Living in London which is a cosmopolitan city, one gets to know people from all over the world. People, who are not all coming from different parts of the world, which also means from different cultures, but also from various walks of lives and realities. London is one of the hubs of Europe which has received people from all over the world, who were escaping from a painful reality. Beginning with the World Wars, Communism threatening eastern Europe countries, African struggles, and not necessarily war or conflict areas but also running away from poverty and seeking new opportunities. We see people walking down the streets, doing everyday chores. However, one cannot stop from wondering about who they are. For an artist, more specifically a photographer, being able to capture a life of a person, its reality and its past, the daily struggles, sufferings, joys, etc. is a necessity. Travelling around the world provides an excellent opportunity to photographers to understand people's culture. One can deepen into what culture is in different places by exploring their everyday habits, leisure, traditions, and history. There are many different cultural aspects that one could focus on. Many photographers seek to explore art, traditional vestments, dancing and beliefs. Others concentrate more on family life, work and food. But in all these aspects, one can penetrate and discover life, present and past. Photography provides people who do not have a chance to travel and explore cultures, to understand more about different realities of people who they might deal with daily in their environment, and who, however, come from an entirely different walk of life.
So far, this unit allowed me to discover the world from a different perspective. I was drawn by diversity, especially how different cultures and societies celebrated life with different vestments, dances and food. The colors and decorations attracted me in such a way that I wanted to discover more about the different cultures so far from my own reality. I was inspired by the work of so many photographers that managed to bring those cultures and realities closer to mine. That is why I decided to explore cultures through photography.
Jacob Maentz
Jacob Meantz is a photographer that has travelled to the most remote places in the world and met people from all different places. He describes himself as someone who is passionate about "documenting issues related to the human condition, culture, and humanity's interactions with the natural world" (REF). Being able to travel and experience different human conditions and cultures provides a better opportunity to be then able to capture those things which one experienced, with its photographic work. Jacob says he likes to tell stories with his work. Just as we already mentioned in the introduction, we live in cosmopolitan cities with people from all over the world coming from different places and experiences. Photography is an effective way of capturing people's stories and cultures and transmitting in in a variety and powerful way.
If we look at his portfolio (Jacobimages.com) we can identify in all his photos a cultural element. Most of his photos highlight a different aspect of everyday life embedded with culture. The two most important cultural highlights are the way people dress, and the way they earn their living. Jacob’s photographs show not only what they are doing, how they are dressed, but also he highlights the environment without each subject losing its attention, on the contrary, highlighting it. In all his portraits, the faces are bright, while the background is dark almost fully black. The faces are lighted to show the expression in the face and in particular the look, showing clearly the weight of their lives in their faces. All his photos show bright colors, emphasizing those specific cultural elements such as their vestments, or their working instruments. Many photos show people working in ways we are not accustomed in the West: fishing with nets in tiny fishing boats or working the land. Handpicking coconuts, or corns, also hunting underwater with spades.
These are all elements of their culture because that is how they live.
I was particularly attracted by those images of people working in ways that we do not use in the West anymore. I was attracted by the hardship of their lives, and then again the portraits express in their faces, in each wrinkle, the struggles they had in their life. While we buy a sandwich on the way to our office in London, the people in these pictures walk on bare foot, they use their hands to gather food, and they light fire to cook it. Their realities are so different from ours. Despite their struggles, they celebrate life dancing and wearing costumes that are so unfamiliar to us.
These pictures tell a story behind each person, behind each society and culture. These photos from the middle eastern countries, highlight Muslims who were wearing their white outfits as they sit on the streets having a coffee.
Jacob captured with his photographs a reflection of real life. All the photos captured all the colors vividly. The pictures do tell a story, and they leave the person wanting to know more about each of them. There are also pictures that include several people such as family photos also show the way they live, large families with little to eat and a small place to live, all sleeping in one small area. Photos tell a story, and a lot of a culture can be learnt through these.
This photo shows a strong eye connection with the camera and one can enter into this person’s world. The contrast of the dark background allows the viewer to concentrate on the brightness of the face that has a lot to say. Furthermore, the white necklace brings the face to life extending the face towards the body. The brightness of her face allows the viewer to be penetrated by her expression and each wrinkle in her face. I was attracted by this photo because it is personal, the contact with the camera is so strong its as though the lady is communicating to me. It is an example of a single individual belonging to a community that has no voice. We have no time nor interest in listening to people who are far from our world and reality, however this photo talks by itself.
