From the Archive: Tuna Factory

Three men clad in aprons and rubber boots, cleaning, cutting and disposing of Yellowfin Tuna, at a tuna processing plant in the Maldives, on the 31 October 2007. The Yellowfin will be processed into tuna steaks for export to the European market.

This weeks photos comes from inside a small tuna processing factory on Hulhumale’ Island, just across the way from Male’, the capital of the Maldives.

Many times the hardest thing I do as a photographer is figure out a way to arrange access to specific locations. As a photographer I rely on friends-of-friends as well as people known in the industry as Fixers. As the name implies, Fixers fix stuff. And by stuff, I mean anything that I may need, whether it is arranging a meeting with a person to gain access to a facility, organising transport, translating in the field…the list is almost endless.

The best Fixers are the one’s that become your friends.

In the Maldives I was fortunate to become friends with Ahmed Zahid, who was instrumental in getting me access to countless places throughout the country. Zahid arranged the meeting with a person that knew a tuna factory owner. That person then arranged another meeting for me with the tuna factory owner. I knew that when I met the tuna factory owner that I would have to be bringing something to the table. Rocking up and asking for access to take photos simply because you are a photographer, is rarely a good enough reason.

While I try and limit what I am offering in exchange for access, in this instance the tuna factory owner would only allow me access if I provided a selection of hi-res images for him to use to promote his business. In the end, I negotiated unlimited photographic access to the tuna factory processing floor. In exchange I provided a selection of images for the tuna factory owner to use. They weren’t the best photos, but they were good enough for what the tuna factory owner wanted.

I would later go on to license a number of the images (separate to the one’s provided to the tuna factory owner) to Serendib Magazine to accompany an article I produced on tuna processing plants in the Maldives.

[This photo can be licensed via Aurora Photos. Just double click on the photo to license it].

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