Timothy O'Sullivan

For Timothy O'Sullivan reality was more than the literal, direct and 'physical' reflection of the world. Truth, was simple and direct, but came from small adjustments in the literal reality that brought into play the subjective. His camera portrayed the way a place seemed rather than how it actually was.

O'Sullivan learn't his technique from documenting the American civil war. Cameras of the period could not catch the action, as they do today, and this fact forced him to build a reality of war from mundane scenes that stood around the action; the context of war.

Later in 1871 O'Sullivan joined the United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian led by Lt. George Wheeler. The purpose was to survey the land for possible future occupation, while also gaining a consensus of the Native American population. His photographs were to be used to prepare the 'Wild' West as an inviting destination for progress, not only for the sake of civilization, but for the continued funding of the surveys.

Leaders of the surveys such as King, Lt. George M. Wheeler, and J.W. Powell tended to use the beautiful, picturesque, and sublime ideologies in writing their survey reports, and hence their hired photographers usually resorted to them as well. But O'Sullivan was unique. While fulfilling the requirements of the survey he was also able to pursue his own instinct for truth and art using devices he had learnt during the civil war.

Though he photographed completely without public acclaim during his life time, he is now renowned for his ability to amplify the telluric beauty of the geological Western American landscape by means of very simple but understated techniques. For example, the top photograph in the accompanying strip of images, depicts Canyon De Chelly, New Mexico, 1873, and shows how he ever-so-slightly tilts the camera's angle to exaggerate the great towering rocks height and weight over the tiny encampment below in the valley.

Jonathan Green in "American Photography" presents Timothy O'Sullivan as something of a photographic renegade. Unlike Muybridge, for example, who added clouds to his picturesque scenic images by using his 'Sky Shade'(1) technique, O'Sullivan seems to accept the limitations of his medium. He exploited, instead, the starkness arising from the wet collodion processes lack of sensitivity to blue, by sometimes integrating the white sky into a series of balanced shades and planes of the geology creating an almost abstract image (image 2).

If there is an answer to endless question: what is reality, surely here we have it in O'Sullivan's images, and as valid today as it was then.

In Elizabeth Paul's words:

"His approach accepts the limitations of subjectivity and photography to discern and portray the whole truth or reality of a subject, and seeks, instead, to gain and portray an impression of the subject truthfully, accurately, and effectively." ~ see her excellent thesis on the subject

(1) Muybridge solved the problem using two different methods:

a - He combined a negative of clouds with a negative of a landscape, when making a print.

b - Muybridge also used a board flap inside his camera to block the brighter light from the sky during a portion of an exposure. He called the feature a sky shade.

Submitted by Philip Cartland on 7 January 2008 - 8:31am.

The Quiet Naturalist

It should be common knowledge now that around the time when Darwin was thinking about the origin of the species by natural selection (1850s), Alfred Russell Wallace, who was collecting specimens in the Malay Archipelago had already sent a letter to Darwin putting in very succinct terms the 'survival of the fittest' idea. Perhaps because of Wallace's quiet and shy manner and his poor background, his emergence as an unsung hero is additionally emphasised. And so we have books, such as the Spice Island Voyage by Tim Severin, which traces Wallace's travels around the Malay islands. One of Severin's missions was to observe how the natural environment has changed since the time of Wallace. Wallace's own much quoted words, referring to the King Bird of Paradise which he had seen, are cited:

'I thought of the long ages of the past, during which the successive generations of this little creature had run their course, year by year being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness; to all appearance such a wanton waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. It seems sad, that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to come to hopeless barbarism; while on the other hand, should civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so disturb the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy. This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man.?

Interestingly I found the same extract in the preface of my rare copy of, The Gardeners of Eden, by Alistair Graham a book analysing and laying uncomfortably bare the often aggressive motivations behind game saving.

Though Wallace shot his Bird of Paradise knowing it would be of value to science and worth money back in England as a stuffed specimen we do not take this action as a hypocrisy; a bird in hand can be worth two in the bush when it comes to preserving species. And so today Wallace is acknowledged as a pioneer of environmental awareness.

So what changes did Tim Severin find around a 150 years later? What is left of the Flora and Fauna in the islands where Wallace meticulously indulged his collecting? Well it's a mixed picture, thriving diversity here, and wanton environmental exploitation there. But most importantly there is still a chance. His Birds of Paradise will continue to exist if the proper steps of protection are taken. However, if Wallace had accompanied Severin on his spice island voyage, his worst shock would not have been in the teeming city streets nor in the forest. It would have been when he looked over the side of our little Prahu (Severin's tradition sailing craft) as we sailed into Ambon Harbour. The exquisite underwater coral garden, which he had described with such enthusiasm, was irretrievably gone.'

