Wood: A Dream Assignment?
I spend about forty percent of my time traveling and taking pictures and ninety percent of that is for various advertising
and corporate clients. In today’s uncertain economy, it is harder to engage
assignments that take you on the road for extended periods of time. To better
manage the changing marketplace, my studio developed a division called
CIRCUMNAVIGATION. We have been traveling for companies for years, but felt it
was necessary to adopt many new techniques and technologies to make it easier
for them to justify the expenditures. We also streamlined the onerous aspects
of travel like logistics, visas, research, time management and access in order
to better service magazines, designers, and businesses that want personalized
international imagery.
"The best friend on earth of man is the tree.
When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest
resources on the earth." - Frank Lloyd Wright
My latest endeavor was in China to document the
supply chain of growing trees, making plywood, and exporting the highly
engineered wood to the USA. This may sound like a boring story, but it is the
preamble to future globalization and cooperation between nations. Many of
the working environments had never been visited and recorded by
"outsiders" before. But my clients have spent the last decade
pioneering this lucrative, new market and its intricacies.
Wood is one of the most basic and essential
materials in the world. It is used for construction, fuel, warmth, cooking,
food, art and has paralleled civilization's progress since the beginning of
time. It is a sustainable resource that has been grown, used and traded for
millennia. Trees are essential to humanity; we breathe their byproducts of
oxygen and could not survive without their chemical/biological contributions.
Even though I do a lot of research before
I take on these jobs, I knew only the basics about this worldwide biomass.
China was my graduate school. I traveled half way around the globe to document
the various steps in making plywood (one of the marvels of modern
technology). We visited the nurseries where the seedlings were nurtured and the
vast forests, most of which were state owned and planted years ago. We
also visited the logging camps where migrant workers were clearing enormous
mountainsides of eucalyptus and poplar trees, the mills in which the plywood
layers were laminated together, and the seaports from which the next stop was
the USA. Access was unprecedented.
As a photographer, my primary objective was to
make wood look good. The public relations task was to make
something we all think we know everything about interesting,
different, maybe even amazing. The stewardship of one of the earth’s most
ubiquitous natural resources needed a new face. Primitive and
organic elements needed to be emphasized, like the exotic mystique of
early and traditional professions being done manually. Since China has
been maligned in the news for its human rights violations and shoddy labor
practices, the dangerous and macho practices needed to be downplayed.
When my clients ventured into the forests of
southern, central and eastern China there were few roads to transport large
convoys of lumber. Their first visits to the mills revealed facilities
with substandard working conditions. Today I drove across six lane highways
built to handle the enormous influx of cars and trucks that are the backbone
of the burgeoning economy. To elevate the quality of the products much has
to be handcrafted and China has the manpower to do it. Due to my clients'
efforts, factory conditions have been improved with better air quality and
lighting, and toxic chemicals have been removed from most of the processes.
The local factory owners and managers were proud of
their new machinery and efficiency whereas I was fascinated with the
human work force in each step along the supply chain. Cultural,
racial and protocol barriers have been overcome at lightning speed.
Generations of traditions and obstacles on both sides of the Pacific
Ocean have been leapfrogged by the combination of labor and capital. Meeting
and photographing the officials who take up the front pages of our
newspapers was a huge responsibility, not only for my clients but for the
historical import of the project.
"Except during the nine months before
he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree
does." - George Bernard Shaw
We traveled thousands of miles to visit the handful
of major species of trees used in plywood fabrication. As a result we used
every form of conveyance to cover the vast distances: domestic airlines, high
speed railroad and, of course, cargo vans. But to reach the most remote
locations, we rode bone chattering four-wheel drive vehicles and hiked the
rest of the way on foot. Despite the rigors this was a dream assignment.
– lou jones
july 2012
Lou Jones is one of Boston’s most eclectic photographers, specializing in photoillustration and location photography. His client list includes FedEx, American Express, Aetna, Museum of Fine Arts, and National Geographic. Over the past two years he has traveled to all emerging B.R.I.C. countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and most recently China) culminating in an eBook titled "Marketing Travel Photography”.