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June 09, 2005

Jeff Randall, and Frank Christopher offer us an opportunity to see through their experience

By Pat Hunt

Pictures tell stories - emotional stories, life-changing stories. But, sometimes stories need to be supported by words. Words that give background to the stories and tell of the creators, their inspirations and their dreams. Stock photographers are storytellers by nature, and have a need for adventure, travel, learning and excitement. This is the background of three of those storytellers, allowing us to follow along with the artists as they go on their creative journey.

Jeff Randall, and Frank Christopher offer us an opportunity to see through their lens and capture their experience:

THE WAR ON DRUGS

Jeff Randall

“Narco-terrorists, guerrillas, paramilitaries” - How many of us think of these words on a daily basis? Jeff Randall does. Jeff is a freelance photojournalist covering Latin American conflicts and indigenous cultures. Jeff’s travel stock photography does not include glamorous girls on beautiful beaches while relaxing with a drink between takes. In fact, tourists don’t go where he goes, so he attempts to stay in the background and away from governmental bureaucrats. As he puts it: “I figure if I get hurt, killed, or kidnapped, then there’s not much the U.S. government can do so why waste time detailing my trip to them.

Jeff’s recent trip to Colombia to investigate “Plan Colombia” gives us some background about what he is able to learn, trekking through areas where few others go. Plan Colombia is a multi-billion dollar U.S. aid package to fight the proliferation of the cocaine market. It encompasses “training Colombian military, upgrading hardware, eradicating coca, introducing alternative crops, building infrastructure, and developing education programs.” However, the cocaine market, kidnapping trade, and the decades old war with FARC guerillas grinds on. FARC receives funding from the narcotics trade by protecting the fields and labs where the cocaine is grown and prepared. Trying to shut these operations down creates more “violence, death, and retaliatory terrorist acts.”

Jeff is a friend with members of the U.S. Marshals Service, whose activities he photographs. He says they are the best in the business, and their training incorporates such initiatives as “safely moving a principal through crowded streets, how to protect the principal during an attack, counter-measures during an assault, situational awareness, man/team operations, and detail formation and organization.” Jeff also observes the activities of the “hired guns” in the area. They are also usually paid to protect, and have been Special Forces, SEAL, or CIA in a former lifetime. As Jeff puts it: “With all the twists, turns, and corruption associated with this ultimate cat and mouse game, having experienced operators with in-place networks is essential to eventually winning the war in South America.”

Jeff observes that FARC has sophisticated explosives equipment and the best terrorist trainers in the world, including the deadly IRA (Irish Republican Army). They play with such charming devices as book bombs, shoe bombs, large explosive devices rigged with pressure triggers, proximity switches, timers and heat sensing detonation. Jeff says that Bogotá is relatively safe as compared to remote areas of Colombia because training has worked to quell violence in major cities. A little south in Peru, where cocaine flows freely, such groups as the U.S. Special Forces and the Navy Special Boat Teams work under the radar and “some even deny their presence in the country, but they are there and working to further the goals of the U.S. Foreign Policy.

According to Jeff, the surrounding jungle “is a spider web of trails and makeshift roads” used by the cocaine producers to transport chemicals, coca paste and pure cocaine. “The leeching wells and processing labs are almost impossible to find in the dense jungle and difficult to get to once they have been located. This unforgiving terrain is ruled by those who loathe any outside influence, so booby trapping, weapons caches, and camouflage is common practice.”

“If every American citizen could see the death and destruction this business has caused on a global scale, then I doubt they would be so quick to question the resources being used to combat the problem,” observes Jeff. He says you can’t understand the magnitude of the War on Drugs unless you are on the ground with the officers and soldiers who fight it. Even though they are under funded, they are making a difference. “This war in ‘winnable’ but it will take dedication and an understanding of South American cultures to finally put an end to the age-old violence.” This is one of Jeff’s goals as a Latin American photojournalist. His theory is that we should clean up or own streets and drug culture in the process.
WWW.JUNGLETRAINING.COM

THE COLLECTIVE INSANITY

Frank Christopher

“The Collective Insanity” - what better way to describe all segments of society as we cross the “lines of mythology” from country to country? This is Frank Christopher’s description of the world and its cultural interactions, as he has studied it for the last 50 years through his photography and international exchanges. At eighty-five years old, Frank is still honored for being the first US citizen to foster detente between the US and the USSR in the cold war era of the 1960’s. Even today, Irina Popova, Cultural Attaché and First Secretary to the Embassy of the Russian Federation, credits Frank as being responsible for setting up the new dialog between the East and West in the Cold War. As Frank puts it: “The leaders at that time were dictating who was going to survive and who wasn’t.” Frank wanted to offer the people of the world an opportunity to get to know each other and appreciate each other’s “intellectual acuity,” as belief systems contributed to “the degradation of common sense.”

“The Iron Curtain was parted” as the result of the introduction of American photography to Russia in 1961. 107 mounted prints were sent to the former Soviet Union, supported by the State Department and then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey, launching a cultural exchange which bridged the gaps in understanding between the two countries. Already an international celebrity in his field, Frank was chosen by the US State Department to “take over all cultural negotiations with the Soviets, and bring the lifestyle of the American people to that of the Russian people.” With the help of the Photographic Society of America and the Photo Section of the Union of Soviet Friendship Societies, Frank initiated a show that drew 34,000 visitors by the time it had traveled from Moscow to Tallinn to Leningrad.

This resulted in a reciprocal show at the Arts Club in Washington, DC displaying the first all Russian photography show depicting the Soviet way of life. The strength of both shows was in demonstrating the every day life of both cultures at home and at work and at play. Similarities between peoples were hard to ignore, as a Washing Post reporter in 1961 wrote - “small boys and old men lose their teeth in Russia just like us.” Photography is the universal language of understanding that surpasses words. These shows achieved better communication than any political debate or policy making up to that time.

At that time Frank’s invitation to go to Russia came from Vladimir Shakhovsoi, who was President of the Moscow Photosection, part of the Ministry of Culture, and considered to be “dean of Soviet photography.” Shakhovsoi was considered to be the “driving force for the progress and adoption of photography as a recreation, an art form, and a means of communication.” He made Frank his personal guest in Russia, and was then in charge of opening the exhibit in the United States.

Over the years Frank had over 1,000 acceptances in international competitive juried salons and won awards in Russia, New Zealand, Iceland, South America, Australia, Wales, Japan and Romania. He has been an “Exhibitor of Honour” at salons in Romania, Taiwan, France and Yugoslavia. Widely published in the US, his work on Russia was used in educational filmstrips by McGraw Hill and distributed throughout the US and Europe. He has been an international journalist, and today is working on his book - “I To Eye.” He is the only permanent member of Honour of the famed Bordeaux Salon in France, and he represented the famed artists, Aubrey Bodine and Manuel Carrillo for 35 to 40 years.

In 1961 an Auckland, New Zealand photographic society reported some of the novelties of Frank’s trip in describing the language barriers. Frank claims, “They didn’t really exist. Ten million Russians are already learning English and I had the services of a young Russian woman as an interpreter, who spoke perfect English with an Oxford accent.” He was using a Contax-2A camera and had taken over 4000 frames on his tour. Building on his theme of “collective insanity,” he quoted: “In the 6,000 years of man’s history people have quarreled and fought wars. Can this ever be stopped? I went to Russia with pictures, to talk to people. If we have to argue, let’s not argue with guns and rockets…let’s argue over pictures!”

Posted by masterjay at June 9, 2005 03:45 PM

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