On any given sunday there are angry Parisians at the Place De la Bastille railing against the government for one reason or another.

The two protests I happened to witness were in response to the ongoing Iraq War and recent xenophobic immigration laws instituted by the French interior minister Manuel Valls.

The Iraq demonstrators were a well mannered bunch of colour-coordinated, middle-aged, middle-eastern looking folks who were neatly lined up in ranks to listen to speeches from a temporary platform that had been set up on the south end of the plaza. The latter group consisted of a handful of angry blokes in jackets chanting slogans. That group was so thoroughly hemmed in by riot police it was difficult to see them at all. The ratio of cops to demonstrators appeared to be about 10 to 1. It was faintly ridiculous.

But if any city could be forgiven for overreacting to street protests it’s Paris. The city has a long history of violent demonstrations and civil uprisings. The French revolution saw perhaps the first mass demonstrations in modern history and the precedent that was set in the last decade of the 18th century was cemented with the June revolution in 1832, the Paris Commune riots in the 1870s and countless rallies throughout the 20th century. The most recent episode of civil unrest came in 2005 when police in the poor neighbourhood of Clichy-sous-Bois chased a group of north african kids some of whom took refuge in a substation and were electrocuted. The riots that followed put Paris into a state of emergency for three months and caused widespread damage to vehicles and property.

And while race riots of the sort that kicked off in 2005 appear to be more of a public venting of rage the culture of public dissent really is a fixture of French society. So much so that some of the Parisians I spoke to were entirely jaded street rallies. That every weekend there would be someone shouting about something at Bastille seemed to be a foregone conclusion. But for me it was really appealing to be in a place where so many people were willing to be activists for their cause. Australians, as a rule, tend to be fairly undemonstrative and un-ideological.  And while that’s a great stabilising force in our society it does make it difficult to raise much of an outcry over genuine societal problems such as immigration policy, civil rights, indigenous affairs and environmental issues.

The overwhelming attitude tends to one of ‘don’t make a fuss’ and people that take to the streets are characterised (sometimes fairly) as fringe-dwelling hippies. When there is a more broad cross section of the community at political rallies it’s either something parochial (Save Live Music!) or somehow tied to the personal interests of those attending (union rallies the like). The decision to invade Iraq prompted about 150 thousand people in Melbourne to take to the streets in opposition in 2003 but in Berlin (which has roughly equivalent population) the number was closer to 500 thousand. In Rome 3 million people took  to the streets. One recent survey indicated that more than 30% of Australians would never consider attending a peaceful protest for any reason.

There’s probably a number of reasons for Australian’s political apathy. Partially I think it’s a holdover from being a colony where autonomy and political freedom was a privilege and not a right. Australia has had no revolution or violent independence movement- just a gradual peaceful transition from Her Majesty’s Prison to a quiet colonial settlement to a slightly less colonial nation. There’s also been waves of immigration in the last 70 years from places that have had more than their fair share of political turmoil. Suspicion of ideologues of all stripes seems likely to have been a shared value and one that’s seeped into the generations that followed.

Personally I wouldn’t want public protests to become a routine piece of street theatre in Australia but there’s something very unhealthy about the reluctance of Australians to denounce political decisions and make demands of their government. It seems like most of the time we simply cut down anyone who gets up on a soapbox and our so our national politics consist of a not quite stationary pendulum swinging all the way from Centre-Right to Just-to-the-Right-of-Centre-Right.

Surely there’s a happy middle ground between the turbulent Place De la Bastille and the empty streets around our state Parliament?

A picture of tiny horses leaving the side door of the Moulin Rouge.

I guess I had a false impression of the Moulin Rouge based on Baz Luhrmann’s film. I figured it was a classy theatre with saucy cabaret shows and lots of dancing (and tiny ponies apparently). Which I suppose it is but it’s also firmly within the city’s red light district of Quartier Pigalle. It’s a little jarring to to discover how this internationally renowned tourist attraction that charges up to 500 euro a show and draws upper class crowds every night is flanked by dozens of good old fashioned seedy strip clubs, peep shows and brothels.

So I assumed that France had a fairly liberal attitude towards the sex industry in much the same way as the Netherlands or Germany [citation needed] but that turns out not to be the case. As it happens France has a long history of abolitionism when it comes to prostitution and until very recently it was illegal to even solicit sex by dressing ‘provocatively’ on the streets.

This law was introduced by then-President Nicholas Sarkozy in 2003 and made it a crime punishable by two months in jail and a 3,750-euro fine to publicly invite someone to have sexual relations “even passively, by one’s attitude.”

This law was repealed a couple of months ago at the behest of  Sen. Esther Benbassa, a member of the French Green Party but there remains a strange tendency in many European countries to tacitly allow prostitution but also maintain laws that punish sex workers – the majority of whom are victims of human trafficking.

