Water Carrier, Salavan Province, Laos, 2005
Water is often laboriously carried in plastic containers balanced at both ends of a pole in the remote rural villages of Laos. Village houses have thatched roofs, and are usually built with ample space below them for cooking and sheltering hogs and chickens. All of which involves hard work. I don’t show the face of this woman, but her sarong tells us something about her culture, the arm raised to her head says a bit about how she feels, and the large house just around the curve well might be her own. In the rural villages of Laos, work is life and life is work. It is difficult to separate the two.
25-JAN-2005
Fish Table, Morning Market, Vientiane, Laos, 2005
The people who sell fish here are confident and proud of their product and their service. I could feel it in how they stood at that table as I photographed. While this may be a group environmental portrait, it is also a workplace picture, because you see them as their customers see them – ready to sell them fresh fish of their choice. Sometimes a workplace shot can take the measure of a person and of a society. I think this is one of those images. Laotians are not only kind and open; they are resolute and tough as well. When you photograph people at work, you can learn a lot about them, as well as the society they represent.
29-JAN-2005
Net Throw, Khong Island, Laos, 2005
The art of casting a fishing net from a dugout canoe is an ancient and difficult skill. I must have photographed dozens of such casts on the Mekong during our visit to Laos, but this was the golden moment in light, time, and space that best tells the story. The Mekong itself is one of the most important work places in Southeast Asia. Boatmen, fishermen, and farmers ply their trade on its waters and along its sandy banks from China to Vietnam. This particular image is an apt symbol for all of them. Much of what is done here requires skill and hard work. To hurl a net to the right spot at the right time and come home with dinner is very important to these people.
30-JAN-2005
Candymaker, Pakse, Laos, 2005
This woman works on a sugarcane farm near Pakse. She is making molds for candies produced from the sugarcane she grows, harvests, and cooks. I call this a working portrait – my subject is well aware of my presence. In fact, I showed her many of my images as I made them, and she was quite pleased to see herself pictured in this manner. Yet she is also working. She was wiring candy molds together as I photographed her. Our visit to this farm was quite brief – probably about 15 minutes or so. I choose her as my subject because of her animation and degree of activity. She moved from cooking sugar to making molds to taking care of her baby, showing many different aspects and degrees of working activity. My photographic approach to this woman reminded of me of my own youth, when I worked as corporate photojournalist at a large insurance company. I would follow an executive over the course of a morning with my camera, trying to express on film how he approached his work. I found myself doing the same thing here, within a smaller time frame, and with a Laotian candy-maker instead of a New York insurance executive. And now I use only digital cameras, which allow me to know exactly what I’ve been able to express, and share the results with the subject herself.
Flower Shop, Shwedagon Pagoda, Yangon, Myanmar, 2005
These shelves, loaded with floral offerings, seem to overwhelm the women who sell them to worshippers at the Schwedagon Pagoda, one of the largest complexes of Buddhist temples on earth. In this case, I’ve subordinated the workers to the product they sell. The colors, textures, and shapes of the floral offerings were so varied and unique that I wanted to fill the frame with them. The workers are positioned so they do not conflict with these offerings, but rather complement them. The boss, wearing white, stands at left, working on a white bouquet that reflects the effect of a shaft of late afternoon light coming into the store through a doorway. Larger arrangements of white flowers seem to flow out of that little bouquet and move across the top of the image. Her young assistant, wearing red, and holding a bunch of green leaves, is warily watching me. She seems to have found a perfect niche at the bottom of the frame. This was the way I found them, and this was the way I left them.
Sweeper, Boataung Pagoda, Yangon, Myanmar, 2005
As they have for centuries, the people of Yangon clean their streets and temples by hand. Here, Botataung Temple undergoes a morning scrub down. This is an abstract approach to a workplace shot. The temple is famous for its stupa, which holds a hair of Buddha. I reduce that stupa to a shimmering gold reflection in the water the sweeper is using to clean the temple’s plaza. I tie the elements of this picture together with geometric rhythms. The sweeper’s head merges with the golden base of the stupa, a series of horizontal moldings. These horizontal lines repeat the flow of the horizontal safety rope the sweeper has put up to keep people away from the plaza while he cleans it. (I made sure the rope maintains its identity as a safety rope by not cropping out the small ribbons that hang from it at left and right. I did crop out some distracting elements on both the left and right sides of the frame.) The rope intersects with a red line extending the length of the plaza. The diagonal curb at the bottom of the frame repeats its diagonal thrust.
The sarong-clad sweeper himself, abstracted by the rear vantage point I am using, wields a broom that slices across both the rope and the paving line, and almost reaches the curb. The angle of the broom creates a series of triangles that seem to embrace the sweeper as he works. Meanwhile, the tilt of his hat brim echoes the angle of the broom, and the bend of his arm echoes the curves in the base of the stupa moldings. The final touch is the focal point of picture – as he steps carefully across the wet plaza, his right toe stops in mid step, pointing directly at the reflection of the temple’s most important shrine, its golden stupa.
