The ‘Art’ of Communication: Jimmy Nelson (Transcript)

Although, I’m showing my teeth because I’m extremely cold, about – 400 C, but everything else that could have gone wrong on this moment is illustrated in this picture.

And I wanted to remind myself of that moment. I’m lost. I’m disorientated. I’ve just mentioned I’m cold, I’m homesick, and I’m desperate to go home. But most importantly, what I’d intended to do, I’d failed… completely and utterly failed.

And very naively I’d started on this journey and gone on this journey. And I wanted to meet these people – The Satin. There are a group of about 40 nomadic herders living in Northern Mongolia. And not only did I want to meet them, I wanted to document them, but document them in a very, very special, iconic way. I wanted to put them on a pedestal.

So I sort of flew up there and I arrived there. And it was about a two week walk from where I needed to start. And I needed an interpreter. As I walked into an village and I found somebody and I found you and you were sitting at a cafe and we looked at each other and you spoke some half decent English. 

He said, ‘could you come with me to the satin?’ And you nodded and when we went, yes, but you went like this, you said “Money, money, money”.

 And I said, ”Fine. It’s okay.”

So we came to a deal and we walked, we walked for two weeks up this long, long, long Valley in the middle of winter. And we got there. And there were with The Satin. I was ready and I wanted to talk to them, but I couldn’t.

So I looked at you and you looked at me and we looked at each other and you said, “Yeah, there’s a slight problem, Jimmy.”

And I said, “Well, what do you mean there’s a problem? They’re really, I can take pictures of them now.  Just tell them why I came.”

And he looked at me and he said, “Yeah, well, I don’t know this dialect.”

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I said, “What? You don’t know this dialect? We’ve spent the last two weeks on this journey. What are we doing?”

And he said, “Yeah, yeah, but you didn’t tell me we got that valley. I thought we were going up. The other Valley, it’s a completely different dialect.”

So I said, “But how am I going to communicate with, and what about all that money I paid you to help me.”

And he said, “Yeah, but I just needed your money. I wasn’t going to tell you, we were in the wrong Valley.”

So I was completely and utterly stuck. So many years research, months of traveling, two weeks of walking to The Satin and I couldn’t talk to them. Absolutely impossible!

So for the next two weeks, I didn’t make one picture. I didn’t make one film that wasn’t one conversation with them, but I traveled. I was patient. I went every day, we’d pack up our tents and we’d travel across the mountains. They were reindeer, herders, long journeys, cold. Every night we put up the tepee.

But after about two weeks, I essentially gave up. That was the moment I made the selfie of myself. I’m going to go home. I’m going to admit I failed. But on that particular night, we put up a tepee.

Now there were about 40 of us in this brigade as they call themselves. So if you can imagine the first front corner of this room, 40 of you after long journey, walking across the mountains, putting up a tepee minus 40 degrees, when you crawl inside the tents…and the only way to keep warm is by putting your arms and your feet, your hands and your legs in each other’s armpits, groins, orifices, you name it. 

And you become a sheer human sardine, and you cuddled up inside and the wind is blowing and it’s scaring. You’re sitting there and every night they’d get out of bottle. And they’d bring out these bottles and they’d pass them around the tents.

Now I’m not very good with alcohol. I’m afraid. So I’d sort of abstained because I was on this mission. I wanted to take these pictures. But on that day, I decided I’m going to give up. It’s a waste of time. I’m going to have a sip of this stuff. It was sort of rocket fuel vodka and they sort of passed it to me. And I had a sip and magic happens now.  It’s not that I’m going to recommend anybody to drink sort of homemade Russian rocket fuel in Mongolia. But the feeling, it felt a little bit like jumping into cold water, wearing a wetsuit and having a pee. 

It was great. So this sort of a long sort of [indiscernible], I said, I started to smile. I think it’s the first time I started to smile in weeks. I had another sip and I had another sip. And in about an hour, the inevitable happened. I’d finished the bottle, but everything seemed to be amazing.

And I was sort of making friends and, but subsequent, I think everybody else in the tent finished their bottles. And we all fell into a sort of self-induced alcoholic comb on the floor of the tent.

