 |
October 6, 2008 |
  |
Created and Maintained by: The Photoimaging Information Council |
|
|
Articles |
|
MICHAEL JACK PAZDON (MJP): So let's start off talking about your history as a photographer, how you got into it, and what some of the steps were that you took along the way. CHRIS RAINIER(CR): Certainly. You've heard of Army Brats; well, I was an Oil Brat. My father had a job where we traveled around the world, and lived in places as diverse as Africa, Australia, Europe and Canada, and my father was South African and so we spent a lot of time in very tribal cultural areas such as in South Africa, East Africa and Australia. So I grew up around indigenous people and fascinated by cultures other than our own. I think it was sort of a natural process to begin to take snaps of them, to begin to photograph them. Eventually what evolved out of that was a keen passion to put it on film. I literally cut my teeth on copies of National Geographic at the age of a year old, and I grew up with the dream and the vision of eventually working for National Geographic. MJP: So it started early. CR: Very early, and I sort of knew all along that photography and storytelling would be not only a privilege but also a passport to the world. And it indeed has allowed me to be a conduit for the stories of what it means to be human on a visual level, on a visual plane. That has been most humbling and thrilling.  Boni Tribe Man. © 2004 Chris Rainier MJP: You worked as a photo assistant for Ansel Adams, is that correct? CR: I was his photographic assistant from the early 1980's to one year after he passed away in 1985. Basically, I met him as I was finishing up photography school and was profoundly influenced by, not only his photography, but also his use of photography as a social tool. That was, at a tender age of twenty years old, what I was trying to articulate for myself. He had a profound influence on my moving in that direction and I helped him not only with his photographic projects but also with a lot of his conservation projects. MJP: That's fascinating, because at fist glance it might be hard to see the similarities between Adam's work and your own, mostly because of subject matter. Yet what you're saying is that there is a similar purpose to be found behind his work and yours. CR: Exactly, and yet if one looks at the work in a different way, they are landscapes with people in it. I think my work tends to reflect an intimate relationship with the landscape. That and staying with the culture and being present enough with the culture so there's some sort of rapport that builds up between myself and the subject matter. It's the combination of both. Whenever I do go in and photograph, certainly the formal portraits, I'm always trying to create an environmental portrait, a portrait in which the environment speaks loudly of who that person is.  © 2004 Chris Rainier MJP: You've touched upon how you came to choose what has come to be your signature subject matter. Could you just speak a little bit more about what draws you to people on the edge of what we in the West have come to consider the world? CR: Yeah, good question. I'm just fascinated with the primeval people that are still present in the beginning of the 21st Century, but hark back to a very different time. You know, if you go spend time with the Aborigines in the outback of Australia as I did when documenting their dream-time rock art for the Smithsonian, you're dealing with a mythology and, if you will, a religion, that is the longest uninterrupted religion in the world--50-,000 years old. And people can still speak of that and speak of their metaphors and their symbols and their mythology. That's incredible for me, absolutely amazing. Once, on one of my last trips to New Guinea, I was sitting on a rock one day and I looked overhead, it was late afternoon, and there was a jet flying some thirty-thousand feet above me on its way to Tokyo from Australia, and frolicking around at my feet were kids that were from the stone age. It was a very incredible moment for me to realize that, here we are at this incredible crossroads where you can still have people that live at the frayed edge of the world's maps, hidden in the forest, and yet Thirty-thousand feet above them are people on their laptops and internet connections on their way to Tokyo for a business meeting. MJP: So in that sense you could say that it's not just the story of these particular cultures that you're photographing, but of a world that contains many. CR: Yes, it's the story of who we are. I think ultimately, in photography, the further one evolves down one's own personal path with it, the more it becomes a self-portrait. For me, regardless of where I point the camera, it becomes a self-portrait. How do you balance between your self, as the photographer, the self-representing owner of the gaze , and the need to present what you see, the subject matter, to the world? CR: I think that that's a very good question too, and that's something that we're dealing with here at National Geographic with the program that I co-direct on helping to steer the entire National Geographic into a more contemporary interaction with indigenous cultures. You know, the old model was two white guys, a writer and a photographer, heading out into the jungle to tell the story of these cultures as seen from a white, Western perspective. And I think things are changing, have to change, as that model presents only one dimension in a three dimensional world. That's also what I say when I present my work. I say: this is only my interpretation and it's less anthropological or ethnographic and more, as an artist, my interpretation of what I see, nothing more nothing less. What I hope can always happen is that we say, 'let's see what a New Guinean photographs about his own culture, let's go off to South Africa and see the vision of South African Photographers as we celebrate the ten year anniversary of the end of Apartheid. Let's see it in a different perspective.' I think that the world begins to change very rapidly when we