FirstLook: Mobile Library, Java

FirstLook May/June 2019 PDF
- Photographed by Putu Sayoga

In 2015 Ridwan Sururi of Serang Village, central Java, Indonesia, started the Kudapustaka (Horse library), and since then, three days a week, he has visited villages and schools like Miftahul Huda Islamic Elementary School. On this day he was joined by his two-year-old son, Tria Ramadhan. Together they handed out donated books to the students. As a photographer I did this story because I was also born in a village with difficult access to books. I believe in the power of books, and I know what Mr. Sururi is doing is important.
—Putu Sayoga
www.putusayoga.net
www.arkaproject.com
@putu_sayoga @arkaproject

I Witness History: I, Horn of Africa

Written by Frank Holt // Illustration by Norman MacDonald

Royal trumpet of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, I was born to command armies, priests and whole populations. But my days with him were few. Layed to rest with my mouthpiece toward my 19-year-old pharaoh, I fell silent for 3,262 years. Then one of you tried to play me.

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History

FirstLook: Tassili n’Ajjer National Park

Photograph by Sebastião Salgado / Contact Press Images

At first impression, the Sahara appears to be lifeless, with golden sand dunes stretching out as far as the eye can see. Yet it is one of the places where I have felt closest to the past of humanity.

—Sebastião Salgado

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Creatives

FirstLook: State Highway 37, near Orchha, Madhya Pradesh, Central India

Photograph by David H. Wells

State Highway 37, near Orchha, Madhya Pradesh, Central India

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Creatives

The Amazigh Adventures of Le Petit Prince

Written by Louis Werner

One of the world's most beloved children's stories, The Little Prince – as it is titled in English – resonates especially in Morocco among Amazigh, or Berber, children and not just for its familiar desert setting. As one translator explains, "The plot has many similarities to our Amazigh oral tales."

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Creatives
History

Tarab and the Art of Music

Introduction by Kay Hardy Campbell

Beyond virtuosity, Arab musical esthetics enjoin musicians to elicit an emotionally charged and frequently interactive relationship between musician and audience called tarab, using instruments from voices and hands to woodwinds, strings and percussion.

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Creatives

12 Things Twitter Won’t Tell You About Zodiacs

Written by Robert Lebling
Illustrations by Kitty Yin Ling Miao

Should the 13th constellation of the zodiac matter to you? (It’s named Ophiuchus, and Babylonians wondered about it just as much as everyone who argues the point now on social media.)

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Arab Translators of Egypt’s Hieroglyphs

Written by Tom Verde

The translation of hieroglyphs in 1822 culminated more than 1,000 years of efforts by Romans, Arabs and Europeans. Insights from 10th-century Assyrian scholar Ibn Wahshiyya al-Nabati helped build the understanding that the Egyptian symbols worked in three distinct ways.

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History

Kanga’s Woven Voices

Photographed by Samantha Reinders
Written by Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein

Skirt, scarf, or both; sling for a child, basket for shopping, or both; bought to honor a special occasion, to give as a gift, or just to feel good tomorrow; its distinctive, one-line jina a proverb, a plea, a proclamation or a sunny burst of whimsy; above all, a social statement on a colorful cotton cloth. From rural villages to city streets, women and girls along East Africa’s coast do more than wear the popular rectangular kanga: They weave it into life, from birth to death, a “social medium” worn, traded and treasured, for designs, messages and memories.

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