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July 7th, 2008
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Wonderlust

A photo exhibit ponders the fate of the developing world

April 30th, 2008 issue

By Bibiána Duhárová

Photos by Edward Longmire
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a street in Qingdao, China
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A mannequin in Hanoi
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More Hanoi mannequins
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Old customs linger in the shadows of skyscrapers, as evinced by the laundry line above.
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For the Post
The beauty of life is in its changes. Edward Longmire knows this personally, having made a career change from the insurance busi-ness to photography. His current exhibit at Galerie U Prstenu documents a different kind of change: The massive transformation currently sweeping through China, Vietnam and Tibet.
“It is safe to say the world is changing, and not necessarily for the better,” Longmire says.
He hopes to open the eyes of Westerners who might realize, but can’t fully imagine, the extent to which developed regions are impacting developing ones. “I want people to see that life is hard, and we should consider just how lucky we are,” he says. “The lack of awareness or insensitivity is a disease itself.”
Originally from London, Longmire, 40, started attending boarding school at the age of six, which he found to be a bubble. “My window to other worlds was the school library, where they had loads of National Geographic [magazines],” he recalls. “I looked at them and I went, ‘Wow, there is stuff out there.’ It gave me wanderlust.”
Longmire went on to study business and information technologies. He was involved briefly in the antiques business, but spent most of his career in insurance. After 10 years, he felt the pull of wanderlust, quit his job and started traveling the world, ranging from South America through Europe and the Midddle East to Asia.
He arrived in Prague in 2001, discovering an “amazing city” of incredible architecture and fascinating culture. “When I first came, it was almost too good to be true,” he says. “Then I went to South America for three months. But every morning I woke up and thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ So I just came back.”
After his return, he started attending and later graduated from FAMU, the Czech national film school, and got involved in documentary filmmaking and photography. “Changing Realities” is his first exhibition in Prague, an examination of the Western world’s penetration into developing regions.
“I returned to Vietnam after six years and the changes were enormous,” Longmire says. “The economy was growing stratospherically, and it was much busier. Hanoi was absolutely full of motorbikes; I almost didn’t recognize it. When I went down the coast, it became obvious that the place is turning into a tourist Disneyland, which is tragic. But if the Vietnamese want the money, they must go and get it.”
The exhibition was curated by Beth Lazroe, an Irish photographer and teacher whom Longmire met while studying at FAMU. “This exhibition has a time capsule element to it,” she says. “Three regions, three cultures, three different levels of globalization project three layers of who benefits from it, who is without choice and who is endangered by it. It makes people think about globalization.”
Longmire has experienced some of weirder quirks of globalization personally. “I went to a charity hospital in Calcutta — you can volunteer to work there, so I did,” he says. “I felt like a hypocrite to turn up for one day. It was like a freak show, there were more helpers than ill people. I had to shave someone, but the razor was so blunt that I ended up cutting him. I should have stayed away.”
Longmire has self-published three books of photography, capturing mainly landscapes, people and their everyday life. The future for this aspiring photographer will involve more traveling, documentary filmmaking and photography, none of which are as easy as they might seem.
“I’ve been working for about three years on a documentary about expatriates living in Prague,” he says. “I’m on my fourth version of that, and really want to finish it up. I have also been traveling on and off in Eastern Europe, Romania, Bulgaria. I have loads of material from there, and am plan-ning to go to other countries in that area.”
In all this, the biggest change may have come in Longmire himself.
“I was always interested in exploring the other side of life,” he says. “You are born into a certain situation and, if you want to challenge yourself, you have to go see how other people live. Some people can sit in a bank for 40 years, which is where my life was headed. Then I thought, ‘No, it’s best to push yourself.’ Because travel doesn’t answer any questions, it just asks more.”
Bibiána Duhárová can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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