Documentary photographer and doctor Oliver Weber has a gift for finding extraordinary stories in the most unlikely people (his assessment of the Canary Islands’ tourism had us reaching for the sick bucket a couple of years back), a knack which he suggests is partly down to a physician’s eye for reading a person’s history and experience in their facial language. The German has uncovered perhaps his most fascinating tale to date in the form of eccentric fellow ex-pat Captain Flint. The two compatriots both live on the islands’ La Gomera — the Captain is a long-time seasonal resident, whereas Weber has a permanent medical practice on the island — and to the untrained eye Weber’s latest subject looks like any other portly retiree soaking up the sun in their twilight years.
Not so, as Weber details in his photo essay. The eponymous Captain Flint has had an amazing life. Through a fug of pipesmoke he recalls his first job in East Germany, preparing corpses for medical students to train with, before escaping to the West in the late 1950s. Weber hears about the Captain’s string of fruitless jobs before being taken on by a prestigious university, of his love of hunting curtailed by a new-found respect for all life as he nears 80, and the reasons behind his nickname and the elaborately dressed skeleton in his La Gomera apartment. The full story of Captain Flint, along with many other absorbing photographic essays, is available on Oliver Weber’s website.
© Oliver Weber
