Rangefinder Magazine
January 2006

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Phil Borges Larry Singer
Building Bridges With Photography

“It is our ethnic and cultural diversity— our difference in language, customs, and beliefs—that provide the strength, resiliency, and creativity of our species,” said 1990 Literature Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz. As his awards and humanitarian accomplishments attest, few photographers live and breathe those sentiments more than Phil Borges.

Renchinkhumbe, Mongolia: Nine-year-old Byamba spends her day herding sheep, collecting water and watching her younger brother. She hopes to move into the neighboring village next year to attend school. Even though several members of her extended family were visiting when I arrived, they invited me to spend the night in their little ger (tent). All 18 of us managed to find enough room on the floor to fall asleep around the centrally located hearth. The ger, which can be assembled in about an hour, accommodates their nomadic lifestyle. (Darkhad Tribe)

Phil Borges wants to make the little-known, and often overlooked, inhabitants of this world strikingly visible, and he’s very serious about achieving this goal. Thus far, he has been so successful that the biggest corporate names in photography, publishing, and computer technology have been willing to back his efforts

“My photographic projects,” Borges explains, “are devoted to the welfare of indigenous and tribal people. My intention is to help bring attention to the value these cultures represent and the challenges they face. What I’m trying to accomplish is to capture these people as individuals; I want to remove them from the abstraction of the group they happen to be a part of.”

Baragoi, Kenya: Eragai (21 years old) and Echuka (24) are good friends who had spent all day walking in 110° heat to the market in Baragoi to get salt for their camels and goats. They called me “the fish” because of the quantitity of water I drank. They didn’t seem to need to drink at all. The four cowry shells on Eragai’s head indicate that she has had a miscarriage. She will wear the shells for the rest of her life. (Turkana Tribe)

Because of his ability to blend art and photojournalism, photographs by Phil Borges are collected and exhibited by museums and galleries around the world. Additionally, he has received numerous national and international awards. Like many professional photographers, however, Borges began on his career path in one occupation, then changed course midstream.

He first fell in love with photography as a dental student in San Francisco. While in school, he photographed people in the Haight- Ashbury district and interviewed them about their use of drugs.

“During the first 18 years I practiced dentistry, I didn’t do much photography at all,” he says, “but I took out my camera when my son was born, 18 years ago, and recorded his birth. I shot it in black and white and had to find a darkroom I could use, so I enrolled at a community college, took a photography class, and then took another class and another class. Before long I became totally immersed in photography. I sold my dental practice, which was then in Sonoma in Northern California, and started doing photography full time.”

After deciding that photography was to be his vocation, Borges felt he needed to be closer to a major metropolitan center and moved to Seattle, Washington. There, he formed a study group of photographers whose work he admired. They met monthly and shared ideas.

Mt. Nyiru, Kenya: As a young girl, Sukulen, now 37, began having dizzy spells and hearing voices. She said she was very frightened and thought she was getting ill. Her grandmother assured her that she was healthy and was, in fact, very gifted. Sukulen is now a highly respected “predictor” in her tribe. Two months before I arrived, she had told several people in her village that I was coming and had described in detail my appearance and the equipment I was using. (Samburu Tribe)

One of the things he learned from that group, Borges explains, “is to always keep a project of your own going. So I did a series of photographs called ‘African American Beauty,’ which consisted of a series of portraits of African Americans that I shot in mediumformat using Kodak Infrared Film.

“At the same time,” Borges continues, “I was looking for commercial photography assignments without a great deal of success, but I kept shooting. It took me about three years before I started getting any substantial work.”

Borges began to be noticed as a commercial photographer when he started using his African American images in his portfolio, and presented the work he loved to do, instead of the work that he thought the art directors and designers wanted to see.

Since one of the things that originally attracted Borges to photography was the possibility of travel, after three or four years he began a project in Tibet. Throughout 1994, Borges traveled through that country, as well as to parts of Nepal and Northern India, where thousands of Tibetan refugees now reside. He began photographing and interviewing them in an effort to demonstrate what had happened to their country and their culture as they struggled to survive in the face of aggression from the Chinese communists.

