A Sunday afternoon in autumn. The large market square of the country town of B . . . It was sunny, but it wasn’t a sun that warmed, it simply shone with its violent light on people and things. Some were directly in this light, some were in shadow. There were no half-measures about this light. The peasants from the neighbouring countryside paid little attention to the quality of light; they had come to the fair to buy or sell cattle.
As for me this violent sunlight posed certain technical problems. I would have preferred a cloudy sky, even mist. Making my way between the cattle, the peasants and the cattle dealers, I was looking for some angle of approach. Warming-up – in both senses of the word. I wasn’t playing any games, I don’t like that, I wasn’t pretending not to take photographs. In any case it’s not easy to trick a Savoyard peasant. And I prefer to be frank about what I’m doing, whenever it’s possible.
Near a line of calves some men were talking. Dryly. They had seen me but were pretending to ignore me. Suddenly one of them spoke out, not really aggressively, but rather more to amuse his colleagues.
‘So what are you doing there?’
‘I’m taking some pictures of you and your cattle.’
‘You’re taking some pictures of my cows! Would you believe it? He’s helping himself to my cows without having to pay a sou for them!’
I laughed along with the others. And I went on taking my photos. That is to say, taking in my own way what was before my eyes and what interested me, without paying and without asking permission.
THE STRANGER WHO IMITATED ANIMALS . . .
I was visiting my sister, who lives in the university town of Aligarh in India. The previous evening, when I first arrived, she had warned me: ‘Don’t be surprised if you’re woken up early in the morning. There’s a young girl, a neighbour, who is blind, but who likes to know what is happening. She may well come to see who the new arrival is.’
Tired by the long journey in the train that had stopped at every station, I quickly fell asleep. And when I awoke next morning, it took me several minutes to remember where I was. I could hear something scratching near the window, a fingernail lightly rasping against the mosquito net. The young blind girl said Good Morning. The sun had been up for several hours.
Without reasoning why, I replied to her by yapping like a dog. Her face froze for a moment. Then I imitated a cat caterwauling. And the expression on her face behind the netting changed to one of recognition and complicity in my play-acting. I went on to a peacock’s cry, a horse whinnying, a large animal growling – like a circus. With each act and according to our mood, her expression changed. Her face was so beautiful that, without stopping our game, I picked up my camera and took some pictures of her.
She will never see these photographs. For her I shall simply remain the invisible stranger who imitated animals.
During the summer Marcel lives and works alone in the alpage, at an altitude of 1,500 metres. He has a herd of fifty cows. Occasionally his young grandson pays him a visit. He seemed to enjoy the two days I spent with him. I was a kind of company for him.
The following Saturday when I took him a pile of prints, he examined them very carefully, spreading them out on the kitchen table. Pointing his finger at a close-up of a cow’s eye, he said categorically: ‘That’s no subject for a photo!’
Silence. Then he added: ‘But don’t think I can’t tell which cow it is! That’s Marquise.’ Another silence. ‘The same principle,’ he continued, ‘applies to pictures of people. If you take a head, you should take the whole head, the whole head and shoulders. Not just a part of the face.’
‘That’s very good! It’s all there.’ He picked out the pictures he liked best. They were those which showed what gave pleasure to him in his life. His large herd. His grandson. His dog.
The next Sunday, early in the morning, Marcel knocked at the door. He was wearing a clean, freshly ironed, black shirt. His hair was carefully combed. He had shaved. ‘The moment has come,’ he told me, ‘to take the bust. Down to there!’ He indicated his waist with one hand. Below this chosen line he was wearing his working trousers and his boots covered with cowshit. Sunday or not, he still had fifty cows to look after. He stood in the middle of the kitchen and concentrated on the camera which was going to take his portrait.
When he saw this portrait, in which he had chosen everything for himself, he said with a kind of relief: ‘And now my great grandchildren will know what sort of man I was.’
To make successful portraits, it probably helps to have taken some self-portraits, and also to have learnt to accept the photographs others have taken of yourself. Otherwise, how is it possible to understand the embarrassment, the worry, even the panic, which often assails people when they know they are being photographed?
