Michael Amendolia explains how time spent exploring a foreign land and a change to his usual shooting style, resulted in an award-winning image.
When I first got interested
in photography back in Year 11 at South Strathfield High School in Sydney’s
western suburbs I read a book by Life
magazine photographer Andreas Feininger about photography.
Visual impact was
what he considered the most important of all qualities in evaluating a good
photograph, and that has stayed in my subconscious ever since. It’s what I’m
always looking for when I’m shooting, no matter how mundane my subject
material. A moment captured on film, or on a digital chip, that could never be
caught again is for me the unique quality that photography has over all the
other arts and communication mediums.
This photograph, made in 2000 in Islamic western China, was shot while I was completely in the flow, very inspired – part luck and part by design.
I was in China at the invitation of the China Folklore Humanitarian Photo competition as one of their eight jurors. After a week of evaluating images from all over the world on issues of culture I decided to travel to one place in China in my own time and stay there for a couple of weeks to document an interesting part of this country.
I decided I wanted to go to Islamic China, to a place called Kashgar. So it was that I spent 10 days walking the streets, sitting in restaurants and cafes, and meeting the local Urgur people. I wanted to loosen up my style a little from my conditioned set to thirds with straight horizons and vertical and horizontal lines.
So, assisted by techniques of my street photographer mate, Trent Parke, I walked the streets, sometimes pre-focussing and shooting from the hip and attempting bolder composition than perhaps I previously had. It was an attempt to add some energy to the photographs. It’s in this style that the 'Sunday markets' photographs were created.
I’d met a young man in town who wanted to guide me through the city for a fee, introduce me, and interpret for me. These boys had taken off their clothes so as to ride the horses they were selling through this deep river next to the livestock sales. The boys would fly past me on their horses and I’d pan and shoot, sometimes without looking through the lens. Some worked – others didn’t! I was working with depth of focus and luck.
I had one rangefinder camera with a 35mm lens and an SLR with a 28mm lens. This is all I carried so I could remain as inconspicuous as possible and so as to make sure my images had an intimacy about them. I wanted nothing I shot to be pulling the subject closer using a telephoto lens. It all had this ‘close observer’ feel to it.
I also wanted the photographs to be classic so I chose to use black and white film, and the weather suited this as it was overcast a lot of the time with not a lot of colour of any sort. The cloudy conditions helped the photos on the whole, as there was less contrast to upset any composition. Back in Sydney I processed the film, made proof sheets and selected a tight edit, from which I printed fibre 10 x 8 inch prints.
I spent some time in the darkroom to add a 'signature' of sorts in the printing to bring the elements of the image together, leading the eye to where I wanted the viewer to look, conscious at the same time not to over burn or dodge. These prints were then copied and distributed internationally by the agency I was connected with at the time – Network Photographers.
The photographs were awarded second place in the magazine stories section of the Pictures of the Year awards in the US. A series of images were exhibited by the Australian Centre of Photography in its Witness exhibition, which travelled around Australia for a couple of years.
These images are also on my website in the features section, http://www.michaelamendolia.com/Kashgar/kashgarmain.htm.
“Sunday Markets, Kashgar Xinjiang, China.” Image by Michael Amendolia. (Camera: Canon EOS 1N film camera, Lens: 28mm f1.4 lens, Film: Tri X rated at 800 ISO, Developed in D76 handheld.)
Article first published in Australian Photography magazine.
Michael Amendolia