Because of my gypsy nature I have always been fascinated by the desert. Believe it or not, I meet in Beer Sheva , the artist and filmmaker Joseph Dadoune who over several cups of warm mint tea presented to me in a beautiful velvet book a stunning project taking place in the Ofaquim desert .

The unique project involves the local community in Ofaquim and will include works of mediums-cinema, photography and video-and will evolve over the course of five years. Hearing about my world wanderings, passions and beliefs he finally says with a large smile ” Joelle, you must work by my side in this project! ”

I take a few seconds to catch my breath… “I am honored Josep”, I reply- “Actually, it would be great if we started now if that is ok with you of course ; I happen to carry my Belkin voice recorder in my backpack.”

Joseph smiles satisfied and agrees to reveal in person more information about his dream project . The first part will consist of a feature film produced in Ofaquim with the participation of local adolescents . It will be part of wide-ranging initiative carefully planned over the past several years. This same initiative will involve the foundation of a local studio, which will serve as the center for his artistic and cinematic activities.

Ofaquim, the town in which Dadoune grew up, constitutes a central axis in his cinematic works, ‘Universes’, ‘Chanti’ and ‘Sion’, were featured in the solo exhibition the Petach Tikva Museum of Art.

‘Sion‘  starring Ronit Elkabetz, was filmed in Ofaquim, Teqoa,  Jerusalem and the Louvre Museum in Paris.  The costumes were created by Christian Lacroix. What an eccletic mix I am thinking while I listen to him talking over his tea.  The film was created in collaboaration with the Louvre Museum, at the Palais of Tokio in Paris ,at the Kunst Palast in Dusseldoff, at the Light & Sie Gallery in Dallas, Texas.

Joseph Dadoune’s films he explains, are a continuous odyssey between various mental and geographic realms in Israel and Europe, between the landscape of his childhood in Ofaquim and the different Mediterranean landscapes, between Southern views from the Negev Desert and realms of sanctity and mysticism, and between East and West. The first of two films is centered upon a group of adolescents boys involved in building a giant missile in an abandoned Ofaquim factory.

The missile which will take shape in front of the viewer’s eyes, will later be carried by the boys throughout the fields surrounding the town, against the background of nearby landscapes and sites where the negative energy and radiation is at it’s highest ; The Negev Desert, the Ze’elim military base, the Duda’im garage disposal site, Sderot and Gaza. In the course of the this Sisyphean journey that appears to have no purpose and no end, the boys engage in a complex and charged relationship with one another.

The presence of one of them an individualist visionary concerned with esoteric subjects, produces conflict-ridden situations and dilemmas that lead to an examination of individual values in the context of collective values.  At the same time the boys attempt to come to terms with the questions of human existence, resulting in an intense and violent argument between those who define themselves as believers and those who define themselves as atheists.

The boys-an allegory for everyman-represent various aspects of human life: a child soul, a worker who carries a missile as a symbol of life’s difficulties and an act of despair , person fleeing a concrete threat         (terror, Kassam rockets, Iran) or abstract evil , and modern man-who is motivated by a destructive urge that leads him to create a weapon of mass destruction. Dadoune raises questions concerning the future of humanity in a nuclear age and produces a social statement about the working class in the contemporary world. This state in emblematized by the residents of unemployment-stricken, peripheral Ofaquim,who bear the burden of defending the country’s center in a threatened area.

The film will examine key issues and ideas related to human existence and human consciousness: faith, fear, atheism, power and democracy as well as universal values such as liberty,choice, honor and allegiance, The film makes use of biblical materials ( the Book of Numbers, whose Hebrew name literally means ” In the desert”) autobiographical elements, and concepts related to contemporary Israeli culture and reality.

The social context has been the center of Joseph Dadoune’s work. The virginal desert sands, the open expanse, the Bedouin tents, the poverty and the acrid odor of the garbage being burnt at the Duda’im disposal site are all embedded in his world of images, and serve as recurrent motifs of his work.

His deep commitment to the city and to its residents engenders discussions and raises awareness shaping the desire to create a true dialogue between the local community and the Israeli cultural field to participate through lectures, forums, contemporary art mediums and concerts,  in a process of artistic creation and to contribute to shaping society.

The project will raise public and International awareness ( and this is why I am here ) to the concerns of contributing to the recognition of the importance of the cultural landscape of the South and of related social and environmental issues as well as making local idenity and culture present within the Israeli cultural sphere.

Joseph chose a factory that has been abandoned for over 30 years as one of the sites featured in the film also offering a form of hope: The factory will serve as a platform for the youth community of the periphery and center of Ofaquim to express themselves with a ” voice’.

