Drop the Moorings: Olivier Föllmi

Olivier  Föllmi*

Sometimes my friends ask me which is the sentence that struck me most, the quote I most love.

It's impossible to choose one; I love collecting famous phrases, I often use them, and each has its own specific meaning for different aspects of me.

But there is a long sentence that every time I reread it I am moved. And who has followed my courses in Rome knows it well, because I use it at the end of the last lesson, as a final greeting.

It is written by one of the most underrated photographers, in my opinion: Olivier Föllmi, in his splendid book “Tips from a traveling photographer”.

Although he has published more than 30 photographic books, awarded in 2008 in the World Press Photo, included by LIFE magazine among the best 50 photographers in the world, Föllmi is rarely mentioned. 

Mostly he is famous for the series “Wisdom of humanity”, made with his wife Danielle, with whom he is also the founder of the HOPE Association, which works all over the world in aid of the most disadvantaged children.

His working method is also of great inspiration to me because, wherever he goes to take pictures, he tries to help in some way the communities he meets, as he tells – for example – in the chapter “Give and Receive”, when, thanks to selling his photos in a village in Burkina Faso, Africa, he managed to build a water well for the people of that village.

 

I love his photographs and those on the Himalayas remain a cut above the photos of Steve McCurry, much more acclaimed.

Föllmi makes use of natural light like few others; he is a romantic and for me this is a remarkable merit.

The book is full of sentences underlined in pencil, and I never tire of reading it.

This is the phrase that I love most and that could very well be my choice: the famous quote as a spiritual testament of my life, since I share every syllable:

“And you, traveling friend, where do you want to go, to begin with?

Head to the continent that calls you, whose culture inspires you, and stop in the country where you will feel at home. Return twice, ten times to your adopted country. Maybe you're going to live there? Don't impose limits, leave all doors open. Leave like an enchanted child and let the journey take you by the hand: the first stranger to discover is yourself! Take advantage of the journey to lose who you think you are. Forget what you've learned, be wary of your certainties, drop the moorings, let yourself be surprised! Go naked, dare to be a beggar: the journey will offer you new clothes. It will reveal riches in you that you did not even suspect.

You will return without a penny, but you will be very rich” (Olivier Föllmi)

 

Hommage à l'Himalaya (Français) Broché – 24 September 2004 

 

My courses, here in Rome, have always been particular, never taught photographic technique, so much so that they were called “Photography as Cultural Mediation”, or how to photograph other cultures, peoples, and religions.

I have always been convinced that our identities are consistent thanks to the meeting with others, as the ancient Greeks claimed.

I am myself today thanks to all the people I met on my journey as a man and photographer. And the more different and distant people were from me, the more I was forced to change myself, an “undress”, as Föllmi says well.

It takes a lot of humility and courage to take off one's mental clothes, a decentralization, a not considering as the needle of the compass of the whole world (something in which we Westerners are very skilled).

The beggar, like the baul of Bangladesh, crazy beggars and mystics.

 

Even Tiziano Terzani, who has traveled all his life, tells how in his last days, in the Himalayas, an old man said to him:

“Abandon everything, abandon everything you know, abandon, abandon, abandon. And don't be afraid of being left with nothing, because in the end that nothing is what sustains you.”

That's it...

 

“The beauty of a story does not depend on the kilometers traveled, but from the intensity of the exchange, the experience and how, with shining eyes, one communicates from the deepest intimate”. These words by Föllmi recall the last verses of Cavafy's poem “Ithaca”.

 

We are all travelers, more or less aware, and our wealth is precisely in how much nakedness we will be able to show to others.

Waiting for new clothes to give us a new glance.

Then we will have to be ready to focus our eyes on our camera, and give back what has been given.

 

Dhaka, 2020

*This image is copyrighted © by Olivier Föllmi or the assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism, or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only.

READ ALSO:

• Odoardo Beccari: The First Italian in Malaysia
• People and Places

Olivier Föllmi: “Tips from a traveling photographer” (Contrasto, 2010)

Olivier Föllmi: “Himalaya” (L'Ippocampo, 2005)

Olivier Föllmi: “Latin America” (L'Ippocampo, 2007)

Danielle & Olivier Föllmi: “Wisdom of humanity” (L'Ippocampo, 2007)

Olivier Föllmi: “Child-friendly” (L'Ippocampo, 2007)

Tiziano Terzani: “A world that no longer exists” (Longanesi, 2010)

 

https://www.olivier-follmi.net/

 http://www.atelier-follmi.com/en/1799-2/humanitaire/the-hope-association/

Italian version