Rare Anna Nicole Smith Pics Surface

Rare Anna Nicole Smith Pics Surface

Cuba before Castro? UAH student finds vintage photos of 'Havana at its best'

al.com (blog)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - It started last April when Emily Pate made one of her routine shopping trips to Packards Antiques on South Memorial Parkway.

It culminated when Jose Betancourt, Pate's photography professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, laid eyes on the pictures.

"You have Cuba -- before Castro," Betancourt, a native of Cuba, recalled saying. "So yeah, I was excited. It was great."

Imagine you're Pate. She merely thought she was buying a couple of bags of old film canisters - fascinated in a digital age with film photography.

"I kind of was interested in old cameras and in one of the booths, there were two bags of these little film canisters," said Pate, a Huntsville native who will be graduating in May with a degree in marketing. "I've never seen that in person before."

In those dozens of canisters, however, Pate found a handful of film rolls. And in those canisters with film, a couple had a small piece of paper that simply said "Cuba."

"I didn't know for sure where it was until I brought it to school to show Jose," she said.

Betancourt knew immediately he was looking at a window through time of his homeland. The pictures apparently were taken in the mid-1950s by a couple on vacation in Cuba, based on other photos found in the canisters as well as the cars in the Cuba photos.

But filling in the details is nothing more than guesswork.

"She's like my little investigator," Betancourt said. "She loves figuring all this out."

Said Pate, "It's mysterious but it's definitely piqued by curiosity."

Of course, Cuba has been a sort of mystery since its borders were closed when Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 and brought communism to America's doorstep.

More on  al.blog.com >>

Cuba before Castro? UAH student finds vintage photos of 'Havana at its best'

Subastan fotos de Korda en el Reino Unido

martinoticias

Un grupo de 55 fotografías históricas firmadas por el cubano Alberto Korda saldrán a subasta el 7 de marzo en la localidad inglesa de South Cerney, en el condado de Gloucestershire.
   
Las fotografías estarán repartidas en 30 lotes que la casa de subastas británica Dominic Winter espera rematar por una cifra cercana a las 50.000 libras esterlinas (57.000 euros o 75.658 dólares).
   
Algunas de las imágenes son instantáneas sin contenido político de la primera etapa del fotógrafo, autor del conocido retrato del guerrillero Ernesto "Che" Guevara tomado el 5 de marzo de 1960.
   
El resto de las fotografías, marcadas y firmadas por el fotógrafo y que han pertenecido hasta ahora a la colección personal de Norka Korda, una de sus hijas, corresponden a los primeros años tras la Revolución cubana, a partir de 1959.
   
La colección incluye una imagen del "Che" hablando con el filósofo francés Jean-Paul Sartre y la escritora Simone de Beauvoir, esposa del escritor, así como instantáneas del guerrillero pescando y jugando al golf con el ex presidente de Cuba Fidel Castro.

 
Unas pocas imágenes, las más antiguas del grupo, son retratos de pasarela en las que aparece la segunda mujer del fotógrafo.
  
Esas imágenes son rarezas dentro de la obra del fotógrafo cubano, tal como explicó su hija en un comunicado de Dominic Winter: "Se conservan muy pocas de aquellas imágenes. Los negativos desaparecieron cuando en marzo de 1968 las autoridades confiscaron el archivo fotográfico de mi padre", comentó Norka Korda, hija del fallecido fotógrafo.
   
"Se trata de trabajos de gran valor, teniendo en cuenta que se remontan al principio de su carrera, un período en el que se formó como artista con una particular visión de la fotografía". 

Subastan fotos de Korda en el Reino Unido

Experto revela errores en las fotos de Chavez

CubanosdeApie

Experto revela errores en las fotos de Chavez

Gobierno venezolano publica primeras fotos de Hugo Chávez

bbc.co.uk

Vea la galería >>

Por primera vez desde que Hugo Chávez fue operado en Cuba en diciembre de 2012, fuentes oficiales venezolanas presentaron fotografías del mandatario.