Submitted by Philip Cartland on 30 December 2007 - 11:00pm.

Life and Death in Eden

Imagine a pacific island.

Palms and blue sea, fruits and jungle-embraced mountains; a little island paradise.

Inhabit your island with 15 men and 13 women, 5 Tahitian men and 10 English sailors - the women: Tahitian. Men outnumber women, but bear in mind Tahitian women are quite 'liberal' and under certain cultural circumstance allow the indulgence of multiple sexual partners.

Our islanders have not simply appeared upon the stage out of no where, so lets allow them a ship in which to arrive. However, shortly the ship is set alight and all thoughts of return to whence they came are cancelled. Why? Well, because a return to the outside world would, for some of them, in all likelihood synchronize with a waiting hangman's noose; they are mutineers and have cast adrift their captain.

Now forget our mutineers for a while, say, 18 years.

At last, Captain Whatsisname is sniffing about the pacific. 18 years have passed and he stumbles across the island. He steps into a waiting canoe and once ashore discovers quite a few women and kids but only one man! He subsequently learns that the particular shortage of men arises, not by the hand of natural calamity, but largely by consequence of murder.

Idyllic!

Those of you who know the story will have guessed by now that I am talking about the Pitcairn Island occupied by the Bounty mutineers in January 1790. A true story quite well investigated by Trevor Lummis in his book 'Life and Death in Eden'; an intriguing and gripping account, apt to blow away any funny ideal of a utopian society in Paradise.

I have come across various other stories, differently flavoured, but which basically throw light upon similar themes: man against nature or man against man. One of my favorites is 'The outpost of Progress' by Joseph Conrad; two men trapped in the jungle of West Africa are waiting for a supply steamer that doesn't come. They end up killing one another over a bag of sugar! (Huuum, reminds me of the company I worked for a few years back; it was a shared ownership and my two bosses could not sit in the same room together without screeching and scratching over nothing!)

Anyway, I write only to pass on my enthusiasm and to leave you with the mythologised version of the Bounty story as painted by John Hagan.

You may also be interested to know that the descendants of the original mutineers continue to live on the Pitcairn islands, are connected to the net and are selling all sorts of curios, stamps and novelty .pn domains.

Submitted by Philip Cartland on 29 December 2007 - 9:16am.

African Elephant Range Countries Human Population Growth

Submitted by Philip Cartland on 28 December 2007 - 11:00pm.

Fatal impact

The following story was bought to my awareness by Blaine Harden's book, Africa - Dispatches from a fragile continent, and appears to be corroborated by many other bits and bobs of info, reports and research articles, that I've found dotted over the net. The story remains one of the classic examples of do-gooders, with the best of intentions, messing up. I've included what few images of my own, taken on the spot, Kalekol, Lake Turkana, Kenya. You should also click on the satellite image thumb below for an awesome view of this desert lake.

The oil rich Norwegians, being a seafaring nation and rather good at fishing, were asked by the Kenyan Government to help the Turkana turn a virtually unexploited fish resource into hard cash. Lake Turkana is a ecologists paradise, with 47 species of fish, seven being endemic, but the Norwegians were interested mainly in the Nile Tilapia, a fish that breeds in the shallows of Ferguson's Gulf by the ton.

Once the Norwegian International Development Agency (NORAD), had completed the appropriate investigations and plans, the Turkana Fishermen's Cooperative (TFCS, 1965) in Kalekol was called into action to begin the first commercial fishing scheme on the lake by enticing more pastoral Turkana with promising incentives. They were encouraged to take up donated fishing nets and boats and taught the best modern way to fish. A research vessel, transported all the way from Norway to Mombasa was hauled overland to Ferguson's gulf.

Then came the road , an all weather road, connecting the main highways of Kenya with Lodwar, the nearest town to Kalakol on the lakes shore. By the early 80's NORAD had also completed their crowning achievement, a Ksh30 million fish processing factory to assist the TFCS.

As many as 20,000 fishermen were employed by the early 1980s, including a large component of migrants from shores of Lake Victoria who came to partake of the boom. But the refrigeration unit didn't last long, a couple of days in fact before it was closed down. Bringing the temperature down from 100 degrees required far more expense in diesel generated electricity than frozen fish fillets could bring in return, and far more clean water was required than was available (Lake Turkana is extremely brackish, drinking it is like drinking soapy bath water).

Then came the drought that was already causing hunger on a mass scale in Ethiopia. The Omo river fed by the now failed rains of the catchment area in Ethiopian highlands, reduced its input dramatically. The Ferguson gulf shallows promptly dried up, the shore receded 2km away and the fish moved to deeper waters or moved elsewhere to better breeding grounds. Out of practical reach without more mechanisation, further proper storage facilities and yet more revenue to compensate for the increased difficulties! In 1986 the processing plant was shut down completely and has not been used since.

