Page 115 - The Book For Men Spring/Summer 2024

VILLAGER IN INDIGO-DYED GARMENT BALI, INDONESIA
I MADE IT MY LITTLE PERSONAL MISSION TO SEE IF I COULD PHOTOGRAPH
as many ancient places and practices as possible. This, for sure, is one of them. This valley is historically known to be very fertile, very pristine, and the plants that grow in the area deliver some of the best natural indigo dye paste in the world. In a lot of Indigenous communities, you see lots of traditional and authentic crafts, and I’ve always had a weak spot for exploring those avenues.
So, when I was in Bali, I was doing research and I bumped into a man called Sebastian Mesdag. By origin, I think he’s half-Dutch and half-Spanish, but he’s been living in Bali for the last 30 or 40 years, running a natural indigo studio. He uses dye paste made from indigo plants to colour fabrics — and the fabrics you can see in this image are coloured by the Mesdag studio.
The studio is located in the centre of Bali, in a very pristine jungle area. Mesdag has his own little valley of indigo, where he harvests the plants and goes through the entire process — 100 per cent organic and natural — to create the pastes that he uses to colour the fabrics. I did a story for him about his dyeing studio, and how he integrates Indigenous Balinese beliefs into practising this centuries-old craft. We ventured into the local villages and photographed some of the local village people wearing these naturally dyed garments. So this image was shot in the context of doing a story about that — that craftsmanship of using indigo plants.
GAUCHO AND HORSE SOUTHERN PATAGONIA, CHILE
THIS IS AN IMAGE — NOT ONLY AN IMAGE, BUT A WHOLE STORY — THAT
is very dear to me. I’ve been working on this story for five years in the south- ern Patagonia region of Chile, and it’s a subject that I could speak about for a long, long time. This particular photo is almost like a poetic document, for the fading identity and disappearing lifestyle of the gaucho — which is like a stoic, over-romanticized cowboy. It’s also part of a multi-platform, multidisciplinary, long-form telling of this story with a team of filmmakers. We’re trying to unravel and unpack the image of a “cowboy,” and see if we can find intimate portraits of what actually happens within this culture.
Southern Patagonia is an incredibly stark region — very remote and desolate. These guys live in complete isolation. So, for the past five years, we’ve been filming a group of these gauchos who live in abandoned farms in the south of Chile. We’ve been trying to understand how they’re dealing with losing this identity, with knowing that they are the last generation of gauchos who will live this way.
It’s very multi-dimensional, and one image could never get across the whole story. It’s going to be my next book, which will hopefully be released sometime in mid-2025. And, at the moment, this is for sure my most important, and my most crucial story. My approach has always been one of long-term commitment to the subjects, and this, for sure, is a good example of that.
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