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Eric Fichtl
<p>'Memory' and 'vote blank' – two slogans summarising popular exasperation with the post-dictatorship Argentine political landscape. <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>Two soldiers guard a street corner in central Tame, a town in Colombia's war-ravaged Arauca department. Their presence was part of an attempt to hold the town after it was reclaimed from guerrillas. <br /></p><p>They are laughing at a joke my colleague made about the relative size of their weapons – indeed, the US M60 carried by the soldier at left is a hefty machine gun often fired by a team of two or three gunners, while the soldier at right carries a more standard-issue Galil, an Israeli derivative of the infamous Soviet/Russian AK-47. </p>
<p>A lioness and her cub eye the photographer. </p>
<p>An old street sign in Marrakech's Guéliz quarter preserves the name of Yugoslavia, a country that is no longer with us. The street has carried the name since Moroccan independence in 1956. Previously, it had also been associated with the Balkan state – named Rue Alexandre 1er to commemorate the Yugoslav king gunned down in the streets of Marseille in 1934. <br /></p> <p>I'm still undecided if that is some sort of tribute to Yugoslavia's passing scratched into the concrete around the sign.</p>
<p>'Smoke before life smokes you'. A healthy dose of nihilism on an electric box.</p>
<p>Window-shopping on a winter evening in Maxvorstadt.</p>
<p>Portrait of N.</p>
<p>Colombian national police round up unfamiliar faces in Tame, Arauca.</p>
<p>The biggest party on earth, Rio de Janeiro's Carnaval converts the sprawling city into a festival of samba, smiles, and surreal spectacle for several days. So Bacchic are the festivities, it's hard to fathom that the Carnaval is rooted in Christian tradition. Here, thousands of revelers watch the famed samba schools in their endless and enormous procession through the purpose-built Sambódromo.<br /></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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On Nury Vittachi's 'North Wind'

Hong Kong writer Vittachi examines pressure on free speech during the 1997 handover from Britain to China
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Looking Back: Seventeen Years Since the El Mozote Massacre

Over 700 defenseless peasants were brutally murdered by a Salvadoran batallion that received U.S. military training and supplies.