Social Slave

This is my favorite part about the New Year – a look at New Year’s Eve celebrations and fireworks from all over the world.

A friend of mine shared this website on Facebook called Kuwait Evidence that has about 1,200 high resolution photos of the destruction left behind from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The website is created by Adel Al-Yousifi and all the photos are his eyewitness account of the devastation he found when he returned home.

After checking on family and friends, he took his camera and began recording the devastation. Starting in the South, he made expeditions into the desert and then worked his way up the Coast, to the City, the Suburbs, and finally the North. Al-Yousifi took pictures every day from March till the last fire was put out in November.

The quality of the photographs is really amazing and the gallery is divided into the different types of damage suffered by each part of Kuwait during and after the invasion.

[Website]

These photos were uploaded on the Arabs’ Got Talent Facebook page under the Kuwait album but I’m not sure if these are the final candidates selected for the Season 2.

Update: They uploaded more photos and I just got a reply from the AGT team that those are just random photos from the Kuwait casting.

Here is a first look at Angelina Jolie’s new ad for Louis Vuitton’s Core Value campaign from Women’s Wear Daily. The ad is shot in Cambodia, the birthplace of her oldest son Maddox, by Annie Leibovitz. It features a barefoot, makeup-less Jolie dressed in her own tee and khakhi pants floating on a marshy lake in Cambodia’s Siem Reap province on a wooden boat holding her own six-year-old monogrammed Alto bag.

The Alto bag is actually a discontinued style but LV’s executive vice president Pietro Beccari said that they are considering to re-edit it. Angelina was signed on for the LV ad for $10 million and she donated a portion of her fee to charity.

The ad is the latest installment in Louis Vuitton’s ‘Core Values’ campaign which launched in 2007 and focuses less on fashion and more on classic Vuitton ideals such as travel and craftsmanship by featuring special people and their special journeys. LV will post a teaser video tomorrow that will link to Angelina’s interview set to air on the Cambodia Journey later in the month.

View other ‘journeys’ [Here]

Last November, the Empty Quarter Gallery in Dubai held an exhibition of the historical photographs of the Makkah in 1885 published by Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje in 1889 as ‘Bilder aus Mekka’ courtesy of Leiden University and a Dutch publisher. The original plates held by the Leiden University have been expertly rephotographed and reprinted as a portfolio of valuable platinum prints.

I’ve always been fascinated by history and especially the old buildings of the glorious past had their own attraction and charisma. I loved the simplicity portrayed in these photographs of a bygone Makkah, although in the last photo, the Printing building is reminiscent of the Greek Revival of the Neoclassical architecture of the late 19th century.

View the entire collection [Here] and read more about the photograhs and the story of Snouck on [CNN].

One of our readers emailed us a couple of photos she took at the Marina Crescent yesterday. Marina Mall was celebrating the World No Tobacco Day and that’s pretty cool. I wonder if the smokers in Kuwait actually participated?

Thanks Taanuu

I never really paid much attention to the view from my office until today when I stood staring out the meeting room windows and noticed how interesting the perspective actually is. Here you see a sharp contrast between the glorious past of Kuwait evident in the once-famous Al-Sawaber Complex against the backdrop of the progressive and bright future of the city with the upcoming skyscrapers and city towers.

It’s pretty cloudy right now. BBC Weather has forecasted a possible thundery shower tomorrow.

Update: It started around 7pm already and it’s been raining and lightning like crazy! Let’s see if it continues till tomorrow.

Here is a website I came across where they have posted a special 3-part presentation on the ‘before and after’ satellite images of the destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Roll over the images to see the massive change.

[Link]

I just came across a very interesting website.

The ‘T-Walls’ or ‘Texas Walls’ are portable concrete walls that are used for blast protection around the US military camps in Kuwait and Iraq. The US soldiers turned these concrete walls into pieces of art. They would wait for nightfall and then paint the walls in the floodlight with their Unit insignia, cavalry scenes, American icons or sports mascots.

George Hauer, the editor of the book,  first learned of the walls when his friend sent him an e-mail and three photos. He then set out to photograph these walls before they were lost forever since they were already being damaged by the sun, sand and mortar rounds fired at them. He then edited a 208-page hardcover book called “The T-Walls of Kuwait and Iraq” with a massive collection of those walls, a photographic footprint that will exist after the walls are gone for good.

“It’s a document of our presence and who was there and how the soldiers felt about their time there,” Hauer said.

Seven military photographers crisscrossed Kuwait and Iraq, using their cameras to capture the images on these walls.

One wall is designed to resemble the Terrible Towels that Pittsburgh Steelers fans wave at home games. Another includes the word “Transporters,” sketched to appear similar to the logo from the hit series “Transformers.” A Las Vegas unit put Elvis on its wall; a Massachusetts unit painted the Boston Celtics’ leprechaun on its wall.

“We’ve been getting orders of the book from soldiers now, because it’s part of their life,” Hauer said. ” ‘We were there. That was us.’ “

Click [Here] for more information and if you would want to buy the book. All proceeds from the sale of the book will go to help severely wounded service men and women.