This will be attained through artistic and cultural creations such as art, cinema open studio for the community cultural events, acting and interaction with professional actors, literary evenings, poetry readings, performances by Internationally  acknowledged artists, art collectors, curators, museum directors ,filmakers, scholars and journalists, Yoga and Dance therapy Workshops sponsored by well known Israeli teachers who are specialized in adolescents, Judaism classes centered on the Book of numbers.These  visits will  undoubtedly contribute to promote the city, it’s landscape and residents engaging the participants into ” positive energies ” .

The innauguaration of the project will be accompaigned by a new Hebrew and English website that will update curators, filmakers, scholars and other cultural figures and institutions in Israel and abroad about the develpoment of the project. The production of the two films, video works and esperimantal satellite photography will be screened in a large scale exhibition in Israel and at International museums, as well as at film festivals, art forums and biennals worldwide .

This will provide to all participants as well as  a great sense of shared pride,  a national and International exposure and the commercial distribution of the films allowing exposure to a greater public. The project ” In the Desert ” will make an important contribution to revealing the complex and multifaceted character of Israeli society, as well as to bringing the periphery to the center and involving it in the process of cultural production pointing the city’s young residents towards a new path, filled with hope for a better future.

Joseph pauses….my tape recorder too. Nearby a small baby goat makes a timid noise in the valley illuminated by a strong sunset, I assume she got scared with so much talking.  Joseph picks her up and lifts her gently to her shoulders with a smile, then looks at me and says” Ok Joelle, I count on you to get the  start-up information going, but when is it that you are you coming back?”

Joelle’s Tips:

The Artist: Yosef Joseph Dadoune , born in 1957 in Nice, France, and immigrated in Israel in 1980 with his mother. The two settled in Ofaquim where he grew up and studied at a local Yeshiva. Photographer,video artist and director.

The Project: In the Desert Project /  P.O.B Ofaquim 80300, Israel, 292 ( o) 545 221949 / infos@inthedesert.org

Photo credits: Joseph Dadoune

The other Movies: Sion

The Partners : The Ministry of Israeli Foreign Affairs / Rabinowitz foundation Cinema Project Tel Aviv / Le Louvre Museum / Center Photographique, l’Ile de France

— Oscar Wilde

For the past few months I have been trying to meet with Tewfic El-Sawy. When he’s in London, I am in Bombay. When he’s in New York, I am in Brussels. When he’s in Brussels, I am in Brazil.

But we both receive our respective travel newsletters and in several occasions showed each other mutual respect and admiration through brief comments on our online publications, websites and emails hoping to have a chance to meet at last between one continent and the other.

Have you ever had that feeling before? When you get so global there are no frontiers or dimensions. Without necessarily traveling, today you are able to connect at any level with people through the millions of miles that separate you from that person without even knowing her, through the different social networks, or any other platform provided by the internet.  Tewfic and I were connected through visual images.

The month of November has come, where accidentally or not, both of us are in the same part of the world and that is New York City. Believe it or not, after a few exchanges of texts and emails to decide where  we would meet I get to “miss” our appointment that should have been in Tewfic’s West Village apartment.

“It’s interesting as an apartment because its walls are totally covered with artwork…with Asian stuff I get when I travel. Would it get a mention in architectural digest? No.

“From a photography standpoint, its not interesting because its not a  studio…the only thing is that there are some of my pics in my office and a couple of computers and lots of hard drives. All digital now. I know what you have in mind…a sort of ‘photographer in his work milieu ‘…while the paintings, Buddhas and Burmese prayer books would be good, its not really photography. So its really up to you to decide…I’m open to whatever you’re  comfortable with.” He writes.

And my Apple Calendar for some reason lost its info that week. So he “cleaned the mess” of his apartment for a visit he was expecting that never took place, Tewfic had travel appointments he could not cancel and patiently agreed to meet me at the Bottega Del Vino the next Monday before my November Newsletter edition.

He recognized me immediately. I could not say the same for me as there are practically no picture of him in his profiles. Tall, grey hair, black wool turtleneck and an Allure from a distant but familiar place, he greets me with a handshake and half of a smile.

My usual decaff expresso macchiato and a capuccino for him are on the Italian wood table. A couple from Sao Paulo passes by and after exchanging a few words in Portuguese with them I find myself answering  Tewfic questions such as, “So you are Brazilian? Is this a Canon G9?”

