Now in HD!

Tired of flip books yet? Hope not, because Wonderful Machine has posted our portfolio on their Youtube channel. An entire book, for your viewing pleasure. Click through to see in hi-def full screen.
Thanks Neil, Amanda, Bill, and hand model!

Happy 2nd Birthday Emma!

We love you!

Story Book: Java Indonesia--Prambanan and Borobudur

In February, my brother Joe came to Singapore for a two week vacation. We looked for a side trip, something off the beaten track with history. We jumped a short flight to Java to check out two 9th century monuments: Borobudur, a huge Buddhist temple, and Prambanan, the area's largest Hindu temple. Both were built during the same period, across the valley from one another. Both under the violent gaze of an active volcano, Mt. Merapi (last erupted in 2006). Below is a story book of our trip.



We stayed at a great boutique hotel--Rumah Mertua--and spent some of the finest afternoons hanging out watching the rainy-season deluge, sent forth from Mt. Merapi daily like clockwork. A fantastic trip. Cheers Joe!

...and there's even video from Borobudur!

Laos revisited

As promised, here's another look at our Laos feature shot for T+L last October. And, we're trying out a new storybook platform to view the images, so let us know how it treats you.

I broke up the images into four major sections: temple life, the locals, street life, and the river. At the end, you get a glimpse of two premier hotels in the area.

[story books are no longer available. For a peek at more from the story, go to: www.morganowens.com/portfolio_laos_2009.htm)

As we travel around the region, it's clear that Luang Prabang is a unique experience, hugely recommended. The combination of mountain village setting, mild-mannered tourism, Buddhist vibe, and the mighty Mekong makes the town hum all its own, indifferent to the rest of the world.

Wonderful Machine is Wonderful

I stopped by to meet the folks at Wonderful Machine last month while I was in Philadelphia for the MLA. Turns out Neil Binkley, the voice of WM and all around great guy, was taking notes for their blog. I also had the pleasure of getting to know their innovative founder Bill Cramer and producer Amanda Hanley over a lunch that went so pleasurably long into the afternoon I missed two trains before I checked the time!

Read the story at:
http://www.wonderfulmachine.com/blog/?p=2005

Then go check out some hotshots at www.wonderfulmachine.com

Laos feature now on newsstands

The feature we shot in Laos last October for Travel +Leisure has hit newsstands! You'll find it in American editions of the February 2010 issue or here.





Also, our images from shoots in Vieques and Hotel Casablanca in San Juan Puerto Rico ran in the November 2009 issue of Travel +Leisure as part of their "Affordable Caribbean Hotels" feature.

We'll be posting OUR favorite shots in coming days!

What we ate when we got back to Singapore

Here's a menu of what we ate during our first 48 hours back in Singapore, with Kristine and Esme's visit as our excuse.

• lunch: phad thai and tom yam soup
• dinner: James's pizza, with kang kong and golden mushrooms

• breakfast: pork, fish, and vegetarian porridge at Ah Chang
• snack: dragon fruit and dark chocolate
• lunch: katong laksa, rojak and lime juice at 328 Katong Laksa (see above)
  
• snack: nutella tart and pear tart at Everything but Fries
• dinner: chilli crab, buns, sauteed kailan with garlic, tiger beer, and fried, stuffed tofu at Jumbo

• breakfast: Set 1 (kaya toast, eggs, iced kopi) at Toast Box
• lunch: popiah rolls, roast pork with rice, chwee kueh, carrot cake (savory), pork and red bean buns, and sugar cane juice at Tiong Bahru hawker center (see above)
  
• dinner: carrot ginger soup and salad, chez James

See how repentant we were by last night?

This month in Brooklyn/Monroe/Kansas City/Philadelphia

Happy holidays! I am thrilled to be sitting in a rental apartment in Brooklyn on Smith Street, a delightfully familiar view out of my kitchen window and dear friends close at hand.

You'll find us here this week, making the rounds, celebrating the births, engagements, projects, and other life-changers that have happened since we've been gone. Next week we head to Monroe for Jessie's family Christmas celebrations, and then after lunch on Christmas day, we'll fly to Kansas City for Owens Christmas dinner, a Santa double header thanks to a year of bumped flights and a growing stash of frequent flyer miles.

Then, Jessie heads to Philly, where she will be delivering a paper on the influence of the photographic on Hawthorne's creative nonfiction -- 1:30 on Tuesday Dec 29th at the MLA. Stop by if you're a member.

