Through travels in countries like Ethiopia, India and New Guinea, Chris Rainier has learned that he can’t just try to see the world objectively through his viewfinder.
Rainier, a photographer and National Geographic Society Fellow, told stories of his many travels as a photojournalist for the New York Times, Time Magazine and National Geographic at a Walter Cronkite School of Journalism Must See Monday event.
“Photography has been the passport — the ability to travel to these places,” Rainier said.
Of the places he discussed, Rainier spent the most time, 10 years, in New Guinea. Within those years, Rainier would leave New Guinea for short periods of time to work on separate stories for the New York Times.
Rainier compared the destinations traveling back and forth from his New York Times stories to New Guinea as “Dante’s inferno” and “the Garden of Eden.”
Because the culture of the indigenous people in New Guinea was so different from any other country he had visited before, Rainier realized the journalist in him was still learning.
“We are very ethnocentric, our culture, our species, wherever we live … Our world is based upon what we perceive and what radiates out,” Rainier said.
He said these considerations are necessary in order to be a good journalist, students must continue to learn to ask the “right” questions.
“I needed to sit down and listen to what was more relevant,” he said.
During his time in Africa, Rainier faced another challenge to his conceptions as a photojournalist
Rainier lived with a United States refugee relief agency in east Somalia. Rainier continued to remind himself to practice “objectivity at all cost.”
“If it was not happening through the frame, it was out of my mind,” he said.
This attitude changed after an experience he recounted.
Rainier and his team quickly helped a man into their pick-up truck to take him and a very ill, frail boy to the hospital.
“It was a race against time,” he said.
While in the truck, the man told Rainier he was thirsty. Rainier offered the man water. In order to help the man drink the water, Rainier set down his camera bag and held the boy.
Just minutes later, the boy died in Rainier’s arms.
“I was no longer photographing the story from a distance,” Rainier said. “I had now become part of the narrative.” From that moment on, Rainier said he no longer believed in objectivity.
He said a journalist can be fair, but objectivity itself does not exist.
Rainier said this distinction helped him improve as a storyteller. In order for a journalist to be a pure storyteller, they must consider becoming involved, he said.
“I had to roll around in it,” he said. “I had to make love to it. I had to hate it. I had to take it in and have an opinion.”
Rainier currently works with some of the Cronkite School’s top photojournalism students, Kristin Gilger, Associate Dean at the school, said.
“It’s been a thrilling experience for those students to work with him,” Gilger said.
As another part of Rainier’s growing career, he created the Last Mile Technology Connect program. Rainier and his team, when invited, travel to indigenous cultures and train the people on 21st century technology.
“Everybody wants to be part of the narrative,” Rainier said.
Contact the reporter at Cecilya.Moreno@asu.edu.
