One week on a tourist paradise, but I did not see much of it. I spent most of the time in the conference room or in my hotel room in front of the laptop (but with a view of the sea).
I managed to take time for myself and to walk long the beach from 6 to 8… in the morning :-(
Even at that early time the beach was full of vendors, and of people willing to show crabs, octopus and little sea creatures to the few tourist in the hotels of the coast. Few indeed, as the Kenya troubles discouraged many to take their holidays on this beautiful coastline…which is the reason why we ended up there, in an upmarket hotel: desperate for business, hotels lowered the prices.
I could not avoid feeling guilty to talk about poverty in a luxury hotel, but on the positive side I was happy to know that lot of the friendly staff had been hired back because we showed in.
The troubled times seems to be gone now… hopefully these vendors will have plenty of clients again soon.
I had hoped to find “portrait material” for the assignment… but I was not very successful. I decided not to take portraits of the vendors on the beach, or hotel staff. I felt uncomfortable about being the “white tourist in a multistar hotel”, buying the time and the attention of the kind people along the beach for a few cents. It is not the kind of relationship I want to have when taking pictures of people.
I took tons of pictures of my colleagues during the workshop, which do not count as coursework… but I was happy to feel that even when taking these routine pictures I found myself thinking more, or waiting more for the right expression. I was pleased by the comment of a colleague, who observed me taking pics and said that I seem to take pics of interesting moments. I also experimented a lot with powerpoint and window media to put together the material for the conference in a novelty format. I had to present the result of an evaluation, and I manage to obtain video clips of the consultants engaging with them… multimedia work was a resounding success.
2 comments:
just a thought about your comment not wanting to be the ' tourist w/ camera' -- i think you may have missed an opportunity to photograph the staff at that early morning. you shining your camera on them is a way of validating their existence for both you, you can honor them by shooting them, and I am sure that they would be proud to be photographed (given correct explanation...or understanding...) sometimes you want to photogrtaph someone but shy away for some reason...i think it is good to figure out why...i now really enjoy the privilege of being a photojournalist because i can basically get access to whatever, i have the means...sorry, rambling now...thanks for your post.
Interesting discussion indeed... well.. in this case, you see, I was coming from a place where I deeply feel I should not have been (a 5 star hotel, which to me is NOT where NGO people should stay, even when rates were, as in this case, dirt cheap because total lack of any tourims).
A person stepping ouf from a 5 star hotel came attached with certain images, perceptions which cannot vanish in the short interaction. So, in a way, the person stepping out of that hotel was not what I wanted to be or where I wanted to be... and I could not have been myself in the interaction with people. This is why I could not really shoot there.
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