#Maybe beauty standards are different maybe the illustrations are misleading

[drumlincountry]

My very important dungeon meshi headcanon is that Laios is Not attractive

[pauldeckerus]

To Stage or Not to Stage in Travel Photography

With the recent polemics surrounding a certain image that won a photography competition this week, I feel like we need to talk about travel photography. About people photography, in our case. And to set up boundaries as to what’s acceptable in both cases. Honestly, in my opinion, it’s a matter of common sense – but it seems that’s not enough. We still witness some shocking scenes in the world of travel photography these days.

Let me be clear: My goal isn’t to attack or criticize any specific, or specific group, of photographers. I don’t know these people. I’ve never met them. But the whole circus that events such as these have created is, in my book, very disturbing, which is why I feel it’s important to discuss the topic in general.

The Case of Photography

Let’s start by looking at photography in a wider context. When it was first invented, staged images were pretty much the only option. The equipment was big and bulky (and expensive) and the exposure times were very long. Anyone who wanted to photograph people had to have them stand still for several minutes. Even with the invention of the collodion technique in 1851, the exposure time still had to be 2–3 minutes. Not exactly spur-of-the-moment stuff.

Then, in 1901, came the Kodak Brownie – the first commercial camera for the middle class. Photography exploded from then on and all the different types of photography that we know today were born.

Documentary photography stemmed from the desire to illustrate newspaper articles – and quickly, a set of ‘rules’, or commonly accepted behaviors, was established. Photojournalism and documentary photography had to depict the truth, without the influence of the photographer. Nowadays, if a photojournalist is caught staging their picture or modifying them in any way, it means the end of their career.

At the other end of the scale, there’s fashion photography. Very little fashion photography happening without staging, without someone directing the whole image. From the model to the props used to the choice of location… everything is controlled and staged for the best results.

But what about travel photography? It seems to me that travel photography is considered as the ‘hobby photography’; anyone can just grab a camera, hit the road and start shooting. If you try to remember the big names of travel photography, who do you think about? Well, there is only one name that comes to mind for most people. Just one.

To me, this proves that travel photography is largely ignored as professional fields in photography – so no one has bothered to set any ethical guidelines. After recent events, maybe it’s time we do so.

The Case of Travel Photography

You may remember the 2015 controversy surrounding Steve McCurry. He was accused of having Photoshopped some of his images to make them more aesthetically pleasing. At first, he said his staff did it. Then he said that he “considers himself to be more of a ‘visual storyteller’ rather than a photojournalist.”

What I understand from this is that basically, if it isn’t photojournalism, no one cares. But the problem is that I do care, and the International Travel Photographer Organization (don’t Google it, I just made it up) isn’t doing anything about it. So I thought I’d set up some ground rules because, well, no one else has.

When it comes to travelers and tourists photographing people, the situation can get out of control. Living in Asia, I witness people traveling here to take photos of people on a daily basis. In fact, my job is teaching people how to practice better people photography, so I’m constantly exposed to this industry.

As an example, a friend of mine witnessed something very disturbing while traveling in Bangladesh. As he boarded a train in Dhaka, he saw a group on a “photography tour.” A Bangladeshi man was sitting on the train, praying. One of the participants of the tour, probably thinking that the man praying was doing so at the wrong angle, or in too weak a light, put their hand on the man’s head and tilted it forward. Without a word, a hello, or a thank you.

Lots of people think that Asia is a great place to photograph people. Unfortunately, some of these people think that’s because you can do what you want with the locals… as if they weren’t people at all, but mere subjects available for your photographs. Like going to the zoo to pat the monkeys and throwing them peanuts for good behavior.

At least, that is what it feels like to me. That this is what some “travel photographers” believe. Which is simply unacceptable.

As I mentioned earlier, there are really no rules for travel photography. Not yet, anyway.

Most people practice this form of photography when traveling. Some do it as a way to remember the places they traveled to. Some do it in order to take beautiful images that they’ll be proud to show their friends and family. Some do it in order to win travel photography competitions.

The Case of Ethics

I started writing this article with the intention of applying ethics to travel photography, but honestly, it’s not just about photography. It’s about having common sense and even the minimum standard of ethics. People are people, human beings like you and me. And just because they live in a poorer country than you doesn’t make them your free models for your beautiful photographs.

If you’d like to travel and photograph people in an ethical way, first start considering people as people, as equal to yourself. This means showing them respect, interacting with them, and – one of the most important aspects – giving them something back. Not something physical, simply a personal exchange. Make them laugh by showing them the photo you’ve taken or, even simpler, make yourself available for them to take a look at you, a foreigner, that maybe they’ve never seen before.

Ask yourself this: What is travel for you? Is it staying in a group, following your guide and going to visit every place that tourists visit? Or is it getting a bicycle and going the opposite way, in search of a more authentic, genuine experience? It’s up to you what you want to do. But maybe, to those people in the huge group, you could say: “Hey guys, I think you’re missing out. You should try and get lost a little more”. (You know, in a nice way!)

A huge group of photographers in Mu Cang Chai lining up with their tripods. Photo courtesy of Mike Pollock

Now, about the staging thing. A lot of photographers travel around the world and stage images wherever they go. And there’s nothing wrong with staging photos. They can help you to take better pictures, and guarantee that you return home with ‘the shot’. I know a lot of great photographers who stage images as part of a project they’re working on. But none of them lies about it.

