28.4.9

Dear Sander,

I’m back in The Hague. Israel was nice. Very enjoyable.

You are now at the other end of the world. I’m thinking how funny it is that distances are measured and not bridged. It’s raining over here. Again.

On my table there are many pictures from the last year. They are all piled up upon one another in different groups. I can’t tell the difference anymore of what belongs to what. I also can’t find a proper way to order it all. I sometimes think that this is how they should be. Just piled up quietly on one another. Innocent pictures. It gives me some kind of security.

I pick up one of the piles. The one with portraits of us in the Ruhrgebiet. Funny place we found ourselves to get lost in, no? It’s as if we thought that if we make a fool out of ourselves in that grey region no one would notice.
As if we wanted to disappear into the Ruhrgebiet. In a sense I think we achieved that. Our immeasurable actions somehow merged into that wild land.

But it also brings me to a great deal of sadness to see all that just disappear. They say good things last. Will the pictures we made there last? Will our steps there make any difference? Will our actions, our beliefs and wishes take the shape we want them to?

Being trapped in ones own reflection is the worst crime one can make. But we were two there. We were trapped in the image of us both. In the two of us. We were trapped in friendship. In photographing that friendship taking shape.
A great endeavor.

I guess there’s not much left to say. I guess we can just look at the pictures. We can read our writings. We can hope that tomorrow will bring good news.

One last word.

Don’t lose the spirit. It’s the only thing we have left.  Believe in it. Embrace it. It’s beautiful.
 
Your Friend,

Ohad

1.5.9

Dear Ohad,
 
I’m sitting in the back of a túk-túk in Chiang Mai, Thailand - and I just read your email. The sun is low and the streets look gold and lazy. I’m on my way to the train station to buy tickets for the overnight train to Bangkok.
 
You are miles away and so is the Ruhrgebiet.
 
A guy on a motorbike tries to shoot past this car - first right, then left - but the alley is too narrow. Now he is staring at me creating a moment of suspense. I suddenly feel an urge to attack him, to throw myself on him like a tiger.
 
Remember that conductor on the train that I almost got into a fistfight with? It was one of the rare times that we had actually bought a ticket, that we hadn’t ‘hopped it’. He became very ‘pünktlich’ and then brutally rude, tearing our day tickets in pieces. Supposedly we were on the wrong carriage even though nobody was on that train. And that’s when I got almost very pünktlich too…
 
The túk-túk stops before a traffic light. A woman starts pushing enormous bags full of salad and herbs into the túk-túk. It fills the whole vehicle and I’m having a hard time writing these words; my nose is full of basil and my body is covered in coriander. I hear people laugh as the túk-túk moves on, and I recognize the word ‘farang’ - foreigner.
 
When I think about it, the best thing that has happened to me in the last year was to be in this position of a farang most of the time. We were strangers in the Ruhrgebiet and we were never actually searching to become ‘insiders’. Whenever we felt we were becoming too much ‘Ruhrpott’ we fled to London, France, Israel, Thailand.
The essence of life often seems to reveal itself in moments of transition.
We rested in the middle of the road, we took portraits of people out of a moving canoe, we saw some light in a dark train tunnel.
 
The túk-túk stops in front of the Chiang Mai train station. The bags with herbs are taken out. I see my disfigured body shape imprinted in one of the bags, before they disappear with the woman around the corner.
 
Friendship establishes itself in movement. That’s exactly what these piles of pictures tell me. It was great to run with you.
 
Sander