Copsa Mica, May 26, 2008
New camera
Summer carnival Rotterdam, July 26, 2008
Got a new cam - at last, the insurance paid me out to replace the stolen one. Here are some first results I shot during the street parade of the summer carnival in Rotterdam.
Nominated!
Romania, 2007
I participated in a photo contest "Straffe Madammen", organised by Bewogen fotografen. One of these days I noticed that one of my photos has been nominated for one of the prizes. Also the public can choose a prize - you can vote for it. It is photo number 16. It would be quite nice if this photo won a prize!
Romania /43
Copsa Mica, May 26, 2008
At the moment I am quite busy printing the photos for my upcoming exhibition about Belgium beach cabins in September. I discovered that it is quite a job to cut passe partouts. I am also preparing a photobook to the exhibition.
Romania /34
Copsa Mica, May 26, 1008
Copsa Mica is probably Romania's most polluted town. A plant producing carbon black (for dyes) was established here in 1936 and consistently left everything - plants, laundry, people - covered in soot until it was finally closed in 1993; white snow was seen in 1994 for the first time in sixty years.
The other industrial plant here, the SOMETRA lead smelter, is more deadly; for thirty years it has been spraying a cocktail of twenty heavy metals over the surrounding area (and up to 50km away). Production has dropped by a third since 1990 - which has helped to reduce emissions, but has left five thousand men unemployed. Millions of dollars have been spent on filters and pollution control, dust levels have halved, and other types of pollution are now just one or two percent of previous levels.
Today the laundry can dry in the open without getting black in no time. Many houses are freshly painted. Even so it will be a long time before local people can safely eat the vegetables from their garden, before their health returns to normal - currently life expectancy is nine years below the national average and instances of tuberculosis and other lung diseases are two or three times higher than normal.
More information:
The People and Pollution of Copsa Mica
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