Photojournalism, Exploration and Documenting Humanity Across the World: An interview with Chris Stowers
You may listen to this interview from HERE.
Chris Stowers left England in 1987, aged 19, clutching a one-way ticket to Karachi, Pakistan. He has lived in Asia ever since. His love of photography began while hanging out with photojournalists in war-torn Peshawar, where he was teaching English and science to Afghan refugees. Photography assignments and wanderlust have taken Chris to over 70 countries, and his work has appeared in publications such as Newsweek, The Economist, Forbes, The New York Times, Time, as well as National Geographic Traveler and Discovery. He has photographed guidebooks from San Diego to Saigon and all points in between, held two solo photographic exhibitions, and regularly shoots for NGOs such as ActionAid and Oxfam. Chris has published multiple books of photography and non-fiction and hosted several TV documentaries. His most recent book – Shoot, Ask… And Run! – was released in January 2025 by Earnshaw Books and documents his media life through the tumultuous 1990s in locations from the jungles of Borneo to the former Soviet Union.
Q1. Please introduce yourself and tell us about your current interests.
Carrying a camera has been my passport to explore and interact with the world. I would never have been so brazen or brave in my travels – or life – without the excuse of being a photographer. I left England when Margaret Thatcher was still Prime Minister. That seems more than a few lifetimes ago, already! Right at the start I fell in with a group of independent-minded freelance photojournalists based in Peshawar, Pakistan, who were covering the war in neighboring Afghanistan, and from whom I learnt a lot. This was an era of intrigue and mystery, when half the people you met were journalists, the others were spies, and some were both. The CIA was just starting to supply the Mujahedeen with the Stinger missiles that would shortly play an important role in cracking the façade of the Soviet Union. I realized, right from the start, Asia was the place to be, and that carrying a camera would allow me the excuse to roam at will. In other words, I was able to turn a vacation into a vocation, right off the bat, and to have arrived on the Asian continent at a most interesting juncture in its history.
China was just opening up to the world following decades of isolation. I was able to pass from Pakistan into Xinjiang, China, via the remote Khunjerab Pass, in May 1987 – the very first year foreigners were officially allowed to do so (Pakistani traders had first been allowed limited access the previous year) – work crews clad in Mao suits were still blasting the roads with dynamite as we went. Many adventures later, I arrived in Hong Kong by ship from Shanghai on August 1, 1987. Hong Kong was still a part of the British Empire back then, a fact I’d never considered or fully appreciated when growing up in England, but which suddenly seemed relevant and advantageous as a penniless but ambitious 20-year-old. It took a few more years before I could quit teaching English and make my living entirely from photography. I haven’t stopped travelling or taking photos since. These days it seems fashionable to have experienced many different roles and occupations in different sectors: I delight in having had the same job and position all my working life. But there is an important proviso – every day as a photographer the subject is different and each day offers the chance to take a better photo than the one before. Photography is an endlessly varied, challenging and fulfilling occupation.
Currently I find myself attracted to architectural photography, and I’ve been lucky to work on a couple of projects for the postmodernist Dutch master, Rem Koolhaas. Photographers and architects are amazingly similar in the way we observe the world, each appreciating structures and landscapes in terms of the play of light and shadow, scale and texture. I know several architects who have gone on to become very good photographers. I am writing a lot these days, too. Possibly this urge to record past experiences stems from an urgency to capture the idyllic days of youth before they fade completely, but it is also a matter of discipline. From the very first day of my travels, I kept a diary – a habit I maintain to this day, and would recommend to anyone – so, writing books seems a natural progression to make, companion to the photographic record I’ve already amassed.
Q2. Who are the photographers or authors that have most influenced you and why? If you could go back in history to a particular moment in time and cover it with your camera, where and when would it be?
I favor the work of street photographers over those of sports, studio or fashion. Among those whose example inspired me to push on during my frequent bouts of self-doubt, are: Robert Capa and Don McCullin, famed for their war work, obviously, but also keen and sympathetic observers of daily life and the human condition. Josef Koudelka (particularly his work in the book ‘Gypsies’), William Albert Allard (check out his amazing run of work for National Geographic in the 1970s and early 80s), and bringing things slightly more up-to-date (at least, to the 1980s and 90s, when I started shooting), Steve McCurry and Alex Webb (both of whom understand light and color so well). A name that many are not familiar with, but whose work deserves to be up there with the greats, is Fan Ho, who was out shooting the streets of Hong Kong in the 1950s and 60s. He was a master of light and shadow, and his images transformed the ordinary into the cinematic and mythical. Just incredible!
