Guangxiao Si, the Bright Filial Piety Temple is one the oldest in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province’s capital. History places the first temple buildings on the site during the 4th century, before mighty Guangzhou was a city. The compound is significant because Hui Neng, of the Zen Buddhist sect, was a novice at the temple during the 7th century.

That’s what the guidebook says. Guangxiao Si has seen dynasties rise and fall, generations born, live and die, and one of the largest cities of the world spring up around its walls. Much of the temple was destroying during a 17th century fire and rebuilt. It remains timeless place of stillness and beauty.

Fragrant smoke hangs heavy over the grounds. Incense, purchased from the temple or the shops surrounding it, is placed before the Maltreya Buddha.
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Women say prayers and leave offerings at the West Iron Pagoda. The ritual continues as they walk around the four-sided iron structure, saying prayers facing north, east and south. Some circle the pagoda, fingers trailing over the cold surface, incense burning in the other.
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Chanting surrounds the Mahavira Hall. The faithful line its walls, texts in hand.
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A group gathers in front of the structure. Inside a master chants sacred words, his voice heard above the hundreds.
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Two monks retreat from the holy chaos for a moment’s respite. I watch them leave, and the assembled worshippers continue with rituals as their ancestors have for generations.
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Originally Published: November 24, 2007.

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Joel Carillet is a master of street photography. His captures are a glimpse at places and faces most will never see. In 2003, he embarked on a year-long overland journey starting in China, and finishing in Turkey. His images from this epic trip are nothing short of stellar. Packed with emotion and insight, his images capture people from around the world in candid moments, transporting the reader to another place. Joel has recently published a book, 30 Reasons to Travel: Photographs and Reflections from Southeast Asia, available Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.

AR: Joel, Tell me some basic information about yourself: ie. age, location, education, etc.

Joel Carillet: Here’s a rough sketch of who I am…or at least where I’ve done my “growin’ up”: I spent the first half of my childhood in Atlanta, GA, where my dad pastored a church in the suburbs. When I was 12 my family moved to Papua New Guinea, where dad directed a Bible translation organization, which meant I spent my teenage years in a very small — and astoundingly beautiful — coastal town in the developing world. I returned to the U.S. for my final year of high school and, after two years of college in Atlanta, transferred to a wonderful school in the mountains of Tennessee. In 1996 I graduated Milligan College with a degree in political science and sociology. Tempted to go to Georgetown to study international affairs, in the end I decided to stay in Tennessee to attend seminary, graduating in ‘99 later with a masters in Church History. (But I still found a way to study international things: my thesis was entitled “The Palestinian Church: an Ancient Body and its Modern Challenge”).

Since graduating, I’ve taught at a college in Ukraine, worked on the staff of a study abroad program in Egypt, answered telephones at the Smithsonian and Washington DC, and volunteered with an organization in the West Bank doing peace and advocacy work.

I’m 33 years old.

Sikh boy in the Golden Temple (Amritsar, India).

AR: What first sparked your interest in photography?
Joel Carillet: My dad enjoyed photography as a hobby and took good photos, and we always had a National Geographic in our house, which as a kid I would marvel at. As a teenager I began consciously taking photos to “preserve memories.”

AR: How did you learn your trade?
Joel Carillet: Practice, I guess; I never took a class.

AR: Tell me about your world travels? You did a Middle-east to Asia tour a few years ago, and a recent trip to Israel and Palestine?

Joel Carillet: Right. In October 2003 I set off from Beijing on a 14-month overland journey through 17 Asian countries, ending in Istanbul in December 2004. (For those who are curious about costs, I spent just under 10,000 on the trip; less than what some of my friends in D.C. paid in rent during the same period.) Since returning to the U.S. I have been working on a book about the journey, the theme of which is something like, “Traveling, when done well, is about learning to love.”

I’ve been to the Middle East several times in the past decade, but in December I returned from a seven-week trip to Israel and the West Bank, where I was working on a photo essay about Palestinian Christian communities (plus some other minor projects). After three years of using a camcorder with a still capability of 1.5 megapixels, I finally invested in a good camera — a Nikon D80 — in October 2006. The trip to Palestine was my first experiment with it, and I love the upgrade. I hope to do a photo exhibit in Tennessee later this winter.

Boy in monastery - Tachilek, Myanmar

AR: Have you ever found yourself in hot water during one of your trips?
Joel Carillet: Several times, though it is the more positive experiences I tend to remember.

