Once in Kisangani, I was in a friend´s car with my luggage. I must confess that after my military service I “borrowed” a few military clothes because they were good to go in the bush. And is it not that we were stopped at a military checkpoint? They opened my luggage, and found the military clothes. OK, I was a Belgian spy, and I was taken prisoner. They took me to the military base, where,whilegoing to the commandr´s office, the soldier´s wives were throwing earth at me. The commander started questioning me, I tld me I was just travelling around to know thecountry, but he didn´t seemto believe me and at a certain point he pulled his gun, made the sign of te cross and pointed his gun at my head. Then, for some reason (maybe he had never killed someone before), he changed his mind, but he placed three soldiers, each with a gun pointed at my head from a different direction so I couldn´t move, to guard me. Later on I was taken to the civilian Province Governor´s office. He looked at my notebooks, and concluded that I was really traveling and not a danger to the country, and he decided that I should go to the civilian jail. At least I was away from the military. Next day United Nations troops from Ethiopia had arrived, and itwas decided I would be expelled to Ethiopia. I was taken to the airport, ad while I waited, a Congolese military jeep arived and took me back. They said: “Today we will kill you”. But I was taken instead back to the civilian jail. A small historical interruption: a riot in which the now Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba participated had taken place in the Congo in 1959. Lumuma was imprisoned in thesame jail where I was. The Jail Director came to me and told me proudly: your cell is next to the cell where Monsieur le Premier Ministre was imprisoned. So I was there for ten days, having the right, being white and as in colonial times, to meals from the city´s restaurants. The Africans had just prison food. I was expecting all the time that the military would come back and execute me.Then on the 10th day, a surprise: I had a visit! It was a red cross representative, who had come to rescue me from jail. His name was Mr. Senn, a Swede living in what was then Rhodesia. He took me out, got me on a plane to the capital Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, flying with me, and staying with me all the time to make sure the military wouldn´t get me back,until I was on a refugee plane to Belgium. I learned later (from a Red Cross LinkedIn member, a connection of a friend of mine) that Mr. Senn had been head of the prison system in Sweden, and was now the Red Cross specialist in visiting jailed political prisoners and in taking people out of jail in troubled countries. The same person told me that Mr.Senn later visited Nelson Mandela in his jail, and that he was able to improve his prisoner´s conditions. So I was back in Belgium. But the story doesn´t end here. I read months later in a Belgian newspaper that, in the Congolese political and civil war turmoil, both the Province Governor and the military commander who nearly killed me were made prisoners by one of the fighting factions, taken to the Province of Kasai and executed, then… eaten. I got back to studying botany, which I had abandoned before my military service.
As I said on my post of 07/17/2008, some of my first pictures were “anthropological” pictures of gypsies near my parent´s home in Brussels. Someone asked me to publish them in this blog. These pictures were some of my first photographs ever. I don´t think I had taken more than 50 (perhaps even 20) pictures before. The first picture is a composite pseudo-panoramic using two pictures taken from a slightly different angle (the same boy appears on both) to give a general view of the camp. Can an expert recognize the cars?
Gypsy camp near Brussels, Belgium ca 1957.
Gypsy family
More pictures whenever I have
time…
All pictures © Jacques Jangoux 2009
(these images are not ready for publishing: they were scanned with the discontinued amateur Olympus scanner at low resolution and are full of scratches (you can see them).Whenever I have time (when? when???) I may try to scan them with my Nikon 5000. I am not sure if Digital Ice will work with silver halide film; some say that it works if you scan as color negative).
I mentioned that after the Leica III F I got a Canonflex, in 1959, not long after it was launched. I used it during my military service in the Congo (then a Belgian colony). When my military service ended I stayed in the Congo, hitchhiking across the country from Katanga in the south-east to the Ruwenzori Mountains, the Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira volcanoes in the north-east. I was using the first Kodachrome which had an ASA (now ISO) of 10. I still have an image taken in 1960 online at the Getty Stone collection made with the combination Canonflex - Kodachrome I in the Congo:
Go to gettyimages.com, Image, Creative, Rights-Managed, and search for my name (TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/bea7zw). It´s the African woman with a lip ornament).
A thing I loved about the Canonflex was its bottom left winding lever. You didn´t need to take your eye off the camera to advance film. Apparently (from a Google search) some photographers didn´t like it because it made it difficult to follow-focus or to use on a tripod.
OK, back to the Congo. Independence day was coming. From Kisangani (then Stanleyville) I went to a small town in Central Congo to assist at more traditional festivities, essentially dance to the sound of drums. After a few days rumors started running that a revolt was happening in Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) - or was it in the Katanga, or both? Anyway I hiked a ride on a truck back to Stanleyville/Kisangani. To continue in a dramatic next chapter… (probably after my March - April trip)
Hello,
As I said on my post of 07/17/2008 some of my first pictures, and my first “anthropological” pictures, were of Gypsies in the Brussels suburbs where my parents lived. Those pictures were taken with a Leica F III with an Elmar 3.5 lens. A wonderful camera, but what I miss most is the focusing lever, that allowed you to preset your distance and with experience have very little focusing to do.Then some “genius” came up with the idea of a focusing ring. Previous to the Leica I had taken some landscape pictures with my father´s Rolleyflex. Somehow around the Leica period I got to like jazz music. I still do, especially the period starting in 1941 at Minton´s Playhouse in Harlem where, under the influence of Coleman Hawkin´s playing, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian and others gave jazz a new form that came to be known as bebop. The apogee came, at least to me, in the fifties, best ilustrated, perhaps, by the works of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. It lasted into the sixties when it morphed into soul (some great soul music, by the way). But I was talking about photography, wasn´t I? So I started photgraphing jazz musicians giving concerts in Brussels: Coleman Hawkins, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Dizzy, Miles Davis etc. The most emotional moment was in a night club after a concert when Bud Powell, completely doped, gave a marvelous version of Round about Midnight. Everybody had tears in their eyes. I never heard something that beautiful and emotional. Then I did a first and last experiment at spelunking, and the Leica found its way into the center of the Earth. My next camera was a Canonflex, the first Canon SLR I believe. A very interesting concept, but that will be for another day.
Jacques
Hello,
I started photography as a teenager. (I think my first pictures were scenics taken with my father´s Rolleyflex). I always had an interest in nature and in anthropology. My first “anthropological” pictures were in the late 1950´s (this time with my own camera, a Leica III F) of gypsies who were camping near my parent´s house in the suburbs of Brussels, Belgium. As I am traveling I have no access to the pictures but I intend to post them some day. The area is all built up now, so no more gypsies…
Jacques