Welcome to my Blog!
I hope to share here my irrepressible thoughts on news, music, books, arts 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

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

This year, book fans and traders happily returned to the Deventer Book Market after several years of disruption due to the Covid pandemic.
For centuries, many printers and publishers were located in Deventer. The city still houses a few publishing houses and printers of national importance and offers a wide and varied range of bookshops and antiquarian booksellers.
The Deventer Book Market is the largest of such events in Europe and took place on Sunday 7th of August.
As always I came away with a good selection

deventerboekenmarkt.nl
More photos on Flickr.com

In her follow-up to The Long Call (2019; which I haven't read yet), Cleeves provides a complex mystery full of surprises.
Detective Matthew Venn’s North Devon team is stretched to the limit by a series of homicides.
An aborted conversation between police officer Jen Rafferty and Nigel Yeo, who wants to discuss a problem at a party thrown by a mutual friend, is the first hint of trouble. The next morning, Jen is called to a murder scene at an artist’s workshop on the grounds of wealthy Francis Ley's home. The dead man is Nigel, who was killed by a spear from one of his glass blower daughter Eve’s pieces.
Wes Curnow is th enext victim, with the same m.o. He's the other artist in residence at Ley's, but also has studio space at an art center run by Venn’s artistic, upbeat husband, Jonathan.
Nigel Yeo worked for a watchdog organization that’s investigating the National Health Service after several families complained that their depressed youngsters got little help and committed suicide, including the son of a local family that could be seeking revenge...
But a connection with Wes Curnow's murder is not apparent.

The homicide team, which in addition to Jen includes an ambitious detective named Ross, work in their own intuitive ways alongside Venn, a clever, soft-spoken, deeply conflicted man — after having been brought up in a cultlike religious group that doesn’t welcome gay people.
A 3rd death complicates the search for a motive even further.
Plenty of drama and well developed characters. Probably not my last book by Ann Cleeves!

www.kirkusreviews.com/- - -/ann-cleeves/herons-cry/
en.wikipedia.org:_Ann_Cleeves

For over 75 years, the photographers of Magnum Photos have not only created photographic icons on both major events and hidden stories but have simultaneously worked on commission.
The exhibition Open for Business - Magnum Photographers on Commission shows a side of Magnum that the general public is hardly aware of, and with which its photographers (Bruce Gilden, Alec Soth, Martin Parr, Steve McCurry and many others) rarely promote themselves.
In 8 chapters, the audience is taken on a variety of commercial assignments: from carte blanche group assignments for governments to the hippest fashion photography; and from chic publications for major industries to reporting in the service of NGOs.

'Open For Business' exposes the true nature of the job, which comes with assignments that highlight the qualities of Magnum’s visual storytellers in completely different ways. It shines a light on the diversity of Magnum’s commissioned work from the 1950s to 2019.
From the beginning, the balance between independent and commercial work has led to fierce discussions amongst Magnum photographers. Every member of the agency considers corporate commissions differently.
This exhibition features the outcome of these experiences, putting a sharp focus on the ethical questions that arise with them. It reveals interactions between commercial and personal photography, emphasizing the ways in which photographers have shaped or changed the visual languages of corporations by applying their personal sensitivity to assignments, with surprising, ironic and often humorous results.
(text by www.foam.org/events/magnum)

The war documentation 'Focus on Ukraine' was on exhibit in a remarkable historic building.

The Cecilia Monastery existed from 1402 to 1577.
It was also known as Cecilia Convent and is a former Roman Catholic nunnery in the center of Hoorn. The convent was founded in 1402 and after the reformation fell to the city council.
The complex was used between 1577 and 1795 as a meeting place for the Committed States of Holland and West Friesland. After the Batavian Republic, it was used until 1970, simultaneously, as a town hall, court and police station.
Before the Cecilia monastery was founded, there was a small community for brothers. This fraternity or fraternity community was founded in 1385.
The founding certificate also states that they were given a house on the corner of The Newesteg and Nieuwstraat. The 'Brothers of the Common Life' adhered to the teachings of Geert Grote and did not take monastic vows.
Remarkable historic building.

