The art of Jimmy Nelson
Little museum of photography and visual arts
I met this photographer thanks to an exhibition, which ends in these days, at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. The photo above, an icon of the exhibition, immediately struck me and intrigued me, so I went to search on the internet for other images and some news about this artist.
I found some very beautiful photographs that reflect the indigenous populations of the various corners of the world immortalized in their natural environment and with their traditional costumes, all in a mythical and heroic vision, images of great effect and masterfully composed down to the smallest details, so well composed and meticulously studied that at times it borders on the perception of something fake. Inside me, my thoughts also literally split into two opposing factions: a part of me immediately loved these images, but another voice in the background considered them stereotyped, almost postcards for tourists, fake and constructed on the spot, according to a typically Western aesthetic and cultural vision.
I had never heard of Jimmy Nelson, so I went to look for something about him and suddenly some warning bells went off inside me: in fact, on the major photography sites there were statements portraying him as a "resilient" character, "radical" and "completely outside the box", (see this interesting interview on Vanity Fair), and here I felt a dissonance within myself, the same dissonance that I perceived when looking at his works.
First of all because if you are truly an outsider, someone completely outside the box and the system as it is described, you will never manage to set up an exhibition at Palazzo Reale, in the heart of Milan, in such an institutionalized venue, and they certainly wouldn't let you hold as well as conferences at universities. To do these things, to have this notoriety and this consideration, to have this flattery from such formal and institutionalized environments as universities, the media and Royal Palaces, then you must be well inserted into the schemes of the system and you must be absolutely functional to them.
In fact, reading his biography and his story, I seem to understand that his life, as narrated, perfectly interprets the stereotyped script of the Western hero, and summarizes in itself some values, or aspiring ideals such that our society Western wants to propose as fundamental in the journey of man, a path that traces a sort of example, a sort of redemption of life, almost a reward for a difficult past, a modern redemption.
His work is an admirable example of artistic work capable, through its fascination, of influencing ideas and sensibilities, the story of his life then offers further valid support to this narrative which aims to elevate itself to teaching, to a path. However, it seems clear that, having had the opportunity to travel halfway around the world since I was a child, we are not talking about a self-made man who started from nothing, but about a person who already started from a certain level. Having then read his biography, one can sense many things in his photographic works that fleetingly transpire through the looks and attitudes of his subjects, but perhaps they are just my fantasies. However, these photographs are not innocent and every detail is meticulously studied, as stated by the photographer himself, who says that he spends a lot, a lot of time in the creation of his images, anything but a warm, passionate and immediate form of expression, a language more than an art, if I allow this distinction.
I also looked at some images and videos of him backstage and I see that he works in a team, not alone. Often we poor amateur photographers are amazed by the beauty of certain images, and we imagine the artist who created them as a supreme master, almost a magician, whose similar results we would never be able to emulate. But if you think about teamwork, having a certain level of equipment available, then things change. When I go to photograph I'm alone and I have to carry all the equipment on my shoulders, which has to fit in a backpack, so I can only bring the bare essentials. Of course, having helpers who carry bulky equipment to inaccessible places and help you arrange the lights and scenography is a completely different matter, and I am convinced that many of us amateur photographers could achieve excellent results in these conditions. So often the famous photographer is not a magician or a superhero, more simply he is someone who has "possibilities" that others don't have. It is a characteristic of our culture to create "the myth", the guru, the great artist, the character, and paint him as eclectic, brilliant, outside the box, when often these works are the result of great team work . Even the great artists of the past had their "workshops" with scores of workers who worked for them, but then history never remembers these anonymous collaborators and only the name of the great master remains in the books. The artist certainly deserves the credit for knowing how to organise, plan, mediate, conceive and materialize his ideas and his visions, which is anything but simple.
With this I don't want to belittle anyone's work, I want to criticize or devalue it, I'm nobody to be able to allow myself this. These words of mine are just strictly personal considerations and thoughts that often run through my mind when I think about the works of many great photographers, and I like to share my thoughts, dialectically, to stimulate reflections, and obviously you will certainly not agree . But a healthy exchange of ideas is always constructive.
