Postcard Colombia

Beyond irony is hope,
beyond hope is despair
beyond despair is death
and beyond death is life
everlasting.

-Richard Emblin/2005

The voyage

After almost six years as the Photo Editor for EL TIEMPO, Colombia's largest daily newspaper, I am moving on. The voyage for me begins. It is time to seek new horizons and live a little more. This picture closes a chapter in my life, as it portrays the plight of a displaced mother and her child, heading up the Atrato River, on Colombia's western coast, on a humanitarian riverboat called La Arca de Noé, Noah's Ark.

Beyond irony, is hope. The only riverboat that is allowed to navigate the turbulent waters of the Atrato, where left wing rebels from the FARC fight right wing paramilitary deathsquads, is Noah's Ark. A lifeline in this country's fourty year old civil war.

Apertures

Colombian children play football under the hot midday sun on a small patch of crushed sea shells and sand in the middle of the Cienaga de Santa Marta. The Cienaga is Colombia´s largest fresh water lake and became immortalized in the works of Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez´s fictional portrayal of life in Macondo. The fantastical place where what is magical is in fact real, and what is real, well, magical.

Postcard India

Standing in the desert, at the start of the Pushkar Mela, with its famous camel fair, I saw this face in the afternoon light. A portrait from India, and a postcard from the bazaar at the end of the world.

Photo: Richard Emblin/1993

Postcard Bolivia

Walking up through the old miner's market in Potosi, Bolivia, towards the Cerro Rico hill, I came upon this boy with his retro red slide viewer. It was a bright sunny morning, as I paced up though the cobbled streets of this legendary silver mining town in central South America, perched high at 3000 meters above sea level on an arid, wind swept plateau.

London Chronicle

Seagulls fly over the River Thames, near Richmond, England, on a grey afternoon in late September.

Postcard (Colombia)

Somewhere between Colombia and Panama, while crossing the Darien rainforest, we found wild avocados and threw them into our dug out canoe.

After heading downstream towards the hamlet of Paya on the Panamanian side of the jungle, I got so tired of having to sit in the canoe and stare at the fresh fruit, that I grabbed my Nikon F4 and 'click'! , I took this picture. I call it, 'still life in the jungle'.

Photo: Richard Emblin/1995

Frontline (Angola)

'The tear'



Refugee camp in Northern Angola, during the height of the civil war in this west African country.

Photo: Richard Emblin/1993

A seat with a view

So here I am.
Travelling
somewhere over the blue
space.
Atlantic Ocean.
A pixel.
A dot.
A line crossing

worlds
of old
new and

red.

Postcard (India)

One of the favorite pastimes in India, is cricket. The sport is played in parks and fields throughout this subcontient, and here, I captured a team of cricketers in downtown Mumbai, the city formerly known as Bombay, on a hot day with their cricket bats and padding.

Apertures

Used coffee cups in the Café La Romana in downtown Bogotá.
This picture reminds me of the line by poet T.S.Eliot in the The Love Song for J.Alfred Prufrock : I have measured out my life with coffee spoons...'

Poem (Coming Home)

Coming home to the Launderette
watching souls, tumble dry
in the damp misery of this inner city.
I recall Sunday dinner
roast pork on a silver tray.

My soul fattens besides the soapy
chickens dangling in the abattoir of
Mister Singh’s corner store.

And Anna with her bleached face
and battered soul makes love to
Zoe in this Ajax.
Heaven.

Coming home to the Launderette
I am that passive voyeur, reaching
for my fabric softener and inviting
loneliness like a cat
tattooed
on your uninviting arse.

Coming home to my squatting
ambition, I inhale death, stale,
death over the counter
only to realize that
I shall never go back to her.

I shall never sleep with my dirty nymph
under grey skies and cleanse
her spirit with my despair.

Hackney. London. Oct 1989

Apertures (VIII)

As the afternoon light faded across the colonial square of this old town, called the Villa de Leyva, in central Colombia, I captured the 400 year old church with my camera, as well as the reflections from the more modern mule, a parked Harley.