Steve McCurry Exhibition Santa Cruz de Tenerife

It’s happened to me before, but only a handful of times in my life; being aware that I am in the presence of greatness, someone of talent so far above the norm that I want to hold my breath. It’s happened to me with musicians and singers, activists and speakers, even from time to time with politicians, and last night it happened with photographer Magnum Steve McCurry. He who is best-known outside of people who are interested in photography, travel or news stories, for his picture of the striking Afghan girl with the haunting, green eyes, and most famous for his work with National Geographic perhaps. That’s  a wonderful portrait, but only one of many in this exhibition,  which is clearly a work of love, from the heart as well as the camera of a man in love with life and all its variety.

Caja Canarias is hosting another of its wonderful spring seasons of exhibitions, debates, talks and movies, this year entitled, as last year, Enciende la Tierra (which probably best translates as Light on the Earth, or Focus on the Earth perhaps) and a retrospective of Steve McCurry’s work is a part of it. It opened Tuesday night, and last night McCurry gave a talk with slides of his work.

Seeing these pictures, some of which are so familiar, in life size is an inspiring experience, hearing some of the stories which lay behind them is fascinating; like that the iconic Afghan girl was very shy about being photographed, and how her teacher persuaded her to pose. How it is forbidden to photography women once they reach puberty, which accounts for the tender age of many of his subjects.

He says that he doesn’t consider himself to be a “color photographer” and yet he uses color in ways in which no other photographer I know does. It seems as if he seeks it out, but he denied it, more than once. Between his words in the exhibition and the spoken word last night emerged the image of a man on a mission to celebrate the world, even, very often in its squalor, or at least what seems to us in the “West” as squalor.

His portraits of grubby children, wizened men and women, or shy young girls are, simply,  without compare.  They capture the essence of the subject so strikingly, and you focus first on the character in the faces, and then, after looking for a long while, you are aware that the child has a runny nose, or the old woman’s skin is smeared with dirt……so you see the beauty first, and the poverty second. They are people and not statistics. His own quote on this subject?  ”If you wait, people will forget your camera and the soul will drift up into view.”

His landscapes almost always include people, and you wonder at how he managed to be there at just the right moment to capture the light or a particular movement, and then you hear that he traveled for days with a caravan of camels or repeated a boat journey day after day, until he got the shot which has become iconic, and you can only wonder that a normal mortal has that kind of patience.

His speaking style is very, very informal, more like chatting than lecturing, and almost nervous. He was gracious in his thanks to everyone, not forgetting the translators and backstage workers. I felt it when he didn’t immediately elicit the audience response for which, I think, he hoped. That was because the audience was mostly listening to the translation on headphones, so however good the translation there were seconds of delay in the meaning of what he said being clear. Most of the questions in the question and answer session afterwards were fairly predictable, like how did he feel about taking photos of suffering. The answer is that it’s his job to tell us about it, to tell the story for people who can’t tell if for themselves, to bear witness. Or how often had he been in danger, he actually, modestly played that down if you know anything about him.

One answer I liked was that he thought the internet, modern communications, mobile phones etc were great; that if a photographer could use the internet to promote their work and bring it to the world’s attention, then that was cool, and not an insult to traditional photojournalists. I had to stifle a cheer for that of course. He has his own blog  which is http://stevemccurry.com/blog .

He also doesn’t appear to be nostalgic for film. I had the feeling that perhaps the questioner was expecting a different response, a sadness at the change of direction in photography, a longing for the past, but no, he works exclusively in digital mode now, and loves its convenience and versatility. These were really refreshing answers from a guy who is, end of the day, a baby boomer! No dwelling on days of yore but a enthusiasm for the present and the future. You could say I was in double heaven, two of my favorite themes, photography and ageism being addressed in one!

The other thing which emerged, and which some friends will cheer, is that he considers himself in equal parts nomad and photographer. There was a quote to that effect alongside some his photos, but in Spanish I can’t remember exactly how it was, but that is the essence. He considers himself born to travel, and even if he couldn’t take photographs any longer he would still travel. Butterflies in my stomach at that!

