(no subject)

[lapsedmodernist]

This is a giant photo post, filled with photos from my summer trips. I actually held off posting them because I feel like some of the photos from Cameroon and from Canada can be read as National Geographic-ish and that makes me intensely uncomfortable. But I am going to post all of them and by way of prolegomenon here is a gchat excerpt from last night (with apropos, natch)

me: so ihave these photos from Cameroon of these kids that really wanted their photos taken but they look uncomfortably like NG Africa photos. I guess if you take photos of kids in an African village on some level they will just look like that
apropos: yes
me: but what to do about it? how to make them not look like that?
apropos: you are not going to frame them in a NG way. hopefully.
me: how can I frame them except these kids really wanted their pics taken? I just wanted to put them on lj. I used a couple of photos from the villages in my workshop writeup [for my grant proposal] but not of kids, just of the community meeting
me I have actually lots of really cool photos from this powwow I went to in Canada because the family that invited me asked me to take pics of their kids and send them to them but they also look NG because all "native" photos in costume look NG that's like the dominant referent of the visual semioric
apropos: i think you can't do much about that semiotic except be clear about the context of the photo's production
me: yeah...
apropos: it is Bigger Than Us
me you know I actually found that taking pictures of kids is something nice I can do for people I visit
apropos: true
me not as like "exotic kids": but as in I am a pretty good children's photographer and can make nice photos for them for free and people are super into it...

So; in reverse chronological order:





first bank

Yaounde soccer stadium

pipeline here

men in a "Bantu" village talking about how the pipeline made it impossible to plant cocoa trees

Jean, a Bagyeli activist, who invited us to her village in Bipindi, in the Kribi region

here she is in front of the photos of the different places around the world she has traveled

this is the chief of her village

close-up of the HIV/AIDS prevention poster--apropos and congogirl NB

a bunch of the village kids below:











Now onto a totally different part of the world, the Canadian North, namely the North of Alberta, the home of the Athabasca tar sands, and the massive oil and mining operations.





right behind the birches and the pines there are mining camps, every few hundred meters


this is a common vista


so is this


a mound


StadOil


this is the "sticker tree" outside the "Oil Sands Discovery Center" in Fort McMurray where the oil extraction horrorshow in the region is spun as a nature-friendly, child-friendly, scientifically neat endeavor


with the help of this "guide," an anthropomorphic cartoon oil drop>





on the drive between Lac La Biche and Fort Mac I saw 3 bears--it is paradoxical--bears right on the road instantly signify "wild nature" but really they are on the roads because the oil development has driven them out of their usual places deeper in the forest


Lac La Biche Transport

Summer is Pow-wow season there, people go from Pow-wow to Pow-wow competing in the dance competitions and visiting friends and relatives. I missed the one in Beaver Lake due to logistics/poor planning/unsuccessful hitchhiking, but Elaine, the sister of the Nation's chief, and an absolutley lovely woman who took me under her wing while I was there, invited me to the neighboring one in Heart Lake. She and her niece, Crystal, asked me to take photos of their kids, which I did, in addition to the photos I took when basically everyone was already dressed up.



Elaine, finishing up her daughter's dress for the competition


her daughter, Mackenzie


hair prep


ladies


putting up a tipi


Mackenzie dressed up


the blue dress


Crystal

Various kids and young people photos below:





















And, finally, these next pictures are subpar in quality, since my camera was stolen in Ecuador, but below the cut are the few cell phone images I have from there



nature

culture

history

DECOIN, a conservation activist organization in the area, involved in the anti-mining struggle

Carlos, the founder of DECOIN

the courtyard in Nangulvi that's kind of a central meeting point for many people, where I did a bunch of interviews

courtyard the other side

Comments

[anthrokeight.livejournal.com]

I love the pow-wow photos. The thing that I love about pow-wow photos is when people start putting them up and passing them around on facebook and tagging one another, and then text-msg-type comments on each others' walls about them.

It kind of does a number on the Natives In Outfits Is Exotic People From Another Time image for me, should (when) I fall into that trap despite knowing better.

Those jingle dresses are really fab!

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

facebook: the friend of coevalness.

I love the fact that the jingles are made from tobacco packaging tops.

[unemployia.livejournal.com]

I always love your photos. thanks for sharing.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

thank you. I am sorry I still have not responded to your question about street photography--I think about it, and will, at some point, respond, when this very busy stretch of life chills out a bit.

[boobirdsfly.livejournal.com]

You are so good at photographing people.
Amazing shots.
I think the photographer's eye transpires through the camera. I understand your need for a "disclaimer" but in my opinion, these photos don't look like photos taken by people who aren't aware of the issues you talk about.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

thank you--and I am curious--how so? these photos don't look like photos taken by people who aren't aware of the issues you talk about.

[londontheory.livejournal.com]

this is crazy to me! i'm probably going to the cameroon & northwestern bc in the summer to do research re: alternative business models on publicly held forestlands, & basically all these photos are making me feel simultaneously full of excitement/full of anxiety/full of wariness/full of trepidation. i'm struggling with issues of representation & ethics. the project hasn't even begun! life!

these photos are beautiful though, which is what i mean mostly to say.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

how cool, I would love to hear more about your project. Where in Cameroon are you going?

[nikadubrovsky.livejournal.com]

отличные фотографии!

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Спасибо!

[dcart.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting these. Usually when I see photos of this type of subject matter they are framed in the National Geographic kind of way. I try to be conscious of that, but seeing photos that weren't explicitly shot with that aesthetic in mind is really cool. The difference is very apparent to me.

[klingrap.livejournal.com]

I would like to faux-adopt one of these adorable young ethnic children. Where do I send my $5 a month?