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The Gaddafi family photo album
Gaddafi did a lot of strange and idiosyncratic things to Libya but one of the strangest, surely, is the improbable celebrity he built up for himself. When I spent a month in Libya on assignment for...
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What to make of this 19th C. Arab-Chinese-Peruvian portrait?
When traveling in much of the world, it is easy to imagine that some relatively brief period earlier — a couple of decades, perhaps half a century — the place being visited was culturally authentic...
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Portraits from Lima, Peru, 1916
There were few treasures to be found a month ago at the flea market in Parque Kennedy in Lima’s prosperous Miraflores district, but amid the drek of newly made trinkets and gaudy textiles there was a...
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Did the Renaissance invent individuality in portraiture?
I am continually dismayed by the narrow cultural view of esteemed art critics. First there was the New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl blithely acknowledging his near-total ignorance of Islamic art and —...
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In Paris, this photo is illegal
It is 101°F today in Paris in the peak of tourist season and illegal activity is going on at every turn in this city. Not that most of the perpetrators of these crimes are aware that what they are...
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The Indian Memory Project
A friend in Bombay saw the recent post about the studio portrait cards I collect along my travels — I was just back from South Asia so it included some from India — and asked if I knew the Indian...
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Portrait of a boy, Paris, early-20th C
I thought this was a magnificent portrait when I found it a few weeks ago at the Librairie Jousseaume in Paris, the latest in a series of vintage studio portraits I’ve collected from India, Egypt,...
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Susanita in Mar Del Plata, Argentina, 1914
Having just posted a fascinating photograph I found in a flea market in Lima, Peru on an earlier trip to South America, I can’t resist posting this enigmatic image of Susanita in Mar Del Plata that I...
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On the Mario Testino exhibit in Buenos Aires
A year or two ago, when I heard the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston was showing an exhibit called “In Your Face” by the Peruvian fashion photographer Mario Testino it inspired a certain weary cynicism...
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Portraits of African elites in India 500 years ago
Ikhlas Khan, Chief Minister of Bijapur, c1580s I’ll be honest, this exhibit of portraits of African elites in India in the 15th and 16th centuries falls into the ‘who knew?’ category for me. But it...
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Young man with pitchfork, Studio Maignet, Paris, date unknown
I collect old portrait cards all over the world but it was the semiotics of this one that intrigued me. I found this portrait in Paris at the flea market that takes place on the side of the Marché...
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