When I contacted Travel photographer Tom Carter, author of CHINA: Portrait of a People from New York for an interview he wrote to me  the following answer I am not sure why… ”  Are you familiar with my background as a photographer and author?  I have lived in China/Asia for the past 8 years and spent 2 years backpacking 56,000 kilometers across all 33 provinces in China.

Well done Tom!  See you next time in Yunaan for a  small cup of Chinese tea.

 J.M: Where were you born?

I was born and raised in the City of San Francisco and will always consider it home even though I haven’t lived there in over a decade.

J.M:When was your first journey?

My first solo journey was down the length of Mexico, Cuba and Central America back in 2000. It started out as a summer camping adventure in Baja, just me and my 1983 Chevy Suburban 4×4, but I kept going and going and never looked back. 18 months later, I finally reached Panama.

J.M: When did you start to use a camera?

I bought my very first camera in 1992, when I started college. I was a sketch artist since I was a child, but for some reason after high school I simply stopped drawing and took up photography.

J.M: Where did you learn photography and what camera do you use?

I’ve never had any formal photographic training. I am entirely self-taught. What I lack in technical proficiency I make up for with a keen eye. I do not use Photoshop or any digital manipulation software, and I prefer natural lighting over flash. It’s hard for me to sell to stock agencies because my photos are 100%  natural, but the upside is that, because of this realism, my photo book CHINA: Portrait of a People has become a best-seller.

J.M: Why China?

After my adventure in Latin America, I was all out of money. I saw an ad on Craigslist to teach English in China and figured it was an ideal way to keep seeing the world. The ad turned out to be a scam, but I stayed anyway. Now I am going on my 8^th year here in Asia, including a year in Japan and a year in India. But China has become my second home.

J.M: Did you ever travel alone in China or always with company?

My first spin across China I was solo. I traversed all 33 province alone, with limited language skills and an even more limited budget.

J.M: Did you ever feel lonely?

Every region in China has its own distinct character. Northeast China along the Siberian border literally captured my breath because it was -30 degrees. Tibet, on the other side of China, also “took my breath away” because I was at an altitude of nearly 6,000 meters and felt like I was suffocating. I can make all kinds of metaphors.

J.M: Are you going back?

I live in China, so I’m sure I’ll be getting photo assignments to go back to various provinces.

J.M:Do you think you have a mission in Life? If yes Which?

My personal mission is to see as much of the world as possible, take pictures and write about it. I’d like to immortalize it all in books because I believe in the longevity of literature. The internet is cool, but books are forever!

J.M:Next adventure?

I have lots planned; it’s just a matter of financing.

Joelle’s Tips:

Please include these links:

The Photographer: http://www.tomcarter.org

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/chinaportrait

The Book: http://www.amazon.com/CHINA-Portrait-People-Tom-Carter/dp/9889979942

Youtube:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyNeGJEpDjw

Copyrights: All photos on this post are courtesy of  Tom Carter.

George Whitman

I have always been mad about books and bookstores. While I am posting this morning,  I receive  a newsletter article  from Flavorwire with an yellowish vintage picture capturing my attention. It ‘s a small room packed with piled books in wood shelves and a small text below:

”  George Whitman, the owner of Shakespeare & Company, the legendary English-language bookstore on the Left Bank in Paris, died last week at age 98. A patron of the arts as well as a visionary bookseller, writers flocked to his shop to browse, mingle, and even spend the night.

I decide to stop writing a little and research more on the internet  about George’s life and philosophy. Among the many interesting angles of his devotion for reading , sharing and lending books, I found the text below that most identifies with my personal connection with books and bookshelves.

‘ Whitman didn’t just want to open up a simple bookshop—he wanted to create a “sanctuary for writers, aspiring writers and artists,” and that he did.  For over 50 years, Shakespeare and Company has been a temple of books and hosting readings by published and unpublished authors, including Henry Miller, Anäis Nin and Alan Ginsberg. What Mother Goose is to nursery rhymes, Whitman and his shop are to the Parisian literary scene. It even looks like it could be part of a fairy tale: wishing well, creaking wooden steps, a slanting roof and all.’