For myself, I’m not too fat, my nose is large but not unreasonably long. And yet for years I could not accept my own physical appearance. I used to dream of looking like Samuel Beckett. (To have a profile like his would perhaps also imply another way of life.) I took a number of self-portraits, and each time I ‘disguised’ my face because I rejected it totally. I grimaced, I played tricks with the light, I deliberately moved the camera. The cure for this play-acting came when I was obliged to look at myself for the whole length of a television film – a film called A Photographer Among Men, made by Claude Goretta. There the dose was strong enough to cure me. This man whom I saw before me existed with all his weaknesses. He was real, and in a sense he was beyond my control. I was no longer responsible for his appearances.
Several years later, during a seminar I was conducting on photography, it was decided that we’d each in turn take photographs – portraits – of each other. When my turn came to pose, one of the students casually remarked: ‘In this light your face reminds me a little of Samuel Beckett’s.’
Was it a game, a test, an experiment? All three, and something else too: a photographer’s quest, the desire to know how the images he makes are seen, read, interpreted, perhaps rejected by others. In fact in face of any photo the spectator projects something of her or himself. The image is like a springboard.
I often feel the need to explain my photos, to tell their story. Only occasionally is an image self-sufficient. This time I decided to allot the task of explanation to others. I took a number of photographs from my archives and I went out to look for those who would explain them. Of the ten people I asked, only one refused. He was an old gardener and he said it was too much like a television guessing-game.
All the others agreed to describe what came into their minds when presented with the photo I was showing them. I said nothing myself, simply noting what was said. The choice of people was largely a matter of chance. Some were acquaintances, others I was seeing for the first time.
E. J., market-gardener: According to the social position you find yourself in, the fact of being able to work, even if it’s hard, is a positive joy.
H. M., clergyman: A happy worker who isn’t ashamed. I find his gesture, as he turns towards us, fantastic. His gestures are the opposite of a dictator’s. Marvellous. He moves me and he’s making no concessions. I admire a chap like that.
C. M., schoolgirl: Somebody who’s happy. He has finished work.
A. R., banker: Work makes you healthy! That’s the slogan this friendly worker seems to be illustrating for us. But it can only be for a moment, for it’s hard to imagine that anyone can be so cheerful when working for eight or ten hours on the production line. Unless he’s one of those rare people whose aims are nobler than the common run of mortals!
A. B., actress: Long live the production line! I feel two things here. The line has stopped. Work is over. The man’s happy. He’s proud of the workshop. Work’s over. My factory is great.
F. S., dance-teacher: I’m a bit lost. What does it mean? A warehouse? No, there’s nothing in it. He likes being photographed. He’s happy. He works. He’s happy. He could complain, he doesn’t. Is he the ideal worker? Perhaps it’s the boss? I’d be unhappy there.
J. J. B., psychiatrist: He’s happy the day is over. It’s a factory with an assembly line. There’s nothing more to do. He’s taking off his gloves.
L. C., hairdresser: Happiness! His way of opening his arms as if to welcome somebody who has just arrived. He looks like a worker who has a hard job and earns little money. It makes me think of the prisoners in the German camps, an armaments factory.
I. D., factory worker: A coincidence. We have the same rollers in our factory! By his expression I’d say it was Friday night, the end of the week’s work. He looks happy, I wish him a good week-end.
What was happening: It was a foundry in West Germany. I was photographing a Yugoslav worker for a reportage made for the International Labour Office. A Turkish worker nearby, seeing me, shouted out: ‘So there are only Yugoslavs here! Me, I don’t exist!’ Yes, he existed too, and I took his picture.
Market-gardener: It makes me think of someone who’s looking for the best place to take a photo! He enjoys nature. He’s a modern type who likes to get out of the city. He looks elsewhere for what he can’t find at home.
Clergyman: Tomorrow belongs to the young! An image of hope. His face and his shirt are touching. I have to stop myself saying: Spring!
Schoolgirl: A bloke in a tree which is in flower. He’s hiding and playing. And he wants to show to somebody that he’s hiding.
Banker: A link between the person and the way the picture has been taken. It’s symbolic: youth, beauty, the spring of life. I like his expression, it’s healthy, both physically and morally. If only there were more young people like that. Or am I being over hasty? I guess he’s an outdoor type who may nevertheless have brains.
