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Eric Fichtl
<p>Trees peek through the mist in Val di Funes – a great welcome for a day of hiking!<br /></p>

Thanks for visiting. This website features my photography, writing, and a bit about me.

PHOTOS

Here is a random sample of my photos. Visit my galleries for many more.


<p>A man in his boat in a Jakarta canal.</p>
<p>In Buenos Aires, a stencil proclaims 'The dingo ate my baby' beside a sticker of a local variant of Shepard Fairey's 'Obey' giant. That is, an Australian mother's cry of despair from a real-life case in 1980, channeled by Meryl Streep in a 1988 US film and amplified to absurdity in 1990s TV series from <em>Seinfeld</em> to <em>The Simpsons</em>, appears alongside a sticker riffing on a US street artist's work (itself a rendering of Andre the Giant, a deceased pro wrestler, paired with a line from a 1988 John Carpenter film, <em>They Live</em>) while invoking the arcane Spanish verb form barely used outside Iberia or churches – and they somehow come together on an electric box in Argentina's capital in 2015. It sort of makes sense. Or not. No idea.</p>
<p>Strange skies over Berlin on 12 July 2020.</p>
<p>Members of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo carry a banner displaying portraits of their relatives disappeared by Argentina's military junta of 1976-1983. <br /></p> <p>Mothers, grandmothers, and other relatives began these marches during the dictatorship, gathering each Thursday at the Plaza de Mayo to demand accountability and justice for their missing loved ones. Their movement adopted the name of the square. <br /></p> <p>This photo was taken in 1999, 22 years after they had commenced their rallies. They continue marching to this day.</p>
<p>Storm clouds arrive at la Santísima Trinidad de Paraná, one of the Jesuit <em>reducciónes</em> (missionary colonies) built in this region during the 17th and 18th Centuries. They fell into ruin when the Jesuits were expelled by Spain in 1767. </p>
<p>This mural on the wall of a squat is part of the Giant Storybook Project by Herakut, a street art duo from Berlin.</p>
<p>In a rural Salvadoran cooperative, community members march under a banner of the slain Archbishop Oscar Romero, who dared to suggest that peasants like these might deserve an earthly bounty in addition to promises of posthumous salvation. For this heresy, he was assassinated by death squads linked to the Salvadoran establishment – a fate that awaited many of his flock.</p>
<p>A view of the Kollhoff Tower, a distinctive skyscraper occupying a sharply angular corner at Berlin's Potsdamer Platz.</p>
TEXTS

A lot of what I write professionally carries no byline. Here are some of the works I have put my name to.

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Other or One of Us? Bulgaria’s Attempt to Assimilate Its Ethnic Turks

In the mid 1980s the Bulgarian Communist Party systematically sought to erase the identity of the largest ethnic minority in the state. Why?
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Not this time, FIFA

On boycotting the 2022 World Cup.
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Let Them Eat Cake… The End of the Tortilla Subsidy in Mexico

The cost of that most Mexican of basic foodstuffs jumped by 25% as the government repealed price control legislation.