Vincent Prévost: West Papua

Photo © Vincent Prévost-All Rights Reserved

 I occasionally receive emails from photographers such as the one from Vincent Prévost that make the work of maintaining The Travel Photographer blog feel really worthwhile.

Vincent tells me he's been a regular reader of The Travel Photographer blog for about 2 years, and that it has been a source of inspiration to him. He cites my two posts on Grenville Charles and Diego Verges, who documented tribes of West Papua,  as triggering his own photo expedition "Highlands Encounters" to this remote part of the world.

That's what this blog is all about...to inspire photographers to explore other unfamiliar areas, to try new techniques and to document endangered cultures.

He has been teaching French in South Korea since 2002 and is also a freelance editorial photographer who fuses fine art and journalism. While most of his work is in color, he also enjoys black & white photography, and travels with compact audio equipment to add a further dimension to his visual work.

West Papua is an Indonesian province that borders the independent nation of Papua New Guinea and forms the western half of the world's second largest island. The indigenous people of West Papua are of the same ethnic origin as those in the eastern half of the island of New Guinea. Ethnically and culturally, they are also related to other Melanesian peoples of the Pacific.

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James Morgan: People of the Coral Triangle

James Morgan features the People of the Coral Triangle, a well made documentary on the Bajau Laut, on his website, along with other multimedia projects such as the Eagle Hunters (previously featured on TTP), and fast-paced documentaries of Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo.

As he explains, the Coral Triangle refers to a triangular shaped area of the tropical marine waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste. It is there that 3,000 species of fish live, including the largest fish - the whale shark, and the coelacanth. It also provides habitat to six out of the world’s of seven marine turtle species.

The Bajau Laut are an indigenous ethnic group of the southern Philippines, who have migrated to neighboring Malaysia over the course of the past 50 years. They depend directly in the natural resources of the Coral Triangle, and are the last nomadic marine communities of the world. Mostly Muslims, some also worship local sea spirits.

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The Big Picture: National Geo Contest 2010

Photo © Ario Wibisono-All Rights Reserved

The Boston Globe's photo blog The Big Picture is showing off some of the submissions to The National Geographic annual  photo contest. The deadline for the submissions is November 30. The Big Picture editor chose 47 images from the three categories of People, Places and Nature.

No one asked me for my opinion, but I'll give it anyway. My favorite of those shown is the one of the two Indonesian boys playing with roosters in the village of Suradita, near Serpong in West Java. The photographer is Ario Wibisono who's based in Jakarta.

Ario's caption informs us that this was not a real cockfight. I'm confused by their dress as I took them to be Balinese children, but they're not...they're Javanese.

I also liked another one (#5) also by Ario Wibisono of the musician in Tenganan Village in Bali, playing the bamboo flute to a disabled child. I spent a couple of hours with this man during my Bali: Island of Odalan Photo~Expedition ™, photographing him playing his various instruments (including a sort of didgeridoo) and recording some of the pieces he played.

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Conor Ashleigh: Futu-Manu In East Timor

Photo © Conor Ashleigh -All Rights Reserved
Futu manu means"fighting bird" in the local Tetum language of East Timor. Cockfighting is a tradition that goes back centuries in various countries, and I've witnessed it practiced in India, Mexico and Bali to name but a few.

I was glad to find Conor Ashleigh's website, and see that he has featured a photo essay on cockfighting in East Timor. There, cockfights are complementary to religious rites and ceremonies, but also feed a gambling streak amongst many men.

Conor lives in Australia and works on developing stories that comment on under-reported environmental, political and social issues. He photographed in Egypt, Gaza, South Africa, Thailand, Cambodia and Uganda, as well as working on long term projects in India, Nepal and Timor-Leste. His images have been published in New Internationalist, Sydney Morning Herald, Newcastle Herald, The Asia Foundation, Catholic Mission and Oxfam.

I also suggest you check in Conor's photo essay on The Brick Kilns of Bhaktapur in Nepal.

I'm currently working on my own photographs of cockfights in Bali, which will soon be published here on this blog.