En total, el servicio de prensa de la presidencia reveló cuatro imágenes en las que aparece Chávez con sus hijas Rosa Virginia y María Gabriela, leyendo una edición del diario cubano Granma. El gobierno venezolano anunció que la foto corresponde al 14 de febrero de este año.

Por su parte, el ministro de Comunicación e Información, Ernesto Villegas, dijo en cadena nacional que Chávez se mantiene respirando a través de una cánula traqueal.

Villegas informó que la cánula le dificulta el habla a Chávez y que el mandatario "se mantiene consciente, con integridad de las funciones intelectuales, en estrecha comunicación con su equipo de gobierno y al frente de las tareas fundamentales inherentes a su cargo".

"La infección respiratoria surgida en el curso del postoperatorio fue controlada, aunque persiste un cierto grado de insuficiencia", añadió.

En la imagen aparece Chávez con sus dos hijas.

Según explica Abraham Zamorano, corresponsal de BBC Mundo en Caracas, "tanto la foto como la declaración del ministro Villegas parecen servir para tratar de mitigar el pesimismo con que los chavistas habían recibido la declaración en que Maduro habló de un tratamiento "complejo y duro", lo que no pocos interpretaron como una recaída".

Las últimas imágenes de Chávez antes de las de este viernes fueron difundidas por la televisión el 10 de diciembre pasado, poco antes de que Chávez partiera a Cuba para someterse a la operación.
igualmente presenta  Chavez temporarily having trouble speaking, Venezuelan official says

Gobierno venezolano publica primeras fotos de Hugo Chávez

World War I photos found inside antique camera

By Claudine Zap | The Lookout

World War I soldiers with bomb (Courtesy of Anton Orlov)

A collector of vintage photography equipment got an extra bonus when he picked up a French camera at an antique store: never-before-seen images circa World War I France.

Anton Orlov details the story of the lucky find on his blog the Photo Palace, where all of the eight photos from the Jumelle Belllieni stereoscopic camera can be seen.

Orlov writes in his blog that he came across the images completely by accident, as he was cleaning the recently purchased camera. He opened up the film chamber and found the negatives on a stack of glass plates.

He writes, “While viewing the images in their negative form it was difficult to say for sure what was on each of them, but after scanning them it became clear that they dated back to the First World War and were taken somewhere in France. Adding, “I absolutely love finding images that likely have never been seen by anyone in the world.”

World War I soldiers on horseback with airplane remains (Courtesy of Anton Orlov)

The photography enthusiast tells Yahoo News by email, “I was very surprised when I found them. “ He noted that while he had found “plenty of undeveloped” film in old cameras before, he explained, “those are indeed ruined when exposed to light, and even if I try developing them it would be a very slim chance of getting anything usable from them.”

The black-and-white photos were taken in France, and document some of the destruction of the countryside. The images seem to be perfectly preserved, except for a couple that are marred by streaks of light.

Two of the photos seen here show the remains of the war: Two soldiers stand next to a big bomb. Another shows two men on horseback surveying the remains of a crashed airplane.

The remaining photos on Orlov’s website include train tracks that have been destroyed, an aerial view of a town showing the wear of the war. And a house that has been bombarded and fallen into a river.

World War I photos found inside antique camera

Photo of Princess Diana, mystery man to be auctioned

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Photo of Princess Diana, mystery man to be auctioned

A Cuban modern witch wants to be a "cuentapropista"

Reuters-Photographers Blog

Desmond Boylan 

At first sight, Mayra is a typical Cuban housewife, carrying out her daily chores as so many others. But she has another job apart from those housekeeping tasks, and when she does that she looks like anything but a housewife.

In Cuba, after the last Communist Party Congress, the government published a list of 181 private jobs and commercial activities that Cubans are now able to engage in, and pay taxes on the income generated from them.