“Yes I am Brazilian, without noticing I am talking about my life, career, travels and cameras and in a rush because I remind him that It was me who asked for the interview! Finally, inspired or on guard, he pronounces his first statement: “I am very good at listening (pause, silence) I am used to listening. I was a banker.” Wow! After such a revelation I almost stop breathing hoping the rest would come righteously.

And in a paused tone, almost of a nobleman he recounts his story: “I was born in Cairo, Egypt, (that’s where the Allure comes from) and used to work for Citibank there. On my several trips to South East Asia and Indonesia, I used to take some pictures in my free time and I guess this awakened my interested in travel photography” He used a 35mm Canon A-1 and his only experience, according to Tewfic, apart from those business trips, was just shooting “family stuff.”

His Canon choice was based on the fact that it was user friendly and that he could neatly see the shutter speed and light numeric conditions in a clear viewfinder while he was shooting. After being transferred to different cities for his business such as Houston, Texas; Bahrain, London and lastly New York, a sort of epiphany took place when he realized his banking milieu was more about politics than proper and pure finance. “I had enough,” he says, “and this is how I decided to do photography 13 years ago.”

In 2000 he travels for the first time to India armed with a better Canon and large telephoto lenses. Nowhere better than the Rajastan circuit to realize that he started a love story  with its colors and “beautiful people as you know” being mostly the theme and the expression of his capturing eye through the shutter speed.

The Internet was just beginning to boom. Tewfic decided to invite a few friends and people who have an interest in photography to join him for, a first of many that will follow, travel expeditions to Nepal, India and Bhutan. Most of those friends were interested in India and thought Tewfic would know his way around (which he confided me he didn’t) and went along touring with him in complete instinctive trust.

And the photo expedition destinations reached  four corners of distant lands. From Indigenous inhabitants of Central India to exorcism rituals at the shrines of Sufi-Soldier Saint-Baba Bahadur Shahid,  Burma’s Irrawai waters where they befriended the people of Tha’nakha, the Guelagueza festival of Zappotek native inhabitants of Oaxaca, Mexico, honoring the corn-goddess Centeotl and of course I could I not mention Tewfic “rubbing shoulders with ascetics, mendicants, mystics, pilgrims, gurus and yogis, charlatans and beggars in Allahabad ” the largest pilgrimage in the world?

Not making a living out the photo-expeditions “provided my costs are covered, I am fine with it “  Tewfic manages to keep their price extremely affordable (approximately $3,000 US dollars for an average of 10 days trip exuding airfare). Because he uses local travel guides and agencies and does not market at all, people get to know about them through his blog or word-of-mouth and are required to have a special invitation to participate.

He generally organizes three expeditions a year and one workshop where he happen sometimes to teach to an audience of 700 people locally like in Mexico last year. His pictures are sold as individually supervised prints by large multinational companies, banks and art galleries who send their buying agents directly to Tewfic desiring a specific work of art. Other clients include image banks, adventure-travel catalogs, and renowned publications.

For those who still don’t know, Tewfic is pleased to announce he has finished the task of reviewing some of the photographs he returned with from his October 2008 Bhutan photo~expedition.

There are many that he hasn’t seen yet (what a suspense!) but will finally  managed to upload some made during the Tamshing and Thangbi Mani Tsechus onto a gallery. He also recorded a lot of ambient audio at various locations, which he will soon start to work on a multimedia feature.

Curiously he mentions in his last newsletter: “If you’re expecting ‘pretty’ travel photographs in this gallery, don’t. Most of these were chosen based on my current stylistic preference for more photo-journalism and documentary photography.”

My last question: “Any future project or dream?” Tewfic confides in me that in he wants his work ” to move away from the pretty smiles…” Thank God he has no camera in his hand as I couldn’t possibly avoid the large smile on my face.

Joelle’s Tips:

Copyright: All photos in this post are courtesy of Tewfic Al- Sawy.
Photo credits of Tewfic during the expeditions are from tour participant Ralph N. Childs.

The 2009 Travel Photographer Photo Expeditions and workshops : Tewfic Al- Sawy

The Blog : The Travel Photographer

The Motion : Multimedia

Inquiries: tes@telsawy.com

I saved the link and left for Spain. On my way back, I would contact the artist. He certainly lived in Europe, I thought to myself, and when I return I’ll find out more about him. On my arrival in New York, for some reason my hard drive got burnt and ended up losing all my information including that particular link. One year later, at a dinner in New York with artist Mattia Biagi and some friends, Yasmina Alaoui and Marco Guerra were right there in front of me.

Still, I had no idea about them being the “the famous link” persona. I found out after dinner only before going to sleep, when I checked their website on the business card. There it was — the picture that haunted my spirit was back, talking to me once more.

