Merry Christmas to you all

Exhibition: Vivian Maier - Street Photographer

Vivian Maier, four portraits, New York, NY, 1953-56

This afternoon a friend of mine and I went to the exhibition of "Vivian Maier, Street Photographer" in FOAM over here in Amsterdam. I've wanted to see it for a while and since I am having two weeks off it is the perfect opportunity to go ahead and see it.

Vivian Maier, self portrait, undated

The entrance of the exhibition itself was a bit unfortunate: it started in this long and small corridor with on one side a lot of photos and on the opposite wall a long text with an introduction, storyline and resume. It was quite crowded before I got to the end of the corridor and I was standing in everybody's way.

entrance of exhibition: Vivian Maier, Street Photographer

The exhibited photos were wonderful though. She left behind a ton of work of about 120.000 photos on which people from all walks of life are photographed. You can see the curiosity for the people around her in the photographs. Her photographs are also quite direct: people are looking at her whether they like it to have their photograph taken or not.

two women looking at photographs of Vivian Maier

9 self portraits of Vivian Maier

For some reason she took a lot of self portraits, shown above are nine of them. In most of them she looks quite stern, unsmiling and eyes looking elsewhere. All self portraits are reflections in anything that she found on the street and indoors, some of them very ingenious.

my friend C. looking at Vivian Maier's photos

self portrait of Vivian Maier, undated: shadow and reflection in a ball

In the seventies she switched from black & white photography to colour and you can see the change in her work immediately: colour takes a prominent place in her photographs.

three people in yellow, Chicago, IL, 1975

The following pictures are two of my favorites of the exhibition, they took my breath away:

Vivian Maier: untitled, Chicago, IL, April 20, 1956

Vivian Maier: untitled, New York, NY, not dated

In both photographs I love the subtle light, the patterns and the lines. She clearly had an eye for the everyday.
The exhibition as a whole is well worth seeing: Vivian's images are straight forward, subtle, raw, funny and endearing. It is on in Amsterdam until 1 February, 2015. 
All photos are taken with an iPod touch.

Christmas card 2014

Christmas card 2014

Last week I sent out my Christmas cards for this year. It was a totally different card than last year (look over here).

Christmas card 2014

When I flicked through the standard designs of Vistaprint the above layout stuck out for me. The idea to combine a few photos instead of showing one was largely appealing to me because I had trouble choosing just one. I chose a few pictures that were colourful, pleasing to most people and a personal shot of me.

christmas envelope stickers 2014

I ordered the envelope stickers for the little extra, I quite like the look of it.

envelopes and stickers christmas 2014

written message on flip side of christmas card 2014

On the flip side of the card (it is not a folded card) I wrote a little personal message for all the addressees. I am quite please how they came out, I hope the recipients will be, too.

Flow magazine: Book for paper lovers II

Flow magazine: Book for paper lovers I and II

Last month Dutch magazine Flow published a second Book for paper lovers. The first issue was published last year and was completely sold out. It was a huge success and after editors Irene and Astrid received many emails from all over the world they decided to come with a second issue (shown above on the right).

colourful tags in the Book for paper lovers II

The second issue is even thicker than the first, I am amazed how they did it. It is another book with few words but with many cards, tags, colours, patterns and other stationary. On this page are a few examples.

blue garland and portraits in Book for paper lovers II

lovely graphic designs in Book for paper lovers II

back flap of Book of paper lovers II

The book is full with colourful paper and a few templates for folding paper dolls or paper garlands. In the back flap are a few little extras. This is the ultimate book for paper lovers. Buy it and experience it yourself!

Yoka and art (Yoku): Silence

Last night was the final Yoku session of 2014 and we ended the year with the theme Silence. This time the yoga session was very quiet and with lots of slower movements than usual which is ideal for a person like me who would like to perform each movement with lots of accuracy. The yoga session had a few hip and chest openers to get the energy flowing through our bodies.

We ended with a meditation singing 'Ong' repetitively, at our own pace and at our own pitch. We just had to let the sound go from our belly, no control and no thoughts about how it would sound. The sound was breaking the silence and the tones were wonderful. At a miraculous moment we all ended at the same time and at the same pitch.

Immediately after that we started drawing, with charcoal this time on a huge A1-sized piece of paper. We drew our experience of singing (see my finished drawing below). I drew the higher notes at the top of the paper, the lower on the bottom. Lines that started halfway were sounds after taking a breath. The circles represent the 'Ong'-sound: if I sing that my arm draws an O in in the air and not just on paper.

my finished charcoal drawing

After that we were asked to write a four-lined poem, a bit like a Haiku. It didn't need to rhyme, but it should tell our experience of the workshop. I wrote three verses, originally in Dutch, on the left a translation:

Unanimously   /   Eenstemmigheid

but projected separately   /   apart ingezet

one very long breath   /   één hele lange adem

than it is over   /   dan is het voorbij

Out of the everyday   /   Uit het dagelijkse

to the silence and breath   /   naar de stilte en ademhaling

at different pitches   /   verschillende toonhoogten

come together fluently   /   komen vloeiend samen

Sounds of traffic   /   Geluid van het verkeer

draught from underneath the door  /  tocht onder de deur door

singing of women like in a convent  /  gezang van vrouwen als in een klooster

and scratching of charcoal on paper / en gekras van houtskool op papier

We finished the evening with organic and vegan pies, delicious!

