Kira

I’ve taken the Moscow-Tallinn train any number of times. The scent of coal smoke, used to heat samovars for tea water on board, is indelibly printed on my brain as the scent of beckoning horizons.

It’s an old Soviet train, built solid and ugly, but it stays warm and nowadays, they even usually keep it stocked with toilet paper (though I have a small roll in my daypack, just in case). Most of the cars are four-bunk sleepers, though there’s one utterly miserable wagon that just has chairs, many of which are broken. I’ve gotten stuck there one time, in a chair that wouldn’t recline, when all the bunks were sold out and I had to make a visa run. Like most of the people in that car, I spent as much of the night as possible in the restaurant wagon; a group of other seater-car refugees, Estonians all, took in on themselves to convince me that Estonian vodka is better than Russian. I will agree, it is quite fine – but I think the dark Baltic beers are the best.

The restaurant wagon is a relic of another age, like one of those old truck stop diners you find in rural areas, and the finest part of the trip. Cheap lace curtains, vinyl seats, and fake flowers on the tables – but the food is good, the beer is great, and the person sitting next to you is might strike up a conversation that could go for hours.

Moscow-bound, you go through customs in Narva and Ivangorod, twin fortified towns on opposite banks of the Narva river, at about 11 p.m. – far more civilized than the 4 a.m. border inspections when you travel Tallinn-bound.

Past customs, the train’s rocking soothes you to sleep. The bunks are nothing special, but I love sleeping on trains, sometimes waking to watch the world roll by outside the window, but mostly comfortably curled into my corner, safe and warm, ready for a new country in the morning.

Originally published at Seeking the World's Soul. You can comment here or there.

Lil­lian is one of my favorite mod­els. She has a won­der­ful vibrancy about her and that Eston­ian way of always smil­ing, even when I’m telling her to look fierce! I was think­ing “Mae­nad” when I envi­sioned this shoot, and when she showed up sun­tanned and wild, straight from camp­ing at a music fes­ti­val. I just said “Per­fect — don’t touch your hair!”. We opened a bot­tle of red to get in the Dionysian spirit,  let her drape the chi­ton as she liked,  and started shooting.

The Ama­zon — Images by Kira Hagen

Originally published at Seeking the World's Soul. You can comment here or there.

Last month I did a shoot in Ankara with model Özge Can pos­ing in a chi­ton, a dress com­mon to women through­out the ancient Mediter­ranean, at the Roman Baths archae­o­log­i­cal site. Özge is work­ing on a master’s degree in envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing and does mod­el­ing as a hobby, and we con­nected via Model Mayhem.

I’ve been think­ing about writ­ing more about where the ideas for these shoots come from, so here goes:

At the begin­ning of the2008 Sum­mer Olympics, Greece hired some actresses to dress as ancient priest­esses for the torch light­ing cer­e­mony. After I saw the pho­tos, I wanted to do a sim­i­lar shoot! (But with garb that didn’t look like it started life as cur­tains.) I’d actu­ally done a Roman look shoot before, though it was in 2000 on a 1.3 megapixel cam­era (which cost $600 then…) and had a blast with it.

In Jan­u­ary, when the school I work at was on win­ter break, I went down to the Mediter­ranean coast by Antalya with the inten­tion of doing some shoots in the area’s ruined Greco-Roman cities. I was hop­ing to find a model to pose for me there and put the cos­tume together before leav­ing. It didn’t work out but I did find Özge’s pro­file and instantly thought of Michael Whelan’s paint­ing “Night’s Daugh­ter”. She liked the shoot con­cept so we worked out meet­ing later in the spring.

The Roman Baths in Ankara are an open air museum with ruins dat­ing from when ancient Ancyra was the cap­i­tal of Gala­tia, then an eth­ni­cally Celtic part of Ana­to­lia. (I was flab­ber­gasted to learn the area had a Celtic his­tory; for some rea­son I’d always thought Gala­tia was in ancient Gaul/ mod­ern France, not — of all places — Turkey.) In addi­tion to the foun­da­tions of the baths them­selves, there are col­lec­tions of tombs, mar­ble pil­lars, and both Greek and Roman way­stones dat­ing from the ancient past. Since the site is on a slop­ing hill, shoot­ing from a low angle allowed me to hide the mod­ern city sur­round­ing us.

Finally, allow me to rec­om­mend Özge to any­one need­ing a Gothic-look model. We did this shoot on a trade-for-images basis but she’s look­ing for com­mer­cial work and would be very happy to travel. Her Eng­lish is excel­lent and she was delight­ful to work with. Con­tact her via Model May­hem or DeviantArt.

