A Photo Essay Actually

After really fleshing out essays again in class and after seeing so many at MPW, my mind immediately went to Nat Geo to look for an essay. Although when I first started looking through I actually found a couple stories this time which I feel like I find less of on their site so the irony of seeing them when I now need an essay made me laugh. 

Anyway, the essay I chose to look at is about photographer Charlie Hamilton James and his work to document the daily lives of indigenous peoples of Amazonia. The work highlights  several different indigenous communities in Brazil and Peru who are on a range of isolation and “primitiveness.” The photographs don’t follow a single individual, group or even a specific issue, but rather center around the idea of being indigenous in those areas. 

The photos are held together by the indigenous identity alone although some could be split off and maybe paired with additional images to form more specific story lines. The two images from the pageant for example could be honed in on for a more specific story or the portrait series of people and their monkeys can stand alone as a story by itself. But altogether the collection of images that ranges everywhere from aerials and environmental landscapes, to details, portraits and daily life shots of groups and peoples stretched across several different locations makes for a broader telling essay.