Graham Greene is my favorite writer, stylistically. I guess I could blame my wanderlust on him setting so many of his novels in exotic parts of the world. But my grandmother had a big hand in it, too, way before I came across the writings of Greene. She lived in Africa in the 1920s and 30s – my father was born there, in Rhodesia (or Zimbabwe, as it is known today) – and I would spend hours lying on her living room floor flicking through the lovingly curated albums of photos she’d taken as a young woman, imagining myself transported from the grey English suburbs to the shimmering glow of Southern Africa, and lion hunts on the Veldt.
The temptation for any photographer is to take advantage of time travel and wish to be back in, say, 1904 when Younghusband and his expedition entered Lhasa, or to capture that last helicopter out of Saigon, in 1975. But I will keep my answer more grounded. If I could go back in history, it would be to when I first arrived in China, in 1987, and recognize what a unique moment that was, and to photograph the heck out of it! What a treasure trove of images I would now have…but at the time I took very few shots, thinking that was just what China was like, and that it would remain the same forever. There’s a lesson there, somewhere…
Q3. How do you prepare for an assignment and does the situation impact the way you shoot? Would this be different for a calm, predictable situation as compared to a tense, potentially hazardous one?
Right at the start of my travels I was advised to ‘never carry more than you can run with.’ This made perfect sense back when all I owned in the world comfortably fitted into a medium-sized backpack. But the larger message, to remain as unfettered as possible by gadgets, heavy gear and emotional attachment, is one that has seeped into the way I operate as a photographer, and approach life in general.
Obviously, as your career advances and you become more settled and established, so the amount of specialist photographic equipment one amasses for various tasks increases. Take the issue of lighting, for example. I often, these days, set out for a one-day corporate shoot burdened by several rolling cases loaded with tripods, lights, light stands and sandbags, duct tape, batteries, soft boxes and so forth: much more luggage than were I, say, off to shoot in Algeria for a month. For travel, I try to fit all my gear into one small backpack and a side bag, so that I don’t become a victim to my luggage. On the road you often find yourself changing plans on the spot, you need to be mobile and able to jump off a bus in the middle of nowhere when you are passing an amazing landscape, for example.
The most productive experience I had in a long while was a few years back documenting Indonesia, from one end to the other, and choosing to shoot the whole project using just one camera body, one lens (a 35mm, f2), and a small flash. I carried a couple of other prime lenses along, just in case, but ended up using the 35mm objective for 75 percent of all my images. It was really freeing to travel so light and to not have to worry or think about what equipment I needed to use. Instead, I began to see everything framed within the context of that single, classic lens. Some of the most intimate shots I ever made in Indonesia came out of that project, and due to the strict limitations imposed by that approach – though, sadly, as often happens, I never did get around to producing the book I had in mind. On the other hand, paying clients expect you to turn up laden like a donkey with up-to-date gear, and looking the part, no matter how much of that equipment you actually end up using.
I don’t tend to do too much research before heading off to a place. This is partly due to my nature, but also to experience, which has taught that most plans will fall apart and have to be adapted on the fly. Sometimes this lack of forethought has led to regrettable outcomes, like in Kathmandu, in 2004. I set out to find breakfast one morning, but instead found myself following the familiar odor of teargas and becoming actively engaged shooting a massive riot. Not only had I the totally wrong film in my cameras at the time to shoot fast moving action, but, of course, no protective gear. I ended up being hit on the back of the head by a brick – an incident that made its way on to the wires, embarrassingly, and left my ear ringing, ever since. So, I guess I could’ve prepared better for that…although I did get one nice image out of it.
Generally, I nowadays divide my work between two main disciplines, let’s call them ‘Corporate’ and ‘Reportage’. The former makes the money that allows me to go off for a few months at a time and have adventures and cover all the interesting and ‘worthy’ social features that these days barely pay enough to cover expenses, but end up winning the awards and making you feel you are still a real photographer. A lot of planning and preparation goes into shooting the corporate-commercial side of things, so I like to let the reportage lead me where it may. And in terms of this ‘reportage’, the equipment I’d bring along to shoot a civil conflict or the aftermath of a natural disaster would not differ greatly from what I’d pack for a general travel feature or when shooting a guidebook. Mobility, in all these instances, is the most important factor.
4. As someone who has documented so many different cultures, religions, and political landscapes, how has this shaped your views on humanity?
As Mark Twain quipped: ‘If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.’ Frequently I find myself reading in the international media about a place I know well or am actually in, and thinking: ‘What is this mythical place they are writing about?’ If the press (and not all outlets are that bad) get it wrong in this instance, can they be trusted to be the unquestioned authority on another? The only way to find out is to head out for yourself, boots on the ground, and start asking questions.
