International photographer (Jan-Dec 1934)

May, 1934 T h INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER Five On the twenty-seventh day out we picked up our first foreign island — Barbados, and there began three months of glorious hours spent among these astonishing islands. We had been ashore at Bridgetown, Barbados, for only a few hours before we discovered the advantages of a small camera. Barbardian negroes, we learned, have sufficient genius to smell out the tourist without help of that world-wide symbol, the visible camera. To walk through the streets of Bridgetown with a big camera slung over the shoulder is to offer yourself as a victim Serious camera work develops a sense of the artistic. Our most interesting experiences came in the Island of Dominica — the most mountainous, the heaviest-wooded and, we thought, the most beautiful of the West Indies. Dominica is the home of the remnants of the original inhabitants of the Islands — the Caribs. Five hundred of them live on the windward side of the island on a reservation approachable only on foot. We decided to hike across the mountain to see them — a distance of forty miles over an old Carib trail gouged in the side of the mountains. Some Leica shots of locales in and around the Caribbean Sea. Note the pretty Carib mother and baby. The picture at lower right was shot during a five days' gale off Cape Hatteras. Note the stack of the tanker over behind the big waves. to every guide and boatman of the town. Waving red flags before bulls is much safer. Let them spot you as a tourist and the voluble army of guide will all but carry you where you wish to go — or don't wish to go. We soon learned to carry our Leica in the pocket. A surrounding mob of shouting guides and hucksters is poor atmosphere for the amateur photographer. If one wishes to obtain character studies without the subject's knowledge that he is being photographed, a small, inconspicuous camera is almost indespensable. Our little Leica we found particularly suited to this type of work. When we were in port we often had to devote our nights to film development. After our one experience in which carelessness about the temperature of the developing and fixing baths pitted our negatives, we were very careful to keep all solutions at 65° F. The boat had no refrigeration system and, of course, our tank water was the temperature of the sea water — approximately 85° F. We had to go ashore and get ice for each development, although at Grenada we hired two little ragged negroes to get ice for us. Almost every day different couples of equally ragged children would row out to say, "Need any more ice, mister? We're the boys who got ice for you the other day." They knew we couldn't tell them apart! As we tramped the steep wooded hills of Grenada and St. Lucia and the other charming islands of the Windward and Leeward group, we learned that the camera itself is a great aid to one's appreciation of beauty. Intent upon returning with good pictures, we found ourselves growing more alert to beauty of composition, of line and form. Sometimes we found it in the innumerable old forts dotting the West Indian hills, sometimes in the patterns of cane fields on the slopes of green mountains, and sometimes in the barren streaks of lava sloping down the side of Mt. Soufriere on the Island of St. Vincent or the rugged shoulders of Mt. Pelee of Martinique. Bergie and I set out for our four-day hike leaving my wife under the competent guardianship of a husky young negress. The trail was narrow and precipitous. Occasionally we would pass groups of natives, heads laden with heavy loads of bananas, yams, or great sheets of corrugated iron for their homes. What a paradise for the picture hunter here. Distant mountains with a foreground of banana tree leaves; a coal-black boy with a white-toothed smile, bearing on his head a kerosene tin full of flying fish ; a strong, short-skirted colored girl standing in the rain, her heavy basket protected by two huge green leaves which she had plucked from the verdant roadside ; a little child on his knees, drinking the cool water which trickled down the rocky walls to be shot out into an available stream by a bit of bamboo. Our Leica found little rest these days. After spending the night at an ancient sugar estate we started on the last lap to the Carib quarter. As we tramped along the narrow rocky path we began to notice the difference in the features of those natives who passed us. The purely negroid type seemed to be giving way to the Mongolian type. The men and women now had squint eyes, high cheek-bones, and long, straight black hair. More frequently than not, they could not speak English. Once we stopped before a grass hut to ask the mother of two naked babies crawling about the house if we might photograph them. She spoke no English and we soon discovered that she did not know what the camera was for. That night we slept on the floor of the cabin of Jolly John, Carib chief, recently deposed ("fired" would be a better word) for permitting his tribesmen to smuggle rum. The Caribs were interested in two things about us — my zipper shirt and the camera. One day Jolly John informed us that a woman had come to have her picture made. Outside stood a large Carib woman with (Turn to Page 24) Piease mention The International Photographer when corresponding with advertisers.