time speed

Photo @ 2007 Ana Yturralde

Usually time flies when you are having fun and drags when you are bored. But the truth is that time speed is always the same. A minute is always a minute. So it means that, when we are having fun or very busy, we don't concentrate on monitoring the passing of time, therefore time passes without us really noticing it, and seems to go quickly. But when we have nothing to do, when we are bored or wait anxious for something, we 'make sense of time' and it seems to drag.

Africa has a different perception of time. Life runs in slow motion even if you are busy or having fun. And in fact, it is probably a more accurate perception of reality. A minute is always a minute when you are bored and when you are having fun. So there is no need of concentrating on time passing or thinking of its speed. Why should we do it if the duration of one hour is always the same?

accueil / reception

Photo © 2008 Ana Yturralde

What we've got to do is discover the essential truth of the situation, and have a point of view about it. Then, the next step is to communicate it. I am increasingly convinced that communication is the biggest pillar for a good understanding. We need to be open-minded and accept all the facts and ideas in a "reception" and then share points of view and beliefs. That's the way to construct solid structures, the way to live in peace, the way to reinforce unity and gain recognition. And that is the only way I understand.

And now a trick. What is the essential truth of this situation? same reception, same corner, same point of view, and two brothers. A superficial perception will say it was just one situation and one person. A deep vision with understanding will find out that the similarities are just by chance. Not the same moment, not the same person. Two different actions going on and both perfectly valid.
So never judge a situation from the first impression. There is always more behind.

Photo © 2008 Ana Yturralde

paludisme

Photo © 2008 Ana Yturralde

Sometimes Life chooses its own ways to put us on a specific path, and a combination of circumstances determined the direction of my actual life. If I look back, I arrived to Africa with no idea of what I was going to find. Alone and with no goal, just needed to purify my soul, breathe and feel freedom. Yes, I just needed a slap on my face to react. Then, circumstances started to guide my steps and my life took a turn.

And it was a sequence of circumstances what brought me to this assignment too. The idea of the project in mind, my first encounter with people affected by malaria, an amoeba, two months of agresive treatment, a great doctor in the Tropical Medicine Department and Bouba's help, led me to the Gueule Tapeé Hospital where the report started. Already delivered in Spain and soon exhibited in Dakar. And the fight against malaria will continue...

Photo © 2008 Ana Yturralde

transport commun

Photo © 2007 Ana Yturralde

During the last weeks the project has been taking shape and almost everything is ready. We already have a crowded room full of enthusiastic people! Plane tickets, equipment of different types, clothes and accessories, paints, instruments, suitcases... A big thing is coming and I wonder if we should rent a van to move around. But it would be a lot more fun to rent one of the typical blue and yellow mini-buses that move through Dakar and some other cities.

Takes a while to understand the way of use of this 'transport commun'. There are somewhat fixed rates for certain distances, but you need to check with a Senegalese beforehand. To find out where one is going, flag it down and shout out your destination at the apprenti (the boy in charge of collecting fares who hangs out the back). If he shouts back at you the destination you want, signal it to stop and hop aboard. To stop, bang loudly on the side of the bus or signal to the apprenti you want to go off. Apprenti's don't always speak French, so be prepared to communicate otherwise (body-language) if you do not speak Wolof.

I never tried to make a ride on these colorful buses but you can find them everywhere, in every street, in every corner. Sometimes there are lines of only buses like this, always crowded and with people hanging from the rear door. Really interesting!

cross cuttings

Photo © 2008 Ana Yturralde

The article published in the senegalese 'Weekend magazine' describes Sira as a beautiful face with feline gait and me as a talented spanish photographer. Sounds like we are a good team, yeah!

