Photos: Again and Again

September 22, 2020

I just ran across the Facebook post I put up in 2013 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Marek's and my arrival in Simbai, Madang District, New Guinea, one month after our wedding in Seattle in 1963:

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=4366939014737&set=a.4366945134890.2149969.1325772342

The photo shows Marek greeting a local elder who had come to visit us at our house in Gunts.  I posted the photo several months before Shiva and I initiated our 2014 return trip to the Maring.  My heart was already pulling me toward the idea of a return and, at several anthropology meetings, my colleagues teased me with rather pointed questions as to when I might go back. 

Looking at that Facebook post now six years later, I find, to my astonishment, that the 1963 photo appears not on its own, but as the first in a series of 2014 photos. How did this happen? Would I really have presented dozens of photographs with no "sound track," no commentary?  What can viewers who were not present at the events make of such images? 

What kind of "glitch" was this?  It is certainly evidence of my rather frail command of ever-changing internet technologies!

But a "glitch" can be used to advantage, so I'm taking it as an opportunity to introduce here the idea of what I have called "visual notes."  

I developed this practice from 1998 - 2004, when I was a mentor at the Summer School of the Visual in Nova Gorica, Slovenia.  The director, Nasko Kriznar, together with other invited colleagues, gave classes in camera technique, history and theory. It was my privilege to lead a workshop in the use of the video camera as a basic "note-taking device."  My aim was to untether students from the necessity of thinking about the complex details of making a film and free them up to explore and dig into questions that occurred to them as they looked around at the immediate social environment of the town.  Their attention was caught by a variety of interactions and locations  -  the customers and local farmers at the weekly market, toddlers and care-givers in a public square, the kitchen crew in the student center, bunjee jumping into the Soča River, the ticket seller at the railway station, and local teens perfecting their skateboarding skill on the steps of  City Hall. Their "visual notes" allowed them to "look again," to unpack details, to let the images pry new questions from their minds and expand their anthropological thinking.

The photos and screen shots in this blog can be used in the same way.  What thoughts occur to you, the viewer, as you look?  What, exactly, in the photo leads to that thought?  What questions would you ask of the photographer (me - who took all the images with four-digit numbers) or my daughter (numbers beginning with xxxx) or the videographers (numbers beginning with JQ8A or 0I xxxx).  What would you like to ask particular people in the photos?  What story would you tell as you begin to unravel threads of what is evident and what may lie behind "the evident"?

Diverse Media Diverse Cultures

The 2014 international conference "Diverse Media - - Diverse Cultures  --  was held at the University of Goroka high above the town that has been the center of the Eastern Highland Province.

Between Worlds

July 18, 2014

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I was grateful that I would not have to walk out of Gundai, retracing my steps back over the Bismarck range to Kwima. When we had trekked in I hadn't known what to expect, and I had been able to keep my courage up hour after hour, depending mightily on Father Nicholas's steadying hand.

Now, for this leg of the journey, chugging under the clouds through the air between the steep slopes rising from the Simbai River, I placed all my confidence in the pilot. 

It turned out that he had flown in this area numerous times, carrying gold prospectors, government workers, and people in medical emergencies. He knew how to navigate in the cloudy weather.

He told us that there was no possibility of rising up into the sunshine. Instead, we had to remain at an altitude halfway between the valley floor and the surrounding ridges whose tops were hidden in the clouds. We would have to fly northwestward, following the course of the Simbai River itself until we would reach Simbai Station where there was a good spot to rise up and clear the ridge in order to get over the Bismarck Range and into the open sky leading to Mount Hagen.

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Departure

July 18, 2014

The afternoon wore on and we gathered our luggage yet again at the edge of Gundai field.

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Clouds began to settle in, but we were elated when, at 4 p.m., we heard a helicopter approaching.  It was high overhead, almost obscured by the clouds.  

 

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  We waved with all our might!

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But it, too, flew away.  Our hearts fell.  What was going on?

 

We found out after Alvilda, yet again, ran up to "the reception point" cell phone in hand, and got a call from the pilot.  He was reassuring.  He hadn't forgotten us. He had clearly seen us, but as he looked down at Gundai field, however,  he had noticed that take-off with five of us and our baggage would require a horizontal angle to be safe.  However, that horizontal route was currently blocked by the many trees around the edges of the field.  He requested that some be cut down. He promised to be back to pick us up within an hour.

