Thesiger

Andy, at the SHOUT photoblog, recently posted about his delight at discovering the work of Wilfred Thesiger in one of the photographer's books at his local library.  That made me smile as I experienced a similar feeling of elation when I first came across Thesiger's work many years ago.  

I found a copy of Thisiger's Arabian Sands in a San Francisco bookshop. Not long afterward I packed up my family and moved to southern Idaho to pursue my own wanderings in the high desert of the Great Basin, often carrying along thoughts of Thesiger's images.

I don't see references to Thesiger often in any of the websites I visit often.  I don't know why that is as he seems to me to be one of the really great photo artists of Twentieth Century. The archive of 38,000 negatives resides in the Pitts River Museum at Oxford.  The photos are all viewable online, but they are small, low quality pdf files. I think that reflects the museum's use of the images as a source of income.  If you want explore Thesiger's work without buying prints, the best course is to find any of his fine books.

Thesiger was a self-taught photographer.  He bought a Leica II in 1934 and used it for twenty-five years to record his explorations, beginning with treks across the Empty Quarter in Arabia.  In 1959 he replaced the rangefinder camera with a Leica Reflex.  All of his work is black & white.  He seems never have done any of own processing or printing. Because he traveled in such remote regions he would sometimes go a year before getting to see the results of his photography of the nomadic communities he documented.

I loaned my copy of Arabian Sands when we lived in Las Cruces and never got it back.  A few years ago I found Thesiger's Visions Of A Nomad in a bookshop in Albuquerque.  It is a compilation of Thesiger's pictures from Aftrica, the Middle East and Asia with very good reproductions and useful descriptions of the photographer's techniques and style.  Re-reading the book prompted me to order another copy of Arabian Sands which I will have in hand soon.

 

There is really no shortage of information online about Thesiger.  One of the best things I came acoss recently was an old blog post at The Idle Woman.