Muggists and mosquitoes and have landed me in the hospital on a couple occasions. In Istanbul five years ago I accepted a cookie from a stranger I had been talking with for 45 minutes. Immediately I began to feel sleepy, and the next thing I know I’m waking up in a hospital 18 hours later with blood on my clothes and an IV in my arm. He was after my passport, which, according to the U.S. consulate at the time, could catch $4,000 on the black market.

As for the mosquito, I think that happened in Cambodia – though I didn’t get the effect until a week later in Bangkok. It was the night before my flight back to the US and, out of the blue, I went from feeling great to shaking and nauseous within an hour. I actually collapsed on the way to the hotel but managed to make it back. I’ve had malaria before, but this was malaria x10. By the time my plane landed in Atlanta two days later, I was taken straight to the hospital, where I spent the next five days recovering from an acute case of Dengue Fever.

There are several “got attacked by dogs” or “was in a bus that just missed plunging into a gorge” sort of stories, but the two incidents above were the worst.

An Israeli border policeman keeps a photographer back as others demolish a Palestinian's home on the Mount of Olives.

AR: What do think about when setting up a scene? What thoughts go into the composition, lighting, scene, etc.
Joel Carillet: Now you’re asking the hard questions, Steve. I don’t usually articulate these thoughts to myself, but I guess I can say I am a lover of late afternoon light, eyes, and skin texture.

AR: You do a lot of street photography, do you ever encounter hostility from your subjects?
Joel Carillet: Sometimes, but rarely. A recent experience: I took a picture of the hands of an illegal money changer in the West Bank town of Ramallah last month. I had tried to get his attention to ask permission first, but he was occupied. So from ten feet away I just took it. I got caught and he got angry. He yelled at me right there in the city’s main square, and I sincerely apologized, agreeing that I should have asked first. I showed him the picture on my screen and prepared to delete it in front of him. But then he stopped. “No, it’s a good picture,” he said. Then he apologized for yelling and offered to buy me a cup of tea. The next day, when i returned to the square for more pictures, he was biggest supporter, chasing away a mentally unstable fellow who began yelling at me for photographing the square.

AR: What’s your favorite photograph (that you have taken) and why?
Joel Carillet: In April 2002, I spent one week in the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin. Arriving n the camp, you could still smell rotting bodies under the rubble of houses (the Israeli military had just withdrawn after an intense battle with armed Palestinians, leveling scores of houses as communal punishment for the camp’s resistance before departing). Entering the camp, all five senses were inundated with the aftermath of death and destruction. I had never been to the camp before and had no place to stay, but after only two minutes in the camp an older Palestinian man, squatting on the rubble of his home, asked if I needed a place to stay. I said yes, and he invited me to stay with his family in the one room they still had standing. It was an extraordinary display of hospitality on more levels than I can explain here, and the next day I captured a candid shot of this man and his wife amidst their rubble. The composition was excellent, but the sentimental meaning for me was just as important.In general, my favorite photos are ones that somehow, in some small way, capture truth. Or at least that begin to capture the reality of a situation, rather than reality be beautiful or horror-filled.

AR: What keeps you inspired and your captures fresh?
Joel Carillet: My friends will tell you that on many days I can be too much caught up in my own thoughts and a bit depressed. Inspiration does not come easily at all, especially now that three years of writing and pictures has so far netted me what most of my friends earn in a week, which has in turn led to considerable financial stress. Sometimes — often, actually — I want to throw both pen and camera into a box and be done with it. But if something keeps me inspired it is this: the human being and our world in general is a beautiful mystery to me. Both can be completely ugly sometimes too, but each of us is capable of great beauty. And sometimes cameras can not only capture that, but sometimes they can even help bring it out of a person.

AR: What kind of gear are you using?
Joel Carillet: It was, until October, a Sony camcorder with a still function built into it. Now it is a Nikon D80. I can only afford one lens at the moment, and that is a Nikkor 18-135mm.