So there we are human sardines, all wrapped in each other’s arms and legs… drunk as the light can be… the tents up, the fires burning and it’s cold and it’s dark… And we all fall asleep. Middle of the night, slight technical problem… Can anybody help me with technical problem? What was wrong? What was wrong? 

Very, I needed to pee… [indiscernible]. I started all those scare as often is the case. One in one has had a little bit too much to drink. One thinks one’s very clever. So I thought, you know what? I’m not going to go outside because it’s too cold. I’m going to roll over the bodies in the tent, get to the sign, just lift up the side of the tent and have a quick pee and everything be fine.

So I said roll over the tent. Everybody was still asleep. Very important. Nobody could see, I was having difficulties turn around. Everybody snoring away. Got to the side of the tent. I made a mistake. I make many mistakes. I’m afraid. And I took off my glove, lifted up the side of the tent and it froze to the tent. Some sort of looking at it, but it’s okay. I’m drunk. You know, I’ve got another hand.

So I looked down, I said, “Oh dear, I’ve forgotten this 83 different layers of clothing there.” So I’ve got one hand stuck to the side of a tent. I’m full of a bottle of [indiscernible]… desperate to go to the loo. And I’m looking at this close. I stopped flailing and I started flailing. And eventually I got there, but a little bit too late, but without getting into details, it’s extremely cold.

And for the men in the audience who know when it’s extremely cold, things change or disappear. Yeah. So I lowered [ph] “Oh No! What am I going to do?” I had a pee, but I sort of went everywhere all over the tent all over me. And I sort of lay there, sort of crying in this at a drunken sort of stupidity looked around. Everybody was still asleep. It’s okay. Nobody knows.

So roll back into my place. Fell in… don’t tell anybody… fell back asleep. Two minutes later, all hell broke loose. Now I described, they were reindeer herders. There were about a thousand reindeer out, outside three o’clock in the morning. They decided to trample over the tent.

Now we’re lying there. We all wake up. The trenches tend to is flattened. Your stampeded of [indiscernible]. Everybody stands up. Everybody’s drunk. It’s a little bit like Monte Python on steroids, everybody running around, flailing, screaming and yelling.

And then all of a sudden one after another, the reindeer started to look at me. And as you can see the range of these massive, great antlers on their head, they started looking at me and they started walking towards me like this.

And I’m sort of thinking, “Am I drunk? Was this happening looking?” And they start looking at me and they start literally sort of gathering of flocking around me. I start walking backwards like this thinking it’s okay…its okay… I’ll be all right. 

And then you can see with  the head…their antlers. They started to lick me from head to toe. They’re fighting coming at me licking. So I’m standing and then I look behind me… there’s a cliff. We’re on top of a mountain on the edge of a Valley and there’s a cliff.

And then I start to scream. I said, “This can’t be true.” These reindeers are about to push me over the side of the cliff. So, I started screaming and screaming, screaming The Satin and down in the Valley below. And there was one man. And he looked at me and he didn’t do and he said look to me, pointed gesture to everybody. They put their hands over their stomachs, bent him and they started to laugh.

 I said, “Don’t laugh,  help me… help” I’m about to be pushed over the cliff by your reindeer. So it sort of eventually came through and he was laughing, laughing, and laughing without any form of language whatsoever.

He pointed at my groin. He waved his finger like this… wandering around. And I said “Reindeer, get the reindeer off me.” So he sort of pulled me back down to the villages. Everyone was laughing and all everybody’s pointing at my groin. How would they leave you all asleep? You have no idea what happened last night.

And then he turns around, he shows me his backside and on his backside, there’s this big, big leather ball. And then the whole village turns around and they bang their bottoms. 

And on their bottom, they carry this leather pouch. And in that leather, pouch is full of urine and they lifted the patch up, passed it to my face and enriching said, yeah. And I said, yeah. And he said, what’s this all about?

And then they started sprinkling the urine on the snow stone. All of a sudden the reindeer gathered then for the last two weeks, I hadn’t noticed because I was far too busy being sorry for myself, not being able to let me make my pictures.