Today I’m still a little on cloud 9, wondering if he really was just a few feet away from me last night; resisting the temptation to drive up into the mountains today (because he mentioned that he might be going up there with a view to coming back one day to take photos) in case I might “bump into” him, because last night I just dried up at the thought of asking him a question, although I had a half dozen whirling around my head. I tend to get all tongue-tied, and to do that in front of an audience would have been a killer!

One thing for sure, I’ll be returning to the exhibition a few more times before it finishes! If you’re interested in photography, travel or curious about how others live, or simply about life the exhibition is on until the end of June at the Caja Canarias in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

Hot Winds & Sahara Sand

I knew that something had changed since our morning walk, when I stepped over the threshold yesterday evening, even before my other senses kicked in, there was a warmth on my skin that I’d missed for months now. As I descended the half dozen steps from the front door the lack of wind was startling. El Médano is famous for its wind; it’s the wind and kite surfers’ town, for goodness sake. Then I glanced over to where Montaña Roja should have been, and it wasn’t there, or at least not that I could see.

Years ago there was an episode of “The Twilight Zone” in which the folk of a normal, middle-class American suburb wake to a thick fog. The citizens driving off into it on their way to work in the city all return, because the fog is so deep and impenetrable that they are afraid. It turns out that the entire suburb had been whisked off to another planet by aliens, and the fog is to discourage them from venturing outside their zone. That program always, always comes to mind when we have a calima this dense.

Calima is what this is, not fog, nor mist, but dust; so thick in the air that you can taste it. It’s known as polvo en suspensión (suspended dust) here. I should have known when I woke with painful sinuses. They are my personal barometer, but when we walked along the beachfront I didn’t notice it that much. It did cross my mind the day before, when I heard the weather forecast – high winds on the eastern islands, those closest to Africa. Yet all day I was working away indoors and didn’t notice the wind drop, nor the light become translucent.

Winds from Africa bring sand and dust from the Sahara, and when the winds abate it hangs in the air ominously. There is often a mild scattering hanging around, veiling the farther mountains so that their features merge and become indistinct, but it’s a couple of years now since I remember a calima this heavy, and in 25 years I could count on my hands the number I’ve seen. The worst lasted a couple of weeks, but often they disappear miraculously after a few days, sometimes overnight even. They are most common around this time of year.

The horizon was lost in the haze, but this paddle surfer was taking advantage of the unusually calm waters to practice his sport. Doesn’t he look like a phantom emerging from the water!

It’s especially bad news this year because the last thing this parched and arid south east coast landscape needs is dust. The flora everywhere is already skeletal and dirty-looking.  It’s been about a year since it rained, and whilst that might sound wonderful to those of you further north, or even here in the holiday resorts, it’s sad to see the hillsides looking so barren and forlorn. Usually at this time of year they are dressed in their springtime best for a while until the sun god takes his toll again. In Gran Canaria reservoirs are said to be 26% down on their normal capacity. Hopefully, our underground reservoirs in Tenerife can take the strain. Even when the sun is bright on the coast,   the swirling mountain mists and trickle their water into the porous, volcanic earth which seeps into the caverns below.

Compare the photos below. The first one of each scene was taken yesterday evening, and the following one is a shot taken from a similar position  at around the same time on a normal day.

This morning there is breeze in El Médano, and although the sun is ghostly behind the dust, it’s not so dense as it was last evening.  The tv is advising those of us with allergies to stay indoors as much as possible over the weekend, so by Monday we should be back to normal.

Hiking Days of Innocence

My friend, Shelia, from Rambling On (a great blog, btw) recently posted a picture on her Flickr account of her younger self hiking. She commented on the clothing (including a very cute hat!), and the lack of technical gear……and whoosh! I was hurtling down memory lane as if it was a roller coaster.

You see, I can remember my first “proper hike” as if it was yesterday, which is odd in one way because there are others which I’m sure I should remember and don’t. Still…….

