The Distance Between Us

by M. C.

~ Nelson Mandela

I relocated 11 years ago. I spoke no English. I could see, but I couldn't utter a word. I started working at the age of thirteen. I held three jobs and the first thing I bought was an automatic camera. To send pictures home, you see. And where is home? It's hard to know after so many years. But at the time there was no closer definition of home than Bulgaria. At the time, I could still smell my grandma's skin, a scent of ripe tomatoes and chicken feathers....

I faced many challenges as a fresh immigrant from a place unheard, unknown, unexotic. My camera helped every step of the way. Drawing and painting were not far behind. I decided to study photography.

~

My work is about people and their incredible will to survive regardless of circumstances. Each photograph carries an untold story of struggle and perseverance. The viewer might only witness fragments of the story: a broken nose, a torn skirt, an empty liquor bottle.... Those fragments are just as vital as the complete human story. They allow us to form our own interpretation of a place unknown. These glimpses of one's existence shake us up. We seek explanations. We ask why. And "why" leads us to an understanding of politics, history, culture, and origin. If there is one thing I would like to show through my photographs and give back to the people whose images I've captured, it would be their dignity. Courage and strength know no race, class, or nationality. They are simply human traits that help us stay alive when the odds are against us.

~

   "Can I take your picture?"
   "For what?"
   "To show others how you live."
   " Will they come here and make it better?"
   "I don't know.... Probably not."
   "Why you want to shoot a photo of an old man, anyway?"
   "Because history is written on your face. Every scar is a decade."
   "Go ahead, if it pleases you."
   "What pleases you?"
   "I don't remember."

~

There are times when I have a lot of doubt about why I am here, why I am interfering with people's daily lives and chores, why I bring the cameras and the notebook and the pen and the questions and the seeking eyes. And then there are days when I feel a touch, a glance, an exchange that pierces the wall of color, the wall of mistrust and fear. There are moments when I am me as me and not anything else—not a woman, not a "whitey," not a "foreigner," not an "invader of privacy"—when I am a large ear, when hugs are given without reservation, when people refer to me as their child, their sister, their mother. And those are the times I pick up the cameras, the notepad and pen, the seeking eyes, and I carry on with my work.

~

Down in New Rest, a township in the outskirts of Cape Town, there was a man who had killed five rats the size of hens. He laid them out on concrete center blocks and he held two by the tails. He posed for a photo and I could see only pride written on his face. Sweat dripped. He had a brownish sweater wrapped around his waist. He stood next to a wheel barrow that was stacked with more center blocks—more dead rats. When we spoke he explained that the rats nibble at night on the children's feet. Most people in New Rest live in squatter houses. Most sleep on the floor, especially households with lots of children. This man, along with many more I met that day, was a hero.

~

   "Hello, my sister. Hello, my brother. And God bless."
   "Where are you headed, old man?"
   "Swept Away. Just down the road. I work there, you know."
   "In 'Swept Away?' That's a resort, right?"
   " Yeah, man. Been working there twenty-one years."
   "Twenty-one years! That's a long time."
   "Look at me and guess my age."
   "Sixty-two. Maybe sixty-five."
   "Just turned eighty-one, man. Was born 1919. A Leo. My given name is Lloyd Anderson but they call me Humble."
   "You've seen a lot through these eyes, Humble."
   "Yeah, man. Seen a lot."

~

You know that feeling... of sitting next to a cracked window in mid-November and getting a chill that creeps under your fingernails and then works its way to your elbows, neck, stopping for a drink at the base of your spine.... That's what I wish for when you stand here—witnessing the stains history has left on its people, these people who've been trying to wash off poverty for many generations. You see them and they are just like your grandpa whose skin transforms itself into a texture of finely woven strands of endurance. Things done to him that you only thought exist in the imagination of a grotesque writer or film director. But that old man is living proof and you, my friend, are witnessing it.

All of it—apartheid, police brutality, loss of freedom, loss of womanhood, loss of children who no longer look like children. Children who've become little men and women before they even learn how to spell "mama." It's in front of you but it shouldn't sadden you. Look at these faces as I've looked at them and think of what it means to be alive in a place that does everything possible to keep you under.

Avenali Lecture

Sebastião Salgado
"On Photography and Globalization"

February 11, 2002

Sebastião Salgado: On Photography and Globalization
M. C., Lecturer of Photography at the Graduate School of Journalism

Sebastião Salgado. I had heard the name many times. I had seen it underneath photographs that remained imbedded in my memory for years: images of history; images of raw skin, sweat and blood. They were photographs that I held up for my students as proof that it is possible to become one with your work, to make it happen. Yesterday, the name that I had heard and seen so many times transformed itself into a warm handshake and a smile. Sebastião Salgado sat in my office and I had so much to say that nothing came out. I wanted to ask him how and why he has devoted 35 years of his life to documentary photography and activism. Why he paints, in shades of gray, the human condition of globalization. I wanted to ask him how he manages to shoot 200 rolls of film in twenty days. I wanted to know about those shoeboxes at home that contain 300,000 work prints instead of soft leather and lace. But most importantly, I wanted to know about the 300 photographs in four galleries on display at the Berkeley Art Museum and UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

I first saw "Migrations: Humanity in Transition" in New York’s International Center for Photography. I tried to absorb it, but couldn't. I returned the next day and still felt I needed more time to comprehend the profound meaning of Salgado’s work. Fortunately for those of us in the Bay Area, the exhibit at UC Berkeley’s Art Museum will be on display until March 24, 2002. "Migrations: Humanity in Transition" and "The Children" tell the story of those who leave behind everything they know in search of a better life, work, safety. Salgado spent seven years on the migrations project and two years on research and preparation. Nine months out of the year he photographed 43 countries in Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas. When a student asked him, "How do you connect with these people?" Salgado answered, "If you become a documentary photographer, it’s a way of life. You can’t be indifferent in your life. You must understand the story of these people. You must act along with humanitarian organizations. In the end, you write, you photograph, you film… It’s your own ideology. In the end, photography is nothing more than a mirror of the society in which you live. An image needs no translation."

