After almost a year living in the forests of East Malaysia, researcher and photographer NOAH JACKSON takes stock of his work and decides where his journey should continue.

Written by Noah Jackson on 20 Aug 2008 with 0 comments. Be the first!

The Journey

When people ask my past ten months in Borneo, I find they often want to hear stories of remote indigenous people or of leeches that sometimes got the best of me. Others ask more intimate questions, they write letters that I ask me about loneliness. I write back about how I struggle to find place and build relations. And sometimes, after three weeks in a community, with a notebook, film and flash cards exhausted, I spend some days running the numbers, turning notebook pages, and looking at the images and the notes I've made about them. It's a lot of volume, and sometimes my heart wells up. And I take a break or call a friend in Malaysia or the US and our voices linger into the evening.

Relationships

I tell these people that I don't know what I'd do without them. And they don't realize how serious I am. As much as I connect with people, and long for connections, the work and life I've chosen creates some disconnections. Shedding relations that hinder growth or are unproductive is a painful process; learning how to seek and develop nurturing relationships is hard.

At some point you hit a wall. I mean this as someone who spends time with forest communities and another culture and in a multi-lingual environment. So many times I would find myself at a wall with people who became teachers. Finding that tipping point that makes connection is a mysterious thing. When I look back in my journal and field notes, I find that relationships can often change in an instant -- over the time of a day and sometimes in the course of an afternoon.

Aren't personal relationships this like this too?

Explaining this to tourists or travelers or people who want to join me with their money belts and backpacks sometimes just doesn't work. I'll take a good hunting dog and someone willing to walk slow and watch, observe, and laugh anytime. And sometimes I need to remind myself to laugh too....

If you can't attend the photography workshop that I'll be offering early next year, don't worry. That last bit will be one of the big take home messages. One of the keys might involve deciding on what kind of traveler you are. Or, you might be like me and decide that you are not a traveler at all.

Seeing

So, through this process, I learn. I learn to see with better clarity. I become more dedicated to the craft of photography and writing and research and the intention of all of it. There are days when things just flow and come together and there are times when the longboat tips and I'm drying out gear.

Or there are days when I'm mysteriously attacked by fire ants. I'm jumping around like a lunatic with one of camera body in pain, I knock a camera against a tree, and watch as the front element of a lens falls off. I'll get to the part about remembering to laugh in a moment.... Those who know me call these incidents a fiasco. Perhaps they are; perhaps living an exciting and inspired life means balancing this chaos with deep connections and commitments.

And, because my mind likes to make connections between people and their relationships, I'm either making revelations about forests and communities or myself. And what I see, about myself, isn't always beautiful or wonderful.

Isn't that what learning to see is about?

In this process of growth I've shed some relationships in the past year. As hard and as hurtful as that has been, I think all of my connections and interactions are starting to grow more intimate. And, being conscious of this challenge, I'm tending to reach out more. And that's good too.

My support over this past year has certainly been pretty tenuous. The farther I get into the forest the more some organizations don't seem to understand. Travel to the interior of the forest is expensive. Other than the few times I've had access to a satellite phone, there aren't calls out or in. It strikes some as odd that I pay for information and time people give me, but I can't think of anything more valuable.

I ask myself, how can I go beyond a snapshot? How can I honor the moment, not only demonstrate the interplay of knowledge, but the intimacy of these interactions? As a photographer, I'm constantly reminded of the importance of the journey. Had my leica not been crushed in a logging truck accident, I might never had made it to that one forest community that took me in and helped me feel safe during an especially challenging time.

Voice

It's natural that my work so often revolves around the theme of home. Or, perhaps it's about the search. Movement and motion play a lot in my images as well as play in unexpected moments. Throwing the fishing net, watching streams of fireflies pass through a forest and down a river horizon, the beginnings of a smile after a river bath and the play between these events all make for great opportunities for participation, communication, and trust. All this is a lot of fun too. Like any good adventure story, this all occurs in uncommon hours, at daybreak, in the late afternoon, or when in a forest camp at night. These are moments of participation; this is about dialog.

And the best images, I think, come when the moments of making relationships and movement are all working together. I think getting to that point, finding that mental and physical place, is one of my big secrets and a great struggle.

I think the images help build these relationships, simultaneously recording time, an instant of human connection. And sometimes one single image says nothing but care about the forest and love fore people and place. That's what this whole process is about for me.

Dreaming

So that's how I've changed this year. And the more I learn how to focus outward, the more I am able to learn and understand the complex relationships, challenges, and hopes communities I work with might have. The funny thing is that I've seen some of my dreams in the process.

I told a friend not long ago that I had found complete happiness doing this. I was learning to see people and forests both. Projects had begun to come together. In many ways I was at the wall, in some ways, had a glimpse of working and living with people that was a life of possibility. I began dreaming of Borneo, forests, and stories. I would awake with new ideas and ideas of working with new tools to help these dreams become more clear.

Work and Passion

At the same time, I wasn't sure I could do all this. Photographers, writers, and everyone in the field of environmental conservation wrestles with demons. We wrestle with seeing. We wrestle with understanding. And it's often confusing: grant periods almost always seem short.

But there was something else. It occurred to me that I had found the elements of leading an inspired life.

I get a lot of questions, people asking me how I can do this work. The truth of the matter is that I don't know if I can. Really. I've decided to do it anyway.

Action and Commitment

So I was left with a choice. Continue my photography, research, and writing with forest communities or give it up - go home, take a job stateside, and put the passion and all the opportunities on hold. I thought about all the support I have received over the past year. I thought about the dreams I've had and held. I thought of all the friends who have supported this. I've decided to move to Borneo. I've decided to commit wholly to my belief that images can change the world. That words and images from forests can make a difference. That support will come. That all walls are surmountable if I put in time, effort, and commitment.

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