A group of young men just spent a week on the Wind River Reservation for a photo camp with National Geographic. The students camped, fished, explored and even helped with a bison harvest, all while honing their skills as storytellers and photographers.
The crew was made up of folks from the Wind River Reservation and the youth conservation group Medicine Fish, which empowers young people from the Menominee Reservation in northeastern Wisconsin. It’s the third consecutive year that National Geographic has hosted the immersive week of mentorship and creativity in Wyoming.
The boys showed off their work at a get-together on July 18 at Central Wyoming College. Family and friends watched as a slideshow played on a projector, with lush images of people, place, color and light passing across the screen. Afterwards, the group came to the front of the room and shared a traditional prayer song they had sung throughout the week.
Wyoming Public Radio’s Hannah Habermann stopped by the showcase and connected with the photo camp crew after the presentation.
She talked with Ronan Donovan, a National Geographic Explorer who helped organize the camp alongside fellow National Geographic Explorer and Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative Executive Director Jason Baldes, and local teachers Mike Redman and Iva Moss-Redman.
Habermann also talked with Corey Beydler, a rising senior at St. Stephens Indian High School on the Wind River Reservation, and Jackson Taylor, who just graduated from Moscow High School in Idaho.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Ronan Donovan: Men across the United States and especially on reservations are struggling in disproportionate ways to young women. And the ripple effects throughout communities and societies, I feel, is profound.
If men aren't doing well, then society's not doing well as a whole.
[This year], we decided to do an all-boys photo camp. We decided to do it on the land, in the sense we were camping out on the northwest part of the reservation at a place called Crow Creek.
We asked, ‘What would you like to do?’ and teepees came up. We had four teepees that we set up with the group on the first day as getting us all on the same ground and getting us all acquainted with each other in that process and building home.
Then the week progressed, surrounding buffalo and connection to land and place. Being in this brotherhood space, there's a vulnerability that's allowed when men are in safe masculine spaces with other men, and they can unfold in a way that I think is different when there's women of the same age are around.
One lesson that I feel like we were all able to collectively share as a photo camp team was that there's comfort and peace and a sense of belonging to being in these quiet, natural spaces that a lot of the boys voiced that they hadn't spent time in.
They hadn't been camping, many of them. They hadn't been around such quiet in that way. We didn't have cell service, and there were these times where there'd be boys looking at the creek. They'd listen to the wind, they'd listen to the birds, and they would just comment that this was something that they never knew existed.
Corey Beydler: My name's Corey Beydler and I'm a student photographer for National Geographic. Could I say that? Yeah.
For me personally, the camp was really cool. It's really cool to meet new people and experience new things. I've never seen a buffalo get harvested before, so that was pretty crazy to see.
Some big things that I learned was learning about portraits, how to take portraits and messing around with light.
I think most of my favorite pictures were landscapes. I took a photograph, it was of some wheat. It was kind of dark, a little moody, with a cloudy sky. I really liked it.
I heard about this photo camp from my Arapaho culture teacher, Mike Redman. He told me about it and he wanted me to go to it, so I was like, ‘Okay, I'll try it out.’
Getting to meet people and hearing their stories and where they're from and their background, it's really cool to hear that.
I’d like to do wedding photos, wedding photos would be cool. It's cool because you'll never run out of work.
Jackson Taylor: I'm 18 years old, I just graduated from Moscow High School in Moscow, Idaho.
Yesterday, me and some of the boys went out to the badlands [outside Dubois]. We used reflectors and we worked together to do a series of portraits. That was the most fun kind of photograph I got to take.
The most special day for sure was the buffalo harvest. That was definitely the most emotional and meaningful day I had during the photo camp.
The most profound moment of that day was after the buffalo was killed. Seeing the herd gather around it and doing their dance for it and respecting it. It felt like as many emotions as we had that day, all those buffaloes had the same, if not more intense emotions and feelings.
Some of them were mourning, some of them were checking, some of them were fighting with each other, but it just felt…I've never seen an emotional display like it from, from anything, buffalo or, or human, but it was deeply beautiful.
I learned that I tend to crop the bottom and the top out of every image without fail. So I think when it comes to lessons, the biggest is: Zoom out more.
One thing that was discussed a lot is this idea of photography as a weapon. But what I think makes that a pretty profound statement is that it's not a weapon that kills, it's a weapon that reveals truth and knowledge and information.
It's one that gives instead of takes, and I don't think there's another weapon like that on the planet. I want to use that weapon in my life to give as much as I can and wield the camera responsibly as we all should, because we’ve all got one on us nowadays. Just learning about what a powerful and positive tool it is.
This is what I want to do. I love photojournalism and I love documentary filmmaking. I've done work in both and I'd like that to be my professional career.
Photo camp was all about the people. The photographs are like a tertiary element, because it was the people that I got to meet and learn from and work with and befriend. That's much more profound than any photograph I took and I think I took some good ones.