If you do stage an image, just be honest about it. Say that you staged it. Because telling people that you managed to capture this incredible candid image when it was actually staged… it’s just unethical. It’s lying to the people who see your picture, and it’s lying to your subject, too. It’s depicting your subject in a way that he/she is not. If you stage your image, you staged it with your preconceived idea of what it should look like. Not what it really looks like.

If you don’t buy into this for the ethics involved, then consider this: You know how the world is today, in this information age. People will find out. People always find out.

Staging an image using a preconceived idea, a concept you have in mind, using a model that you can control? There’s a name for that – it’s called fashion photography.

There are no rules in travel photography, so anyone can do what they want. At least, that seems to be the unfortunate consensus.

But there are basic human rights that everyone should respect. You shouldn’t use people as your personal models if you don’t show them respect or even involve them in the process. This happens a lot when people disguise a staged image as a candid one – often with the goal of getting into photo competitions and increasing their perceived value. If they shot these images candidly, it means they’re pretty good photographers. Whereas staging photos can actually turn you into a worse photographer – sure, you’re in control of all the elements in the frame, but where’s the creativity?

The Creativity Question

In the end, it’s a personal choice – whether you want to stage your image or not. As I said above, if you decide to stage your image, it’s fine as long as you’re honest about it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it if you’re honest with yourself and the people viewing your images. You won’t be misleading the public by pretending that this or that situation was real when it’s been fabricated by someone who may have interpreted the scene from a different cultural point of view.

My main issue regarding this topic – and this is more personal – is about creativity. Because my primary role is teaching photography, I’m against staging – for me, it’s counter-creative.

Creativity in photography, and art in general, comes from conflict, from the unexpected, and often from the accidental. I’ve never woken up in the morning feeling like a creative genius! No, the times I’ve felt creative with my images and composition is when I’ve messed them up – I was too late, I cropped in a weird way, I had the wrong setting on, or my subject moved in an unexpected way. These, in fact, were the times that I got my best photographs.

Staging your images closes the doors to all of these factors, factors which can make creativity happen. Of course, it isn’t as simple as that. Becoming a good photographer, able to capture a good image in any condition, takes years of practice. But there are no shortcuts when it comes to art, and the real genuine art takes years to create.

Take the example of fashion photography. Most of the time, the final image starts with a concept, an idea. What differentiates it from travel photography is that the people coming up with these ideas are usually good at doing so. They’re artists, they make bold moves, they think creatively to catch the attention of the public.

I doubt that every single hobbyist photographer traveling around Asia and staging their images has such vision. Often, they’re simply inspired by other images they’ve seen before — some stunning scene that moved them. Or by some other image that won a photo competition once. And so, what they often do, is copy that image they’ve seen in the past.

If you want examples of these images, I list a few in this article. Frankly, as a photographer, a teacher and a fan of creativity, I find it pathetic to be constantly exposed to the same images – merely copies of copies of photos that, once upon a time, were original and authentic.

The scary part is that this trend isn’t slowing down. Nowadays, photography is accessible to pretty much everyone, and with the huge number of ‘photography tours’ available in Asia, anyone can be a travel photographer. All of this competition makes it harder to make a place for yourself as a photographer or to be recognized by your peers. So some people choose to take a shortcut, to reach fame faster.

Who’s to Blame? Photo Competitions, For Starters

A decade ago, there were only a few travel photography competitions around. Prestigious names, prestigious competitions, awarding great creativity and originality.

Nowadays, it seems that launching a photo competition is simply seen as a great way to make good money.

Think about it. If you know how to build a website, that’s all you need. You can launch your new “Renowned International Photography Competition” website, and charge people to enter their images. Then you can find tons of emerging photographers happy to judge the images for exposure. You make money, you don’t spend any. Jackpot!

The truth is, there is no exposure for the judges. When is the last time you checked the bio and website of all the judges in a competition?!

Another problem is that these emerging travel photographers may not be experienced travel photographers. They may not know about photography as much as a pro, and may not know about images which are actually copies of other images. If I see one more image of a novice monk in Bagan burning incense, Chinese cormorant fisherman, Inle lake fisherman or Omo valley cute kids with flowers on their heads winning a competition, I will instantly categorize that competition as BS. Because such images have been created and captured for over a decade now. They have already won plenty of competitions. We’ve had enough of seeing them. And any respectful competition organizer should know that.

Since it’s getting more and more difficult to make a name for yourself in the world of travel photography today (remember, everyone is a photographer), then it seems that winning photography competitions could help. What that means is that photography competitions are the ones who officially decide and tell the public what a good picture is. And that’s the scary part!

If you see an image winning the National Geographic photography competition, you’ll probably think that it must be a great image. Similarly, people seeing competition-winning images tell themselves that these must be great images, the images that they should be taking in order to… win photography competitions. They’re leading by example: what to shoot in order to be popular. The sad thing is, it’s becoming more and more rare to see real creative work being awarded. People want the “wow”, the postcard. The problem is, the postcard isn’t real. It was created to look “wow”.

Why Are You Practicing Photography?

If your goal is to become famous and win competitions by staging beautiful images, there is ethically nothing wrong with that IF you are clear about what you do and how you do it. The worst thing is finding out that a photographer lied about staging images. It usually means, for them, the end of a promising carrier.

On the creative side, though, this won’t help you to improve your travel photography skills, especially if you photograph people. Because in places like Asia, where scenes can be quite busy and chaotic, photography skills are needed to capture great images.

