About three years ago, I spent some days in Dubai. These were my impression about it...

Dubai is a fast growing city: strategic position, low tax rate and high degree of freedom are the key for the area expansion. It seems that the local leadership would transform Dubai in a sort of midpoint between Hong Kong and Montecarlo.

High degree of freedom, especially compared to other neighboring countries (even of United Emirates), make easy and comfortable for western and Asiatic people trading and living in Dubai.

Low tax rate is important key to attract capitals and trade business. Being located on the Gulf area, it becomes a favorite access door for the Middle East area, Iraq included. All of that make Dubai a melting pot of races and cultures. There are, too, nearby an high number of well-to-do people, a number of immigrates that lead a poor life with few rights: echoes of this problem can be found also on the local newspapers. 

Fast growing is the impression that the high number of tower being building give to the visitor. The photos of this page were taken quite a year ago during a business travel of few days. There weren't time to spare: most of the photos were taken from inside a taxi! Visit in this way Dubai, I got the feeling of untrue, the impression of a sort of a "plastic" city: the high glasses tower, the plane spaces and the few contact with city true life might yielded this sense.

Photos, as are finally produced, may yield this sense of untrue…. Other towers and place of Dubai are interesting and famous as or more than the ones shown here.

A church in the nearby of Zia in Kos island

Pictures I’m introducing to you are related to the S. Giovanni Battista church that is located in Mogno, Val Maggia (Switzerland); it was designed from the famous Swiss architect Mario Botta.

The building, finished in 1996, replaces the previous church built in 1638 that was destroyed by a landslide in 1986.

Pics were taken on 1 August 2005 during a touristic tour of Val Maggia. Unfortunately, weather was not very fine and that made difficult take good shots. Val Maggia is wonderful, specially in the highest part; this Botta’s work adds reasons for visit the valley.

Being in the area, it’ll be a pity to lose the opportunity of a visit.

It is a city of quite 10’000 inhabitants, but the great part of the buildings, most of them low, old and made by wood, or the new ones, built in traditional fashion, make it more similar to a big village. It is a touristic destination, but ambient conditions are very hard: average year temperature is 2°C and in July it is a little more than 11°C.

It is located among the see and the hill of the fjord, but its harbour isn’t an important commercial one. It is Hammerfest. It is located beyond the 70° of latitude, few kilometres away from Cape North and claims to be the most Northern city in the world.

Its economy has grown up in the last twenty years thanks to the discovery of methane wells not far from the Norwegian coast. Tourism, too, helped in the economical growth that seemed, once, in slow but relentless decline. Nevertheless, it is a difficult city to live in. Cold, covered of huge quantity of snow or rain. Quite no sun light for 6 months and, vice versa, no night for the other 6 months.

I arrived here at the beginning of May, after a whole day of travel; coming from Italy I got the sensation to enter a complete different world. The sensation was not only due to the snow that covered in part the land, the winter temperature and the frozen lake. Landed at about the 09.30pm and leaved the baggage in the hotel room, after an half an hour we were out searching for a restaurant. And then I realized that that dusk light will illuminate all the night.

Weather remained cloudy for all the time that I stayed there. And with that grey sky it was difficult to catch the difference between night and day. And these sensations brought to me memory of an hallucinated film starring Al Pacino: Insomnia. In the film, this fine border between day and night, the lack of the nightly dark was the humus over which grew up emotions and the plot.

But more involving was to stay, for quite all a day, outside among the fjord, twenty kilometres far from Hammerfest, on the see. In these places, human traces are feeble. We have habit to live in anthropized environment, rich of infrastructure; being lost in the silent of a grey see, grey sky and grey land with few human marks, make feel to be in a different dimension.

I think that, when the sun shines, it is possible to enjoy a beautiful landscape; but, in any case, even in the condition that I found, for a short time of stay, the place is strongly involving and more true than the tourist representation.

I was in Agadir, Morocco, during the January of 2004.

Fine climate and wonderful beaches; in summer it is a good place for spend own holidays. For people that has not familiarity with the geography of the region, Canary Islands lend themselves toward the Agadir gulf.

Globalization made things similar all over the world and that happened also in Morocco. But still remain peculiarities, that depend on social and economical conditions, on culture and traditions.

One morning, we was driving along the city outskirts. I saw a huge number of trucks and lorries parked on the road side, outside the roadway. Some people seemed to be waiting. Later, I saw similar scene in another road, I dared to ask to the driver why all that trucks were parked there in that way and what the people there was doing.

Then, I learned that hauliers, there, haven’t any office where waiting for customer; they haven’t also any fax to use for receiving hiring. They, patiently, wait in those parks. Customer that needs to hire an haulier, searches him in this sort of exposition, selecting the one that seems more cheaper or reliable in order to assign him the job.

They wait for hours, full of frustration, then the negotiations; eventually, the job is obtained: maybe a travel of few days in the Morocco desert…

Digital photo cameras changed the way we can catch glimpses of the world. They allow you to take photos at no cost, preview them and, in case, discard the bad ones. There are no intermediaries between taking photos and enjoy them: no developing laboratories and printing processes. You download your photos to computer, store them into a CD or DVD, see and even directly print them. If you are smart enough in using computer, you can retouch your photos adding to them what you weren’t able to catch: once that was a matter for professional photographs. It doesn’t meaning that a digital camera change us in a professional or in an artist. For that, knowledge, expertise, skills and even genius are needed. Nevertheless, it is today more easy than ever to enjoy making photos, to catch moments of your real life and store them forever.

Today, a lot of people experience traveling, for tourism or for business, for enjoy themselves or as a part of own daily economic struggle. Jets can bring you, in a matter of few hours, towards sites where culture and social life are completely extraneous, unrelated. Sure, commonly used humankind made objects become day after day more and more similar: that is the price (or the advantage?) that we are paying to globalization. Nevertheless heritages and way of life are still different. What can be caught in few days or few hours of a travel are only glimpses of the complex reality of the social life; often the evidences are monuments, buildings, landscapes or natural wildlife. Photos are an attempt to freeze, to make still those moments, but they are only partial views.

Neighborhoods are so well known and common that often we think that they don't worth the cost of a film photogram and of a print. Now, digital photo, gives the freedom to explore the neighborhoods: the advantage of the knowledge helps in fixing them in uncommon, unusual way that often are more true than the common tourist views.

Internet shrank the world. Closed in a small room, it is possible to contact people all around the earth, publish web pages that are at once available in all part of the world. That is a powerful means to share own thought, emotions and creations. Among the last, digital photos well suit to web. Indeed, many web sites have added images share sections, giving you the possibility to show your photos to all the web visitors. The share allows also to download and use the images. Surfing those sites you can catch, in untidy and irregular way, sense of the world being.

Putting together more glimpses, those from traveler and those from everyday life, might help in complete the view and in better understanding of the world and its peoples. Using the web and digital photos, then, it is possible, mixing technology and sensibility, to share glimpses and knowledge of the world. That is what "glimpses of the world" try to do.