Salud! Comrade Pablo Neruda!

It’s been 40 years since legend Don Pablo (Pablo Neruda) took his last breath. But still his poems have been inspiring boys & men to be dipped in love, girl & women to be felt appreciated and desired.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines...” have been a silent partner in my saddest times. Or when I read from his sonnet XVII,

…where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

it’s like a feeling that only he can transcend into words. Probably that’s the reason artist/poet like him comes few in every century or so. His writings have been iconic throughout last century and may it last till the end of centuries to come. Salud! Comrade!

From Pablo Neruda’s Sonnet XXVII:

“Naked, you are simple as one of your hands, 
Smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round: 
You have moonlines, applepathways: 
Naked, you are slender as a naked grain of wheat.

Naked, you are blue as the night in Cuba; 
You have vines and stars in your hair; 
Naked, you are spacious and yellow 
As summer in a golden church.

Naked, you are tiny as one of your nails, 
Curved, subtle, rosy, till the day is born 
And you withdraw to the underground world,

as if down a long tunnel of clothing and of chores:
Your clear light dims, gets dressed, drops its leaves,
And becomes a naked hand again. “

Here is a clip from the movie Il Postino (The Postman) which has a part of his sonnet xxvii (written above):

A tribute to Masahisa Fukase

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I was stunned…

I was overwhelmed.

They crushed my soul ….

How can some “mere” set of pixels, combination of gray dots do such a thing! I had no idea! I just kept looking at the photographs. They more I looked, the more I saw and the emptier I felt. Fukase’s “ravens” seem to have that sublime yet strong reaction.

Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase‘s (1934-2012) book “Solitude of Ravens” is a collection of 62 black and white photographs. He started taking these photographs after he got divorced from a 12 year marriage.He was coming back to his birthplace, Hokkaido, to deal with his psychological situation. But Fukase found a subject that reflected his darkening vision, and he pursued it with obsessive relentlessness. He started photographing ravens from running trains, buses, at different stops etc.In Japanese mythology, ravens are disruptive presences and harbingers of dark and dangerous times His photographs of ravens were published as a book for the first time in 1986, photos edited by Akira Hasegawa. He says, “masahisa fukase’s work can be deemed to have reached its supreme height; it can also be said to have fallen to its greatest depth. the solitude revealed in this collection of images is sometimes so painful that we want to avert our eyes from it.” According to British Journal of Photography, his book remains the best photo-book in last 25 years (1986-2011).

He got remarried to someone else and divorced again. But he was still in ruins from his lost love. During one evening of 1992 he was too drunk, he fell down and had severe brain injury. He had been in coma for last 20 years until June 9,2012 when his body finally gave up.

During these days, Yoko, his lost love, looked after him. She says,“He remains part of my identity; that’s why I still visit him.”

Some good reads about Fukase:

claxtonprojects | reflets de lumiere | avesnoir

Counter Foto honors living legend Sayeeda Khanom

 

The official launching ceremony of Counter Foto – A Center for Communication’s photography department will be held on Nov 23rd, 2012 at Counter Foto office. On this occasion Counter Foto honors legendary photographer Sayeeda Khanom with Counter Foto Lifetime Achievement Awards 2012.

banglanews24.com link on the event

Publication in The Daily Star& Prothom Alo

Photo Published in The Daily Star &  Daily Prothom Alo

on 24/09/2012.