Text & Photography © Manny Santiago / HESO
The Glassy Surface
The photos depicting peaceful inlets of coastal water are of Taiji, a little known whaling town on the Pacific coast of Japan’s Kii Peninsula in Wakayama Prefecture. The area is known as Kumano, and is a world heritage site, renown for its pilgrim trail and striking temples set in both ancient Cedar forests and along pristine coastline, such as this. The jagged asymmetry of the windswept trees perched on jutting outcroppings of rocks, themselves constantly battered by the sea, feels like …

It’s summer in most of Asia, which means heat, sweaty, hot, shirt sticking to you no relief in sight mold literally growing on you dampness. Rather than another boring “How To Beat the Heat” post, which never really work, how about just distracting that part of your brain always reminding you of the barometer reading with some classics from the closet? Don’t have the money to travel the world? Why not take a trip of the mind? Put down the magic mushrooms and let HESO come up with the perfect …

Across the barren steppe totem flags flap in the cold winds that blow from the Altai mountains beneath a bright blue sky. The world’s last wild horses run in the distance as herds of goat, sheep and cows graze on the sparse grass. A shaman’s drum beats rhythmically across the land while a woman in a sheepskin deel robe emerges from the lone white tent standing out against the blue sky to gather dried dung for the evening fire. A few hundred kilometers west of the Soviet built capital of …

GIA, ETA, IRA, ELN, FARC, Tamil Tigers, Islamic Jihad, Abu Sayaf. What do these names mean? What makes the men who establish & recruit for them tick? To try and answer these questions, HESO looks at Phil Rees’ seminal book Dining With Terrorists

Mac McCaughan, co-founder of Merge Records & lead guitarist/vocalist for Superchunk & Portastatic, talks about his love of hockey, being a small business owner & the future of music.

What is the mystery of photography? Why do we love the static image? What is it that these fragments of reality, frozen in time tell us? What is it about the photograph’s ability to transcend commonplace existence that has taken it from an unrecognized set of chemical reactions to the most popular and life-changing art-form the history of the world has ever seen?
Are we seeking knowledge of our place within the greater universal complexity? Or could it be that we are a conceited bunch of heretic animals in love with …

HESO interviews Robert May, co-producer of The Animation Show, and independent animator Bill Plympton.
HESO: Can you tell us a bit about the history of Animation Festivals in the US and abroad?
Robert May: In the 1950’s a group of international independent animators formed Association Internationale du Film d’Animation (ASIFA) to help bring animators and filmmakers from around the world together to communicate ideas. A festival was born from this in Annecy France. The International Annecy Animation festival is still the largest in the world today and embodies that original spirit. The first festivals for …

It is somehow fitting that I write a certain kind of eulogy for two men I didn’t know, a week after the fact of their unrelated deaths, from Tokyo of all places. Nothing is as it was. Not that it ever was, but there is a seemingly palpable sense of hyper-reality lurking about these days, in the people and the places we haunt, that pervades life in modern society, so much we have forgotten that there was a time when it was normal to write by typewriter or talk into …

As seen on Magnesium Photography.
The major problems facing the human race are massive as ever and show no sign of abating anytime soon. Resource wars are becoming the norm. The environment needs a breath of fresh air. American obesity is getting serious (picture a muumuu-clad Homer Simpson when his fingers were too fat to dial the phone). Despite the overwhelming negativity slowing most forward-thinking legislative bodies, there seems to be a palpable worldwide trend toward cleaner living. Maybe it’s the economic recession talking or perhaps people are finally getting the …

For those in the Tokyo community who don’t know her, know of her or haven’t attended one of her celebrated Parties For Peace DJ soirees, Peace Boat International Coordinator and activist Emilie McGlone is motivated and charismatic, a deadly combination when it comes to getting what she wants. Luckily her wish list is not laden with the many luxuries lining Ginza boutiques but rather consists of the altruistic desire to help people. That and party. Party positively, of course. It’s a long story, but an interesting one, …

SNJEZANA JOSIPOVIC is immediately enigmatic. Her voice is such that you feel the words rather than hear them, like an animal’s growl, a kick drum in the dark, or a wave’s crash on rocks. And at the same time she’s sweet and laughs a lot, which covers for the lack of silence. Let me explain. Snjezana’s photographs are engrossing and although varying greatly in theme, content and technical wizardry, the overall feel is one of a vast inner life, bustling with behind-the-scenes activity, yet covered by an invisible veil which …

In Japan, the land where sake flows like a never-ending river and lubricates both awkward social interaction between men and women as well as cements business transactions amongst a bevy of black-suits, it’s easy to think of the past, present and the future in terms of drinking. There is the sobering post-war period of infrastructure and economic rebuilding called the 日本の一番長い日 (Japan’s Longest Day). Then came the exuberant 80s, which were the time of overflowing Cristal pyramids and buying and selling the world’s treasures like so much Bolivian blow in …