soura soura
On our trip with Yemeni Dreams we ended up crossing paths with Mamo, Natasha, Matjaz and Ana, a bunch of longtime travel friends. Matjaz and Ana are Slovenian ("Cellphonian" according to Jamal) and Mamo and Natasha live in Torino. Brothers in arms Mamo and Matjaz have traveled the world behind their lenses. Bolivia, India, "PNG" (Papua New Guinea), Morocco, Scotland, Mali, Kashmir - you name it, they've shot it - and mainly Tibet. Beautiful stuff on Matjaz' website.
Yet Yemen did not let them down.
Yemenis have seen generations of (European) photographers passing through their country in search of the authentic Arabia, pointing shutter machines at their faces, clothes, daggers, houses, mountain towns, terraces.
We encountered opposite attitudes to the camera. In the remoter parts of Socotra and the Hadramawt, people tend to have a supersticious fear of the lense. Opening my handle bar bag would be enough to scatter a bunch of kids behind available rocks or trees. But around Sana'a and in the Haraz mountains, where we traveled with Mamo and Matjaz, everyone wants to be on the soura it seems. "Soura soura!" resonating across the valleys wherever the Soura Santas passed...
Dida and Omar with personal variations of the soura sign.
Matjaz hunting for award winning shots with his widelense bazooka. Fortunately not too many other kids around this time - usually Matjaz' left arm is pushing the less photogenic ones out of the frame. A lousy job, being a photographer in the corners of the world, but someone's got to do it...
More soura moments - Mamo at work at the qat market, and Matjaz adjusting a Kalashnikov at Jbel Shougrouf.
Hanging out with the four of them was a lot of fun, especially when the shutters were silent, and the batteries recharging. Their obsessive dynamics had a relaxing quality - watching them interact over the New Year's Eve beach dinner felt like a piece of theater unfolding in front of us. With an honorable mention for Matjaz' hilarious inventory of worldwide toilets - "Mamo Mamo remember that one on the border of Pakistan and Iran?"...
Yet Yemen did not let them down.
Yemenis have seen generations of (European) photographers passing through their country in search of the authentic Arabia, pointing shutter machines at their faces, clothes, daggers, houses, mountain towns, terraces.
We encountered opposite attitudes to the camera. In the remoter parts of Socotra and the Hadramawt, people tend to have a supersticious fear of the lense. Opening my handle bar bag would be enough to scatter a bunch of kids behind available rocks or trees. But around Sana'a and in the Haraz mountains, where we traveled with Mamo and Matjaz, everyone wants to be on the soura it seems. "Soura soura!" resonating across the valleys wherever the Soura Santas passed...
Dida and Omar with personal variations of the soura sign.
Matjaz hunting for award winning shots with his widelense bazooka. Fortunately not too many other kids around this time - usually Matjaz' left arm is pushing the less photogenic ones out of the frame. A lousy job, being a photographer in the corners of the world, but someone's got to do it...
More soura moments - Mamo at work at the qat market, and Matjaz adjusting a Kalashnikov at Jbel Shougrouf.
Hanging out with the four of them was a lot of fun, especially when the shutters were silent, and the batteries recharging. Their obsessive dynamics had a relaxing quality - watching them interact over the New Year's Eve beach dinner felt like a piece of theater unfolding in front of us. With an honorable mention for Matjaz' hilarious inventory of worldwide toilets - "Mamo Mamo remember that one on the border of Pakistan and Iran?"...
posted by Jan at 10:12 AM
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