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Jimmy Nelson’s World – The Eternal Spectre of the Noble Savage

Taco Hidde Bakker, Sophie Feyder, Annie Goodner

A Dutch version of the following essay was published under the title Jimmy Nelsons wereld in EXTRA 17 (Fall 2014), FotoMuseum Antwerp, pp. 34-41. For inquiries and/or republication, please obtain written permission from (one of) the authors: taco@tacohiddebakker.com, sophiefeyder@yahoo.com, info@anniegoodner.com

Monumental is a term that best describes Jimmy Nelson’s photo project Before They

Pass Away, published as a book in late 2013 and traveling as an exhibition since, both

for its ambitious scale and the subsequent size of the book.1 And not least for its

monumental failures and contradictions, of which one of the most damaging, perhaps, is

that Nelson propagates cultural diversity in a totalizing and homogenizing way. His work

neatly fits into a centuries-old tradition of romanticizing non-Western purity and

authenticity.

On many trips across the world and employing all the modern technologies he implicitly

deems responsible for the decline of indigenous cultures, Nelson went 'hunting' for the

most remote peoples and places on earth, to capture in photographs 29 indigenous

tribes "before they pass away"2. The indigenous subjects depicted are wearing traditional

garments, and are according to Nelson not just at their “Sunday best” but in their “day-to-

day” attire. What Nelson tried in his carefully composed tableaus is to “invert the racism

and put them on a pedestal. Rather than making an authentic picture of them, I try to

present them in an iconic light, in the same way we do with the people we perceive as

important.”3

The craze for monuments stemmed from a desire to guarantee unambiguous origins and                                                                                                                1  Published  by  teNeues  in  2013,  the  special  (“luxurious”)  XXL  book  measures  no  less  than  460x630  mm  2  “Across  the  world”  excludes  the  continents  of  Europe  and  North  America,  as  in  Nelson’s  view  its  peoples  and  cultures  are  impoverished,  i.e.  they  have  lost  their  authenticity.  3  Nelson  at  a  discussion  about  his  work,  organized  by  sub_Stance  and  the  working  group  Bring  Your  Images,  National  Museum  of  World  Cultures,  Leiden,  14  April  2014.    

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cultural stability, in the context of rampant nationalism and patriotism in the rapidly

changing world of the 19th century. Jimmy Nelson’s mission resonates with this modern

obsession with lasting monumentality: it seeks nothing less than to create a universal

visual archive (“for humanity”) of indigenous cultures in spectacular locations, before

modernity ultimately comes to destroy them both. In short, the message Nelson wants to

bring across is: we moderns (have) become impoverished with the demise of indigenous

cultures and we need to protect their authenticity (in order to recover our connection to

mother Earth).

Nelson (UK, 1967), who as a child lived in the (former) Third World and later attended

Jesuit boarding schools in England, started his career as a photojournalist, then, having

to support a family, ventured into commercial photography. Major financial backing by

Dutch billionaire Marcel Boekhoorn enabled Nelson to embark on a project close to his

heart. Before They Pass Away, he said, is not so much about photography, but about

finding himself and about making contact. The purpose of it consisted of a “combination

of self-indulgence and to make what I perceive of the most beautiful pictures I technically

can make of the most beautiful places and the most beautiful people on the planet.”

It is unquestionable that Jimmy Nelson has impressed many people, partly for his

persona as a relentless and passionate adventurer, but most of all for his technically

brilliant and breath-taking photographs. Amongst the flow of appraisal he received, BBC

called him a “maestro”. The work also received considerable attention in the

Netherlands, where Nelson is based, since the fall of 2013. Before They is presented in

three ways, as a book, exhibitions in a commercial setting (travelling to 17 galleries in

the culturally impoverished continents of Europe and North America), and several

museum shows. In The Netherlands, an extensive solo exhibition of Nelson’s work was

on show from April through September 2014 at the National Museum of World Cultures

in Leiden. By assigning Nelson the task to photograph the Dutch “tribes” of the islands of

Marken and Terschelling, and adding them to the exhibition of Before They, the museum

attempted to counterbalance Nelson’s one-sided aestheticism. But the show remained

too immersive and averse to serious criticism within its set-up, to spark much critique

from visitors and reviewers alike. They were stunned into silent admiration instead. The

formerly respectable daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad featured an uncritical review of

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Nelson’s project, admiring the beauty and courage of the so-called premodern people

and asking how long it would take for their hands to be contaminated by iPhones.4

The project as a whole acts as a kind of visual blitz, to such an extent that even for

potentially critical sources it works like a "stun-gun to subdue, to quiet thinking"5, causing

nothing but awe to express. Because the photographs are so spectacularly produced

(orbiting around Nelson’s role as fearless director and adventurer), we stop thinking

about, interrogating, or seeing the often-blatant inconsistencies in descriptions and

definitions of the ‘tribes’ (Tibetans, Maori and Vanuatu are all equally whole, equally

‘tribal’, equally anti-modern). Context becomes irrelevant. Time becomes irrelevant too.

