ART Exhibition #1: the candy trail ...

exhibition poster

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This exhibition is a swirl of travel, surrealistic social comment & pychedelic art, introducing the range of my work and reflecting my random, meandering life as an extreme global nomad ...

thru doors are windows of hope - Burma 2001

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

(my tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi)

- Burma, AKA Myanmar, continues to be brutalized by a military regime and an insurgency fueled by opposition ethnic divisions and drug warlords but, it is also a beautiful and friendly country with stunning temples - if you can travel, with that focus.

work - East Timor

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- By accident (long crazy story) I landed a great job with the United Nations PKF in East Timor, traveling extensively & constantly across this freshly-liberated, half-island state during 2000 – 02.

- Anyway, like across most of the rural Developing World it is usual to witness girls and women lugging firewood back home; but here is an exception.

in hope she must trust- La Paz Bolivia 2002

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- La Paz is weird, a stacked-city stuck in a canyon, surrounded by the bleak, windswept Altiplano (= Andean high plateau). This moment on the street reflects – for me – more than poverty but ideas of male & female, rich & poor, young & old, interacting, or not.

rain rivers storms - Bangladesh 1991

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- Bangladesh is highly-populated and mostly low-lying and it seems that every-second-year to suffer from the wrath of Mother Nature.

- I was caught in a monster cyclone in Cox’s Bazaar on the night of April 30 / 1 May 1991 (- pics in photo image galleries); it was up-there with an epic Wellington storm but more intense … That night, 139,000 people died and 1.7 million were made homeless across southern Bangladesh ...

window on Istanbul - Turkey 1989

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- Reflections on a fascinating historic city and its friendly – albeit, shy, in this girl’s case – inhabitants. This impression is among my first travel experiences that very-first morning of travel outside the Western world; I was 22.

- The warmth of Istanbul was immediate and a further 2 months traveling around Turkey lead me into the Islamic world of Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine ... and beyond.

Sahara mirage / danger in the desert - Algeria 1991

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- I hitch-hiked across the central Sahara, from north to south – Algeria and Niger – over a 5 week period, relying on the odd passing freight truck or vehicle but towards Niger & Mali where there was no road only sand tracks and rocks and simmering civil unrest were bands of Taureg – the blue-cloth men of the desert who fought the French Foreign Legion – and vehicles were seized or destroyed and hostages taken; but I had no misfortune.

safety in sleep - Argentina 2002

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- Reflections on our common humanity, of father and child, mother and child, of that love embrace, of feeling safe and secure in sleep.

weekend in Samarra - Iraq 1989

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- This pictured mosque – or at least the visible Al-Malwiyah spiral minaret, or tower where the calls to pray are sang from – dates back to when the Islamic world was way-more advanced than Europe, around 960 A.D., when the Abbasid Islamic empire based in Iraq retained the ancient knowledge of Greece & Rome that would have otherwise been lost to us in the barbarian chaos of Dark-Age-Europe.

- A few days after this photo was taken, I was arrested by the Iraqi military in Ranya, north-eastern Kurdistan, and detained for 30 hours, accused of being an “Iranian spy” and then a “journalist” reporting on the “Kurdish problem” (Saddam’s gassing of the Kurds) but eventually they saw what I really was: a crazy, nonchalant, naïve, 23-year-old backpacker (long story: check my Travel Stories) and they released me.

Hmong girl stare - Vietnam 1994

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- I was invited to stay a few days with a local family in the northern mountains near Laos. Here the Hmong hill-tribes wear highly-embroidered outfits of blue hemp cloth; at night, after long hours in the rice paddies, it is customary for elders to smoke pipes of opium ... mostly, to alleviate the aches & pain of age; but, it is seen as a disgrace for young Hmong to take on this habit as they get lazy and useless as we all would with such an addiction.

tradition - Yemen 2005

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- These boys were praying on the backstreets of Sana’a because their local mosque was too full. They simply put their headscarves on the ground as a prayer mat and got down and prayed. The covered woman is from a remote village. She approached wanting me to photograph her (not a usual occurrence here in conservative Arabia) but she needed a little money, and so I paid her for this photo.

