The Story Behind the Photograph: Some Faces
No matter where I have traveled, it is the people that I have met and seen along the way that have made the journey. Yes, I have gazed out onto scenery that has moved me and stayed with me long after I have travelled onto new vistas. Yes, I have gone searching for solitude in nature, away from the busyness of everyday life and the concrete jungles of our modern cities. Indeed nature is my happy place. I enjoy the stimulation of cities but eventually I want to return to the quieter rhythms of the countryside.
The people who I meet are those who make the country tick. They give the pulse and character to the places that I visit. They are the ones who I have sat across from on train rides or squeezed against on a crowded bus, who have taken me in at night and offered me food and a bed for the night, who I have checked me in at their hotels and made sure that my stay is comfortable. They are the ones who have called me into their stores as I walk down the street taking in with curiosity the new sights, sounds and smells that grab me, greeting me with a handshake, offering me a chair and a cool or warm drink as custom dictates. They are the ones who have called me over for a chat, even if that chat is mainly through sign language and foreign language phrase books - both parties having shared curiosity for another culture.
I do not wish to romanticize my interactions with other cultures. That does no peoples a favour in my opinion. There has been the rough along with the friendly meetings along the the way. Hey, there is enough rough and smooth on my own doorstep. However, my belief is that at our core we are good people, wanting the best for ourselves and others, and when I am on the receiving end of the kindness and generosity of those whose countries I am traveling through, I receive it gratefully, remember it long after I have returned home, and hope that I repay that kindness to foreign visitors who cross my path.
The Faces
If you scan back through the photographs in this occasional series, you will see some faces of those who I have crossed paths with on my travels. Below are a few more. The images are in no way exhaustive and I will include some more in a later post. As this series crawls forward hopefully more will emerge. Where I remember where the photographs were taken and the story behind an image, I will share that. Otherwise for now there is just the capture of a person in a place at a time somewhere in the past, probably around 1989/90.
And…I wonder where they are now? Are they still alive? Where has life taken them? What has been their joys, their happiness, their successes and their struggles?
One last reminder for those who are new to this series, “The Story Behind the Photograph”. The images were originally taken on slide film that I left the UK with. They traveled around with me and were eventually developed on my return to England. To bring them to this blog I have used various methods for capturing them - taking a photo with my phone of a slide projected onto a wall, scan a slide directly onto my computer with a simple scanner, take a photo with my phone of a slide through a viewer - ie not pro level gear, and so please excuse loss of definition and colour.
I think that I took this photograph mainly because of the poor goat, which I assume had been marked up for the choicest cuts when it was slaughtered? I believe that it was somewhere in Pakistan.
I believe that this is in Pakistan, somewhere on the Indus plain. My guess is that I saw this gentleman and asked if I could take his photograph, something that I am not very good at doing.
In June 1989 I found myself in the Swat Valley in Pakistan. I was none too well - the runs, maybe giadia. I decided that I wanted to get to a higher and cooler elevation and chose Chitral as my final destination. There were numerous vehicle changes involved in that decision and I created a lot of interested as a solitary white male traveling through - crowds gathered around me whenever I stopped somewhere. I made for chai houses to cut down the size of the audience. During one leg of the journey a part fell off a bus. The bus stoped for someone to pick up the part, through it not put back in place, but rather thrown under my seat and on we went. As we arrived in the town of Dir I wrote in my journal, “Then in the distance my first view of snow; I smiled.” I had been looking forward to seeing the mountains, the Karakorum mountains, and to be in some air without the heat and dust of the Indus plains.
Chitral sits in a valley of its own, dominated by the presence of the 7700m Tirich Mir, and is cut off for a part of the year due to the snows. The final leg of my journey there was not long after the vehicles could get through following the spring snow melt. I traveled on an over filled jeep - over filled with men and luggage. The jeeps wheels were not in good shape, not only low to non existent tread but also one of them had a slash through a part of it, leaving a nice long hole. Looking at the hole, one of my fellow Pakistani passengers made a comment of that that was “not good.” Before we left there was a delay because the jeep had to be fixed, and then there were numerous stops as we climbed up to the Lowari Pass to pour cold mountain water on the radiator. At one point we had to walk through snow as the jeep made its was through a river. The road was hairy in places, with vertical drops and snow still on the road, but dropping down into Chitral felt as though we were arriving into a forgotten valley.
We drove in in the dark with people, both curious and keen to see us, hanging off the side of the jeep. I was offered homes to stay in by two of the men who had traveled on the jeep with me, but I was still not feeling well. It had been a long day and I wanted the privacy of a hotel room.
I cannot remember how this photograph came about? Somewhere in India. Maybe got talking to this gentleman while I was in his or someone else’s chai shop?