see it multi-dimensionally; with multi-colored, as opposed to monochromatic, vision. Borneo Headhunter. © 2004 Chris Rainier MJP: What was the program that you mentioned co-directing? CR: 'Cultures on the Edge.' Basically, here at the National Geographic at the turn of the century they came up with this phrase , which I think is very apt. It's like: 'We helped show you the world in the 20th Century, and now in this century we want to help you save the world.' So they started a very powerful conservation initiative and a sub-context within that is culture--the cultures initiative. I co-direct it with a person named Dr. Wade Davis, and basically we put together a series of expeditions and we go out to multiple locations around the world. We not only do document the culture there, but try to gather around that imaginary fireplace and sit down with indigenous cultures to share the stories of what it means to be human, to be alive. I think storytelling is the way that we can step back into the joy of what it means to be alive and be a unique species on this planet. And those stories are not only the celebrations of life but also the issues of life. We want to reflect those issues and allow people to tap into them. One of the ways we're doing that is this website, culturesontheedge.com. It's really a portal for indigenous cultures to share their stories, their photography and film and words. We're doing interviews with people like the Dalai Lama, Kofi Annan and spiritual leaders from different indigenous groups, letting them have their own voice. We're also sponsoring a grant for indigenous photographers working on their own issues.MJP: Sounds like a fantastic project. CR: It is. I think that with the Internet, now, we can really begin to start connecting globally. It also allows for a more democratic process when it's decided whose work gets to be seen, whose words get to be heard . I think that that's showing up across the board.MJP: Noting the internet and technology, and that photography is perhaps the quintessential modern medium, what are some of the issues that arise in documenting these cultures that signify the 'ancient' using modern technology and media? CR: Well, it's interesting, one would imagine that one eliminates the other, the old is overrun by the new. Quite the contrary, however. In the travelling that I do, over and over again I've run into situations where indigenous cultures are empowering themselves with the use of new media, new technology, the internet, to get their message out there… I think we're really at a pivotal crossroads in human history, and really, cultures are not necessarily dying off, they're transforming. They're transforming into traditional cultures using modern technology. I see so many indigenous cultures swinging around here at the end of the 20th Century, at the beginning of the 21st Century and saying, 'enough is enough, we really want to continue our culture and have it linger and last for a long time.' So there's a renaissance going on with traditional cultures around the world and for the most part I think the integrity of many cultures are still intact and are now really beginning to expand and flourish. © 2004 Chris Rainier MJP: It's a good lesson for cultures like ours, where technology is taken for granted as part of our lives. Perhaps by looking at these cultures we can begin to question the ways in which we use technology in terms of what we really want for our lives. CR: Oh yeah… I have this dream that sometime in the 21st Century, with ourselves spiritually bankrupt, we're suddenly going to look at indigenous cultures that will be ten, fifteen, twenty years into the use of new technology yet still with their roots, their culture and their spiritual wealth intact. Who's going to be better off?MJP: Are there any conflicts that arise when you're interacting with people who don’t live with the photographic image as part of their daily experience? CR: I wouldn't say conflicts. I think time is the issue. You've got to spend time. I lived in New Guinea for ten years making contact with tribes and some of these contacts took five years before I was given permission to photograph certain rituals or traditions. You have to slow down until you really speak the truth and speak with your heart.MJP: Making it mutual then? CR: Yes, one of the terms that was kicked around in a meeting this morning was 'intellectual property.' You can't just fly into New Zealand, be picked up in a car and go out to a traditional Maori event , put the camera in front of everybody's face and say 'thank you, I'm out the door.' It's like, what exchange is there, what process? For me, as it relates to photography, the portrait is in direct correlation to the friendship, the relationship, or the particular exchange with that human. I'm always consciously aware of that. Of course, sometimes it's not always easy. I just came back from Iraq where I did a project on the war over there, and you can't really linger too long there if you want to escape with your tail intact, but there's an ideal and there's variations of the reality below that. © 2004 Chris Rainier MJP: Personally, I'm impressed with the quality of de-exoticization that one gets from your work. Certainly there's a lot about your images that can be read as exotic, but I also think that the sense of the everyday comes through, of the mutual humanity. CR: Well, that's what I'm trying to do. I loved what Alfred Steiglitz was saying with his whole 'concept of equivalences.' Basically I'm trying to allow you to have something of an equivalent emotional feeling as I did when I was in that event. If the photograph can begin to vibrate on a level internally, where you're feeling an emotional response that brings you close to what I was feeling, then I've done my job.>>Click here to visit the Ancient Marks website... >>Click here to visit the Cultures on the Edge website... >>Click here to visit Chris Rainier's website...
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
© 2002 - 2008 Take Great Pictures |
|||||||||||||||||||||
