These days, the cameras are so good that people can easily make a sharply focused, well-exposed photograph. But the skill set involved with being a photographer is so much bigger than the ability to use a camera, duChemin said.

“It’s the vision, passion and curiosity. Especially when you’re photographing people, it’s the patience, compassion and the ability to relate to another person.”

DuChemin recalled an “unforgettable” experience with a village of Rendille people in northern Kenya with whom he had developed a very close relationship.

“When I fell off a wall in Italy four years ago and broke both my feet, the elders of the village called the village together to pray for me. It is a very humbling thing to be that close to people who are so different from me, on the other side of the world, and to know that for all our differences, we are very much the same.

“Of course people can be terrible. As a species we have done, and continue to do great harm, to each other and the planet. But we also have great beauty and goodness. When I travel among the poorest of this planet I am constantly reminded of this.” 

To answer what makes one a good photographer, duChemin quoted lines from a book written by Chaim Potok: “Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a 'universal' without patriotism, without home who has found his people everywhere."

“A good photographer,” the photographer added, “may also be a rebel who has found his people everywhere.”  

As an assignment photograher, duChemin has spent eight years doing humanitarian photography for big nongovernmental organizations, like World Vision and Save the Children, traveling to places like Africa and Southeast Asia. Recently, he has been working closely with a group called the BOMA Project, based in northern Kenya, which implements a high-impact income and savings program for ultra-poor women in the drought-threatened arid lands.

“I want to tell stories based on hope. I would also like to work on environmental issues because in so much of the world it is places of great environmental destruction that see the greatest poverty. They are connected,” he said. 

By Bae Su-kyeong

The writer is a freelance journalist residing in Europe. ― Ed.