February has come and gone and with it went the EXPOSURE Calgary, Banff, Canmore Photography Festival: www.exposure2010.ca. This festival has been running for six years and it featured Canadian and International photography exhibitions.
The Ssubi Foundation photography and work of Philip Ndugga were featured in EXPOSURE this year. If you haven’t had a chance to read about this remarkable foundation and how travel shapes its existence, be sure to visit: www.examiner.com/x-38708-Calgary-Travel-Insights-Examiner~y2010m2d24-From-Uganda-to-Calgary-A-Look-into-the-Life-of-a-Pro-Athlete?cid=examiner-email. You can also take a look at some of the photography featured at EXPOSURE by clicking on the following link: http://picasaweb.google.com/darlenelee/Exposure2010Preview#.
More and more Canadian photographers are becoming locally and internationally recognized for their talents. One of these individuals is Canadian-born photoactivist Jordan Bower, whose work can be seen at www.jordanbower.com. Jordan was recently a recipient of two travel photography awards: the 2010 Visual Culture Awards ‘Award of Excellence’ and the One World Photography Contest ‘People’s Choice Award’. For a peek at the winning photos visit http://visualcultureawards.com/2/ and http://www.studio414contest.com/Winner_s_Gallery.html. Jordan will also be exhibiting at the upcoming International Contact Photo Festival in Toronto starting May 3, so if you are traveling to that area be sure to take a look at his stuff. For details about the exhibition visit: www.contactphoto.com.
Accomplishments aside, what’s intriguing about Jordan is the role that travel has played with igniting his passion and inspiration for photography. When asked what travel has brought to his life, his responses are "worldliness", "wisdom", "tolerance", and "compassion". Having traveled to over 50 countries, Jordan’s focus has been towards throwing light on the myth that Eastern countries are dangerous, war-torn, poverty stricken and full of urban slums. An interview with this remarkable Canadian photographer demonstrates how his passion for photography truly comes from his heart and a deep need to expose the truths about humanity:
1. What first inspired you to go traveling?
I was really fortunate to be raised in a family that had the means and interest to travel. Ever since I was around 10, I’ve gone on short, exploratory holidays with my dad and my two brothers. Initially, we did road trips throughout the US; eventually, we began to explore farther flung destinations like Morocco, Peru, and Costa Rica. Traveling just became a thing worth doing. When I turned 18, I talked my parents into letting me do a high school study abroad semester in Switzerland. There was no turning back.
2. How do you afford to travel?
As I mentioned, when I was younger my family was really supportive of traveling as a tool for education and family bonding. Later in life, traveling grew to be a priority. I’ve worked on and off for seven years in various aspects of the travel industry to help fund my obsession. While I am fortunate enough to have had rich experiences, I don’t have many of the creature comforts valued by many of my contemporaries. I don’t own a house, a car, or much more stuff than can fit in a backpack and a camera case. Experience versus possessions: this is the trade off I face.
3. How did your traveling experience evolve into your passion for photography?
I’ve always carried a camera when I traveled from age 18. It seemed like the sensible thing to do, but for many years I made bad photos. I never had the intention of being a photographer, I was just curious. Over time, I increasingly found myself involved in wild adventures that exposed a new world for me. At first it was hard, because my experiences separated me from my old reality, the reality of my family and friends, not just physically but psychologically, emotionally. This was a period of significant depression and disassociation for me - in retrospect, this was the time when I began to hear my own voice. Photography seemed to evolve as a method of discussing what I had learned.
On my first trip to India in 2007, I found myself in a town in the south called Tiruavannamalai. I met a wild haired French woman who told me that I would leave that place differently, and a week later I did. I don’t know how to say this any differently, but photography found me in India.
4. You call yourself a “lovewallah”, can you explain what this means?
“Wallah” is Hindi slang, something added to the end of a word to refer to a guy who’s in charge of something. If you’re female, you’re a walli, but same difference. Everyone in India knows a chaiwallah, the guy who serves tea. Tailors, plumbers, electricians are all North American equivalents of wallahs, but in India there are all sorts of jobs that don’t exist here: like the guy who holds the electric light standard to shed light on the wedding dance floor or the girl who sells flowers to be used as offerings as the temple. Nearly all commerce we do here is contained behind windows and doors, but in India it spills out onto the street.
I spent a lot of times hanging out with wallahs and started to dream of being one too. I started to think about my intention with my photography and the message I was hoping to communicate. One day this idea of a “lovewallah” came out, someone who is community-oriented, focused on doing their job well, and trying hard to live a good life. The amazing thing is that as soon as I came up with the word, I started to see these types everywhere, in my world as well as in India. The world is stabilized against insanity by all of the lovewallahs and I wanted to pay homage.
