Emily Davidow
Saga Dawa at Mt Kailash, Tibet
Posted on 06.16.08 by Emily

Robert AF Thurman beginning kora around Mount Kailash

Today you can see this photo I took of Robert Thurman standing in front of Mt. Kailash in the San Francisco Chronicle, accompanying a great interview with Robert by David Ian Miller, “Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman on Why the Dalai Lama Matters,” about his new book, Why the Dalai Lama Matters.

In the picture, Robert stands near the Tarboche flagpole at the outset of our kora (circumambulation) around Mt Kailash. Buddhist, Hindu, Jain and Bön traditions all revere Mt Kailash as the axis mundi - the center of the world. From it flows 4 major rivers that feed Asia: the Indus, Brahmaputra, Sutlej and Karnali. Thousands of pilgrims arrive each May and June, but this year China has delayed the pilgrimage season and limited the number of participants, restricting all foreign visitors during the Olympic torch relay in that region.

After four days trekking around the mountain and reaching an altitude of 18,600 ft, we arrived back here in time for the Saga Dawa festival, celebrating the birth and enlightenment of Sakyamuni Buddha.

Raising the Tarboche Flag Pole at Saga Dawa

On this occasion, the flag pole, wrapped in prayer flags, is raised by poles, ropes and trucks.

uprightpole.jpg

A perfectly upright flagpole signifies a good year for Tibet.

upright flagpole at tarboche

Musicians play throughout the festival. Thermoses of yak butter tea keep throats in singing and horn-blowing condition at dry high-altitudes on the Tibetan plateau.

musicians at saga dawa festival

Then, at the moment the flagpole is raised, thousands of windhorses (colorful squares of paper printed with prayers for happiness) fill the air and fly towards the peak.

windhorse.jpg

Saga Dawa occurs each year on the 15th day of the fourth lunar month. This year, Tibetans will celebrate Saga Dawa on June 18, 2008 — may the pole stand upright and usher in a good year for Tibet!

An excerpt from the SF Chronicle interview:


The news from Tibet has been pretty grim lately, but you remain optimistic that the situation will improve … that the Tibetans will one day be able to live there freely and practice their religion. What gives you hope that will happen?

I base my hope — as the Dalai Lama bases his — on what is realistic. And I believe reality dictates that the Tibetans are the ones who can live sustainably in Tibet. They’re the ones who can restore and maintain the Tibetan plateau, their ancestral home, as they have for thousands of years. And it has to be healthy in order to be of benefit to its neighboring regions. It’s the water tower of Asia — it’s where everybody’s water comes from, India, China, Southeast Asia. It’s also the source of the wind — the jet stream that rises up out of the plateau, affecting the weather all around the planet. So if Tibet is messed up then the world gets messed up. This is why Tibet should matter to everybody.

To learn more:

Filed under: about me and better world and books and consciousness and culture and environment and people and photography and travel


Salad Days in New York
Posted on 03.31.08 by Emily

Salad mix with broccoli raab flowers photo by Emily Davidow

My photo of Yuno’s Farm’s salad mix with broccoli raab flowers above is featured in this week’s New York Magazine in an article called “Salad Days” on page 104. The article reveals that Nevia No, “co-owner of South Jersey’s Yuno’s Farm, exotic seed seeker andartful arranger of what might be the most beautiful produce stand in town,” returns to Union Square with “a bevy of tender greenhouse greens, plus overwintered broccoli rabe and spinach.” Yay! Spring’s arrived.

Related posts:

Filed under: about me and emily approved and flowers and food and happiness and news and photography and shopping and taste


The Latest Issuu
Posted on 02.20.08 by Emily

Copenhagen-based ISSUU invites everyone to upload and turn their documents into beautiful turn-the-page magazine experiences for free.

Once uploaded, people can bookmark, share and comment on it. Text is searchable so the document is easy to find. You can subscribe to an RSS feed of publications. Finally, you can also post and embed Issuu documents on any external site.

Now actually, it’s still not a joy to quote, because you apparently can’t deep link in there, and you can’t copy and paste text and do all the things you could do with a standard webpage (or PDF for that matter). But it’s so close… you can almost taste it. And you can just embed the whole darn thing… In any case, this is a wonderful way to share the experience of a printed thing (without the waste and expense of printing and shipping).