Gallery of images from the shoot. Click any image for prints and pric­ing.

Ozge — Ancient Priest­ess shoot — Images by Kira Hagen

Originally published at Seeking the World's Soul. You can comment here or there.

One of the world’s best col­lec­tions of ancient Roman sculp­ture is in the rel­a­tively small Antalya Archae­o­log­i­cal Museum, on Turkey’s South­ern coast. An ancient set­tle­ment itself, Antalya is within 90 minute’s drive of five ruined ancient cities, and the pick of the finds from them reside in the city’s museum. Not only do they have sim­ply beau­ti­ful sculp­tures on dis­play, the dis­plays them­selves are some of the most respect­ful and taste­ful I’ve seen any­where in the world; some of the rooms are almost temple-like.

One of my favorite pieces in the museum was a sculp­ture of the god­dess Artemis of Perge. Her face had a strength and clar­ity I think cap­tured the essence of her myth well. When I’m a lit­tle more set­tled, I’d like to put a large print of this image up on my wall — lack­ing the abil­ity to afford actual replica stat­ues, I think dec­o­rat­ing with pho­tographs of ancient art would be a taste­ful sec­ond choice.

Another image I’d like to print is from the sculp­ture atop the Tomb of Ari­adne — it had the same sort of light­ing and color but was a gen­tler, more sub­dued piece of art, show­ing Ari­adne wak­ing from a dream. I think it’d look gor­geous printed about three feet wide and hang­ing on cream walls. Well, some­day I’ll be in one coun­try for more than 10 months, and able to have “things” again (fin­gers crossed)!

The museum’s col­lec­tions also include some Byzan­tine finds and var­i­ous ethno­graphic items show­ing Turk­ish life from a cen­tury ago. The entrance fee is a bit high — 15 TL as of Jan­u­ary 2010 — but absolutely worth it if you are a fan of ancient sculp­ture. Antalya is Turkey’s fastest grow­ing city and a major sea & sun tourism des­ti­na­tion; it’s very easy to get to as it’s con­nected by bud­get air­lines all over Europe. If you go, I rec­om­mend see­ing the museum first and then tak­ing a tour of the ruined cities in the sur­round­ing area, espe­cially Perge. We went through Mithra Travel for a tour and were very pleased with how extremely knowl­edge­able our guide was; I usu­ally hate guided tours but would rec­om­mend this com­pany with­out hesitation.

Full gallery of pho­tos from the Antalya Archae­o­log­i­cal Museum:

Turkey — Antalya Archae­o­log­i­cal Museum — Images by Kira Hagen

As you can see on the map, the museum is a cou­ple kilo­me­ters out­side the Old City, which can be a nice walk along the coast in good weather, or more sim­ply a quick ride on the tram (approx­i­mately every 20 – 25 min­utes). We were there in Jan­u­ary dur­ing a storm, and I can say from expe­ri­ence that the bus stop does not pro­vide much shel­ter from sleet com­ing down sideways.

Originally published at Seeking the World's Soul. You can comment here or there.

I like to know as much as possible about places before I visit or move to them, and as I’ve been doing a lot of travel over the last few years I’ve worked some basic online research methods. Of course books are great and I love a good travel guide – Rough Guides are my favorite, generally – but most of the time I don’t have easy access to English language books.  Hence, most of my research is done online.

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Originally published at Seeking the World's Soul. You can comment here or there.

The last trip got to me. Just a bit, noth­ing too bad, only trav­el­ing two weeks around Turkey, where I’ve now lived for 5 months. It left me exhausted, though, and I’ve spent the last three days since get­ting back to Sam­sun in the house, all burned out and anti-social.

I always try to go… fur­ther. Deeper into a place, to grab its pain and love and his­tory, to wrap it up around me and get it under my skin. How can you under­stand some­thing with­out get­ting too close to it? Too close means the bar­ri­ers fall, you get past the polite masks, the illu­sion embraced by the unin­ter­ested — ignorance’s safe haven. Too close means you get touched. You get muddy, soaked, exhausted, afraid. It’s when it’s try­ing you, though, that you see the real face of a place, begin to touch its soul, to have your own soul exposed by it. Not safe. Not comfortable.

