Travel photography - Luke Duggleby, Larry Louie, and James Morgan

I came across the photography of Larry Louie and James Morgan as prize winners in the Travel Photographer of the Year Competition in 2010. My tutor, Michael Kinsey also suggested Larry Louie and Luke Duggleby as modern photographers that I might find interesting.

James and Luke are both commercial photographers working for magazine and corporate clients on photojournalism type assignments. Larry, in contrast, is an ophthalmologist by profession who practices in North America. Larry photographs remote parts of the world as a pass time.

Each of these photographers has photographed in Indonesia and have included portfolios of Indonesian subjects on their websites.

Larry Louie - Indonesia 2006 (Java and West Papua)

Luke Duggleby - The Salt Book - Kusamba, Bali and Savu, Indonesia

James Morgan - Papua Elections 2012

As I am familiar to some extent with these Indonesian locations and conditions, I chose these particular photos to review as guidance on these photographers approach and style.

Larry Louie

Larry's series of photographs of Java and West Papua are visually dramatic black and white pictures. The composition and enormous tonal range make the images strongly eye-catching and he clearly merited the Photographer of the Year award. I would differ however with the observation made on his website that his photography is "Realism at its best". For me, on the contrary, these photographs portray an visually exaggerated view of these scenes and places. The images seem to be touched up that they represent an imaginary ideal of the world. This is somewhat similar to the comment that images of women in magazines do not portray what women are actually like. These are very memorable images, but they convey little sense of the actual place.

Luke Duggleby

Luke, on the other hand, is taking photographs in locations without the stunning scenery and colourful characters photographed by Larry. Traditional salt production in Bali is taking place on a rather nondescript beach with local people dressed in their everyday clothes. The location is Savu is similar, although the ground is rocky. Nevertheless, Lukes photographs use compositional techniques of framing, asymmetry, pattern and so on to produce images which are visually interesting. The colour and light seem totally natural, and I had no impression that the colour, contrast etc had been adjusted at all.

His sequences of photographs portray the various stages of natural salt production without individual captions. An overview describes each stage of the process, so that a viewer can work out for himself or herself what is happening in each picture.

The photographs are limited to scenes of salt production and he includes no images of other aspects of villagers lives, for example where they live, is there a school, how is the salt transported and sold. As a section of a book on natural salt production, the scope of these photographs was presumably limited by the brief for the book.

I noted a similar limitation looking at his photographs of the whaling village on Lamalera Island in Indonesia. He clearly must have spent a week or more in the village to take the variety of creatures that are shown in his photographs. In this series, the photos focus on the extraordinary process of fishing in this village. I would also have been interested to see more of village life away from the whaling.

James Morgan

James sequence of photographs about the run up to the 2012 election in West Papua are most definitely a form photojournalism. James sequence of photographs depict an event rather than a place. Whilst the sequence of photographs describe the process of this event, the captions add some key information on the role and activities of the people and the place. I feel that the captions are essential to assist the viewer understand the images.

The photographs juxtapose the strongly held traditions on one side against western style shopkeepers, religion and processes of government on the other. James uses a wide angle lens close up to the subjects for a lot of these photos. One effect of this is to draw the viewer into the scene. He nevertheless varies composition and viewpoint to compose strong visual images (I admire the way he gets himself right into the centre of these scenes). The style is high contrast with vivid colours. I assume that most are natural light, with possibly some fill flash for the locations under shade.

Conclusions

These photographers represent three very different styles of what might be described as "documentary/photojournalism". All appear highly professional but their photographic objectives would appear quite different.

• Larry Louie's photographs can stand alone as iconic images. These are artistic in the sense that he reveals the beauty around us which we do not normally see. We do not have the perception nor do we look with sufficient attention.
• Luke Duggleby's photo-essays in contrast take the viewer on a voyage of discovery. The viewer is left to explore for himself the location and to form his own impressions of the people and the place. I felt as if I had been on the beach at his side and had seen for myself the salt making activities. (I would not have come back with photos as good as his however).
• James Morgan's photo-essays go one stage further, in that they show a society that is virtually impossible for us to understand or experience. Even if we were with him, we would probably not understand who the people are, what they were doing and why. In fact, we would probably be unwise to visit these places, even if we wanted to. His photo-essays come with an opinionated commentary which provides insight into the complexity of human society and its problems.

Do these photographers have relevance for my travel photography? I suggest that they all do in their different ways:-

• Do I want to see the iconic sights of the countries that I visit? This seems to be the basis for the mainstream tourist industry and for example, the cruises to far flung parts of the world. Like most people, I am attracted to the stunning photographs of places that I have not yet visited, and this will often encourage me to travel somewhere new.
• I enjoy exploration to discover things for myself when the opportunity arises. Watching fisherman working on a beach or walking around a rural area is often fascinating. I would like to collect my own impressions of holidays encompassing the regular daily lives and character of the places we visit, not just the famous sights. I have started in a limited way by writing a blog on our visit to Patagonia and will endeavor to develop this on future trips.
• Whilst I would love in my imagination to do investigative photojournalism like James Morgans, in reality this would not be desirable or practical. I am happy to take pleasure from looking at his work and the work of others like him.