The magazine has a terrible printing quality but it is always satisfying to publish abroad and see that they recognize your work.

serpents africains

Photo © 2008 Ana Yturralde

This is the director of the Gueule Tapeé Hospital in Dakar. We were having a talk about the photo report I was going to do there, about the hard conditions they face, about the problems they have every day... While waiting for the translation in English, I couldn't look away from the poster behind the director: the face of a white man surrounded by threatening snakes and the words "les serpents africains enfin vaincus!" (african snakes finally defeated!). I wondered if there were snakes around the city, but once we left the office I forgot about snake bites and focused my mind on mosquitos and malaria.

Some days later driving the car next to the coastline, somebody pointed to one of the Madeleine Islands and said: that is the "Snakes Island". The poster at the hospital came to my mind so I asked curious about it.

What is true or what is legend, I don't know. But the explanation was that it is infested with poisonous snakes. Still, and due to its position (it is situated on the west side from the peninsula of the Green Cap, the most western part of Africa), the U.S. wanted to buy it. Seems like the government in Senegal refused the offer and the island remains as a snake's paradise. (The turistic version says that, decreeded National Park, you will find there miniaturized baobabs and a 4 meter deep natural pond).

We will have to ask my subconscious why I've been thinking of this snakes island for the last days...

where is my mind

Photo © 2007 Ana Yturralde

Moving a little away from the noisy beach, there was a cape where the only sound was the waves breaking on the rocks. There was an infinite sky and a wide open sea with a beautiful island in front. It is in these kind of moments when our senses come to life all at once. Smell, touch, sight... and the silence makes sense filling our minds with deep feelings or sensations.

Sale stayed there with his look lost into the sea. I looked at him and wondered about his thoughts. And it was in that moment when I wished I could bring with my photography the visions of the world that they see. We're different, as everybody is and we're equal, as everybody is. But realities are not the same. And sometimes we have to open the eyes of the people around to make them aware of problems that they never see. And I have now a big project on it.

raining cows

Photo © 2008 Ana Yturralde

From time to time I have a recurrent dream. Sometimes the scenario or situation around changes, but the "incident" is the same, and, in this dream, I always have the same feeling, the same sensation. That is curious as I never faced a situation like that in the real life... 'till last saturday.

In the dream (often in the beach, sometimes in the city) I see a plane flying over me that crashes on the floor just in front of me, very close. I always watch it in a quiet slow motion calm. Difficult to express the sensation that fills me in that moment as I'm just watching the fall, not scared, not alarmed... because the crash is never spectacular as it also happens in slow motion, and in slow motion things seem to be softer...

Now I lived the exact slow motion sensation in person, not in a dream. It's raining planes in my dreams. Raining cows in cartoons. But what rained over me while driving in the real life was... a bed. Surreal. It happened in slow motion and I did not fell scared, just... amazed. Afortunately time and space were on my side. Just a matter of centimeters and I will keep on driving while singing one of my on the road recurrent songs.

"I'd climb the highest mountains,
I'd swim the deepest sea"
(Paul Weller)

April 12th

Photo © 2007 Ana Yturralde

There's a birthday to celebrate today: my "new" camera is one year old. A 5D with 12 megapixels had to be mine. I remember the feeling I had that april 12th... like a small girl, happy, nervous and anxious but, at the same time a little frightened. I touched it with delicacy without knowing all the amazing things I was going to live through it's lenses and visor.

Since then, my 5D has been the best soul mate, travelling companion and weapon charged with dreams and emotions. My emotions and the world's emotions.

Moments, african sunsets, people, situations... fragments of time captured through my camera and my eyes.

A 5D with 12 megapixels in my hands, a pair of boots and the world in front of me. An intense year full of emotions. Happy birthday!

Ananas

Photo © 2008 Ana Yturralde

Yesterday I finally completed the series of photographs for the exhibition that I'm preparing, and took a picture of a spanish painter and settings interior designer. She invited me to her fabulous duplex apartment and we had a really nice and interesting conversation while I took a look to her gorgeous hand painted books. We also talked about the african art and she mentioned their beautiful clothes and fabrics so we ended talking about the batiks and the creation process.

I was very pleased that Yadi invited me to see how they do it. A very interesting place, similar to a village where many artists were working wood figures, batiks, masks....