She'll meet James back in Brooklyn on Dec 30th, where we'll be dancing and relaxing for the rest of 2009. Katie D has graciously made up her spare room and plans to have a little party. I look forward to hearing the steam pipes at Pratt again this/next year.

We go back to Singapore on January 5th, in time to welcome our second guests, Kristine Z and baby Esme and usher in the new semester.

So, if I don't get to say so in person on this whirlwind loved ones tour, I hope you and yours have a happy holiday season and a fruitful, prosperous, and magical 2010.

James's birthday

"Do I look older?"

Last Wednesday, we took the day off to celebrate James's birthday. We began the day in the neighborhood at the Tiong Bahru market. I had convinced the plant vendor to bring in a Calamansi lime tree for him, which James had made VERY clear was his heart's desire.



(This bowl of limes was destined to become key lime pie)

After the tree was safely planted in our al fresco bathroom, we went out for porridge at Ah Chiang's, a neighborhood institution, and James's favorite breakfast since introduced to the goodness of pork porridge in Laos.

The shredded ginger and chillies make all the difference.

After breakfast and a nap we headed back to East Coast Park, the site of our Monsoon Halloween to try our luck with the weather. Almost as soon as we sat down with a coconut (to drink from with a straw), it began to rain again. We ran for cover in the same spot, but this was no 2-hour deluge. We had just about made it through the satay and popia rolls when it stopped. We took a beer down to the water's edge and watched antsy high school kids in teams and uniforms build sand castles. Windsurfers went out to the container ships and back again. No paddling through the inside!

It was my intention to get on the water or on a bike, but the sailboat rentals were for certified sailors only, so biking it was. We rode along the beach to a trail which turns north, running alongside Changi airport. It was gorgeous and wild, with the occasional plane watching -- this airport has one of every kind come in like clockwork all afternoon long. We'd ride a while, then watch planes land, then ride a while longer.



After we returned the bikes to the rental stand -- late -- we took quick showers at the changing stand, then drip dried while watching the sunset.



Once we were presentable, we made our way to the "Seafood Centre": the five top rated seafood restaurants in Singapore, all "co-located" by the Housing Development Board into one seafront extravaganza of capitalism and chilli crab. Jumbo, Red House, Fisherman's Village, Long Beach, No Signboard -- all of them set up to seat a thousand diners, all clamoring for our business. The only chilli crab we hadn't tried was the name that suited the day best: Long Beach. All day we'd been pretending that we were in California!



We got "Set A" which came with bamboo clams, rice with tiny, crispy silverfish, spinach and garlic, fried buns, chilli crab, and pumpkin ice cream, served over a jar of smoking dry ice. We ate everything but what got left behind on the table cloth!

Mamiya

While we were photographing Mt Phousi, a group of French tourists decided that James and his camera are part of the attractions of Luang Prabang! Hear the temple drums in the background?

Monsoon Season

And it's rained every day since! Just like home!

Jessie's first publication, available Feb 16, 2010

In March 2007, I went to the UK (sponsored by the University of Southampton, where Quinn is now!) to deliver a paper on photography and abolition at a conference held in honor of the 200th anniversary of the end of slavery in the British Empire. Cora Kaplan and John Oldfield took interest in my work and invited me to submit a chapter for this volume. Scholarly publishing takes time, but Palgrave Macmillan now lists our book for next spring, and this week it appeared on Amazon.com

From the editors' description :

A collection of new essays, Imagining Transatlantic Slavery offers the latest research and thinking on current debates about the representation - past and present - of transatlantic slavery. Building on the interest generated by the bicentenary in 2007-8 of the end of British and American involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, our volume is interdisciplinary, drawing on history, literature and museum and heritage studies. Its focus is on the transatlantic nature of slavery and abolition, and the essays range from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century. Its distinguished contributors offer a critical view of the histories leading up to the defining decisions of 1807-08 and its complex legacies over the last two centuries. Essays on notable figures such as Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, Hannah More, Benjamin Flower, and William and Ellen Craft are juxtaposed with those on early Quaker writing and the use of photography in abolitionist discourse. The last part of the book on 'Remembering and Forgetting' addresses debates surrounding the representation of slavery in drama, visual culture, museums and galleries, and appraises the importance of recent research to public understanding of slavery today.