Actress: A young man in a flowering tree. Spring. Sexuality. It reminds me of the moment in Fellini’s Amarcord when the man exclaims: ‘I want a woman!’ Only here the man is young and the tree is in flower.
Dance-teacher: A chap in a tree with flowers. But he’s more realistic than the tree. Youth. Spring. But his face is too tense.
Psychiatrist: A Spanish worker in an orchard full of blossoms. A contrast between the fact that he’s proletarian, and it’s springtime in the countryside. Yet no, there isn’t really a contrast. I can see he’s carrying something – but cameras aren’t white. He looks surprised but not guilty. Perhaps there’s a girl sunbathing in the orchard.
Hairdresser: Somebody high up in a tree. Nothing else. Oh yes. He’s a photographer, looking for a picture.
Factory worker: It’s pretty, but the flowers would be even prettier in colour. He climbed high up, he has a head for heights, that one.
What was happening: Washington 1971. A demonstration against the war in Vietnam. 400,000 demonstrators in front of the White House. The young man had climbed the tree so as to see better and to take his photographs.
Market-gardener: The eyes of these men tell you about their lives. They’ve never had anything, or any advantages. Today, when things are changing politically and it seems possible for man to change his fate, such people are becoming aware of the differences between different countries.
Clergyman: Who is going to reply to them? They all look at the camera, they are all waiting for something. I like this photograph. I see in it all the problems of our Christianity. Am I going to offer them the usual spiel, or am I going to listen to them and share their waiting?
Schoolgirl: It’s a group of poor people and they are waiting to be given something.
Banker: This image immediately brings to mind the stirring of the Asian masses. As racial types, they have fine features, and their expression suggests that they are questioning the why of their existence, which is probably very precarious.
Actress: My first impression: a group of men like choral music. They are waiting for an answer. Or are they just looking at the photographer? The situation is very tense.
Dance-teacher: These people believe in what? It’s frightening, the way they look. One would like to offer them something. Not food – it’s not what they’re asking for. They are waiting and they are worried. And what will they do to us, if we disappoint them? It’s there, in that moment, an uncontrolled force, either positive or negative.
Psychiatrist: I wouldn’t like to be in the photographer’s shoes. Perhaps it’s a political meeting. They are very serious and grave, these men. Scarcely a smile. All of them young. No old people, no children. All of the same age-group.
Hairdresser: They are holding papers in their hands. They must be waiting for a signal. It’s in Asia. Men waiting to be vaccinated, or waiting to vote. Their faces are all similar. And the filth. Men waiting to be paid. They are poor.
Factory worker: What country is it? Are they Algerians, perhaps Moroccans? Are they posing for a photograph? It’s hard to know what they are doing, or what they are waiting for. From their faces and their eyes, you can see that they don’t eat every day.
What was happening: A tea plantation in Sri Lanka. A group of workers came to hear a talk in favour of vasectomy (male sterilisation). After the talk, thirty of them agreed to be operated on straightaway, in the mobile hospital unit outside.
Market-gardener: (Laughs) This one makes me think of a little girl who already has a maternal capacity, and who’s treating her doll like it was her own baby. All right, the doll is not pretty and is undressed, but it’s hers!
Clergyman: An odd photo. Should one protect children from seeing the cruelty of the world? Should one hide certain aspects of reality from them? Her hands over the doll’s eyes shouldn’t be there. One ought to be able to show everything, to see all.
Schoolgirl: She’s crying because her doll hasn’t any clothes.
Banker: Well-fed, well-dressed, such a child is probably spoilt. Given the luxury of no material worries, people can give in to any whim or fancy.
Actress: ‘My baby is crying but doesn’t want to show it.’ What surprises me is how she hides the doll’s face. There’s a strong sense of identification between the doll and the child. The girl is playing out what is happening to the doll and what the doll feels. The vine in the background is strange . . .
Dance-teacher: She has everything, yet she doesn’t realise it, she is crying with her eyes shut. And the tree behind. The doll is as big as she is.
Psychiatrist: It puzzles me. She’s crying as if she has a pain, and yet she’s well. She’s crying on behalf of her doll, and she covers the eyes as if there was a sight which shouldn’t be seen.
