story was for a weekend supplement of Le Monde, and would have roots in a civil war that took place in my own country as I was growing up, but which I realised I knew less about than many other conflicts in other corners of the globe.

What shocked me the most were the “Peace Walls”. We talk about—and deplore—the Israeli wall that separates the Palestinian Territories from Israel, segregating two peoples. But these exist in Belfast today. Under the shadow of it, gardens are covered in netting and mesh, resembling small prisons, to protect them from bricks and other missiles thrown over from the opposite side. I had seen the same thing in Hebron.

And these are not relics of the past, now that peace talks have brought about a relative calm. People here say that the walls are still needed, to keep two opposing communities apart. Integration is a long way off yet.

» Read Belfast, en paix mais toujours divisée — Le Monde des religions
» See the tearsheet in my portfolio

Old Town Mombasa

Whilst Congowea market has a distinctly African flavour, Mombasa’s old-town is something different. There is a much more arab flavour to East Africa’s port, with the Swahili culture adding a very nice twist, particularly whilst enjoying a coffee in a little café tucked away in the back-streets.

Walking the streets at dusk during Ramadan, people prepare to break the day’s fast with their Iftar meal. An echo of France—a painted wall advertising “Épices + Thé + Café”—reminds me of last year during Ramadan, when I was walking the outskirts of Paris in a very Maghreb neighbourhood, en route to the climbing wall in Pantin. Things have changed.

Amongst the Stacks The Bibliotheca Alexandria was another of the reasons I wanted to visit Alexandria. Originally established in 283 BC, the Great Library of Alexandria was one of the first libraries open to the public and was a massive centre of knowledge. Copyright was of little interest back in the days when Alexandrian law demanded the confiscation and duplication of manuscripts arriving in the city by boat. Reading about Google’s scanning of the world’s libraries for its online catalogue, certain parallels come to mind. The new library, the Bibliotheca Alexandria, was opened in 2002 and is an impressive piece of architecture. The sunlight reflecting off the metal discus that forms the library’s form reminded me a little of Libeskind’s Juedisches Museum in Berlin. Beside the entrance, a large, curving, ornamental wall is inscribed with characters from “every known” alphabet; I was limited to understanding those of Arabic, Cyrillic, Japanese and of course Latin, whilst ogling at the hieroglyphs, characters and pictograms of many other languages and civilisations. Inside, the angled windows from the discus form of the building cast a wonderful light over the book-shelves and rows of desks. There is space to hold eight million books, over tenfold more than the 700,000 documents of the original Great Library; although the spaces on the shelves indicated its current stock is somewhat less. Pieces of typographic and calligraphic art are dotted around. I sat with Alexandria’s studious souls, idling away the afternoon with books on Arabic calligraphy and Middle-Eastern & African linguistics. I miss my books.

Amongst the Stacks

The Bibliotheca Alexandria was another of the reasons I wanted to visit Alexandria. Originally established in 283 BC, the Great Library of Alexandria was one of the first libraries open to the public and was a massive centre of knowledge. Copyright was of little interest back in the days when Alexandrian law demanded the confiscation and duplication of manuscripts arriving in the city by boat. Reading about Google’s scanning of the world’s libraries for its online catalogue, certain parallels come to mind.

The new library, the Bibliotheca Alexandria, was opened in 2002 and is an impressive piece of architecture. The sunlight reflecting off the metal discus that forms the library’s form reminded me a little of Libeskind’s Juedisches Museum in Berlin. Beside the entrance, a large, curving, ornamental wall is inscribed with characters from “every known” alphabet; I was limited to understanding those of Arabic, Cyrillic, Japanese and of course Latin, whilst ogling at the hieroglyphs, characters and pictograms of many other languages and civilisations.

Inside, the angled windows from the discus form of the building cast a wonderful light over the book-shelves and rows of desks. There is space to hold eight million books, over tenfold more than the 700,000 documents of the original Great Library; although the spaces on the shelves indicated its current stock is somewhat less. Pieces of typographic and calligraphic art are dotted around.

I sat with Alexandria’s studious souls, idling away the afternoon with books on Arabic calligraphy and Middle-Eastern & African linguistics. I miss my books.