Welcome to my Blog!
I hope to share here my irrepressible thoughts on news, music, books, arts, history, cultural events and such like.
In general these will be items, events and issues which I feel have no place on my website (which focusses on aviation history and my travel photography).

The item immediately below this would be the latest posting.

"Anybody, providing he knows how to be amusing, has the right to talk about himself. - Charles Baudelaire
Esse est percipi (To be is to be perceived)" ¬Bishop George Berkeley

"Not even I understand everything I am" ¬Aurelius Augustinus of Hippo

"I'm only myself in front of my typewriter" ¬Joan Didion (I'd replace 'typewriter' by 'desktop PC'..)
"I always think that the quickest way to understand someone is to look at what's on their bookshelfes." ¬Matt Haig

In 2013 I started a series of photo albums on Blurb.com, named '36Exp' (a subject adressed in 36 exposures, a reference to the exposures on most common rolls of 35 mm film: 12, 24 & 36.) back in the day.
The books can be ordered directly from the Blurb.com or Amazon.
www.blurb.com/user/ruudleeuw

CURRENT BLOG

Sometimes, I find I simply cannot read as much as I would like to. Life has a habit of filling every available hour with 'stuff'.
My usual consolation is to buy the book anyway and let backlog build up. The purchase is oddly satisfying.
Some might call this clutter. The Japanese have a far more elegant word for it: tsundoku. The term describes the habit of acquiring books and allowing them to accumulate unread. It combines the idea of stacking things up (tsunde), leaving something for later (oku) and reading (doku).
The result is a concept that captures the quiet optimism of a pile of books. Far from being a sign of being time poor or lacking in discipline, tsundoku may reveal something surprisingly important about how the brain responds to anticipation...

When we encounter something that promises enjoyment or discovery, the brain’s reward system becomes active. One important pathway runs from the ventral tegmental area, a dopamine-producing region in the midbrain involved in motivation, to the nucleus accumbens, a structure that helps generate feelings of reward.
Dopamine is often described as a pleasure chemical, but that is too simple. One of its key roles is helping the brain identify opportunities worth pursuing. Rather than rewarding us only after something beneficial has happened, the brain often rewards us in advance, encouraging behaviour that are likely to prove valuable.

The anticipation of a pleasurable experience can activate reward pathways long before the experience takes place. An unread book is a good example. It may remain closed for weeks or months, but the brain has already recognised its potential value, enjoying the prospect before the first page has been turned. The hippocampus, a structure deep within the brain best known for its role in memory, also plays an important part.

When you picture yourself finally reading that book on a summer holiday, during a long train journey or curled up on the sofa on a rainy afternoon, the hippocampus begins to assemble that future experience.
It binds together fragments of previous experiences stored across the brain – the warmth of sunshine, the smell of coffee, the sound of turning pages, the comfort of your favourite chair or couch – into a coherent mental scene.
In effect, the brain uses memories of the past to rehearse pleasures that have yet to happen.
This ability may be more important than we realise.
Psychologists increasingly recognise positive anticipation as a contributor to wellbeing. Looking forward to enjoyable experiences can improve mood.

It is perhaps no coincidence that this behaviour feels strongest in bookshops rather than online. Physical browsing engages the brain more fully, drawing on sensory, spatial and reward systems that make discovery feel richer and more memorable.

theconversation.com/why-you-keep-buying-books-

Today went to the impressive Walburgis church in Zutphen (Gelderland) for the World Press Photo 2026 Exhibition, saved me a trip to Amsterdam.

The annual World Press Photo Contest recognizes and honors the best photojournalism and documentary photography produced over the last year.
Selected from 57.376 photographs submitted by 3.747 photographers in 141 countries, it was exciting to see the winners here in Zutphen of the 69th annual World Press Photo Contest!

One does have to accept the rather penetrating realities we see documented here, globally; marked by fracture, urgency and yet an innate resilience.
They reveal the global overreach of power, the escalating climate crisis, and the human cost of conflict, while also bringing into focus stories of resistance, rebuilding, recovery, and the quiet, enduring dignity of those who persevere.
The 42 winners were selected by an independent jury based on visual excellence, storytelling approach, and commitment to diversity; celebrating local voices, dedication, and a range of styles.