If you practice photography for the sake of it, because you love it, because it’s your passion – or, in my case, because it pushes me to travel further and meet new people – then why would you ever need to stage an image?

As I mentioned earlier, creativity comes from the unexpected, which is the opposite of carefully planning a composition and using models. Staging images can make you become a lazy, bad photographer. Staging photography can lead to you traveling in that huge group of people who all want THE shot. (Sure, everyone will get THE shot. But everyone will get the same shot.)

Conclusion

In the end, you can stage photos if you like – but please be honest about it. If your goal is to win photo competitions, just be aware that a lot of today’s ones are dubious and won’t get you anywhere. (I know a lot of people who have won great photo competitions and their lives haven’t changed because of it!)

One last thing: It’s important that photographers don’t fall into the photo competition/social media trap. That is, taking photos of what you expect people to like, in order to bring you more popularity. This is the end of art and the beginning of marketing.

Shooting for popularity, not shooting for yourself, will make you become a predictable photographer – shooting the same things, over and over again. There is no more room to express your voice and opinion. There is no style and originality. You may win a photography competition once, but what are you going to do next? Shoot the same thing?

To stage or not to stage? To shoot for others or yourself? They’re big questions, which pose a lot of arguments. But I think it’s about time that we started asking them.

About the author: Etienne Bossot is a travel photographer based in Asia. You can find more of Bossot’s work and writing on his website, blog, Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook. This article was also published here.

Image credits: Header photo courtesy of Mike Pollock

from Photography News https://petapixel.com/2019/03/23/to-stage-or-not-to-stage-in-travel-photography/

[sailorrrvenus]

To Stage or Not to Stage in Travel Photography

With the recent polemics surrounding a certain image that won a photography competition this week, I feel like we need to talk about travel photography. About people photography, in our case. And to set up boundaries as to what’s acceptable in both cases. Honestly, in my opinion, it’s a matter of common sense – but it seems that’s not enough. We still witness some shocking scenes in the world of travel photography these days.

Let me be clear: My goal isn’t to attack or criticize any specific, or specific group, of photographers. I don’t know these people. I’ve never met them. But the whole circus that events such as these have created is, in my book, very disturbing, which is why I feel it’s important to discuss the topic in general.

The Case of Photography

Let’s start by looking at photography in a wider context. When it was first invented, staged images were pretty much the only option. The equipment was big and bulky (and expensive) and the exposure times were very long. Anyone who wanted to photograph people had to have them stand still for several minutes. Even with the invention of the collodion technique in 1851, the exposure time still had to be 2–3 minutes. Not exactly spur-of-the-moment stuff.

Then, in 1901, came the Kodak Brownie – the first commercial camera for the middle class. Photography exploded from then on and all the different types of photography that we know today were born.

Documentary photography stemmed from the desire to illustrate newspaper articles – and quickly, a set of ‘rules’, or commonly accepted behaviors, was established. Photojournalism and documentary photography had to depict the truth, without the influence of the photographer. Nowadays, if a photojournalist is caught staging their picture or modifying them in any way, it means the end of their career.

At the other end of the scale, there’s fashion photography. Very little fashion photography happening without staging, without someone directing the whole image. From the model to the props used to the choice of location… everything is controlled and staged for the best results.

But what about travel photography? It seems to me that travel photography is considered as the ‘hobby photography’; anyone can just grab a camera, hit the road and start shooting. If you try to remember the big names of travel photography, who do you think about? Well, there is only one name that comes to mind for most people. Just one.

To me, this proves that travel photography is largely ignored as professional fields in photography – so no one has bothered to set any ethical guidelines. After recent events, maybe it’s time we do so.

The Case of Travel Photography

You may remember the 2015 controversy surrounding Steve McCurry. He was accused of having Photoshopped some of his images to make them more aesthetically pleasing. At first, he said his staff did it. Then he said that he “considers himself to be more of a ‘visual storyteller’ rather than a photojournalist.”

What I understand from this is that basically, if it isn’t photojournalism, no one cares. But the problem is that I do care, and the International Travel Photographer Organization (don’t Google it, I just made it up) isn’t doing anything about it. So I thought I’d set up some ground rules because, well, no one else has.

When it comes to travelers and tourists photographing people, the situation can get out of control. Living in Asia, I witness people traveling here to take photos of people on a daily basis. In fact, my job is teaching people how to practice better people photography, so I’m constantly exposed to this industry.

As an example, a friend of mine witnessed something very disturbing while traveling in Bangladesh. As he boarded a train in Dhaka, he saw a group on a “photography tour.” A Bangladeshi man was sitting on the train, praying. One of the participants of the tour, probably thinking that the man praying was doing so at the wrong angle, or in too weak a light, put their hand on the man’s head and tilted it forward. Without a word, a hello, or a thank you.

Lots of people think that Asia is a great place to photograph people. Unfortunately, some of these people think that’s because you can do what you want with the locals… as if they weren’t people at all, but mere subjects available for your photographs. Like going to the zoo to pat the monkeys and throwing them peanuts for good behavior.

At least, that is what it feels like to me. That this is what some “travel photographers” believe. Which is simply unacceptable.

As I mentioned earlier, there are really no rules for travel photography. Not yet, anyway.

Most people practice this form of photography when traveling. Some do it as a way to remember the places they traveled to. Some do it in order to take beautiful images that they’ll be proud to show their friends and family. Some do it in order to win travel photography competitions.