What I have discovered is that, although fashions and religions, economies and histories are multiple and various, at base the old adage is true: humans are all pretty much the same – and after the same things – all round the world. Perception is key. Different societies have drilled-in expectations of people from alien backgrounds. In Taiwan I lose track of the times I’ve been asked where I come from, only to be met with a sage nod and solemn pronouncement (most often by people who have never stepped foot in the place): ‘Ah, England. You are gentleman.’ We all unwittingly process people in this fashion, even after decades of being proven wrong on multiple occasions and knowing we oughtn’t be so judgemental. I’ve always tried to act up to and beyond these stereotypes. People – until you get to know them better – are less wary when you conform to expectations, even outmoded ones!
In India (the country I shoot my best work in, and get most frustrated at) everyone warns you to be on your guard – against theft, beggars and con artists. This is sound advice for travel anywhere, of course, but the mantle of distrust seems to have fallen particularly heavily and unfairly on India. On my first few visits there I travelled to all the big cities and sights, and came back having had things stolen and with many uncomfortable tales of woe and hardship. The visual lure of the place was so great, though, that I couldn’t help myself from going back, time and time again. My perceptions began to improve after about my tenth visit (did I mention photographers need patience?), after working on assignments in rural areas. Once, in Orissa, I left my entire camera bag on top of the car, parked in a remote and impoverished village, going into a hut to photograph. I just knew my equipment would be untouched when I emerged. That would be unthinkable in any Indian city! Cultivating a good circle of local friends and staying with them, instead of being isolated in hotels, is also a key component of assimilation. When you stop emitting a defensive, foreign vibe, people sense the difference, and everything becomes more harmonious. Always smile and be quick with a handshake, too!
Q5. You’ve witnessed many transformative and often chaotic periods in the course of your work, including revolutions, social unrest, and leadership changes. Have you developed any insights into the cyclical nature of history and how have these insights influenced your worldview?
Perhaps it is not entirely coincidental the words ‘cyclical’ and ‘cynical’ are found so close in the English dictionary? For someone even peripherally (as myself) involved in the business of ‘news’, I tend to get it wrong a lot of the time. For instance, I was in the jungles of Borneo when Tiananmen happened, and in remote Xinjiang when the Berlin Wall fell: on both occasions I misjudged the moment. Fortunately, we bundle together these outcomes of flawed policy and weak human judgement, after the event, and call it ‘history’ – and there’s nearly always a second chance to get it right, next time.
History repeats, climates change, markets crash and boom, and dictators come and go. Were Indonesians any better off under Jokowi than enduring the iron fist of Suharto? I very much suspect the answer depends upon whom you ask, and from which social class they come. In 1991 I photographed the rising star of Malaysian politics, Anwar Ibrahim, as Finance Minister, witnessed his subsequent downfall and decades of imprisonment, and have lived to see his rebirth, now, as Prime Minister. On another occasion, I covered the protests that rocked the Philippines in the early 1990s – not long after the overthrow of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos – which led to the successful removal of US military bases from that country. Today, 30 years on, we not only have US bases being asked back into the country, but a Marcos (Ferdinand’s son, Bongbong) is once again President.
Reality is anchored in land and location; but people, technologies and regimes fluctuate. Events don’t so much repeat as reappear at critical junctures, altered in form and name. For instance, the ‘Silk Road’ is re-engineered and marketed currently as the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, and the ‘International North-South Transportation Corridor’ (being mooted from Russia through Iran to India) is just the latest incarnation of Great Game dalliances. And don’t get me started on the Middle East…
To compete as a photographer, one has to be interested in history and geography as much as current affairs, and try to predict which topics and trends from which regions will be in demand before photo-editors even think of needing images of them. If I had to put money on it, then I’d say Iran, and the territories immediately bordering it, are going to produce a lot of interesting, photo-led feature stories in the next couple of years. And I’ll be heading to shoot in the Baltic States and former Eastern Europe this summer, as economic and immigration issues, and EU sabre-rattling with Russia, mean a number of topical issues to cover.
Over time, I have become more cynical about this ‘cyclical’ aspect of history, and the role the media play in amplifying it. Shooting a news event is like drunken sex: in its grip you burn, nothing else matters. But the morning after you wake with a bad taste in your mouth wondering if the whole experience was worth it. Nothing becomes old as fast as news. My advice to any investigative reporter would be to ignore the misdirecting daily hysteria, and think long term. Always follow the money, and refuse to accept the fit-all narratives spun by governments and official media outlets at each new recycling of the narrative.
Q6. In the course of your work, have you had a chance to shoot or engage with leaders or senior political figures? Do any specific individuals stand out as particularly impressive or villainous?