Fishing had enforced a settled way of life. Those who couldn't leave to resume their pastoral existence were stuck without a renewable resource. Their livestock had grazed the land in the reachable vicinity to the roots while trees had been chopped down for firewood. They were left little alternative but to accept food aid or scrape by on fish which traditionally was a last resort anyway and considered the livlihood of a failure. When I went to Kalekol in the 90's they were selling trinkets made from fish bone to a trickle of tourists passing through to view the 'traditional' Turkana village.

In the review of their failures, NORAD belatedly discovered in the records at Lodwar, evidence that this was not the first time the bay had dried up. But more importantly, the Turkana, who had never actually been asked in the first place, revealed that their interest in cows (like the Masai they believe all cows of the earth to be their own) was a well founded, tried and tested, survival adaptation, finely tuned to the whims of spotty rainfall and regular drought. Already the best solution to a crap situation.

Besides the fact that Turkana livestock are extremely hardy, the Norwegians learned, further, that cows link family (dowry being the most basic of example) to family, clan to clan, that in time of drought they might shift their herds away from affected areas, to relatives in less affected areas, responding to the whim of the rainfall, thereby watering down the risk. Mobility in harsh environments is key, any semi desert region will show just that, and Turkana cows are a highly efficient way of extracting available energy and storing it.

And so this ambitions plan to pull the Turkana out of their misery, was a flop. Planning and organisation and an insurmountable number of consultations and Nordic knowhow, all went to nothing before two very basic and crucial facts, that the lake dries up and Turkana live for their cows (literally).

This legacy continues too, with irrigation schemes and their unconsidered effects. I also discovered that a new plant, Prosopis juliflora was introduced and now there are many negative reports, one being that the bush is over running Northen Kenya and causing causing teeth problems among livestock that eat it, ie their teeth are falling out (see: Mwangi, Esther & Brent Swallow, June 2005, Invasion of Prosopis juliflora and local livelihoods: Case study from the lake Baringo area of Kenya. ICRAF Working Paper - no. 3. Nairobi: World Agroforestry Centre). Again, the Turkana have their own way of managing trees, as revealed by this study. Finally, as of 2003 NORAD has been funding the Turkana Livestock Development Program (PDF) the main input being vetinary services, I'd really like to investigate this one.

Judging by the sheer number of research papers and complex reports spouting out of Africa, many of them turning over the same old ground, it is hardly surprising that more harm is being done than good.

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Notes: I have tried in the post above, short and webloggy as it's meant to be, to cross check facts from as many sources available to me, but with my limited access and time there are questions that I cannot answer. Consider this a work in progress which I'll add to over time, after all this is just one piece of a long story.

Finally as a point of interest, while digging through all the info I have, I came across this snippet from a letter (RTF file) which appears to have been written to send to the Human right commission and posted on a minority right group website.. Demands include include:

"The natural resources that exist in the district have not yet been exploited. (There are mineral water sources at Elliye springs, precious stone such as gypsum in Napusmor and green garnet in Horiu, including Lake Turkana's fishing grounds). A Norwegian fishing venture was abandoned in the 1980s due to political disagreements between the Kenya and Norway and the government to date has not done anything about the structures that were put in place by the Norwegian government."

The political disagreement bit is true, but not the primary reason why the plant was closed, I believe the Kenyan government felt Norwegian aid was in fact aiding the opposition and the Government wanted all cash through them and only them. But the desire to have the fish factory thing restarted is ludicrous.

Other notes: The water level of the lake has been dropping steadily for some years: a decline of 10m was recorded between 1975 and 1993, primarily due to reduced inflow from the Omo River in Ethiopia due to irrigation and drought upstream

However, following the El Nino rains in the Ethiopian Highlands in the last two years, the Ferguson's Gulf - a protected cove to the North-west of the lake has again filled up and fish catches have suddenly increased, making the lake the main source of fish in the country. (1999 Nation). No sign of the processing plant coming alive.

Other great sources:

EXTENSION AND LIVESTOCK DEVELOPMENT: EXPERIENCE FROM AMONG THE TURKANA PASTORALISTS OF KENYA Darlington M.O. Akabwai - This paper discusses some of the reasons for decades of development failures in the pastoral area of Turkana District, Kenya.

"Projects are frequently based on the assumption that Western ideas and behaviors form appropriate models for the pastoral situation or that what pastoralists say they do ("ideal behavior') and what they have been observed to do ('ideal behavior') are accurate representations of the pastoral system."

A COMPARISON OF TWO SURVEY METHODS ON PASTORAL TURKANA MIGRATION PATTERNS AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT PLANNING by P. H. Fry and J. T. McCabe

Submitted by Philip Cartland on 11 October 2007 - 10:21pm.