How-To

Howl, Allen Ginsberg's ode to alienation, invokes "the visible mad man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East." A few of those madtowns -- vast insane asylums in campus settings -- are still standing, abandoned and rotting into exquisite ruin.

It's always been much easier for me to understand why photographers want to take pictures of people than why people want to have their pictures taken. For most of us, even the famous, it can be profoundly discomfiting to forfeit our power of self-deception, to put ourselves into the hands of a portraitist who has his or her own agenda. Richard Avedon once recalled that Henry Kissinger, a man used to authority as Richard Nixon's secretary of state, pleaded with him to "be kind to me" when he sat for a portrait.

Watching the Super Bowl halftime show on TV, have you ever found yourself saying smugly, "Look at all those fools firing off flash photos! There's no way they can illuminate the halftime show from their seats!" You'd be right to say it, but at least they were there, and if you were watching on TV, you weren't. They may be bad photos, but at least they can say, "I was there."

In the predawn darkness of 5 a.m., nearly 1,000 people stand in a circle, their white robes reflecting the glow of the candle that each holds. In the center, priests in elaborate, many-hued robes and huge pillbox hats lead prayers over a golden replica of the Ark of the Covenant. Suddenly, the priests turn and start walking. The faithful follow, candles in hand, chanting eerily beautiful prayers in a language totally foreign to Western ears. The procession winds around town as the sun rises.
It's just another morning in Axum, Ethiopia.