{"id":5988,"date":"2014-06-03T04:58:40","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T04:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=5988"},"modified":"2014-06-03T04:58:40","modified_gmt":"2014-06-03T04:58:40","slug":"photo-challenge-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=5988","title":{"rendered":"Photo challenge: Cities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ailsa has posted a photo challenge:\u00a0 take her on a tour of my favourite concrete jungle.\u00a0 Well I’m not partial to concrete, and I don’t have a favourite city, but I do have a favourite photo of a city.\u00a0 Here’s Nairobi in 1941.\u00a0 Or 1942.<\/p>\n

\"Bombay,<\/a>
Government Rd, Nairobi, Kenya, 1941\/42<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ailsa quoted John Berger:<\/p>\n

‘Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and, in this, hasn\u2019t changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.’<\/p>\n

Nairobi is a young city, established in 1899 by the colonial authorities in British East Africa. So that tells us her age. But is this city feminine or masculine?\u00a0 Perhaps a long-time resident of Nairobi could tell me.<\/p>\n

It’s now one of Africa’s largest cities, with a population of 3.1 million, but look at this photo from the ’40s – not a lot of people on the street, not a lot of cars on the road.\u00a0 Plenty of space for everyone.<\/p>\n

And from the same photo album, this mosque in Nairobi, a very attractive building made of bricks, not concrete, and only three stories high, not scraping the sky. I like the man in uniform helping the woman cross the street, though she is also in uniform and obviously very competent. It was the gentlemanly thing to do. They’re easy to spot in the vast space of the uncrowded streetscape.<\/p>\n

\"Bombay<\/a>
Khoja Mosque, Nairobi, Kenya 1941\/42<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The photos are from my father’s World War II album.<\/p>\n

Thanks Ailsa for the prompt<\/a> to find photogenic cities.<\/p>\n

Save<\/span><\/p>\n

Save<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ailsa has posted a photo challenge:\u00a0 take her on a tour of my favourite concrete jungle.\u00a0 Well I’m not partial to concrete, and I don’t have a favourite city, but I do have a favourite photo of a city.\u00a0 Here’s Nairobi in 1941.\u00a0 Or 1942. Ailsa quoted John Berger: ‘Every city has a sex and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Photo challenge: Cities”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[4,5,605,606,607,608,7,8,21,568,155],"class_list":["post-5988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wwii-photos","tag-1940s","tag-215th-battalion","tag-blackwhite","tag-kenya-1940s","tag-khoja-mosque-nairobi","tag-nairobi","tag-photography","tag-photos-2","tag-postaday","tag-postaday-2014","tag-wwii"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}