holga064...1/2

I pity the fool who don't buy my oranges!

Don't ever listen to me....

here is a letter from my latest love advice column ( yes i'm still writing it ). I submitted this to the editor last night. I keep expecting to be fired yet it never happens....

Dear Ben,
I have fallen deeply love with a girl I have recently met. She seems to also like me but I am not sure as it is hard to tell. She is an introverted and quiet girl and when I talk to her sometimes she only responds with silence. I am looking for a way to some how make a connection with this girl so that she will open up to me. I have asked lots of my female friends what to do but they have only given me bad advice. What are some ways that i can break this silence and win her heart. Please let me know the secrets to melting a girls heart and making her fall in love with you.
Blue

Dear Blue,
I think first off if your hanging out with your female friends looking for advice then your doing your research in the wrong library. I think if your reaching out to this girl she is still giving you the cold shoulder you might be trying too hard. Don't go chasing this girl trying to impress her instead I think you need to be strong and your own man which in turn will impress her even more. Try and be like a cowboy. You know that guy on a horse alone riding through the desert. The cowboy has his own code of honor, ethics, and his own rules of living. He never, ever tries to impress the women but in the end he always gets the girl and they ride off into the sunset together. I think you need to reach down deep and find some of these qualities inside yourself and let her discover you. In the end if she doesn't care about you for who you really are than no trick in the book is going to melt her icy heart.

I would love to hear your thoughts....

holga 063

holga 60 something

here is a shot of on of the boat guys in the river that divides dhaka the capital of bangladesh. I first he wanted $500 USD to take me out in a boat but i finally negotiated him down to about 10 cents or something.

holga a day

Ok. I got really slack on my goal of a holga photo per day. But I was broke and kind of busy. Now I am bored again and have money and just got 60 rolls of film developed. So I am starting up again.

i figured I would start off light. I was toying around with infrared film in my holga and shot these. it doesn't have much IR effect because i used the wrong filter. I tried using a standard $5 red 25A filter instead of the $100 red R72 filter. Anyways I still thought the dark sky gave it an interesting look. The rest of the week i am going to post portraits and such from bangladeshy villages.

D.P.R.K.

So I have decided that I am gonna try and take a little pleasure trip to The D.P.R.K. ( aka north korea )

I figure I want see an actual axis of evil before McCain claims his destiny and bombs them back into the stone age.

I am an american ( obviously ) so I just submitted the application to the tour agency to see if I can actually get a visa to visit north korea.

The highlight of north korea would be getting the chance to see the mass games. The mass games is a 100,000 people in a synchronised gymnastics show that makes the beijing opening ceremonies seem like a community theater performance.

Anyways I will keep you posted on the details if i get greenlit or rejected.

here is a clip of the DPRK mass games :



What are Mass Games?....in a nutshell:

The Mass Games organisers state that 'Juche orientated mass gymnastics of Korea originated from Flower Gymnastics, a work by President Kim Il Sung created in 1930, the early days of his anti Japanese revolutionary struggles'. 1961 marked the fist truly Korean style Mass Gymnastics piece with the catchy title of 'The Era of the Workers' Party'. Today, Mass Gymnastics represents 'the ideological theme of the history of the country and nation splendidly through combination of gymnastic formations, backdrops involving tens of thousands of people and music'. The original aims were to train the people's physique but this led into a form of gymnastic art, 'the ideological theme promotes social development and it trains not only the people's physiques but also their spiritual power'.

Unlike a sports competition, where the athletes compete for a prize, the mass gymnastics of Korea brings 'pleasure and satisfaction to the performers as well as to the audience and instils in their hearts hope for the future'.

As Kim Jong Il pointed out in a meeting with the mass gymnastics organisers in 1987 'the Korean style of mass gymnastics is a mixed form of comprehensive physical exercises with a combination of high ideological content, artistic quality and gymnastics skill'.

