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A Photographer’s Mission: Building Bridges Through the Image*
This quote, which signs off Anglo-American photographer Lorraine Chittock’s e-mails, seems to be emblematic of this adventurous and open-minded woman’s approach to life and work. Feeling acutely conscious of other people’s suffering, and showing a keen interest in “different” peoples and cultures from childhood, Lorraine was destined for an unconventional life. As an adult, her passion for the images of people and animals and her desire to show the East in a way that people can universally relate to brought her to many corners of the world, and most of all, to Africa. From Kenya to Djibouti and from Senegal to Egypt, Lorraine captured the everyday life of the “silent majority” and, more than anything, the way people everywhere relate to and benefit from their animals. Now back in America, while working on a book about her travels with dogs in Africa, this photographer allowed the IslamOnline.net Art & Culture Page a unique glimpse into what motivates and moves her. IOL: Please tell us something about your personal background and your work as a photographer. What attracted you to photography, what have been your major projects, and what are you working on at the moment? I remember very vividly the floods in Bangladesh as a child of the 70s, and feeling like I wanted to be there and doing something to help. I think some people more than others are drawn to wanting to do something proactive to make the world a better place. I still feel this way, though I’ve come to feel my approach is a soft sell approach rather than one of hard core journalism. The aim of my first book Shadows in the Sand, about an ancient caravan route which begins in Sudan and ends in Egypt, is to show people how another society lives. The second book Cairo Cats, on first glance appears quite superficial. It’s a picture book about cats in Cairo juxtaposed with quotes from the Middle East. But my aim for this book was anything but superficial. It became very important during my seven years in Egypt to show the Middle East in a non-threatening way to the West. The cat is something most Westerners can relate to and have a positive experience with. So for me, the cat became a gentle tool to bridge a gap between the two cultures and to teach about an area of the world so many in the West still have misperceptions about. So, though I’m very much a photographer who feels strongly that good design, color, and composition makes a photo. I rarely take photos for the sole purpose of making “art.” IOL: What attracted you to Africa and what is the specific photographic allure of the continent?
As a child, I remember taking a record (remember those round things?) out of the library on how to speak Swahili. I still don’t know the language, and am certainly not nearly fluent in Arabic, I’m sad to say. Some people feel they’re drawn to Africa because it’s the cradle of civilization, but that doesn’t explain why Africa has such a strong draw for some people and not for others. Part of the appeal for me has always been the amazing diversity of animals and people. There is vibrancy and a connection to the land that much of Western culture has become removed from and is now struggling to regain. Africa, meanwhile, struggles to sometimes play “catch-up” to Western technology, but I very much hope it doesn’t lose some of its soul while doing so. Balancing the new and the old is a huge challenge for all cultures in the 21st century. IOL: Which African country or community did you enjoy working with the most and why? That’s an impossible question to answer because people are never that simple, just as life is not. Your experiences are based so much on individuals, as opposed to an entire community. But to make a huge generality, for friendliness the Egyptians are of course, well, the friendliest! And I found the Sudanese incredibly dignified and giving, especially considering the hardships they’ve endured for so many years, if not their entire lives. IOL: You worked in several Islamic countries; how did you prepare for your work in these countries? Did you read about Islam? What did you read? Was it as you had expected? Did you learn any Arabic? When I was 23, I aimed to tour through the entire African continent in six months. Ah! The ignorance of youth! I only saw Morocco and Senegal, and that took two months! Other than that short journey and experience of Islamic life, I went to Egypt in 1991 to work for what is now Egypt Today magazine with only a few weeks to prepare. The good side was that because it all happened so fast, I didn’t have time to build up false expectations or judgments before arriving. The down side was that I arrived at Cairo airport barely knowing how to even say yes or no. I learnt everything as I went, which is limiting in that I had little background information, but beneficial, in that I was learning the Egypt of NOW and how the country really works and doesn’t work.
