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Bull Race Festival In Kerala By Ajayan Kavungal Anat

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The images are from the traditional Kaalapootu (Bull Surfing ) held mostly in villages in North Kerala. The race takes place during the post-harvest season in August and lasts from noon until dusk. In southern Kerala, these events are held under the name “Maramadi”. Though the events are held in water filled paddy fields after harvest, many of the Panchayaths and private individuals own specially maintained fields exclusively for this event.

Kaalapootu is a celebration of the villagers. They gather in large numbers for the event. Kaalapootu, is also a celebration of the strong bonding of human, animal and nature. It is a beautiful symphony created by the fertile mud, water, men and the bulls. In the air charged with excitement and fervor from the “arpuvilikal” ( acclamation ) ,it is the farmers dreams and longing that reverberates in the atmosphere. We witness the natural, spontaneous ushering in of a new season in the ambience of a simple, tranquil village now heady with excitement. The over powering energy and unbeatable enthusiasm of the event, symbolize the indomitable spirit of the villagers.

The bulls are purchased for huge prices and are specifically fed , trained and well groomed for this traditional race. Some are even provided with air conditioned rooms and regularly given traditional ayurvedic treatment and put on special diet. The bull guides are called “pooter” in Malayalam and the half-naked “Pooters” hang onto the tail or a harness of the animal and skim through the mud surface. They are physically enviably fit, well trained and professional .They start training from a very young age and there are “pooters’ who are just school students !

The images shared are from a Kaalpootu event held at Penumanna, near Kozhikode, Kerala. The organizers feel that these events will bond the villagers together and encourage youngsters to carry on the tradition.

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About Ajayan Kavungal Anat

My name is Ajayan Kavungal Anat. I am a retired senior bank executive and took to photography seriously post-retirement. I am living in Kozhikode, Kerala. Photography is my hobby and I am very much interested in Street, Travel and Documentary photography. Had mentoring from Mr. Saurabh Chatterjee of SIA Photography, Mr. Vineet Vohra, and Mr. Rohit Vohra of APF Photography and Mr. Peer Mohammed.

Participated in the following exhibitions: WSP Exhibition, Hamburg, Germany, SIA Photography Exhibition, Hyderabad, “Open Origins – Open ends”- Photomuse, Darbar Hall, Ernakulam and “Lightfall”, Lalithakala Academy hall, Kozhikode.

You can find Ajayan Kavungal Anat on the Web :

Copyrights:
All the pictures in this post are copyrighted to Ajayan Kavungal Anat. Their reproduction, even in part, is forbidden without the explicit approval of the rightful owners.

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Mountain State Forest Festival Photo Show winners announced | News, Sports, Jobs

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Submitted photo
Photographer Alan Tucker of Buckhannon is congratulated by Maids of Honor Sophia Shoemaker and Miriam Fath, and Queen Silvia Anna Ruf.

ELKINS — Arbovale resident Dale Kinnison captured the Best in Show Award at the annual Mountain State Forest Photography Show, held during festival week at the Elkins/Randolph County YMCA.

A total of 75 photos were submitted for the contest. Tyler Belt of Elkins was honored with the People’s Choice Award. Paisley Tabor earned Best in Show for the Youth Division.

“Everything went great and we had a really good show this year,” Mountain State Forest Festival Assistant Director Tracy Gooden told The Inter-Mountain. “There were a lot of great photos and we had a lot of entries submitted, so it was a really good turnout.”

Queen Silvia Anna Ruf and her Maids of Honor, Miriam Fath and Sophia Shoemaker, selected their top photos. Awards were also handed out in six other categories, including Nature, Animals, Places, People, Black & White and Youth.

In the Nature category, first place went to June Proctor of Beverly. Elkins’ Sherry Gibson was second and Beverly’s David Proctor finished in third place.

Wendy Parks, who hails from Fairmont, swept the top two spots in the Animals category. Philippi’s Hailee Poling followed Parks in third place.

Morgantown’s Dietra Savage took top honors in the Places category, and was followed by Buckhannon’s Alan Tucker and David Proctor.

The People category had just one submission with Parks placing first.