Whitman and his shop are to the Parisian literary scene. It even looks like it could be part of a fairy tale: wishing well, creaking wooden steps, a slanting roof and all.While at the Université Sorbonne, American George Whitman managed to amass a rather large collection of English books that he would sometimes lend or even sell to friends. Soon Whitman turned his hobby into something more tangible, acquiring the perfect location for his adventurous business endeavor right across from Notre Dame in 1951.

You can go on George’s lovely vintage-loolinkg website and read more about his life, events and bookstore as  this post , originally   named  Livraria Da Vila , could not have a  better  introduction .

Nestled in the heart of chic Sao Paulo, in a neighborhood called  Jardins  the legendary bookstore,  Livraria da Vila  was designed  in 2003 by internationally renowned Brazilian architect Isay Weinfeld. Like Gerorge Whitman ’s Shakespeare & Company in Paris,  Samuel Seibel in Sao Paulo,

” Charming,  receptive, democratic and  as Seibel describes, Livraria da Vila opened 25 years ago in a small shop where  children  storytelling  took place welcoming whoever liked to listen and read,  hosted with a warm cafezinho.

With the time , the small bookstore locally called  a queridinha  ( darling  ) acquired  the love and care of the old neighborhood (Vila)  whose adopted initial vision  for storytelling became a meeting point  to  buy and explore all sorts of books spending time meeting people  discussing amicably about almost anything over pastries and Pao de Queijo.

One day it flew higher, to the mind and hands of the one who transformed  a small dream  with wings into an ever thought magnificent almost unreal reality .

Without loosing it’s attribute and character, in the last 7 years, The vila established  in a  comfortable , highly  and unpaired contemporary environment ,. an  in-house venue for conferences, lectures, courses, debates, pocket shows story telling. and goes without saying  the launching of boots with autographs sessions.

Seibel is now constantly thinking about  new ventures and unimaginable destinations his initial dream can take him.

After all Wihtman was right, hotting strangers of so many years some winged angels must have passed by .

 Joelle’s tips:

The bookstores:

The Shakespeare & Company
37 rue de la Bûcherie  75005 Paris
Tel : 00 33 (0) 1 43 25 40 93  news@shakespeareandcompany.com   Open every day 10am – 11pm except for Saturday and Sunday when we open at 11am.

Livraria da Vila

By now, the little sectioned circle has become so familiar, it feels as if it had no genesis, that it just emerged out of a collective folk culture, like the Star of David or a nursery rhyme.

But in fact it can be traced to single inventor, Gerald Holtom, whose story is woven into two new histories, Peace: The Biography of a Symbol by Ken Kolsbun with Michael S. Sweeney, (National Geographic) and Peace: 50 Years of Protest by Barry Miles (Reader’s Digest). (See Joelle’s picks below) Holtom was a London textile designer who had been a conscientious objector during World War II. By 1958, as Britain, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were well into the nuclear arms race, a grass-roots movement to “Ban the Bomb” was gathering force in the United Kingdom. Early that year, a fledgling disarmament group called the Direct Action Campaign (DAC) started to put together what would be Britain’s first major demonstration against nuclear weapons.

The plan was for a 52-mile (84 km) march from London to the town of Aldermaston, home to an A-bomb research center. Enter Holtom, who brought to the DAC his design for a symbol that marchers could carry on banners and signs. He had arrived at the image by combining the semaphore signals for the letters N, for nuclear, and D, for disarmament. The first is a figure with arms held downward and out from both sides; the second, a figure holding one arm above its head while the other points to the ground.

The symbol was simple–a few straight lines inside a circle. But like a Chinese character, its form was suggestive. The straight lines hinted at the human body. The circle brought to mind Planet Earth. (It also looked a bit like the Mercedes-Benz logo, which has led to some confusion over the years.) Importantly, anybody could draw it.