Kudos for the commitment and courage of all the photographers to document these matters!

www.worldpressphoto.org/

Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, David Cameron, George Osborne, Theresa May, Dominic Cummings, Daniel Hannan, Jacob Rees-Mogg: Oxford has produced most of the prominent Conservative politicians of our time.
The university newspapers of 30 years ago are full of recognisable names in news stories, photos of social events, and Bullingdon Club reports. Many walked straight out of the world of student debates onto the national stage.
Unfortunately, they brought their university politics with them. Eleven of the fifteen postwar British prime ministers went to Oxford. This narrowest of talent pools has shaped the modern country.
In Chums, Simon Kuper traces how the rarefied and privileged atmosphere of Oxford University - and the friendships and worldviews it created - helped give us today's Britain, including Brexit.

It's quite unnerving to read how most of these people led a country without a proper education to do so; this elite without being in touch with working class (or even middle class) people bluffed their politics over the vast majority of British people and had their snouts in the trough of wealth with total disregard to the common people: they laughed themselves all the way to the bank.

An excellent document, however unnerving...

Simon Gad Kuper is a British, and naturalised French, author and journalist, best known for his work at the Financial Times and as a football commentator.
Born in Uganda to South African parents, Kuper spent most of his childhood in the Netherlands and lives in Paris.
After studies at the University of Oxford, Harvard University and the Technische Universität Berlin, Kuper started his career in journalism at the Financial Times in 1994, where he writes about a wide range of topics, such as politics, society, culture, arts and sports.
He also writes for other publications and has written a number of books.

www.goodreads.com/book/ -chums
en.wikipedia.org:_Simon_Kuper

In 2017, Marianna Zampieri addressed the Venetians directly, receiving numerous reports plus wide and unexpected enthusiasm for the idea of a project in which the photographs are correlated by a description of the cat portrayed, which explains a little about its history and personality.
The idea was born from the reports received: in most cases they were not just cats but 'famous' cats with their own name and a particular area of 'competence'.

There is a fascinating intertwining of stories, personalities, decisions and freedom that these cats tell that represents the great beauty of this project. All enriched by the respect and pride with which Venetians tell and welcome their cats.
The stylistic choice of black and white photography manages to "clean" them of distractions, making the emotions more alive and giving the right emphasis to the subject of the photo which, in this case, has the luck of a timeless background like Venice.

www.mariannazampieri.it

Ernst Haas (b.1921–d.1986) is acclaimed as one of the most celebrated and influential photographers of the 20th century and considered one of the pioneers of color photography.
Haas was born in Vienna in 1921 and took up photography after WW2.
His early work on Austrian returning prisoners of war brought him to the attention of LIFE magazine.
He declined a job offer as staff photographer in order to keep his independence. At the invitation of Robert Capa, Haas joined Magnum in 1949, developing close associations with Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Werner Bishof.
Personally, his (color) work reminded me of Alex Webb and Harry Gruyaert...
When Ernst Haas moved from Vienna to New York City in 1951, he left behind a war-torn continent and a career producing black-and-white images. For Haas, the new medium of color photography was the only way to capture a city pulsing with energy and humanity.

After he moved to the United States he soon after began experimenting with Kodachrome color film.
At the time the film was very slow and Haas used this also to create moving colors!
These images demonstrate Haas’s tremendous virtuosity and confidence with Kodachrome film and the technical challenges of color printing.
Unparalleled in their depth and richness of color, absolute brimming with dramatic tension, these images reveal a photographer at the height of his career.

He went on to become the premier color photographer of the 1950s. In 1953 LIFE magazine published his groundbreaking 24-page color photo essay on New York City.
This was the first time such a large color photo feature was published by LIFE!
In 1962 a retrospective of his work was the first color photography exhibition held at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Throughout his career, Haas traveled extensively, photographing for LIFE, Vogue, and Look, to name a few of many influential publications. He authored four books during his lifetime: The Creation (1971), In America (1975), In Germany (1976), and Himalayan Pilgrimage (1978).

The first book by master photographer Ernst Haas sees his work dedicated to both his classic and newly discovered New York City, color photographs of the 1950s and 1960s.
Ernst Haas’s color works reveal the photographer’s remarkable genius and remind us on every page why we are fascinated by New York.
Browsing the book for the 3rd and 4th time increased my admiration for the images.

Ernst Haas received the Hasselblad award in 1986, the year of his death.
He has continued to be the subject of museum exhibitions and publications such as Ernst Haas, Color Photography (1989), Ernst Haas in Black and White (1992), and Color Correction (2011). The Ernst Haas Studio, located in New York, continues to manage Haas’s legacy, aiding researchers and overseeing all projects related to his work.

Hardcover: 208 pages + Publisher: Prestel (October 6, 2020) + Language: English +
ISBN-13: 978-3791386546

www.exibartstreet.com/ - /ernst-haas-new-york-in-color-1952-1962
Ernst-Haas.com
en.wikipedia.org:_Ernst_Haas

Starting at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, on the Devon coast, and finishing on the edge of the North Sea in East Anglia, Richard Long has created a work of art out of an eleven-day (!) walk across England.

