the Phlog

Khor al Fardh

Hilal bin Ali al Amri has been burnt almost black after a lifetime in the glare of the sea, loading wood and dates onto dhows …

12.30pm

The muallim of Luluah, up here   www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own for Eau Du Volcan | Courdemanges, France  

From Mid Coast www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own  

The cruellest part of the desert is its sound. In that emptiness without people, stretched across countries, you will first be aware of the soft …

Crossing, 2005

My first crossing of the desert: the Wahibas that were later renamed to the more politically-correct but inevitably wishy-washy Sharqiya Sands. This is a scan …

To Yemen

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4.39pm

Turning away from Jebel Kawr . www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  & if you really insist, Twitter Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops

4.12pm

Towards Jebel Kawr . www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  & if you really insist, Twitter Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops

5.18pm

Perhaps a bit clichéd, but we don’t believe in clichés, do we? . www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  & if you …

Before the release, Kuwait. . www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  & if you really insist, Twitter Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops |  Paragraphs + …

Towards Iraq

6.13pm, Kuwait. . www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  & if you really insist, Twitter Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops |  Paragraphs + Pixels

Noon. Ja’alan

The gargoor: a cage that lets the fish in but which is very difficult to swim out of… . www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our …

9.29am

. www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  & if you really insist, Twitter Paragraphs + Pixels |  Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops

Cow

Eid in Wadi Bani Auf. . www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops online |  & if you really insist, Twitter

The Book of Disquiet

Portugal and The Book of Disquiet, up here now. . www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops online |  & …

Campo Maior

Portugal . www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops online |  & if you really insist, Twitter

9.39pm

Lisboa . www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops online |  & if you really insist, Twitter

Noon, Alentejo

What does my wall think about my shadow? Sometimes I wonder about this until I realise I’m wondering about things… And then I feel annoyed and out of …

9.20pm, Jaalan

And Rashid was always getting lost. He was three years old and the family had been stuffed in the back of the pickup, and there …

8.42pm

And it got so hot the bitumen on the roads turned to mush and the trucks that cleared the streets at night were sent out …

Luchshi Gorod Zemli

Or The Best City on Earth, by Muslim Magamayev in 1988. Better in Russian here You have never been to our bright city, You’ve never dreamed in …

Fredka

And we stuff ourselves into the little kitchen – there are only small kitchens in Russia – cram ourselves into the little ground-floor room at …

Kashirskaya, 12.43am

Zaur is from Baku and we have nothing in common except music, and that’s enough, so he calls his son to meet us in the …

Sufayri

And there’s sand on the lens and we’re stumbling over tires and a stuffed toy horse. And Sayh Sufairi, the Plain of Copper, is just …

2.39pm

Khamis has lived in the wadi dust for a lifetime, without electricity, a phone or an address, with a donkey instead of a pickup truck, …

8.10pm

www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops online |  & if you really insist, Twitter

8.08pm

Mukhaynig is a secret place, just a handful of houses of Sineidi, Bareeka, Saalmi and Hadmal slapped together in the earthen desert, downstream in the …

Sayh Sufayri

The three month-old summer wind blows from the south, whipping an entire desert’s worth of sand across Sufayri, the plain named after its copper coloured …

10.17am: Daffah

High over the sea, on the cliffs of Daffa, the boy with oily hair walks up to me and raises his little face in greeting. …

4.10pm

We’re crunching through sand where the wadi spills its guts out, the badlands of sand and dust and bits and pieces of stone carried with …

Hani

Hani is up here now. This is the view from her house in Qohbon. www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  Nikon Muscat …

Diesel

Mohammed Abdullah Shahu al Balushi is up here now. www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops online |  & if you …

Ayman

Ayman is up here now. www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops online |  & if you really insist, Twitter

Mithadhmat

Saalma is up here now. www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops online |  & if you really insist, Twitter

2.02am

www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops online |  & if you really insist, Twitter pinaki.info on Facebook |  Nikon Muscat …

3.37am

Moskva is up here now. www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops online |  & if you really insist, Twitter

Moskva: Sandpaper

Up here now. www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & pinaki.info on Facebook |  Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops |  & if you really insist, Twitter

The old wound

But to understand Russia you have to understand the weather, and what it can do to the land, and how it can sandpaper the berezkas …

Andrushka

And the snow can be cruel too, and while we’re tearing into pig hearts before Paskha in the little kitchen Andrushka was on a surface …

Yulia

“The problem is that it’s easier to break down houses and start from zero than to restore them,” says Yulia, before she starts her eight-hour …