AR: What are your tips for up-and-coming photographers?
Joel Carillet: The same tip I would give just about anybody: love people, and love life. Of course, read up a bit on how to take a decent picture, but I’m not sure what photographing is for — or anything else for that matter — if love is not somehow involved. There is a quote in Dostoevsky’s The Brother’s Karamazov that has stuck with me since I first came across it four years ago. If I may, I’d like to close with it: “Love man in his sin too, for such love resembles God’s love, the highest possible form of love on earth. Love God’s creation, love every atom of it separately, and love it also as a whole…”

Abu Rajah and his wife, one week after the Israeli army demolished all but one room of their house to make way for tanks in their crowded refugee camp. When I visited Jenin Refugee Camp in 2002 and had no place to stay, Abu Rajah invited me, a complete stranger, to stay with his family in the one room still standing. Two of his sons had already been killed by the Israeli Defense Force (one died of an asthma attack brought on by tear gas, forbidden by the soldiers to leave their house to go to a nearby hospital for treatment). During my stay, Abu Rajah and his wife asked that I make time to talk with their third son, a 17-year old who hoped to be a suicide bomber. Their hope: that an outsider would have more influence than parents in discouraging a child from committing such a terrible act.

Visit Joel’s site at www.joelcarillet.com and see his work at imagekind.

Lighting incense at the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees, Guangzhou, China.

Because the dynamic duo Ron and Robin (are they like The Captain and Tennille?) have been getting musical I will do the same today. This title of this song fits, but not the rest, unless the vocalist is singing about The Buddha. Meh, it’s early.

It was a special day at the temple. (What I like about China Travel, is amazing Chinese temples.) I never learned which one, which deity from the pantheon I know little about was being feted for supernatural feats. People from across the city of 12 million had gathered at the largest temple in the region. Fridays are not usually busy days for religious observance in boomtown.

I love old things. Maybe that’s my attraction to China, and China Travel. Temples, tombs, and houses that hold the energy of the generations that have lived within their walls, fascinate me. I’m far from spiritual, professing only a belief in the FSM, having been touched by His Noodly Appendage.

Chinese Temples, large or small, ancient or recent, give me reason to pause. The incense in the air, the chanting, the devotion, contrasted with running children, men on cell phones, and lovers holding hands and snapping photos, make temples a place for me to both reflect and people watch. They are a microcosm of Chinese society, ancient beliefs still observed in a nation economically bursting at the seams.

The monk was standing by a table full of offerings: Fruits, vegetables, flowers and cooking oil. I have a friend that professes the ability to see auras. While I call that new-age claptrap, for a moment, the briefest one, I thought I saw him surrounded by white light. He smiled benevolently, like the golden idols behind him. Serenity rolled from him in waves. His eyes were clear and kind, but with a glint, a small spark, of something that made me wonder what he did in his life before he donned the robe.

He saw me, standing in the afternoon sun, a camera in hand. A smile and he waved me over. No pause, no dropping jaw, something I often experience. He had seen enough foreigners at this place, his home, to be unshocked by my presence. The temple doves watched us from their perch above the religious chaos.

I froze. I didn’t understand his beliefs, or his language. My camera in my hand, I wanted to raise it to my eye and freeze the moment, the smile, and the calmness I knew my CCD couldn’t possibly capture. He smiled a little wider before turning away. After wiping some dust from the offering table, and looked at the group kneeling in prayer before leaving the main courtyard.

He meandered, moving in stops and starts. At the shrines, he looked at those offering their thoughts to the ancient Gods. I followed, waiting for an opportunity.

I hate posed shots. You see only a facade. There is enough posing in the world, people keeping up appearance for friends and neighbors.

The China Travel guidebooks say not to take photographs of monks. Since guidebooks are usually wrong, I wasn’t worried about causing offence. (Maybe a little, the thought of a thrashing from a monk trained in Shaolin gongfu isn’t appealing.) I could tell by his demeanor that he wouldn’t have minded a photo, he probably would have posed with me if someone else held the camera.

I’ve done some sleazy things with a camera. A newspaper photographer is not everyone’s friend. Standing at the side of a road snapping photos of mangled bodies covered in bloody blankets isn’t pleasant, nor is the feeling in your gut afterwards. A drink can make you forget for a time but doesn’t erase the act, the utter invasion of privacy.

No, he wouldn’t mind. My motives were pure. I wanted to capture him, who he was.

A moment.

A feeling.

He stopped by a pillar. The sun cast the last of its golden light over the courtyard. He turned a little, away from the shrine. I raised my camera.

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A prayer tree at the Tian Hou Temple in Chiwan, Shenzhen, China. Surrounded by an industrial shipping complex, this temple is place of tranquility in a boom-town. For more information about Tian Hou, the goddess of the sea, see my Associated Content article. Captured, March 2007.