Dharamsala, India: Palden (62) was arrested at his monastery in 1959 and spent 24 years in prison where he was tortured frequently—actually losing 20 teeth in one beating. He managed to flee Tibet in 1987 and came to Dharamsala. He told me “ I no longer have anger for my captors; however, I feel it is my responsibility to let the outside world know what is happening in Tibet.”

In 1998 Borges undertook a project for Amnesty International that celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His images from that project also became a book called Enduring Spirit.

Borges’ next project became a book called The Gift, published in 1999. It was created for, and illustrated the efforts of, Interplast, a nonprofit organization that sends medical teams to perform cleft palate surgeries on children in remote communities around the world. The organization also trains local doctors to perform surgeries and aftercare.

A nonprofit organization that Borges co-founded, Blue Earth Alliance, provides support for individuals producing photographic projects that educate the public about endangered environments and threatened cultures.

Chahuatire, Peru: Seven-year-old Dimicia’s mother was instrumental in establishing a school in their small village. About the time Dimicia started first grade, her nine-year-old brother began working as a porter on the Inca Trail. For less than three dollars a day, he carries some 40 pounds of camping equipment for tourists, making the popular four-day hike to Machu Picchu. (Quechua)

In 2003 Borges was presented with a Lucie by the International Association of Photography for his humanitarian work. In February 2004 he was awarded the Medal of Honor from the University of California, and he took home the Photo Media Photographer of the Year Award in 1992. He has also hosted three television documentaries for The Discovery Channel and National Geographic.

Bridges to Understanding, the nonprofit organization that Borges started four years ago, is an online classroom program connecting children from indigenous and tribal cultures with their urban contemporaries, for the purpose of honoring and exploring cultural diversity. Through photojournalism and audio arts, students learn from and with each other. It is currently supported by Canon, Microsoft, National Geographic and Adobe, with 13 sites in Africa, Asia, North and South America and the Arctic Circle. “We now conduct workshops,” Borges explains, “where we take photographers to these areas to teach digital photography, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Premier. At these locations, volunteer mentors train indigenous youth to use communication and Internet technologies to tell their own stories. The project has given cameras to these young people, has hooked them up on the Internet and paired them with schools here in the United States, enabling them to share their stories with one another. Pictures from these stories have already been shown at both the United Nations and the Smithsonian website, and are also part of the National Geographic’s All Roads Film Festival. To facilitate Bridges to Understanding, Canon donated 60 A40 PowerShot cameras.

To capture many of his images, Borges uses a Hasselblad 500CM with an 80mm CT lens and a VPan view camera with a rollfilm back. He uses Kodak Tri-X film, rated at E.I. 200 and developed 1:1 in D76 for 10 minutes. He prints on Ilford Multigrade IV fiber-base paper with selective toning with Kodak Sepia Toner. When Borges goes digital, he uses a Canon EOS 1Ds with a 24mm f/1.4 lens.

One of Phil’s pictures especially meaningful to him is a picture of a girl with braided hair named Abigul. It was taken shortly before September 11, 2001, in Pakistan. “I was right in the middle of shooting ‘Spirit of Place,’ ” Borges explains, “when I went to visit a group of people called the Kalash, who live right on the border of Afghanistan, and this little girl, Abigul, is in that tribe. She helped me unpack my gear, set up my lights, and was really fascinated by what I was doing. Her father had been fighting with the government in Pakistan to stop logging in their valley because her tribe considers the trees to be sacred. When she was five years old someone dropped a bomb through a hole in the roof of her house and killed her father.”

Yavello, Ethiopia: As one of five children, Mimi (age 8) spends most of her day collecting firewood and water. Her parents will soon choose which one of their children will go to school. Mimi said she would love to go but doesn’t believe she will: Not only is her help crucial to the family’s survival, but parents also customarily choose boys over girls to receive an education. (Borana Tribe)

Another favorite photograph is a Mursi warrior in southern Ethiopia, Agino, who has scars down one side of his arm. “That’s why I shot him in profile. Every wavy scar on his arm represents someone he has killed from a warring neighboring tribe. Within his tribe it’s considered a taboo to as much as yell at another person or fight with another person, but you’re considered a complete hero if you kill a member of a tribe with whom you are fighting.

