Comment Gallery
Your input on reader-submitted photos is welcome. Rate the photos and add your comments — or submit your own photo. We’ll consider each of the photos for publication in the print version of Geez magazine and publish the reader’s choice (subject to editors’ discretion). Note: comments submitted here become eligible for publication, subject to editing for clarity and space.
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A Time for Everything
This photo was taken a few years ago in front of the apartment I lived in in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
“A time for everything” is partly about the sign in the window. The sign not only challenging people to question the necessity of work but also – by putting this in the window – inviting people to look at the inhabitants of this home differently. How did this household value time, value work, value money?
The picture is of course also about the gentleman and his unconventional choice of vehicle. In the Netherlands this type of bicycle, known as a “bakfiets” comes in all sorts of sizes, often used to transport children to and from school, but also used to carry larger and heavier objects. Originally these freight bicycles were used by tradesmen navigating the narrow streets of the city to deliver mail, milk, meat and more.
Here my brother Botte is preparing to move most of his belongs on this rental bakfiets to a new home on the other side of the city. The test-drive is about to take place and one must know that it is hard work to pedal a fully loaded bakfiets up bridges and stay in control of the brakes on the way down too!
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“Whoever has the most things when he dies, wins”
Submitted by M hiebert in Canada on 29th January 2011 | Culturosities |
I was volunteering in Ghana and went to a small village to drop off clothes and pencils, and saw a young boy wearing this T-shirt (probably a previous donation from a first world country). The children in that village were too poor to go to school and could not read, and so the boy was oblivious to what his t-shirt said. It was ironic in the sense that his poverty had saved him from leaning the consumerist motto of the first word.
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Building Character
Submitted by J.T. Cassidy in Yokohama, Japan on 14th December 2010 | Ways of Seeing |
Yokohama, Japan – Old wooden buildings with corrugated metal siding like this one are quickly disappearing from my neighborhood only to be replaced by bright, broad-shouldered condominiums and shiny shopping centers that draw would-be residents and shoppers like bears to honey.
Over the years time and weather have chiseled these structures into complex works of art whose beauty is overlooked or, as often is the case with great art, misunderstood. For some curious reason they can be even more imposing and much more uninviting than the brightly-lit sterile towers that so often take their place. Like all masterpieces though, the real test is time and as years pass by I’m sure they will be missed for what they are and once were.
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A Forest Blooms
Submitted by Aaron Smart in Seoul, South Korea on 13th December 2010 | Culturosities |
When cities choke out the forests, where can new trees grow?
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An Old Soul
In the middle of Insa-dong, a small, gentrified area in Seoul, South Korea that is highly publicized as a center of art, tradition, and culture, an old man sells bbeongtui (kind of like popcorn) from an old rickety cart. He can be seen beside his cart seven days per week in the same spot, trying to earn enough money to maintain the condition of his ragged shoes and his decrepit home (a 20 minute walk up the hills behind Insad-dong). But his cart is always full and I have not seen even a single person purchase the man’s food. Perhaps he, too, is just a traditional cultural icon to be observed, much like the hanboks (traditional Korean dresses) and calligraphy wall-hangings in the windows of Insa-dong’s shops. A token of a past way of life that could not be gentrified, only forgotten.
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