The White Tulip / opening party

The White Tulip is a florist shop in Miami Beach's stylish South Beach district. I shot the opening with fast lenses and no flash. The DJ was drag legend Elaine Lancaster.

Jai Pakistan . . . Jai Democracy!

Snuffing out the Constitution, muzzling the press, arresting liberal lawyers, firing the Supreme Court, outlawing public gatherings of more than three people, beating up protesters, suspending elections -- all in the name of protecting the nation from terrorism . . .

Meanwhile -- even as the Pakistani police, army and spy agencies imprison the moderate, secular, cosmopolitan, and democratically-oriented professional people and human rights activists -- the fanatical jihadis, the Taliban and Al Qaeda all grow stronger in the rough mountains of the Northwest Frontier Province. Now the extremists have even become powerful in the splendid resort valley of Swat, not to mention in the major cities like Karachi and Lahore.

Crushing Pakistan's democratic elements under the boot of the army will only strengthen the terrorists.

A growing democracy with economic opportunity, education and equality before the law is the best antidote to Islamo-fascism, but Musharraf is going in a tragic direction. It's horrible to see democracy being strangled in its crib. Even worse is to see anti-democratic encroachments on our own Constitution and Bill of Rights here in the United States, all supposedly for the same reason: to fight terrorism.

But here, too, our unfettered American democracy with its Bill of Rights, guaranteeing freedom of speech and assembley, due process, and right of privacy from government spying -- our profound civil liberties as conceived by the Founding Fathers remain the world's best defense against tyrants of any stripe, foreign or domestic.

We must stand for democracy here and abroad. This is an historic moment of enormous consequence. We must stand for democracy with all our hearts. This is what those patriotic songs they taught you in school and the Pledge of Allegiance are about: freedom and justice for all, the land of the free and the home of the brave, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

I made the above image more than 20 years ago in Lahore, Pakistan, the artistic capital of the Punjab -- the land of the five rivers -- at the monumental Moghul fort there; these mosaics are more than 350 years old.

Jai Pakistan -- Long live Pakistan! Jai Democracy -- Long live Democracy!

Sleepless in Miami

Saturday night Miami Beach was more interesting than usual with art installations and live performances all over town nearly until dawn -- part of what was billed as a $400,000 "Sleepless Night" of culture.

Hookers were still click-clacking in their heels on Collins Avenue; and clueless teenagers, hip-hoppers and twenty somethings were still lining up to get into overpriced clubs on Washington guarded by hulking bouncers in suits -- a far cry from the glorious times of yesteryear (some 15 years ago) when the clubs were still cool, the crowds hipper, and achingly beautiful women in drop-dead gowns or drag queens in wings -- door goddeses they were called -- guarded the doors, deciding who'd get in.

Anyhow, the lure of the neon got to me, so I took some fast lenses (a 50mm f1.4; a 28 f1.8; and a 135mm f2) plus a 17- megapixel Canon 1Ds Mk3, and walked about for couple hours.

I shot architecture more than people -- though there were some cute kissing couples in Plaza de España, where Dana Keith's great Miami Beach Cinematheque put on an outdoor showing of the 1929 Surrealist classic Un Chien Andalou accompanied by a live performance of a flamenco troupe.

Even so, it was the architecture, the approximately 70-year-old Art Deco architecture, that drew me the most; and I photographed it handheld, mostly with the 28mm wide-angle, and then made the perspective more rectalinear in Photoshop, adjusting away distortion and making the lines more true.

The Sigma lens, the 28, is big and heavy, and I didn't think it would be very sharp wide open -- but it was, and yet had a creamy quality, abetted by some High Dynamic Range post-processing I dd in Photoshop.

I hadn't shot with my fast lenses for a long time -- I've been using f2.8 and f4 zooms and tilt-shift lenses mostly. But this was a return to my roots: I used to do photojournalism with a fast 50, a 28, and a 135; I love those focal lenghts.

The Temple of Taleju

Bought a new flatbed scanner -- and scanned some old prints I made in a chemical darkroom years ago. Here's one from Kathmandu.
In the background rises the Temple of Taleju -- the goddess who's the protective deity of Nepal's royal family. The temple is exclusively for the use of the king and his priests, except for one day a year, when the public is allowed to enter. Built by King Mahendra Malla in 1564, the great pagoda is 120 feet tall, the highest structure in the old city's series of palace-temple-market squares.

Nepal is Beautiful

Remember slides? I still have tens of thousands of 'em -- and every once in a while I digitize some of my favorites.

Here's one's from Nepal:



The woman in the crimson sari is performing a puja, or prayer rite, at the gilded, Hariti Devi pagoda temple on the outskirts of Kathmandu, at a stupendous Hindu-Buddhist temple complex named Swyambhunath, also called The Monkey Temple because of a troop of some 250, semi-wild, sacred, Rhesus monkeys who live amongst the forest and shrines on the hill, overlooking the entire valley.

Hariti is the Hindu goddess of smallpox and other epidemics; and people pray to the goddess for her protection. To Buddhists, she is Sitala, a mother goddess and protector of children.

It's interesting to scan the old slides, and see how even the best ones have less resolution and less detail than the digital images we shoot today.

Versace Shot Dead

Nine years ago today, on July 15, 1997, a madman pumped two bullets into Gianni Versace's face and neck, and the great designer fell dead on the doorstep of his Miami Beach mansion, his blood and brains congealing on the pink steps to his palazzo.

A few minures later, the Washington bureau of a German television network telephoned me asking for quotes and information about Versace -- I spoke with them, then threw a camera bag across my shoulder and sped on my bicycle to Versace's mansion, just a half mile from my studio. The TV choppers and paparazzi were already there in force, buzzing noisily around the scene.

I made some pictures from the street before the police cordonned it off and put all the media beyond a yellow tape across the street. Versace's body was gone.

Versace loved South Beach and it loved him. His presence here had been good for business, too; and his murder, while not the cause of South Beach's decline, hastened it.

People talk about the bloody steps at the scene of the crime, but it wasn't just blood -- it was Versace's brain, his beautiful brain, splattered across the steps that sunny morning, the sticky gray matter dripping and congealing on the coral rock stairs. It was ghastly.

Fourth of July Special