'Developing mass gymnastics is important in training children to be fully developed communist people, to be fully developed communist man, one must acquire a revolutionary ideology, the knowledge of many fields, rich cultural attainments and a healthy and strong physique. These are the basic qualities required of a man of the communist type. Mass gymnastics play an important role in training schoolchildren to acquire these communist qualities. Mass gymnastics foster particularly healthy and strong physiques, a high degree of organization, discipline and collectivism in schoolchildren, The schoolchildren, conscious that a single slip in their action may spoil their mass gymnastic performance, make every effort to subordinate all their thoughts and actions to the collective.'

holgaroid

I just scanned this. before i moved to beijing i bought a ridculously expensive polaroid back 2 weeks before polaroid discontinued making film for it. Anyways i shot a ton of polaroids back then lost them and just refound them so here is one. I am too lazy to post anything else. tomorrow i pick up about 20 rolls of film from the lab so expect tons of fress holga shots from india and bangladesh this week.

Benjamin Radcliffe Biography

Benjamin Radcliffe was born in Massachusetts in 1975. He graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1997 with a B.F.A. in Computer Art. Since then he has lived all over the U.S.A. working as a Lighting & Compositing artists for studios like PDI/Dreamworks, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Walt Disney Feature Animation. In january of 2007 he left his job at Disney and proceeded to spend the next 18 months traveling to the remote corners of China, Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, India, and Bangladesh. During these travels he documented his adventures using a cheap toy plastic Holga camera shooting medium format film. The artist currently resides in Beijing, P.R.C. working as a Computer Graphics Artist for Technicolor Beijing and is also writing a weekly love advice column for the chinese newspaper 21st Century. When not busy planning his upcoming adventure to Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea ( aka North Korea ) Benjamin can often be found in the Beijing hutongs at Huxley's Bar solving the world's problems one beverage at a time.

olympics wrap up

So i don't know about you but at the Olympics I had a fucking blast! It had exceeded my dreams. I saw Bolt break a world record. i saw tae kwon do fighters knock each other out. I aet drank and was merry. I was introduced to the sport of Handball which is awesome. So much craziness happened I was slack on the postings. I have way too many photos to sort through so I figured I was start at end and work my was back even though i started at the beginning... or something. I am sold on the olympics now need to start looking for employment possibilities for london 2012!

Anyways olympics ended big for me.

web page help

So I am organizing stuff for that gallery show in LA. I need help making a webpage. i bought a domain and now i need to make a simple page with my photo a bio and a few picutres and maybe a separate page with a gallery of some photos. I have no idea how to do this. I also have no idea how to put stuff on the internet once i make this. I was wondering if anyone out there could make a page for me and host it and make use my domain?

I aslo just banged out this bio please let me know what you think and what the grammitcal errors are.

Benjamin Radcliffe was born in Massachusetts in 1975. He graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1997 with a B.F.A. in Computer Art. Since then he has lived all over the U.S.A. working as a Lighting & Compositing artists for studios like PDI/Dreamworks, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Walt Disney Feature Animation. In january of 2007 he left Disney and spent the next 18 months traveling to the remote corners of China, Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, India, and Bangladesh. During these travels he documented his adventures using a toy plastic Holga camera shooting 120 film. The artist currently resides in Beijing, P.R.C. working as a Computer Graphics Artist for Technicolor. When the artist isn't in exotic locations getting in adventures with his toy camera he can be found at Huxleys solving the world's problems one beverage at a time.

As for the photos i am still not sure I am just going to print all of these and whichever come out the best is what i will frame. Also not sure if i should do som color and b&W or just all b&w....Would still like to hear opinions.

B&W:







Color:

Great Article

I just read this on yahoo and thought it was great. As someone who has been here watching china get ready for the olympics. i have seen first hand the broken promises to the olympics the crackdowns and raids and deportations as well as just simple lack of human rights. I was in the tibetean areas pre riots and in the Tibetan exile community during the riots. My friend recently told me he tried to check into a hotel and the policy was no lai wai, tibeteans, or xinjiang people and this was un written govenrment policy. I have also seen them install the handicap access 1940's technology 6 weeks before the games start. China did it their way. Sign the contract first then ignore your obligations later.