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Ramadan: The Month Of Fasting

Photo © Adek Berry/AFP/Getty Images-All Rights Reserved
The Islamic month of Ramadan started while I was in Bali, and while the majority of the island's inhabitants follow Hindu traditions, there were indications that its Muslim communities were observing it, especially in areas such as Semarapura.

Many of the newspapers' photo-blogs such as the Boston Globe's The Big Picture, the WSJ Photo Journal and the like have featured images of Ramadan observances around the world, but the one I liked the most was from The Sacremento Bee's The Frame.

In the above photograph, Indonesian women pray during the first night of Ramadan in Jakarta on August 10, 2010. The fasting month of Ramadan, which started on August 11, is the ninth month of the Muslim Hijra calendar, during which the observant abstain from eating, drinking, and smoking during daylight and, in the evening, eat small meals and conduct evening prayers.

I also read that President Obama has recently positively weighed in on the issue of erecting an Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan, but has then waffled on his stance following criticism from his detractors, from conservatives and from the illiterate xenophobes who, incidentally, do not live in Manhattan or even in New York.

Much as has been said and written about this issue, but two of the most repellent are these: the Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to ending “unjust and unfair discrimination,” but which now blatantly discriminates against American Muslims, and Newt Gingrich who squawked that “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington”, making the analogy between Nazism and Islam.

President Obama should be reminded that he said this on the inauguration of his presidency:

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth."

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Joey L. : The Mentawai (The Movie)

Here's a highly recommended 16-minute long movie documentary of Joey L.'s (and his team) excursion into the land of the Mentawai. It starts with the 10-hour crowded cargo ferry ride from Sumatra across the strait to the islands of the Mentawai, approximately 150 kilometers off the Sumatran coast.

The excursion took 2 years to plan and prepare, and we are treated to a behind the scenes look at the photo shoots along with snippets of the Mentawai's life. The amount of gear that Joey and his team had to carry was quite significant. This is not a destination where you show up with a couple of cameras and flashes. They had to lug heavy lighting equipment, large reflectors and lightboxes, cameras, lenses, video equipment, generators, food and so forth.

The most visible Mentawai tribesmen in the documentary are Bajak Tarason and Bajak Tolkot, who seem to have a pessimistic view of the Menatawai's future. They address the interference of the Indonesian government in their ancient tribal customs, and of the Christian missionaries who seek to change their belief system.

It's Bajak Tolkot who invites the world to visit the Menatawai islands, to witness their way of life before it's too late. I really hope very few people take him on this invitation. I realize that an influx of tourists could bring a much needed infusion of prosperity to the Mentawai, but it would also accelerate the demise of their way of life, or turn them into performers; wearing their loin cloths and brandishing their arrows for the tourists' cameras.

In the documentary, I've seen young Mentawai wearing graphic t-shirts, including one of Donald Duck, posing next to a traditional Mentawai tribesmen. So the infiltration has already started, and not before too long, the baseball caps will appear as well. It's a shame that similar cultures and traditional ways of life can so swiftly disappear.

My thanks to Cathy Scholl for the heads-up on this movie.

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Diego Vergés: West Guinea

Photo © Diego Vergés-All Rights Reserved
Diego Vergés is back at it again, and has completed uploading a couple of new galleries on his website. This time, the photographs (color and B&W) were made during Diego's recent West Guinea adventure in the Baliem Valley.

The Baliem Valley is also known as the Grand Valley, and is located in the highlands of Western New Guinea. It is occupied by the Dani people who are the subject of Diego's cameras and who, because of the impenetrable territory, were only discovered in 1938.

They are one of the most populous tribes in the highlands, and are found spread out through the highlands. The Dani are one of the most well-known ethnic groups in Papua, due to the small numbers of tourists who visit the Baliem Valley area where they predominate.

I ought to mention that Diego self-finances these trips, and has just spent 4 months in Indonesia and the Philippines. He tells me he has taken 17 local flights, and engaged a large number of porters for his lighting gear and other photo equipment in Papua and Siberut....all out of his own pocket. Incredible!

While I've posted three of Diego's Mentawai photographs in my last post, I've restricted this post to only one image so you'll have to drop by his website, and check the rest yourselves.

By the way, I imagine that the scarf dangling from the Dani's neck in the above photograph is an intentional strategic decision to mask the man's penis gourd.