A few postcard pictures from Barcelona.

So after a couple of months of North America I finally made it to a place where the bread is good and the police have beards and people are practically fornicating in the streets (most of which are named after communists or saints). It was a nice change of pace. I stayed in a little apartment north of the city near the Hospital De Sant Pau.

Barcelona is rife with weird and wonderful architecture and I felt like I could have stayed there a year or two without exhausting the photographic possibilities. In the end I stayed away from the queues to the various building designed by Antoni Gaudí and explored the city on my own.

The best thing I came across was the under-construction Nou Mercat Dels Encants featured above. Designed by Fermín Vázquez the structure is a permanent roof to one of the oldest markets in Europe. The Encants market dates back to the 14th century and when it reopens this year it will have a reflective gold 8000 square meter roof.

I also took some worm’s eye photographs of the iconic Sagrada Familia cathedral – Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece. It’s been under construction for 130 years but this year the scaffolding will (apparently) come down and the finishing touches will be applied.

The last two photos show trace evidence of some of the civil strife that has gripped Spain since the beginning of the financial crises. These photos are of flyers and shattered eggs and food dye that have been liberally applied to a Bankia branch in downtown Barcelona. The Bank was nationalised following its insolvency last year but despite a 20 billion dollar bailout it has lost 99% of its share value in the last two years.

Some images taken of the collection at the American Museum of Natural History.

Visiting the AMNH was an incredible experience and it brought back memories of the old Melbourne museum which had a similar atmosphere- albeit on a much smaller scale. Melbourne had a very traditional museum with roman columns out the front, thousands of mysterious objects in glass cases in darkend rooms with little descriptive plaques that strived for objectivity and scientific formality.

In my short lifetime I’ve watched that sort of treatment of history become a product of history. And modern trends in history curatorship have not always been an improvement on the old. Modern museums seem to be engaged in a desperate struggle for relevancy to the widest audience possible and, when that fails, they generally try to turn their permanent exhibitions into simplified edu-tainment for youngsters with touch-pool interactive displays and colourful animated video screens at every turn.

I can’t fault the people who run museums for trying to make the material accessible to children but I think the mentality behind many of these changes is somewhat patronising to kids and cheapens the experience for adults. The recent Mesopotamia exhibition in Melbourne really tried to emphasize the similarities between Assyrian day to day life and our own. In the process it omitted countless fascinating (but rather dark) aspects of their culture.

Certain civilisations like the Assyrians and the Aztec are fundamentally alien and, in trying to draw parallels at every turn, you’re doing a disservice to the children who want to learn about the history and you’re denying them some of the wonder that you get when you realise for the first time just how different human societies can be from one another.

Added to this is a modern tendency to use museums to redress painful colonial histories and counteract decades of racist and unseemly depictions of ancient and primitive peoples. The result has been a shift in focus from the facts and anthropological details to the stories and experiences of ancient cultures. In some cases this has given us a rose-tinted version of history that diminishes the value of modern civilisation and, at the same time, fails to do justice to the ancient cultures that visitors came to learn about. A talk by Steven Pinker at one of the recent TED conferences highlights one myth that is perpetuated by the overly sensitive stance taken by museum curators and educators in recent years.

There’s a good run-down of this debate written by Des Griffin- a retired Austalian Museum director- on his website. In it he quotes the chief art critic of the New York Times, Michael Kimmelman who said;

“museums are at a crossroads and need to decide which way they are going. They don’t know whether they are more like universities or Disneyland, and lurch from one to the other”

I think the American Museum of Natural History strikes a good balance between making the art and artefacts accessible while still maintaining credibility and a scholarly approach to history.

Returning now to the far less dramatic streets of New York back in April I have another batch of photographs.

People-watching was probably my favourite thing to do in New York because there’s an endlessly fascinating parade of people wherever you go. And there’s also an infinite number of distractions on the street which make it easier to get candid photos of people going about their lives.

Full disclosure; some of the hipsters featured here were imported for the duration of the shoot.

The previous set of photos was taken on Istiklal avenue approaching Taksim Square.

These photos were taken mainly at the Square and adjoining Gezi Park.

Please note that the big red puddle is not blood. Police here use red dye in their water cannons to mark demonstrators for later arrest. Quick update; as of Sunday afternoon the Turkish media has finally started to give coverage to the demonstration and they are reporting that roughly 1 million people participated in Istanbul alone.

Photos I took of today’s anti-government demonstrations in Istanbul.

“Tell the people in your country that this is the first day of the Turkish revolution”. That was what the bloke next to me said once I climbed up onto of a temporary site office in Taksim Square to get a sense of the crowd. All day tens of thousands of protestors had been flooding towards the square and the adjoining Gezi Park to protest against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who recently announced plans to turn the park into a shopping centre and reconstruct an old Ottoman military barracks at the site.  A peaceful sit-in at the park had taken place over the last few days but yesterday the police staged a violent crackdown on the protestors using water canons and tear gas grenades.

