India Through The Tour Bus Window By Michael E. Hrankowski

My two passions are photography and travel but sometimes they can be at odds with one another. My ideal trip is one where I can explore my surroundings in a leisurely manner, wandering here and there with no time constraints to find interesting subjects and compositions to photograph. But, alas, it doesn’t always work out that way.

A recent trip to India was one such trip. I tend to avoid non-photography oriented tours but when an opportunity presented itself to join some friends for a small group “Best Of India” tour, I couldn’t pass it up. It was one of those tours where the go, go, go was interspersed with long, boring bus rides before stopping for the next go, go, go.

As we embarked on the first of several rides, I found myself fascinated by the scenes along the way and I lamented about not having the power to stop the bus at will so I could get out and take pictures as my whim dictated. Then it occurred to me that maybe the bus didn’t have to stop in order for me to get some interesting pictures.

So, what started out as a way to stave off boredom turned into a project. And the photographs I took through the window of the tour bus turned out to be some of my favorite ones of the entire trip.

Washing Up © Michael E. Hrankowski

Two Friends © Michael E. Hrankowski

Taking a Break © Michael E. Hrankowski

Stopping for a Drink © Michael E. Hrankowski

Shave And A Haircut, Two Bits © Michael E. Hrankowski

Roadside Conference © Michael E. Hrankowski

Michael E. Hrankowski
Michael is an amateur photographer from Edmonds, Washington. His interest in and involvement with photography started in high school and it has been an important part of his life in one way or another since then.

While in dental school, Michael was invited to participate in a special course where one of the requirements was to document his work photographically. During his 36 years in dentistry, he continued that practice and used his camera daily to record pre-treatment conditions and post-treatment outcomes for medical-legal, patient educational and professional educational purposes.

While cosmetic dentistry was his “art” while in practice, he is now retired and photography has become his main creative outlet. He enjoys many different photographic genres, with travel photography being at the top of the list. Michael is active in several different local photography groups and his work has been awarded in both local and regional competitions.
www.flickr.com/photos/michaelh55

No Need For Gasoline © Michael E. Hrankowski

Morning Chores © Michael E. Hrankowski

Isn't That Just Typical © Michael E. Hrankowski

Family Outing © Michael E. Hrankowski

Can You Hear Me Now © Michael E. Hrankowski

Sneaking a Peak © Michael E. Hrankowski

Empty Chair With Pigeons © Michael E. Hrankowski

Don't Miss Your Stop © Michael E. Hrankowski

Cedric Roux: Before Rebirth

By Cedric Roux

Publisher : ODYSSEE

2024 | 96 pages

Empty storefronts dot the downtown, while massive brick tobacco warehouses stretch the length of city blocks—abandoned and awaiting creative reuse. Wilson, North Carolina, feels frozen in the 1970s. Invited by the Eye on Main Street festival, photographer Cedric Roux made several trips to this enigmatic town. For a photographer used to capturing the vibrant energy of New York City streets—his first book, My Wonderland (now sold out), vividly chronicled the bustling metropolis—his initial encounter with Wilson was a profound shock.

Expecting a town in the midst of a vibrant renaissance, Roux wandered Wilson daily, exploring its diverse areas: downtown, affluent suburbs, and struggling neighborhoods. On either side of the railroad tracks that symbolically and socially divide the city, he sought a light that might suggest an emerging revival..

In his latest book, Before Rebirth, Roux captures this sense of disconnection, using his lens to explore a promise not yet realized. With a population of just 47,000, Wilson is a far cry from Manhattan’s 1.5 million. Used to the dense human energy that fuels his photographic style, Roux found himself reimagining his approach. His work took on a more stripped-down, documentary aesthetic, yet it remains deeply rooted in place and retains the distinctive palette and framing that define his vision..

In collaboration with artistic director Jean-Matthieu Gautier, Roux drew from his imagination and visual archives to craft a narrative that stays true to his photographic roots while stepping far beyond his usual realm.

All About Cedric Roux

John Divola: San Fernando Valley

By John Divola

Publisher : Nazraeli Press

2024 | 60 pages

From the publisher: San Fernando Valley is where John Divola was born and raised, and it served as both backdrop and subject for his earliest, serious photographic explorations, made during the early 1970s. This previously unpublished body of work shows “the Valley” through the eyes of a young photographer who would soon become an internationally-recognized artist with the exhibition and publication of his much more conceptual “Zuma” series. The black and white photographs in “San Fernando Valley” comprise a series of subject groupings which, pulled together, show early manifestations of the deadpan humor and the ability to capture everyday scenes wrapped in loneliness, for which Divola is now well-known. The book is also, and not incidentally, a fascinating record of a quintessentially 1970s Los Angeles culture. John Divola’s work is the subject of numerous books and catalogues. Widely exhibited and collected throughout the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia, Divola’s photographs are included in the permanent collections of many public and private institutions, including those of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Getty Museum, Los Angeles; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

All About John Divola

Cig Harvey: Emerald Drifters

By Cig Harvey

Publisher : The Monacelli Press

2025 | 224 pages

Following her celebrated monograph Blue Violet (Monacelli, 2021), photographer Cig Harvey continues her personal study of sensory experience, focusing on the ephemeral nature of light, pigment, and vision. Her latest photographs are lush tableaux of her signature subjects – flora, cakes, domestic interiors, and the human figure in landscape – accompanied by prose vignettes on the science and art of color, written in her vibrant, intimate style. Featuring an afterword by award-winning novelist and poet Ocean Vuong, Emerald Drifters is a catalogue of pleasures and heartbreaks, and ‘an urgent call to live.’

All About Cig Harvey

Helmut Newton. Berlin, Berlin

By Helmut Newton

Publisher : Taschen

2025 | 244 pages

Born in Berlin in 1920, Helmut Newton trained as a teenager with legendary photographer Yva, following her lead into the enticing pastures of fashion, portraiture and nudes. Forced to flee the Nazis aged only 18, Newton never left Berlin behind. After his career exploded in Paris in the 1960s, he returned regularly to shoot for magazines like Constanze, Adam, Vogue, Condé Nast's Traveler, ZEITmagazin, Männer Vogue, Max and the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin as well as his own magazine Helmut Newton’s Illustrated. In 1979, the newly relaunched German Vogue commissioned him to retrace the footsteps of his youth to capture the fashion moment. The resulting portfolio, Berlin, Berlin!, inspired the title of the exhibition which celebrates 20 years of the Helmut Newton Foundation. This collection includes Newton’s most iconic Berlin images, as well as many unknown shots from the 1930s to the 2000s: nightcrawlers in uber-cool clubs and restaurants, nude portraits in the boarding houses he knew from his youth, and the Berlin film scene, featuring Hanna Schygulla and Wim Wenders at the Berlin Wall, John Malkovich and David Bowie. In October 2003, only months before his death, Newton moved large parts of his archive to his new foundation, housed in the Museum of Photography beside the Zoologischer Garten station―the very station from which he fled Berlin in the winter of 1938. This publication thus closes a circle in the story of his extraordinary life and work.

India Through The Tour Bus Window By Michael E. Hrankowski

Selected Books