Review of a photo essay
The World Through a Lens
From the New York Times: In the World’s Driest Desert, Ancient Wisdom Blooms Eternal. The title of the Time’s photojournalism series, to which this piece belongs, is The World Through a Lens, which turns out, in a metaphorical sense, to be rather on the nose.
The photographer’s supplementary text tells a familiar tale: “Burned out from life in New York City, I was looking to understand how ancient wisdom thrives in this part of the world, and how I could honor these values in my own existence.”
She does not specify why she chose “this part of the world” (the Chilean Cordillera de la Sal), nor does she note that she’s also there for the photos. Probably this goes without saying.
“At first glance, the houses might have looked worn and neglected, with cracks and crevices that exposed their inhabitants to the outside world. But I saw them more tenderly: Each was made with hands that were deeply rooted in the earth.”
Look: rustic life. But no, wait — this is dignity I see! Wisdom so mystical only an unwieldy metaphor can evoke it. Rooted hands.
She thinks of New York. New York is different from this desert town in Northern Chile. The differences between these places lead her to see herself differently: there are limits to the life she knows.
“Time was hazy in the desert.” This is a strange land, where things behave strangely. Like time. And light, perhaps. The women shepherding llamas, with bright laughs and brightly colored clothes.
The life of these people is demanding. There is little to be had. But they work together. They survive.
Again, the photographer thinks of New York. The children here are lucky to have such a connection to the earth. Their parents do not reprimand them for stopping to pick up sticks.
Pachakuti: a Quechua word that means “earth-shaking,” and marks a period of upheaval. The spiritual leader, Carlos, tells her, “For centuries, the dominant social order had been that of the Western conqueror, to hide and shame the wisdom of Indigenous communities. This new pachakuti rids us of that energy… and renews us with Indigenous knowledge to bring back into existence a harmony with Mother Earth and all her beings.”
(In Quechua, there are two first-person plural forms: noqanchis, which includes the listener, and noqayku, which excludes the listener. If Carlos had been speaking Quechua rather than Spanish, I wonder which of these he would have used. Would he have included the photographer, and by extension, us readers, in this “we”?)
But! There are minerals here. This way of life is threatened by mining.
The photographer goes on a drive with Carlos to “marvel at the landscape.” They watch the sunset. A vast space. Mountains frosted with salt. Pink light, and silence, probably, besides the sound of the wind.
At long last, it comes: rain. In a moment of soulful abandon, she turns her face to the sky and feels its touch. She has grown. What was first mysterious to her is now clear. What was invisible can now be seen.
I had intended to write about the images in this photo essay. But recounting the photographer’s narrative is, I think, the most direct way to comment upon the world that they depict.
I have read this story before. Indeed, it is one of the most well-rehearsed stories one finds under these circumstances: the story of someone like me going to someplace like there. Like the rest of us, the photographer would have known the end of this story (the rain, the insight, the feeling of deep connection) before she ever boarded the plane.
By the same token, she would have known what those photographs would look like before she ever laid eyes on the llamas, or the smoke in the branches, or the waning desert light. She saw these through the lens of a tired story, which means she scarcely saw them at all.