Freelance Photography : Bertrand Celce

Military Junkyard

Digging out of my chinese pics, I sorted out pictures shot in a dying open-air military museum, with plenty of remnants of soviet style memorabilia . I was looking at the sea and city of Qingdao from the lighthouse grounds when , walking on the dyke back to the mainland, I noticed this dicreet museum on the side, along the harbour piers .
As chinese cities are being swiftly renovated , this place could be one of the next casualties of the local haste for revamping the city landscape and infrastructures .
This grey rusting plane has a "Casablanca" touch . Except that it never saw Humphrey Bogart . This Ilyouchine-14 military transport plane was one of four planes sent to Mao by leaders of the Soviet Union as a gift for Mao's 65th birthday . Retired from active duty only in 1991 .

This museum lies in the outskirts of the town, with harbour facilities and a few industries not yet moved away nearby . Views like this one are stunning . I love this sort of worn-out industrial landscape . It has some great hidden beauty I'm not sure people are fully aware of : A water tank , a lone chimney, the back of a giant board, a (not-water) tank ... And a few cypresses that punctuate the scene .

As families stroll among the dozens of aircraft, missiles, floating mines and other repainted ordnance, I wonder at the colour alliances of roses with the faded-out colours of the diverse chinese and soviet military products .This place has an uncertain future . Even if the chinese authorities like to play the patriotic tunes of the maoist era, they are probably aware of the potentially counter-productive effects of this sort of worn-out open air museum . Especially now , in a time where it seems so easy to build new and shiny buildings . Plus , this prime location, facing the Qingdao lighthouse and the sea, must have caused some head-scratching among the hotel and property developers .

Winter in Burgundy

Semur en Auxois , Burgundy

We left the capital by a grey rainy day to spend a few days in Burgundy . Burgundy is nice in winter . This is a cold country . Grey . Sometimes white . But stone cold . Cold is getting its way in the earth and fields and woods . People have these thick old houses to keep warm .

Going through places , you smell the fireplace and the burnt wood just by walking in the streets . This is a time of the year people enjoy staying inside . Like the life of the trees and plants takes refuge in the roots , people stay indoors and wait for the cold thing to pass .

Semur en Auxois is a medieval town in a part of Burgundy called "Auxois" . The town is impressively beautiful and we like the old big cobble stones on its streets . We stopped for some patisserie , spent some time in a cozy bookstore . It was warm there . Read pages at random in some of the books displayed .

Shanghai pics

Sichuan Lu in the eveningThis picture sums up the two wheelers range in the chinese cities streets : From right to left : A motorbike , a bicycle and an electric scooter . These electric scooters are amazing . They are everywhere , of course completely noiseless . At first I did'nt realize they were electricity powered . Just thought the person had cut off the engine to spare gas . But then, looking as they were gathering speed again , I understood . At a visit at a local branch of the Carrefour supermarket chain , I saw new electric scooters starting at about 1200 Yuan ( or 120 Euro) , and new bicycles at 129 Yuan ( 12 Euro ! ) . Crowds of bicycles are still the norm all over China ( including Shanghai ) but other two-wheelers take a bigger share everyday . Waiting on the subway platformI think we westerners are liked very much in China , and I don't think only to these beautiful young women that came at my side while I was walking, to exercise their english . Several little things tell me that we are positively viewed . One of these things was the countless occasions young chinese asked me to pose among them for a picture . Typically , I would pose near 1 or 2 girls , then 1 or 2 other so that each in the friends group could have her/his souvenir . Sometimes I even saw (I acted as if I did'nt see anything) them discreetly coming near me while the other took the picture. There was plenty of place everywhere to pose with the beautiful given background , but they chose me ... Maybe I have some resemblance with Da Shan ( Real name Mark Rowswell ), this canadian national who became a star here after a first appearance on the chinese TV in the early eighties .... But anyway , when I come back to France and don't find the same reception here , I just ask myself : Did I change so much ?!
This pic on the left shows a man working _all the place seems to be remodelled all the time_ with a billboard in the back . Most billboards are about brands , cell phones , and othe consumer goods . This one looks more like the ones they had 40 years ago . The transition between these two different billboard culture is interesting . One thing remains from the former : The huge size of the billboards and the brightness of the colors .

