In fact, I got really frustrated once when I took a National Geographic videographer into a group of pygmies. I told him, look, you’ve got to follow my lead and be really sensitive. These people are going to be scared. And he went in and got his shots like a mercenary. He didn’t sit down the whole time we were there. By the time we left, kids were crying, dogs were barking, and everybody was afraid. And I had sat quietly the whole time, hardly taking a frame, because I was trying to build up a future relationship with them. I’m not trying to make that videographer out to be evil, it was just his first time in something like that, and he was driven by his job. He didn’t realize — and I told him clearly afterwards when I chewed him out — that you’ve got to establish trust. Most of these people tell their kids that the white man is the boogeyman. And so we’re just the boogeymen coming to town.
My motto when I go into these places is that I want to make it fun for them that I was here. So when I leave, they won’t feel like this guy just came in and took all of their images and left. No, they’re going to say, that was cool. We had fun. We danced a lot, we joked, we played around, and maybe we got some fish hooks and manioc.
So there it comes down to body language again. I’m much taller than most of the people who I photograph, so I sit down a lot. I use the Leica instead of the big Canon. I use eye contact, and if there’s a smile coming back at me, I kind of offer the camera, asking if it’s okay, and if they nod back — it just takes a lot of time. I can’t go into a situation like that and be a bulldozer. The biggest trick is a smile and a gesture of permission, making friends and moving lightly. Unless you’re photographing on the street, where there’s a hundred people, doing it without that permission is just not cool.
I think using a Leica is really helpful because it lets me shoot unobtrusively. Now, if a party starts and a big dance breaks out, I can use the Canons, because the pictures become fun. The flash going off becomes part of the magic of the ritual. But if we’re sitting around quietly, and I’m off with grandmama, then the Leica is much better.
When the party starts, partying with them is important. I can’t go out there and keep myself in a clinical box. People ask, why do I always get so sick when I’m out there? Well, it’s because I eat the snail heads and I do what I need to do to win their confidence, and that’s the only way. Of course, when they’re not looking, I’m filtering my water and eating healthy stuff that I brought with me. But if it’s a social issue, I’ve got to eat what the chief is offering me — and then later, I’ve got medicine to take care of the worms that I’m going to get from eating.
A lot of times they’ll ask for money to take their picture. Because I’m a working professional, I generally don’t have qualms paying them. I’m getting paid, so why shouldn’t they? What I don’t do is pay people to do specific things. I find the chief, and say, okay, I want to photograph in this village for the next week — how can we work this out? Hopefully, it comes to trade goods. When it comes to pure exchange of money, it usually doesn’t go well. And I don’t want to change the place just because I went there to take a few pictures, so I say, ok, what was here before I got here? I usually end up trading food, pots and pans, fishing line, hooks, cloth. Unfortunately, cigarettes seem to play into it a lot too.
I promise to give a lot of photos, but I’ve been a bad person about that. My time in hell will probably be everybody getting revenge who I promised a picture to. I just can’t live up to it, it simply takes too much organizational skill. What I sometimes do is have a session in a village where I take Polaroids of everybody the way they want, holding their kids, whatever. And then I say okay, this is in exchange for letting me photograph you for the next week, plowing the field, living daily life. That works well, but even then I’ve got to pay close attention, because sometimes the Polaroids can set up rivalries in the village.