This morning I hung up my drawing on the wall with the smallest nails I could find. I quite like how it came out and every time I look at it, I can feel the Ong-sound.

Eery morning light

This week is my last week before the holidays and I am really holding on to that thought. Work has been hectic, busy and tough with a colleague being sick and I am exhausting myself.

This morning I was so tired I got up a little later than usual and decided to take the tram instead of riding my bike. I simply didn't feel like exerting myself more than I needed to.

When I stepped out of the front door I noticed this yellow, eery light. I immediately got my camera out of my bag and took some shots.

The light was very fascinating and I realized that it makes me feel awkward when the sky does not have its usual colour. Do you have that feeling, too?

I took a shortcut through the Vondelpark and saw the light reflected in the pond. 

When I got to the tram stop the eery light was almost gone, the world had woken up and everyone was already involved in a new and busy day.

Leaves and tiles

diagonal with tiles and leaves

I was walking through my neighbourhood last weekend, doing groceries and such and I saw these dried up leaves on tiled floors. The tiled floors are just a few square metres at the front doors of some old houses and I love the patterns and the colours of them. In the future I would like to photograph them more.

blue tiles and dried up leaves

Anyways, I was surprised to still see the leaves, I thought they were gone as winter has set in. I love how they landed on the tiles.

multi coloured tiles with dried up leaves

The last picture is my favourite: the lovely colour of the big orange-pink leaf goes beautifully with the tiles underneath.

My next trip to India

virgin Mary with flowers, rosary and mala

Last weekend I went to my yoga teacher's house to have an holistic massage. She's been giving them for about 20 years and she's really good. I quite like the combination yoga and massage, I like it so well that during my yoga teacher training I also followed two shiatsu massage workshops with that yoga teacher.

painting of an ohm sign

Anyways, I went to her house and into her yoga & meditation room and before the massage we chatted for a while. She is planning a trip to India next summer and I would like to come along. First she is going to give a yoga week at Auroville, same place where we went in 2012, look for my first impression of India over here and over here.

Hindu god Ganesha

After that she is going to take us to Tiruvannamalai to meditate on a holy mountain. There is also a holy man that she has met before and she is probably going to introduce him to us. 

virgin Mary with rosary and mala

Those two activities will take about two weeks and I am looking for a destination to go after the mediation week or before the yoga week. My yoga teacher gave me two possiblities: Sathya Sai Baba's main ashram of Puttaparthi or the ashram of Yogi Ram in Rishikesh. I am pondering on the alternatives and there are more of course besides these two.
The pictures shown above are taken in the yoga & meditation room of my yoga teacher.

Winter sunlight in my living room

sunlight on the couch and living room table

The sun was out today and I was so happy with that, I grabbed my camera and took some snapshots of my living room. I usually don't show that much of my living spaces but this light was worth recording.

sunlight on a framed photograph

sunlight on the fringes of a blanket

Miksang Contemplative photography is about seeing what is and not embellishing anything. So my living room was like this, not really tidied up and the couch looks like somebody had just sat in it. That is exactly how it was.

sunlight on the pillows of my couch

After snapping these photos I went for a walk in the park. Later in the week I'll try to post these photos. Did you enjoy the sunlight today?

Book review: Current reading

My latest and current reading projects (from top to bottom):

• The wisdom of a broken heart, by Susan Piver. Susan writes with a lot of self humor about the feelings and emotions like sorrow, grief, anger, shame and lack of confidence after a broken love affair. Gave me confidence and recognition after the ending of my own relationship. 
• The Sanity we are born with. A buddhist approach to psychology, by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. All people are born with a spiritual healthy core. This book is not always easy to read and it would help if you are already familiar with Shambhala buddism, but it gives a clear insight in psychology from a very different perspective.
• When things fall apart, by Pema Chödrön. Pema is an American buddhist nun and a well-known pupil of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. This book is also very handy to read in times of trouble like a broken relationship. She mainly advises to feel the feelings, to meet your demons and not to avoid them.
• The Shambhala principle; Discovering Humanities Hidden Treasure, by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. Sakyong Mipham is the son of Chögyam Trungpa and in this book he explains about the fundamental goodness of people, how to find that in ourself and how to influence society with it.

After the storm

It's harder and harder for me to photograph these days as the days are still getting shorter and I hardly see any daylight outdoors during my working days. Bad habit I know, but with a colleague ill at home it is so busy I don't know how to get everything done.

green leaf on black car

Today was actually my day off, but I had so much stuff to do that I went to the office to get some tasks done. To have a bit of a day-off-feeling I didn't set my alarm and just woke up when I my body and spirit were ready for it.

There was a bit of a storm going on this morning: it was raining and the wind was blowing pretty hard. I didn't feel like taking my bike out so I walked through the park and took the tram to work. 

milky water

red ribbon in the gutter

three leaves on front window of a car

At some moments I needed to hold my umbrella with two hands, that's how fierce the wind was. I saw leaves and branches everywhere, some bicycles were blown over like in the first picture. I quite enjoyed the wind and the rain, they make me feel alive, especially the wind.

two leaves stuck on a silver car

By the time I got home again the wind had lost its force and the world was calm again.