Chile: Old Blue-Eyed Shepherd

Away from countries that fear terrorism and believe everyone with a camera is a possible threat, to photograph people is a delight. And such a great excuse to make new friends, start a conversation, and learn something new. The better if you speak the local language.

I learned a lot from the people I photographed—from Africans; Latin Americans, Asians. And they always treated me as a friend. Why can’t so many of us not act similarly?

I photographed this gentle old blue-eyed man near Puerto Montt, in Chile. He was herding sheep but was happy to give me his time and chat with me for a while. We both ended up a little happier and wiser that day.

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Paraguay: Where Have Those Times Gone?

In 1971, picture-hunting one early morning in Ita, Paraguay, during a seven-month journey around Latin America, I came unnoticed upon this heartwarming street scene. Protected against the already fierce sun by an umbrella, this little girl was peddling her mother’s bread from house to house.  

I had one of her rolls for breakfast, and how I wish today I could find one as good in the Pennsylvanian town where I live these days. But there are things, like good bread, that American amazing technology can’t make.

Or should I say, can no longer make? When visiting my mother in Belgium, still alive 30 years ago, and asking her for some of the delights she had served me while I grew up there, she already had to warn me that, even in our own country, “food was no longer what it used to be.” Big industry had taken over.

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Paraguay: Slow Life, Happy Life

In this 1971 street scene of Encarnación, Paraguay, those young carefree people, sitting on part of a harvest to be sold at market, were patiently waiting for a fourth passenger.

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Once Upon A Time In Paraguay

In 1971, under the warm light of a setting sun in Yaguarón, Paraguay, the woman shown here was a street vendor entering the cavernous darkness of a café to try to sell some of the stuff she was carrying on her head. It was common in those days for people there to walk barefoot.

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Paraguay: Oxcart Rolling Out Of The Past

In 1971, during a seven-month exploration of Latin America, this sandy path leading away from Encarnación, Paraguay, offered me this scene of a time long gone in the rest of the world. Armed with a stick long enough to whip his first two oxen, this farmer was taking his harvest to market. 

     I had recently traveled down from Bolivia’ high and icy Altiplano desert and could not have been more grateful for the heat and surrounding greenness. Also, Paraguay in those days added the attraction of a travel machine. Walking its dusty paths plied by people on horses and oxcarts threw me back 100 years.

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Panama: Female Beauty Is On Display on Corpus Cristi Day

Less young than the dancer whose photo I posted on this blog yesterday, and much less enhanced by external artifices, this other dancer animating the Panama City Corpus Cristi procession is just as ravishing.

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Panama: Rutilating At Corpus Cristi

Parading and dancing in Panama City’s Corpus Cristi procession, every scintillating girl and woman looks irresistible. And shouldn’t they, whose vanity invested small fortunes in time and money on hair, skins, jewelry, and, mostly, elaborately made dresses they call polleras? This is the day they are out to show their best faces. And do they succeed!

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Brazil: Yanomami Women Are Among The World’s Kindest and Most Devoted Mothers

Having traveled the world and shared the daily lives and hardships of more than 30 tribal and indigenous people in three continents, I have marveled at the hassle-free relationship these people have with their children and adolescents. It starts, I think, with great love and tolerance, not just from parents, but also from everyone else. At the same time, these children are taught early where their places and responsibilities are in their societies. Mostly, perhaps, there are no overburdened single moms among them. No orphans. Spouses and parents die with minimum consequences.

In the case of Brazil’s Yanomami, for example, as many as 100 people may live under a single vast circular roof, each family around its own fire, but each one responsible for the others. And Yanomami mothers are among the most loving I have watched anywhere. After giving birth to a baby they’ll do almost anything to avoid another pregnancy for the next four years, even avoiding sex. During those four years they’ll take their small children anywhere with them, even when it means loading them on top of already very heavy full baskets.

The photographs that follow show the same young mother, probably no older than sixteen. She was so sweet that she quickly became my favorite. But all the Yanomami mothers I photographed behaved like her. To see some of them, write ‘Yanomami’ in this blog’s search box. You’ll find them on many pages.

Slashing through an overgrown abandoned field to pull some manioc still growing there.

The manioc.

Resting for a while 

Felling papayas in a plantain field.

Peeling manioc while keeping her baby girl busy with a piece of papaya.

Readying herself to lift the basket on the back of a small companion girl.

Carrying a bunch of plantain to her family fire.

Grating manioc inside a piece of bark. She will squeeze and dry the result to get flour.

Baking flat manioc bread on ceramic plate. Baby sleeps in hammock.

Fishing from river.