My assignments ranged from photographing hospitals in Cairo and seeing heart surgeries to homes created for runaway boys who’d been living on the streets to up and coming fashion designers to photographing black African refugees living in Cairo. I photographed the rebirth of the Cairo Stock Exchange and the conditions of people living in villages. And this doesn’t include projects I did for myself in my own time. Those two years were some of the happiest and fulfilling of my life, and will always remain as such in my memory. I entered into so many different worlds, as you do as a photographer, and each of those worlds was fascinating to me. While with the magazine, I was also fortunate to travel to Pakistan, Jordan, Sudan, and, for the second time, Morocco. It really was the chance so many young photographers aspire to and I’ll always be grateful to the magazine for hiring me. IOL: What were your most vivid impressions of how Islam influences African culture and art? Dress—absolutely, people’s dress. In Kenya, where I lived for five years, I was always fascinated when traveling to more remote areas how men and women incorporated Islamic styles of clothing into what was originally tribal garb. IOL: You traveled the 40-Day Road through the desert from Sudan to Egypt. Can you tell us something about that experience? How were the social dynamics within the group of travelers? In my book Shadows in the Sand I speak briefly of how at times it seemed we were a circus caravan traveling through the desert. It’s ironic with so much wide open space, how less than ten people seemed such a small community. What was especially fascinating was how the other Western woman I traveled with, an American, and I would get on each others nerves, while the men, who all came from different tribes, all seemed so peaceful and easy with each other. I think the Sudanese as a general rule are this way with each other. So it’s extremely tragic when you see the current political situation and atrocities in the Darfur region now. IOL: You photographed for a feature on Islamic manuscripts in Mauritania (for Saudi Aramco World magazine: http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200502/). Were you familiar with the country or the manuscripts? Please tell us something about your experiences working on this project.No, I was not familiar at all with the manuscripts, and most of my knowledge of Mauritania was based on what it looked like when I flew over it when I was 23, going from Morocco to Senegal, since their borders were closed at that time. I tend not to do much research before arriving in a new country and knew little more than what Louis Werner had written in his article.
My most vivid experiences of the country were quite different in nature, but both made me cry. In Chinquetti, I photographed the keeper of one of the libraries with a book made from the skin of gazelle. Of course, this book should be behind glass for the purpose of preservation because it’s so exquisite, but not only was I able to see and photograph it, but I was able to touch it. The feel of the pages brought tears to my eyes. Today, we all have computer screens in front of us and write words by touching plastic keys that we see appear on a plastic screen. To think that hundreds of years ago, the few people who did do the writing for a culture were able to practice their art and write scholarly works by touching a surface in a tacitly pleasing way, makes you wonder if there are similar benefits to our present day method. Never once have I written anything on a computer and thought, “Isn’t the feel of the plastic wonderful.” In many ways, we live in a frighteningly sterile world. I flew into Mauritania with my British passport, (I have dual nationality and also have an America passport) just as America and England were dropping bombs on Baghdad. It was obviously on the television in everyone’s house. One of the places I visited was Tichitt, a two-day drive from the capital of Nouakchott, and the second day of driving was almost entirely off-road and much of it over sand dunes. There were markers placed every mile since there was no road at all. I arrived just before sunset and the two small hotels in Tichittt had been closed a few years before. Since Lou Werner had not initially planned on having this village in his article, I had no leads, I knew no one and had nowhere to stay, and there was a lot of tension between the Arab world and the West. Despite all these pitfalls, I was invited to stay at the mayor’s house with his family for a week. He had the only television in the town of less than 1,000 people and the news of what was happening in Iraq was atrocious. But I was welcomed. I cried when I left. I’ve wondered many times what would’ve happened if I were Arab, arriving at a small mid-western town in America during this period of time. I’m almost certain I wouldn’t have been made as welcome. The Arab tendency towards hospitality is something people in America sadly do not understand unless they’ve traveled in the Middle East. At a time when travel is so much easier and communication devices are so advanced, the misperceptions are, unfortunately, extremely high. IOL: You have done work on quite a wide variety of topics, from Cairo street cats to camels in the deserts to Mauritanian manuscripts. Do you approach such variant topics differently from an artistic and ideological point of view? How?
Good question. I don’t think I do. In all these projects, I wanted to show as much information as possible so the viewer can feel they know the place and people, as if they were there with me. For me, information is key. Once again I’d like to refer to the photographs in Cairo Cats. When you view the pictures quickly, they appear as just portraits of cats. But on closer inspection, when you look at the surroundings and how people reach out and touch the cats and what the people have around them, how they dress, you realize the pictures reveal much more than immediately meet the eye. IOL: Do you have any current or future projects in Africa? Please tell us about them. I’m currently finishing a book entitled On a Mission From Dog: A Woman’s Walking Adventures in Africa. In contrast to my other books, this work will have very few photographs and instead is a novelistic memoir of my five years in Kenya and the time I spent traveling around the country and Tanzania with a dog named Dog, visiting different tribes and being out in the bush amongst wild animals. * You can find out more about Lorraine Chittock and her work on her website www.cats.camels.com. **Rahma Bavelaar is a staff writer and assistant editor of the IslamOnline.net Art &Culture page. She holds a MA in African Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, UK. You can reach her at shabeel02@yahoo.co.uk. |
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