A dozen people were injured and two opposition legislators had to be hospitalised from the effects of the gas. That violent overreaction on the part of Erdogan’s government brought tens of thousands of Istanbul’s residents into the streets today. Similar demonstrations were staged in other parts of the country including Izmir, Trabzon, Antalya and the capital Ankara. The demonstrators in Istanbul clashed with police in the early afternoon and eventually succeeded in reaching the Square. Several police vehicles and pieces of construction machinery associated with the re-development project were damaged when the police retreated. The Police station adjoining the square was looted and torched.

Some of the slogans being chanted included “shoulder to shoulder against fascism” and “government resign” and many an unflattering comparisons was made between Erdogan and the old Ottoman sultans. From what I’ve read there’s a growing antipathy towards Erdogan’s more Islamic-rooted government from the more secular segments of the Turkish population. In recent years the government has stepped-up restrictions on alcohol, withdrew funding for theatres and the opera and given tacit support for more sharia-inspired legislation.

According to journalist and commentator Zeynip Tufeki the underlying causes of the protest are;

“an increasingly tone-deaf, majority government who is relatively popular but is pursuing unpopular, divisive projects; an incompetent opposition; a cowardly, compliant mass media scene PLUS widespread, common use of social media.”

I followed the protest along Istiklal avenue towards the square. There were thousands of people on that stretch of road alone with more flooding in every minute. The police and security forces were at a clear disadvantage even as volleys of tear gas grenades were sent into the front of the crowd. Several groups of protesters hung back to provide assistance to those suffering from the effects of the gas and many more raided construction sites and dragged in planter pots to build barricades to prevent the police from reclaiming any ground. Sometime around 3pm the police withdrew and a large cloud of dark smoke could be seen coming from the square where protesters had set fire to the police station.  We went back down Istiklal avenue again -this time unimpeded- and watched the celebrations as a vast crowd on anti-government demonstrators waved banners and marched through the square.

There were people there from a range of different backgrounds but the majority appeared to be young students and casually-dressed men and women in their 30s and 40s. They waved Turkish flags and pictures of the venerated former leader Attaturk and the atmosphere was one of celebration and excitement. Cars and motorbikes everywhere leaned on their horns and people broke out spontaneously into cheering and clapping all over the city as I walked around. It felt like Turkey had won the world cup or been awarded the Olympics. It certainly didn’t feel like any public demonstration that I’ve ever witnessed.

Better coverage than mine is available on the major news networks and worse (though arguably more dramatic) pictures than mine can be found on the Occupy Gezi Tumblr account.

According to the some of the folks I know that live here this article by Zeynep Tufekci is a good primer for the context and implications of the Taksim Square demonstrations. As you can see from this aerial instagram there was a ton people on the streets today.

NB: Protestors exposed to teargas were treated with a liquid antacid and water mixture so that’s the white stuff you can see on people’s faces in some of these pictures.

The view from the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

The Rockefeller centre in downtown Manhattan was commissioned and financed by the son and heir of John D Rockefeller- one of the largest oil barons of 19th Century America. Adjusting for inflation it’s estimated JD Rockefeller was probably the wealthiest person to have ever existed. He established oil, banking and railway monopolies that made him one of the most powerful and influential figures in US history. He was also one of the most prolific philanthropists of his era and many of the hospitals, universities, charitable foundations and museums he funded still bear the Rockefeller name.

His son John Junior inherited not only his father’s empire but also his nack for aggressive business practises and also his philanthropic tendencies (all the suits of armour in the Detroit Institute of Arts, for example, were bequests from the Rockefeller foundation). Despite being a teetotaller his public criticism of prohibition helped repeal the 28th Amendment and despite his father’s preference for homeopathy he helped direct funds towards medical research, public health issues and environmental conservation.

It’s important to remember though that there’s a great deal of bias built into the recording of the Rockefeller legacy. History is written by the victors, the saying goes, and the same is true for those who are victorious in business. Junior died in 1960 but the Rockefeller family is still inordinately wealthy and their trusts and foundations will be a prominent part of US society for many years.

With that in mind it’s difficult to get a sense of what it really took to build such an empire and who lost out in the process. The inescapable criticisms of the Rockefeller family centre on a strike at a mine they owned in Colorado that was brutally repressed by mercenary security firms and the Colorado national guard in 1914. The mining companies used armoured vehicles and machine guns to break up a strikers camp near a town called Ludlow. That massacre, and the conflict that followed, may have claimed the lives of as many as 200 people and it remains the most violent chapter in the American labour movement. Socialist activist Margarat Sanger at the time described the Rockefellers as;

“leering, bloody hyenas of the human race who smear themselves with the stinking honey of Charity to attract those foul flies of religion who spread pollution throughout the land.”