Sebastião Salgado just turned fifty-eight. He was born on a farm in Brazil. He had seven sisters. Later on he studied economics. He understands better than most that there is a price to be paid for each release of the shutter. On Monday night, February 11^th, Salgado spoke at Wheeler Auditorium. "I met many people crossing the border of Guatemala and Mexico. Why are you going to the United States? What are you expecting? ‘Well, we want work. To get a small house. A car.’" Migration has always existed but, as Salgado points out, never on the scale that it does now. Most listeners that night were surprised that Salgado spoke little of photography. Instead he addressed the audience by posing questions about the reality of today’s world. "How can we live in a society that’s a society for all?" he asked. "We must open our minds and have a discussion. A dialogue. We must act, we must work together. We must protect all people."

Later in a conversation with Orville Schell, the Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism, Schell asked if Salgado had become more or less hopeful in the last ten to fifteen years. "I’ve become less hopeful" was the answer. "There are very few Third World countries where the second trip is better than the first. But I am not giving up hope. Photography for me is a universal language. It’s the reason. People allow you to come inside their lives. They accept you. It’s very powerful. To freeze this moment—a fraction of a second. You understand the distress of these people. These pictures are not objects. They speak of history. But the photographs alone are nothing." "So what is the answer?" asked Orville Schell. "That’s the question. What’s the answer?" Salgado replied, smiling at the audience.

But Salgado’s work is living proof of how one person’s efforts as a creative human being can sustain change. In 1998, he and his wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado, created Instituto Terra, a non-profit organization that promotes the reforestation of Bulcão Farm, a 1,600-acre private property in Brazil. Salgado’s hope is that reforestation will reduce rural poverty and global warming, and increase biodiversity. Salgado is currently working on a photography book on Ecuador. "I hope these photographs that are out there can help build a new society. We can achieve a much more human globalization," Sebastião Salgado said.

When Mimi Chakarova's family left her native Bulgaria and migrated to Baltimore in 1989, the teenager felt alone and out of place. Desperate to find a niche, she saved her money, bought a simple point-and-shoot camera, and started taking pictures.

"Baltimore was a very segregated town, both economically and ethnically," recalls Chakarova, now a lecturer in the Graduate School of Journalism. "My family was both poor and foreign, so we struggled. Since I couldn't speak English, I used the camera as a way to communicate."

Her unique ability to communicate through photography has earned Chakarova the 2003 Dorothea Lange Fellowship.

"It's important to respect and learn from those who have come before you," she explains. "Seeing how the masters chose to document their subjects helped me develop my style."

Starving for a more diverse and active environment, Chakarova left Baltimore and moved to San Francisco in 1994, where she studied photography—first at City College, then at the San Francisco Art Institute. She earned her degree, but felt "there had to be something more."

"I was trained as a fine-arts photographer, which means you spend a lot of time exploring yourself," she says. "I found I was more interested in others than looking inward."

Though she initially pursued documentary filmmaking, Chakarova was discouraged by the field's expense and lack of opportunity. She decided to try documentary photography, and found a career that, over the years, has taken her around the world, often to places most people would like to avoid, like the impoverished shantytowns of South Africa.

"The residents there were so surprised to see me," she explains. "One woman told me that in the 30 years she had lived there, no one from the outside had ever come to see the horrible conditions in which they existed."

She also traveled to Jamaica to explore life for people living in the shadows of giant luxury resorts. But those in the community where she stayed were distrustful of a white woman with a camera around her neck, and gave her a chilly reception.

"They assumed I was there to take pictures for calendars or postcards; that they were once again being exploited for profits they would never see," she says. "I was shut out, and almost gave up on the project. But I was eventually befriended by a young, mentally retarded man, and he introduced me around the village."

Once the community came to trust Chakarova, she was able to document their deplorable lack of basic needs, including electricity, running water, and proper education. Back in the states, she used the photos to inform others about the situation there, and sold prints to raise money for the village's one-room schoolhouse.

"I go wherever stories are not being told, or are being told through a slanted perspective," says Chakarova of her projects. "To be successful, my photos must not only educate people, but motivate them to take action."

Among her most recent work are photos depicting life at the Creative Growth Center in Oakland, a facility where people with mental, emotional, and physical disabilities produce works of art that are later sold, with the artists receiving a percentage of the profits. She'll use the fellowship money to complete the second phase of this project, profiling people with disabilities as they go through their everyday lives.

But first she's off to Eastern Europe to document the trafficking of women there, a trade that has flourished in recent years. "I want to find out why this is happening," she says, "and see if I can help bring an end to this awful enslavement."

While Chakarova has been praised for having an "unfailingly good eye," she says the most important part of documentary photography is not the technical aspect of operating a camera, but the relationships one must build with his or her subjects.

"Anyone can learn about light, composition, aperture settings, and developing film," she says. "The most difficult skill to acquire is the ability to connect with people."