Capturing the Human Spirit

If you’re ever in Paia Maui in Hawaii, stop by Indigo Paia on 149 Hana Highway. This store and gallery is owned and operated by Daniel Sullivan and his wife Caramiya Davies-Reid. Daniel and Caramiya have traveled extensively through Central and Southeast Asia seeking out some of the world’s most beautiful tribal arts and antique rugs. On display at Indigo Paia are rugs, bedspreads, antique textiles, gold jewelry, necklaces, rings, earrings, relics and unique portraits of people from the lands that they have visited.

Daniel’s journey to the Hawaiian Islands began in New Orleans. As a young boy growing up in the Big Easy, Daniel photographed jazz funerals, the French Quarter and the homeless who lived in and near Jackson Square. “I’ve always been drawn to people, but more than that, the human spirit. Returning to New Orleans after Katrina was strangely reminiscent of when I entered Kabul, Afghanistan for the first time after the war.”

Daniel considers himself a procurer of rare antiquities. However, in his travels purchasing rare items through Central and Southeast Asia, he has been able to combine his buying trips with his love of photography. What began as an interest in relics and a love for photography in 1996 led to the opening of his store and gallery in 2005.

Daniel has found that the more dangerous and difficult a place is to travel to, the greater the odds of finding something outstanding, both in antiquities and photography. “Anyone can go to Thailand for vacation; it’s on the tribal border between Pakistan and Afghanistan that you find another world. One of my most interesting moments came when I traveled from Peshawar, Pakistan to Waziristan along a very unstable tribal border. There were reports that Osama Bin Laden and Al Zahari were hiding in the region.
“Traveling with my friend Nick Jackson, a freelance writer with the London Independent, we left under the cover of darkness in a car with blacked out windows. I wanted to photograph the loya jirga [grand assembly] of [Afghan] tribal elders who were meeting to discuss a possible truce with Pakistan. I stepped out of the car when we arrived at the meeting site and was immediately confronted by four officials. We were told that two officials were killed the night before and we would be dead in several minutes if we did not leave. Wanting to photograph another day, we drove away; I was not allowed to take a single picture.”

Taking portraits of the indigenous people of India, Tibet, Afghanistan, Burma, Pakistan, Cambodia and Nepal, requires trust on the part of the local people. This trust might be earned in several seconds, but more likely, it will take several weeks or months. In many of these cultures, capturing their image in a camera is the same as capturing their soul. If they do not trust the photographer, a picture will not happen.
 
When Daniel is taking photographs in a new place, he tries to remain open to what is around him and whenever possible, he will ask permission to take someone’s portrait. “At the very least, there is an unspoken agreement reached through gestures or eye contact. That unspoken trust is really important. There must also be respect; I never want anyone to feel that I am exploiting him or her in any way. Once we have that trust, most people are very proud to have their photo taken.”

When Daniel returned to Afghanistan after the war in 2004, the country was still largely unstable. Because photography had been banned during the reign of the Taliban, he kept his camera well hidden and, not wanting people to know that he was American, he passed himself off as Swiss or Canadian. The only way to take pictures during this visit was to “shoot from the hip,” especially when women were involved. He was gradually able to befriend the children and families living in a bombed out Russian-built movie theater. “It was the first time I had seen women take off their burkas for their portraits. The photographs from that period are some of those of which I am most proud.”

Being a photographer has opened many doors in Daniel’s life. He worked for the Louisiana State University newspaper in college and he spent the summer between his sophomore and junior years in Paris with a cousin who worked for Newsweek magazine. This trip gave him the opportunity to travel to Spain and Morocco where the architecture and the Muslim culture turned him on to a world he had only imagined. After graduating from college, he traveled to the Middle East and Africa, living in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Pakistan. He photographed the funeral of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, the Israeli retreat from Southern Lebanon and the refugee crisis in Pakistan. He lived in a cave in Syria and traveled to Afghanistan. It was during these travels that he acquired antique rugs, statues and stones among other items that he would later sell at a photography show. The money raised at this one show financed his photography for a year.

All of Daniel’s photographs are taken with Nikon equipment. He is presently using the D200 with three lenses: a 12–24mm for architecture, a 17–200mm for most of his work and an 80–200mm f/2.8 for special circumstances such as photographing the Ghats at Varanasi, one of the holiest places in India.
His after capture work is done with Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture. “When I first stated doing photography, everything was done in a darkroom. Cropping was frowned upon. I still try to treat my computer like a darkroom and remain honest to the integrity of the photograph. I don’t usually crop my images and do very little in postprocessing.”

Daniel markets his business and specifically his portraits through his website www.indigopaia.com, and word-of-mouth. His store and gallery is a great resource for selling his photography with large framed prints for sale as well as smaller, matted 8 x 10s and 11 x 14s. His coffee-table book, The Waking Dream, also brings people to his gallery. “The Waking Dream chronicles my travels through post-war Afghanistan, India, Tibet and Cambodia. Throughout the book are the connecting rhythms of the portraits, people and the spirit of the places that I have traveled. Photography has always been a way of connecting with people, both the people I photograph and those who see the image. It has been a tremendous gift to live the path of a photographer. It has taken me places and let me see things I never could have imagined.”

While Daniel is grateful to live the path of a photographer, it should be the rest of us, those who view his images, who should be grateful. He has captured their lives and their spirit, etched in the faces of these people from far-off lands. He has opened the door to people unknown to most Americans. By bringing these faces to us in his gallery and his book, he has made the world a little smaller and has shown that the human spirit prevails in places like Afghanistan and New Orleans alike.

Harv Goldstein from Branford, CT, has been in the photographic industry for more than 35 years. He is a former studio owner and presently edits numerous association newsletters and magazines, as well as being a freelance writer.