Costya

Somewhere outside, past the thousands of trees and the villa that cannot be demolished because the owner has a paper signed by Lenin, past the …

Banditsky Peterburg

And the girl who had gone a lifetime without ever kissing anyone had a dream once that she was lying on the couch with a …

Uspienski Sobor, Kreml

Outside the Uspienski Sobor of the Kremlin, the group of women huddled together. “I didn’t notice the winter is almost over,” said one. “What are …

Clutching at Limqasil

The furthest Khamis bin Rashid bin Khalfan al Nasibi has ever been is Rustaq, four hours of hiking and crawling and tiptoeing over rock away. …

Pepper Fryberger

The Other Fryberger is up here. www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops | pinaki.info on Facebook | & if you really insist, …

October 2007

That last part, when you know you’re beyond ever stopping, happens in slow motion: the camel runs out from the trees and across the mountain …

6.54pm

A brother – a web designer – dances with his younger sister at a relative’s pre-wedding party in Muscat. Their father sings in the band …

11.44pm

It is a quarter to midnight and the Balushi from Karachi is kick-starting the pre-wedding party, sashaying across the compound where the groom’s family is …

Howling over Yasab

“The old people say that since we didn’t have any utensils in the old days we used to drop the flour for the bread right …

Limqasil

Was it worth it? Khamis laughs out loud at the question, while his brother Salim, who couldn’t ever put together enough money for a wife, …

Samakt

July 20, 2008: A quarter past noon. Hellishly hot white light bouncing off a landscape of rock outside. But I’m squeezing ISO1600 in the depths …

Vakils of Misfah

Up here now www.pinaki.info |  because the best stories are our own

la Danse aux Morts

Madame Cojean is up here now

le Conquet

But it is twilight in le Conquet, and the sea is rushing in so fast it gives you vertigo when you stand in the middle …

Paris, 5.05pm

Past Notre Dame, unbearably overloaded with architecture and tourists, where the faithful can buy a fake gold medallion from a vending machine for two Euros …

One way or the other

I suppose there are poor people everywhere, and some of them work through a hard life and their children start off a little better. But …

the Mingis

A camel in Qafifa, where I shot the remnants of the Mingis. Who says only elephants have nice eyelashes? A muzzle helps when one moves …

Failure at Kaziranga

Up here now. It is May 1999, and I’m in the jungles of Kerala on holiday from college. I have borrowed a little film point-and-shoot from …

Three Men and a Trilith

Anything is possible in Dhofar, even an Egyptian journalist, a British soldier and a line of Iron Age rock arrangements no one has figured out …

Stopping a moment

Up here now.

Children and Grandchildren

The 135 rials Fatma earns at the school is spread wafer thin over the house and granddaughter she takes care of, and she had to …

Sibelle, windblown

This is what you get more than a thousand kilometres of desert away from Muscat: an unknown beach a couple of turns away from the …

Gallery on the Stairs

Starting now, I will be exhibiting one story at a time at the Gallery on the Stairs at the Bait al Baranda, Muscat. I’ll go …

a Jeep called Viola

Dragging the fan belt along the highway at 140 wasn’t such a good idea after all. It was my second breakdown in three days. The …

A Quiet Cancer

I was a thousand metres above sea level near a prehistoric lake and the moon was so close and bright I had to turn my …

Husbands, Sons, Lemons.

Saalma is ecstatic when my fixer Seema and I hunt down her house the next day, and practically hugs me when I say I have …

Stinky and Exclusion

It is half past eight at night and we are sitting down to coffee and Irish cream over dull green kitchen tiles and a single …

under Wadi Qani

Ayman is subconsciously twitching his knees in the diffused light that filters through shut windows at the far end of the majlis, as if trying …

The Voice of Emptiness

It is midday and I am sweating my way up over water-smoothened rock, blue-faced lizards and a mountainside of sun-bleached thorns. High on top, on …

the Sheikh of Wadi Lawami

The old man hitches up his dishdasha, showing off scars from operations in India as we huddle into the little room surrounded by mango and …

Tom Traubert’s Blues

It is 4 minutes to midnight and dinner was too long ago, and Tom Waits is singing Tom Traubert’s Blues and I follow its lyrics …

jumping into a sweatshop

How does it feel to spend a whole day stuck in a sweatshop, and have an entire photography workshop’s worth of people jump in and …

five years of synthetics

Raj is from Punjab, and has found it worthwhile to work in a hole in the wall shop in Muscat, in a back-alley maze where …

Pakistanis, mutton and metaphors

It is just past six and a hundred Pakistanis sit down to eat on the pavement, wedged in between bare mountains, tons of second-hand Toyota …