Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/08/27
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Peter Dzwig wrote: > > I took Daniel's suggestion and went along to the > NPG. The exhibition, though > small, is absolutely fascinating. If you are over > here while it is running > (until end October) and looking for a way to spend > an hour or two in London then > I recommend it to you. > > For the record Freya Stark's Leica is a III, serial > number 230857. Both of these women have been big inspirations to me, Stark (a professional traveller) perhaps more than Bell (a major political player). I've spent many years retracing their journeys. Together with men like T. E. Lawrence and Wilfred Thesiger, they produced some extraordinary works documenting in words and pictures the rural and tribal peoples of the Middle East. Bell's "The Desert and the Sown" is a good read. A fine biography of her, "Desert Queen," was published just a few years ago and I recommend it. Stark wrote many books. The best are about southern Yemen. I have used her stories as my guides when travelling through that region, which has hardly changed since when she was there. I just missed meeting Stark at the Hotel Baron in Aleppo (Syria) not long before she died. They say she was lively right up to the end. I was more fortunate to get to know Thesiger over the course of several years, before he died just recently. He was personally complex in many of the same ways that Riefenstahl was/is, yet I still admire him for his pioneering works. Those crazy English women (and men) who rode around the desert with their cameras 70-80 years ago were a bunch of extraordinary characters the likes of which I suspect we will never see again. Emanuel Lowi Montreal ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca