A photograph is an image of a real-world object created by recording the light reflected off that object and its surroundings either chemically onto some light-sensitive material or digitally via an image sensor. The technologies used to found and shape the process of photography as we know and understand it today have existed since the early 18th century, namely the camera obscura, which is a dark room with one hole in one wall that allows for the image of an object to be projected onto the opposite wall, and light-sensitive materials, or materials that darken in the presence of light.  However, it was not until after the 1830s, with the rapid development of various means of and techniques for capturing photographic images, such as the daguerreotype, calotype, stereoscopy, etc., that the concept of photography began to take hold in the local domain (Rosenblum et al. 2019).  And while the field of photography underwent these massive technological and methodological transformations during the 19th century, it would take until the early 20th century for photography to finally find itself fully embedded within the local domain. 

As a distinct visual medium, photography has certain characteristics that differentiate it from other visual medias and that have allowed for it to become the type of visual media it is considered today; of these characteristics, the most significant is that of immediacy, or the ability to produce an image instantaneously (Rosenblum et al. 2019). To take a photograph with a  modern camera, regardless of whether the image is captured through a film or digital camera (that is regardless of whether an image is captured chemically or digitally) all one must do is click the shutter, which in turn will open up the aperture (a closed hole in the lens of the camera) thereby letting the operational system within the body of the camera to record the light reflected off the objects within the frame of the lens. While the processing of these images post-capture differs between different photographic techniques and technologies, all photographic images are established at the time of exposure. This characteristic not only is unique to photography as it makes photography the only visual art media that can capture an image exactly as the eye may see it in that particular moment, but also makes photography unique as the gives the photographic images a sense of authenticity and realness that cannot be captured by any other visual media in the same way (Rosenblum et al. 2019).  Before the 20th century, photography was considered a “mechanical art” or a “shortcut to art” due to its dependency on technology, which reflected the popular critique that photography did not require much skill or technique in order to produce an image, especially when compared to other popular forms visual art such as painting and drawing (Rosenblum et al. 2019). However, while photography was not treated as a type of artistic media, despite the fact that it existed as a type of visual media, its capacity for immediacy as well as to capture extensive detail revealed an impressive potential for documentation.  Traditionally, the notion of documentation signified the “record[ing of] the details of an event, a process, etc.” in the form of a document or a “paper or set of papers with written or printed information, especially of an official type”(“Document”, Cambridge English Dictionary).  With the recognition and popularization of photography as a method for documentation, the notion of documentation as well as of a document has expanded beyond the “record[ing of] information… by writing about it” to include “photographing it [information]” as well (“Document”, Cambridge English Dictionary).  Thus, most of the initial thematic or content-related genres of photography were genres of documentation rather than genres of art, such as photojournalism, portraiture and documentary photography – all of which continue to exist as the most popular and defining genres of photography today. 

Influential photographers working within the genre of documentary photography at the turn of the 20th century, such as Edward S. Curtis, attempted to chronical what the world looked like during their lifetime from either a social or environmental perspective.  Curtis became known for his work The North American Indian, which was comprised of 20 volumes of anthropological text about and photogravures (prints of photographic images that are produced by transferring photographic negatives to copper plates and etching them in) of Native Americans that were meant to show the “people and their homeland – a picture that will show the souls of the people” (Gidley 2019). Between 1907 and 1930, Curtis took thousands of photos – primarily portraits – of the indigenous peoples of the trans-Mississippi West, and while it is argued that the resulting work has been a major contribution to the preservation of Native American culture and history, many critics accuse Curtis’s work of perpetuating the idea of Native Americans as a “vanishing race” and presenting inaccurate portrayals of Native American life during that period in time (Warren 1999). In hindsight, perhaps Curtis should have known that his aim was in no way uncomplicated or easy.  Many of the images he took depicted Native Americans in traditional ways of life that were no longer the norm or had died out altogether. Curtis himself confessed to having his subjects reenact ceremonies or reconstruct settings that, while still relevant to their indigenous history, no longer represented their modern way of life. For example, in his photo “In a Piegan Lodge”, a small clock that rests between the two subjects of the image is missing (Meier 2018). While the picture itself, like the thousands of other he took during those 20-plus years, is in many ways respectful of its indigenous subjects in its portrayal of their culture and heritage, the intentional staging and meticulous retouching of this image to portray a highly idealized vision of the artist rather than an accurate representation of its subjects.  While Curtis’s intentions may not have been to do so, his work, by depicting the indigenous people in their traditional dress with their primitive material culture and natural settings, leaves indigenous people lost in a premodern past and establishes a distance between indigenous peoples and the rest of contemporary society, thereby suggesting the possibility and probability that they would disappear in the face of modern progress and contemporary society (Warren 1999).  Of course, while it is true that their culture is a large part of what gives Native American people their identity, to suggest that without their traditions or traditional way of life they would cease to exist altogether only perpetuates idea of repressive authenticity, or the notion that how one was in the past must be the same as they are now in order to be authentic (Wolfe 2006). The consequences of such an idea constrict Native Americans to a specific, and frankly outdated, way of like by requiring that they perform according to non-indigenous or outside expectations of what being an “authentic” Native American person looks like, which in turn often and in many ways restricts Native Americas from progressing along with the rest of society as those outside expectations detail outdated performances and aspects of life that are stuck in the past. Though the loss of certain traditions in the name of or due to progress does not result in the loss of a peoples, forcing indigenous populations to choose between embracing their identity, and in turn retaining their traditional ways of life and risk making a spectacle of themselves in the eyes of society, or foregoing that authenticity and assimilating for the purpose of progress has the potential to be an effective method of eliminating the threat of indigenous populations from a settler-colonial perspective (Wolfe 2006); regardless, it’s a lose-lose situation for the indigenous people as evident by the current reality of Native American populations in the 21stcentury.

Unfortunately, the documentation and portrayal of indigenous peoples as dying or vanishing populations did not end with the criticism of Curtis’s work. If anything, many other photographers since Curtis have found massive inspiration in his work and have attempted to do the same. One of these photographers is Jimmy Nelson, whose photographs of indigenous people from around the world have sparked much praise and even more controversy.  From 2009-2012, the British photographer spent three years visiting and photographing 35 of worlds most isolated and visually unique tribes, which resulted in his first photography book Before They Pass Away. Marrying the genres of portraiture and social documentary as his idol Edward S. Curtis did a century prior, Nelson shot images of the Maori people of New Zealand carefully placed within a beautiful waterfall landscape with their taiahas and wahaikas in hand, and of the Samburu people of Kenya standing on the tops of the Ndoto Mountain Range with spears in one hand and the reign to their camel in the other, and of the Mustang people of Nepal in their intricately embroided gowns and shrouds of red. 

While Nelsons work made laudatory headlines all over the world, selling more than 25,000 copies worldwide and individual prints for tens of thousands of dollars, the images depicted in Before They Pass Away received as much negative reaction and criticism.  Non-indigenous authorities in the photography world, like leading photographer for BBCs Human Planet, Tim Allen, chastised Nelson for producing a “patronizing and self-aggrandizing narrative… a primitive attitude” about indigenous populations (Survival International).  However, Nelson’s intentions have perhaps always been a bit selfish.  According to countless interviews and talks, Nelson has consistently stated that the main motivation behind his projects has been beauty, to simply capture what is beautiful. According to his own TED talk:

I’m a real romantic. I’m an idealist, perhaps in some ways naive. But I truly believe that there are people on the planet that are beautiful. It’s very, very simple. It’s not rocket science. I wanted to put these people on a pedestal. I wanted to put them on a pedestal like they’d never been seen before. So, I chose about 35 different groups, tribes, indigenous cultures. They were chosen purely because of their aesthetic, and I’ll talk more about that later. I’m not an anthropologist, I have no technical study with the subject, but I do have a very, very, very deep passion, and I believe that I had to choose the most beautiful people on the planet in the most beautiful environment that they lived in, and put the two together and present them to you. (Nelson 2014) 

