After a whirlwind shoot in Shanghai yesterday, I’m leaving today for a few weeks to far western China to pursue some personal projects. Internet connection will be a problem for much of the trip, so please contact me by phone at +86-13770324102. I intend to photograph a few stories including: Tibetan New Year, snow in Xinjiang, development in Xinjiang, a Hui minority wedding, and other subjects. When I return, keep watching dvafoto for pictures. Editors, let me know if you need any pictures.

Incredibly last minute announcement but I will be in New York City next week, December 21st through 23rd, for a quick visit with publications, editors and friends and to continue my project I See A Darkness. I will have new work and portfolios to share, including an under-wraps book project that will begin immediately upon my return to Serbia in January. (Did I even mention that I’m back in Seattle for the holidays? It’s been busy.)

If you are in the City and feel like meeting up to see work, see an exhibition (I’ve got Ballen, Frank, and Mosse on my schedule right now) or grab a beer, be in touch! It’ll be a crazy quick visit but it might be my only one this year.

Within the last decade backpacking has literally become a global youth movement. Every year millions of young people from first world countries travel the planet taking with them nothing more then their backpacks. They are hoping to find freedom, cultural exchanges and a lot of fun. It has become a tourist industry on its own that has developed its very own touristic infrastructure. In some places like Ko Pha-Ngan in Thailand, Arambol in Goa or Vang Vieng in Laos individual or alternative travel is no longer existing. It has been transfered into a different kind of packaged tour.”

              -Jörg Brüggemann / Same Same But Different

Jörg Brüggemann’s “Same Same But Different” tackles a subject I’ve never seen photographed before. Sure, Martin Parr’s covered tourism and others have covered the effects of travel in local communities, but this treatment of backpacking and its many idiosyncrasies feels like new ground. The viewer is presented with a world not in its natural state, but instead created, produced, for consumption by wealthy, overwhelmingly white travelers looking to experience the third world or The Orient. Phrases such as “third world” and “The Orient” seem particularly apt, both because of the baggage they entail and the sense of separation they impart. Truly, the travelers in these pictures are entirely out of place, and yet they’re surrounded by all the comforts of home. The “foreign” has been rendered familiar. A guest house in India might as well be one in Thailand or Laos; the experience remains the same.

I won’t lie and say these pictures don’t hit close to home. As an American transplanted to China, the scenes in Brüggemann’s essay are all too familiar. I’d hesitate to condemn the travelers as much as The Spinning Head, or perhaps even Brüggemann, but I understand the queasiness. Travel by itself isn’t necessarily suspect. If it were, there’d be moral concerns with leaving our apartments or houses. Confronting the unfamiliar is a necessary and vital component of daily life, and travel is an extension of that. But, the complete destruction of communities and traditions in order to cater to such a widespread phenomenon of travel as backpacking is deserving of criticism and investigation (especially as most backpackers espouse some variant of a wish for spiritual discovery when traipsing around foreign climes).

A great story confronting difficult questions.

(via Asim Rafiqui)

(And my bet is that the title comes from a particularly common piece of so-called “Tinglish,” which I’ve heard, despite having never been to Thailand.)

I’ll be in New York City for the next week for a full (and getting fuller!) schedule of meetings with editors at a variety of publications and organizations. Editors, fellow photographers, please let me know if you would like to get together between Sept. 7 and Sept. 12. I can be reached at (917) 512-3473.

Last week we had a look at Tomas van Houtryve’s brilliant and cunning pull-back-the-curtain look at North Korea called “Secrets and Lies”. Via his blog today I found this interview with the BBC World Service (which is playing today, I suppose. He also mentions it will only be available for 7 days) where he discusses his new worldwide project about the few remaining communist states Comrades Revisited and the methods (and reasoning) he used to photograph in a new way in North Korea. Have a listen, it is the first segment.

Thanks to M. Scott for all the terrific posts while I was on the road the last couple of weeks. I was showing an old friend of mine from Seattle around the region, including an awesome 10-day car trip from Belgrade to Sarajevo, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo and back. I’ll probably post some of those stories and pictures at some point, but just one for now.