I was also present in the stadium to see Bolt break the world record and celebrate it. I sang him happy bday. What might look like showboating via a TV screen out of context definitely wasn't perceived as such at the time. I was there and EVERYONE went crazy and shared the moment. The other sprinters as well were rejoicing no one had ill will everyone was stoked. just look at my photo of him and shawn Crawford down below in my other post. does he look like he feels dissed?

Although i was a non-believer before and am all about the olympics now. Before I was anti because of all the political bull and it is seeing things like bolt that turned my opinion around.

anyways I thought this was worth a read check it out. i would love to hear your thoughts.

BEIJING — Jacques Rogge is so bought, so compromised, the president of the IOC doesn’t have the courage to criticize China for telling a decade of lies to land itself these Olympic Games.

All the promises made to get these Games — on Tibet, Darfur, pollution, worker safety, freedom of expression, dissident rights — turned out to be phony, perhaps as phony as the Chinese gymnasts’ birthdates Rogge was way too slow to investigate.

One of the most powerful men in sports turned the world away from his complicity. Instead, he has flexed his muscles by unloading on a powerless sprinter from a small island nation.

Rogge’s ripping of Usain Bolt’s supposed showboating in two of the most electrifying gold-medal performances of these Games has to be one of the most ill-timed and gutless acts in the modern history of the Olympics.

“That’s not the way we perceive being a champion,” Rogge said of the Jamaican sprinter. “I have no problem with him doing a show. I think he should show more respect for his competitors and shake hands, give a tap on the shoulder to the other ones immediately after the finish and not make gestures like the one he made in the 100 meters.

Oh, this is richer than those bribes and kickbacks the IOC got caught taking.

All the powerful nations — including the United States — have carte blanche at the Games. They can pout and preen, cheat, throw bean balls, file wild complaints, break promises that got them a host bid, whatever they want. They can take turns slapping Rogge and his cronies around like rag dolls as long as the dinner with a good wine list gets paid.

A single individual sprinter? Even if you don’t like his manner, that’s whom Rogge deems it necessary to attack, to issue a worldwide condemnation?

“I understand the joy,” Rogge said. “He might have interpreted that in another way, but the way it was perceived was ‘catch me if you can.’ You don’t do that. But he’ll learn. He’s still a young man.”

Perceived by whom? Old fat cats making billions of Olympic dollars on the backs of athletes like Bolt for a century now? They get to define this? They get to lecture about learning?

Bolt is everything the Olympics are supposed to be about. He isn’t the product of some rich country, some elaborate training program that churns out gold medals by any means necessary.

He’s a breath of fresh air, a guy who came out of nowhere to enrapture the world with his athletic performance and colorful personality. This is no dead-eye product of some massive machine.

He was himself, and the world loved him for it.

On his own force of will, Bolt has become the break-out star of these Games. He saved the post-Michael Phelps Olympics. It wasn’t so much his world-record times, but the flair, the fun.

No one at the track had a problem with this guy; they understood he is everything the sport needs to recover from an era of extreme doping. The Lightning Bolt made people care about track again, something that seemed impossible two weeks ago.

“I don’t feel like he’s being disrespectful,” American Shawn Crawford told the Associated Press. “He deserves to dance.”

Apparently, Rogge would prefer 12-year-old gymnasts too frightened to crack a smile.

It got better when, in the same press conference, he pretended to forget all the lies China told him to get this bid, all the troubles, all the challenges, and praised the host nation. Yes, these have been an exceptionally well-run Games from a tactical standpoint, and the Chinese people have displayed otherworldly kindness.

None of which denies the promises broken, the innocent jailed, the freedoms denied — the kind of issues someone with Jacques Rogge’s standing should be talking about.

He has no spine for that. Not for China. Not for any big country. He had to criticize someone, he had to make headlines, he had to show he was a tough guy. So who better than someone from somewhere that can’t ever touch him back?

Yes, Usain Bolt is the problem of the Olympics. He’s the embarrassment. He’s the one who needs to learn.