5. What inspired you to start the photo project, What Does It Mean to Be a Human Being www.whatdoesitmeantobeahumanbeing.ca?
Like a lot of kids, I really struggled in that period right after university, when you’re ejected out into the real world. I had been so used to getting grades and being presented with measured objectives, I couldn’t understand how to comprehend the great emptiness called life. I had been a voracious reader since I could remember, but the more I read, the more I was overcome by ideas at the expense of action.
And then I would meet all sorts of people who didn’t read, who weren’t overcome by enormous philosophical questions and were instead driven by career progress and material gain, houses, mortgages, and children... I was so confused. I couldn’t understand how these people were able to get by. For a while I was really ashamed that I was the only one thinking about these things and convinced that something was wrong with me. Maybe you can imagine the feeling: not fun.
But then I realized that, actually, no one was able to get by: that everyone was on antidepressants or having affairs, or not thinking about life and death and spirituality, or getting divorced, or just plain uptight and hurried and annoyed and rude. I was horrified, especially because in India I was having the opposite experience: so many of the people I was meeting lived a slow paced, thoughtful, devotional life rich in all sorts of unique, creative, and connected experiences – obviously not all of them, but far more than I met here, where everyone is constantly told to be part of the crowd and spends 16 hours a day staring into a screen. I felt as if I had something to learn, and that this was something worth talking about.
6. Have you found that answer, what it means to be a human being?
You know, I read an excellent book called “The History of Love” by Nicole Krauss a few years ago. There’s one idea in it that has stuck with me: a letter that asks “When will you learn that there isn’t a word for everything?” That idea blew my mind. When you’re brought up to think it’s easy to forget how to feel. I think there is an answer to that question, but I think it’s something that can be accessed on the level of feeling, not the level of thinking. I haven’t found it, but there are brief instants when I’m sniffed it, and those experiences keep me going.
7. How do you choose the subjects and people you photograph?
There’s all sorts of ways, I just try my best to stay comfortable and smiling and engaged with where I am. The best ones just kind of emerge.
Tribal Boys Near Alternative School Sunrise in Tribal Kitchen
Photo credits: www.jordanbower.com
I have one photograph of a guy with thirteen fingers: I was walking down the street one day and this man calls out to ask me how many fingers I had. In India, people call at me all of the time, but this was a pick-up line I had never heard. I walked over to the guy and said “I have ten” and I showed him my hands. He tells me he has thirteen fingers and he shows me his hands and sure enough he does; I’m speechless. I chat with some of his buddies for a minute or two, and then he says “How many toes do you have?” By this time my mind is blown. “Six on this foot, six on that foot”, he cackles with a triumphant grin. “You can count to twenty, I can count to twenty-five.” Every photo I take has a story like that.
Man with Thirteen Fingers
Photo credit: www.jordanbower.com
8. Can you talk to me about the stereotypes you found when traveling between West and developing countries in the East?
For Westerners, most of our understanding of places like India tends to be filtered either through news stories like war, poverty, and disaster or through touristic shows on National Geographic or Discovery Channel. That helps support a certain idea about these types of places: distant, exotic, dangerous, and, mostly, different. In contrast, the way we portray ourselves is mostly positive: kind and benevolent, educated, wealthy, funny, inclusive, brave, and worldly. Those are the ideas new forms of media carry around the world. Most of us are observant enough to know that the ideas we see on our TVs about our own societies only tell us half the story, but because we don’t have the same type of in-depth experience with all other cultures, we’re forced to believe what we’re shown. This means that our ideas about each other are wildly simplified.
So you have this really odd situation where, when I’m in India, people often urge me to bring their children to Canada where they can live the life they see on TV. When I’m in Canada, people wonder why I spend months traveling through villages or envision that I’m getting in touch with my chakra on an idyllic beach. I don’t know which version is better, but I know both are wrong because they are simplistic. The real need of this next century and the real usefulness of photography and other communications technology is for us to present ourselves as we are. Because I think that if we see each other as we are, we’d actually end up liking each other more than we think – or at least we’d deal with each other honestly and authentically, instead of perverted by these odd stereotypes.
9. What are some misconceptions you have from others about travel?
That it’s difficult, that it’s expensive, that it’s scary. These misconceptions rise from the idea that there is something fundamentally different about out there than in here. Of course, that’s not true. Every day of our lives we’re traveling from one uncertain destination to the next – we’re just deceived to think that life here is somehow more comfortable than out there.
10. What do you do when you are not traveling?
I don’t ever feel like I’m not traveling…
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