Tucker was the overall winner in the Black & White category and Gibson placed second, followed by Elkins’ Stephanie Smith.

Tabor also placed first overall in the Youth category, and Clarksburg’s Rain Hoalcraft was second. Tabor rounded out the top finishers in the Youth division with third place.

Ruf’s top choice in the contest was a photo from Proctor, while Tucker’s photo was Maid of Honor Sophie Shoemaker’s choice. Maid of Honor Miriam Fath chose a photo from Norton’s Cheryl Gottschall.

Photos submitted to the contest can be picked up at the location they were dropped off at this week.

“We had a great week for the Festival this year, we really did,” Gooden said. “All the events we had turned out really well and everything was well received. It was a really good week.”

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Atlanta Celebrates Photography rebrands as Atlanta Center for Photography

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The name Atlanta Celebrates Photography is dead. Long live the Atlanta Center for Photography.

Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the photography and lens-based media festival is re-inventing itself again. The nonprofit is rebranding itself as Atlanta Center for Photography this month, without losing any letters of its acronym ACP, becoming officially a “center” for photography.

For the first time in its history, the organization will host exhibitions and live events in its own space, a 500 square-foot, street-level “jewel box space,” as its new director, Lindsey O’Connor, describes it. In the past, the nonprofit has partnered with art galleries and venues to host its events.

The new space, named the Atlanta Center for Photography Project Lab, will open Oct. 26 with a solo installation by photography-based artist Kalee Appleton. The Fort Worth, Texas, artist uses photography, sculpture and drawing to create immersive, digitally manipulated landscapes. The work, according to O’Connor, is representative of the new direction the center wants to embrace — giving lens-based artists a space where they can “take risks, experiment with creative approaches and push the boundaries of the medium’s impact.”

Instead of the organization’s familiar monthlong, citywide festival, this year’s programming will be minimal, in part to give time for the new staff to consolidate its new direction. The Atlanta Center for Photography will continue to expand its core programs, including the emerging artist fellowship. Chelsea Mukenya is the 2023 recipient, and her exhibition is on view through Oct. 29 at the Mint gallery.

Credit: Courtesy of Kalee Appleton / Atlanta Center for Photography

Fans of the annual festival, portfolio reviews and public art installations will have to wait until spring.

But worth noting is an upcoming exhibition “Ghosts of Segregation: Photographs of Rich Frishman,” in collaboration with the David J. Sencer CDC Museum. The show opens Monday, Oct. 16, and will feature an artist talk at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 19.

ArtsATL talked recently with O’Connor to learn more about this new chapter and the work in progress.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you envision your new position as executive director?

A: I was previously at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York for six years, working as the biennial coordinator. My role was to coordinate the artists, curators and the museum staff to realize projects. I coordinated the exhibitions and film programs of three biennials in 2017, 2019 and 2022. In that time, the total number of artists from the American South that I worked with was three, maybe five. There were a lot of artists from Puerto Rico, but, from the mainland, the global South, there were very few.

In New York, there’s so much white noise, so much happening in the art world all the time. I felt (coming to Atlanta) was an interesting opportunity to have an impact somewhere else. Here there are a lot of incredible working artists, and interest in and potentially money for the arts. I think we can provide a platform and open up paths of exchange that ultimately will get more artists on a larger platform than just our region.

Q: This year marks a huge transition for the organization with the opening of a brick-and-mortar space on Edgewood Avenue. What motivated this transformation?

A: The transition to having a physical space had been discussed with the board and many community members before I was hired as executive director. A lot of interviews were done to take the temperature of different key stakeholders throughout the Atlanta arts community. Everybody agreed that this was the right next step. I think the community felt it was time for the organization to make a shift, make a bigger splash and have a more year-round presence.

Q: What are the benefits of having your own space?

A: Many people think of us as just an October festival. This new space will give us the flexibility to not only commission new works from artists living in the South, which is the thrust of our curatorial program, but also to curate public programs and to host lectures and screenings. This will give us a lot more flexibility to create programming on a year-round basis.

Our inaugural exhibit is a good example of what we’re trying to do, which is to push the boundaries of the medium and consider the preconceived notions of what the limitations of photography might be. As people who love photography and lens-based media, we don’t want people to feel pigeonholed. So we’re working with artists who are interested in filling a space in a fresh way.

