Picture of a Picture
Behind the lens and in front of it: two portraits, two stories.
Picture of a Picture is a recurring series that pairs the act of photography with the final image it produced. Each entry offers a rare view of process, connecting the scene behind the camera with the photograph itself. In this installment, Nick Parisse reflects on two portraits of the same woman from our book Pipe Dreams, accompanied by her testimony.
It was Saturday morning when we arrived in Mara Rianda, a Maasai community of about 20 huts in a conservancy near the Maasai Mara Reserve. The moment the chief greeted our team, I thought: We can take our time here and really get to the bottom of things. I didn’t yet know it would become such an important day in our investigation. Mara Rianda would turn into a case study on the relationship between drought and domestic violence.
The first thing I did was launch my drone. I needed to see the village from the air, to understand its distance from the reserve and any potential sources of water.
On the ground, I first saw the women outside, gathered and working on jewelry. I approached slowly, not wanting to disturb them. Soon Camille [Sachs] tapped me and summarized her interview with Nadupoi before leading me to her.
I introduced myself, and Nadupoi gave her consent. She was still speaking with our team, so I went down into the grass. The sky was darkening, and it made sense to look up at her—without distractions, only her stature and garments. I began with my Leica, then switched to my Fuji.
I knew immediately I had strong images, but I told her I wanted to spend more time together. She invited me into her home to show me her jewelry. It all unfolded naturally. These moments are delicate: I was a foreign male photographer alone with a woman inside her hut. My approach is always to follow, never to lead. By then she had been speaking with our team for some time, and she was welcoming, without apprehension.
I was struck that her hut had a single electric bulb. When she sat on the bed to show me her jewelry, she was directly beneath it. That’s when I made the picture. I usually avoid artificial light, but this time it felt right. I wasn’t rushed or anxious. It seemed like I was there for an hour, though it was probably only 15 minutes.
In all, I took about 200 frames of Nadupoi. I always take more than I’ll need. In the end, it’s the smallest subtleties that can lift a picture from good to great.
“Men here don’t do anything.”
Nadupoi Nooretet, 40, at home in Mara Rianda. Her husband has left to find pasture for their cattle. “He goes every year for about six months,” she says. The burden and cost of caring for children fall to women when the men leave. “We sell ornaments to feed our children. I depend on my bead business. I have a lot of trouble with school fees now.”
Nadupoi spends an hour each day collecting water. “We usually fetch water from the nearby spring, but if it is dry, we travel five kilometers to fetch it.” Women in Mara Rianda are hard-working and often take on all community and household responsibilities outside of livestock rearing, including constructing their homes: “I made this house out of sticks and cow dung.”
Like many men in her community, Nadupoi’s husband is polygamous—he splits his time between her and her co-wife in another home. Between the jewelry production, home building, and water collection, Nadupoi feels responsible for everything: “Men here don’t do anything.”
Article by Mauro Gama based on an interview with Nick Parisse | Summary of Napudoi Nooretet’s testimony by Raul Roman and Camille Sachs | Photos by Rafe H Andrews and Nick Parisse
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