Wayne Schoenfeld - Project Ethiopia

November 7, 2009

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Wayne Schoenfeld - Project Ethiopia

Christopher Harmon Interviews photographer Wayne Schoenfeld on Ethiopia and his newest project, A Mission of Mercy: In Their Own Words

Article rating: 6.76

Documentary and fine art photographer, Wayne Schoenfeld has had a very busy couple of years. He’s had six major one-man shows in the United States, Canada and Korea. In July of 2005 his documentary book, Mission to India, was released. This year, he’s begun photographing two ongoing projects in Africa, including a book and film project, A Mission of Mercy: In Their Own Words documenting the heroic work of Rotaplast International's volunteer medical team in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Rotaplast International volunteers travel all over the world performing reconstructive and plastic surgery on children with disfiguring birth defects, burns and other facial deformities.

When I met with Wayne in his Santa Barbara home he’d just returned from almost a month in Africa.

CH: Tell me about Ethiopia. I understand that this was not your first documentary work with a medical volunteer team.

WS: Ethiopia was the fifth Rotaplast medical mission I’ve photographed. Two of my photo-journals have been published as complete books. The Independent Publishers Association awarded Almost Perfect, documenting the team in Vietnam, The Most Outstanding Book of 2003. Mission to India, very colorfully narrated by journalist Rex Weiner, was co-published with American Photo magazine.

Usually, on these missions, I spend a lot of time in the hospital. I’m drawn to photographing the drama. You can see it chiseled into the faces of the parents and children - tears, uncertainty – their expressions tell a story.

This time, though, I wanted to tell a different story. I wanted to tell the story of the context in which the medical volunteers were working. So, that meant getting out of the hospital. It meant getting into the fabric of the culture and into the lives of the patients and their families.

CH: Was it difficult to get access.

WS: The military was off limits. The infrastructure was bloated and inefficient, but I had few dealings with the government beyond the Ministry of Information, which issued my credentials. I found the Ethiopian people to be very gracious and generous of spirit. The poorest families would have me into their homes. The Archbishop of Ethiopia granted me an interview. There were a few exceptions, but generally I could get in where I wanted to be.

CH: The news is always filled with the tragedy in Africa - poverty, disease violence and revolution. How did you find things in Ethiopia?

WS: Especially because I was based at a hospital, every sensibility was overwhelmed by the devastation of disease and birth defect, the horror of gangrenous noma and leprosy, the many untreated cleft lips and palates. Like much of Africa, the country has been ravaged by HIV/AIDS, which is virtually wiping out a generation. A chilling image, I photographed Marta, an HIV positive teenager. With an emotionless stare, she’s sitting in front of a wall of memory boxes, cigar-box sized wooden cartons that AIDS victims, including her mother, leave behind, filled with all that they have, their Identification papers, perhaps a picture, their only legacy.

I spent days in orphanages and adoption centers. Malaria and tuberculosis are very serious problems. Yet I found the people to be bravely optimistic. On one occasion we interviewed students at the Bethlehem Public School. Very striking in her purple uniform, one fifteen year-old girl said, and I guess this summed it all up for me.

“I’m proud to be an Ethiopian. We have traditions. We have always been a free people. We have diverse religions. And, while we know that there is great poverty and disease, we believe in science and technology and we believe that we will solve these problems.”

And, I did see a great deal of emphasis on schools and education, even among the very poor.

CH: I know that you’ve been to Africa before. What makes Ethiopia unique?

WS: Ethiopia is one of the only nations in Africa to have never been under a prolonged European colonial influence so, in some ways it’s archetypal Africa. Yet the people are very different from other Africans. There’s the Jewish history, the legend of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon and the Arc of the Covenant, which is still supposed to be in Ethiopia. And, there is a definite Ethiopian look. Lighter skinned people than in much of Africa, Ethiopians have distinctive elongated faces with strong features. I was very drawn to portraiture in Ethiopia, especially the women - wonderful natural beauties.