Good News

Barges , cranes on the Huangpu river ( Shanghai )... Yes , I'm back , and the pictures are OK... When you take pictures far away, working mostly non digital like this time , there is always a doubt about the pics . You sometimes idealize the pictures you shot , sometimes underestimate them . So when the day comes to check the pictures back home at the lab , you really come down with reality . I have always wild thoughts about shutter opening only half of its course , things like that . But mostly the result is OK , even if it is hard to be fully satisfied .
Shanghai is there with her bright lights , dim lights , broad avenues , narrow streets , its human tides, the Huangpu river and its typical harbour smell, the Bund chiming clock in the old Customs House , and its melody every 1/4 hour (giving the place a London Big Ben atmosphere), ship horns , sputtering engines of old barges ...
My place being very close to the Bund and the river , I litterally breathed this atmosphere . And liked it . This town has a lot of energy and the Huangpu pumps even more air & blood into it. Hundreds of boats and ships of all kind going up and down, barges , tankers , freighters , day cruise boats , small old boats with their tchouc-tchouc old belt engines smoking and visible at the back . Early in the morning , like between 6 and 7 , people doing tai-chi or gym . At night , all the lights of boats and buildings ... Shanghai . View from the hotel

Jewish Cemetery in Wroclaw

Between two clouds, came the light

When I learned there was a jewish cemetery in Wroclaw (formerly Breslau in Prussia ) that was kept untouched and overrun by vegetation as a museum since the war , I thought I had to go see it .
First time I discovered a central european cemetery with jewish graves was in Chernovtsy , in Ukraine , then the Soviet Union . I was travelling with friends in a rented black Volga M24 and we had stopped near a long wall with a breach in it in the suburb . I had peered the treasure through the hole and suggested a look . Inside , it was a maze of all kind of graves , jewish , german , old russian and ukrainian, soviet graves with red stars... all of that in a dense and wild vegetation as if forgotten for years . Had time to take a few pics , but on the other side of the road was another long wall : A military facility , and while I was looking at the graves , guards had come to the car and asked my friends to leave immediately .This short first experience left me a deep impression that I kept in memory when I decided to visit the Wroclaw cemetery . As you wander in the alleys , every detail , names or things written on the tombstones make you think to the 30's and 40's around here .

I took the tram for Slezna street , missed the stop but eventually found the long and high wall , then the door . This was to be a travel through History , back to Breslau , Prussia, 60 years ago , when this cemetery was last active . I paid the 7 Zlotys to the guard , who proposed me booklets in german about the history of the place . Inside the wall , the first time I came , I was alone . Very impressing .Detail on a tombstone

Back from Poland

Stairs to Platform in Wroclaw Station

Just back from an assignment in Poland . Been in several cities and places there . The country left me an impression of youth , dynamism and modernity . If some european countries are on the decline , certainly not Poland . It is both a modern country with a booming economy ( as it seems ) and a quiet and traditional one . What strikes the visitor is everyone , from all age , has a cell phone , internet cafes are common and affordable ( 3 Zl an hour , or 0,7 Euro ) , and young people are often fluent in english . War has left big scars , with many historic city centers reduced to several blocks , then come the drab housing blocks built in the 50's and 60's , that they happily sometimes recently painted with nice colors . And even what looks like historic city centers have often been rebuilt from scratch after complete WW2 destruction .The unsuspecting tourist may think this part of town never suffered that bad . Churches are in use , even on weekdays and services are held at different times of the day . It is not uncommon to see young women and men enter to join the assembly . Their train system is efficient . The fastest train , the IC ( Inter City ) is the equivalent of our "train corail" in France , except the service is better . A young woman does all the train at the beginning of the journey with a cart to serve for free: bottled water , coffee , tea , with a biscuit bar . French retailers are massively present here , all the big names ( Carrefour , Auchan , Leclerc, Geant , Leroy Merlin , Castorama ) have built supermarkets in most suburbs of polish towns . But small retailers like the many kiosks that were in use in the communist times  are still there , selling all kind of things . In the cities , an avid consumering culture has taken hold , with gleaming commercial centers here and there and all the usual brand stores seen elsewhere in Europe . I discovered Poland has an exceptional shoe industry with many different designs & styles . I bought some and am now a fan of polish shoes . They love dogs , that are often muzzled ( by law I presume ) .

