Czech mate and beyond

Hi party people,

I'm in for the blog as well, although I'm still on the road. I'm in Lisbon right now, then going back to Eastern Europe. Prague was utterly amazing. I shot some assignments for the Prague Post while I was there and shot some photo stories (and actually managed to finish them!). :) It's not all updated yet, but if you want to see some photos from Prague, look at my flickr sets: http://www.flickr.com/photos/43028992@N00/sets/

It was wild being in a country where very few people speak English. It taught me to be more patient, to move more quietly, to walk alone, not to fear traffic (!), and communicate more with body language than speech. Some days I didn't talk to another person at all. Not having to interact with people somehow made it easier to look and see the bones of situations underneath things where before people's words have distracted me. Still, I'm really looking forward to being able to talk to my subjects again, at least so I can explain what I do and why they don't need to fear the lens. (The lens is your friend...)

The biggest shock about the trip for me came in terms of realizations about how people relate to public and private space in communism. My Czech friend Tomash explained it to me like this: In the former communist bloc, being in public meant you couldn't smile or appear outwardly happy or another but serious and solidarity-minded. He said, if you smiled, it meant you had something special to smile about, something all your own, which really should be shared with everyone, and why are you hoarding that smile all to yourself! So breaking away from communism meant being able to express emotion in public again, to have thoughts and feelings all your own. Still, old habits are hard to break, and generally Czechs are a stony-faced lot. It was pretty intimidating being confronted with 30 pairs of staring, expressionless eyes the first few times I rode the tram. But the upside is that when a Czech smiles at you, you know you've earned it and they really mean it.

I'm not sure how my internet access will be since I'm going east to Poland and Hungary, and not sure how much I can post, but I'll update when I can. Hope all of you are enjoying life, shooting hard, and having good summers. POST MORE PICS! What are you up to?

Oh, and has anyone heard from my beloved jonhuang.com? (He's probably fallen down a World of Warcraft hole and can't get out.) :)