CH: I understand that you had a special involvement with this Rotaplast mission that made it different for you than earlier ones.

WS: As a photojournalist, my job on past medical missions as been as an observer. This has given me a different perspective than that the medical team. In some ways, I’d say, unburdened by participation in the minute-to-minute medical effort, I’ve been afforded the luxury of a bigger picture perspective of the situation that the patients and their families find themselves in.

In the hospitals, and these are no frills, third world hospitals packed with the patients and families that have traveled, sometimes for days. People are uncomfortable, frightened and uncertain. There’s nothing to distract them from the interminable waiting – waiting to see if they’ll be selected for surgery, not everyone can be treated. Waiting for surgery to begin, waiting for word on how it went, waiting to heal, waiting…

In April I was in Montreal at the artist’s reception for my Circus of Life tableaux vivant series. I was completely into the circus mentality when I had this absurd thought - it seemed absurd, even to me, at the time - about bringing a circus along on one of these medical missions to lift the spirits of the children and their families. Well, it’s a long story how it all came to pass, but my project director in Montreal, Nadia Duguay, located a group, Clowns Without Borders. She then secured a small stipend from Cirque du Soleil – she is a real angel and a doer – and, so in November I found myself on a volunteer medical mission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with my own circus. Nadia, the mercurochrome haired, outrageously outgoing ringmaster, David Fiset a clown in the tradition of Patch Adams and a very adventurous friend, Michele Mattei, a talented photographer who’d agreed to come along to shoot video.

CH: It sounds like this was a once in a lifetime experience.

WS: I hope not. On this Rotaplast mission I didn’t see the anguish of interminable and uncertain waiting. Everywhere I looked I saw children and their families laughing as our red nosed clown did his rounds sporting an erect stethoscope and drawing everyone into the show. I know that this effort made an impact and I felt very empowered and less the voyeuristic observer. Nadia is working on a training syllabus for clowns on medical missions – this is highly specialized and very emotional work – and we're looking for permanent funding to ensure that these smile givers can be a regular part of Rotaplast’s international humanitarian projects.

The children are the future.

In Ethiopia, there is great reason for hope and optimism.

CH: I can see that in addition to doing something really worthwhile that you’ve captured some very powerful and iconic images of Ethiopia. Would you like to say something about the equipment that you used.

WS: When I shot my first documentary book in Vietnam, I wanted to bring to the viewer the detail and perspective of a larger format camera with the spontaneity of a 35mm. I carried over a hundred pounds of film, backs, bodies and glass. But the book won a prize, so, at the end of the day, it was all worth it. I got what I wanted.

In those days I never dreamt that I’d be able to get the performance and image I wanted in a lightweight digital camera. Enter the Nikon D2x. This camera is fast, accurate and, what’s most important to me, it renders an image that tells the story, an image that captures the drama. I travel with two bodies, an 18mm-35mm and a 28mm-70mm zoom lens– zooms, too, have come a long way, and there’s nothing to compare with Nikon glass. I bring two laptops – a primary and a backup - currently I’m using Sony Vaios running Windows XP. And then to fill in any space I may have after stuffing in the tripods, speedlights, and a reflector or two, I bring more backups, and more backups. Where I go, there’s not usually a camera store for hundreds of miles.

CH: Wayne, let me take this opportunity to thank you, not only for this very informative and fascinating interview, but for the body of work that you’ve created that helps tell the drama and human story of volunteers that sacrifice to make the world a better place for all of us.

Schoenfeld’s recent collectors include the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, Korea and Cirque du Soleil, which will be hosting his entire Circus of Life series at their Montreal, Canada Headquarters January – February 2007.

His work is available in the monograph books Brittle Glory, Surface Tension, Through the Eyes of Man, There Are No Answers – If the Questions Aren’t Asked, Almost Perfect and Mission to India. He is a member of the Photographic Arts Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Santa Barbara Museum.

www.wayneschoenfeld.com

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