Remember

Steel structures in the foreground

As the anniversary nears , and that we think to the victims of vicious killers that day, here are a few pictures I took in the early eighties , during my first stay in New York city . I did not like very much the buildings, by the way , but had them several times framed for my photographic work .

*****

Somebody said "If you can do it in New York , you can do it everywhere" . As I did many other places at that time , I hitch-hiked in the North East , to and from NY , and slept in various places , with valuables & cameras in a locker at the Greyhound terminal . I ended up sleeping at this very terminal on 42nd street , in a quiet spot I discovered . 42nd St and 8th Ave was an experience , especially in the evening .

Fountains of Provence

Someone is relaxing in a courtyard... In inner Provence in summer , nothing better than a fountain to get refreshed and to quench your thirst . These few pictures were all made in a village named Besse sur Issole , but could have been shot in virtually any provencal village as public fountains are part of the traditional landscape there .I love this plane tree they sort of "repaired" with bricks... Besse has 12 fountains scattered across the village . Besse sur Issole is also reknown for having been home to Gaspard de Besse , the "brigand gentillomme" , a sort of Robin Hood highwayman (1757-1787) Fountains in Provence, more than anywhere else, are witnesses of the great strides in modernizing the french provinces in the past centuries . The 3rd republic in the 19th century is the major time for fountains erections as public equipment . This was at the time the sign of progress, like today audacious bridges, highway interchanges ... There are all kinds of fountains, some simple and separated , some built against a house , some with four sides, also some made of cast iron that you operate with a rotative movement . Some reflect the political urges of the time , with odes to the "Republique"engraved on them ... I got lost in the narrow streets to find most of the fountains . Alone, as B. was waiting somewhere in the shadow and the village was sleepy and waiting for the heat to pass .

Un Beau Mariage

This is a nice wedding in a nice little french town in the Loire Valley . Thibault , my nephew , marries Clarisse . The weather was supposed to be clouded with rainstorms and it turned out to be sunny with a lighr breeze .We arrived the day before , relaxed in the place , took time to dress . I needed some help for my necktie ( bought a few days ago ) , being not really used to wear one . A wedding is the sum of two persons , but also of the work of many others , brothers , sisters , parents , and of all the guests , each of them bringing his/her own touch .

Ordinary 14 Juillet

14 Juillet Parade in a village near Valencay July 14 th was unexpectedly sunny and warm , following rainy , windy , and colder than usual days .in France . Have you often lit up a wood cookstove around july 14 th in this part of the world . I have .Temperature at night was just something like 8°C , wich is not bad when you sleep in a warm bed . Then suddenly , a bright sunny day , just in time for the ceremonies staged in every town and village in France . The transition from rain to sun offered huge rainbows , like this one the day before . Was on the bike at that time , and although I hate rain while riding , couldnt but stop, take off my helmet and shoot under the rain for a few rainbow pics . Because every village has its own National Day festivities , with its "Fanfare" and firemen parading its streets , you can go anywhere in France at that time of the year and have a fun . Some have the "Bal Polulaire"(dancing in the open) , and the fireworks scheduled the 13 th , some the 14 th , wich lets you enjoy two festive evenings , jumping the next evening in another village for more "fête" . Motherly preparation for the parade Is it increased revolutionary fervor or the efficiency & affordability of the chinese fireworks industry , but you see these in every town and small village nowadays . And the technique & artistic quality improves , allowing an entertainment as long as 20 minutes of uninterrupted splendor . Usually held in an open space near the village , every generation is present as early as 10 pm to watch the 11 pm fireworks . Thrill of excitement in the chill of the night .