strange-geographies

Article

Strange Geographies: Beautiful, Alien Iceland

Iceland is a landscape that's still being born. While much of the world's once-jagged peaks have gradually worn into sloping hills, gushing rivers and mighty waterfalls have slowed to a trickle of their former flow, and remnants of the last Ice Age melted long ago, it's not so in Iceland. This a young land, one that's still being shaped by the same primeval forces that made much of the world -- fire and ice. Its massive Vatnajokull glacier, which dominates about 10% of the country's landmass, is so large... READ ON

Article

Strange Geographies: A Most Peculiar Trip

Some of our readers may remember my Strange Geographies columns from April and May, all about my time in Amsterdam and my road trip through Belgium and Luxembourg, where with the expert help of a Dutch urban explorer I sought out grand old abandoned buildings to play the role of Miss Peregrine's house in the trailer I made for my novel. But those columns were different from my usual Strange Geographies photo essays -- most of the pictures were stills lifted from the hours of video I shot. After editing... READ ON

Article

Strange Geographies: The Accidental Sea

Today's Strange Geographies post revisits a place I've been several times before -- the Salton Sea. It's one of my favorite places to visit; just a few hours from my house, it may as well be on the moon. This time, though, I shot video rather than photos while I was there, and the result is my first Strange Geographies-style short film. Hope you like it! [See all my Strange Geographies photo... READ ON

Article

Strange Geographies: Abandoned Belgium (and Luxembourg), Part II

So last week, I told about half the story of my recent adventure to Belgium and Luxembourg, where I was looking for atmospheric abandoned chateaus to film inside for a book trailer I'm making for a novel I have coming out in June called Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. I was, ostensibly, looking for the Home, trying to find an exterior and some interiors that looked something like the grand-but-decaying house that figures somewhat centrally in my book. I found the perfect exterior right away... READ ON

Article

Strange Geographies: Abandoned Belgium, Part I

I recently spent eight days traveling around the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, though explaining why I went is a bit complicated. The short version is that I was there on business: to film the interiors of abandoned houses. The somewhat longer explanation is that I have a novel coming out in June, and my publisher asked me to make a book trailer for it. (Related explanation: a "book trailer" is a bit of viral marketing which publishers hope will reach a different audience than other kinds of book... READ ON

Article

Strange Geographies: Quick Facts About the Netherlands

I just got back from a week in the Netherlands (and Belgium and Luxembourg) and my head's still spinning -- from the jet-lag, heavy beers, and dizzying awesomeness of that part of the world. I'm just starting to go through the intimidating mountain of images and videos I took while there, but just to kick off what will be probably several weeks of occasional posts about the region, I wanted to do a quick overview of Holland, which as it turns out has a lot more to offer than tulips and wooden shoes... READ ON

Article

Strange Geographies: Freaks in Mayberry

Mount Airy, North Carolina is known to most tourists as the birthplace of Andy Griffith and the inspiration for Mayberry, where his titular sitcom was set -- and indeed, if you walk down its main street, as I did last week, you'll find nothing but Andy Griffith memorabilia: tee-shirts in every window, restaurants named for its characters, Barney Fife's face peering at you from life-sized cutouts. They even pipe the Andy Griffith Show theme song into the air on a semi-continuous loop (I still haven't been... READ ON

Article

Strange Geographies: Venetian Graffiti

One thing that surprised me about Venice was that graffiti was everywhere. There's almost as much art on the streets as there was in churches and museums, which might be because Venice is a city of blind alleys and dark corridors, a warren of hiding places that are perfect spots for taggers and street artists to do their thing. Initially it was a little shocking to see so much spray-paint applied to the exterior of twelfth-century cathedrals and otherwise beautiful crumbling walls and even on people's... READ ON

Article

Strange Geographies: The First Ghetto

Venice is a city known for its stunning art masterpieces and its architectural marvels, for its famous canals, for being the birthplace of Vivaldi and a haven for classical music and opera lovers. It is not widely known for its ghetto -- and yet the very word itself comes from Venice. Prior to the 16th century, the Jewish quarter of Venice was a foundry, or in Italian, a getto. To control the spread of fire should one break out, the foundry was on an island bordered on all sides by canals. But in 1516,... READ ON

Article

Strange Geographies: Death in Venice

If you've got the money, you can live in Venice. If you're a romantic, you can die in Venice. But you cannot be buried in Venice. That rule was adopted in 1807, when Napoleon's inspectors surveyed the sorry state of parish plots scattered across the city and decided that it was unsanitary to bury people in Venice proper, a city where you can't dig more than a few feet without hitting water (or wooden pylons, or sand). Elected as an alternative was the nearby island of San Michele, formerly a prison,... READ ON