Brussels, March 22nd.

Thanks for the pictures, having actually walked in some of the places you shot it's a bit eerie to see it empty. Keep safe man
 
Hi Lukitas,
glad to hear you are OK.

I work in between NATO and the Airport, Maelbeek is 10 min walking distance from our flat (Ambiorix) and on the way to work for my wife.
My daughter's nursery 10 minute walk from Schuman.
We were all already at our working places yesterday and we are now all together at home and I consider myself lucky while my thoughts go to the victims, their family and friends.

Giulio

I am happy to know that you and your family are OK, Giulio.

Erik.
 
Thanks Erik, while at work yesterday I only waited for the moment to be back home with my family.
As I wrote I consider myself lucky really lucky.

Giulio
 
Our thoughts and prayers to those in Brussels, Istanbul, Baghdad and everywhere else these terrible acts happen.
 
I will never understand how people can do such terrible things to innocent people.

Our hearts and prayers go out to all of you.
 
Thanks for letting us know you survived this event.

Photos are nice but it's even better you are on the right side of these, making the photographs!
 
Would that people, one day soon, would choose to build, not destroy; to create, not extinguish; to enhance. not diminish - to respect and not despise, each other.
 
As soon as I saw there was an attack in Brussels I thought of you Lukitas. I'm glad you're safe and still making pictures. All the best from Australia.
 
The International Press swooped down into the centre of Town, in front of the bourse, where people had been writing messages of peace and love and anger on the pavement, and lighting candles. I counted nine tents with camera crews, and at least ten crews without tents. The adjacent streets were stacked with satellite trucks.

Yahoo! We're in the limelight!

Learning lines:
_R003968.jpg


_R003970.jpg


NBC :
_R003987.jpg


freelance reporter :
_R004010.jpg


_R004021.jpg


RTB :
_R004070.jpg


Le petit Journal :
_R004081.jpg


fm24 and aRBN :
_R004096.jpg


Fox News :
_R004108.jpg


Fox News, make-up :
_R004123.jpg


Fox News, on the box :
_R004158.jpg


miscellaneous press :
_R004131.jpg


_R004137.jpg


_R004147.jpg



The guys from CNN had a heavy who tried to push me away. Message to american TV-crews : "You're my guest, and I'll be happy to have a beer with you, but don't push me around, this is our place, not yours. And you're rich enough to pay for your own beer. Thank you."

Setting up the tents for the tv-crews wiped out most of the scribblings on the pavement. Unavoidable, I guess, with all those people walking around.

Cheers
 
Good work, colleague. As your other friends here have said, stay well, be safe as you can reasonably be. Trust your visual courage.

And please keep writing your critical commentaries for us (and perhaps--why not?-- for publication) alongside the images. You are a very good writer. I say that about very few people--.01-.04% qualify for that assessment, if I may repurpose your figures. Even if you have time only for short paragraph captions or reflections, what you write is likely to enrich the image (and vice versa).

As for the awful event, I hear Conrad's Kurtz whispering The horror, the horror. The victims are innocent, the empires are not. As a friend was saying, Would it make any difference if we could just give the bombers Dick Cheney's address? No. Righteous causes and revenge have danced for centuries on the graves of the innocents.
 
Would that all had survived untouched but they didn't and I'm sad. Happily, one of my favorite photographers is still reporting.
 
The horror, the horror. Thank you for that bit of Conrad.

Twenty years later, I just re-read 'Catch22', Joseph Heller. Appropriately, a sense of déjà vu strikes, déjà vu being one of the main themes of the book.

The main character (with really is you, the reader) becomes convinced everybody is out to kill him : the germans, his superiors, his flight crew and the girl friends they go and ficky fick while on permission. And the doctors too.

Rules are mired in catch 22. You have to be mad to fly and be shot at. If you're mad, you should be grounded. But if you tell them you're mad, you must be sane, because you're scared to fly. And if you're scared, you're sane, and you can't be grounded, so you'll have to fly more missions.

The brass are very confident of the importance of their rank, and profoundly insecure about the importance of their rank. Slowly and surely, they grow the number of missions that have to be flown before you can get sent home, you are always 2 or 3 missions short.

And through all these contradictory paradoxes is woven the character of Milo Minderbinder, Mess Officer, who builds a private enterprise emporium (in which everyone has a share) with the available airplanes : figs from the Lebanon, cutlets from Spain, he corners the Egyptian cotton market, buys eggs at 7 cents in Malta , to sell them for 5 cents in the mess, but that's all right, because he first bought them in Sicily at 3 cents, to sell them in Malta for 5 cents, so he's making money all the way, and that's ok, because everyone gets a share. He contracts out to the Germans to bomb and strafe the American base - with American planes, the luftwaffe having been shot out of the sky - but that is perfectly all right, because it brought an enormous profit, and everyone has a share.

Yossarian is stuck in a universe of madmen, crazy people, homicidal maniacs. And genius crooks.

Déjà vu all over again.

Belgium is selling arms to states who promote terrorism. We're getting paid for the arms that kill us.

'Catch 22' was never more up-to-date.

Cheers!
 
Went out to Orlando International Airport on a coffee and picture trip...took my new Fuji Gran Tourer along. TSA had no problem with my taking the bike inside to Starbucks so long as I was walking...fine with me too. Early in my U.S. Coast Guard "carreer" I worked in Port Security in Baltimore, Maryland. It was early, though TSA was well disbursed around the airport "Homeland Security" in different uniforms had "grouped" in the atrium...eight or so..when I asked whether they always took breaks in groups they decided to disburse...except at the food court later....the same thing...so I called my Congressman... Thwarting terrorists requires professionals at their best and sometimes a reminder about "coffee breaks."
 
Back
Top Bottom