Blink And they’re gone
Jimmy Nelson
Issue 50 | February 2019
Agency
JWT Amsterdam and JWT India
Creative Team
Creative JWT India, J. Walter Thompson Amsterdam Creative Team Bas Korsten, Senthil Kumar
Production Team
Director Senthil Kumar Production House Small Fry Productions, Mumbai Editors Priyank Premkumar, Dev Nayak & Kevin Menezes Music Director Dhruv Ghanekar
Other Credits
Client Jimmy Nelson Photographer Jimmy Nelson PR Managers Marit de Hoog, Jessica Hartley Project Manager Coco Box
Date
December 2018
Background
Photographer Jimmy Nelson has made it his life’s work to encourage understanding and respect for indigenous cultures in far-flung parts of the world through his photography. He wanted to issue a warning, that once the identity of indigenous peoples has been lost, it will be lost forever.
As well as raising awareness of the issue, he also wanted to raise funds for The Jimmy Nelson Foundation, which gives young photographers and filmmakers the opportunity to work on projects with indigenous cultures.
Idea
The campaign kicked off with “Blink and They’re Gone”, a two-and-a-half minute film made with over 1,500 of Jimmy Nelson’s photographs taken over the last 30 years, showing never-seenbefore images of 36 of the last indigenous communities on the planet.
The film took 90 days to edit and featured startling images of the Huli Wigmen from Papua New Guinea, the Kazakhs of Mongolia, the Sadhus of India, the Wodaabe from Chad among others. The film was directed by JWT India’s Chief Creative Officer, Senthil Kumar in Mumbai, working closely with J. Walter Thompson’s Global Creative Lead, Bas Korsten, who is based in Amsterdam.
Results
The campaign resulted in enormous amount of press coverage in leading newspapers around the globe.
Our Thoughts
This is an astonishing film. You will want to freeze-frame it often simply to look at the images of indigenous peoples you vaguely knew existed from National Geographic magazines. Jimmy Nelson certainly knows how to take a photograph. Yes, some of the people he has captured on film look exotic but he has also captured their dignity and pride.
Go to jimmynelson.com and you will see that he does not remove the posts that are critical of him. For instance, Albert Phuck (how very amusing): “These images are little more than a perpetuation of deeply entrenched Western notions of the noble savage.”
Good point. But how much easier it is to do nothing about the many problems we face in the world today than it is to do something.
Big respect to Bas Korsten, Senthil Kumar and, of course, Jimmy Nelson, for stirring the pot. They got my donation.