Hairdresser: It’s a child and somebody has tried to take her doll, which is precious to her. She’s going to hold on to it. Perhaps she’s German, she’s blonde. It makes me think of myself when I was that age.
Factory worker: It’s sweet. It reminds me of my niece when her sister tries to take her doll away from her. She’s crying, screaming, because someone wants to take her doll away.
What was happening: Great Britain, in the country. A small girl was playing with her doll. Sometimes sweetly, sometimes brutally. At one moment she even pretended to eat her doll.
Market-gardener: This reminds me how dependent we are today on the petrol-producing countries, and how it would be better to get on together instead of quarrelling. Today I’m turning off the tap, tomorrow I may open it. That’s no way to go on.
Clergyman: Funny! my first reaction: I’d like to be able to sleep like him, without any worries. To sleep is a kind of freedom. Second reaction, more thought out: what have these pipes – petrol? water? – to do with the country and its population? I’d rather he was sleeping against the tree on the left, or in the doorway of a house. He’s defying the pipes!
Schoolgirl: This person is lying on that thing to warm himself. Somebody else is coming who thinks the first one is hurt.
Banker: What an unattractive and uncomfortable place to take a siesta! Or is he meant to be on duty, guarding the pipes? No, that’s mean. Why is it that what is useful is always so ugly?
Actress: ‘A rest during a long journey.’ Is it a pipe-line? A feeling that it goes to the world’s end. An image of going-on, and of rest. The direction has already been decided. Everything else in the landscape disappears.
Dance-teacher: How do you get a photo like that? It’s crazy, that tiny creature asleep. A man. Just as it was men who made those pipes. But the men who made them never imagined how immense they would look in a photo. They go on and on, those pipes.
Psychiatrist: Pretty extraordinary. What’s in the pipes? Perhaps they are warm, yet the country doesn’t look like one where people would seek warmth like that. Is it water?
Hairdresser: Water. Massive water-pipes. It’s in India. The people are thin. Weary. And the pipes go on and on. Into the distance.
Factory worker: What’s flowing along those pipes? Water or fuel? From the way he’s sleeping, it looks as though he’s earned the right to sleep well.
What was happening: Ponai, thirty kilometres from Bombay. Water pipes taking water to the city. The boy had gone to sleep on the pipes because they were cool.
A FRAMED PORTRAIT OF A WOODCUTTER
One day the woodcutter’s wife stopped in the village and said: ‘I’d like to ask you a favour. Would you take a photo of my husband? I don’t have one, and if he’s killed in the forest I won’t have a picture to remember him by.’
Gaston, unlike most woodcutters, works by himself. He admits that this is more dangerous than working with a team. But he has a passion for forests and likes working alone in them. Also, he works too fast for most other woodcutters. After a few days they leave.
‘You can take some pictures,’ he said, ‘on condition that they show what the work is like.’
‘That’s the photo I’ve dreamt of since I began cutting down trees,’ he said, ‘the moment when the tree crashes down and falls exactly where you wanted, so long as you know your job. Falls down twenty centimetres off where you knew it would.’
Gaston is paid by the cubic metre of wood he delivers to the edge of the road, where the lorries pick it up.
This is the portrait which Gaston’s wife framed and put on their mantlepiece. There are no trees in it, but the expression of his face is easier to understand if one knows something about the forest.
Java. December 1973. Djakarta – Bandung. A journey of 200 kilometres each way through ricefields and mountains. The organisation for which I was working had decided that taking a plane would be too expensive and too uncertain. To go by car would have meant finding not only a vehicle but a driver, for the roads were particularly dangerous. I was told to go by train.
And so I found myself in a comfortable Pullman, about to leave Djakarta. An art-student kindly offered me his seat by the window: ‘If one day I am travelling in Switzerland, I’m sure somebody will do the same for me, and I’ll be able to enjoy in comfort Mont Cervin and the Jet d’Eau. You will see superb countryside soon, particularly when we get to the mountains.’
However, before reaching this countryside we had to leave Djakarta, a fearful city of five million (the exact figures are uncertain and always changing). An endless suburb of the most squalid poverty – a monsoon-drenched poverty – sprawling either side of the railway line, often only a few inches from the tracks. The typical tragedy of a city smothered by the daily influx of peasants trying to live somewhere.