Contributors: Brycchan Carey, Vincent Carretta, Lilla Maria Crisafulli, Eileen Razzari Elrod, Catherine Hall, Douglas Hamilton, Cora Kaplan, HollyGale Millette, John Oldfield, Jessie Morgan-Owens, Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace and Marcus Wood

Maybe you want a taste? Here's the first paragraph from my chapter, "'Another Ida May': Photography and the American Abolition Campaign":

Photography’s potential as a persuasive visual adjunct to reform campaigns was recognised from the inception of the medium in 1839, even if before the half-tone process revolutionised printing in 1880 images had to be distributed hand-to-hand. The majority of photographs made in antebellum America were daguerreian portraits: a unique image typically the size of your palm, imprinted on a reflective mirror, encased in brocade and brass. Daguerreotypes circulated without captions; therefore, authors who utilised these early photographs to depict abolitionist ideology found a malleable and suggestive representative space. Their evidentiary power in political debate relied upon writing to instruct audiences how to ‘read’ these images. In this essay I will discuss images of two little girls, both in appearance white, one fictional and the other daguerreotyped, one free and the other a slave, that nevertheless illustrated the same potent message of late abolitionist rhetoric: that however impugned by the public’s anxieties surrounding miscegenation, the invisibility of racial markers demonstrated a moral obstacle to defining slavery along racial lines.

Pre-order your copy now! Or, since it's listed at $74.95, ask your library to order one for you.

Making groceries

James and I went to Carrefour today to pick up some groceries, and ended up seeing Julie and Julia instead, which cast life in Singapore into sharp perspective.

The biggest supermarket in our area is a French-owned conglomerate, which means that we can pick up "Western" items like cheese, sausages, unscented eco-friendly detergents, cous cous, charcoal briquets, and El Paso brand tortillas (oh how far the mighty have fallen!). I heard Carrefour pronounced Ka-fou by a cosmopolitan local friend last night, but we still call it "Care-a-4." Stupide americaines...

The aisles are wide and well lit. Today, touts with bullhorns announced one-hour specials on Korean grapes, bone-density screenings, and ready-made Swiss rostis. Durian gets an entire section apart from the regular produce. The first basement offers the sorts of items one might find in Target (but mysteriously, whatever we are shopping for-- lamps, gardening tools--is never there).

In short, making groceries here in no way resembles a trip The Met on Henry Street, followed by a visit to Scottos or Smith and Vine, followed by Fish Tales, followed by Mazzolas, followed by the green market on Carroll Street, and the many other stops on our peripatetic daily shopping trips in Brooklyn and Union Square. That said, the reason we live in this neighborhood is the extensive wet-market a few blocks away, which we visit with the same frequency we did our marketing at home. So it's all good.

But some things necessitate a visit to Carrefour, which is located on the ground floor and 1st basement of a 9 story shopping mall called Plaza Singapura (which we pronounce with a Spanish accent for no reason whatsoever). This mall is but one of many malls on Orchard Road, an avenue which features 10 blocks of 9+ story malls facing one another, many of which also have grocery stores on their bottom floors and cineplexes on their top ones.

Each floor of Plaza Singapura has a theme: for example, go to floor 5 for hobbies and crafts, floor 6 for music and instruments stores, and a floor each for books, young fashion, imported fashion, home improvement, etc. There are four food courts, each catering to a different taste: mall restaurants, local hawker style food, fast food chains, and the desserts/snacks chains.

Today, I was feeling a little post-shoot malaise. Anyone feels low when a week-long trip is followed by a long work week of catchup, though in my case, this feeling is compounded by nostalgia for the those 7 days of joy, fulfillment, and energy that accompany successful creative output. Add in meeting beautiful new people and trying new cuisines while staying in five star accommodations and you'll understand the catch in my stride. So I planned to enjoy a book of poems written by my landlord at the Starbucks, and then join James in a bit of grocery shopping.

(Caveat: Before you indulge my feeling sorry for my slump today, I should admit that I had a great week at the university and then I spent Saturday: at a poetry reading from 1-2:30, then a dessert date at 3:00 with my female colleagues, then we met friends at Siloso beach at sunset, then J and I watched part of a movie on our couch, then we met up with friends for falafel and foul on Arab street, had a nightcap at a jazz club, and still managed to catch a full night's sleep. So don't let me whine.)

Instead, we wandered up to level four to look for a lamp for my office, stopped by the faucet store to a price a hot water heater for the kitchen sink, and did a quick pass though the sale at the fabric store on level five. Since we were all the way upstairs, we decided to visit the cineplex on level 7 to see what was on. There was The September Issue, but frankly, Gourmet's closing this past week has me just too aggravated at 4 Times Square to enjoy a movie about the work (and waste) of putting together a magazine. But Julie and Julia was in sneak previews today...in 5 minutes! so we bought tickets and went in.

