anita līcis-ribak's blog

Every day, between yesterday and tomorrow - 2

I took this photograph peering through one of the tunnel-like openings formed by the massive stone walls in the base of "The Liberty statue of India", a 133 feet (40.5 m) tall stone sculpture of the Tamil saint and poet Tiruvalluvar, author of the Thirukkural. (Thirukkural, a classic of couplets, or aphorisms, is considered to be the first work to focus on ethics in Dravidian Literature). The sculpture was completed in 2000 and is located atop a small island near the town of Kanyakumari, which lies on the southernmost tip of the The Indian Peninsula, where three bodies of water, the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean, and the Arabian Sea meet.

On my trip through Tamil Nadu in Southeast India in February I met and talked to several people whose lives are intrinsically tied to the ocean, and who told me their personal accounts of the terrible morning in December of 2004, the day of the most infamous tsunami. One was a young fisherman who by night sells beautiful sea shells on Chennai beach. He and his friend were preparing to go out to the sea in their small wooden boat that morning. They were spared, but the mother of his friend was killed by the wave. Another one, an old man, was doing his usual chores at the Gandhi Memorial in Kanyakumari, preparing the museum for the opening, when the tsunami hit. Everything inside the museum was destroyed, he told me, all the photographs were washed away, windows shattered, but he, save for the vision in one of his eyes, was spared. The wave was so enormous, he told me, that it touched the shoulder of Tiruvalluvar's statue. I looked back at the statue from where he and I were standing. It was dwarfing the tiny figures of people gathered at its feet. And I would have thought that this man is a reincarnation of baron Munchausen. Except that I was full well aware of the extensive damage that this tsunami had produced in the region, and seen areas still desolate of life, 6 years after. So I stood there, stretching my imagination around this new information like some Glad Cling Plastic Wrap over an elephant, and feeling increasingly queazy.

I look at this photograph, and the calmness and peace of the three oceans are astonishing if not reassuring, in the perspective of things. As if it was tamed and composed by the dark square of the dense stone frame, and smoothed out from above by the silver light. A finishing touch - a tiny boat in the distance - was added by a pedantic producer last minute. And voila, we've got ourselves a very agreeable picture. As if there never was a wave that touched the poet's shoulder...

The Object Stares Back

I've come across a notion a few times that taking photographs is hiding behind one's camera. I wonder if that's how it is for others, but for me it doesn't work that way! When I am out taking photographs I feel very present in the moment, and very exposed (no pun intended :). I can pretty successfully blend with the surroundings (unless I am in Southern India!). But as soon as I get my camera ready I am announcing "Here's to looking at you!" And more often than not, there's the look back.

Sometimes I do wish I had one of those spy cameras! One too many times I've come across a situation that pleads to be recorded but I don't dare lifting my 'hideout gadget'. One such situation comes to mind. One very early morning in December of 2007 I walked into a small cafe in Taos, New Mexico, and met point-blank with a dozen or so wild, life-wise eyes staring at me from the assembly of the locals, all the color of sand - all of them - from the rugged boots, to their long worn-out coats, to crazy hair, to wide-brimmed hats that'd seen all kinds of weather.. But their eyes were sky-blue, glowing from this untameable mass of sand, penetrating, and ..eternal.. My hand was burning to pull out my camera. But something made me to just pause for a split second, walk in and past these stern sand people, and to stay put. (Perhaps I didn't want to find myself playing a character in a Western, besides it was way too early for that, at 6:30am! But to tell you the truth, I felt like an intruder..) I have the picture of these unforgettable faces clear in my mind, and it's a picture I never took. 

I've traveled a safe route in photography for a long time, shooting safe objects that were either familiar or that won't stare back: I photographed my family and friends in my teens, architecture in my 20-ies, cities, landscapes and abstract geometries in my 30-ies. And it is only recently that my gaze (and my camera) is turning more towards people. Most of my photographs of people are spontaneous snapshots of strangers I encounter. I find faces fascinating. I like imagining life stories of these people. I inevitably feel a strong affiliation with, and sympathy for everyone I photograph. But there are times when I need to step back, to not be drawn in too far. I sometimes wonder what happened to Diane Arbus, had she crossed an invisible line from which there was no coming back?

