By Hari Menon and Heather Park
Africa, what a great continent. I'm talking about wildlife, but what many people here forget about is the people. Anne Tapler White is a superb photographer who is a very interesting. I mean, why would anybody take photos of African culture over animals, right? Anna Tapler White is a photographer who cares deeply about African culture and interviewing her was a great experience. What inspired you to start a project on Africa? Even though we are separated by many thousands of miles, were basically the same people. We all want the same things in life. I want my viewers to see how difficult it is for people in third world countries to achieve what we take for granted. How hard they have to work, and in some cases, they don't achieve it at all. Why did you take photos of people and not animals? Because I find that people are part of humanity. So many people go to Africa and that’s all they take. There is so much more that we can say about Africa than just animals. What was your first photograph and what significance does it have to you? You mean on this trip? You mean my very first photograph? I don't know because you know there are some photographs that I don't even remember taking. I can get into that about the photographic process... in a vehicle travelling you're still looking and you’re still photographing. You take them... This photograph I don't remember because I was in a vehicle and I took them instantaneously. It was just a boom, sometimes that happens, that you just see something and you take it very quickly. Because if you don't take it, it's gone. Where did you learn photography? My major was in college was printmaking, so I consider myself multidisciplinary. I do photography such as this or I will do a diorama where I would set up a situation. Like I did the Trump Motel and I got a little building which had quick pieces from a shop and I had a little figure that I coloured that looked like Trump. I do things like that photographically, and also do a three-dimensional panel. One of them is called Books Fly Away so I get little books with wings that are flying away. So I consider myself not necessarily a photographer but I am multidisciplinary and I use photography as a tool. When travelling excites me, I have really come into travelling as an element for photography. What inspired you to start a project in Africa? When I first went to Africa was 2013 and we went from Ghana to Benin and I started to document the people. To me it was so important that I just continued. From Accra all the way up to Saint Louis in Senegal and Accra to Capetown. There were three separate trips over, I would say, six years and 24 thousand kilometers, in that time. How long were you in Africa? Three months. So these photos were three months of camp, we did have some guest houses and I think when our leaders felt sorry for us so we did stay in one really nice hotel. But it was sixty five percent camping. And we cooked our own food, we went into villages we bought; meat that had a lot of flies on it. And then we bought vegetables and whatever we could get to cook…. This is the end of my project… this was nineteen, we just came back last April. So about ten months ago Did you find anything surprising, interesting that was unknown to you at first? I think when I went to Africa my eyes were open, I knew what I was going to encounter. I think what really overwhelmed me was the fact that people were just so overwhelmed to see us. And it was one place and I think it was in Lubanga? Angola? And we left our hotel and we were in our truck and we drove towards the main street and it was like we were in a parade and everyone on the side of the street were cheering and waving and it was overwhelming. So I was overwhelmed with just the people and how welcoming they were. What about African culture stood out to you during your stay there? There is always something beneath the surface that we never see. Like in Cameroon what they do to young girls is they iron their breast so that the men don’t look at them a certain way. So they iron them with hot stones and irons so they flatten them. It doesn’t always work but you know there are things like that. Why are all your photos black and white? From the very beginning I just found black and white simply finds the subject. It was a more artistic statement. And I love black and white. I get very consumed with the color. When I see an image, I look at blue and green and yellow and I know that it relates to the image. I get more involved in the colors. Whereas black and white you are just dealing with the subject.
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