I was attracted by this image because it is a very clear example of cultural outfits and celebrations. We could talk about repetition in this image, or shapes, however none of them particularly fit in this image. I would say this image is more about atmosphere because it expresses the joy or importance of the celebration, the mood of this image is exactly that: the importance of celebration which the photographer highlighted with the bright colors used.
Mitchell Kanashkevich
Mitchell enjoys adventure, and he uses photography to capture more deeply the different realities he encountered in his travels. He uses photography to make those experiences more intense, and in that way, his photographs tell us the stories of people and their culture. Most of those experiences were of people facing situations where rather than living they were surviving or struggling to survive, in challenging environments (www.mitchellk-photos.com). Most of the people he photographed are still living as their ancestors lived, in tribal groups, and they work and live in contact with nature with their hands. His photos are also embedded in cultural experiences. From their family lives and how they live, their beliefs and rituals, and the way they work. Like Maentz, his work is all in color and he emphasizes them, appearing even brighter than they would be in reality, to highlight a particular aspect of culture.
All the photos tell a story through facial expressions, body language and the environment surrounding.
The images from the album ‘The Salt Caravan’ are an example of the harmony between people and the environment in the photo. All the images place importance in the surroundings. They show how adverse the environment is, and how they are still working, transporting, and doing everyday chores as if civilization and technology did not exist.
The pictures captured during the night emphasize the whiteness of the salty grounds and the intense area they covered walking transporting salt using their camels.
This album shows the challenging conditions these people must face and how poor they continue to be. If we look at Fig. 12 the emphasis is on how there is no other light but the fire they managed to light. There is an intense darkness, and they have nothing but that small fire. The photographer managed to capture the intense light during the day, which is a strong element influencing how they live. The cultural aspects of how they work, how they dress, how they transport from one place to another using camels rather than cars or trucks impresses Westerners how they are still able to do everyday activities in an undeveloped society.
I was drawn by this image because the soil is harsh, it shows how hard and hostile that area is, and so it helps understand later in the other images the totality of the experience. It is not only about the work they do, but how they get there, the type of weather they experience, land, and the resources they have.
The photographer used the repetition technique in Fig. 14, as it can be contemplated by the camels walking in line one after the other. The ground also shows a patterns technique. The photographer has captured more ground than sky, to show the shapes and cracks while creating a mood, an atmosphere that transmits tiredness, hard work, struggle and admiration.
In Fig. 13, we can see a man working with his hands. The photographer also used a shapes technique, in this case squared shapes (blocks of salt). The camels lying in the background give an atmosphere of exhaustion. They rest while the man must keep on working. This is their everyday life which makes us sympathize for the man as he is doing a tough job all alone which requires a great deal of effort. I was inspired by these realities which show the way they do things in those cultures but also how these images express these lives.
If we look at Fig. 12, there is a contrast between light and darkness which is natural as it is during the night. This image shows what happens at the end of their day, after they worked hard as seen in the images above. I chose the three images from the same album to focus on one culture and see story behind the images. The atmosphere of this image is calm because it is time to rest, but also it transmits a worry and concern about the following day. I am touched by this image because I can see the worry in the man’s posture and look. These people do not seem to enjoy life as we do, however they are surviving in a hard way. It is part of their culture to celebrate, and they do, but they are constantly struggling to survive. This image shows exactly that. A man who worked hard all his life, and even if it is time to rest, he cannot, knowing that he needs to keep on working as it is not enough. They depend on him. The atmosphere of this image is about burden and concern despite the time of the day which is to rest.
Conclusion
As a summary, we can say that photography is a way of entering people’s realities, and images can capture life and tell stories that are difficult to describe and put into words. Sometimes images say more than words, and in many of these images this is the case.
This project allowed me to understand the diversity of the world better in which we live in. It also allowed me to explore and identify how each society lives differently according to their culture. I was not as aware of this before doing this project about the hardships that people have to undergo to have a basic living. It also led me to a reflection about how we see through these images a story, and for us its just a story, an amazing image, an inspiring photographer, but for them it is their life and reality. However, being able to dedicate as a photographer to pursue such a career, one can bring closer two worlds that are far apart from each other, and help themselves.
There are many traditions and cultures that are disappearing (www.vanishingculturesphotography). Photography is a way of keeping them alive, because even if they do disappear, somehow, through photography we will be able to remember them and keep a part of them alive. These are cultures in faraway places that thanks to today’s resources we can get there, and photography and video allow us to keep parts of their culture alive.
Works Cited
http://www.jacobimages.com/
http://www.mitchellk-photos.com/photography/the-salt-caravan
http://www.vanishingculturesphotography.com/blog