Mayra told me, “I went through the list of 181 jobs and I couldn’t find mine. I am a freelance witch, spiritualist and fortune teller, so for the moment I cannot apply for a license to legally do my job.”

Mayra’s transformation from housewife to witch is dramatic. Others had spoken to me about her but I didn’t believe them, so I had to see for myself. I’m not particularly religious myself, but after speaking to her and insisting, she invited me to a ceremony in which her husband acted as her assistant.

I visited her home several times but her clients were not particularly interested in having a
photographer there. My curiosity for the subject started to increase so I had to be patient. Usually
people involved in the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion are very camera shy and do not allow their rites to be documented. Because of that I feel privileged to have gained access to document some of these interesting occurrences.

There was a regular trail of different clients seeking help from Mayra, usually middle-aged men and women. I could hear chanting and cries from outside the “chamber,” the room of the house where the ceremonies are practiced. My curiosity kept growing.

One woman troubled by a family affair sought assistance and advice from Mayra, and a religious ritual was to be done in Mayra’s home. The woman was alright with having some pictures taken.

Engulfed in thick cigar smoke, eyes shining, Mayra is a witch – a modern witch. She falls into a trance and shakes, talks about the dead, the spirits, the future, the past, the need for ceremonies, and practices sophisticated witchcraft involving animals, coconuts, plants, flowers and an array of other items.

One day I was at Mayra’s place and Dayana, an 18-year-old Cuban model, showed up. Dayana was having some troubles at home so her mother decided to take her along for a cleansing from bad spirits, the “rompimiento” ceremony. The ceremony consists of several religious rites and prayers involving coconuts, cigar smoke, alcohol, scents and other artifacts. The person must have his or her clothes ripped off in a ceremony to expel bad spirits from the person.

The momentum of the ceremony kept growing, Mayra was smoking cigars, the room was full of smoke, and there was a strong smell of scents as Mayra seemed to fall into a trance. At one point she had to be held up by her husband, and did go into a trance. She asked Dayana to follow her to the back of the house near her shrine, and started ripping off her clothes frantically while speaking in an African language.

Several days later Mayra went to the seaside to finalize the work she had done for Dayana. There on a beach she performed a simple ceremony beside the water, reciting African language phrases sentences pouring a liquid from a jar into the sea.

After a few days I asked Mayra how her client Dayana was doing. She had received the news that Dayana’s troubles had ended and that she was on a tour of Cuba working as a model and doing very well.

Afro-Cuban religion mixes Catholicism with ancient African beliefs originally brought to Cuba by slaves. Thousands of people practice the Santeria religion throughout Cuba.

Mayra charges 240 Cuban pesos, around ten dollars, for a full ceremony and around 100
pesos for consultations. But she says, “I many times don’t charge anything if the person needs my help and does not have money. Too many people involved in Santeria are just in it for the money and have made it a prosperous business.”

I answered Mayra, ‘Don’t worry it reminds me of the same happening in other religions. None is spared.”

A Cuban modern witch wants to be a "cuentapropista"

Rostros de Ano Nuevo en La Habana

folha.uol.com.br/galerias

Rostros de Ano Nuevo en La Habana

Pregnant Marisa Miller Poses Naked For Allure

Marisa Miller poses in Allure (Dec. 2012) -- Brian Bowen Smith

Yahoo News/

Not even an eight-months-along baby bump gets in the way of Marisa Miller's sexy style.

The Sports Illustrated model and Victoria's Secret Angel, who is expecting a baby boy, posed nude for Allure magazine in a new series of black and white photos.

Marisa admitted she was not shy about showing off her new curves and actually embraced her new shape.

"I always felt, even before I got pregnant, that it's better to accentuate your curves. Obviously, you can't suck it in, but it's important to really show off the belly," the bombshell told the magazine.

