We were introduced to the concept of a cheeseburger pizza in Fox Glacier township, on the wild West Coast of New Zealand's South Island.
Oh my goodness. I cannot tell you how delicious it was!
The people at Cafe Neve were fairly modest about it all but it was stunning.
Fast-forward and here we are, back in Belgium. Gert decides to whip up a pizza base, wanting to recreate a cheeseburger pizza.
All his own work ... a cheeseburger pizza Belgian Bloke style.
He's a rebel. He wants inside ... our Mr Toad.
Now the warmer days have finally arrived, I have the door to the garden open. Well, I want to have the door to the garden open but picking up a toad and repeatedly carrying him back outside just isn't my idea of a good time.
Nope nope nope!
So far, he has jumped all barricades placed in his path. He's an Olympic toad.
His goal is my kitchen.
I don't even want to know why. He hides, he hops, he tries to evade capture. I admire his tenacity but really, I prefer him outside.
I photographed these two the other day. They tolerate me wanting to photograph them ... just.
I found a link to this over at the Creativity and Women site and followed it to this website called 'Who Does She Think She Is?' ... a documentary was made.
That question, it has had so much power. It can be said with so much venom/distaste/disgust/disapproval ...keeping women, very powerfully, in their place.
Have a look, I think it's marvellous.
Etel Adnan was born in 1925 and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Her mother was a Greek from Smyrna, her father, a high ranking Ottoman officer born in Damascus. In Lebanon, she was educated in French schools.
She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, Paris. In January 1955 she went to the United States to pursue post-graduate studies in philosophy at U.C. Berkeley, and Harvard. From 1958 to 1972, she taught philosophy at Dominican College of San Rafael, California.
Based on her feelings of connection to, and solidarity with the Algerian war of independence, she began to resist the political implications of writing in French and shifted the focus of her creative expression to visual art. She became a painter. But it was with her participation in the poets’ movement against the war in Vietnam that she began to write poems and became, in her words, “an American poet”.
In 1972, she moved back to Beirut and worked as cultural editor for two daily newspapers—first for Al Safa, then for L’Orient le Jour. She stayed in Lebanon until 1976.
In 1977, her novel Sitt Marie-Rose was published in Paris, and won the “France-Pays Arabes” award. This novel has been translated into more than 10 languages, and was to have an immense influence, becoming a classic of War Literature. In 1977, Adnan re-established herself in California, making Sausalito her home, with frequent stays in Paris.
In the late seventies, she wrote texts for two documentaries made by Jocelyne Saab, on the civil war in Lebanon, which were shown on French television as well as in Europe and Japan.
Extract, the website of Etel Adnan
Searching for information about Etel Adnan also led me into an interesting world that left me wanting to stay and read a while. And there was another book too, Sea and Fog.
I took this photograph of her at the TASWIR Exhibition. I was off to one side, taking photographs while she was interviewed.
My camera was filled with interesting people during those months on the project.
My 3 days in Cairo were magnificent, occasionally disturbing ... an honour, a privilege, an experience.
This might be my favourite image from the working side of the trip.
The Cairo Notebook, present at every discussion, always a work in progress.