The Case of Ethics

I started writing this article with the intention of applying ethics to travel photography, but honestly, it’s not just about photography. It’s about having common sense and even the minimum standard of ethics. People are people, human beings like you and me. And just because they live in a poorer country than you doesn’t make them your free models for your beautiful photographs.

If you’d like to travel and photograph people in an ethical way, first start considering people as people, as equal to yourself. This means showing them respect, interacting with them, and – one of the most important aspects – giving them something back. Not something physical, simply a personal exchange. Make them laugh by showing them the photo you’ve taken or, even simpler, make yourself available for them to take a look at you, a foreigner, that maybe they’ve never seen before.

Ask yourself this: What is travel for you? Is it staying in a group, following your guide and going to visit every place that tourists visit? Or is it getting a bicycle and going the opposite way, in search of a more authentic, genuine experience? It’s up to you what you want to do. But maybe, to those people in the huge group, you could say: “Hey guys, I think you’re missing out. You should try and get lost a little more”. (You know, in a nice way!)

A huge group of photographers in Mu Cang Chai lining up with their tripods. Photo courtesy of Mike Pollock

Now, about the staging thing. A lot of photographers travel around the world and stage images wherever they go. And there’s nothing wrong with staging photos. They can help you to take better pictures, and guarantee that you return home with ‘the shot’. I know a lot of great photographers who stage images as part of a project they’re working on. But none of them lies about it.

If you do stage an image, just be honest about it. Say that you staged it. Because telling people that you managed to capture this incredible candid image when it was actually staged… it’s just unethical. It’s lying to the people who see your picture, and it’s lying to your subject, too. It’s depicting your subject in a way that he/she is not. If you stage your image, you staged it with your preconceived idea of what it should look like. Not what it really looks like.

If you don’t buy into this for the ethics involved, then consider this: You know how the world is today, in this information age. People will find out. People always find out.

Staging an image using a preconceived idea, a concept you have in mind, using a model that you can control? There’s a name for that – it’s called fashion photography.

There are no rules in travel photography, so anyone can do what they want. At least, that seems to be the unfortunate consensus.

But there are basic human rights that everyone should respect. You shouldn’t use people as your personal models if you don’t show them respect or even involve them in the process. This happens a lot when people disguise a staged image as a candid one – often with the goal of getting into photo competitions and increasing their perceived value. If they shot these images candidly, it means they’re pretty good photographers. Whereas staging photos can actually turn you into a worse photographer – sure, you’re in control of all the elements in the frame, but where’s the creativity?

The Creativity Question

In the end, it’s a personal choice – whether you want to stage your image or not. As I said above, if you decide to stage your image, it’s fine as long as you’re honest about it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it if you’re honest with yourself and the people viewing your images. You won’t be misleading the public by pretending that this or that situation was real when it’s been fabricated by someone who may have interpreted the scene from a different cultural point of view.

My main issue regarding this topic – and this is more personal – is about creativity. Because my primary role is teaching photography, I’m against staging – for me, it’s counter-creative.

Creativity in photography, and art in general, comes from conflict, from the unexpected, and often from the accidental. I’ve never woken up in the morning feeling like a creative genius! No, the times I’ve felt creative with my images and composition is when I’ve messed them up – I was too late, I cropped in a weird way, I had the wrong setting on, or my subject moved in an unexpected way. These, in fact, were the times that I got my best photographs.

Staging your images closes the doors to all of these factors, factors which can make creativity happen. Of course, it isn’t as simple as that. Becoming a good photographer, able to capture a good image in any condition, takes years of practice. But there are no shortcuts when it comes to art, and the real genuine art takes years to create.

Take the example of fashion photography. Most of the time, the final image starts with a concept, an idea. What differentiates it from travel photography is that the people coming up with these ideas are usually good at doing so. They’re artists, they make bold moves, they think creatively to catch the attention of the public.

I doubt that every single hobbyist photographer traveling around Asia and staging their images has such vision. Often, they’re simply inspired by other images they’ve seen before — some stunning scene that moved them. Or by some other image that won a photo competition once. And so, what they often do, is copy that image they’ve seen in the past.

If you want examples of these images, I list a few in this article. Frankly, as a photographer, a teacher and a fan of creativity, I find it pathetic to be constantly exposed to the same images – merely copies of copies of photos that, once upon a time, were original and authentic.

The scary part is that this trend isn’t slowing down. Nowadays, photography is accessible to pretty much everyone, and with the huge number of ‘photography tours’ available in Asia, anyone can be a travel photographer. All of this competition makes it harder to make a place for yourself as a photographer or to be recognized by your peers. So some people choose to take a shortcut, to reach fame faster.

Who’s to Blame? Photo Competitions, For Starters

A decade ago, there were only a few travel photography competitions around. Prestigious names, prestigious competitions, awarding great creativity and originality.

Nowadays, it seems that launching a photo competition is simply seen as a great way to make good money.

Think about it. If you know how to build a website, that’s all you need. You can launch your new “Renowned International Photography Competition” website, and charge people to enter their images. Then you can find tons of emerging photographers happy to judge the images for exposure. You make money, you don’t spend any. Jackpot!

The truth is, there is no exposure for the judges. When is the last time you checked the bio and website of all the judges in a competition?!