“Batdalai,” Borges continues, “is a boy from Mongolia. His tribe is known as the Tsaatan, and they are reindeer herders that live right on the Siberian border in northern Mongolia. He was about five years old and had just learned to ride a reindeer. In the background of this picture is the reindeer he had just ridden across the steppes.

“Buzayan,” Borges says of a picture of a young girl with a torn coat, “lives in Ethiopia, and she is one of two children whose father had left her. Her mother spends 40 dollars a year to send Buzayan to school, and she only earns a little over 200 dollars a year.

“Dimicia (shown below),” Borges explains, “is the girl in the foreground of the picture, which was taken in Peru. She is a Quechua, and they are the descendents of the Incas. We set up a school there teaching the kids photography as part of the Bridges program.

“Kinesi (shown this page),” Borges continues, “is a Samburu in Kenya. He was seven years old when this picture was taken, and is one of seven children and the only one in his family that has been allowed to go to school. The kids in these tribes have to work to keep the family alive. They either have to herd the goats or go collect firewood or water, so the daily routine of survival takes up all their time. Since his family is nomadic, there are times when he has to walk almost two hours to get to this little one-room schoolhouse.

“Sukulen (page 56) is also from the Samburu tribe, and she is considered a predictor. She actually predicted the arrival of me and my assistant two months before we got there. She told the other villagers we were coming, and she accurately described to her villagers that I would have dark curly hair and my assistant would have long blonde hair.

“Lena,” Borges explains, “lives in Indonesia in an area called Tana Toraja, an island located in the Northern part of the South Sulawesi Province. I met, and photographed, her while doing the ‘Enduring Spirit’ project.

Tana Toraja, Indonesia: Seven-year-old Rudi’s small village is a day’s walk from the nearest road in the mountains of Sulawesi. He took me to his one-room house where many of the villagers were crowded around a small television watching Mike Tyson fight Evander Holyfield. After my arrival, all eyes were in constant motion between me and the television set. As Tyson bit his opponent, I couldn’t help but wonder what these people thought of me and my culture. (Toraja)	Ladakh, India: Jigme (8) and Sonam (18 months) are sisters whose nomadic family had just come down from the Himalayan highlands to their 16,500-ft. winter camp on the Tibetan Plateau. When I gave Jigme a Polaroid of herself she looked at it, squealed and ran into her tent. I assumed that this was one of the only times she had seen herself since her family did not own a mirror.	Mt. Nyiru, Kenya: Kinesi (6) often helps his older brother take care of the family goats. He is the only one of seven children who was selected by his parents to attend school. Since his Samburu family is semi-nomadic, sometimes he must walk alone nearly four hours, over terrain populated by baboons and leopards, to get to the only school in his district. His mother says that Kenesi runs most of the way—not from fear of predators but from the excitement of school. (Samburu Tribe)

“The Bridges to Understanding program,” Borges states, “was created not only to give a voice to indigenous peoples and the dispossessed, but also to bring awareness of other cultures to young people in our society because our county is quite insular when it comes to knowing about the rest of the world. A recent National Geographic survey found that the United States came in second to last among the nine most industrialized countries in the world when it came to geographic literacy. We want this program to not only help indigenous people have a voice, but to bring understanding of these people and their lives here in the United States.”

As a photographer who follows the adage, “shoot what you love,” Borges knows from firsthand experience what it takes to succeed in a highly competitive field.

“I think the hardest thing for photographers,” Borges explains, “is to set their sights on a direction, a specific focus for their work. It’s easy to fall in love with the process and the mechanics of photography, and with making beautiful images, but there are so many people making these images that you have to do something more in order to separate yourself. Being conscious of what you want to accomplish is one of the main things a photographer needs to do. As a photographer, you’re a visual communicator. Know what you want to say with your images.”

Additional pictures by Phil Borges images can be seen at www. philborges.com. Photographs from the Bridges to Understanding project can be seen at www.bridgesweb.org.