The Ludlow massacre bears some resemblance to the Eureka Stockade massacre in Australia in that wealthy business interests often have enough political influence to employ government forces as their own private army. Many similar injustices no doubt lurk in the background awaiting a time when public sentiment towards the Rockefeller name has cooled enough to allow them to be brought to light.

Interestingly the famous image of workers ‘lunch atop a skyscraper‘ was taken during the construction of 30 Rockefeller plaza. The building was constructed at the height of the depression when more than 25 per cent of the men living in the city were unemployed. Seen in that light the image is not really the playful portrait of fearless blue-collar New Yorkers that it’s made out to be. It’s more a reflection of the working conditions of the time. No helmets, no harnesses, no railings- just desperate men casually undertaking a dangerous job.

I got up to the observation deck just as the sun was setting and watched people come and go from the corner of the level below me. When the sun had fully set there was this deep contrast between the blue light from the building and the yellow lights from the offices in the streets below and I waited for someone to stop in that particular corner to get the title shot.

My tour across the states has really been one big survey of American neon signs.

So the logical place to end this survey was in Times Square- possibly the most garish public space ever created. I already knew what it looked like during the day so I jumped on the subway early one morning to beat the crowds. When I got there I found a squad of black guys in red coveralls removing all the garbage deposited by the visitors the previous day. By night whatever is playing on biggest digital displays determines the colour of the square. The whole place flickers like a dark lounge room with the TV on.

What’s interesting about this place is that it’s pretty much the real life analogue of a dodgy porn site that brings up a ton of pop-ups. And the rationale is the same. It doesn’t matter what the context of the advert is, how obnoxious its presentation or how overwhelmed it is by the noise the premise is that if you’ve seen the advert then it has done its job.

Times Square has a sort of visceral appeal with thousands of digital displays all vying for your attention and switching from one brand to another in this big frenetic riot of consumerism. It’s not so different from watching fireworks over London or bombs over Baghdad. People are fascinated by the spectacle of it all and are happy to indulge it when’s it’s at saturation point in one centralised location far from where they live. But places like this are going to be less and less unique as the technology becomes ubiquitous. Really what Times Square represents is the natural end point for any public space once corporate entities are given free-reign.

Six years ago in Sao Paulo, Brazil the city’s Mayor, Gilberto Kassab, banned all outdoor advertising and brought in regulations to restrict the size of storefront displays. He treated outdoor billboards and posters simply as another form of pollution and, with a great deal of support from constituents, went about cleansing the city of its advertising.

It would would be nice to think that companies in other places would see that backlash as a consequence of saturation marketing and exercise more restraint. But the reality is that competition drives these companies to try to overwhelm one another in public spaces and that it’s only until the city streets look like like Times Square that people will realise what sort of an environment they have consented to.

There’s a nice little article on Sao Paulo’s experiment on AdBusters.

There was a big deli at the bottom of the street I stayed on that’s apparently famous for its roast beef sandwiches. I figured millions of New Yorkers Can’t be wrong.

What I found was that millions of New Yorkers can be wrong and that millions of tourists will be be drawn in by hype.

What I also found was a severe case of celebrity worship from the proprietor. I’m always slightly bemused by restaurants in Melbourne that put up framed photographs of famous people eating at their restaurant. On the one hand it’s a good endorsement because people can look at the picture and say ‘if it’s good enough for an ageing Bill Clinton then it’s good enough for me!’ On the other hand there’s always something slightly undignified about being proud simply for having met someone.

Fair enough if you are a great admirer of someone’s work or you feel inspired by them. But it seems like there’s a lot of folks that get intense satisfaction simply by being photographed with anyone who has a higher profile than them. In the states it’s a pretty big constellation when it comes to celebrities so your chances of meeting someone famous is pretty high. But instead of diluting the thrill it just seems to mean that everyone can play the game.

So many restaurants and shops had photographs of celebrities in their store or wearing their merchandise. Conversations often found their way to encounters with celebrities. One guy in Detroit told us all about valeting for Ryan Gosling the previous week (he drives a van). One street stall in Williamsburg even had a laminated paparazzi photo taken from several meters away and from behind of Leonardo DiCaprio (possibly) looking at his stall. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take away from that. Leo was so impressed by your merchandise he paused to look at it for a few seconds in 2007 and. . . what?

Katz’s Deli in the Lower East side is absolutely wallpapered with photos of visiting celebrities. Some of them are yellowed and faded by age. Many of the people in question have little dymo-labels of their name. Others don’t. This provides a rough insight into the blinkered worldview of the average American (or Katz patron at least). Dennis Quaid’s brother obviously needs no introduction but Gorbachev needs a caption.

Still, the pastrami was pretty good.