Pregnant Marisa Miller Poses Naked For Allure

"Las fotos de Felipe"/ OLPL

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Fotos del bloguero y poeta cubano LUIS FELIPE ROJAS (@Alambradas en Twitter), con música de Erik Sánchez.

"Las fotos de Felipe"/ OLPL

The Soviet ticking time bomb legacy

terrible. esta el asunto de las minas antipersonales que ha provocado cientos miles de mutilaciones y decenas de miles muertos. uno de los legados de los camaradas sovietivos que tambien transmitieron a los kaxtroz. hay un convenio internacional para evitar su empleo, pero los hp de siempre no lo han firmado entre ellos cuba. cientos [o miles que nunca se sabra] cubanos las han sufrido en los campos de mimas que rodean la base naval de guantanamo de lo cual nadie habla. hay cientos de miles sino millones de minas sembradas por militares cubanos en muchos lugares del mundo particularmente en africa y centroamerica. tampoco se habla de ello ni se piden responsabilidades  igualmente espantoso el asunto de las armas exportadas o regaladas a cualquiera que decia ser anti-yanqui. hoy cualquier idiota puede adquirir un akm-47 original en internet y causar una masacre. los otros - los yanquis digo-, tampoco se quedan atras.

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By Vasily Fedosenko

The Soviet Union collapsed overnight more than two decades ago. In Belarus, which suffered most in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, the sudden demise of the nuclear superpower five years later left enough lethal legacy of other types to endanger the lives of several future generations.

In a forest near the village of Savichi, some 160 km (100 miles) southwest of Minsk, one of these Soviet-era time bombs is still ticking. Here, under a thin layer of ground, hundreds of tons of highly toxic Soviet-made pesticides are stored in leaky dumps.

Located just 3 km (2 miles) from a busy motorway, the dump spreads the pungent smell of chemicals far beyond its perimeter marked by rows of barbed wire. The poisonous substances hastily buried here back in the 1960-70s include the dreaded dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, more widely known as DDT, banned worldwide for several decades because it can cause cancer in humans.

Belarus’s independence has given a new lease on life to places like Savichi, a forlorn area marked with signs reading: “Danger. Toxic chemicals.” A $5.5 million U.S. grant helps finance work aimed to clean up the pesticide disposal site. People clad in white chemical protection overalls and wearing gas masks load a greyish mixture of soil and chemicals leaked from rusty barrels into new blue-colored 70-kg (154 pound) plastic containers.

Last year, workers loaded and sent a total of around 950 tons of the toxic substance to Germany for environmentally safe processing. This year they are completing work at this old dump, having packed more than 600 tons of pesticides in more than 9,000 containers.

This project is coming to an end but officials say Belarus’s land holds several more huge Soviet-era dumps of toxic pesticides. And the time bombs continue ticking.

The Soviet ticking time bomb legacy

Vacilando con un hijo de Fidel

The Atlantic/ Lois Farrow Parshley

Michael Dweck Studios

Alex Castro/ Michael Dweck Studios

Camilo Guevara, hijo del Che/ Michael Dweck Studios

HAVANA, Cuba -- On a recent, dark Havana night, the breeze blew the ocean spray over a crumbling sea wall along the city's seaward road as New York photographer Michael Dweck took a seat across a dockside table from Alex Castro, one of Fidel's sons.

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Vacilando con un hijo de Fidel

Cubanos en Kuna Yala

http://www.folha.uol.com.br/ Carlos Jasso/Reuters

Segun refiere el diario brasileno Folha de Sao Paulo, se trata de un grupo de inmigrantes ilegales cubanos que hacen el viaje por tierra desde Ecuador hasta Panama. En la foto, banandose en Puerto Obaldia del archipielago panameno de Kuna Yala.

Cubanos en Kuna Yala

The Photography of Omar Rodríguez Saludes, Cuban Dissident

NYTimes.com/ By DAVID GONZALEZ 

Freedom was in color. That was the indelible memory that Omar Rodríguez Saludes remembered the day he boarded an Iberia flight to Spain from Havana in 2010. Until then, his world was sketched in drab shades of gray, green and white. Those were the colors of his imprisonment: gray for his rags, white for the walls and green for the guards.