It was the summer of 1958, and I was eleven years old.  My life was about to take one of those sharp, unavoidable turns which seem, at that age, like jumping off a cliff. I’d passed my 11-plus, which was the exam we took at that age back then, which shunted us off into the educational direction the results indicated. I was headed for the exciting yet frightening road to grammar school. Maybe it’s because of the anticipation of the impending shift in my life, and resulting feelings of panic, that I recall this walk so clearly.

Until this point, my vacations had been passed in Halifax, Yorkshire  with my grandmother’s family. My vacation pattern was another part of my life on the cusp of change.  My next  summers would be spent in the English Lake District, since my aunt, uncle and cousin had moved there a short time before. Halifax, although surrounded by magnificent countryside, was then very industrial, whereas Bowness-on-Windermere, in the now defunct county of Westmorland,  was a quiet village, which attracted its share of Sunday afternoon drivers, but not the gridlock a 21st century bank holiday produces. My cousin went to the village school, where all the children of the community were accommodated in just one class, so few were there.

It must have been a weekend that we ventured forth, because my aunt and uncle both worked during the week, and it was still considered necessary that Glenn (two years younger than I) and I had my grandmother as a kind of nanny.  Looking back, she must have been younger than I thought at the time, but I guess at 11 it’s normal to think that one’s grandparents are older than the hills. I do remember that I was making life difficult for her. My rebel without a cause phase was about to begin, but all I knew then was that I was insulted by her presence.  I considered myself quite “grown up” and not in need of a babysitter. She wasn’t one of those “fun” grandmas, she appeared quite austere, not very communicative, and always looking for the danger in anything we wanted to do (she had her reasons I now know), so her negative pull felt like being trapped in a spider’s web.This made our weekend hike even more appealing – it was heaven to be outdoors with my aunt and uncle, both of whom I hero-worshiped in my way.

I remember parking the car by a stream near Rydal Water, and climbing over a stile into what seemed another world. Although Yorkshire’s wild scenery is stunning, I’d always seen it from a distance;   hilltops glimpsed from second-floor windows; vistas passed through and seen through the steamed-up windows of buses, and now here I was in the real heart of the English countryside- I already knew Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” by heart, and here I was, treading in his footsteps, even though it wasn’t, granted, daffodil season. Instead of daffodils there was knee-high bracken, and there was still enough of the child in me to know that under bracken leaves you may find fairies hiding.

This particular spot is less wild than many parts of the Lake District National Park, and it was a marked contrast for me after the desolate Yorkshire moors I’d seen before. The hills, tempered by the Ice Age, as I was soon to learn,  rolled off into the distance, and trees sauntered down their sides to the pretty lakes nestled in the gentle valleys.

This was the beginning of a love affair for me, with the Lake District, with Rydal and Grasmere especially. A bonus was that it brought alive  the Romantic poets, particularly Wordsworth, I was to study in the year ahead.

It was also the beginning of a love affair with walking, though back then it seemed so much easier. You simply packed a picnic, shoved it into your duffle bag, piled into the car and parked (with ease) close to where you wanted to go, and set off.  Note our attire in the following photos – totally inadequate by today’s standards! My grandmother in what was her kind of “second best” clothes, a pleated skirt and sturdy shoes, and, believe it or not, stockings! The shoes not walking shoes, but sturdy because that’s what elderly women wore, and note the ever-present handbag by her side! Can you imagine going for a hike today with your handbag hooked over your elbow Queen-Liz style?! And there’s me in cotton skirt (it was red I recall) and, well, just normal kid’s shoes – this had been a parental reaction to the cut off jeans and scuffed sneakers I’d practically lived in during the previous months, to my mother’s alarm…..going to grammar school required that I ditch the tomboy stuff in favor of more ladylike things. Auntie Dot, however, striking just the right note for the day in her woolen, tartan trews (possibly MacArthur or just a generic pattern, but I remember the green and black with a faint yellow stripe). I so envied that she was able to wear trousers – it wasn’t just as common then as you might think – I was, in later years (1966), reprimanded for turning up to a college class in trousers on a day when there was snow and ice on the ground! Our picinic is all neatly packed into that duffle bag Uncle Jim carries – no backpacks, nor daypacks, nor fanny packs back then either….and as the other man in the group, it’s Glenn who carries the ssecond bag.