Before long, millions of people did. It debuted on April 4 in London’s Trafalgar Square, the assembly point for the four-day march. Over the next few days, it appeared in countless newspaper photos and TV reports. Bayard Rustin, an American protégé of the Rev, Martin Luther King, Jr. who took part in the march, brought the symbol home to a growing civil rights movement dedicated to nonviolence.

When the Vietnam War started getting out of hand, protesters discovered they had a ready-made icon to signal their feelings. There were people who didn’t like the symbol any better than they liked the movements it represented. They saw it as an inverted broken cross or “the footprint of the American chicken.” But it kept spreading through the culture.

Like the Christian cross, which has served the purposes of soup kitchens and Crusaders, the Sisters of Mercy and the Ku Klux Klan, it was adaptable. Over time, it evolved from its narrow association with nuclear disarmament into an insignia for countercultures of all kinds.

Hippies made it a sort of all-purpose symbol of peacefulness. The environmental group Greenpeace, the militant wing of flower power, adopted it for its eco-defense campaigns. Duplicated endlessly as a hip fashion accessory, it threatened to devolve into a meaningless emblem of benign and groovy sentiment.

And inevitably, the market found it. By the late 1960s, peace symbols were appearing on coffee mugs, miniskirts and ponchos and were dangling from chains around the necks of guys you would expect to see at the Playboy mansion.

Duplicated endlessly as a hip fashion accessory, it threatened to devolve into a meaningless emblem of benign and groovy sentiment. It started looking corny, a kind of smiley face before there were smiley faces.

But events have conspired to keep giving the peace symbol fresh life. The arms race rumbles along, wars keep happening, and it continually comes back into circulation as, well, a peace symbol. The war in Iraq has created all kinds of opportunities for it at rallies and demonstrations. If it’s true, as John McCain has suggested, that the U.S. may have to remain in Iraq for 100 years, then the peace symbol probably has a long life ahead of it.

“This year, I noticed that everyone was talking about the counterculture,” said creative director Simon Doonan of Barney’s store while unveiling the 2008 Holiday windows at the beginning of this month and explaining his “Have a Hippie Holiday” theme via books by Sheila Weller (Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon – And the Journey of a Generation) and Tom Brokaw (Boom!: Talking About the Sixties: What Happened, How It Shaped Today, Lessons for Tomorrow) and coffee-table tome Spaced-Out: Radical Environments of the Psychedelic Sixties. (See Joelle’s Picks)

Also: “I read somewhere that it’s the 50th Anniversary of the peace sign!”
Of course, Mr. Doonan added, “We only picked the cheery, upbeat aspects of the ’60s! No overdoses, assassinations…”

The windows included homages to denim, Afros, tie-dye, and Women of the Counterculture (Janis, Joni) and a clutch of naked mannequins awaiting custom peace-sign-adorned dresses by designers such as Alexander Wang and Narciso Rodriguez.

A VW Beetle parked on the curb had been painted with flowers and peace signs “at one of those pimp-your-ride body shops on Long Island,” and would be raffled off to a lucky winner.
“Hippies didn’t have a lot of stuff,” said Mr. Doonan.

“Now there’s been this long period of bags, shoes… With this shift in the economy maybe people will be thinking they don’t need 5,000 handbags!”
“But they do!” he said, quickly contradicting himself. “And they need to come buy them at Barneys!”

Joelle’s Tips:

The Source: “A Piece of Our Time”
By RICHARD LACAYO Mar. 27, 2008 Time Inc.

The Store: Barney’s Madison Avenue
660 Madison Avenue New York NY 10065

TEL: 212.826.8900 / FAX: 212.833.2293
info-madison@barneys.com

The Window Dresser: Simon Doonan Contact Info

View the Photo Gallery: Times 50 years of the Peace Symbol

The problem is that I am not “getting” the fashion this year. I hate everything in my closet from the past years and have no idea how to match what I must buy with what I already have. Everything looks so un-match-able .

