France Info - I am on French radio today - and also about turning my house upside down

Et voila, you can hear Regis Picard, Chief editor of France Info, talking about my recent book, "Mongolie, La route de l'horizon", followed by an interview of yours truly. Just click here...
It is part of a weekly broadcast called "Les Aventuriers".

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Regis Picard, rédacteur en Chef à France Info, parle de mon récent livre "Mongolie, La Route de l'Horizon", parut aux éditions de la Martinière, suivit d'un interview. Cliquer ici pour lire et entendre...
Cela rentre dans le cardre d'une émission hebdomadaire intitulée "Les Aventuriers".

Here below, the easiest way to really clean your house is to turn it upside down - le meilleur moyen de vraiment nettoyer sa maison, c'est de la tournée à l'envers!... C'est pas un proverbe Mongol mais ca devrait l'être. Me voila in Bayaan Olgii, Western Mongolia, 1998

Dunhill features me on Day8

Just fresh back from a 2 weeks assignment in Nepal, more about this later.
Here is something about me on the Dunhill website.

Mongolia revisited, Royal Geographical Society, Ulysses, monsters and wonder-woman

Over the last 5 days, I prepared over 130 images for print in my upcoming book on Mongolia, which will come out at the Editions de la Martinière in France, at the end of September. The color proofs are done in France but the actual book print will be done here in Hong Kong, allowing us to supervise it, which is a treat..
I have attached a few new image scans from Mongolia, including (last image) a picture of a TV screen of a movie that played in a yurt once.

After some YouTube research, I am sure it was Ulysses, from 1954, by italian movie director Mario Camerini. Just the stuff of dream I think. I had to put the link too. In the same lineage, Sindbad The Sailor from 1958, is just fantastic. The beginning of animation, and I think incredibly haunting. I am a big fan!




 Text and design of the Mongolia book is by Mareile, my wife, who is a multi-talented wonder-woman, mother, company owner, financial adviser, web designer and... passionate Pilates instructor! As some of you might know, she will be hosting a retreat in Bali from June 19th until June 26th. Have a look here.
I won't be able to join her as I will be hosting a lecture/movie screening of our Pamir movie at the Royal Geographical Society in Hong Kong around this time. Details will soon come on the venue and exact date.

Follow this link for an intrepid travel with Sindbad and the fast moving island monsters.

Planning an exhibition...

My computer is fuming. It has been handling 2 GB files as I am scanning and retouching for my upcoming solo exhibition here in Hong Kong. It is supported by the French May, who joined in at the last minute following a impromptu meeting with the people at the Alliance Francaise.

The venue will be the PictureThis Gallery, on 9 Queen's road. This gallery recently exhibited Michael Yamashita's work. Here it is, up on the French May website. In due time, I will let you all know about the opening's date etc as it has changed (it will be up on PictureThis website early next month).

And for the German speakers, something else on the web that I just found that's quite interesting, talking about how Geo Magazine and I eventually came about to do that winter Kyrgyz story in Afghanistan. Article translates to  "How we came about to do "The Forgotten". There is a picture of me holding 10 Kg of opium. We were at a Afghan dealer's house up in the High Pamir. I promise, I did not consume, too terrible of a drug. There is my buddy Ted Callahan also, the anthropologist who lived up there. For those of you who did not see the 5mn trailer of the movie (using stills...) that resulted from this assignment, here it is.

I am off to Philippines for 2 days, a worldwide book project where some 100 photographers will contribute. More when I am back!

Unfortunately, it does happen....

New "Portfolio" link on my website

I have just put a new "Portfolio" link under "Stories" on my website.
Here is a screen shot:


There is a "heavy" quote to read on the opening image, while the rest of the images load in the back: "Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did NOT do that is inconsolable." - Sydney J. Harris wrote this, an American journalist.

I figured, knowing how rushed-up some photo editors are, it would be good to have a quick picture summary, hence the Portfolio link. Tough call of course on the selection of images - it's always hard to judge my own images. I selected them thinking to 1/ show diversity and therefore avoid repetition in the image settings 2/put some new recent material 3/make it short - only 20 images. Voila, so that's done.

I will double the blog today, another one coming up.