Recorded here in a series of lyrical photographs and short texts, his journey avoided large towns and urban areas, and concentrated on the landscape we think of as quintessentially English – summer cornfields, country pubs and churches, lanes running between hedgerows and little villages.
[Yes, I recognize and love the views over the endless hills / single track roads / isolated hamlets, seen by me and my wife since the 1970s and as recent as a few weeks ago. But Richard Long adds interesting details, observations and humour ☺]

Long is an artist who has helped to redefine the boundaries of art practice, making much of his art as he moves through the different land surfaces which cover the planet, or bringing the environment into the gallery itself, in the form of stone, wood, clay or water.
Long brings to 'Land Art' a poetic quality that points us to the world around us and reexamine the surroundings that we thought we knew so well.

Artist: Richard Long Author: Richard Long
Format: paperback
Year published: 1997, Thames and Hudson Publisher
Total Pages: 192 & 130 colour illustrations.

pallantbookshop.com/ - /a-walk-across-england-by-richard-long/

Dutch writer Jaap Scholten founded Protect Ukraine in 2022 and has since led convoys to the country together with Tommy Wieringa, among others.
He delivers defensive and medical supplies for the army.
In this book, Nastya in Kharkiv, he shares his experiences in Ukraine alongside photographer Eddy van Wessel, who went straight to Kyiv in 2022 to document the effects of the war.
The book includes numerous black-and-white photos and fascinating stories about the various convoys.

The trips with the convoys are adventurous and require a lot of improvising. Jaap Scholten says:
"In the autumn of my life, I’m learning things I’ve never been very good at: asking for help, setting boundaries, making decisions."

The book is a captivating account of encounters with people in Ukraine who experience the effects of the war on a daily basis. Jaap Scholten also gets close to the front lines and talks to soldiers there.

In Ukraine, he meets Nastya, a young woman who is working hard to support the Ukrainian army. She represents many women who are actively involved in the war.
Nastya trains medics, and tellingly, all 50 people she trained have now died.

With lots of quotes, Jaap Scholten gives an intense and powerful picture of the war that has been tormenting the country for more than three years now. The quotes come from conversations, text messages, books, and articles.
An amazing books that reaches into the depths of your soul!

boekenkrant.com/recensie/nastya-in-charkiv/ (NL)
www.hebban.nl/boek/nastya-in-charkiv-jaap-scholten (NL)
ProtectUkraine.nl/ DONATE!

By the hand of Takeshi Nakamoto we take an inspiring walk with legendary Japanese street photographer Daido Moriyama as he himself explains his groundbreaking approach to street photography.
For over half a century, Moriyama has provided a distinct vision of Japan and its people.
In 'Daido Moriyama: How I Take Photographs', he offers a unique opportunity for fans to learn about his methods, the cameras (analogue versus digital, no brands mentioned) he uses, and the journeys he takes with a camera.

I am not unfamiliar of Mr Moriyama's work, I have seen his work displayed and have some of his work in my bookcase already. I particularly admire how he crosses bounderies in the universe of photography.

Daidō Moriyama (b. 10 Oct1938) is a Japanese photographer best known for his black-and-white street photography and association with the avant-garde photography magazine Provoke.
Moriyama began his career as an assistant to photographer Eikoh Hosoe, a co-founder of the avant-garde photo cooperative Vivo, and made his mark with his first photobook Japan: A Photo Theater, published in 1968.
His formative work in the 1960s boldly captured the darker qualities of urban life in postwar Japan in rough, unfettered fashion, filtering the rawness of human experience through sharply tilted angles, grained textures, harsh contrast, and blurred movements through the photographer's wandering gaze.

Although the photobook is a favored format of presentation among Japanese photographers, Moriyama was particularly prolific: he has produced more than 150 photobooks since 1968!
His creative career has been honored by a number of solo exhibitions by major institutions, along with his two-person exhibition with William Klein at Tate Modern in 2012–13.
He has received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the Hasselblad Award in 2019 and the International Center of Photography Infinity Award in 2012.

“You take one, then one more, then one more, and so on. The more you take, the more you want to take. It's like you're continually stimulating yourself, increasing your desire, just by looking at that little screen. You want to try it this way and then that.” ― Quote from Takeshi Nakamoto in Daido Moriyama: How I Take Photographs.

en.wikipedia.org:_Daido_Moriyama
www.goodreads.com/ - /quotes/Takeshi_Nakamoto