The people of my world are nothing but the sum of certain wondrous encounters. Over the years, I have pinned them fast to my emotional panoply. Some of these people I only passed by in my travels while others I keep revisiting as I have for years on end. I lingered beside many of them at some point in space and time, trying to figure each and everyone out. They have all taught me something important about life. I have passionately taken pictures of them all and I’ll be trying now to tell their story. My world would be much smaller and blander had I never met them. Let me, therefore, extend my gratitude to any and all such characters.
Suleiman
The road from Jerantut to Kuala Tahan was seriously bumpy. And full of hairpin bends. Our heads kept banging on the windows in our double attempt of either watching the scenery or stealing a nap. The wooziness persisted even when, at twilight, we’d started straying about the townlet bordering the rainforest. Lying in Malaysia, Taman Negara is the oldest and probably the most fascinating stretch of jungle on the planet. We were on its fringe and looking for an independent guide to lead us into the depths. Almost a month before, while still in Vietnam, we had been taken on a sort of fieldtrip for the day. But we’d had enough of package tours. This time, we were after a knowing local that would take us on roads less travelled by…
Then we came across Suleiman who, half devoured by mosquitoes, was sitting on a ledge by the river. He was smoking and seemed, at first glance, as though he’d lost some of his marbles, yet in sort of a likeable way. He spoke emphatically, slashing the air with ample dramatic gestures. We negotiated for an hour before we came to an agreement concerning the route and the fee. The dawn was barely cracking when, the following morning, we hopped into a powered dugout and vanished into thin air. The jungle is all about sounds, smells and sensations far too intense for my mere page to match. It matches, however, Suleiman himself, who was to become my photographic subject for the next several days even though he wasn’t particularly crazy about the idea of suddenly becoming a photo model.
The primordial rule of photography is to find a subject you care about, whichever it may be, a subject that significantly stirs both your mind and soul. The same as with writing, photography is actually a language, an intercession between us and the world. It has its own unspoken grammar rules, its own tenses and dialogues, climaxes and boring descriptions which as in any compulsory reading you must necessarily skip. Contact sheets are nothing but endeavours to articulate a sentence. Fragile and bidimensional as it may be on a patch of paper or, for that matter, made up of some pixels on a screen, photography is basically emotional memory. And sometimes, for the ones truly involved in their own story, it has the magical force or restoring the tridimensional body of the world itself, every so often not without sounds, sensations, smells and all. That’s the strength of a subject you take on with sincerity and passion.
That’s how things are with Suleiman, no less. When I look at him in the pictures, I recollect the damp cave where we spent the night sleeping straight on the ground, the leeches you couldn’t escape even if wearing boots, the eerie sounds of the harvest flies, the monkeys calling from high above in the canopy of those endless trees and the smell of that tobacco blended with some secrets herbs which could suddenly turn Suleiman from the cheerful, good-humoured person he was into an austere and broody philosopher prone to deep reflections on the meaning of life. More than anything, though, I am reminded of the constant fear we felt that, mistakenly overdosing his ganja, our man would unexpectedly abandon us forever in a jungle synonymous to the phrase “at the mercy of God”. Nobody would have found us anymore, not ever, as it had happened to so many who failed to follow well trodden paths. There was at least one day’s walk back to the nearest village and Suleiman was the only one who knew the right direction. Never before had my life depended so much on a photographic subject. Maybe that’s why I actually grew so fond of this man. We never lost sight of him even for a second. We lay him to our hearts, so to say, both as a guide and a photographic subject. He could never suspect what an important lesson he taught me.