“To see any other color was rare,” Mr. Rodríguez Saludes said. “But in that plane, I saw colors. Everyone was dressed regularly. I saw colors I had not seen in a long time.”

Seven years, to be exact. Journalism was the reason for his imprisonment. Specifically, everyday shots of Havana life, far from the gleaming tourist hotels and beaches. His world showed a crumbling city with haggard faces, presided over, Oz-like, by billboards with revolutionary slogans.

He had been among some 20 independent journalists who were rounded up by the Cuban government during a sweep of 75 dissidents in March 2003, and given lengthy sentences after quick trials. They were said to be traitors and mercenaries in the service of the United States government, even though international human rights and journalists groups defended them as prisoners of conscience.

Mr. Rodríguez Saludes was a self-taught photographer who was considered among the best of the island’s up-and-coming independent journalists. It was not an easy life, whether dealing with daily harassment and short-term jail stays, or regularly having his camera and recorder confiscated. In a profile I wrote on him in 2002, he called himself “a blind photographer,” since he saw only his negatives, never the prints that were published in a Miami-based Cuban news service, Nueva Prensa Cubana.

Soon after the article ran, a friend of his in Miami called to thank me. The article, he said, would give his friend a higher profile and, perhaps, a measure of protection.

That’s relative. Mr. Rodríguez Saludes was sentenced to 27 years, the longest of any independent journalist. He got off easy: prosecutors had asked for a life term. Mr. Rodríguez Saludes served seven years before being sent into exile to Spain with his family, where he now lives (though has been unable to find work).

“You have to have courage to do this work,” said Carlos Lauria of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Omar’s case was one of the longest sentences they gave to anyone. It is a faithful reflection of an arbitrary system that has a totally obsolete legal framework. It is totally repressive and looking to stifle any kind of expression.”

Mr. Rodríguez Saludes did not start out to be a journalist or dissident. He had been working at a shipyard, where he saw the differences between how the company — the Cuban government — treated those who worked inside the office and those who worked fixing boats. He called it slavery. The government thought otherwise. In 1992, he lost his job.

He had become used to walking around Havana taking pictures, a hobby he had picked up from his mother, who took family photos with an old box camera. In his early 20s, he had been using a Soviet-made camera to chronicle his walks about town. His archive grew; his work prospects did not. 

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The Photography of Omar Rodríguez Saludes, Cuban Dissident

Faces of Cuba, People "Havana"

waller1218

Faces of Cuba, People "Havana"

Anthony Suau: The Iconic Photo of the Berlin Wall

TimeMagazine

Anthony Suau: The Iconic Photo of the Berlin Wall

See rare pics of a young Obama

The Blaze/

Information about Barack Obama’s past is difficult to come by. Photos, however, apparently are not. Buzzfeed has a collection of 35 photos just from Obama’s high school, college and law school years, some of which are familiar, but most of which you’ve probably never seen. Before, you’ll find the 10 we thought were most revealing and/or least widespread:

#10.

#9.

 

#8.

 

#7.

#6.

#5. 

#4.

#3. 

 

#2. 

 

#1. 

 

Click here to see the rest >>

See rare pics of a young Obama

Marilyn Sings to JFK: The 50th Anniversary of an Iconic Photo

TimeMagazine

Marilyn Sings to JFK: The 50th Anniversary of an Iconic Photo

Photos of people living off-the-grid in the United States

Eric Valli spent 3 years taking photos of people in the United States who have "decided to live light on the earth." The photographs are terrific. It looks like Valli spent time with two clans: a frontier/settler type group, and another group that look almost like cave people. I wish he had included more information about them!

More:  Eric Valli: Off the Grid >>

Photos of people living off-the-grid in the United States