Sure, Jacques, sure.

Tito's Big Day

I would like to announce to everyone that today is a very special day for Mr. Tito Fratt. Today we are celebrating 36 years of his birth. Now for those of you who don't know who Tito Fratt is, he's the very successful, very hairy, very disease free gentleman pictured above. Did I mention he knows Tae Kwon Do? ( sorry ladies he is already taken )

For the record Tito once told me in confidence that Alec Baldwin is the one man so sexy that he could feel comfortable having sex with him and still not feel gay. Please help Me wish tom a happy birthday by emailing him a special happy bday tito alec baldwin photo:



To help wish Tito a happy bday please download this photo and e-mail it to him: HERE

Bolt

So after my first trip to the birds nest I was hooked. The opportunity arose to go last night for the mens 200m finals. I has seen bolt run in the 200m semis and it was amazing so i jumped at the chance. I cannot tell you how amazing it is to watch olympics athletics live. We had AMAZING seats A level 17th row. Our seats were so good that evander holyfield was like 4 rows behind me. Like I said AMAZING.... and they should be amazing they were $200usd a pop. But cost doesn't matter and the fact that i am eating noodles 3 times a day for the rest of the month doesn't matter when it comes to once in a lifetime opportunities like this. The main events were womens hammer throw the 800m semi's the men's pole vault, womens 400m hurdle finals, the 110m hurdles which would have been amazing if liu xiang didn''t get hurt hurt. and of course the 200m mens finals.

For those not in china i don't think you can ever realize just how HUGE liu xiang is he is not just olympic famous like Mary lou Retton or Brian Boitano! H is coca-cola nike famous like Shaq, Kobe, Gretzky, Bo Jackson, mike tyson, NKOTB, the 2 cory's, the olsen twins, paris hilton, and Jackie Moon all rolled into one. He was it. His face is every where! every magazine, billboard commercial, sides of buses, on tv screens in subway cars. And he didn't compete and the chinese are devastated. There was talk of the chinese imposing a Martial Law enforced Do-Over. There was a brief military buildup aimed at stopping the games taking the medals back and waiting for him to heal but instead they decided they will just erase his injury from the history books like other historical chinese events not legal to type in blogs.

Anyways Bolt was it! This is the second world record i have seen so far and it was amazing. IHe was so f'ing fast. He was like 35 feet in front of everyone else. And after he won they started blairing jamming reggae and he took his shoes off and did a victory dance around the stadium. Then they announced tomorrow was his birthday and EVERYONE in the crowd sang him happy bday. TENS of THOUSANDS sang him happy bday. It was crazy.

I have something like 800 pictures and will take me a while to sort but here are a couple. I got one of julia and evander i was too afraid to get closer than 10 feet to him to get a picture. She said his ears were intacts but might have been bolt-ons.

birds nest

olympics are still rocking hard. saw basketball saturday if you saw the greece angola game on tv i was the drunk american draped in a chinese flag who got the crowd to do the wave!

I just got back now from the bird's nest stadium where i saw ameica win 4 golds 3 in one event,

the top of the night though was the womens pole vault final. this russian set a olympic record then a world record for the gold. no matter what sport seeing a world record made in the olympics gives you chills.

more photos after i sleep.

ping pong qiu

So last night was my first Olympic ping pong event. Seeing as ping pong is to china what baseball football basketball combined is to america I really wanted to like it. I tried but I failed. The crowd was way into it. The thing is lets face it pong pong is not a sport its something people in ohio play in thier garages and in church functions. I honestly don't think i have ever actually played. And coming to realize that I realize there are a lot of suburban activities i never really got into. I played a fair share of air hockey and skee ball but ping pong alas.

anyways the other thing that was offsetting was all the chinese players just dominated. I dont just mean china or taiwain. I mean hong kong, singapore, and just about every other countries teams had at least one asian person on it. the germans looked asian as did the polish. Anyways the matches were loppsided and other than poland vs romania the all finished 3-0 in a best of 5 series. i imagine the finals would be more like forest gump.







anyways here are some pictures...