For this Action Project I had to portray someone’s meaning of life in one portrait and 1000 words.I portrayed Roslyn Cameron, Galapagos Development Officer for Galapagos Conservancy. She is 58 years old, and was born in South Australia. I photographed/interviewed Roslyn on Monday, September 18th, 2017 at her office at the Galapagos Conservancy headquarters, on Santa Cruz Island.
I decided to photograph/interview Roslyn because, as she put it, I had a journalistic “hunch”. I had only met her briefly during a couple of social meetings; and to be truthful, I barely knew much about her. But there was something that seemed very interesting to me; she has lived in the Galapagos Islands for the last 30 years of her life. It felt to me as if the main reason behind her decision to stay here for so long must have been one that transcended many things, including both work and economic status. This made me very curious.
I also felt to me as if the meaning she gave to her life must have been strongly linked with the fact that she lives in these Islands, so far from her homeland. For this reason, I decided to introduce the topic of the meaning of life on questions related to why she lived here.
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Roslyn believes that we are not always born in the place where we can best develop our potential. Given that traveling is much easier now, more and more people get to find the place for their best growth.
“Australia was not that place for me. I am a woman; born at a time when women still didn’t have rights, when aborigines didn’t have rights, when we were still very much under colonial rule. You didn't educate girls, you didn’t send them to university; what a waste they are only going to marry and have babies!”
“Australia was not that place for me. I am a woman; born at a time when women still didn’t have rights, when aborigines didn’t have rights, when we were still very much under colonial rule. You didn't educate girls, you didn’t send them to university; what a waste they are only going to marry and have babies!”
By living in the Galapagos Islands, Roslyn transcends social, familial, and cultural constraints that limit intellectual and spiritual growth. She receives constant mental stimulation through her work, and the conversations with the never ending opportunities to talk to the occasional scientist studying iguana intestines or the tourist who’s a Stanford Professor studying human behaviour genetics. Roslyn also values communities that understand, merit, and benefit from differences. She believes that Galapagos, as a generalization, is just that, where cultural differences collide and meld.
Coming to live in these Islands was certainly not something she had planned. When she described how she came to live here, she mentioned that “...I don’t believe in luck, but it was the right time and the right place”. Roslyn believes in life paths, and that people and places are brought together at an important time in their development. This is Galapagos for her.
Roslyn is also a single, devoted mother. She has a colored child, and for her the thought of raising her child in Australia was simply unacceptable. The Australia of her youth was only recently repealing the White Australia migration policy, which restricted migration based on skin colour. And this was the Australia she knew.
“Those are my memories of the Australia I grew up in, which may or may have not been true 25 years later… This is something that probably only a mother would understand.. On becoming pregnant the thought flooded through me that my child needed to be raised in Galapagos. He could have been as white as I am, but the minute I knew I was pregnant instinctively I knew he had to be raised in Galapagos.”
Coming to live in these Islands was certainly not something she had planned. When she described how she came to live here, she mentioned that “...I don’t believe in luck, but it was the right time and the right place”. Roslyn believes in life paths, and that people and places are brought together at an important time in their development. This is Galapagos for her.
Roslyn is also a single, devoted mother. She has a colored child, and for her the thought of raising her child in Australia was simply unacceptable. The Australia of her youth was only recently repealing the White Australia migration policy, which restricted migration based on skin colour. And this was the Australia she knew.
“Those are my memories of the Australia I grew up in, which may or may have not been true 25 years later… This is something that probably only a mother would understand.. On becoming pregnant the thought flooded through me that my child needed to be raised in Galapagos. He could have been as white as I am, but the minute I knew I was pregnant instinctively I knew he had to be raised in Galapagos.”
Roslyn believes that part of the meaning of life is the constant search for truth. The everlasting quest for knowledge and understanding. And Galapagos is a unique place which offers her an environment where living up to this ideal is possible.
Slowly the topic on the meaning of life began to take form in the interview as we explored more deeply through conversation and a few basic questions. At first Roslyn pointed out that the meaning of life sometimes changes with the decades. For example, she recalled that when she was my age (17), her life expectations were very much molded by the political situations of the time. Had a lot of social reform movements not happened in Australia in the 1970’s, she believed that she certainly wouldn’t be sitting with me here in the Galapagos Islands.
“There is liberation in the changing of decades that also allows you to speculate what your life path might be, or the meaning of life.”
Slowly the topic on the meaning of life began to take form in the interview as we explored more deeply through conversation and a few basic questions. At first Roslyn pointed out that the meaning of life sometimes changes with the decades. For example, she recalled that when she was my age (17), her life expectations were very much molded by the political situations of the time. Had a lot of social reform movements not happened in Australia in the 1970’s, she believed that she certainly wouldn’t be sitting with me here in the Galapagos Islands.