ExploreAtlanta fall arts guide

Q: Atlanta Center for Photography has this unique DNA in the photo festival world, inviting everybody — artists but also non-professionals and amateurs — to find a venue and to exhibit work. Are we going to lose this democratic aspect of the festival?

A: We definitely want to keep the community-driven aspect. We plan to condense it into a tighter, more focused, multiday festival in 2024 with keynote speakers, workshops and artist presentations. There will definitely be community programming at organizations all over the city. We still want to do an open call for everybody to get their exhibition, their screening, their talk on a shared calendar. We will still have a rich feeling of collective work and a shared goal.

Q: Public art was a center point in the years past with “The FENCE,” the Phoenix installation and, last year, Jess T. Duncan’s large-scale photographs exhibited during the Atlanta Pride parade on the windows of the Hyatt Centric in Midtown. Do you have plans for public art this year or next?

A: We are definitely still interested in our public art activation. Photography lends itself well to public installation, We don’t have any activation planned immediately. I have some ideas, but we need to get the exhibition program up and running and make sure that our core programs are well-considered. Then we will start to fold in more public art activations.

EXHIBIT PREVIEW

“Ghosts of Segregation: Photographs of Rich Frishman”

Through May 24. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Wednesdays and Fridays. 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Thursdays. Free. David J. Sencer CDC Museum, 1600 Clifton Road NE, Atlanta. 404-639-0830, cdc.gov/museum.

Rich Frishman artist talk

5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 19. Free. Sencer CDC Museum. Calendly.com/cdcmuseum/rich-frishman-artist-talk

Virginie Kippelen is a photographer, multimedia producer and writer specializing in editorial and documentary projects. She has contributed to ArtsATL’s Art+Design section since 2014, writing mostly about photography. And after living 25 years in the United States, she still has a French accent.

MEET OUR PARTNER

ArtsATL (www.artsatl.org), is a nonprofit organization that plays a critical role in educating and informing audiences about metro Atlanta’s arts and culture. Founded in 2009, ArtsATL’s goal is to help build a sustainable arts community contributing to the economic and cultural health of the city.If you have any questions about this partnership or others, please contact Senior Manager of Partnerships Nicole Williams at [email protected].

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How Belize became a poster child for ‘debt-for-nature’ swaps

View of the Laughing Bird Caye National Park in the outskirts of Placencia village, in Stann Creek District, Belize

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When Covid hit Belize, its economy nosedived: closed borders meant fisheries and farmers had no export markets, and tourism centered on the tiny Central American nation’s warm waters and wonders of biodiversity came to a halt.

“We lost approximately 14 percent of GDP,” Prime Minister John Antonio Briceno told AFP in an interview. Nearly a third of the workforce of the country’s 400,000 people were unemployed and there wasn’t enough money “to keep the lights on,” let alone maintain onerous debt repayments.

Then came a lifeline: environmental nonprofit The Nature Conservancy (TNC) offered to lend Belize money to pay off creditors if it promised to put part of the savings into marine protection.

So-called “debt-for-nature-swaps” are being hailed as an innovative financial tool for preserving ecosystems from climate change and overexploitation, even as critics warn their generosity is overstated and they are far from a cure-all.

Finalized in November 2021, a year after Briceno took office, the deal involved TNC buying back a $553 million “superbond” which held the government’s entire commercial debt, negotiating a discount of 45 percent.

This was converted into a $364 million loan “blue bonds” in a sale arranged by Credit Suisse, unlocking $180 million for marine conservation over 20 years.

“For us, it was a win-win, it gave us a breather,” said Briceno. Notably, the buyback reduced the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio by more than 10 percent.

Old idea, bigger scale

Prime Minister of Belize Juan Antonio "Johnny" Briceno meets with reporters during the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) High-Level Event "Nature and People: Ambition to Action" in New York — Prime Minister of Belize Juan Antonio “Johnny” Briceno meets with reporters during the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) High-Level Event “Nature and People: Ambition to Action” in New York.
Photo: Zak BENNETT / AFP/File
Source: AFP

Belize’s coastline is home to the largest barrier reef in the northern hemisphere, providing significant habitat for threatened species including manatees, turtles and crocodiles.