In Syria, in 1993, one couldn’t escape the images of two powerful men, plastered on posters everywhere. One was the country’s president, Hafez al-Assad; the other, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his role as ‘The Terminator’. Cynics may debate who was the more dangerous of the two, but each man was undeniably popular among large sections of the local populace, at the time. Joking aside, dictators like Assad are often portrayed as the embodiment of evil. But scratch the surface, and things are far more nuanced. It was confided to me by someone who had lived through the era, how comforting it had been living in Spain under Franco, since one only got to read good and positive news about the country in the papers.
People are ruled by their fears: they are conditioned to accept governments that rule by fear. Real tyranny creates chaos, then swoops in to secure the situation at a usurious cost to your personal freedom. The appeal of political stability and regular meals – the ‘freedom’ from worry about regular work and food – are downplayed by privileged outside observers who have enjoyed conditions of peace and plenty for generations, and no longer consider these as luxuries. I’d wager many of those who cheered the arrival of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) into Damascus a few months back are already mourning even the façade of normality that existed under the Assad regime they deposed. This is not to say I endorse totalitarianism, far from it. I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to minimize government involvement in my affairs. But nothing, not even a photograph, is simply black and white.
I was very impressed with Chris Patten during his time as the last Governor of Hong Kong. I photographed him at Government House for The London Standard not long after he’d arrived in the colony. He showed off the door flaps he’d had the workmen install for his pair of dogs (terriers of some sort), ‘whisky’ and ‘soda’. I have an affection for Taiwan’s first democratically elected president, Lee Teng-hui. He was a real statesman of the old school; a wily and far-sighted politician brave enough to change positions and ruffle feathers within his own party. I shot him for Reader’s Digest, and just remember his blinding smile!
It’s probably a cultural thing, but it’s easier to gain access to the presidents and prime ministers of Western countries than in Asia, where I’ve spent the overwhelming bulk of my career. Leaders in Asia – and this goes for company bosses out here, too – tend still to be accorded the respect of Emperors, rather than treated like the glorified public servants they are. I spent years in Indonesia, at one stage, and never caught a glimpse of Suharto. His picture, like that of Assad, was up everywhere; in every government office, school room, police station and airport. But the man himself was an enigma. The more he kept himself hidden away in his modest family house in the Jakarta suburbs, the more some people loved him. Anger and hatred were directed, instead, at the more visible members of his cabinet.
I was there throughout the whole period, from the Asian Economic Crisis to when Suharto was finally deposed, shooting for Asiaweek magazine. The feeling after the dictator was forced to step down was very odd. Initial elation, followed by deep concern about ‘now what do we do?’ He was like a father to many in the country who had never known another leader. Several years of financial chaos and ethnic violence inevitably followed, as the disparate islands and regions Suharto, his cronies and his security apparatus had held together by fear, ripped themselves apart and vied for representation.
Q7. As the man behind the camera, are you able to be truly objective in what you shoot? Do you approach a scene with a particular narrative in mind? How much forethought goes into a picture?
It is impossible to ever truly erase your own personality from a photograph, nor should you try, since what makes a photo unique and gives it life and value is that inexplicable symbiosis between photographer and subject. Photos, particularly those involving people (which account for 90 percent of mine), are sort of an on-going bargaining process. How the subject reacts to your approach directly affects the amount of freedom you have to invade their space; even in a passing-on-the-street situation where you just have time to catch someone’s eye as you’re raising your camera. You can learn as much from a picture about the person who shot it as about the subject themself.
Ultimately, I’d love to cover myself with an invisibility cloak and become truly unobservable. All I ever want is for people to carry on with the action they were doing that attracted my attention in the first place. But the camera is a disruptive element, and most of the time people need coaxing and to become familiar with your presence before they slip back into anything resembling their natural and unselfconscious state again. In this way, shooting in a war zone – where people are preoccupied and distracted with concerns of imminent personal safety – is much easier. But that understanding between photographer and subject is visceral, and the roles have to remain clear.
As Susan Sontag wrote in her book, On Photography: ‘The person who intervenes cannot record, the person who is recording cannot intervene.’ Perhaps it is impossible to record life and have a real experience at the same time. Pretty much the only chance I had to sit back and enjoy the travel experience for what it was, rather than feel compelled to distill and capture an interpretation of it through the lens, was in China in 1990 after I’d had everything stolen, in Kunming. For three days and nights I had a really immersive Hard Seat experience, sans camera, on the train back to Hong Kong!
