The ‘what’s that?’ effect
Adding an air of mystery to your photography can do nothing but good things for your shots
Let’s extend the idea of raising questions, rather than always trying to answer them with the camera. It took me longer than most photographers, I think, to get used to this. This is because I grew up in the world of magazine reportage, where the typical assignment was telling a story with, what was basically, a focused photo essay that the editorial team would then spread out among the text essay across several pages.
This probably doesn’t get as much thought as it should, largely because we’re all too busy when we’re out on assignment (including self-assignment) looking for the shot. Most of the photographers I know, most of the time, are looking for particular things that they already have in mind. It’s basic training, to actually have a purpose and to work at getting it. More than one of the Creative Paths I’ve put to these pages have been built around the idea of knowing what you’re looking for. In the world of documentary photography, it’s about finding, showing and telling some kind of story, which is reasonably straightforward, even if it does take effort.
This photograph was taken in Sudan for a book that set out to do a classical reportage on this large and very littleunderstood country. Among the many subjects in a long shot list that we spent two years covering, were the cattle camps of the large ethnic groups in the south, the Dinka, Nuer and Mandari. In fact, the picture of the boy bathing in cow’s urine that appeared in N-photo 92 under Stranger Things was also shot in a cattle camp, though a different one from here.
Cattle play a key role in Dinka economy and culture… They’re the wealth and pride of their owners, and for four months in the dry season Dinka men and boys graze them in the swamplands along the Nile – living with the animals and sleeping next to them.
A typical so-called cattle camp has many hundreds – even thousands – of animals, most with long lyre-shaped horns, and as a photo-opportunity they’re hard to beat. Added to the mix is smoke and dust. The smoke comes from smouldering dried cow dung, burnt to drive away insects. So even without the sun, as here, the scene is usually incredibly atmospheric.
Learning to react properly
In particular, there’s a large variety of opportunity, and between the mass of animals, the horns, and the long, thin body shapes of the Dinka men, it’s not hard to find dramatic and graphic imagery. But I didn’t want to show that here, though I shot plenty of it in a number of cattle camps across South Sudan.
The difference between shooting documentary and being less focused on narrative is in how you react to chance. Photography is good at surprises. It thrives on them. With the undisciplined world in front of your camera, it doesn’t take very long for something unexpected to walk into your frame, but if you’ve already decided what your shot is and are about to take it,
what do you do when it does? Do you wait until it’s gone away, or get rid of it if you can, so that is doesn’t spoil your idea? Do you perhaps change your idea? When it comes to the unexplained in imagery, it’s worth realizing that it can add an extra layer to the viewing of a picture. In the case of the Dinka cattle camp here, the misty cattle and squatting man are interesting enough, but what is that cross doing? It’s surely not a normal religious icon? That’s what I wondered when I glimpsed it, and there are two ways to go when something simply gets in the way like this. It interferes a little with the basic idea of cattle camp, so from a documentary point of view you might want to avoid it. But it intrigued me and so I included it – in fact, I timed the shot to make more of it.
I never found out what it was. The basic principle is, treat the unexpected as a kind of gift, something you wouldn’t have thought of but which makes the shot interesting, thought-provoking…
The difference between shooting documentary and being less focused on narrative is in how you react to chance. Photography is good at surprises. It thrives on them