Claudia Andujah, Yanomami Youth Dancing a Traditional Reahu Festival, 1978
Claudia Andujar was born in 1931 in Switzerland and raised in Oradea on the Romania/Hungary border. In 1944, she and her mother fled to Switzerland, then to the United States, and finally to San Paulo, Brazil in 1955. Her Jewish father and all his extended family were killed in Nazi concentration camps.
Of this experience, she said, “I want to help the Yanomami to survive like my family did not. I think my work is dependent on the suffering of my childhood. My friends from school all died in Auschwitz. Everyone. Nobody, nobody survived” (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/jan/29/claudia-andujar-photography-yanomami-brazil-jair-bolsonaro).
The survival of the Yanomami, an indigenous tribe in Brazil’s Amazon jungle, was threatened by disease and development. In response to a devastating measles epidemic among the Yanomami, Andujar gave up photography to establish medical clinics. Her fight to protect the Yanomami people spanned decades. She is now 89 years old, and still an active voice in their defense.
I love Andujar’s use of light and tried to imitate this in the studio. Below are three of my images and a discussion of my work compared with Andujar’s.
My image closely imitates Andujar’s pose and contrast, but does not communicate the same message. Andujar’s image is tied to a social cause and is part of a larger body of work; mine is not. My image, a simple portrait, sends a different message, and possibly one that I did not intend. I crafted the lighting to sculpt the face and create a pleasing portrait. When I showed this image to another professor, he explained that my image objectifies her (she is not looking at the camera) and by looking down, she is less powerful; in a historical context, this sexualizes her, which is a message I did not intend.
Technical spec: f/10, 1/200 sec, ISO 100, 70 mm. I used one large softbox, very close (just out of the frame) to the right of the model. The background was white but due to the light fall-off from the softbox (and a small adjustment in Photoshop), appears black.
Below are two other images from the assignment.
PhotoChronologies 