Harssan the Hindu magazine stall seller with an enormous smile piles up this month’s issues of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Nylon, W Magazine and a few others I have never heard of. They are all talking about the New fashion, this is very important! My shopping bag is heavy, and Harssan says with another smile – “Edggioi Miss“.

I head home thinking of hot Darjeeling tea to help my concentration, when a large portrait in a Bergdoff Goodman window on 57th Street catches my attention. It’s from the New York Look Book, published by Melcher Media, and apparently new in stores this week. I notice from the pictures in the window display, some individuals of all ages and genders, dressed in a very personal and peculiar way, emanating somehow a powerful and vibrant magnetism from their looks and attitude.

From vintage Gucci glasses to red hair, impressive skin tattoos and large Hermes Birkin bags, colorful striped wool sweaters paired with faux animal skins, countless silver bracelets and ring collections, loud red lipsticks and Panama hats, furs bought at a Niagara Falls family thrift shop, brand new Puma sneakers, belts from Guatemala, suits from Brioni, old Missoni socks, Rogan t-shirts, vintage Betsy Johnson, ponchos, H&M scarves, Marni coats, grandparents’ watches, Hong-Kong Swiss cotton tailored shirts, mum’s 70s cowboys boots, Christian Louboutin to-the- edge sandals — all telling visual stories about those who wear them. I like that. I am going to buy the book right now. Sold out. I will order it online.

At home, in the August 26 New York Times Magazine Style issue (my favorite) Women’s fashion fall 2007, pictures of Jean-Baptiste Mondino, in the article United Colors of Fashion finally comfort my deranged soul. I start relaxing, appreciating the strong Darjeeling aroma of my tea and the multiple variations of possibilities in my closet. Models wear layers of colorful un-match-able coats, sweaters, shoes shirts and pants and who cares what other think? It looks so great, so free spirited!

I always thought of myself as a daring personality in the way I dress, especially with accessories and jewelry, but I realized once more — strolling through the white background studio-like pictures of photographer Jake Chessum and quick, impertinent but respectful interviews by writer Amy Larocca of the New York Magazine, in the project that started a year ago in the randomly picked New York streets of Manhattan — that style is nothing more than the personal expression of the self and the revelation in depth of one’s personality. It’s about courage, vanity, certainty and most of all freedom to flaunt one’s style like plumage as read in the New York Look Book foreword by magazine editor-in-chief Adam Moss.

This city is full of globally eclectic stylish people, apparently they sound the way they look.  Among some of the exotic names in the Look Book: Mica de Jesus, Anjel Garcia, Raven Burgos, Shakti Westrom, Alain Ades, David Rauch, Par Parekh, Jamie Pesavento (a mother of cute, stylish baby pooches called Venus, Aphrodite, and Zena). In a way, all men and women are seriously committed in thinking of making their look their own.

The popular Sartorialist and other recent blogs have already proved that the examination of style in the streets has become something anthropological, and New York Magazine with their last photographic and documentation project has certainly made contention that the streets of New York are giant runaways, and each passerby plays the role of model and designer of his own style.

Very well. I am on my way to buy that bright wool psychedelic H&M scarf and hat, sure it will look absolutely gorgeous with my Hermes Kelly burgundy crocodile handbag and my Jodhpur Khakis bought in 1980 at a local seaside Kerala market. I will then candidly walk straight down Madison Avenue. Who knows, Jake Chessum’s eye might luckily and accidentally catch the personification of my look and feature my style in next week’s issue?…My answers to Amy are perfectly ready.

I will cross my fingers and say a little prayer to Hashem.

Joelle’s Picks

The book: The New York Look Book – A Gallery of Street Fashion. Amy Larocca and Jake Chessun. Buy online at Amazon.

The Vintage Look shopping online: Adore Vintage

The Look Book Party pictures