Can anyone explain this to me? We were staying at this 60s-era Yugoslav hotel/resort along the Montenegrian/Albanian border called Ada Bojana. At breakfast, in the cavernous crazy restaurant, I saw this painting on the wall. This has to be a representation of Nick Ut’s infamous Vietnam photograph, right? So, but why in ‘officially sanctioned’ art in the dining room of this resort? What does it mean?? Is this common in Yugoslavian/communist ‘art’?

I’m trying to get back up to speed with posting here, I appreciate the patience (lots of catching up to do here, plus I’m photographing a lot these days). I’ll mention again that I have begun to twitter (twitter.com/mattlutton) and will muse on everything from time to time there.

First, the bad news: one of my hometown’s two daily papers, and employer to many friends and colleagues, has closed its print edition this week and is now online only in a venture to create a new model. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer as we knew it was 146 years old.
Best of luck, I really hope you get it right… both for Seattle’s sake but also because it will be a testing ground for what will probably come in many more cities (around the world). But as slate.com’s Jack Shafer points out here they’re not exactly off to a great start, and have a lot to overcome. Also notable: some of the best coverage I’ve read has been from The Stranger’s (Seattle alt-weekly) Eli Sanders at their lively blog The Slog (link to his piece from inside the newsroom on the last day). Really worth checking out this and all his other stories (you’ll have to dig a bit sorry).

Two, my favorite blog (Foreign Policy’s Passport) posted an interesting little photo-related piece about an alleged meeting between Vladimir Putin and Ronald Reagan in 1988, which has a quote/confirmation from new White House chief photographer Pete Souza in his January interview with NPR, who was along on the trip.

Next, to steal M. Scott’s thunder (he sent me the link) the New York Times Sunday Magazine from this past weekend had some pictures from the seemingly missing in action Joachim Ladefoged with an interesting-seeming article about Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and his role in current Russian nationalism. Or so I think, I haven’t had a chance to read the piece yet but I look forward to. I quite like the picture, and neither of us can remember seeing anything new from him since a piece on Iraqi refugees in Syria in the same publication awhile ago. Looks like
his website has been updated too … so have a look (I will as soon as I find a decent internet connection..)

Also I was sent a link to a new piece in the New York Times international section from Moises Saman about Peru’s Cocaine War. The pictures are terrific, especially this one above which closes the story.

Someone just posted about this but thought I’d also share: Medecins Sans Frontieres (Canada) now has a picture blog. Some interesting things to see on my quick glance, including work by Donald Weber.

Lastly, I’ll share a few of my new Bosnia pictures … nothing concrete is together yet, just loosely connected random pictures for now.

I’ve been hanging out in Sarajevo this week as a bit of a respite from Belgrade and to get some reading and research done for a few new projects I’m trying to get off the ground. So, sorry for the lack of posting . Luckily we have M. Scott who keeps the great stuff coming…

I’ve got a couple of quick things to offer before my battery dies (for all its charms Sarajevo lacks decent internet places where I can take the time to actually look at stuff and post). First, for quick-hits of things I’m reading or finding interesting, that aren’t just related to photo (and thus don’t get much play on dva) I recommend subscribing to this rss feed of my postings to facebook. Yea, oldschool .. I should be using twitter .. but this is an easy way for me to share with friends stories and things that I’m digging.

Second, congrats are in order (again) to friend and inspiration Jonas Bendiksen who picked up another great prize this week. You’ll probably have to use Google Translate for that page unless you speak Norwegian… Also, I found this news out via Magnum’s new Twitter page, which features news, links and (it appears) interviews with Magnum photographers who are in the office. Very energetic.

all for now thanks

Sunday morning (real early) I left cozy Belgrade in the pretty snow for Kosovo. Spent the first 36 hours in Mitrovica and I am now in Prishtina for a couple of days. The first anniversary of Kosovo’s independence is Tuesday. Will probably be here in Prishtina for the festivities…

Big thanks to Giulio Petrocco who let me crash on his couch last night (honestly, the best place I’ve slept in a month). Giulio’s an Italian photographer who is living in North Mitrovica with the Serbs, and he cooks some great pasta.

Will be very busy next few days but will try to write about what is happening here. Probably not too many pictures since we’re trying to publish them ‘for real’ all around… Ciao!