N.B. to those who like to tear, save and share the parts they like out of printed things… you’ll love Skitch.


links for 2008-02-15
Posted on 02.15.08 by Emily

Filed under: books and links and music and nyc and photography


links for 2008-02-12: connect the dots la la la la
Posted on 02.12.08 by Emily

Filed under: activism and advertising and animals and better world and creativity and culture and links and love and marketing and photography and science and taste and technology and travel and video and webstuff


Kenro Izu: Bhutan: The Sacred Within
Posted on 11.05.07 by Emily
Kenro Izu Taktsang Monastery
Kenro Izu, “Druk #131″, Taksang Monastery, Paro, Bhutan 2003

Kenro Izu: Bhutan, the Sacred Within
November 2, 2007–February 18, 2008
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th Street, New York, NY 10011

What a treat to hear Kenro Izu talk with Owen Flanagan at the Rubin Museum of Art in conjunction with the opening of his exhibition of photographs, “Bhutan: The Sacred Within.” Kenro Izu’s been exploring and photographing sacred sites both natural and manmade for decades. To look at his landscapes of sacred places around the world is to enter them; you can almost smell and taste the air inside the image. In “The Sacred Within,” he turns his lens to the essential element that makes a place sacred: the people that revere it and hold it in their hearts.

Out of all the places he has photographed, Bhutan has especially captivated him, drawing him back six times over six years. Izu writes in the introduction to his accompanying book, Bhutan, “Traveling many years, I have not yet seen a place as peaceful as Bhutan, or a place affecting such a peacefulness within myself. If there is a place indeed named Utopia, this place may come the closest to it.”

Bhutan, known as the “Land of the Thunder Dragon,” is a small independent country of 700,000 people nestled in the Himalayan mountains between China, Tibet and India. What struck him on his first visit was how unique it was among Himalayan lands with its abundance of lush green trees and glacier fed rivers. He was moved by how the high altitude air was unusually moist and dense. And he was struck by how rich the people seemed, which he noted might sound odd considering the average GNP per capita is under US $1000, but he never saw anyone begging for money. Instead, people appeared well fed and well dressed, even happy.


Kenro Izu's Camera
Kenro Izu’s custom-built large format camera on display at Rubin Museum of Art, 2005. Photo by Emily Davidow

Izu travels with a custom-built large-format camera with a 14″ x 20″ negative that captures the density of the air and the quality of light. His large format platinum palladium prints appear illuminated from within, offering a depth that transcends two dimensions. That also makes them an ideal medium for portraits. Why did it take Izu such a long time to shift from the sacred places to the people that make them so? “I am shy of people. Can’t point the camera at them.”

Spontanaeity is another challenge with his turn-of-the-last-century technology. Every picture has to be staged, “like a diorama of a scene.” He described the process of making an image that looks like a candid of two schoolboys walking and looking back at him (Druk #537, Bumthang, Bhutan 2007). He had seen them walking to school near Tamshing Lhakhang in the morning and envisioned the shot, but they were in a rush to get to school, so he set up to meet them after school and take the photograph.

(more…)

Filed under: art and better world and books and creativity and culture and design and emily approved and flowers and gardening and happiness and interconnected and love and nyc and observations and people and photography


links for 2007-11-01: Looking at Things Differently
Posted on 11.01.07 by Emily

Feel the Numbers with Chris Jordan
Posted on 10.20.07 by Emily

Chris Jordan in Camden, Maine at Poptech 2007

Chris Jordan’s concerned that we can’t feel statistics. Our brains aren’t hardwired to deal with high numbers. If we’re going to make radical changes, we have to fall in love, or feel angry enough to do something. His art translates raw data and numbers to the visual language of feeling to help people shift from self-centered consumers to compassionate, connected members of society.

Jordan takes digital images and composts them to create massive digital prints that manifest these previously inconceivable statistics. I’ve been admiring his images online for a while, but was fascinated by the power of his detailed prints in person. If you have the opportunity to see an exhibition, seize it. Below are a few images from his latest Running the Numbers series.

Contrails Detail at actual size from “Jet Trails” 2007, 60″ x 96″ depicting 11,000 jet trails, equal to the number of commercial flights in US every eight hours. Chris took digital images of planes flying overhead, then composted them together. He originally intended to display the number of commercial flights in the US every 24 hours, but the image was completely white.
Plasticbottles Sample from “Plastic Bottles” 2007, 60″x120″ depicting two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.
Cansseurat-1 “Cans Seurat” 2007 60″ x 92″ depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.

