Last meeting: Dave McKay – The Constant Traveller
Last year Dave finally manage to catch up with the travels he had to postpone due to the Covid pandemic. He went to Angola and Indonesia and we were treated to his images, videos and stories from those trips.
He travelled with Bharat and Bharat’s friend from India, Geeta. They arranged a guide and visited ethnic minorities in south-western Angola. The roads were not tarmacked and the further away from the towns the vaguer the roads became in this very arid part of the country.
The villages Dave visited were very similar in terms of the types of houses built, mainly made of wooden poles ingeniously held together with strips of treated bark and with thatched roofs. The walls were weatherproof usings mud and cow-dung. Each village had a central open space surrounded by the village houses.
Dave had great shots of the women and children as the men were away tending the cattle. Hair styles were a feature, so were necklaces which were colourful, elaborate in their construction and representing stages of life. But it was the hairstyles that really stood out. One ethnic group, the Humbi, had incredibly intricate style of hair called Elephant Ears. Other groups, particularly the Himba, had their hair in dreadlocks which is covered in a paste of oil, butter fat, herbs and is also decorated with beads.
Men also have interesting hair styles. Dave had a great shot of the young Himba man sporting a very fetching quiff.
Dave then took us onto Indonesia. In Bali he photographed dancers performing the Kecak Ramayana dance-drama, a highly stylised form of storytelling. Two female dancers perform in a circle of crossed legged men. Dave had great shots of the facial expressions and hand gestures of the women dancers.
He also had stunning shots of a fisherman throwing his net into the sea with the rising sun behind him. There were also shots of fire eaters, Tenga horsemen, the landscape around Mount Bromo, contorting yoga poses, rice terraces bathed in sun rays and very close to the action shots of buffalo races.
A marvellous set of images all.