The reindeer have been following us because The Satin would be sprinkling their urine in the snow as they were going along. Next time, be more observant. And I said, “But why didn’t you give me that leather pouch?”

And they all have said, “You didn’t say you pee your pants.” So anyway, so we were sort of put back up the tin [ph]. Very sheepishly, I went back and sat down saying, you know, like this and all the old ladies got out their special, extra strong bottles of vodka passed… everybody’s laughing.

And then the next morning, something very, very beautiful began to happen. Through sort of extreme humility, we find who made a contact slowly I could communicate with. We found a way of seeing each other.

And in that process, I started to make these pictures. Pictures, which I very much participate in. They’re directed… that I can a graphic… they’re romantic… they’re idealistic, but it requires an enormous amount of communication to see them, to place them, to show them and to present them to you.

But by learning this very, very, very sort of childish lesson, it was the only way I actually managed to end up communicating with them. But the journey, and I think this is a very beautiful journey, especially to stand here with you today. 

I actually started in my childhood. And many of you in your sort of middle teens, and this is me when I was seven. My father traveled around the world as a geologist. I traveled with him. So I saw an enormous amount of the planet. Got to the age of 16, returning back to an institution… much the same as this in the United Kingdom.

And I was ill. I had cerebral malaria. And I think to be honest, I was a little bit stressed when I sort of said to my parents, isn’t it time you keep me at home. And it’s very English and old fashioned said, “No, you’ll be fine with all those priests on the mountains”.

 So I sort of went back up; probably somewhat terrified and met this sort of priest said, “It’s fine. It’s fine. You’ll be well in the morning. It’s malaria.” So a whole load of rubbish. “Take this pot of pills and everything will be fine.”

So I sort of naively took a bottle of pills and I woke up in the morning and I ended up looking like somebody else. Now, how many of you are here 16? Please put your hand up.

Okay. Would all of you put your hands in the air? Imagine what it’s like going to bed tonight. And tomorrow morning, going up to brush your teeth and meeting somebody else when you look in the mirror.

Now it’s quite a dramatic experience and you look and you go, who the hell is that? And then you start looking at, but you literally say, I remember literally sort of touching myself, “Is that me that I saw.”I had no hair whatsoever. Everything had fallen out within a few hours.

And I think, “Well, it’s okay. I feel the same. I had may not look the same.” So I said, I remember leaving out. And everybody looked at me in a different way. Everybody said, “Oh, who the hell is that?”

And said, “it’s Jimmy” and everybody was waving and waving, “That’s not Jimmy at all. You’re somebody else.”  And I started screaming. Literally. I remember all my knees, “It’s me. It’s me. It’s me.”

And everybody literally went, “No, no, no, no, no. You’re somebody else, go and stand over there.” Utterly, utterly terrifying. Now nothing happened to my health, but it was basically a judgment. I was judged to be somebody else that I wasn’t purely by my appearance. So I run away.

Now, I’m not going to recommend you. And if you run away, it was about sort of 17. And I disappeared and I bought a one way ticket to Tibet. 

And I remember reading a book, not a very profound book. This book, here we go, ‘Tintin’ ,and I remember seeing lots of little bull boys running around the Himalayas, following Tintin and his dog Snowy.

And I said, “Well, that’s where I’m going to go because that’s the one place on the planet where maybe, maybe not easily, I will be able to find some empathy because the boys looked like I do.”

Now, of course they’re shaved because they’re Buddhist monks. That’s what I did. I disappeared. And by default, not by being an explorer or an adventure or an athlete, I got lost. But on that journey of getting lost, perhaps I started to go on another journey of starting to find that, Who am I? Who am I? Who do I mean, what do I look like on that process? And what do I feel?

And then on that spectacular journey, I started to meet other people, other people by using a camera. And we started to make these contacts by not necessarily by slipping in my pants and tents, by the extraordinary sort of interactions.

And so I started a career by default, as a photographer. Few years later, I met my icon. I think for all of you… all of you who are studying here in these fantastic schools, you need people to look up to. And this is the man I looked up to, Edward Sheriff Curtis, an extraordinary guy. He spent 30 years of his life traveling around the American West a hundred years ago, documenting the native American Indians.