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Diego Vergés: The Mentawai

Photo © Diego Vergés-All Rights Reserved
Photo © Diego Vergés-All Rights Reserved
Photo © Diego Vergés-All Rights Reserved

As I indicated in an earlier post on The Travel Photographer blog, Diego Vergés is back from his 4 months trip to Indonesia (and PNG) and its various islands, and is currently working feverishly on his inventory of images.

He tells me that he has so far edited and readied only one of his expected 8 or more photo essays on the various indigenous groups of Indonesia, and that's the gallery on the Mentawai. The images are spectacular, and I encourage you to view them as they provide a window into a culture which I suspect will soon vanish.

You'll notice Diego's characteristic lighting techniques from the above photographs, and which he told he learned from The Strobist. Photographing the Mentawai, he used off camera lighting, a reflector and a softbox. For cameras, Diego uses a Canon 5d and a 5d Mark II, with prime lenses (24mm f1.4 and 50mm f1.4).

The Mentawai are the native people of the Mentawai Islands, which is a chain of about seventy islands and islets off the western coast of Sumatra. They live a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the coastal and rain forest environments of the islands, and number about 64,000. They are known by their deep spirituality, body art and the tradition of sharpening their teeth for beautifying reasons.

The Mentawai practice traditional animism, and as with other indigenous cultures, are threatened by encroaching modernism.

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Grenville Charles: Tribes of West Papua

Grenville Charles is a freelance photographer, whose main body of work is in TV and film stills for the BBC and Granada Television amongst others. Passionate about tribal cultures led him to travel to Asia where he photographed the Vietnam Hill Tribes of the central highlands, and to the remote jungles of West Papua to document the Dani, Korowai, Mek, Kombai and Asmat tribes. His portfolio of the Tribes of West Papua is featured on ZoneZero.

He was shortlisted in 2004 and was the runner up in 2008 for the Wanderlust Travel Photographer of the Year Award. In 2008, he was one of only 22 photographers selected from international applications to participate in a 5 day Magnum Workshop led by Magnum photographers Carl De Keyzer, Mark Power and David Hurn.

West Papua is the former Irian Jaya, and is home to more than 300 tribes. They have inhabited the island for more than 40,000 years. The Dani tribe are by far the most populous and probably the best known ethnic group in Papua. Another of the highland tribes are the Mek who live in the area surrounding Kosarek, despite there being an airstrip, the area is still very remote and very little visited by tourists.

The lowland jungles are home to the Korowai, since the mid 1980's some of the Korowai have moved to the missionary villages such as Yaniruma and Yafufla, but the majority of them live as they always have, in their treetop homes in the jungle swamps.

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Islam: The Month of Ramadan

© Reuters/Sugit Pamungkas
© AP/Dar Yasin
Ramadan is the Muslim religious observance that occurs during the 9th month of the Islamic calendar, believed to be the month in which the Qur'an was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad by the angel Gabriel. It is the Islamic month of fasting, in which participating Muslims do not eat or drink anything from true dawn until sunset. Fasting is meant to teach the person patience, sacrifice and humility.

The Boston Globe's Big Picture has gathered 35 photographs of Muslims during Ramadan from across the world. Two of my favorite photographs are by Reuters' Sugit Pamungkas and by AP's Dar Yasin. The first is of Muslim women praying at a mosque in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia. The second is of Kashmiri Muslims inside the Jamia Masjid, or Grand Mosque, in Srinagar, India. Click on them for bigger versions.

If you haven't visited The Big Picture yet, you're missing out on a visual delight.

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Matt Brandon: Sumatra

Image © Matt Brandon-All Rights Reserved
Matt Brandon over at the Digital Trekker just returned from an assignment in Sumatra, and has great portraits to share with us. He traveled to the small community of Sekayu in Sumatra, which is populated by a community of friendly and welcoming Muslim people called the Musi. They live up and down the Musi River that flows through their territory and down through Palembang.

Having converted some of his resulting photographs to B&W, he put up a slideshow with music. My favorite one is of this elderly woman...I chose it because Matt managed to expose her face very nicely, and process the photograph just perfectly....despite the shadows thrown by the hat. Not an easy photograph to make well.

Matt Brandon's Sumatra

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