Another problem is that these emerging travel photographers may not be experienced travel photographers. They may not know about photography as much as a pro, and may not know about images which are actually copies of other images. If I see one more image of a novice monk in Bagan burning incense, Chinese cormorant fisherman, Inle lake fisherman or Omo valley cute kids with flowers on their heads winning a competition, I will instantly categorize that competition as BS. Because such images have been created and captured for over a decade now. They have already won plenty of competitions. We’ve had enough of seeing them. And any respectful competition organizer should know that.

Since it’s getting more and more difficult to make a name for yourself in the world of travel photography today (remember, everyone is a photographer), then it seems that winning photography competitions could help. What that means is that photography competitions are the ones who officially decide and tell the public what a good picture is. And that’s the scary part!

If you see an image winning the National Geographic photography competition, you’ll probably think that it must be a great image. Similarly, people seeing competition-winning images tell themselves that these must be great images, the images that they should be taking in order to… win photography competitions. They’re leading by example: what to shoot in order to be popular. The sad thing is, it’s becoming more and more rare to see real creative work being awarded. People want the “wow”, the postcard. The problem is, the postcard isn’t real. It was created to look “wow”.

Why Are You Practicing Photography?

If your goal is to become famous and win competitions by staging beautiful images, there is ethically nothing wrong with that IF you are clear about what you do and how you do it. The worst thing is finding out that a photographer lied about staging images. It usually means, for them, the end of a promising carrier.

On the creative side, though, this won’t help you to improve your travel photography skills, especially if you photograph people. Because in places like Asia, where scenes can be quite busy and chaotic, photography skills are needed to capture great images.

If you practice photography for the sake of it, because you love it, because it’s your passion – or, in my case, because it pushes me to travel further and meet new people – then why would you ever need to stage an image?

As I mentioned earlier, creativity comes from the unexpected, which is the opposite of carefully planning a composition and using models. Staging images can make you become a lazy, bad photographer. Staging photography can lead to you traveling in that huge group of people who all want THE shot. (Sure, everyone will get THE shot. But everyone will get the same shot.)

Conclusion

In the end, you can stage photos if you like – but please be honest about it. If your goal is to win photo competitions, just be aware that a lot of today’s ones are dubious and won’t get you anywhere. (I know a lot of people who have won great photo competitions and their lives haven’t changed because of it!)

One last thing: It’s important that photographers don’t fall into the photo competition/social media trap. That is, taking photos of what you expect people to like, in order to bring you more popularity. This is the end of art and the beginning of marketing.

Shooting for popularity, not shooting for yourself, will make you become a predictable photographer – shooting the same things, over and over again. There is no more room to express your voice and opinion. There is no style and originality. You may win a photography competition once, but what are you going to do next? Shoot the same thing?

To stage or not to stage? To shoot for others or yourself? They’re big questions, which pose a lot of arguments. But I think it’s about time that we started asking them.

About the author: Etienne Bossot is a travel photographer based in Asia. You can find more of Bossot’s work and writing on his website, blog, Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook. This article was also published here.

Image credits: Header photo courtesy of Mike Pollock

source https://petapixel.com/2019/03/23/to-stage-or-not-to-stage-in-travel-photography/

[michaelfallcon]

Stop Calling It “Geisha” Already

It’s been 14 years since the Geisha coffee variety dropped into the specialty coffee scene on the 2004 Best of Panama auction stage. Since then, the variety has broken records on auction prices multiple times, helped secure wins at barista competitions, and astonished palates for people around the world.

But here’s the issue: it gets confused and punned with geisha, the Japanese entertainer, which leads to many problematic interpretations. What some might consider a delightful homophone has become a kind of carte blanche for inappropriate appropriation—taking images and motifs associated with the Japanese tradition of art, song, and dance, and using it to sell high-priced coffee.

The misuse of “geisha” in this style is nothing new, nor is it a relic of yesteryear. In researching this article I came across multiple roasters using Japanese geisha images to market their coffee. Similarly, there are articles written in the last three years with geisha people imagery illustrated next to Geisha coffee. 

Not only is this misuse disturbing, but it is wholly unnecessary. By the time Geisha coffee made itself known to the greater coffee community, geishas were already known to the world as something else. The region from which this coffee hails, however, and the traditions to which it is tied, are hundreds of years old, and instead go by the similar-sounding but importantly different name of “Gesha”—hold the i.

I’m writing this editorial to offer a bold choice to coffee drinkers, roasters, importers, and industry professionals of all stripes around the world. What if we just stopped calling it Geisha? I posit that the industry should choose to use Gesha instead, in perpetuity moving forward, and to abolish “Geisha”—and all of its unfortunate linguistic abuses—to the grounds bin of coffee history.  

There’s several potential advantages to this choice.

Consumers new to Gesha coffee will no longer assume that it’s named after the Japanese geisha performing arts tradition.

We can hopefully, and definitively, avoid seeing any future instances of Orientalist imagery being used to market and reference this coffee.

We can wax poetic about this truly delicious and inspiring coffee variety while properly evoking its Ethiopian heritage, and without confusing consumers as to its origin.

Before we get too far down the rabbit hole, let’s back up to what we know about Geisha coffee.