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Self-Evident Marquesan Woman

Exploring Ua Pou, one of the Marquesas Archipelago’s six inhabited islands, I stumbled upon this young woman as she was pounding popoi in her open kitchen. Popoi, a staple food of the Marquesas, is prepared mixing and cooking fresh and fermented breadfruit and pounding it.

     Having photographed her at work, I asked her to let me take a portrait of her. Not worrying for a minute about her untidy hair, dress, hands, and wrists, she let me shoot her in the raw, unafraid to show her real self—a woman happily interrupted during a messy activity.

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Enchantment Of The South Seas Islands

In !982, on a National Geographic Society assignment to produce a chapter, text and photographs, for a book titled Secret Corners of the World, I spent two months exploring the six inhabited islands of the Marquesas Archipelago in French Polynesia.  Walking along the stunning coast of Ua Huka Island, which I had to myself, I chanced upon these dancers, who were rehearsing for the French Bastille Day celebration. But then, such occasions are what makes travel off the tourist map so exciting.

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Mali: Gold-Adorned Red Fulani Woman

One of two red Fulani women I transported in my car over a few miles near Mali’s Bandiagara Cliffs. Each was carrying a big calabash of fresh milk, some of which they spilled on my rear seat. But they graciously posed for me at their destination. 

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Mali: Old Man Issued From The Shadow

In Djenné, Mali, this old man, with amazingly long legs, emerged from the shadow behind a wall to have a look at the equally curious photographer. 

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Indonesia: Rushing Home With The Groceries

In Indonesia’s Jakarta, the country’s capital in Java Island, a pedicab’s cargo leaves little room for its owner.

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Indonesia: How Our Stone-Age Ancestors Drank Water

In 1968, having spent four months crossing Indonesian Borneo from Pontianak on the west coast to Samarinda on the East coast on assignment for National Geographic, I traveled the next three months on a Venture magazine assignment photographing the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, Sumba, Sumbaya, Timor, and Irian Jaya.

In Irian Jaya, in the western part of New Guinea, I reached the stone age. Literally, as the Dani tribe there were still using axes and agricultural tools made of polished stones. There I watched a boy drink from a river as do animals. Our distant ancestors may have done it too.

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Indonesia: Amazing How Much You Can Pile On A Bicycle

The world’s streets offer some of the most amazing spectacles. And they are free. I shot this earnest ciclyst near Jakarta , Indonesia, in 1968. 

Indonesia: Broken By A Demanding Job

Having transported people all day through the traffic of Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, this pedicab driver found a quiet spot to take a nap. Here’s a man who will never put on weight.

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Philippines: How To Carry Six Guitars And More

Guitar vendor in Manila, Philippines, is carrying his stock on his shoulders.

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Philippines: Two-Wheel Fun

Two-wheel taxi slicing the air of Philippines’Negros Island.

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Philippines: Fourteen On A Motorcycle

Up a steep road in the Philippines’ Negros Island, 13 boys are riding a motorcycle taxi’s side car to a soccer game. They were as flabbergasted at seeing a camera lens pointed at them as I was of their own circumstance.

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Benin: Running Around In A Fetish Dance

Yoruba women and girls irrupting into a joyous circular fetish dance in Benin’s Ita Djebou, near Sakete.

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Niger’s Wodaabe Nomads: From Yakey To Gerewol

In previous posts my photographs showed how the Wodaabe nomads of Niger’s Sahel prepare for, and perform in, the Yakey dance, which doubles as a male beauty contest among the members of a clan. Again, in this new image, an important part of the game is the display of white teeth and eyes.

The Yakey was only a way to warm up for a much more important and challenging festival. This one, the Gerewol, now pits clan against clan. And pity the less attractive or less spirited dancers for the mockery they will endure, including the threat to get saddled up like donkeys,

The elders, women and men, spare none of the dancers. And as they spur them into a more energetic act you can imagine their words, which are universal. “Come on, girls. What have our grandsons come to?  What a generation of weaklings!

The old men selected a few of the prettiest girls to judge the dancers. Unlike the granddaddies, they watch the young dancers respectfully. When asked for their choices at the end, they will each rise and walk towards a dancer while pointing at him.

The onlookers.

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Niger: Yakey dance, A Wodaabe Male Beauty Contest

In the last few days I posted photographs of Wodaabe men preparing for a Yakey dance, which doubles as a male beauty contest. Here is a section of a row of men making great efforts to show the whiteness of their eyes and teeth to a parallel row of young women watching them as they dance and sing without leaving the spots they are standing on. They are wearing sheep skins pants and swords. 

The third photograph shows a rear view of one of the men. 