Stanley set to the job.  Fortunately, he had already earmarked those trees for cutting as they were dead and it was easier to keep them standing until they would actually be needed for firewood.

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All the children gathered to watch this new excitement.

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As the clouds continued to gather, we found it hard to believe that a helicopter would be able to make it in, with or without the trees.

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But at 16:35, the familiar sound alerted us to its approach. The pilot came down to the altitude of Gundai field and flew in just under the cloud cover.

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Alvilda, who was still up the trail at the cellphone reception spot, watched as people,  surprised by the strong wind of the helicopter blades, scattered to the sides of the field.

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The helicopter turned and landed.  It was 4:37 p.m. 

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And now there was no time to lose.  Alvilda greeted the intrepid pilot.

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Our luggage was loaded..... 

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.... and our last goodbyes were said in haste.

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Philippa piled in next to the pilot. 

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Alicia, Alvilda, Shiva and I took our places in the four seats behind the pilot, luggage crammed in among our feet.  Each of us was poised with a camera at the ready for take-off.

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Preoccupation with photographing this unexpected and rather alarming adventure kept my mind off the deep sorrow I felt at my departure.  

 

I had met the elders, Nintup, Mbana, Aikapo, Konduai, and Dimbonk who I had known as teenagers in the 1960s. They had introduced me graciously to their children and grandchildren.  

 

I had only barely started to learn about their 21st century life.  

 

Would it be possible to stay in touch?

 

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Last day in Gundai

Friday,  July 18, 2014

 

Morning again.  Our last morning in Gundai. Peter Aikapo stirred up the coals to get the morning meal going.

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We took out the little gifts that we had tucked away in our baggage.  A wooden double ocarina was the perfect present for Ngaomb, the boy who was nicknamed for the local bamboo jaw harp that he so often played.

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An inflatable globe fascinated the school age children.  

 

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This 3-D representation of the world surprised them, especially when Stanley held it in the Western traditional position with the North Pole at the top.  "Why don't all the people in the southern hemisphere just fall off?" they asked.  

 

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How I wished I had brought in more such items that could be used for teaching purposes!

 

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Young women and men appeared with bilas from the forest.

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At first we were puzzled as to how they had painted such delicate decorations on their cheeks. Then they showed us:

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Boys crowded around the men who had the photo albums and extra prints, matching portraits with the colored paintings done by the young men of long ago.

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Other boys set up two reeds in the middle of the field as goal posts for a soccer game.

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They had carved balls out of the pith of tree ferns  -  yimunt'.

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The morning was wearing on and we were expecting the helicopter at any moment. Clouds were gathering and would soon,  and predictably, make landing impossible.  

 

Finally we heard an unmistakable "chop-chop-chop" sound in the distance.  High overhead a tiny shape appeared. 

 

We waved in delight, but instead of landing, the chopper flew off again.  

 

Whatever could have been the trouble?    Alvilda again trekked up the trail to the "reception point" and managed to contact the pilot.  Why had he not landed?   We had been waving! All the people gathered on Gundai field had been waving!!

 

The pilot had indeed seen us, but we were not the only people on cleared spaces scattered along the length of the twisting valley who were looking up eagerly and waving.  Not far to the west the landing strip on Bank Mountain was also full of waving people.  He couldn't figure out where he should have landed! 

 

Someone came up with the idea of building a smudge fire that would clearly identify our location.

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But it was too late. By this time, the clouds were getting ever thicker. The pilot, unfamiliar with this particular mountain valley, had flown off to another appointment.

 

Again Alvilda went to the reception point. She contacted another helicopter company that agreed to schedule a flight for 4 p.m.   

 

To avoid the problem of people waving from various landing strips, we practiced lining up in the form of an "X" so the pilot would easily be able to identify which of the cleared hilltops was Gundai.

 

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Then everyone settled in for the afternoon. The boys continued their soccer game, ever patiently retrieving the balls that kept rolling off down the slope.

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Later the sun came out and women, babies, toddlers and dogs relaxed on the grass.

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The older girls, for their part, filled the time with a lively game of jump rope....

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... while Aikapo's little daughter kept her eye on us, holding a limber stick on which her pet bird perched.

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