I am now in the elevator of their loft on Green Street down in Soho. As soon as I arrive I am welcomed by a noisy small dog. The light is just amazing, the afternoon spring sunlight filters through a Moroccan embroidered white cotton curtain, the window is open. Nobody is around, just the sound of an old record player emanating traditional Persian music almost as if prayers are sung around that space to prepare me — for what exactly, I don’t know.

Yasmina, dressed in a cute child-like light blue cotton dress with white lace and cowboy boots, welcomes me and invites me to sit. Marco, with a large smile on his face, comes in after a few seconds, eating a green apple and offering me one. The dog goes sun-bathing on the roof. Yasmina coated him with suntan lotion and without listening to details about the dog’s tan, I look at the majestic life-sized artwork that covers their high-ceilinged walls.

Marco Guerra is a Chilean New York-based fashion photographer whose works have appeared in the biggest magazines such as Conde Nast Traveler, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue . He tells me that outside his career he is inspired by poet Pablo Neruda‘s poetry, and the intersecting lens of photographer Edward Weston, and Tina Morotti.

He also undertakes personal projects like film and a passionate ode to love and women. He confides to me he secretly keeps in a drawer away from everyone else his own world of personal photography, a search devoted in expressing the mysterious, the haunting, the sensual and the sculptured nudes of the human figure evoking the timelessness and exoticism of mixed temporary cultures passing through his life as in a message.

That message finally understood, he confides to me, thirty years later he’ll exhibit in a powerful and meaningful retrospective solo exhibition. But in India there is a saying: “You make the plans and the elephants (deities over there) laugh about it.”

Yasmina Alaoui — North African, precisely Moroccan — is an artist herself. She studied Fine Arts in Paris and lived there for 10 years. She then got her BA in Fine Art from the college of William & Mary. Until she met Marco Guerra, her main expressions were intricate drawings evoking her cultural heritage, a blend of Islamic calligraphy, Henna patterns and primitive naive arts.

Yasmina and Marco meet in New York and decided to live together. One day, almost by accident, the One Thousand and One Nights miracle naturally fits into place. Maybe by coincidence, maybe by spiritual drive, maybe by excessive longing for the sake of merging one with the other breaking the safety of the other’s boundaries, Yasmina firmly decided to ask Marco the access to his secret drawer.

Each drawing begins with black and white nude photography by Marco. Layers of complex ink drawings by Yasmina are meticulously added like a spider working on her web, and then digitally fused with the portrait in a breathtaking media solution.

The sun is setting above the Soho rooftop. Marco talks about his “Letting go” — he’s still a little stiff about the effort he provided when Yasmina asked her aiming and direct question… I do not listen to him anymore …for a minute I pause, sipping my cold water, looking at the sun reflecting when my gaze stops at a miniature Indian painting they have on a corner of their staircase….

I realize that, like in Tantra philosophy, the entire universe is a manifestation of pure consciousness. In manifesting the universe, this pure consciousness becomes divided into two poles or aspects, neither of which can exist without the other. Shiva and Shakti come immediately to mind.

One aspect is Shiva — masculine, retaining a static quality and identified with unmanifested consciousness. Shiva has the power to be but not the power to become or change. The other aspect — Shakti — is feminine, dynamic, energetic and creative. Shakti is the Great Mother of the universe, for it is from her that all form is born.

Like in a miniature universe, a legendary collection of tales from the Middle East or the realism of South American poetry are found in the cosmos and can be found within each individual, and the same principles that apply to the universe apply in the case of the individual being.

Shiva and Shakti, King Solomon and Bithiah, Marco and Yasmina, unite above the crown of the head with pure consciousness. This union has the aim in all cultures — Islamic, Indian, Shaman, or Kabbalistic, it doesn’t really matter — to blend into a resolution of duality and a fusion with the Absolute.

By this union, liberation is attained while living and is considered in Indian Tantric life to be the highest experience: a union of the individual with the universe. The ultimate bliss is a transcendence of dualities: male-female, energy-consciousness.

Yasmina is up checking on the dog. Marco wakes me up from my wandering thoughts, “Are you okay?”

“Yes Marco.” I answer, “Thank you. There is a message for me, I think I must prepare for a trip.”

“Yes of course…and where are you going?”

“May I see that portrait again?”

Joelle’s Tips:

To purchase Yasmina Alaoui and Marco Guerra contact:

y@yasminaalaoui.com /www.onethousandandonedreams.com

June 5 Exhibit:

Opera Gallery
115 spring street
NY NY 10012
1 212 966 6675