NL.wikipedia.org:_Ceciliaklooster_@Hoorn
www.oudhoorn.nl/kerken/st_ceciliakapel/ (NL)

Hoorn is well known in the Netherlands for its rich history.
The town acquired city rights in 1357 and flourished during the Dutch Golden Age. In this period, Hoorn developed into a prosperous port city, being home to one of the six chambers of the Dutch East India Company (VOC).
Towards the end of the 18th century, however, it started to become increasingly more difficult for Hoorn to keep competing with nearby Amsterdam. Ultimately, it lost its function as port city and became a regional center of trade, mainly serving the smaller villages of West Friesland.
Cape Horn and the Hoorn Islands were both named after this city.

en.wikipedia.org:_Hoorn
Flickr.com

There were several exhibitions I greatly enjoyed here, photos above start with Ouders | Parents.
In this exhibition Fotomuseum Den Haag brings together works by 30+ artists who have portrayed their mothers and fathers in a remarkable fashion.
The selection of works shows that the relationship between parent and child is both universal and extremely personal and intimate. Through their work, the photographers provide an insight into their varied relationships with their parents, from loving and tender to aloof or dysfunctional.
The exhibition also demonstrates the photographers’ great variety of approaches to their subject. While Corbino has opted for a carefully posed black-and-white portrait of his naked father, Deanna Dikeman has portrayed her mother and father waving in front of the house they have lived in for more than twenty-five years.
The exhibition features works by, among others, Jan Banning, Nina Berman, Melanie Bonajo, Diana Blok, Corbino, Deanna Dikeman, Eddo Hartmann, Pieter Hugo, Erik Kessels and Erwin Olaf.
Such a pity there was no catalogue made of this superb exhibition!

The 2nd exhibition Dutch artistic duo Robert Knoth (b. 1963) and Antoinette de Jong (1964) present their work titled 'Tree and Soil'.
They made several trips to Fukushima in Japan shortly after a tsunami had caused a nuclear disaster there on 11Mar2011. They wanted to see with their own eyes what impact this event had had on the region and talk to people who lived there.
In Tree and Soil, the book they made after their visits to Japan, Knoth and De Jong combine the landscapes they photographed and filmed with objects from Naturalis Biodiversity Center’s Siebold Collection.
Physician and explorer Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796-1866) was based at the Dutch trading post on the island of Deshima, off the coast at Nagasaki. During his time there he was able to take several trips round Japan. He collected a huge quantity of plants, animals, paintings and other artefacts of great cultural and historical value.
And the Siebold Collection shows in great detail how Japanese culture emerged from and is inspired by nature. Linking the Siebold Collection with their own photography, Knoth and De Jong connect past and present. Amazing documentary in all respects.
In a tragic coincidence I read during my visit here that Shinzo Abe, former and longest-serving prime minister in Japanese history, had been assissinated today, 08Jul2022, while delivering a campaign speech in Nara.

The 3rd exhibition, of only two (large) photos by Eddo Hartmann, was 'Here lives my home'. This was my 2nd photobook I purchased.

www.fotomuseumdenhaag.nl/en
www.knothdejong.com/
eddohartmann.nl
www.flickr.com/photos/

The annual World Press Photo Contest recognizes and celebrates the best photojournalism and documentary photography produced over the last year.
In 2021, only 7% of entrants came from South America, 5% from Southeast Asia and Oceania, and 3% from Africa. For 2022 a change was in order.
The WPP 2022 Photo Contest worked with a regional system that included six regions:
¬Africa
¬Asia
¬Europe
¬North and Central America
¬South America
¬Southeast Asia and Oceania
www.worldpressphoto.org/- - -/new-contest-model

From the 24 regional winners in each of the four categories, the 2022 Contest jury selected these four global winners:
World Press Photo of the Year: Kamloops Residential School by Amber Bracken, Canada, for The New York Times
World Press Photo Story of the Year: Saving Forests with Fire by Matthew Abbott, Australia, for National Geographic/Panos Pictures
World Press Photo Long-Term Project Award: Amazonian Dystopia by Lalo de Almeida, Brazil, for Folha de São Paulo/Panos Pictures
World Press Photo Open Format Award: Blood is a Seed by Isadora Romero, Ecuador

Judging of the 2022 World Press Photo Contest took place from 17Jan - 02Mar22 and involved regional juries and a global jury.
www.worldpressphoto.org/contest/2022