Never mind that a simple Internet search will yield more than twenty photography books

from the last three decades with nearly identical missions or titles (almost always

something with 'vanishing').

                                                                                                               4  Marianne  Vermeijden,  'Vergeven  en  vergeten  is  hier  een  misdaad',  NRC  Handelsblad,  7  March  2014.  5  James  Clifford  in  email  correspondence  with  Taco  Hidde  Bakker,  30  March  2014.  

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In one astounding image from Before They Pass Away, two men in Vanuatu, an island

nation in the Pacific, boldly rest atop a rocky peak, gazing into the distance. The sun

illuminates the palm trees below and casts shadows across the vibrant sea, forest, open

sky and their exposed and lean bodies. Positioned at the very center of the frame, each

man is holding a bow and arrow in contemplation. This tableau is at once intimately

close - any closer and the viewer would be flung off his perch -, and yet they are

untouchable. This image is as technically beautiful as the other images in the series, with

a balance of vibrant colour, texture, meticulous composition and superb timing.

But what happens if we look more closely at this photograph? Why are these men bow

and arrow they normally use to fish the ocean on top of a mountain? What status does

the volcano have in local mythology? And in what way does ‘Sunday best’, a term

continuously used by Nelson to describe the eye-catching traditional attire worn by most

of his subjects, transform the of subjects’ tools and clothing into an empty vessel for our

imagination and wonderment? One starts to wonder to what extent the places, things

and people appearing in this work have been neatly arranged to both excite us as

viewers and then satisfy our curiosity. Nelson readily admits to staging the scenarios he

photographs, which is apparent in the abundant ‘behind the scenes' images featured on

the project’s website.

Looking closer once more, this image is also a prime example of the key mechanisms

behind the success and popularity of Nelson’s work. As the project’s quasi-urgent title

warns, this beauty sits on a precipice: in order to exist it must be witnessed by us,

perpetually, but at a safe distance. A cornerstone of this model is the pronouncement of

imminent destruction; creating a sense of urgency that Nelson spreads over the entirety

of the work. By simply owning the book we contribute to the establishment of a

permanent visual record of an authentic mankind before modernization disrupted it (or in

Nelson’s opinion: corrupted it). Ultimately, the work assumes that the subjects don’t have

an internal method of recording or exploring their lives and the changes to their lives.

The two men in this photograph have no names, they are simply known as ‘the Vanuatu’.

While the book contains cursory information about rituals and food, the subjects’

ethnicity predominantly finds expression in the surrounding, seemingly untouched,

natural landscape.

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Since its inception, photography has been used to record and romanticize a world

seemingly threatened by change. From Charles Wooley documenting ‘the last of the

black Tasmanians’ in 1866 to Edward S. Curtis’s early twentieth-century depictions of

‘the vanishing race’ in The North American Indian (1907-1930), photography has

continued to popularise and illustrate narratives of disappearance. This kind of

photography requires a seemingly disempowered subject. Colonialism has historically

provided the circumstances for engendering this kind of relationship. However, as is

evident in the huge amount of critical discourse that has developed especially around

Curtis’s work, this (photographic) relationship is no longer acceptable. Today there are

abundant indigenous movements to protect ancestral lands, a U.N. charter on

indigenous rights, as well as a larger global dialogue about post-colonial representation.

This political dimension is crucial to the contemporary relevance of Jimmy Nelson’s

project, but has gone completely missing. Rather, Before They seems to flourish as a

result of its atemporality: the subjects are dead silent, not granted voice in a dialogue.

Admirers are offered entry into a world without time, without history and without power

dynamics. They are given the conflicting task of pre-empting an inevitable

disappearance of people whose very presence in this project is prefaced on their

threatened status.

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Before They Pass Away has become a brand and a major commercial venture,

obscuring important questions about ethical responsibility and the rights of its subjects.

Under the sign of a mutual, even primal understanding (Nelson often demonstrated how

he communicated with his subjects, by making himself small as a dog to win over their

confidence that he is harmless), the production team has not bothered to issue release

forms, which is and should among documentary photographers, ethnographers and

filmmakers be a basic act of using informed consent. Furthermore, Nelson naïvely

assumes that his interaction with his subjects, as well as bringing a copy of the heavy

book back is worthy compensation for their ‘participation’. It follows his outdated notion

that the peoples he photographed—despite many meanwhile having been photographed

by tourists for decades—neither have a clue of what a camera is, nor use for any

monetary compensation.

Here we have pointed out only some of the many inherent inconsistencies throughout

the project. Perhaps the most patronizing and worrying is the basic idea that while his

subjects have so much to teach us, they remain ignorant of their cultural assets and

Nelson, or the enlightened viewer in the urbanized centers of the world, is the person

who must make their cultural wealth apparent on a global scale.

© 2015

Taco Hidde Bakker, Sophie Feyder, Annie Goodner