Other images from the series feature:

  • 8 million toothpicks, which are equal to the number of trees harvested in the US every month to make the paper for mail order catalogs
  • 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cellphones retired in the US every day
  • 213,000 Vicodin pills, equal to the number of emergency room visits yearly in the US related to misuse or abuse of prescription painkillers
  • 29569 handguns, equal to the number of gun-related deaths in the US in 2004

His images address deep systemic issues without simplification; there’s not one person you can point to and say it’s their fault. In each image you can see the dramatic different ends of scale from each individual object to the massive collective.

Most of all, he hopes to pass on the message that the individual matters. Whether you believe you matter or don’t matter determines your behavior. If your vote doesn’t matter, why do it? If you do something bad and it doesn’t matter, why not do it? On the other hand, if you realize everything you do makes a difference, you’ll act consciously. And if 300 million people decide that we do matter, then the revolution happens.

Jordan pointed out that the U.S. is number one in the world in all kinds of horrendous ways and is curious why that is. If he depicted the 1.8 billion shells from handheld weapons every year with each bullet 1/12″ (the size of a pinhead), the print would have to be 15 feet high by 160,000 feet wide.

He doesn’t wish to be all doom and gloom and quotes Van Jones, who said “Martin Luther King Jr. did not inspire a nation by saying ‘I have a complaint.’” At the same time, he feels like one of the things we have to do as a culture is face up to what is, first. He offered the analogy that it’s as if he woke up and realized he was an alcoholic, and that his whole family is alcoholic. He’s just saying “family, there’s a whole pile of vodka in the corner. Let’s look at it and talk about it.”

He recommends Paul Hawken’s book, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming which talks about the number of organizations devoted to social justice and environmental good things — the largest mass movement in history. Paul shared his list of 130,000 organizations, and Chris plans to make a giant mandala that when you zoom in close, you can see all the names.

Through making his art, Chris notes he began to recognize his own hypocrisy in failing to take responsibility for his own behavior and blaming his behavior on corporate entities. He realized he can make a choice to buy these plastic bottles or not. He thought it was going to be a sacrifice — turns out there’s not a single time he’s missed drinking water out of plastic bottles and been dehydrated.

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Links for 2007-04-02: Her Story is Strange
Posted on 04.02.07 by Emily
  • Debbie Millman interviews Maira Kalman for her Design Matters podcast, introducing her subject with a story about the sign at right.

    On Vagueness: “The word itself defines the entire essence of being and how things are always confused and unknown and then you go ahead and make some kind of sense out of it, and then you make some kind of nonsense about it and it’s a full time job, just figuring it out.”

    Her last installment of “The Principles of Uncertainty” comes tomorrow, but the book is coming out in Fall (with a fabulous index!).

  • Happy first birthday Photojojo, a delightful site/e-mail list that’s all about fun with digital photos. Inspired to try out today’s tip and tutorial on making Videoramas - full motion video panoramas.
  • Scrapblog is another fun tool for creating and sharing multimedia scrapbooks or presentations online with photos from Flickr/Yahoo/Photobucket and videos from YouTube.
  • Today’s Daily Om comes right on time: Centering And Expressing.
  • Lonely Planet launches travel video social networking channel lonelyplanet.tv, and Charles Simonyi blogs about traveling beyond this lonely planet, following in the weightless footsteps of the amazing Anousheh Ansari. If you’re over the moon about space tourism or terraforming, you’ll want to attend Esther’s Flight School.
  • If like Maira, you prefer to explore more vague territories, NYTimes points out you, along with everyone in China, can take “Topics in Philosophy of Language: Vagueness,” a graduate level course at M.I.T.
  • Apple announced that they will sell EMI’s entire catalog of music without copy-protection from the iTunes store. Thank you! The other important news here is that the music will be higher quality, encoded at 256 kilobits per second rather than 128 kbps. I’ll be one of their best customers once again, and not have to feel bad about the superfluous CD and packaging waste generated just to enjoy music. (Which reminds me, dear Poptech, why can’t I buy the Antibabel EP by Yungchen Lhamo and Reggie Watts as downloadable files? Will you carbon offset my CD purchase and shipping?) Lately, I’ve been receiving most of my aural gratification from the Hype Machine.


Filed under: art and books and branding and consumerism and creativity and culture and design and emily approved and environment and happiness and interconnected and links and love and marketing and music and nyc and passions and people and photography and retail and science and senses and shopping and sustainability and technology and travel and video and webstuff

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