A budding Eve Arnold on assignment, Astrid prowls around the room. Camera raised, trigger-finger poised, she eyes the rapidly changing image on the screen. The lens struggles to focus as the camera roves around. Suddenly, Astrid stops and presses the button. The blurred image sharpens and with a click (generated by a digital recording, not the sound of moving parts and mechanisms), a photograph is taken.
Astrid presses a button on the back of the camera, which switches it from record to playback. She looks at the photograph. It's not very good. It looks like it's been taken by a five-year-old, you might say, which would be high praise since Astrid is just shy of 19 months. The image is crooked and a tad out of focus. It's difficult to make out the subject: the top of a chair, the end of a table, a book, a plastic horse, a bean bag perhaps. Nevertheless, I find it remarkable that she has taken it at all.
Astrid turns the jog wheel with her finger, flicking rapidly through the rest of the photographs on the camera. I haven't had a chance to upload the images taken during our recent trip to Jordan and the memory card is crammed with family snapshots against a backdrop of hot and dusty ruins. It's a rapid-fire photo montage, a sequence as quick and unrelenting as the spray of bullets from a machine gun.
Every time she comes to an image with herself in it though, she stops and pats herself on the chest. Every time she arrives at an image with me in it, she stops and hits me on the back. Less than two years into her life, Astrid's vision of the world, her way of seeing herself and other people, is already profoundly influenced by this medium.
"As vision developed towards the Kodak," wrote DH Lawrence in an essay called Art and Morality, "man's idea of himself developed towards the snapshot. Primitive man simply didn't know what he was: he was always half in the dark. But we have learned to see, and each of us has a complete Kodak idea of himself."
When he wrote that essay in 1925, this observation might have seemed a bit strange and visionary, but the claim turned out to be so accurate that any profundity has since turned to triteness. Kodak went digital for the most part in 2004. Moving with the times, updating Lawrence's statement to take such developments in technology into account, it becomes: each of us has a complete digital idea of himself.
This sentence is spot on. The digital idea of oneself, a second life composed solely of bits and bytes, has become as prevalent as the Kodak one was in the years following 1925. Photography still dominates, albeit in digital form, but these images have been supplemented by a torrent of words, videos and actions.
More and more, these digital versions are taking on a life of their own. The still-active Facebook accounts of the recently deceased, for example, which live on as digital ghosts, are far more spooky than any crumpled old photograph of a dead loved one.
Looking forward, much less in the future than Lawrence's essay is now in the past, these digital versions of oneself will become increasingly elaborate. By 2050, you will be able to download your consciousness to a machine. If such developments move beyond the concoctions of science fiction writers, then Lawrence's statement will need updating again: the complete digital idea of oneself will, in fact, become a reality.
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
THE SPECS
Engine: 6.75-litre twin-turbocharged V12 petrol engine
Power: 420kW
Torque: 780Nm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Price: From Dh1,350,000
On sale: Available for preorder now
Specs
Engine: Electric motor generating 54.2kWh (Cooper SE and Aceman SE), 64.6kW (Countryman All4 SE)
Power: 218hp (Cooper and Aceman), 313hp (Countryman)
Torque: 330Nm (Cooper and Aceman), 494Nm (Countryman)
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh158,000 (Cooper), Dh168,000 (Aceman), Dh190,000 (Countryman)
COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Alaan%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202021%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Dubai%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Parthi%20Duraisamy%20and%20Karun%20Kurien%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESector%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20FinTech%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestment%20stage%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20%247%20million%20raised%20in%20total%20%E2%80%94%20%242.5%20million%20in%20a%20seed%20round%20and%20%244.5%20million%20in%20a%20pre-series%20A%20round%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A