I just returned from a 2 week trip to the southern part of Southern India (South South India) For the first time I was asking people to pose for me, perhaps encouraged by their warm nature and smiles. So you will see from the pictures that I took during this trip, some of which I will be posting in small installments here, and on my photography website, www.anitalicis.com, that people were a strong focus for me (and yes, many were looking back!). Although I did take a fair number of abstract compositions, landscapes and even wild animals (I will be posting some of those as well)

An old man on the ocean before sunset. Marina beach. Chennai, India. 2010

Sages convene. Kannyakumari, the southernmost point of the subcontinent. India. 2010

Kavín stares back. Near Coimbatore. India. 2010

Late night's smoke. Madurai. India. 2010 

Notes on Toilets From a Zombie Zone

I am back from India.

A quick visit to Wikipedia to check on the meaning of 'jet lag' leaves me informed that it takes 1 day per each eastward time zone to recover your circadian rhythms. (it's 1day per 1.5 westward time zones) I still have 3.5 (out of 10.5) days to go, before I emerge from my zombie zone! Why there's a half-hour in there, beats me, but there's a handful of countries utilizing fractions of an hour to computer their local time, India and Canada among them. Are they trying to buy some time?

I am at a nice local cafe, Esselon. I walk into one of the bathrooms here, and instinctively all my defense mechanisms kick in at once. It's Pavlov's reflex, developed over the 2 weeks of my travels in India. All these embarrassing thoughts flash though the subconscious mind of my westernized-ly pampered self, before I even enter the bathroom: Will there be toilet paper? Will there be a TOILET? Will there be a door to close behind me?... Take it easy, I am back home, I almost told myself. There are plenty of small - and isn't God in the small things anyways? - design details about the public bathrooms in the U.S. that have always unnerved me, such as stall doors opening inward leaving NO ROOM for your entire body to enter, or in-plain-view gaps between the stall doors and partitions (how about some privacy, please?!) These particular bathrooms are impeccable though, thanks very much, Pavlov!

Truth be told, my experiences with Southern India's public bathrooms of the type that triggered that detour into my subconscious are most of the time impeccable, in their own way. There's always water (even if it's all over the place), and there's always, at the very least, a hole in the ground. As someone who grew up in the Soviet Union and has travelled around that vast country, often in search of holes, *and* toilet paper, I felt grateful for that.

It should strike one as a contrast then that some of the brightest and tallest store windows I saw in the cities and towns of Southern India were of modern bathroom appliance showrooms. In that bright fluorescing spot of the familiar where a weary traveler from 'the West' might expect - or beg - to see sleek Italian couture, or the next big thing in the car industry (or, in a particularly desperate moment, even some distant Martha Stewart hold-outs), bold glowing towers of modern amenities in the form of glistening toilet pedestals tower high over the streets, like some royal impersonators of displaced wealth, inviting you to join in, in the bold westernization festivities. Or, are these more like the return-to-the-roots type of festivities? Let me explain: another consultation with Wikipedia (I know, I shouldn't be building my entire knowledge of the world based on this source alone!) on the subject of lavatories brings me to this discovery: "...the ancient cities of the Indus Valley Civilization, e.g., Harappa and Mohenjo-daro which are located in present day India and Pakistan had flush toilets attached to a sophisticated sewage system" That's 4 thousand years ago!!

3.5 more days to go, 3.5 more...

India Calling ! (Or Some of Us Are One)

Seeing India has been a long-time dream of mine. I think the first time I knew I *had* to go to India was when as a 17-year old architecture student in Riga I was listening to my Architectural History professor telling us, his students about the ancient temples of India proudly displaying stone-carved sculptures of couples copulating in all imaginable and (mostly) unimaginable ways. Now, what you need to know is that at the time my university was a Soviet Institution, and as such was there to affirm the official party line that sex was a capitalist invention and hence did not exist. My old professor's slide presentation was a revelation (and an act of brave rebellion on his part)!

Konark: The Sun Temple.

A year later I was reading Krishnamurti, standing on my head, and trying (rather disastrously) an assortment of exotic recipes: my best friend and I were testing the limits of the spiritual awakening theories. Partial awakening arrived in the form of a completely inedible stone-hard loaf of bread that we concocted based on one of our obscure recipes obtained from even more obscure sources. Our self-esteem nearly crushed, we decided to return our focus to architectural studies instead.

Fast forward some years later, characterized by successful avoidance of the experiments of aforementioned kind. (Except for one embarrassing incident when doing a "downward dog" left me partially immobilized for two weeks, and I was forced to walk bent 90 degrees forward! Imagine all the patterns in my town's pavement and my living room floor I discovered over those weeks! My sympathy levels for the old and disable have since skyrocketed. I had always proudly avoided any yoga instruction, instead learning from what looked like hand-printed Russian books on Yoga.. There you have it, i thought!.. So, yoga aficionados, go easy on that downward dog, or you'll become one!)