“There is liberation in the changing of decades that also allows you to speculate what your life path might be, or the meaning of life.”
However, she believed that as much as her meaning of life had changed over the decades, the core had always remained the same.
“The meaning of life for me has been about the pursuit of happiness. Not happiness itself but about the challenges the path and everything else along the way. Happiness is that sense of calm that you’re doing your best and no matter what is going to happen- maybe it’ll happen the way you wanted it to, maybe it won’t -but that there’s a flow to what’s happening.”
“The meaning of life for me has been about the pursuit of happiness. Not happiness itself but about the challenges the path and everything else along the way. Happiness is that sense of calm that you’re doing your best and no matter what is going to happen- maybe it’ll happen the way you wanted it to, maybe it won’t -but that there’s a flow to what’s happening.”
Some people have religious support to that theory, but she wasn’t raised in a religious culture. “I don’t like to label the feeling” she said, “but there’s something bigger than me and I have a role to play”. Roslyn has traveled over the years, and she’s got Jewish, Buddhist, Chinese Buddhist, Atheist, Catholic friends, and many more. And she believes that the basic principles of all religions are the same. It’s about being a decent human being, doing the right thing for yourself, for your family and for your community. Roslyn was also raised with country values. You don’t steal from the neighbour, you don’t talk badly about the neighbour, as well as many other familiar, social, and cultural structures that are very ingrained in her.
Roslyn was raised by two very different family structures. She described her mother’s family as working class white that intermarried with people of aboriginal descent. So she grew up with mixed race people that were her cousins and aunts, and that itself set her apart from most Australians. Her father’s side was very cultured; her grandmother, which she described as her biggest influence on her father’s side, came from a wealthy family . She was educated and sophisticated, and everything she did was immaculate.
Her father was a policeman and one of the good ones. He would go to work everyday to protect and help the community. So Roslyn was raised to investigate, to be aware, to verify. Growing up her career trajectory was forensic science or law but for a “whole bunch of silly circumstances during high school, it just didn’t happen”.
“But that’s where my skill base lies, and so it’s in me to verify. It’s in me to double-check things, it’s in me to memorize certain things and ask ‘are you sure Raji? Did you check that?’ ”
Roslyn was raised by two very different family structures. She described her mother’s family as working class white that intermarried with people of aboriginal descent. So she grew up with mixed race people that were her cousins and aunts, and that itself set her apart from most Australians. Her father’s side was very cultured; her grandmother, which she described as her biggest influence on her father’s side, came from a wealthy family . She was educated and sophisticated, and everything she did was immaculate.
Her father was a policeman and one of the good ones. He would go to work everyday to protect and help the community. So Roslyn was raised to investigate, to be aware, to verify. Growing up her career trajectory was forensic science or law but for a “whole bunch of silly circumstances during high school, it just didn’t happen”.
“But that’s where my skill base lies, and so it’s in me to verify. It’s in me to double-check things, it’s in me to memorize certain things and ask ‘are you sure Raji? Did you check that?’ ”
She believes that because of this innate skill her meaning of life is related to verifying things, hoping to make other people think beyond the obvious, and sharing whatever it is she finds out, or knows. Storytelling.
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This is a photograph I took of Roslyn right after our interview outside her office. I asked her if she had any suggestions concerning the portrait I was going to shoot and she reminded me of the power of expression of our eyes with the phrase, “The eyes are the windows to the soul”. I find that phrase very convincing because I know for certain that eyes can tell us a lot about what a person is really feeling, as well as give hints related to a person’s personality. I decided to shoot it in black & white because I wanted to highlight the sharp, piercing and deep look her eyes transmit, rather than the color of her skin, eyes, and hair as well as her age, which can be perceived much easier in color.
I shot this photograph with my smartphone (HTC One). The main focus is set on the eye. It was noon when I shot this photograph, and the sun was blazing. I set the aperture of the camera rather low, as well as the shutter-time, permitting me to take the photo in back light and making sure the photograph doesn’t get blurry from the movement of Roslyn’s hair from the breeze. Roslyn’s eye is also set on the left vertical line in the imaginary grid, centered right between the two horizontal lines. Roslyn’s skin, as well as the detail in both her eyelashes and her eye add texture to the photograph, as well as the blurry trees in the background.
The only manipulation I did to the photograph after shooting it was cropping it a bit closer to the eye, removing a small portion of the beginning of the nose which was present in the original photograph.
