Joshua Gale 11/23/11 Adv.

Documentary Photography In July of 2011, I was given the unique opportunity to, for one month, live with and document the lives of a Maasai tribe in northern Kenya. The entirety of my experience was under the guidance of various representatives of the not for profit organization Unto the Least of His. In particular, my job was to document the relief efforts that are being made in an attempt to control damage done by a nearly year long drought. This drought has taken lives and has created hardships for communities in almost every aspect of their lives. My experience, I soon figured out, would be unable to be reproduced in full via any camera equipment, not just mine, no matter the caliber. I was sent on an impossible mission to constrain a culture to merely 2 dimensions and bring it home as if it could be canned and tasted like an exquisite food. Nonetheless, as time has progressed and artistic techniques have developed, artists have trained themselves in ways that are meant to represent fragments of reality so that at least bits of that reality can be conveyed to the public. Some of those photographic rules I made sure to break, while others I intentionally kept. My hope with my photographic documentation is that, even though while there I felt as though I were in some epistemic anomaly, it is apparent to the viewer that I maintained control within myself and was able to seize the opportunity to simplify a very distant place and different culture into a clean and precise photograph that anyone can understand. When seen, the photographic dissemination of a struggling people is something anyone should be able to interpret. As with many things, there are many severe dualities at play in the Kenyan culture. They are teased with a democratic legislature that is corrupted by tribalism. Though Kenyans are a very eastern people, they have attempted to embrace western technology and thus have created a paradigm very unique to themselves. The walls of their homes are made with water, sand, and dung while the ceilings are made of scraps of plastic, sheet metal, and fabric. Kenya is a place where simple lives have become

complicated and where tourists spend thousands of dollars to witness for just a short period of time the dying and materialistic poverty of the Kenyan nation, while those people on display hardly ever get even a small fragment of that money. My photography is meant to embrace these dualities while at the same time express the purity and desperation of the beautiful people I saw in their deepest time of need. The 10 photographs enclosed here best represent various parts of the Kenya that I was able to experience.

The following 10 photographs were each taken in different communities and locations. Many of which are a part of a series of similar photographs and were selected because I felt they best conveyed the idea one would feel after viewing the full series. My camera gear consisted of a Nikon D90 and a few lenses (18-24mm, 50mm, 35mm, 70-200mm). I shot in raw format and used Photoshop CS5 as my back-end program to edit and convert them. Although there was hardly any rain while I was there, it was technically the rainy season, so the weather maintained steady an overcast cloud coverage that was helpful in keeping the highlights from blowing out, but the darks and shadows were still very dark. I did what I could in post to fix this. A large portion of my photography there consisted of portraiture. In many of the portraits, such as in the 3 provided in selection below, the subject breaks the 4th wall by looking directly at the camera. He or she makes one very aware of the presence of the photographer. My intention was to exhibit these photographs in one place where this idea could be emphasized. In those eyes there are stories. In those eyes are emotions that beg the viewer for attention. In that, I believe there is power. Thanks for taking your time to look at them, Joshua Gale.

A wide aperture was used for this photograph creating a shallow depth of field. That in combination with its simplicity is the strength of this photo because from that the viewer is forced to pay attention to the single subject. The contours of the flowing garments the boy is wearing draw in the viewer and frame out his face. I like this photograph because it expresses how simple yet elegant a people they are.

This is a photograph of a Kenyan boma.

These bomas are made of wood, mud, and dried grass and limbs. I pulled down the saturation in this photograph, in order to express a mood that one might feel as they approach this home.
The studs of the home are several vertical pieces of wood that create a linear patternand because the edges of the house are not shown, the viewer might feel as though this house goes on and on well beyond what is seen here.

The door offers a place for the viewer to rest his eyes. This photograph was taken with as wide an aperture as possible. The sharp focus on the eyes of the child and fly on his nose are meant to catch the viewers attention. As with the previous portrait, simplicity is a brute part of the strength of this photograph. The light falls softly on his face from the cloudy day and his eyes look as though they are made of glass, with an interesting reflection of the photographer in the center of them.

The composition of this photograph is completed by the clapping of the girls hands in the lower left side of it. It is clear each person is in their own deep state of thought but the ornate fabrics and beads speak on their behalves. The girl who is facing left just right of the center of the photograph offsets the motion slightly. Her gaze forces the viewer to follow the motion of her eyes. The location of the camera is slightly lower than the eyes of the women that set the viewer into a place of curious admiration.

The bokeh is a very warm yellow and contributes to the overall warmth of the photo. The profile of this Maasai woman characterizes the style of dress of their culture quite well. Completely desaturated, the viewer is forced to look beyond the womans brilliantly colored garments that would classify her according to her tribe and directs the attention of the viewer to other things that perhaps would not have stood out so much before, such as her ears and necklaces or the knot tied to the fabric that helps hold up her limp hand. The lines in the fabric wrapped around her and the design on her shirt emphasize the form of her body and her clothing. The camera is positioned at the height of my own eyes and shows quite how tall of a woman she is.

This wide-angle photograph was taken atop one of the highest points in Kenya. The cloud formation that starts in the center of the image burst forward toward the viewer while the cliff juts out of the left side of the image and peers over the bush underneath. I softened the edges just slightly to add a soft tone to the image that balances out the magnanimous size of the clouds and mountains with a touch of serenity.

Here are some members of a community that have very recently received a well. They began to dance and sing because we, the Americans responsible for the well, came to visit. I lowered my camera toward the ground and set my shutter speed to be very fast to capture the water particles as they splashed outward. The positions of the 6 hands and one foot juxtaposed against the smile of the little boys face form together to convey a very joyful and playful attitude a very appropriate feeling considering the situation.

This is the structure of a boma in progress. I wanted to take a detail of this structure to show how complex a structure this can be. The grid of lines created from each of the sticks conveys this thought of complexity. The blurry background adds to the continuity of the photograph by giving the viewer something easy to rest his eyes on and though distinct, hard edges cannot be recognized, they reiterate the direction and texture of the sticks in the foreground strengthening the composition as a whole.

The sign in the back left mimics the position of this ostrich crossing our path. The distinct lines painted on the road dip back beyond the ostrich and add to the awkwardness, yet strength, of this photo. In Kenya I felt as if I were in another world, one where even an ostrich could appear from the bushes and walk in front of your vehicle. The overall yellow tone makes the viewer feel in that same surreal yet lethargic mood. The shape of the ostrichs neck and legs work together to show movement and a certain pace within the photo.

The hard light coming from under the hood of the car and use of an extended shutter are at the heart of this photograph. One night, on our way home, our car broke down near a bus stop. Many of the Kenyans who were waiting at the bust stop came to our aid. It was a chaotic moment and I wanted to capture the rustle and bustle of it. The strong lighting in the center with intense amount black at the bottom creates some very interesting silhouettes. The prominence of the color red adds to the immediacy of the situation.