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Niger: Wodaabe Male Beauty Contestants

Men of the nomadic Wodaabe tribe, also known as Bororo, are made up to participate in a Yakey dance, which doubles as a male beauty contest among members of a clan. Later, during the short rains, when pasture will be abundant enough for those people’cattle not to need to keep moving for a while, the clans will gather and compete in a Gerewol dance. 
     This will be a much more demanding beauty contest. This time it will oppose clans against clans, and the less-than-handsome will be ridiculed by the elders. The good-looking ones will hook up with potential wives.

     The Wodaabe canon of beauty demands light skin, thin nose and lips, high forehead, and mostly shining white teeth and eyeballs. This invites much make-up.

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Niger: A Wodaabe Man Checks The Whiteness Of His Teeth And Eyeballs Before Joining A Male Beauty Contest

Looking into a small mirror in his hand, a man of the Wodaabe tribe, also known as Bororo, is checking the whiteness of his teeth and eyes before joining a Yakey dance, which doubles as a male beauty contest among members of a clan. Later, during the rains, when pasture will be abundant enough for those nomads’ cattle to stop moving in search of grass for a while, the clans will gather and compete in a Gerewol dance. This will be a much more demanding beauty contest. This time it will oppose clans against clans, and the less-than-handsome will be ridiculed by the elders. The good-looking ones will hook up with potential wives.

     The Wodaabe canon of beauty demands light skin, thin nose and lips, high forehead, and mostly shining white teeth and eyeballs. This invites much make-up.

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Niger: Wodaabe Man Preparing To Participate In A Male Beauty Contest

Looking into a small mirror, a man of the Wodaabe tribe, also known as Bororo, is painting his face to participate in a Yakey dance, which doubles as a male beauty contest among members of a clan. Later, during the rains, when pasture will be abundant enough for those nomads’ cattle to stop moving for a while, the clans will gather and compete in a Gerewol dance. This will be a much more demanding beauty contest. This time it will oppose clans against clans, and the less-than-handsome will be ridiculed by the elders. The good-looking ones will hook up with potential wives.

     The Wodaabe canon of beauty demands light skin, thin nose and lips, high forehead, and mostly shining white teeth and eyeballs. This invites much make-up.

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Amazon: Angelical Face Of A Yanomami Girl

Little Yanomami girl of Brazil’s Amazon rain forest. Having lived in isolation in their Edenic forest over many centuries, the Yanomami have not benefited from outside influences. But they are as human and intelligent as of any of us. And they have an amazing sense of humor. Their children are the happiest I have seen anywhere in the world.

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Amazon: Yanomami Indians On A Hunting Expedition

Armed with bows and arrows much taller than them, those Yanomami of Brazil’s Amazon rain forest are headed on a hunting expedition. On their return they will share the meat of their preys with the whole community and only keep for themselves the least appetizing parts. They won’t work hard the next couple days. The Yanomami are so well organized that they do not need to work more than an average two and a half hours a day.

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Colombia: A Sting That Could Have Killed

This Noanama man is showing me around his Colombian Choco rain forest. My wife, Martha, was part of the journey, as were two of her Colombian teenager cousins, Diego and Juan Carlos. That journey would have been idyllic if at some point we had not been close to lose Martha. It was sudden and frightening.

     We were walking down barefoot the muddy ground that separated the Noanama’s big stilted hut from a canoe in which a Noanama man was waiting to pole us up the Docordo River to his family’s forest plantation when Martha cried in pain. Something had stung her lower leg. The pain was brief. But soon her skin inflated all over her body. Large blisters were quickly spreading like rain water or oil on metal, swallowing each other as they grew.  

     “I see black,” Martha suddenly complained. And having said that she started struggling desperately to breathe. It was scary and happening too fast to allow thinking. We thought we were seeing her die.

     Diego suggested we rush downriver to try to find a dispensary. But there was no time.  Somehow I thought Martha could find some relief lying down. The river was shallow and the banks too muddy. So I asked everyone to leave the canoe and laid Martha down in it. I had no idea how to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but thought nothing else would save her at this point and I had to try it. However, before I could even start she breathed better. She told me she was seeing again. And her blisters left little by little, the way they had come. It seemed miraculous. And perhaps it was. We never knew what had happened to her, but figure she suffered from an allergy, perhaps to a spider sting.

     Some years earlier, in Afghanistan, I had seen a young Frenchman nearly die from an allergy to flea stings. Armies of fleas were leaving cracks in a wall of the caravanserai where we slept to feast on our blood.

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Colombia: Noanama Canoe Parking

Pulling sugarcane with her left hand, a Noanama woman steps out of a canoe at the bottom of her family’s tambo, a large wall-less hut on stilts above the Docordo River in Colombia’s Choco rain forest. Floating on the water are canoes for every member of the family. Children get canoes fitting their own sizes as soon as they can walk—to play with them while learning to use them. In a road-less world, moving is over rivers.

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