La Gacilly photo festival, France

The biggest outdoor photo festival in France - http://www.festivalphoto-lagacilly.com/ - over 200.000 expected visitors.
I am showing my story on the Afghan Kyrgyz. Here a couple of snapshots from "my section", it will be up until mid-September 09.

What to do with rotten teeth?

Here the answer, at the bazaar today.

Sopa Award

If that talks to you, I just won the Society of Publishers in Asia's award for "Excellence in Feature Photography". It went to a story I shot in Pakistan, Hunza ( titled "A World Away" ) in Oct. 2007, published in Destinasian in 2008.
They went quite lyrical on the comments: "Simply stunning photos, the kind that leap off the page and invite you to walk into them. Gorgeous images from a far-away land I know I'll probably never get to, but now at least can dream about."

Back to the KGB office...

Fill me up on Central Asia.

Hospitality is non-stop in Central Asia - it is a constant given in Tajikistan. Salty milk tea, fresh yoghurt, always candies, maybe eggs, butter and all delicious milky derivatives such as cream and cottage cheese and more milk tea with sugar and flat bread to spread cheery jam on, add some fried fish and you better get up and start walk up that mountain again... that is if you managed to avoid the first vodka shot that always somehow comes with the entire bottle.

Have a click on this:

Belly full of flowers: a dead ibex in the river.

Donkey trekking will come, but for now, a cute memory: in sept. 2003, we were trying to get over an un-previously crossed pass, the Wodwashk pass in a remote valley in Pakistan, on the borders of Afghanistan and China. As the trek might bring a new way between 2 valleys, we had no option but to go with the "Nambardar", the village head - a worryingly inexperienced man when it came to mountain trekking - he would head straight into the crevasse area. As we neared the pass and it started to snow, I got terribly sick: a bad case of diahrrea.
A bit further that day we found a dead ibex in the stream I had drank off the day before. I pointed that out to the Nambardar who responded with a pitiful face "Well that can't be it: ibex only eat flowers, there is just no way to get sick from a dead Ibex!".

The view below Wodwashk pass:

Matthieu is roaming in Gorno Badakhshan

I am heading to the far end of Tajikistan's Gorno Badakshan region, near the China border, all geared up with tent and powered by an old russian jeep.
I will be back in a week, 10 days. Let's talk about donkey trekking in the Hindukush when I am back: whatchyouthink?

Some links, des liens.

I make the eventual "Matthieu Paley" google search to see where I am on the web. A few things showed up over the last couple of months, voila:

- I am happy about my recent win of PDN Photo Annual 09, the Marty Forscher price for Humanitarian photography.

- Blog of New York Times magazine, a short text from James Estrin, talking about VII agency and my website.

- And there is another link about La Gacilly festival taking place in France for 3 months (June-September). I have been selected to exhibit outdoor large format images.

- I got honorable mention at the NY Photo Festival, in the Editorial Photographic Series.

- From the "Travel Photographer", a write up on my multimedia "Pakistan Love Parade".

Voila for now, off...

Tasteless crops.

Please try and enjoy the few tasteless background images on my current homepage.

This one is from Tajikistan, Dushanbe - they were shooting a music video and the model took off her shoe to get her feet in the nearby lake.

This is a funny one: a russian fisherman fishing in a hole on frozen Baikal. It's winter, and in Siberia it means it's probably -20C. I was nicely zipped in my dawn jacket and these guys were heated from inside, bare chested on the vodka: bare chested! This is a couple of other one from that lot.



Tajik fashion - always interesting to see what defines beauty in other faraway lands. Real Tajik beauty must sport unified eyebrows and golden teeth. I guess it's an acquired taste.

In China, trying on the hippopotamus at "Windows of the world" attraction park in Shenzhen.

Last one is a detail from a Mongolian wrestler getting ready to enter the ring.