Working on a Smile

Look at the faces of each of these people in this coal mining village outside the city of Datong. They’ve taught me so much. Their curiosity is insatiable, and their smiles contagious.
Whenever I would stop to take a photograph in this part of China I would be surrounded by locals. It was hard to get work done, so I decided to just go with it and teach a little boy how to use a 4×5 camera, or explain the difference between film and digital, to someone who lived during the rule of Mao, with sign language and the “Rough Guide to Basic Mandarin.”
The funny thing about this photograph is I was setting up my camera to make an image of their bathroom. You should have heard the laughs when they looked through the back of my camera and realized what I was doing.
What I’ve been working on, and why I’m showing you this photograph, is something the photographer Ed Kashi said at OU while talking about improving his work for National Geographic. “Before I could become a good photographer I needed to first work on being a better person.” This is true for all of us. Before we can become better mechanics, better bakers, or better candlestick makers, we first need to become better people.
For me that meant realizing why I was taking photographs in this part of the world. What is it I want to say? It meant not getting angry and frustrated when I couldn’t make photographs because too many locals were in front of my camera staring at the lens in amazement. It meant accepting all those things I couldn’t change and respecting these people for those things they can’t.
In this part of the world I’m a representative of white people, of Americans, but most importantly of a human being. They will remember the white man with all the equipment. I hope they also remember my smile and my humility, so that next time someone like me comes through they treat him as well as they did me. When we travel we often forget the memories and impressions we leave behind.