I named my blog “Seek­ing the World’s Soul” because that title describes what I’m doing, in this long wan­der­ing path around the globe. I’m try­ing to under­stand these places, the peo­ple, the rever­ber­a­tions of his­tory on the present, to under­stand this crazy lovely heart­break­ing world of ours. I’m try­ing to catch glimpses of its soul in my viewfinder, to share its darks and lights, its wild­ness, its sacred­ness, its des­e­cra­tion, and some­times the glimpses of that shud­der­ing beauty that shines through its pain.

Of course I do more nor­mal photo projects — var­i­ous shoots with fan­tas­ti­cally cos­tumed mod­els, wed­dings, the odd prod­uct shoot. But I rarely try and shoot ugli­ness, because the world has enough of that already.

The artist’s role is to burn with Promethean fire, and its fuel is Promethean pain — to have your guts pulled out for all to see, picked over by the vul­tures of the world, and still to keep breath­ing, keep being reborn. To keep dream­ing, and to keep the fires alight. “Art” that is only a com­men­tary on ennui, on bore­dom, on apa­thy… fails.

Good art alchem­izes real­ity into truth. It takes the world and shows its deeper heart, the eter­nal bal­anc­ing the transient.

But the process itself can be exhausting.

Originally published at Seeking the World's Soul. You can comment here or there.

Amis­sos — Sam­sun, Turkey — Images by Kira Hagen

The Eng­lish Club vis­ited Amis­sos on a cool Novem­ber after­noon. The the win­try sun­light was fad­ing fast, and slid golden over the twin tumuli atop the hill above the old har­bor, slowly fad­ing to twi­light blues as it sank behind the coastal moun­tains. The air was cool, a faint breeze blow­ing in from the sea. Sit­u­ated  to give panoramic views of the West­wards from Sam­sun, the city seemed, for once, tran­quil in the Black Sea dusk.

Amis­sos is the name of the ancient set­tle­ment which pre­ceded mod­ern Sam­sun. It was a trad­ing port in Hel­lenis­tic times, and famed as belong­ing to the home­land of the Ama­zons. Samsun’s mod­ern cit­i­zens use the name mainly to mean the site of two tombs and a mod­ern cafe some­what East of the city, and also to denote the oth­er­wise invis­i­ble his­toric fore­bear of the ram­shackle mod­ern town.

The tumuli are named Kalka­nca and Baruthane, accord­ing to the Direc­torate of Cul­ture and Tourism’s Sam­sun hand­book, and may have been used as light­houses; from a cer­tain angle the two mounds align and only one is vis­i­ble, appar­ently indi­cat­ing an ancient har­bor entrance. Claims have been made that the hills were used as tem­ple spots for Roman dieties as well.

Originally published at Seeking the World's Soul. You can comment here or there.

Long time since I posted any­thing on here. A word­press upgrade broke the old “Options” theme I was using, and I’ve been fid­dling with mak­ing the blog pre­sentable again since then, on and off. Mosty off as I was spend­ing a lot of time job seek­ing, then get­ting ready to move, and finally mov­ing from Min­neapo­lis to Samsun.

Sam­sun is a small city on the Black Sea Coast of Turkey — friendly, mid­dle class, full of obser­vant Mus­lims, and a bit dull. I’m teach­ing Eng­lish at a pri­vate girl’s school out­side town, and my hus­band is doing the same at a boy’s school under the same man­age­ment. Peo­ple are friendly, the food is *great*, there’s noth­ing to spend money on, and a year here should let us recover eco­nom­i­cally from the deba­cles we’ve had to deal with since leav­ing Moscow.

I’m going to be post­ing a lot more travel writ­ing and catch­ing up on older pho­to­graphic work, so do want to find a good way to present all this mate­r­ial… which I guess means fuss­ing with Word­press more.  I’ll try to post more often, anyway.

Originally published at Seeking the World's Soul. You can comment here or there.

Well, first off apologies for not writing much lately. Been paying more and more attention to Facebook and neglecting LJ... not that I like Facebook more; it's a very shallow level of communication there! It is faster and easier though, and more of the people I know face-to-face are using it now. I've made my page public and it can be read at http://www.facebook.com/kira.hagen .

Hav­ing some prob­lems with my site at the moment — my apolo­gies! I upgraded word­press and the tem­plate I’ve been using for the last few years broke. So, try­ing to find a new one that dis­plays both images and text well — so far, a lot harder than I expected. I do know some of the menu items are hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties and am try­ing to fig­ure it out; hope­fully I can can that sorted in the next day or so.

Originally published at Seeking the World's Soul. You can comment here or there.