Now he put them on a pedestal. He put them up high. He made them spectacular. He made them beautiful. And he said, “Look, look, look, look, look how we’re developing. Look where we’re going. And look at what we still have. This has to be protected. And we have to take it with us.”

He made these amazing books. 95% of them were burned. They were destroyed. He was destroyed. He was divorced. He was bankrupt and he disappears and he died and he was forgotten.

30 years ago, the remnants of these pictures re-emerged and the whole of the contemporary culture looked at them and put their hands over the mouth and went, look at what we’ve lost. And perhaps by looking in the mirror, look at what we’ve become.

On the strength of Edward Curtis, I also set out on a journey, a journey very much inspired, very much by him, but looking at the rest of the planet, Who are these people? who are the last indigenous cultures tribes on the planet? What do they look like? And what perhaps could they mean to us?

One and a half years ago, I published a book, never published a book before. It was a little bit naive.  I made pictures from a sort of a gut instinct, passionate and emotional instinct, but not necessarily understanding the significance of what I was doing.

And something quite spectacular happened. Due to the digitalization, the world, what my naive message spreads, six and a half thousand publications within a period of six months started to publish the pictures.

Pictures were published. Something even more spectacular happened. People who would read the stories and seeing the pictures came to me, radio stations, television organizations, and said, Jimmy, “Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, what is this? Where this, what is it?”

And it went so far as to say, “You are like Edward Curtis, he faked it, all you’re faking it all. And it has no significance to us whatsoever.”

And if you look here on the right, somebody accused me of wrong-headed obsession with vanishing indigenous peoples. Now this is what I want to talk to you about. Wrong-headed it is not at all, but obsession it is. It’s a deep, deep session and a passion and a journey I now want to take you on.

Does anybody know where Chukotka is? Far Northeastern Russia, okay. It’s miles away… 13 hour flight from Moscow and into Chukotka are the Chukchi. Now all we were talking about it earlier Inuits… in Chukotka, my personal sort of fantasy of seeing the last Inuits. They live in Chukotka. Not many of them, there’s only 40 of them and they’re remote, but it’s fine.

I spent four years researching online. Met somebody, another person he said, yeah, I speak good English. I know where Chukchi are. I flew there, arrived there. And I looked at him and said, “Great! I’ve got two weeks, you know, I’ve got to get…” He says, “Two weeks Jimmy, There’s a slight technical problem.” 

And I said, “Technical?” He said, “Because Chukotka is a big place.” And I said, “Yeah, I know, I know I’ve been traveling.” He says, ”It’s as big as the size of France.”

I said, yeah, but he says, there are only 40 Chukchis left. I said, “Okay! But we spent four years online communicating… you know, I was ready. You must be ready.”

He says, “Yeah, but they moved, they are nomads.”

“So what are you trying to say?”

“I have no idea where they are.”

I said, “Oh no. Go in the next flight back… since we… you mean you have no idea. You know, we need preparation.” He says, “Yeah, but I have a very good idea. I have a tank.” He says, I have a very, very good tank. And on the roof, you can see the tank here and on the roof, we can take two months of diesel”

“Two months…? I can’t just disappear off into the Tundra.” 

He says, “But this is the only way we’re going to find the Chukchis.” And I said, “Well, I need a time. I need a deadline.”

He said, “Well, I can’t give it to you, but you can trust me. And we can disappear off into the Tundra.”

So as you can see from the pictures, we sort of slipped and off, we went, we got into this tank. Now this tank travels at about 10 kilometers an hour. It’s like a dentist chair, grinding 24 hours of the day. And then I said, “Okay, how are we going to find the Chukchis?”

He goes, “Oh, easy. The reindeer”

“Reindeer. Oh no, not reindeer.” And he looks at me. He goes, “You have a problem with reindeer?” And I said, “Well, it’s a long history as long problem with many things… But reindeer is one of them.”

He says, “Explain later” “I sit on the roof of the tank and the reindeer droppings. I can tell by the age and the distribution where the Chukchis moved to. Very, very easy.”

“So yeah. All right. We’ll see it when we believe it.”