The Gesha coffee variety was “discovered” via British colonial expeditions in the 1930s in southwest Ethiopia, brought to research stations in Kenya and Tanzania, and then subsequently to Panama for its coffee leaf rust-resistant traits. In their groundbreaking previous work on the subject, coffee professional and journalist Meister explored the variety’s historical documentation in a piece titled “Is it Geisha or Gesha.” A certain “Geisha Mountain” was referenced in 1936 by those British colonials, but, plot twist: there is no Geisha Mountain in Ethiopia. Instead, there is a Gesha region of Ethiopia—an entirely separate term with no connection to Japan. How exactly the “i” came to find its place in coffees from Gesha is a matter of some conjecture. It may have been a simple misspelling. It’s also possible that because the local language Kafa is oral, it was romanized into “Geisha.” There’s also a third theory that the researchers used “Geisha” because it was a more familiar word and exoticized it. Since we weren’t there and documentation is not clear on why it was written as Geisha and not Gesha, we’ll let these theories lie here.

In 2004, the Peterson family of Hacienda La Esmeralda submitted Geisha coffee and won the Best of Panama auction. The winning bid was $21 per pound, which seems like nothing compared to this year’s record-setting $803 per pound. Geisha seeds were introduced to Panama from a research station in Costa Rica. The coffee was spelled as Geisha—and still is by many producers—because that’s what they were documented as in the original expedition.

The Panamanian “Geisha” coffee has origins to Ethiopia. In a 2014 genetic research study of Geisha coffee in Panama and Ethiopia, Dr. Sarada Krishnan, Director of Horticulture and Center for Global Initiatives at the Denver Botanic Gardens, found the two coffees to be genetically very similar. She wrote, “It is highly possible that the Panamanian Geisha could have originated from the same Ethiopian Geisha coffee forest as the samples for the present study came from.”

As the variety spread around the world, other producing regions wanted to replicate the success of the Panamanian “Geisha” coffee. The variety grown in Central America tends to be spelled “Geisha” while other regions use “Gesha.” There is no established rule. Within the industry, “Geisha” coffee is more widely known and holds brand power, as written about by James Hoffmann and many others.

To summarize, all of the coffee we’re talking about—whether you use the “i” or not—is actually Gesha. Let’s move on to why this is all problematic—and please note that for the remainder of the article we’ll default to using “Gesha” when talking about the coffee.

Gesha coffees are rare, expensive, and often given notes like “delicate” and “floral.” If you were new to specialty coffee and just learned about this variety, it wouldn’t be too far a jump to unfortunately associate these same characteristics with the Japanese arts tradition. In Western countries, stereotypes about Japanese women lean into exoticism. They’re portrayed as submissive, delicate, and astonishingly beautiful. For geisha performers, the word came into global use in the early 18th century and it often mistakenly connotes an idea of a demure, high-priced prostitute. Books like Memoirs of a Geisha and Madame Butterfly have certainly enforced stereotypes and contributed to Orientalist perceptions.

Briefly, Orientalism is a concept introduced by a Edward Said in a book by the same name about how the West is centered and the East is perceived as “other” and exotic. In the West, it creates fantasy interpretations and representations of what the East is like. It’s a fascination with Eastern culture and shows up on the daily as turmeric suddenly being “discovered” as a superfood or Katy Perry dressed as a geisha.

“The concept of the geisha as perceived in Western society is fraught with exoticism and hyper-sexualization of Japanese women,” says David Inoue, Executive Director of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). Established in 1929, the JACL is the oldest Asian American civil rights organization in the US and according to their website, works to “secure and maintain the civil rights of Japanese Americans and all others who are victimized by injustice and bigotry.”

Inoue continues, “It is quite a stretch to use images of geisha to market a coffee that has its origins in Ethiopia, but is also symptomatic of our misogynistic society that continues to celebrate the objectification of women, particularly women of color.”

The coffee industry already fetishizes Gesha coffee. We package it up nicely into tins and small doses. It’s talked about in tones of reverence and introduced to customers at five times the standard cup price. Asian women are similarly fetishized (believe me—I am reporting from personal experience). If we’re not on parallel paths of the same word being used in similar ways, then the industry is certainly capitalizing–unconsciously or not–on Japanese exoticism.

Confusion abounds around the term. “I thought it was named ‘Geisha’ because someone thought it was so exotic and sexy,” a fellow specialty coffee pro told me, on condition of anonymity. This is from someone who used Gesha coffee in their United States Brewer’s Cup competition routine.

It’s not just baristas who get confused. Noboru Ueno, owner of equipment distributor FBC International in Japan, finds the use of the word “geisha” when referring to Gesha coffee to be similarly misleading in his country. Ueno says that because geisha artists are often symbolic of Japan’s culture, like Mt. Fuji and sushi, it’s easy to popularize it in consuming countries, especially in Japan. He found that Japanese consumers associate “geisha” coffee with Japan, and that coffee professionals typically do not try to correct the misunderstanding.

Ueno agrees that the correct term Gesha should be used going forward, as the coffee itself is Ethiopian, not Japanese. “Every consumption country, including Japan, must respect the original culture,” Ueno tells Sprudge. “Words and language are the fundamental basis for each nation’s culture.”

Respect, accuracy, and the dismantling of Orientalism and colonial primacy—these sound like pretty great reasons to drop that damn unnecessary “i”. You can argue around this a thousand different ways, and it all comes back to the same thing: it’s Gesha, not “geisha”.

Gesha is a coffee producing region in Ethiopia, from whence the popular Gesha coffee variety is thought to originate, same as the Chardonnay grape is named for the Burgundy village of Chardonnay, or Warsteiner beer is named for the southern German region of Warstein, or the brand Point Reyes Cheese is named for Point Reyes, California. We name agricultural products after the places they hail from all the time. In Gesha’s case, globalism conspired to move the fruit from Ethiopia to Panama and beyond, which has ended up being a good thing for coffee drinkers—these coffees are delicious!—and also a good thing for Gesha growers in Central and South America, whose coffees can fetch top dollar. However, these same global forces also conspired to introduce the “i”, making it sound more like the familiar word “geisha”—which is why today I have to look at exoticized, fetishized depictions of Asian women being used to sell coffee.