Here in the picture he is applying the hot wax over the selected areas before dyeing. The parts covered in wax resists the dye and remain the original color.

Photo © 2008 Ana Yturralde

Ananas is the 'pet name' that Yadi lovingly uses to call me and make fun of me. We always laugh with it. Ba Beneen!

football colors

Photo © 2008 Ana Yturralde

For my hospital assignment I followed this nurse for some hours. Serious and not very talkative but helpful and nice. Most of the time I spent with him was at the sickbay where he attended the people that needed medical cure.

That day there was an important football game broadcasted by the RTS TV. In a busy european city it is always amazing to see the empty streets while a national football game is on TV, but in Senegal, where life takes place in the streets, it was really shocking. In the hospital there was a room with a TV and during the game all the nurses were there. Even one of the malaria patients (that later I photographed) left his bed and drip I.V. just to watch the game!!

In this picture you can see that the nurse has a small radio in his pocket with an earphone to follow the game while working.

And talking about football.... I don't like football at all, but it was a great experience to watch the Senegal vs Burkina Faso game last september at the Leopold Sedar Senghor Stadium. The stands were so packed that I had to sit on a very small place at the steps holding tight my camera bag. I did not dare to bring the camera out!. And well, I didn't watch the game itself, even if one of the players was the big football star in Senegal -that signed up with the Liverpool team- El Hadji Diouf (that I met in Almadie a couple of days before that game). And I didn't follow the game as I was absorbed by the colorful atmosphere around. The green/yellow/red colors, the drums sound, the african rythms...




That was the reason why I kept the invitation ticket. And also because the ticket number consists in three numbers that add up to 12 between two fives.

An honour...

...as well as a pleasure! This picture (a larger view if you click on it) is one of the single photos selected by David Alan Harvey at "The Emerging Photographer Fund" created as a wing of the Magnum Cultural Fundation (Magnum Photos Agency).

And this brings courage, energy, will, hope and power to keep going, to keep moving, to keep walking and to keep following this dream. Never give up wishing!!

outtake one

Photo © 2008 Ana Yturralde

The editing process becames a nightmare. I see the pictures hundreds of times and each time I change my mind. It is so difficult to make a selection... But I already talked about that. Now I just wanted to talk about the outtakes, those images removed in the editing process and not included in the final work.

I really wanted this picture in my next exhibition but, much to my regret, it will have to stay out as an outtake.

I use to take a liking to some of the photos that don't "see the light"... and now I was looking at this picture like if I was looking a small kitty crying in the streets that I can't take home with me. Maybe this photograph is an outtake for the exhibition, but it is a selected one for this place.

that driving feeling

Photo © 2007 Ana Yturralde

Oh yes, I love to drive. Today I had to go to a nearby village to take a picture. There was no trafic on the road and the sun was bright. The road, a big blue sky ahead, good music and only my camera bag on the co-driver seat. And that great feeling came again filling the air I was breathing... That feeling of having the world in front of you, that nothing can stop you as you just feel... free. Driving, listening to music and free. It feels like you're running away... and nothing matters. Suddenly reality faded out. I was driving like a robot as my spirit and soul was far, far away. Memories came to my mind, moments, words, kisses... that passed in front of the window like an old movie. And, when I arrived to my destination, I realized that I was smiling and feeling... good. Oh, yes, I love to drive...

put shoulders to the wheel

Photo @ 2008 Ana Yturralde

We could make a move or we could wait. Decided to make the move, and what a move!! Now it is time to work, work, work. We're more, we're ready. Different places, different cultures, different hands, but everybody working with one goal in mind. Make it happen. That's the spirit, and it is alive!

Some things are better if you work together, if you are part of a team. And as I read somewhere, individually we are one drop but together we are an ocean. An ocean of hope and will. We are getting the right responses and something big is coming....

"Coming together is a beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success"
(Henry Ford)

Get to work!

Photo @ 2008 Ana Yturralde