This day was significant in my life too because it marked not the beginning of, but the  understanding of another love – and that was photography. I’d had a little Kodak since the previous Christmas, but I had to be careful with my use because developing was expensive, but on this vacation I was free to be as creative as I wanted, and Uncle Jim, a talented amateur photographer was a great teacher. He supervised the grouping of the photo above for me.  I can’t help thinking, as the memories wash over me, how my life might have been different had I pursued the photography he encouraged and the writing which Auntie Dot encouraged back then, instead of waiting half a lifetime to indulge. Ah, well.

As I final note I tried to find a photo of that first, Kodak Brownie, and came across this video on YouTube to amuse you :=)

Yep my first photos had been taken with my parents’ box camera, just like that one. I guess I’d shown interest and that’s why they bought me the “all-singing, all-dancing” Kodak Brownie for Christmas!

The Cave of the Wind: Tenerife Underground

Just two days ago I was sitting in my high heels under fairy lights, eating gourmet Thai food and drinking fine wine, now I am sitting in absolute darkness, somewhere under the earth’s crust.  The only sounds are a faint voice somewhere deeper into the earth, and the breathing of the folk I know are around me. Under my feet, even through my boots, I can feel sharp, volcanic stone, and my hands rest lightly on the cold ledge on which I’m sitting. The one point of reference is someone’s watch face glowing eerily in the otherwise perfect lack of light. The darkness heightens my other senses. It’s a strange and interesting feeling.

Two experiences more different are hard to imagine, but they are both part of the rich variety that is part of the magic of Tenerife, and that’s what has pulled me back every time I’ve tried to leave so far.

I’m in Cueva del Viento, the fourth largest lava tube in the world. It’s the largest lava tube in the European Union, since the first three are all located in the Hawaiian Islands, and the longest labyrinth of tubes. So far 17 kilometers have been explored. On an island famous for its caves – the native Guanches were living in caves when the Conquistadors arrived – this is special, although no signs of habitation have been found, it has revealed many other mysteries.

“These rocks, these caves, where else can you shine a light where no human’s been? There is nowhere else left on the planet to explore.”

Those are the opening words of the trailer for the movie “Sanctum”, which I saw recently. They send a thrill through me which I can’t possibly explain. We reach for the moon and study the stars and other planets, and yet there is a universe beneath us, whether under the oceans or under our feet, which we haven’t fully explored. If I could live my life over this is one thing I would love to do, explore the unknown, try to understand the links between what happened millions of years ago and now. So much of the Earth’s early history is hidden under our cities and farmlands and mountains.

In these labyrinths in Tenerife skeletons of fauna now extinct have been found, animals which must have wandered or fallen in and lost themselves in the myriad tunnels, which became their grave, including a giant lizard, never seen by human eyes. The animals which do live here, only one of which we have seen, have adapted, as cave-dwellers do, losing pigmentation, growing antennae to compensate for the lack of sight, and learning to survive for long periods when there is no food. Water does seep through and so do the roots of plants and trees for some sustenance.

Cueva del Viento (Cave of the Wind) lies just outside Icod de los Vinos, one of my favorite villages, and I even enjoy the drive, which takes just over an hour from the south. It meanders along the hillsides of the west coast, before dipping into the pretty village of Santiago del Teide and then climbs upwards again into the Teno region, possibly the oldest part of the island, before winding its way through the narrow streets of the outskirts and suburbs of Icod, where you have to pull over to let cars going in the other direction pass.

We have booked for the 11 o’clock tour.  There are four per day and numbers are limited to 16, so booking in advance is a good idea. Before we set off we are given a short talk and watch a video.  We learn that this tube is the result of eruptions of  Pico Viejo, which is the volcanic peak which rises close to El Teide in the National Park. Leaving our daypacks behind, but taking cameras, we climb aboard two mini buses which take us to the beginning of a short walk which will lead us to the cave.

When we arrive at a clearing on the forest road we are given helmets with head lights, and cosy, kind of head warmer caps in bright pink – you can judge from the photo whether we look more like Smurfs or as if we are about to pick up our knitting alongside Madame Guillotine!……and if anyone wants to send in a caption they are most welcome.

