A long time ago, on my first trip I traveled to countries where people speak English, a language I understand. Did I make this choice out of convenience? No, I think it was the fear of the unknown – though I would not have admitted that at the time. My world was small, and leaving it was a big deal.

I had no idea how much this journey would change me. At the time I began taking pictures, and so there is photographic evidence.

This is what the world looked like during ‘my wonder years’.

This is a hard one.

Sometimes events are so vast that they redefine my world. When I took this picture, “terror” was a vague term for me. I was a child. Something happened. Afterwards the meaning was clear.

Now I have to think about the true meaning of “war”.

War is back. The aggressor tries to hide it behind fancy names and lies. But an avalanche of pictures and reports show its true face – even if you are in denial: A war is raging, killing and destroying. A new era of history has begun, because this is a new kind of war. A nuclear superpower has attacked and threatens to use nuclear weapons.

And no one knows how this will end.

A war machine has been unleashed to suppress freedom and hope, before our very eyes. The world was stunned, but now it is watching and documenting, and preparing for a reckoning. While all nations are grappling with a global pandemic and the effects of a changing climate, a single government has put its own imperialist interests before anything else. The world will have to deal with the aftershock for decades to come.

And there is nowhere to hide.

After the rediscovery of a picture I had taken long ago, I rememberd another picture and started looking for it. I found a whole harddisk full. One of the pictures … But more of that in the next post.

Here is the picture I was originally looking for.

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