But warming oceans from climate change, excessive fishing, and coastal development all pose major challenges.

Under the terms of the deal, Belize agreed to expand protection to 30 percent of its territorial waters, and spend $4.2 million annually on marine conservation.

Since then, TNC signed similar agreements with Barbados and Gabon. Ecuador negotiated the biggest swap of all in May, reducing its debt obligations by about $1.1 billion to benefit the Galapagos Islands under an arrangement overseen by Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project.

Slav Gatchev, managing director of sustainable debt at TNC, told AFP that although the first debt-for-nature swaps happened in the 1980s, now they operate at a far larger scale.

“A third of the outstanding commercial debt to lower and middle income countries is in some form of distress,” he said, meaning environmental ministry budgets are stretched and it’s hard for governments to invest in nature.

He sees an opportunity to refinance up to $1 trillion of the commercial and bilateral debt, in turn generating $250 billion for climate and nature.

Paper parks?

Andre Standing, a researcher for groups including the Coalition for Fair Fisheries Arrangements, told AFP the Belize deal was only possible because the country was about to default and it was therefore better for creditors to accept a lump sum — rather than the altruistic act it was portrayed as by some.

Moreover, he added, such deals do nothing to address the debt crisis plaguing developing countries.

“That’s true, but it’s not intended to,” Esteban Brenes, who leads conservation finance for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which is also looking to organize new debt swaps, told AFP.

“We’re going to take a piece of the debt and use some proceeds for something better, but by no means are we going to solve the big problem,” he said.

Another concern has been that countries might agree to lofty commitments to secure concessions but then fall to “paper park syndrome” where protections exist only in theory.

But Gatchev said the commitments are legally binding and governments could incur fees for breaking them.

“Our reputation as the world’s largest conservation organization is on the line here, and we have no incentive to sugarcoat lack of compliance,” he stressed.

Briceno, for his part, said the high-profile deal had increased environmental consciousness among his people, who were now quick to report illegal mangrove dredging, for instance.

The debt restructure was “a very good start,” he continued, but his country needed far more assistance from the Global North.

“Developed countries destroyed their environment to be able to have development: high-rises, big vehicles, nice fancy homes,” said Briceno.

“Now we want the same and you’re telling us ‘we can’t afford you to destroy what we have destroyed’ — then pay us.”

Source: AFP

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Outgoing Izabella is a nature lover

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Izzy is an inquisitive, outgoing, and outspoken girl in search of her forever family. She loves to explore the outdoors and nature, which include various community activities, gardening, and collecting small insects for her “bug sanctuary.” She always willing to try new things and new foods. Izzy also enjoys arts and crafts and going to the library. Her biggest strength is her ability to advocate and speak up for herself.

Izzy attends a local public school and receives support through an IEP. She participates in many extracurricular activities which include gymnastics, cheerleading, and the Girl Scouts. Izzy is currently placed in a residential program and has made positive connections with peers in and outside of school.

Izzy would thrive with a caring and committed family of any constellation with a female parental figure with or without other children in the home. Interested families need to have experience in trauma informed care and therapeutic parenting. Interested families should also willing to accept and have access to the support of therapeutic services. They must be dedicated to providing ethnic role models and appropriate information about her culture which includes discussing racism. It is important to Izzy that her maintain contact and visits with her younger brother who is also in foster care.

To learn more about adoption from foster care visit www.mareinc.org . Massachusetts Adoption Resource Exchange (MARE) can give you guidance and information on the adoption process. Reach out today to find out all the ways you can help children and teens in foster care.

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30 Remarkable Photo Recreations That Will Amaze You

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Explore the captivating trend of recreating old photos! Witness the unfolding tales of people’s lives through captivating “Then vs Now” pictures. Dive into the most popular submissions from the r/PastAndPresentPics subreddit below. These photos are brimming with cherished memories and genuine emotions, immersing you in the rich narratives they portray.

Scroll down and enjoy yourself. All photos are linked and lead to the sources from which they were taken. Please feel free to explore further works of these photographers on their collections or their personal sites.