Watermelon Seller, Ananda Temple, Bagan, Myanmar, 2005
Her face smeared liberally with cooling Thanaka paste, this watermelon vendor rests for a moment in the shade of one of Bagan's ancient ruined temples. She normally carries her tray of watermelon on her head. The watermelon is in her lap, but the small head pillow she uses to support the watermelon, remains ready for use at a moment’s notice. The convergence of colors in this image amazed me. Not only does she paint her face yellow, but the walls behind her seem to be painted with splotches of the same color. The top of the curving, sun-baked wall is the exact color of her head pillow. The colors of the wall blend with her so well, it seems as if she has become part of it.
A series of repeating rhythms pull the eye through this picture. The curves and points of the watermelon slices repeat the shape of the wall cutouts she leans on. Just as the watermelon slices are arrayed on her tray, point by point, so, too, the top of the wall behind her is designed as a series of repeating pointed shapes.
At ease, she looks at the camera, glad to find a spot of shade in the brutal mid-day heat. Soon she will place the watermelon back on her head and resume her rounds on the streets and plazas surrounding the ruins of Bagan’s most famous temple.
Stacking Rice, Yangon, Myanmar, 2005
Every day, tons of rice arrives at Yangon’s river port. Young men carry the huge bags to a holding area, where they are stacked in enormous piles. (You can get a glimpse of the physical effort that goes into this job in my photograph of a group of rice carriers on the move, which is displayed in my black and white gallery. See it by clicking on the thumbnail at the bottom.
This is a more abstract approach to an image devoted to the same job. Here we see two carriers, one from behind, and one just suggested by only a single leg, working with the stack itself. The diagonal thrust of that leg, entering the frame in the upper left hand corner, leads directly to the bag of rice on the other man’s back, and echoes the line of his dangling arm.
There are more than 50 bags in this shot. All were carried here on somebody’s back. And all of them will be carried away from here on somebody else’s back, as well.
River Landing, Yangon, Myanmar, 2005
Yangon is surrounded on three sides by muddy water --its busy port is on the Yangon River. Aged boats of all kinds jam the harbor. This scene could have just as easily been photographed in 1905 as in 2005. In this image, two boatmen guide a venerable long boat away from the landing. Its passengers are on the way to a larger boat standing in deeper water. This photograph is based on scale relationships. The two upright figures contrast to the sitting figures, and are small compared to the boats around them. Like most of the other jobs in Yangon, this work is done by hand, just as it has been done for centuries. Time moves slowly in this city once known as Rangoon. The work here is done with care and precision, but in no great hurry. The slow pace of the work is echoed in this image – the two workers seem to be frozen in place forever.
Brick Carriers, Mandalay, Myanmar, 2005
I watched as these women carefully balanced heavy loads of bricks on their heads while working on a construction project in Mandalay. They showed almost no emotion at all -- they behaved like robots, programmed to do the dirty heavy work. Balance, strength, determination, and patience are all part of this job. I tried to imply these attributes within this image.
Sifting Rice, Mahagandhayon Monastery, Amarapura, Myanmar, 2005
It takes a lot of time and effort to feed a thousand monks every day, and this woman is one of those that work in the monastery’s food preparation area. Part of her job is to sift hundreds of pounds of rice each day, removing the impurities before cooking it for the monk’s mid day meal. I used a normal shutter speed of 1/60th of a second to make this photograph, which was able to stop, yet also blur, a mass of rice in mid-air at the peak of its leap from the sifting tray. While the unsual fountain of moving rice grains is the focal point of this image, there are other important factors that make the picture work. Her shirt and huge hair clip are similar to the rice in color. The way she is able to grip the ground by spreading her toes from a squatting position is informative. And the intensity she brings to the task is critical – she takes her job seriously and does it well.
18-JAN-2005
Food Packer, Huay Xai, Laos, 2005
As soon as I entered the large market hall at Huay Xia, I saw the potential for a striking workplace image. A huge canvas awning was stretched from floor to ceiling across one side of the hall, open on all four sides, to cool the heat of the afternoon sun. It was made up entirely of cool blue and gray striping, and with the sunlight passing through it, it was beautifully translucent. All I needed to do was to look for people working directly in front of it. They would become silhouetted, backlit abstract figures, symbolizing the physical work that goes into maintaining such a market as this. I found my subject in this woman, who was busily packing food into a container. I photographed her just as she was completing her task and sealing the container in a plastic bag. Her body language was perfect. She seems to be saying “There! Almost done!”.