New Zealanders now living in the Catskill Mountains of New York State, John Eastcott published his first book of photographs at age 17 and later earned a degree in photography in London, England. This large format black and white series was produced in 1974, before he met his future professional collaborator and life partner Yva Momatiuk in Wyoming. They quickly decided to share their photography credits, pitched their first story idea to National Geographic, and embarked on their mission to the Canadian Arctic titled Still Eskimo, Still Free article in 1976. Other articles for the Society followed: documenting the lives of the Maori of eastern New Zealand, the sheep herders of the New Zealand highlands, the highlanders of Poland and Slovakia, the inhabitants of the marine and subarctic kingdom of Newfoundland and of Labrador, as well as Dance of Death about a bull moose killed by a family of wolves in Alaska, and Shore Leave, documenting the violent breeding season of southern elephant seals on South Georgia Island.
They published six books, including This Marvelous Terrible Place: Images of Newfoundland and Labrador, which later became a stage production. Their images and stories have been published in numerous magazines around the world. Their photographs have won awards in the Pictures of the Year and BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year competitions and have appeared on US and Australian postage stamps.
Site Web : https://www.momatiukeastcott.com/
E-mail : [email protected]
For prints: contact by email
For archive images: https://www.mindenpictures.com/search?s=momatiuk
[email protected]
Introduction: providing service
“This is a photographic project focused on Bank intersection, the heart of the City of London. This is the intersection of Poultry, Princes, Threadneedle, Cornhill and Lombard streets, among the oldest in the capital. Its mission was to document the neighborhood’s professions, which were numerous and extraordinarily varied. Lucie Sante
Lanza: How did the idea for this subject come about, what were your influences?
Eastcott : I was studying photography in England and the final year’s plan was to produce a year’s worth of work, including a major project. My major opus was produced between February and June 1974. I designed it to challenge my weaknesses: being confined in a big city, photographing complete strangers and mastering a camera. I didn’t have a script, just a desire to see where the concept would take me.
My documentary approach was inspired by the United States Farm Security Administration Photography Project, launched in 1937. I wanted to take portraits of ordinary people exactly as I encountered them in their workplaces.
The choice of the 4″x5″ black and white format was influenced by the recently published work East 100th Street by Bruce Davidson, who took his large format camera into cramped interiors and made intimate images of the people he was with. It was made friends with details and tonal gradients that 35mm cameras, with their greater spontaneity, simply could not do.
Lanza: How did you end up on site in this area of London to take the portraits?
Eastcott : I felt that the project needed a certain physical restraint, a limit so that the serendipitous nature of the work could unfold. I took the old seven street intersection in front of the Bank of England as the epicenter of the circle I drew. I loved the idea that all these people with their dynamic professional diversity, social backgrounds, and personal histories were working within a mile of each other.
Lanza: What was your process and approach to making the portraits, including the technical aspects?
Eastcott : I just walked the streets, went into dark alleys and knocked on doors. There were times when permission was required before taking an image, and sometimes an appointment had to be made. It took time and repeated visits, but refusals were very rare and the responses were as varied as the personalities. I was shy and deferential, which engendered a favorable attitude from almost everyone. I felt very privileged to have received such a positive response, and it showed in many of the faces I photographed.
I carried my Linhof Technica 4×5 camera, three lenses, several racks of sheet film, and a heavy tripod from location to location and subject to subject. I only used natural light and allowed people to pose however they wanted. By doing without a focusing hood, I would judge the composition (all images are full format) with a reflex adapter giving an inverted image on the frosted screen, and thus maintain total contact with my subjects before removing the holder -film and press the shutter button. . My exposures in many dark interiors were long and required somewhat static poses of the people. This didn’t bother me; on the contrary, it often gives them dignity. I collected brief stories from each person to create captions and personalize the images. The people I met would refer me to others, especially as I slowly built the portfolio and they could see the nature of my work. Later I came back to them and gave everyone a draw.
Lanza: What are you looking to do with this series, since it has remained unpublished until now? Only a few appear in this very limited article, and a set of prints are in the archives of the Guildhall Library in London.
Eastcott : The original negatives were on Ilford acetate film which slowly turned cyan and faded. To preserve the work, I made high quality digital files from the negatives: 14,400 x 18,000 pixels. I believe these images would have a strong impact if printed in large format and displayed in a gallery, allowing the public to absorb their human and historical impact, their richness of detail and the daily lives of workers 50 years ago. Captions complement the background stories and give each image a personal tone; they are an integral part of the job. And few photographers devote time and resources to this type of large format documentation.
Lanza: What was the emotional experience you had through this project and how did it influence your later career?
Eastcott : As a New Zealander, I come from a country whose colonial roots in its newly created cities go back barely 100 years, whereas in London they go back a millennium. It wasn’t just about finding myself in a city with three times the population of my entire native country, but this historic crossroads in the heart of its old town presented a rich mix of the familiar and the alien. People used English, their common language, but our accents spoke of different origins and the surroundings of the city offered a different depth of tradition. I got a glimpse of what England’s first settlers in New Zealand left behind and the traditions they kept while building a new colony 12,000 miles from their origin.
Just as importantly, I was embarking on my journey toward adulthood and the need to become self-reliant, and I wanted to see how others had gone about their individual quests. The richness of human diversity that I discovered in this 1 km diameter circle nourished my dreams and allowed me to seek my own ambitious horizons.
My London subjects were trying to help a young student graduate, and their desire to help was expressed in many forms: in almost all cases, these people were my seniors. The reaction of the people depicted is not only a response to having a large camera and tripod sitting at their workplace with its lens pointed at them, but also to a naive young man from a former British colony on the other side of the world and at his audacious request. to photograph them at their work. The original title of my article was a rather dry description: People who work within half a kilometer of the Bank of England. Looking back on their work with a more mature experience of what these people showed me, I now call it Giving Service, both for the respect I have for the daily work they contributed to their society , and for my gratitude for allowing me to step in, document and learn from the time and attention they gave to a younger me.
When I was 15, I began a dream of falling in love with a young woman, traveling the world, and photographing for National Geographic. And only a year after making my images in London, I was on a side road hitchhiking into town when a Land Rover pulled up, the front seat littered with cameras. “Another photographer? » I blurted out happily. “And who is the original?” » retorted the woman behind the wheel. It was only a 15 minute drive from Jackson, Wyoming, but I was thrown into a new reality and amazed. The charming woman I dreamed of falling in love with could really exist!
We met again a week later and I showed him this work. Yes, I was another photographer. Ten months later, we had published the first magazine article with our dual credit and secured the first of our many commissions for National Geographic magazine.