In terms of planning a shoot, I always have ideas and mostly I storyboard them, rough sketches of angles and situations, preferred lighting situations, the vague suggestion of the work of others from books and magazines seeping into my sub-conscience. But, in the end, things nearly always play out differently, unexpectedly and chaotically. And, nearly always, shooting organically, reacting to events as they occur, results in far better images than my imagination originally came up with. In the days of shooting on film it was amazing how many times my very best shot would turn out to be taken on the very last frame of the roll. Frequently, too, the shots where you felt sure you’d mucked-up the exposure produced some of the best results. Of course, in those days you wouldn’t know your mistakes had worked out until after getting the films developed a week later, which was actually kind of magical.
Q8. When entering a new situation, do you have any general guidelines or preparatory work to ensure you start an assignment on the right foot? How do you engage with locals and are there any good practices you have learned that ensure cooperation or at least tolerance from local communities?
The great thing about being a member of the extended media family is that you can, with some exceptions, waltz into the newsroom of pretty much any newspaper around the world, start asking questions, hook up with local reporters, and through them gain useful local contacts and knowledge. It’s an unspoken rule that you will reciprocate and help out anyone who turns up on your patch, too. However, I remember one occasion in New York, in 1997, thinking I might have stretched the limits a little far. I’d managed to blag my way up to the 16th floor of the Time-Life Building (security was a lot easier to by-pass, pre 9/11) and into the office of legendary Photo Editor, Robert Stevens. Obviously, I had no appointment, and he had no idea of who I was, but I was in town and passing-by, and I’d had a photo appear in Time a while back, so thought I’d pop in and say hello… But, leaving the building, I didn’t make it to the middle of the cavernous lobby before a security guard started chasing after me, calling out ‘Sir, wait a moment, sir!’ I guessed they’d called down from the 16th floor and I was in trouble. Instead of running, I decided to turn and face the overweight guard who finally caught up with me: ‘Are you one of those Time photographers, sir?’ He asked. On the basis of my one published photo, I admitted I was. The poor fellow looked relieved and pulled out a cheap compact camera, ‘I wonder, can you tell me why this camera of mine isn’t working? I’ve tried everything!’ Turns out his battery was dead, so I let him keep one of mine.
Anyway, on multiple occasions – in the Philippines, Indonesia and Lebanon, Georgia, Romania and India, to name a few – the ‘local paper’ approach has yielded great results. Of course, before hitting a new country you need to do some basic research, find out what the key societal features and trends may be, and if they align with your own passions. I tend to focus on the issues that keep me awake at night, ones I’ve a personal interest in getting to the bottom of, and can learn about along the way. If you are shooting a book you’ll be immersed in a subject sometimes for years, so you need to be passionate about the material.
Some events you just can’t prepare for in advance. For example, in the summer of 2008 all my media colleagues from around the world were heading to China to cover the Beijing Olympics. I had no desire to be anywhere near that event, and decided to head somewhere I’d never been before, namely, the Caucasus. I figured I could get some nice travel stories and have a holiday at the same time. Then, on the 8th August 2008, the day the Games began, Russia invaded Georgia. I practically had a war to myself, since the airport and railway out of Georgia had been destroyed, and the international press couldn’t get into the country for the first few, critical days. That was my luck. But, also, you have to be ready to adapt in an instant to take advantage of any new and changing reality, and not to panic.
Many photographers I know are rather shy and conservative characters – I certainly am – which goes against the popular stereotype. The old adage of hiding behind the camera is true. Sometimes you have to will yourself out of your hotel room and onto the street where the camera makes you a target for local attention, both good and bad. Purchasing some cheap trinket from a stall holder will gain an ally and establish rapport. I don’t smoke, but always carry a pack of cigarettes with me to hand out on assignment, and make friends. Photographing people is all about establishing trust. You need patience, in buckets! It’s as much about psychology as any technical proficiency.
I’ve always made a point of displaying my profession right from the get-go. I don’t try to sneak my shots. I wear the photographer’s uniform of a many-pocketed camera vest, a Cambodian scarf, and always carry two cameras out in the open. I’m not trying to hide who I am, or my intentions. Carry one camera body and you’re a tourist. People see and make the distinction, quickly realizing you’re there to do a job, and after half an hour anywhere you are basically left alone to get on with it.
It’s up to the individual, of course, how far to take this issue of ‘dressing up’. In terms of personal safety in war zones I’ve always taken my chances with the locals who, after all, have no protective gear to wear. I’ve always reasoned wearing a bulletproof vest would have the unintended effect of making me stand out like more, not less, of a target. Probably that’s just my freelance attitude. These days, many news organizations will insist their employees wear helmets and flak jackets for insurance and legal purposes. But when I started out in Pakistan in the late 1980s, no one I knew going into Afghanistan had any protective equipment. Hell, the Mujahedeen often didn’t even have shoes!