I got a little teary in those first few minutes because I simultaneously missed our life in New York, Paris, my mother (Meryl reminds us of her), and Julia Child, who I just love, even though I haven't successfully made a single one of her recipes. I remembered how we used to shop for groceries in Brooklyn, how our apartment (much less than 900 sqft!) also looked crammed with worn but comfortable things, how I also got pearls on my 30th, and oh, all that beautiful fall produce I'm missing! I remembered the first time I read the Julie/Julia blog and marveled at the tenacity of her idea. I remembered the first time I went to Dean and Deluca, and the rooftop parties--it was at my first roof party that I met my dear Parisian friends, who would in time, teach me about markets and picnics and productivity.

The movie is slow in parts, too long by a quarter hour, and delightfully sappy as all get out, but my thanks and my two thumbs up for capturing that moment. (But did we really dress like that in 2002? for goodness sakes!)

After the movie we sat at an outdoor table at Toast Box for butter and jam/butter and ham sandwiches and pretended we were on the continent. Then we did our shopping at Carrefour and tried to enjoy the irony. At the checkout line I bought the last copy of the last issue of Gourmet. Then James made beet salad for dinner, followed by my zucchini bread and some brie.

Bon appetit!

call me

I hate to use this space for product placement but I want everyone to know that you can call us on our 718 number, and vice versa. There's been a some confusion when we call and our 718 number comes up on your caller id, seeing as how we sure don't live in Brooklyn anymore! We subscribe to a service called Vonage that magically transferred our old home line into a little black and orange box, that when hooked up to a DSL line anywhere on the planet, thinks it's still in Brooklyn. So our phone rings here in Singapore, though for all intents and purposes, your phone company thinks you're calling Brooklyn. It works the same for us, too, when we call you. Our bill looks the same as if we were calling you from Brooklyn. Except Vonage throws in 60 other countries for free, including Singapore and her neighbors, Germany, UK, Mexico, France, and 50 other places we haven't had a reason to call yet. For this service we pay a flat rate of about $30, which we call the Momma Bill, since my mom and I love to talk to each other on the phone. Worth every penny!

The downside: having a 718 number that rings in Singapore also means that dinner time sales calls ring here at 6am. And sometimes even well-intentioned callers get the time zones upside down. Thankfully, the service comes with voicemail, so we'll call you back when we wake up and turn the ringer back on.

Hanoi airport

We are waiting out a long layover at the Hanoi Airport on our way to a shoot in Laos. James is trying to condense our scouting/shooting in Singapore last week into 200 words for the magazine, while I read the International Herald Tribune and try not to use up all my kleenex (I'm kicking a cold, so we decided not to take a cab into town exploring). James reports that the Banh Mi at the Bamboo cafe in the airport is not as good as at Hanco on Bergen Street.

Every other time I've heard Vietnamese spoken all around me was in the movies. What a trip! We can't help but be dorks about it. I know we're supposed to seem like jaded jetsetters, weary world-travelers but OMG We're in HANOI! What would our 19 year old selves think of us if they saw us now?

The Kodak people interviewed us back in the Spring, over the phone, while we sat at the big table in our apartment in Brooklyn.We rattled off stories about ourselves and what we did to get here. They've just published an article about us in their ProPass magazine. See "Partners in Life, Partners in Business" online at their website along with a slide show some of the photos we have taken with Kodak film these last 9 years. They seem to think that if our 20-something year old selves could see us now "after 9 short years" (really? didn't seem short to me!), they'd think we were living a "fairy tale." There's an editorial in the IHT called "The Referendum" today which posits that since we shouldn't look back (see: Lot's Wife) we look sideways, and evaluate our lives to the paths taken by our dear friends and neighbors. There's a winning view of James from where I'm sitting (at the airport in Hanoi OMG!!!!).

In the article I say that I learn a lot from talking to photographers, but omits the names of to those photographers with whom we've shared long standing conversations and poker games. I'd like to ameliorate that with a big shout out to Cedric Angeles, David Nicolas, Frédéric Lagrange, Zubin Shroff, Buff Strickland, Ball & Albanese, and Joshua Paul. There's a legion of other photographers we know, and some who feel like familiars. My thanks to them as well, but that's a list for another post, compiled from someplace with airconditioning.