Downward Dog, from an old Hatha Yoga book in Russian, "Начала хатха йоги"

But back to my story..

Fast forward once more.. Soviet Union, that sex-less empire, falls. I settle in the territory of its once fiercest adversary, the "inventor of sex", the US, my home now. An ALIEN myself for more than a decade (that's what you are called here, until you obtain a Green Card that is NOT green, or become a citizen), I meet Indians, among other 'aliens' like myself, and discover to my amazement that in life they don't embody the public promiscuity of the famous couples on the India's temples.. Quite the contrary. They seem to be an impeccable embodiment of chastity and purity. One of them becomes a very dear friend of mine, literally over the course of one conversation - involving the Sanscrit, Tagore, Indira Gandi, and architecture - which leads me to believe in either of these two things: 1. Either I was once an Indian. 2. My friend was once a Latvian/Russian. 3. Or, we are all one. (or, *some* of use are one, anyway) Which ends up being more than two things, really.

At the end of last year it becomes evident that my dream trip is possible. The realization sends me into an intoxicating state of frenzy, excitement and agony for a few days, before I finally decide to do it. It's much harder to make such a decision now that I have a 16-months old son. I'm twice the age I was when I had my first son, and back then I didn't think much about leaving for extended concert tours through Europe with my choir, or venturing out to produce dirt and skeletons at the archaeological digging sites at the ancient Roman ruins in the South of France. At 20, everything seemed simple, possible and permitted. Add to that 20 years of Life's schooling, with intense courses on Responsible Parenting 101, Existence of the Limits of Possibilities 202, and The Vague and the Concrete Consequences of Following One's Desires 303, and what you have here is a new type of mother. But the thing is, I still live with that unquenchable sense of adventure!... 

Just before I set out to buy my airplane ticket, a vague thought crosses my mind to check if I need an entry visa to India. Turns out I do! So I spend the last day of the year 2009 frantically rushing out my application along with a $125 check that covers the visa processing, a third party fee and FedEX both ways. I part with my passport. An alarming move, especi ally considering the fact that it's going out by mail in a pretty much anonymous direction, and that I also buy the plane ticket that same day. The visa arrives after surprising two weeks! It's shocking, considering what an epic undertaking it had been, in the previous years, to obtain a US visa! (I could have for instance circled the Earth a couple of times on foot while waiting for my US work visa to get processed. Except that of course I couldn't: the way it works, you've got to remain in the country while your visa is being minted!) Sigh of relief. Now, it's time for immunizations! I call the travel nurses in the area, they are all overloaded with work: everyone seems to be heading towards the Japanese Encephalitis-infested areas this winter! Eventually, I manage to get a tight appointment at my primary health care provider. They seem bent on providing me preemptively with what they promise: health. I get armed with a bunch of prescriptions, three immunization shots, and two pounds of literature on how to avoid Japanese Encephalitis. Except that I do not plan on staying at a pig farm for four months, a prerequisite condition warranting such a precaution.

I am flying out of Newark next Wednesday, February 3rd, and heading down to Chennai, via Mumbai. The flight, the longest non-stop flight I've ever been on, is 15.5 hours long. I am meeting my friend (remember Tagore?) in Chennai where she is living again, and where she has offered, in the most gracious display of goodness, to pick me up from the airport at 3am. (THANK YOU MY DEAR FRIEND!) We haven't seen each other for some years now. But you know those friends who never change on you, whose lives always remain in sync with yours no matter how much time passes, and how many continents lie between you two? Well, that's the kind of friend she is.

I am bringing along my photo camera, along with two batteries, tens of gigabytes of flashcard space, a charger, and some other photo paraphernalia, along with those filled out prescriptions and wearable cotton (hard to think of it, with an inch of fresh snow outside my window). That summarizes it really. I know I am headed to the most technology savvy place on earth, but apart from spending some days in Chennai the rest of my 2-week itinerary is still quite vague. So I may end up in a place and a situation where the only photographs I can take are in my imagination. ..At least it won't be on a pig farm... I do promise to bring you photos of those carvings though, if I make it that far! But I doubt it. It is only on the maps in my guidebooks that India appears small and easily navigateable, as it is only in Krishnamurti's books that life seems to make complete sense...