Humans are the same wherever you find them. That’s the great realization. It sounds simplistic, I know. But just head on in and treat everyone with the same courtesy and respect you expect for yourself; all opinions are worthy of consideration, even if you personally don’t find yourself agreeing with some of them. People have their reasons. In the end we all want and cherish the same things; to be respected, to do fulfilling work, to provide and to care for our families, to laugh with friends and not feel scared of our governments or neighbors. Ultimately, a photographer needs to be a good listener. People will tell you anything once you’ve established their trust. Asking to take their photo is just a natural follow-on.
Q9. What are the conflicting emotions that go through your head when you are faced with a particularly traumatic or harrowing situation? Have you ever been wracked with guilt or despair at what is happening in front of you, and how do you work through these emotions to get the job done? Have you ever walked away from a shot or put down your camera and gotten involved as a participant?
When photographing a traumatic event, there is always a moment you find yourself doubting ‘Why am I here?’ and ‘Can my presence be of any use?’; and then ‘Am I turning into a voyeur or thrill junkie?’. I think as long as you find yourself conflicted like this in the presence of suffering it shows you are still human and haven’t yet lost your soul. How do you react in such situations? On several occasions I’ve found it very hard to start shooting, but reasoned with myself: it’s my job, I’m here to get the news out, and after a few moments of reflection and embarrassment picked up my cameras and started doing what comes naturally. Now, as I alluded above, in a war zone or the aftermath of a terrible natural disaster, people are exposed, and vulnerable emotionally, so you can push the limits beyond the bounds of normal social etiquette. People are often so pre-occupied with their fears or suffering that you can slip by practically unnoticed. On the other hand, your very presence as a member of the media sometimes gives people hope, something to latch onto; that the world hasn’t forgotten their plight, and that the worst is possibly coming to an end. You have to handle that trust delicately.
Photographers are the foot soldiers of the media. Writers get to sit in hotels behind the lines and write-up their reports off the wires and from TV reports, and by questioning photographers in exchange for drinks when they return from the scene. A photographer, though, has to get his or her hands dirty: there’s no way of avoiding it. When I was covering the aftermath of the Kashmir earthquake in North Pakistan, in 2005, I was flying into very remote villages on Pakistani Army helicopters airlifting out the victims. Together, we experienced the same aftershocks, power outages, the dangerous buildings, lack of food and potable water, and terrible sanitary conditions. It created a bond. The photographer and subject become very close in situations like this. I’ve sometimes been moved to tears – so it’s not just our faces we hide behind the camera.
The photographer is lucky (at least, I consider myself so) in that we get to observe and record the extremes of the human condition but, at the end of the day, it’s just an assignment. There’s an expiry date to our torment. We always get to bug-out. Every war, natural disaster, humanitarian crisis or famine results in the same outcome: dispossessed and displaced people, the injured, the traumatized and the homeless. This is the reality left behind after the TV cameras have packed up, and fickle world attention has moved on to the next breaking news story.
There are Karen refugee camps scattered along the Thai-Burmese border where people have been living – and into which new generations have been born – since 1988. I photographed them in the mid-1990s, and those same poor souls are still there today. The saddest thing of all is this tragic waste of human potential. I remember an Iraqi refugee on the Slovenia-Austria border, in 2015, inviting me into his tent and insisting on opening a nice packet of biscuits for his visitor. Initially, my instinct was to decline, to tell him to save his luxury food for himself and his family. In the end we ate the biscuits together. There is a larger issue at play here: through his generosity, the refugee was declaring his independence, his pride. Who am I to take that away from him?
I think I have more freedom to photograph in Asia than in the West due to looking so obviously ‘foreign’. People expect you to conform to stereotype (as mentioned above), and in terms of my work, I’m usually only too happy to do so. This affords me great access to conflict zones and areas of natural disaster. On the other hand, you can get too used to this privileged status. When I was in Bosnia, coming from Hong Kong, I totally forgot that, to the average member of the local militia I could just as well be an enemy combatant. At one point I was apprehended and accused of being a Bosnian spy. My Serb interrogators handcuffed me and, a pistol jammed in the back of my neck, drove me off to some uncertain fate. I was debating whether to make a run for it or plead for my salvation but, in the end, just got really pissed off and started shouting at my captors. This was such an unexpected reaction (to me as much as to them) that they began doubting their actions and grudgingly checked out my credentials, and eventually – long story short – I survived to tell the tale. The moral of that is: Don’t act like a victim, or you’ll make yourself into one.