Though Nelson attempts to and often times succeeds in photographing these indigenous people in a respectful manner – that is to say that he attempts understand the culture and traditions of those he photographers –, the manner in which he photographs these people in addition to the fact that he is photographing these peoples under the pretense of them dying or vanishing creates an inaccurate portrayal of and consequent reality for these populations. It is primarily for this reason that representatives of indigenous populations, like Davi Kopenawa of the Yanomami tribe in Brazil, don’t seem to like the photos for it is not true that indigenous peoples are about to die out…we will be around for a long time, fighting for our land, living in this world and continuing to create our children” (Survival International).

As a self-proclaimed street photographer and documentarian, I came to realize early into my journey with photography that I want to tell real stories about real people  – and though I did not learn about photographers like Edward S. Curtis and Jimmy Nelson before I began to research this topic, I suppose I would have found inspiration in them as well had I known about their work before I knew about the social consequences of their work. From the moment I raised my first DSLR camera to my face, squinting into the viewfinder and shooting everything that I saw, I began to experience stories in a way that I had never seriously taken into consideration before.  No longer was I oblivious to every other life but my own; I soon became a silent witness to the world around me as I began to perceive the stories I observed unfold like stills of a movie.  Family trips and summer workshops in faraway places became the background of most of my photographs; capturing the essence of these cities through its people and their culture became the focus of my photography: Two men, one parked behind and one to the left of a colorful fruit stand, in the midst of a heated conversation, hands moving and lips shaking; two Rajasthani dancers twirling under the starry desert sky, their bare feet pulsing to the hypnotic rhythm of the tablas ringing in the air.  I used to believe that a picture is like a time machine – its purpose is not to recall a moment, but to relive it.  And not just relive what was seen through the camera’s viewfinder, but also to holistically relive the experience of that moment in time as it was.  What I’ve realized through my experiences with photography, however, is that to holistically relive the experience behind the photograph (that is to relive what was seen, heard, smelt, felt, etc.) is impossible for anyone to do besides the maker of that image themselves.  After reflecting upon the time I had spent sharing these single slivers of a subjects’ life, it struck me that I’d never know what that conversation between those two men parked by the fruit stand was about, and I’d never find out how those dancers’ feet arrived at that particular dance floor that night. With my eye behind the lens of my camera, I captured these stills with clear-cut clarity, but I have since realized that that’s all these photographs are: details of a single moment.  If a photograph only has the capacity to detail a single moment, then it should also be noted that capturing a still image means knowing that there is a story that can be told and accepting the fact that the truth of that story may not be obvious, or even existent, within the photograph.  If photographs are of multifaceted objects, then a singular photograph can only capture one mood or disposition of its subject (Bolt 2000).  A document is a document, not a person – for the audience of a photograph to assume that an image of indigenous people, however aggrandized, must represent everything that that indigenous person or people are means that the audience are able to understand the story behind that image, but if that image is open to interpretation because only the creator can fully understand the context then that image can never accurately portray such. 

There isn’t necessarily a right or wrong when it comes to Jimmy Nelson, or any other social photographer, and his work – only intention and unintended consequences. While the intentions of his projects are purely aesthetic, the reality of the consequences of photographing indigenous populations in a highly stylized manner that may not accurately reflect their contemporary way of life only perpetuates notions of repressive authenticity. At the end of the day, the fact that thishistorical pattern of highly stylized or retouched photographs of indigenous populations to fit a typically while male creators agenda is a critical issue because it defines the unequal line between the settler narrative and the indigenous narrative, thus perpetuating the distinction between society and the other (the other being indigenous populations) in a manner that skews the indigenous narrative and continues and the historical theme of an almost a wishful state of disappearing from the settler-colonial perspective. 

Bibliography

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“Criticisms of Photographer Jimmy Nelson’s ‘Before They Pass Away.’” Survival International, Survival International, www.survivalinternational.org/articles/3373-jimmy-nelson-before-they-pass-away. Accessed 6 June 2019.

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