Thursday 28 May 2009

Tribes of West Papua

This is a long term project of mine to document some of the many tribes of West Papua. I have been four times now, the first time was in 2004 and most recently in March of 2009. There is nowhere like it and I love it. I have photographed the Dani, the Mek, The Komorro, Korowai, Kombai and Asmat tribes to date and will be uploading more images from the trips. I will split the gallery in to individual tribal galleries when I have uploaded the majority of the work.
It may be of interest that Survival International will be publishing a book this year commemorating 40 years of helping tribal people, they will be using several of my images in the book, it is to be called "We are One". Two of my photos are also used in their diaries available from http://www.survival-international.org/
I also have a book publisher in Holland interested in publishing the work.


Tribes of West Papua, Indonesia - Images by Grenville Charles

Damascus- Portraits from a Taxi

Didn't have very long in Damascus as we were filming in Latakia in the north of Syria, it's very frustrating been in such a wonderful place with no time to take photographs. I did however have an hours Taxi ride in the city on our return from the filming and shot these portraits, some of them as we passed at very high speed, not ideal circumstances for photography but they have a certain quality about them that I like, something of a departure from my usual work but perhaps a step in the right direction.


Damascus Taxi Ride - Images by Grenville Charles

Tuesday 12 May 2009

Film making in the Middle East

Just returned from three weeks in Syria, shooting stills for the director Najdat Anzour's new 30 part tv series to be aired during ramadam. Najdat Anzour is probably the biggest director in the whole of the Arab speaking world and is recognised everywhere, probably the equivelent to Steven Spielberg in the West. He is something of a tyrant, but in the nicest possible way. On the set of this latest film he shot a revolver at the feet of Kalib, his production assistent on a daily basis when he displeased him, but it was all done with great humour, and I liked him very much. He works exceptionally fast in comparison to working on a film set here in the UK, but even by Arabic standards I was told he was quick.
Najdat also has a feature film in the pipeline, it is set during the colonial rule of Libya by Italy in the 1930's and was written by Gadaffi. I was privaliged enough to see a teaser for this film and it was stunningly photographed and very beautiful. Najdat has asked me to do the stills for it when it goes into production, I agreed.


Syria - Images by Grenville Charles