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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