I realize this is not the most flattering picture, but I thought it went well as an illustration of one of my smaller investigations. The actual strips of papyrus that I cut (by drawing the knife along the whole length of the  stem, as the ones where I attempted to ‘unroll’ it were an unsatisfactory [...]

Bundles of a papyrus are stored against a building on a small farmstead outside of Bahir Dar, on Lake Tana. Papyrus is used for a variety of local purposes, most notably the papyrus boats called tanqwas.

A man rows home in the evening, with his nets and his catch of Nile Perch, in a papyrus boat called a tanqwa on Lake Tana, just outside of Bahir Dar.

Papyrus used as a building material: the wall of a light-duty building.

A man carrying a large bundle of papyrus, which has been collected out in the lake and transported by tanqwa to get to his village, outside of Bahir Dar. Papyrus sees a variety of uses in the Lake Tana area, and is sold in large bundles like the one this man carries. The use of [...]

Papyrus is an ubiquitous commodity in the Lake Tana region, and sees a variety of uses. Stalks are cut from the plentiful stands on the shores and islands of Lake Tana, and brought to Abbay village, where they are made into local reed boats (called tanqwa) sold for a variety of other uses. Here, a [...]

Melaka Tsehai burns the oil off of an addition of nug (an oilseed) to the carbonized grains, leaves, and earths that serve as the base for black ink. Various implments of the scribe’s crafts are on the ground beside him. Also, lest any one accuse me of having done the opposite–I have actually *de*-saturated his [...]

A door into the mosque at Bou Inania Madrasa, a lavishily-decorated Marinid building in the Medina of Fez.

Meat sits on display in the window of Schwartz’ Montreal Hebrew Delicatessen, on Boulevard Saint-Laurent, in Montréal. I have tried to give this a more filmic quality in processing, by adding grain, reducing saturation, increasing vibrancy, and toning it to increase blues in shadows and yellows in highlights. A different direction for me, but I [...]

The sandwich from Schwartz’, the deli featured in yesterday’s post. It was delicious, and worth the wait. The pickle and coleslaw raised no complaints, either.