Roof of the world

I have a few big spreads in the current issue of Le Figaro magazine, one of France's prominent magazine. You can see it here. It's titled "les afghans du toit du monde", "Afghans on the roof of the world". Why Roof of the world? Pourquoi Toit du Monde? ... et bien voila: the Pamir, or Pamirs rather, as there are several, is the original Roof of the world. Here from Wikipedia: "The name Roof of the World was first applied to the Pamirs. The British explorer John Wood, writing in 1838, described Bam-i-Duniah (Roof of the World) as a "native expression" (presumably Wakhi)." Also fascinating: Pamir highlands is the nodal point of the mountain systems of Tien- Shan, Kun-Lun, Karakoram, The Himalayas and Hindukush, and therefore called the roof of the world. Here in full.
Ah: I am ready to fight for this one. I know it's a lost battle, but Roof of the World is the Pamirs, it's the traditional, original term, and people should know that Tibet or worth, Mt Everest, is a term borrowed to the Pamir... take that!

A view of the Roof of the world and the story behind:

That's an image shot from the Tajik Air flight bringing me from Delhi to Dushanbe in 2004, flying of the Pamirs. It was in the evening and beside me Russian passengers were doing the inevitable Russian thing: having vodka shots. We were sitting face to face, like in a train, no one wearing safety belt - they were none anyway. We played cards and ended up staying in Dushanbe at the house of the guy sitting across from us.
I planned the same route to get to Tajikistan in 2008 and found out in Delhi that the flight didn't exist anymore... Damn... "Not enough donors" told me the Tajik ambassador in Delhi. "We need people to donate, you should donate so we can fly Delhi-Dushanbe!!!" And then he charged us 620 USD (six-hundred twenty american dollars!!!) for three 3 months Tajik visa. What a steal... To try and find an alternative flight was a total nightmare, I had to pull all my skills as an impatient travel agent - we went through Dubai in the end. See the full story here on Mareile's Blog of our 2008 family trip to Tajikistan.

Hey: I AM BACK IN HONG KONG, CHINA, after 5 months on the road - gotta go back to dusting off the office...

Perpignan, Paris, Munich... et Hong Kong alors??

A major break on the blog front as I was running around Europe like a headless chicken the last 2/3 weeks.

A propos headless chickens.... do you know Mike?? incredibly, Mike the rooster lived for 18 months after his head got cut off. see that below? and read that... unbelievable but true!


Left Tajikistan on August 25th and after a few family days north of Montpellier, here is what happened:
- first there was Perpignan. Perpignan was great this year for me - my second time there: the first time, in 2002, a bit "green" out of school, was more stressful than exciting, I guess I was a bit too desperate to meet editors and "connect". This time, more laid back, I met some great people and just enjoyed the weird mix, vin blanc and passionate discussions.
- right after this, hitting the steel while its hot, I headed off to Paris and followed up on a couple of meetings, magazine editors, galleries, book publishers... My yearly round in France. It was jammed packed and quite productive: in fact, people are quite approachable. Among follow up on positive meetings, I will get an 8 pages in Le Figaro Magazine next week, coming out on this Saturday 19th 2009. Apparently, it's pretty major, Le Fig Mag as its known rarely does 8 pages anymore on reportage. So I am excited, it will be a great exposure in my homeland.
- after Paris, nothing better than a 4 days climb in North Italy, near Lago di Garda. I lead a few 6A climbs, I was aching, I am utterly out of shape... Tajikistan's heavy russian food is taking its toll.

Currently in Munich, Germany, I will be back in Hong Kong on September 18th, just in the path of a big typhoon that flooded our top floor apparently.

This month, I am also featured in Outside magazine (US), in the "your toughest shot" section. A picture shot in Siberia where I was left in a winter night and almost served as diner to the local bears - it was tough and so I called for mama.. click here to see the link.

Also just in: I will head out to Pakistan's northern areas - probably my favorite place on earth, on assignment. Can't talk about it for now, but an interesting story I have been thinking of for years. I am excited. I should be there the first 2 weeks of October.

Visa pour l'image 2009

And again this year: a story on the Afghan Kyrgyz that I submitted to Perpignan's international photojournalism festival "Visa pour l'image", will be projected - it should be presented at the evening screening on Sept 1st, during the professional week.
I should be in Perpignan from 1st Sept until 5th Sept, feshly back from Tajikistan...

Banff Mountain Culture photo competition

Back from a wonderful trek and here it is, just in: a portrait of Marbet with her red cheek won best mountain culture picture for the Banff Mountain Photography Competition 2009. Here s a link...

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...

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...