I have on occasion found myself paralyzed from being able to take a shot of other people’s suffering. I’ve had the camera lined-up, but then the subject has turned and established eye contact through the lens, and I’ve been physically (perhaps mentally) unable to press the shutter. Probably this keeps me from winning awards, but I’d rather retain some semblance of my humanity. I remember clearly an instance of this in Georgia. I was on the South Ossetian border and refugees were flooding over. There was an ITN TV crew filming out the back of their big estate car, driving slowly along, tracking the flow of fleeing people. I was with a group of freelance photographers and our local fixer, Zaza. We all looked at each other and instantly decided to put down out cameras and make space in our rented car to fit in an elderly couple and their belongings, and drive them to relative safety in Gori. I can’t blame the ITN guys, really: that’s the nature of their job. They have editors and producers yelling at them down their phones with nightly schedules to fill and satellite links to make. I guess they don’t feel very good about themselves, at the end of some days.
Q10. Please describe the image that can be accessed at this link. What was the background of this shot, and can you share details around the set-up, situation and thought process that led to this moment?
One of the most memorable and fulfilling long-term projects I ever worked on was with my friend, and fellow pogonologist (as we studiers of beards classify ourselves), Richard McCallum. Namely, our self-published 2008 book, and cult classic: Hair India – A Guide to the Bizarre Beards and Magnificent Moustaches of Hindustan.
What started as a whimsical suggestion at a New Delhi dinner party, became a three-year obsession to track down and record the various and most extreme styles of facial hair across that vast subcontinent. Belatedly, we realised the book could never be considered complete without tracking down the longest examples of beard and moustache in India, and, with the printing presses set to roll, I dashed off to track down the gentleman who appears in this photograph. It is an image I remain very proud of, for reasons explained below.
An Indian friend recalled hearing about a chap with a long moustache in Jaipur. So, I began my search through that hectic city, finally arriving at the doorstep of Mr. Ram Singh Chauhan one sunny morning. There was no sign of a dangling moustache, though, which was initially disappointing. But I soon discovered the hirsute wonder was coiled up, for practicality, underneath his turban. Each morning his dutiful wife would comb coconut oil through the – at that time, 12-ft long – strands of his moustache, keeping them glistening and in tip-top condition (for, to a Rajasthani, his moustache is his pride).
Taking Ram Singh on the rooftop of his family home and using a little fill-in flash to bring out the colour of his elaborate ceremonial garb (which he donned especially for the occasion), I tried positioning him in a number of angles, before hitting upon this idea to best display the marvelous moochie for posterity. What you don’t see in the image are Ram Singh’s two sons-in-law, standing on chairs, just out of shot, each holding a tip of the moustache in their fingers.
The shot worked, the book was duly printed, and after a while I filed the image away with my photo agency, Panos Pictures in London, and moved on to subjects less hairy. Then, a year or two later, my agent mentioned that the Guinness World Record people had seen this photo in the archives, and on the basis of it, dispatched their India team with tape measure to Jaipur. The photo was used in that year’s Guinness Book of World Records, and Ram Singh Chauhan’s was officially crowned the World’s Longest Moustache, a title it keeps to this day!
Q11. Is there any future for traditional photojournalism in the digital age, when news wires want rapid footage delivered online and will not pay for independent coverage? Has the ubiquity of camera phones devalued the work of professional photographers?
At base, photojournalism will survive as long as there are stories to be told. The medium by which the image is captured or the word broadcast is just that, a ‘medium’. A method of transmission.
The problem arises, though: how to be adequately recompensed for the time, effort and danger involved in working on longer, more nuanced stories than, say, the daily news flash? Back in 1990, for example, I was paid 500 HKD (64 USD) for my first photo printed in the South China Morning Post. Today, 35 years later, that same publication pays the same photo rate! I could live comfortably for a week on 500 HKD in 1990, but today? You’ll get a nice meal out of it, as long as you don’t order any wine. Beyond the buzz of seeing your work published, there has to exist, long-term, an appropriate form of compensation for freelancers, or else the quality of ‘news’ will suffer. This is already happening, in my opinion.
The news wire services have evolved over the last three decades, from providing purely spot news to getting into the features market that was previously the realm of the freelance photojournalist. Publications find it more economical to subscribe annually to a wire service where, for a fixed fee, they have push-button access to an almost limitless number of images and stories ‘for free’, rather than to assign individual shooters for every event, and to negotiate the separate contracts (and deal with the crusty personalities) of each of those individuals. A certain uniformity of images and topics duly emerges across the media landscape, but that is balanced against cost.
