In February of 1986, I was lying in a hammock somewhere on the Caribbean coast of Honduras and I was deep in thought. A Honduran environmental organisation was paying me to photograph the national parks and document some environmental issues. I kept swaying in the hammock during the heat of the day awaiting better light toward late afternoon … swaying and thinking.
I wasn’t happy. I realised then and there that I really didn’t know diddly squat about photography. I had been masquerading for the past five years as a nature/environmental photographer, but in that sleepy coastal village in Honduras I realised I wasn’t getting any better at photography because I was working in a vacuum. I was totally self taught and had reached the point where I had taught myself everything I knew.
I needed a mentor. I needed to be able to walk and breathe and talk photography with another human being.
I finished that assignment in Honduras, then finished a contract in Nicaragua and then returned to Costa Rica. I packed everything I had accumulated over five years in Central America in a couple backpacks and a cardboard box. Two months after that epiphany in Honduras I was in Madison, Wisconsin. I had no plan … just that somehow, I wanted to learn to be a better photographer.
That didn’t happen. Life has a way of throwing out forks in the road. For some reason, I convinced myself to take the road leading to a graduate degree in agricultural journalism.
Two years later, I got my degree. I was moving out of my campus office when a tall German walks in and in his thick accent invites me for lunch. Wolfgang Hoffmann was the filmmaker and photographer of our agricultural journalism department. I hung out at times in the film unit and chatted with Wolfgang at department parties, but I didn’t know him well. ‘How about if you stick around and work for us as a scriptwriter,’ Wolfgang asked over lunch. I was slightly stunned; that just wasn’t one of the forks in the road that I was visualising. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a shiny new degree so I’m heading back to Central America and try to put it to use.’ Wolfgang wouldn’t accept that. ‘Come with me,’ he said.
Wolfgang led me to the projection room and pulled out some films from a shelf and fired up the projector. I had heard Wolfgang was a pretty good documentary filmmaker, but I really didn’t know how good he was until I spent that afternoon watching his films with him. They were stunning. He was brilliant. Suddenly there was new fork in the road. I realised Wolfgang was the opportunity I visualised while in that hammock in Honduras.
For two years, Wolfgang and I travelled the Midwest making movies and shooting stills. We’d go everywhere together with a couple of cameras around the neck and another in the pocket. He selflessly shared his knowledge about photography with me. I was finally able to not only develop the skills I yearned for but developed my artistic style … heavily influenced by his own.
A few years later, I was lying in another hammock on the porch of our home near Cali, Colombia. That feeling of living in a professional vacuum still absorbed me. I opened up the directory of the American Society of Magazine Photographers and found that only two members were listed for Colombia: me and a Belgian named Victor Englebert. It turns out he lived just down the road from me. I gave him a call and he was shocked to learn of another photographer in the area.
It was the start of a beautiful friendship. Victor had lived the life I had always dreamed of but I never had the courage nor talent to achieve. He had travelled to some of the most remote parts of the world … often financed by National Geographic … and in 17 photo books had documented cultures and people who very few had ever seen.
Victor and I developed a reciprocal friendship. He was a bit old school with his photography and struggled with some of the settings on his new Nikon. I taught him how to use his new camera while he inspired me with endless stories of the adventures he had taken during his lifetime. I never tired of Victor’s stories and even after Padma and I left Colombia, Victor and I continued our friendship with long letters. Victor and his wife, Marta, moved to Pennsylvania where Padma and our boys visited him. As photography evolved into a digital medium, Victor and I would correspond at great lengths about how we needed to evolve as well. It was so important to me to have him there just to talk about photography and life in general.
Victor died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2015. Wolfgang died suddenly and unexpectedly a year later in 2016. I can’t pick up a camera without thinking of my departed mentor and my departed inspirer and when I do post a photo I wish so dearly I could share it with them.