- I spent a month traveling across Yemen alone, over to Oman overland to Dubai, and people were friendly - despite this being the claimed-ancestral home of Osama Bin Laden, no one particularly nasty stood out. A few shop keepers in Aden told me with pride – often smirking, that the mineral water I was presently purchasing was a product of “Bin Laden” (-the rich, dis-associated family I assume, and not that bad boy, but who knows…?).

- Anyway, I hope people can understand that most Muslims are not interested in being suicide bombers – and that Islamic people are just like you and me; that there is good and bad in every society … And so with this fact in mind – despite the media-hysteria, which is the ugly-small percentage of reality - we must not allow ourselves to forget the simple realities of our shared humanity for we are all brothers & sisters from the same tree.

refugee hopes - Niger 1991

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- Despite well-intended talk and further promises of aid and debt-relief to Africa, I suspect this huge refugee camp amid the lower Sahara, has only seen its problems expand ...

- Mostly it was conflict & famine refugees but also some waiting the transit of the Sahara to freedom in Europe – as they then thought and they asked of me many questions and I gave them the reality and wished them much luck as they had to break from chat to pray; they were from Ghana and worshipped within a rim of earth some inches high defining on the desert their most humble mosque. And there, their inspiration & hopes at a chance of a better life ...

illusive peace - Jerusalem, Palestine-Israel 1989

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- For over half-a-century now, this conflict still has no ‘solution’ for long term peace.

- I have seen both sides and met nice people from both sides and hence, remain neutral ...

- Both cultures share super-sacred religious sites near each other, as depicted here, sharing the same surrounds, each with their beautiful and brutal histories barely co-existing. It saddens me there can’t be peace yet.

- The day after these pics were taken I was caught between Israeli troops teargas and a Palestinian funeral-procession that ended in chaos around me below the old-walled tower of Jaffa Gate in December 1989.

- There are no photos because an Israeli Sergeant threatened to shoot/beat me - if I did, as I’d raised camera and decided not to cos he was meters-from-me and looking mighty-fucked-off.

enjoying the traffic

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- It seems traffic congestion and pollution, delays and frustration blight every large city across the planet, with some cities already choking to extreme.

coughing clouds

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- Global warming, industrial pollution, environmental mess; parts of the world are cess-pits already. (Quiz: can you spot skulls in the clouds?)

screaming planet

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- Theme is obvious; many aspects of our planet are now in pain & screaming ... animals, flowers, oceans, people.

opening the doors to democracy

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- Despite great things like removing Saddam-the-evil, and opening a potentially-better world for all people in Iraq the US has gotten bogged down again in another foreign battle by lost policy, in Iraq, which some may see simply as the US pursuing self-interests in the region; and that, this current situation has lead us further into a collision with Others …

- This mosque and couple depicted here were in the Shia holy city of Karbala, in Iraq, 1989; which in March '06 witnessed Shia pilgrimage massacres by presumably Sunni-insurgent/militants in this civil-war-religious-strive-accelerating-situation - in simple terms: an Islamic AKA Muslim version of Catholic Vs Protestant but they’re called Sunni & Shia fighting deeper into a nasty civil war in Iraq now, today). Are senior US government officials blinded by arrogance or ignorance? Are they unaware of history? And so I ask: will the mistakes of the Cold War – Vietnam & Latin America be repeated in the Middle East..? We’ll see.

global conflict circles - death of the bull & the matador

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

(my tribute to Salvador Dali)

- There are no ‘real’ winners in conflict – as all sides suffer loss, yet humanity across history - and even in our ‘modern age’ - continues with these ever-destructive cycles of war; it seems morally, we are the same creatures as those who emerged from the caves before us ... but more dangerous. We have not learnt anything from history and so the cycle repeats.

future tourism

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- Mass tourism, the rapid-commercialization of everything cultural everywhere; virtual reality in the hi-tech future, etc.

guaranteed 100% happy for 5 minutes

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- The demands and expectations of modern society.

unconcerned by society

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- About …?
- This is where you get to decide ...

in your eyes i see procreating goddesses

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- Reflection on the feminine beauty of a lady-boy, a transsexual; “the third sex”.

playing the day away

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- Psychedelic state of enjoyment, dimension, seeing, sexuality; in this case, two beautiful young women friends.

watching the day away

mrp@thecandytrail.com (the candy trail ...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

- Psychedelic vision across a long, pleasant, calm, colorful, and sunny, afternoon; happy, happy.