So we’ve got into the tank and we went on the journey. Now this is Brahm, the camera man who came with me. This is how we wake up every morning, sort of minus 20 degrees in the tank, very warm… those his bottles behind him, not mine.

And we spent 28 days in this tank. Now a bit of an odd experience sitting a little metal box with the four of you in indefinitely, traveling over the Tundra. But then one day something spectacular happened. We saw something, we came over the mountains and there in the distance, we saw this, it was like sort arriving in Manhattan, a tent. 

And, I promise you if you spent four 28 days in a tank, you see this tent, “Oh my goodness! Yes we [ph]shall realize where I wanted to come.”

And next to the tent there were these people and they were sitting having a picnic and I hope,” Jesus, this is the people that wanted to be, this is it. This is it.”

So I started jumped out and met this man. And he was eating on my hitp [ph]. My literally… my icon, very handsome, the chief of the Chukchis sitting there. And how’s that jumped into Jimmy I’ve been 28… in a tank and I’m going to get home. My wife’s going to kill me… She’s probably right. I need to take your picture, please, please, please…

And he said, he looked at me and he looked at me anyway. And the whole, the whole of it took she’s went and he raised his finger and he spoke the one word of Russian I’d heard ‘yet’

 I said, You got me serious. I need to make your picture. I’m Jimmy. I’m doing this project. He went ‘yet… yet’ and the whole village started going “yet yet.” So it’s a little bit sort of disillusioning. And he said, “but you are welcomed through the translator.” He said, “you’re welcome to stay.”

I said, “well, what am I going to do?” And he says, “what are you going to do? You can stay and live with us. You can watch us.” I said, “yeah, but I need to make pictures.”

And he said, “Well, you can’t make pictures.” I said, “But why? Am I stealing your soul?”

And he says, “No, don’t believe in any of that nonsense. It’s just too cold. We need to keep alive. We need every 24 hours, we have a chance of dying. If you come here and start singing, we know what it is to make pictures and films will probably die, but we’d like to have you to help keep us alive and we’ll help keep you alive. And perhaps you’ll see something else.”

So this phenomenal lesson on miles, we’re on the other side of the world. In the middle of nowhere, my own sort of hands are handcuffed. But for the first time in my life, I’m convinced to observe, observe, observe.

So one and a half years ago, I made the book, showed it and people started questioning me positively and negatively. And I started saying, well, I’m desperate to go back. I’m desperate to show that the Himba, the Chukchi, the Hooli, the pictures I made, I felt I’ve taken something from them. They didn’t know I was making pictures. I have to share it to them. I have to show it to them.

So I started to go back and we started to film. And we went back to Namibia, Northern Namibia, right on the border of Angola and the top with the Himba. Now the Himba, I think 99.9% of them live in the cities.

In the year 2050 if I’m writing saying 95% of the planet will live in cities. So the Himba are a fantastic example of a tiny fraction of an indigenous culture, still living the habitat. So we said, we arrived back a little bit melodramatic as used to be about production values, hot air balloons, not quite the normal way to arrive with the Himba. But then we got there and then there they were, we, I remember arriving and they looked and they looked and this time they all started to cry.

And being about four years, since I’d seen them and I started crying and they literally came up to me and said, “You know, you’re not the first person to have ever photographed us or filmed us. We know what it is. You’re the very first person to give us the respect and the dignity to come back and show us what you made. What were you doing standing behind that tripod, waving your hand, sweating all day… What was it all about? That was a beautiful story.”

So you sort of sat down. I remember we sort of came into the village, showing them the book and the and everybody leaning in seeing themselves then eventually recognizing themselves in the pictures and then having the amazing discussion.

What’s this, did I see you in the right way? Is this the way you see yourself? What are your dreams? What’s your aspiration? And a fantastic conversation. And then you sort of got to the end of the chapter of the Himba, and here we are coming back to the group.

And then there, we got to the end. Then we turned over to the Chukchi and they went this horror of realizing, “What is this, this, this furthest snow in there?”  I said, “Yeah, there are other places on the planet. Other spectacular people like you…”and all of that.

