Whereas most websites are created to generate business, this website is a review of images and projects in my fifty-year career as an ethnographic photographer. The phrase that describes it is… ‘Photography of the indigenous peoples of the Americas’ (and the rest of the world).
I consider myself lucky to have had the trust of clients (educational publishers and international development organizations) to also do exotic travel. Before photography became digital, the film stock and travel expenses would be spent before seeing one picture. I’d shoot for a month…or two. Things like dust, heat, X-rays, and theft were hazards. The digital age started right in the middle of my career. The changes were tremendous; mostly for the better.
My work with the Maya produced the biggest thrills.
To do this work I had to exploit the personal qualities of my essential being that allowed me to approach strangers (often with no shared language ) and to make them feel comfortable being photographed. I was good at getting people to give it a try… and that we’d stop if it didn’t go well. In some Maya towns, the rules said ‘no photography’ but as a professional, I was willing to push it. The story of getting arrested is a good one.**
The Maya world I stepped into was traditional; mud brick homes with grass roofs. In the cocina there were no manufactured goods; the most modern thing was one 60-watt lightbulb. Imagine trying to make pictures with the slow films of the late ‘70s, with dark adobe walls, and a ceiling that was black from fires with no chimney gobbling up the light. (Solution: push processing, and clip tests.)