The walk, through a wood of Canary Pine, however, is all a part of the tour, as we learn to identify different types of lava, and our guide, Raico, talks about the plant life around us.  This is all to be relevant later. It’s all about the connections between life above and below ground. He speaks with passion and enthusiasm, and soon has us hanging on every word, as he throws in an odd joke and a quirky local tale about how the cave was first discovered; this last as we gather around a grating in the middle of the wood, which protects the entrance to a chasm which we lean over to see falling away into the bowels of the earth. This isn’t the entrance though.

The entrance, when we arrive, almost takes me by surprise. It certainly isn’t the showy, touristy place I thought it might be. We descend through a gap in the earth, quickly, down steps and into the yawning space beneath. We are told how to walk, picking up our feet, any shuffling would have us flat on our faces on the prickly floor, and of course, we mustn’t touch the sides of the cave unless it’s an emergency.

There are no lights along the tunnels, any “interference” with nature has been kept to an absolute minimum, hence the head lamps. There are handrails and steps only where it is essential for safety, and other than that the only sign of man is the information boards at various points to illustrate and explain what we are seeing.

These are well-done, explaining the formation of this cave and volcanic activity in general in easy-to-understand language, embellished by Raico’s knowledgeable descriptions and nuances. As well as gathering around the boards, we stop at various points where he explains how the passageway along which we are walking was formed, as fresh lava cooled quickly (within twenty to thirty minutes to my surprise) along the walls, and points out different types of rock; how this tube differs from the ones in the Hawaiian Islands; roots of the hardy Canary Pine thrusting through the ceiling or tells us about the five species of fauna known to be exclusive to this cave system.

At the end of our walk is the chasm which we had seen from above, now we are looking up and blinking at the shaft of light and the bracken trailing over its edge. This last talk informs us that this labyrinth is actually on three levels, and we learn how this can happen, basically, as new eruptions occur and new lava flows over the original tube. Sometimes the floor of the new lava system collapses onto the one below, forming a new tunnel. More information and now my head is swimming in an effort to both translate it and remember it all (there are tours in both English and German btw). After everyone has taken their snaps we turn around and head back, very reluctantly.

About half way back we hear voice ahead of us, another tour group. This is, apparently, unusual, for two groups to cross, but this is a special group from one of the cruise ships which now regularly put intoSanta Cruz. We sit on the handy shelf the cooling lava formed and wait as they pass.

Once they are gone, Raico instructs us to turn off our lights to experience how it must be to live underground, and that’s when other senses begin to stir.

It’s over far too soon. As we arrive back at the compact visitors’ center another group is heading off, this time with an  guide speaking English. We spend a little time chatting with Raico and looking at the information boards there with a new understanding. We understand better the relationship between above and below ground, about the connection between the elements and the earth, about how volcanoes are formed and what happens to the ground when they cool, and a dozen other things. Caving, for instance, which is classified as a sport-science, became popular only at the end of the 19^th century, and here, in Tenerife, began in the 1960s. An information board pays respects to the first explorers of the region.

I ask Raico if all of the information he’s given us is on the website, and he says no, because if they give too much information perhaps people won’t come, and they need people to come to fund further research and maintenance.  As yet it isn’t a protected site, (unlike the Teide National Park or the city of La Laguna, which are both World Heritage Sites) despite its status as the largest lava tube in Europe, despite the fact that there are no less than five species unique to the cave and despite the fact that skeletons of extinct fauna have been discovered there.  They hope to be able to offer more extensive tours in the near future, and we eagerly put our names down for information when it’s available.

If you are visitingTenerifeor if you live here I highly recommend you to visit, to help promote and maintain this unique witness to history. It’s a fascinating tour, and since getting there and the tour takes about half a day, you can combine it with something else in the area, or just visit one of the excellent restaurants around Icod de los Vinos. (Just one word – don’t try the one opposite to the visitors’ center – more about that another time!) It is just €15 with a discount for residents, and you need sturdy shoes and a jacket or sweater.