And then we went on another journey a few months ago to Vanuatu. It was quite… I was ranked by CNN and there was this guy, “Hi, my name’s Bob.” And I said, “Oh, Hi, man”

“I hear you want to go on a journey.” And I said, “yes, yes, please.”

“Where do you want to go?” And I said, “Well, I’d love to go back to Vanuatu”

“Meet me in Sydney in two weeks.”

So I sort of flew down to Sydney and there were six of him, you know, about this six, the very large guys, all named Bob by thing and all, carrying 32 different drones. And I thought Oh no, not quite over here…the intimacy is going to go and sat down and said, we have to be very careful about what we’re doing. And we did.

We went, we went to the Island of tonneau. We started filming with the yokel. And at the beginning it was a little bit confronting, but eventually we found a rhythm and a communication. 

And then towards the end, something magical happened. The chief said, “Come, come, come, come, Jimmy. We want to take a picture with you and our tribe. You are sort of adopted member.”

And I was very proud and guilt involved in sat there under the tree. You’ll see the picture in a minute and wedged in and had the copy of my book. And you’re surrounded by 80 people in this sort of Banyan tree. This is the cathedral of this culture, enveloping them.

And here we go. And I remember sitting in sort of very proudly sort of presenting the book. And all of a sudden the chief went into him and he goes to me, they said, there’s a problem by the translator. And the whole tree went silent and, ‘Oh Jesus, here we go. I’ve done this again. You know, it’s nothing to do with my gloves this way. What have I done?’ And the whole tree starts shaking their head and murmuring.. ‘Now, Oh no, what have I done?’ 

He says, “You gave me this book. I’m very happy.” And I said, “You have no idea how it is traveling with, for those, you know, as handbags plus all my cameras.”

“I’m so proud of what he says. Yeah. But there’s a big problem.” And I said, “Well, what’s the problem?”

He says, “When are the other 80 people going to get their book?” And the whole tree started nodding like this. So if anybody wants to come to Vanuatu and  has a container, you’re more than welcome to come with me sometime in the near future, because I have to go back because I promised them all 80 books, how I’m going to do that. I’ll deal with that later.

I think the moral of the story is… going back to that story at the very, very beginning about until you truly let go… until you truly form a humility, can you find it empathy…  And in that empathy, you can find a contact. And in that contact, you can discover who you truly are and who the people are around you.

So I want to leave you with another picture, which we’ve just gone past. And I need, if you come up on the stage now, Drake, it’s this picture where are we, of The Nenet. Now this guy is amazing. It’s not one of my favourite pictures.

The other day, a friend of mine said, “Oh, Jimmy, when you finished talking, you have to show that picture of the Nenet.” And I said, “Why? it’s not my favourite?  He says, “Not about being your favorite. This picture is very, very symbolic. You don’t see what’s happening in this picture, do you?”

And I said, “No, I don’t.” She says, “Look, look, look into the man’s eyes. And we started looking in the eyes and there’s this spectacular reflection of me flailing behind the tripod.” 

And she said, “Well, that’s what this is all about. You’ve etched yourself onto his soul.”

And in that sort of metaphor, I hope the few pictures that I’ve made in the stories that I share with you have edged something on your soul.

Now I know the majority of you are far more intelligent and will become far more educated than I ever became. But please look at these people, look at where they live, look at what they represent and look at what they stand for and realize the importance and the value of them as we move on into the future.

Now to end with you’re all a tribe. So please stand up. We’re going to make a picture of you, but it’s an important picture, okay. You have to stand still Okay. [indiscernible] your top button. Stand tall. Okay. You ready? Okay. Is everybody ready?

We’re going to make a pan and we’re going to stitch him as you have to stand still longer than five. Breathe in through your nose. There are no reflectors. Okay. Stand up straight. Lift your chin. Are you ready? You’re ready.  Okay.. Go, go, go!

Thank you.

Resources for Further Reading:

The 110 Techniques of Communication & Public Speaking: David JP Phillips (Transcript)

Reading Minds Through Body Language: Lynne Franklin (Transcript)

Louise Evans: Own Your Behaviours, Master Your Communication, Determine Your Success (Transcript)

Stephen Duneier: How to Achieve Your Most Ambitious Goals at TEDxTucson (Transcript)

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