Journal

No fear of flying

A staggering flight
I remember. Sudan, 29 January 1963. My first photographic flight. I have hired a Cessna 172, together with a Swedish pilot, in Khartoum. I want to document the temples, pyramids and fortresses of ancient Nubia between the Fourth and Second Nile Cataracts above Wadi Halfa. At Soleb, close to the Third Cataract, a team under Michela Schiff Giorgini is examining and restoring the great sanctuary of Amenophis III. As an archaeologist, Signora Schiff Giorgini fully deserves her reputation: as a hostess in a desert camp she has no equal. For her, a Martini without an olive is unthinkable. The first pilot to land in her camp will find a bottle of whisky waiting in the fridge. As we are approaching Soleb, I uncautiously tell my pilot about this oasis of creature comforts and the prize awaiting whoever lands there first. Now there is no holding him back. The archaeologists on the ground use sheets to indicate the wind direction on the bumpy runway, but the thirsty man finds the fridge and bottle without any further assistance. We are hailed like Lindbergh after his Atlantic crossing. The inhabitants of the surrounding villages flock to see their first light aircraft. An hour later, the Cessna, now long overdue, takes off and staggers – there is no other word for it – the last two hundred kilometres to its destination. In Wadi Halfa the police arrest the drunken pilot and impound his plane.

Beware of piranhas
I remember. Near Manaus, 3 March 1979. We are flying over the green sea of Amazonia in a Cessna 182 fitted with floats. Earlier in the day I photographed the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Amazon for an Air France advertising campaign. The four of us – me, the pilot, who is a Canadian missionary, and, in the rear seats, a French couple, Marc and Chloé – are now on an ethno-archaeological reconnaissance flight over the areas inhabited by the Waimairi and Akroairi Indians. In its policy towards the native Indians, the Brazilian government has never cared to show its hand, and so our missionary-cum-pilot has preferred not to notify the authorities about our flight but to slip away beneath the radar of the airport of Manaus. We are forced to be entirely self-reliant. No one knows where we are. Suddenly Marc taps my shoulder and asks me to inform the pilot in English that Chloé has been taken short. It is urgent. ‘Chloé has to pee.’ The man of God at the controls takes it all in his stride, selects an atmospheric tributary, lands on the water, brings the Cessna to a rest on a sandbank and releases his fishing rod from its mounting, intending to take advantage of our unplanned pit stop to do a spot of fishing. Discreetly we men turn our backs on Chloé and the Cessna while she does what she has to do. The Cessna unfortunately takes this opportunity to do something it is not supposed to do, breaking free from the sandbank and drifting slowly into the river. Stranded on a sandbank in the middle of a river almost certainly teeming with peckish piranhas, with no links to the outside world and not even missed by our fellow human beings: our situation could hardly be more unpleasant. But our fisherman-pilot keeps his head and, casting his line with well-aimed accuracy, catches the aircraft as it drifts away, then slowly, ever so slowly, draws in his catch. Never before has the tensile strength of fishing lines given me such pause for thought.

In praise of old age
I remember. Nanjing, mid-June 1987. I have been asked to photograph China from the air for an Australian publisher working in collaboration with one of China’s state-owned publishing houses. I have to rely on the machine placed at my disposal by the armed forces. There are no chartered planes in the Middle Kingdom. I first see the machine at a military airfield in Nanjing, a Soviet Antonov AN-2 from the 1940s that was rebuilt in China. A double-decker with a radial engine, it was the largest single-motor double-decker in the history of aeronautics and looks for all the world like a gigantic crop-spraying plane. It is certainly an old-timer. It is no wonder that my heart sinks and my voice rises in pitch. ‘This thing must be thirty years old.’ ‘No, no,’ my companions reassure me. ‘More … older.’ Their answer reflects the Chinese respect for great age, which apparently guarantees increased reliability even in airplanes.

In other ways, too, I have problems with the veteran AN-2. The armed forces’ ideas on safety are very lax. They expect me to stand in the open doorway during the flight, leaning slightly forward in order to be able to see out of the plane, but without an adequate safety harness. Suddenly I remember a clause in my contract: ‘Life must always remain subordinate to the best photograph.’ Until now I had assumed that it was the translation that had turned the Chinese original’s well-meaning concern for the photographer’s life and limb into an expression of ominous nonchalance, but in spite of this I risk standing during a brief flight over the mausoleum of Sun Yat-sen. Safely back on the ground, I insist on a seat for all future flights. My wish is my companions’ command, and I am duly given a seat for the next flight – a kindergarten stool perched perilously close to the gaping door of the plane. It is badly anchored to the floor, and in the foetal position that I am forced to adopt, I can scarcely see further than my knees. On landing, I therefore express an urgent request for a more solidly built chair for an adult, a chair more appropriate to the task in hand, more resilient, more welcoming, more comfortable and, finally, conducive to a relaxed posture. My translator, never at a loss for a flowery expression, evidently does an excellent job when passing on my catalogue of demands, for on the next flight I find that the kindergarten stool has been replaced in the open doorway by a feudal and formidable club armchair, almost certainly a solution unique in the annals of flying. But I refuse, of course, to be a pioneer: the heavy chair is so badly lashed down that if the plane were suddenly to change direction both the chair and its occupant would slide into space.