Title: Stunning Set of 7 Framed, Hand Printed Photographs - All Proceeds to Red Cross Ukraine Appeal Description: All proceeds from this sale will be donated to The Red Cross Ukrainian Appeal. Collection of 7 hand-printed & framed photographs of war-torn Beirut by Calvert Charles. Including: A young boy standing in front of a shot-up Panhard car, Beirut 1976. Photographer Calvert Charles C Type photographic print. 1978 14 1/2 " x 11 1/4" image 19 1/2" x 22" frame The photos are real photos hand-printed not computer outputs. They're signed by the photographer and the mounts and frames are made to museum standards (special mountboard that is completely acid-free). They were printed by a friend of mine who was an absolute genius with an enlarger, you could say a real old-school artisan. Calvert was in Kashmir during one of their periods of conflict. He was driving along a road when he passed a family walking the other way, the parents were bent over carrying bundles of wood, he stopped to find out why they were carrying so much stuff and where they were going. They struck up a friendly conversation so they made him a cup of tea. He said that in all the conflicts he had been to the children always seemed to find a way of being happy. The boy drinking Pepsi was the son of one of Calvert's drivers. He thought it was unfair that he was staying in a western luxury hotel with a swimming pool when most of the locals had nothing. He invited the driver and his family to the hotel so they too could sit by the swimming pool all day and enjoy the benefits a luxury hotel can offer. Unfortunately, Calvert has lost most of the negatives. He said he was in Beirut. He heard a jet overhead, as he pointed his camera the jet released its bombs. Below is a snippet from a blog documenting the photographer's experience: HAD I STOPPED WE'D ALL BE DEAD Beirut, the breakup of the Soviet Union, Kashmir, Chad, Libya, if something was happening then Charles would be there. From the late 1970s to the mid '90s Charles organised emergency aid for war zones. Drinking tea in a rural English sitting room I noticed a photograph tucked away on a bookshelf of someone who looked like Charles standing with someone who looked like Mikael Gorbachev. I asked what he had been doing in Russia. "I was in Moscow because I had to go somewhere called Perm. I went up there on a very dodgy aeroplane for a series of meetings about buying Russian aircraft. We didn't buy them. It was at the time the old USSR was breaking down and there were opportunities to make money. They thought they'd like to sell us some brand new aircraft to use in the West." The report that came back said they weren't very good, they didn't have capacity to carry very much, I think we leased 5 or 6 to use in Ethiopia. We used them and their drivers to do airdrops. I was there bringing in supplies for the International Red Cross, we were the only civilian aircraft allowed in by whoever was in charge of the airport. I went down there and told them it was purely humanitarian aid and the International Committee of the Red Cross would be distributing the food and water to all of the different factions in Beirut at that time. Whilst I was there I thought I'd better have a look around Beirut. It's an interesting thing that even in the midst of civil war and awful hunger children are still playing. The boy was playing a copycat game, pretending to hold a gun and shoot people, he and his mates were re-enacting what was going on around them, it was like a scene from a post-apocalyptic film. Yes, I certainly was, that was the first of three times where people have tried to kill me. I was running to a restaurant from where I was staying. I put the Red Cross thing on my arm convinced that that would save my life. I was sort of walking and jogging past an area where there were lots of high-rise flats and the old Holiday Inn, I'd been told they'd all been cleared but some of the snipers were still up there and as I ran along I could see the bullets going into the wall to the left of me and being very silly and very young I just carried on. I didn't know what else to do. Do you stand still and make an easy target or do you run like the clappers? I did the latter and I'm still alive. I'm pretty sure it was hunger that was driving me on. It was one of the last restaurants in that area that was still open. They were a French-speaking restaurant, we had quite a good natter, they thought I was completely off my rocker and shouldn't do it again." I don't know who was driving it but it was a Russian tank, I don't think it was crewed by Russians. I thought that will make a nice photograph so I asked the driver to stop. He got all shirty so I asked him to pull up a bit further along and just wait whilst I did the shot. That was the same day they started to take hostages in Beirut. Although I'm not from there I have vaguely cosmopolitan looks so they may have thought I was from there. The driver thought he would be killed for stopping, he was very nervous." "That was the second time I was shot at. It was in a place called N'Djamena in Chad. There were a series of different checkpoints with ragtag troops with their AK47s. I don't know what they were doing, they probably wanted money. When we got to the third one the driver just went all the way through so the two guards started shooting at the minibus and bullets went through the rear screen. No one was injured but it was a bit scary, you could hear the guns firing. They were probably rubbish shots at aiming or maybe they just didn't want to kill us but they certainly made their anger known so we turned on the driver and asked him why he hadn't stopped and he said, "Had I stopped we'd all be dead." Condition: New Delivery option: Delivery Location: HA8 Category: Art