There is maybe only one scenario I can think of in which it might be genuinely appropriate to term something a “Geisha” coffee, and that is if the coffee was grown, roasted, or served by an actual Japanese geisha artist. In such a scenario I am all for using the term “Geisha” in relation to coffee—and I’ve created a handy Venn diagram below to illustrate this choice.

Words evolve. Their associations change. That’s part of the glory of the English language. And for all its glory, it is not without fault—sometimes words get written down wrong or exoticized, especially when the person doing the writing has all the power. But together we have the power back in our hands now. Using the correct term Gesha instead of the inaccurate term “geisha” helps remove ambiguous relations; it respects the cultural and agricultural history of the crop; it better informs coffee drinkers about that history; and it minimizes the likelihood of some asshole using a picture of a Japanese geisha person to discuss the coffee ever again.

So let’s call it Gesha, not “geisha”—it’s a small change with big meaning behind it.

Jenn Chen (@TheJennChen) is a San Francisco–based coffee marketer, writer, and photographer. Read more Jenn Chen on Sprudge.

The post Stop Calling It “Geisha” Already appeared first on Sprudge.

Stop Calling It “Geisha” Already published first on https://medium.com/@LinLinCoffee

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Stop Calling It “Geisha” Already

It’s been 14 years since the Geisha coffee variety dropped into the specialty coffee scene on the 2004 Best of Panama auction stage. Since then, the variety has broken records on auction prices multiple times, helped secure wins at barista competitions, and astonished palates for people around the world.

But here’s the issue: it gets confused and punned with geisha, the Japanese entertainer, which leads to many problematic interpretations. What some might consider a delightful homophone has become a kind of carte blanche for inappropriate appropriation—taking images and motifs associated with the Japanese tradition of art, song, and dance, and using it to sell high-priced coffee.

The misuse of “geisha” in this style is nothing new, nor is it a relic of yesteryear. In researching this article I came across multiple roasters using Japanese geisha images to market their coffee. Similarly, there are articles written in the last three years with geisha people imagery illustrated next to Geisha coffee. 

Not only is this misuse disturbing, but it is wholly unnecessary. By the time Geisha coffee made itself known to the greater coffee community, geishas were already known to the world as something else. The region from which this coffee hails, however, and the traditions to which it is tied, are hundreds of years old, and instead go by the similar-sounding but importantly different name of “Gesha”—hold the i.

I’m writing this editorial to offer a bold choice to coffee drinkers, roasters, importers, and industry professionals of all stripes around the world. What if we just stopped calling it Geisha? I posit that the industry should choose to use Gesha instead, in perpetuity moving forward, and to abolish “Geisha”—and all of its unfortunate linguistic abuses—to the grounds bin of coffee history.  

There’s several potential advantages to this choice.

Consumers new to Gesha coffee will no longer assume that it’s named after the Japanese geisha performing arts tradition.

We can hopefully, and definitively, avoid seeing any future instances of Orientalist imagery being used to market and reference this coffee.

We can wax poetic about this truly delicious and inspiring coffee variety while properly evoking its Ethiopian heritage, and without confusing consumers as to its origin.

Before we get too far down the rabbit hole, let’s back up to what we know about Geisha coffee.

The Gesha coffee variety was “discovered” via British colonial expeditions in the 1930s in southwest Ethiopia, brought to research stations in Kenya and Tanzania, and then subsequently to Panama for its coffee leaf rust-resistant traits. In their groundbreaking previous work on the subject, coffee professional and journalist Meister explored the variety’s historical documentation in a piece titled “Is it Geisha or Gesha.” A certain “Geisha Mountain” was referenced in 1936 by those British colonials, but, plot twist: there is no Geisha Mountain in Ethiopia. Instead, there is a Gesha region of Ethiopia—an entirely separate term with no connection to Japan. How exactly the “i” came to find its place in coffees from Gesha is a matter of some conjecture. It may have been a simple misspelling. It’s also possible that because the local language Kafa is oral, it was romanized into “Geisha.” There’s also a third theory that the researchers used “Geisha” because it was a more familiar word and exoticized it. Since we weren’t there and documentation is not clear on why it was written as Geisha and not Gesha, we’ll let these theories lie here.

In 2004, the Peterson family of Hacienda La Esmeralda submitted Geisha coffee and won the Best of Panama auction. The winning bid was $21 per pound, which seems like nothing compared to this year’s record-setting $803 per pound. Geisha seeds were introduced to Panama from a research station in Costa Rica. The coffee was spelled as Geisha—and still is by many producers—because that’s what they were documented as in the original expedition.

The Panamanian “Geisha” coffee has origins to Ethiopia. In a 2014 genetic research study of Geisha coffee in Panama and Ethiopia, Dr. Sarada Krishnan, Director of Horticulture and Center for Global Initiatives at the Denver Botanic Gardens, found the two coffees to be genetically very similar. She wrote, “It is highly possible that the Panamanian Geisha could have originated from the same Ethiopian Geisha coffee forest as the samples for the present study came from.”