And these are the personal considerations, then there are the cultural considerations regarding this work. These beautiful glossy images are intended to be a tribute to the beauty of humanity, but they risk ending up like those folkloric dolls that were in fashion years ago. It seems to me to be a typical modus operandi of our imperialist societies, that of invading both materially and culturally other territories to eradicate their roots, to impose one's own model of life and values. Once "the enemy", the savage, has been annihilated, once he has been secretly depleted of his physical and moral riches, and only then after having rendered him harmless, a public recantation is staged and one pretends to work for the good, to recover the saveable. As the title of a photographic book by Nelson says, "Before they pass away", before they die, before their traditions disappear, but now it is too late, they are already dead as a people and as a culture, and what happens to them what remains is only folklore, to be sold as a souvenir to tourists, or as a sterile curiosity for Western intellectuals who seek meaning in their lives in shamanism or exotic mysticism, because their culture, spiritually, no longer has anything to offer. Our culture has already killed us all inside, we are now like dying zombies and insatiably thirsty for life, and we seek in the wild, the exotic, the shaman or the Buddhist, a glimmer of hope that our global continent has now completely lost.
It is a "genocide", give me the strong term, which perhaps all of us have done in our own small way, when we have embraced "the future" and all its false promises, and denied our roots, the cultures of our grandparents and our ancestors. Now someone is repenting and trying to collect, conserve, enhance and spread these now dead traditions, we see some initiatives around, some books, some small museums, but they are things that are now dead, they are no longer part of our everyday life, an entire world is been lost. We believed it too, and it is bitter now to admit that we were deceived.
These images have a bitter aftertaste, they have this double facet: a tribute to the superb beauty of humanity certainly, but they also recall in a somewhat veiled way the trophy that the hunter brings home after the carnage. I don't know how you see it, but I have a bit of this impression, without taking anything away from the artistic, documentary and human value of these images, without a shadow of a doubt very suggestive and iconic.
Nelson works in analogue, for many an added value, for me a question of personal choices, his own philosophy, undoubtedly fascinating, and he takes a lot, a lot of time for his shots, shooting in the most inaccessible places on the entire planet, and here let's go back to my initial speech. His photographs remotely remind me of Salgado's works, even though he works exclusively in black and white and with lights that are of a much more marked drama. Salgado also photographed indigenous populations in their natural environment, but his photos seem more dynamic and confidential, less formal and less set, more natural in short, while Nelson has a decidedly more Hollywood style. His characters often appear almost like superheroes, or like Gods who have descended to Earth from some distant planet, surreal apparitions at times, their costumes, their prowess, their bodies and their attitudes seem to literally reflect the strength and atmosphere of the surrounding environment. And perhaps it is precisely this visual impact that captures and fascinates, like a vision that sometimes is hard to believe.
Looking at these images, we realize how all our values, our concepts of reality and the canons of beauty, modesty and respect are absolutely relative, indeed they are probably completely misleading in the logic of a healthy relationship with Nature, spirituality and others. An example that particularly struck me is the skimpy clothing of many populations who live in harsh climates: they appear on the snow with legs and arms uncovered, often wearing something little more than a pair of slippers, and this makes us understand how even the perception of strong sensations such as biting cold, which we consider physical, objective, are in reality subjective and cultural perceptions. In this regard, I saw a documentary where indigenous populations living in Tierra del Fuego were shown calmly bathing completely naked in the icy waters of the Arctic, all in the most obvious way.
We realize, with the great work of this photographer, how our civilization has literally severed our umbilical cord with the planet's energies, and how we now wander orphaned on this Earth admiring, fascinated and incredulous, those who still this he has a connection. Let us always keep in mind, however, that this civilization of ours has precisely this maniacal characteristic, that of severing the roots of man, and then leaving him at the mercy of simulacra and fetishes, always a stranger to himself, always tending towards a horizon that moves away step by step. .
Great credit therefore to Jenny Nelson, if with her photographs she knows how to displace our reasoning and she knows how to unleash a wave of such impetuous thoughts.