The sight of this, through the large Pullman window, was almost unbearable. Around me the other passengers chattered or read or daydreamed. I was the only one who could not look away.
Soon the hills became higher, and the railway track began to wind in and out, and go through tunnels. Emerging from one of these tunnels, the train slowed down as if it were going to stop. It never stopped altogether, but it went very slowly for several kilometres. From every side children began to appear, half-naked, wild-eyed, hands outstretched. They ran along beside the train for several hundred metres before giving up. Nobody in the carriage noticed: even the art student kept his eyes on his book and gave me no explanation.
During my two days in Bandung, these children haunted me. On the return journey, once again with a place by the window, I had a camera ready: how do you free yourself from an obsession, when you are a photographer, if not by photographing the object of the obsession? And so, at a five-hundredth of a second, hidden behind my camera, I saw again those emaciated children running barefoot the length of the train, receiving nothing. Neither from the others, nor from me.
Many years ago I was travelling across Yugoslavia in a small 2cv. Citroen. I took my time, happy to be discovering so much that was new to me. There were few Western tourists then, for Yugoslavia was labelled ‘communist’ in the Western press.
On my way to Belgrade I heard that a meeting was about to take place – the first – between Tito and Gomulka. Along with other press photographers from Life, Paris-Match, Stern, I took some pictures of this meeting.
Before leaving for Yugoslavia I had made an arrangement with a press agency whereby, should I come across any news story, I would send them back pictures. This was undoubtedly such a story, and so I sent the pictures by air back to Geneva. There were enough for a front page or a double-spread. Having dispatched them, I continued my slow, fascinating journey.
When finally I arrived home, I didn’t expect to be congratulated – there is no such thing as congratulation in the world of photo agencies – but I did expect to find a little money in payment for my published pictures. I was quickly disabused.
‘We could scarcely use a picture. You chose to show Tito as a head of state looking human, even friendly. Yet Tito is a communist, and the newspaper editors here, who buy our pictures, have a very clear idea of what a communist head of state looks like. They must have scowling and threatening faces. You should have thought of that, you know.’
Ten years later, Tito began to be labelled ‘socialist’ rather than ‘communist’ in the Western press, and even to be lauded as the legendary figure who dared to oppose Moscow. My photographs of him then became useable.
‘To take or not to take?’ This is a constant question for the photographer who is a reporter, walking along a street. The reasons for deciding not to take a picture are various.
Fear sometimes. You feel the possibility of violent reactions on the part of the photographed. In the dock areas of certain cities, for example. In Africa or South America a white photographer may draw upon himself all the hatred of that imperialism of which he has become, while taking pictures, the symbol.
Sometimes an ethical hesitation. To take a picture of an execution, for example – unless, with the picture, one intends to denounce the opressive regime.
There are many reasons for not taking pictures. But if you are a press photographer your employers will recognise none as valid.
Several years ago I made an expedition in the Alps with the aim of climbing the southern face of the Grandes Jorasses. That’s the easier face. When we arrived at the hut where we were going to spend the night, we found another group of climbers who had just come down the northern face and who had been forced by a storm to spend the whole night a few metres from the summit. Several of them were suffering from severe frost bite. Their faces were haggard from the ordeal. The exclusive photos were there to be taken for the next day’s papers.
I didn’t even take out my camera. There was no virtue in this decision, there was simply something more urgent to be done: to take down the injured on our backs. (In those days there were no helicopters.)
Recently I was in hospital for two weeks following a back operation (that damned shoulder-bag of cameras and lenses and films that we all carry!). I lay on my back, motionless, not allowed to move. I began to think photographs: the size of the ward, my unfortunate fellow patients (I was in the neurosurgical section for the skull and spinal column), the spotlessly clean corridors, the spotless ceiling, everywhere a white, spotless anguish. Photos could show this. And then I realised that you can’t truly be on both sides of the fence at the same time. During many years, while working for the World Health Organisation, I’d taken pictures of the ill, the post-operative, the hurt. This time it was better to live totally on their side, so that the experience should be indelibly printed, not on film, but in my memory.