As the variety spread around the world, other producing regions wanted to replicate the success of the Panamanian “Geisha” coffee. The variety grown in Central America tends to be spelled “Geisha” while other regions use “Gesha.” There is no established rule. Within the industry, “Geisha” coffee is more widely known and holds brand power, as written about by James Hoffmann and many others.

To summarize, all of the coffee we’re talking about—whether you use the “i” or not—is actually Gesha. Let’s move on to why this is all problematic—and please note that for the remainder of the article we’ll default to using “Gesha” when talking about the coffee.

Gesha coffees are rare, expensive, and often given notes like “delicate” and “floral.” If you were new to specialty coffee and just learned about this variety, it wouldn’t be too far a jump to unfortunately associate these same characteristics with the Japanese arts tradition. In Western countries, stereotypes about Japanese women lean into exoticism. They’re portrayed as submissive, delicate, and astonishingly beautiful. For geisha performers, the word came into global use in the early 18th century and it often mistakenly connotes an idea of a demure, high-priced prostitute. Books like Memoirs of a Geisha and Madame Butterfly have certainly enforced stereotypes and contributed to Orientalist perceptions.

Briefly, Orientalism is a concept introduced by a Edward Said in a book by the same name about how the West is centered and the East is perceived as “other” and exotic. In the West, it creates fantasy interpretations and representations of what the East is like. It’s a fascination with Eastern culture and shows up on the daily as turmeric suddenly being “discovered” as a superfood or Katy Perry dressed as a geisha.

“The concept of the geisha as perceived in Western society is fraught with exoticism and hyper-sexualization of Japanese women,” says David Inoue, Executive Director of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). Established in 1929, the JACL is the oldest Asian American civil rights organization in the US and according to their website, works to “secure and maintain the civil rights of Japanese Americans and all others who are victimized by injustice and bigotry.”

Inoue continues, “It is quite a stretch to use images of geisha to market a coffee that has its origins in Ethiopia, but is also symptomatic of our misogynistic society that continues to celebrate the objectification of women, particularly women of color.”

The coffee industry already fetishizes Gesha coffee. We package it up nicely into tins and small doses. It’s talked about in tones of reverence and introduced to customers at five times the standard cup price. Asian women are similarly fetishized (believe me—I am reporting from personal experience). If we’re not on parallel paths of the same word being used in similar ways, then the industry is certainly capitalizing–unconsciously or not–on Japanese exoticism.

Confusion abounds around the term. “I thought it was named ‘Geisha’ because someone thought it was so exotic and sexy,” a fellow specialty coffee pro told me, on condition of anonymity. This is from someone who used Gesha coffee in their United States Brewer’s Cup competition routine.

It’s not just baristas who get confused. Noboru Ueno, owner of equipment distributor FBC International in Japan, finds the use of the word “geisha” when referring to Gesha coffee to be similarly misleading in his country. Ueno says that because geisha artists are often symbolic of Japan’s culture, like Mt. Fuji and sushi, it’s easy to popularize it in consuming countries, especially in Japan. He found that Japanese consumers associate “geisha” coffee with Japan, and that coffee professionals typically do not try to correct the misunderstanding.

Ueno agrees that the correct term Gesha should be used going forward, as the coffee itself is Ethiopian, not Japanese. “Every consumption country, including Japan, must respect the original culture,” Ueno tells Sprudge. “Words and language are the fundamental basis for each nation’s culture.”

Respect, accuracy, and the dismantling of Orientalism and colonial primacy—these sound like pretty great reasons to drop that damn unnecessary “i”. You can argue around this a thousand different ways, and it all comes back to the same thing: it’s Gesha, not “geisha”.

Gesha is a coffee producing region in Ethiopia, from whence the popular Gesha coffee variety is thought to originate, same as the Chardonnay grape is named for the Burgundy village of Chardonnay, or Warsteiner beer is named for the southern German region of Warstein, or the brand Point Reyes Cheese is named for Point Reyes, California. We name agricultural products after the places they hail from all the time. In Gesha’s case, globalism conspired to move the fruit from Ethiopia to Panama and beyond, which has ended up being a good thing for coffee drinkers—these coffees are delicious!—and also a good thing for Gesha growers in Central and South America, whose coffees can fetch top dollar. However, these same global forces also conspired to introduce the “i”, making it sound more like the familiar word “geisha”—which is why today I have to look at exoticized, fetishized depictions of Asian women being used to sell coffee.

There is maybe only one scenario I can think of in which it might be genuinely appropriate to term something a “Geisha” coffee, and that is if the coffee was grown, roasted, or served by an actual Japanese geisha artist. In such a scenario I am all for using the term “Geisha” in relation to coffee—and I’ve created a handy Venn diagram below to illustrate this choice.

Words evolve. Their associations change. That’s part of the glory of the English language. And for all its glory, it is not without fault—sometimes words get written down wrong or exoticized, especially when the person doing the writing has all the power. But together we have the power back in our hands now. Using the correct term Gesha instead of the inaccurate term “geisha” helps remove ambiguous relations; it respects the cultural and agricultural history of the crop; it better informs coffee drinkers about that history; and it minimizes the likelihood of some asshole using a picture of a Japanese geisha person to discuss the coffee ever again.

So let’s call it Gesha, not “geisha”—it’s a small change with big meaning behind it.

Jenn Chen (@TheJennChen) is a San Francisco–based coffee marketer, writer, and photographer. Read more Jenn Chen on Sprudge.

The post Stop Calling It “Geisha” Already appeared first on Sprudge.

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