On rare occasions I have filled-in for a wire service colleague for a day or two, or been assigned by the features section of a wire service to shoot a package. On these occasions, I continue to shoot as widely and creatively as I would for my own projects, since the spirit of competition between photographers to get the best images on the wires the fastest is intense and addictive. In the end, though, I don’t see this as a viable career option, since the pay is dreadful and only for the day you shoot. You retain no copyright over the photos submitted to the wire service. But those images can, and do, go on to be republished and paid for multiple times, the organization profiting, not the creator. You may say, ‘But you agreed to the deal’, and I’m not denying that, or complaining, but in the past photographers had secure, full-time positions in the wire services. Nowadays, when the last dinosaurs retire, they are replaced only by young, enthusiastic stringers on part-time terms.
Here’s an amazing fact: In the first one hundred years of photography – the period from roughly 1840 to 1940 – five billion photographs were taken and painstakingly reproduced on paper from glass and celluloid negatives, using dangerous and messy chemicals. Now, five billion photos are being taken every single day – thanks largely to two recent innovations: digital photography and camera smart phones. And that figure is only rising. That gives you an idea of the saturated market any potential photographer faces entering. It is also an explanation for why payment for images has remained stable – and in many cases declined – since the early 1990s.
The proliferation of camera phones among the general public, and of CCTV footage that can be grabbed and played on TV news flashes, or even printed in newspapers, is a huge disincentive for the freelancer to travel to a disaster zone. You’d never recover the cost of even your air fare unless an organization is hiring you. Most news publications adopt the mantra of ‘good enough’. The image may be less than professional, but it’s next-to-free and can be touched-up on the computer and made ‘good enough’ to print. This attitude also presupposes a lack of education in their readership as to what constitutes a ‘good’ photo, in the first place.
As with most technology, I was forced kicking and screaming into the digital age. The demand now is for images to be shot and delivered within a few hours rather than, when I started out, by the end of the week. There was simply no way I could remain competitive and still shoot on film. However, I consider myself very fortunate to have begun travelling and to have learned my trade in the pre-digital era, before the internet, mobile phones and the 24-hr news cycle exemplified by CNN. It is important still to learn to print and develop films and images in black and white using chemicals, as this is the surest way to understand about light and contrast, and what makes or breaks a photo. The first half of my career, to date, has been spent shooting on film – mostly color slides – the second half in digital. I was among the last and most stubborn among my contemporaries to adopt digital technology. I was certain it was going to be a passing fad (since the image quality of early digital SLR’s was nowhere near as good as film, at the time). Well, I was wrong about that!
Q12. In recent years, several journalists trying to make names for themselves have been abducted and sometimes killed in conflict zones. As a result, serious work behind the scenes is often required to try and get them released. A dirty secret is that the major news organizations won’t send their own people into these places but give tacit approval to young freelancers to go and try and get the stories. Have you seen situations like this in your career?
No photograph is worth losing your life over. Having said that, even the best precautions are no guarantee tragedy won’t occur. Regrettably, several of my friends, colleagues and contemporaries can be numbered among the first category in the question above (out of respect, I’ll not list their names here) … and still others have been left badly wounded. They knew the risks they were taking. They were all experienced (though only one of them could be considered ‘famous’), and none of them were well paid for the risks they took. I’d say they were driven, or morally bound, to get a message out. I don’t think they’d consider themselves as having been abused by the media machine; you take your chances. But it is true that such casualties have led news organizations to reconsider who they send into an active conflict zone, and certainly nearly all the big organizations and wire services these days require their staff to go through some form of Hostile Environment training before being sent off to report from the frontlines.
Decreased photo budgets, combined with cheaper and more widespread access to transmitting technology has, inevitably, tempted an increase in the utilization of local stringers. This is not a new concept, by any means. Local newspaper photographers were issued professional cameras and sent out to report as far back as the Vietnam War, in many cases to great acclaim. Think of Nick Ut’s photo of the napalmed girl, for instance. It’s an iconic shot (probably one of a handful that helped actually hasten the end of a conflict) taken by a poorly paid local shooter. The fact that controversy is now raging as to the provenance of that image – whether it was actually Ut’s shot, or the work of another local stringer – just adds layers to this complex moral dilemma.
The trend of trusting news gathering to local freelancers seems to have been accelerated through the recent conflicts in Ukraine and, particularly, Gaza. These young and enthusiastic freelancers have the advantage in terms of local knowledge and ethnicity, mastery of the language and nuances of the different factions and political rivalries. Unfortunately, an explosive-laden drone, or long-distance sniper, doesn’t care about any of these qualities; they just see a target running around with a camera. Some of these young freelancers will benefit from the experience, and go on to become great and famous photographers in the future. The majority will probably drop out and go back to their studies, become doctors and experts in some other field, having had their share of youthful thrills, and realizing photography is not for them. It is unlikely the ones killed in action will have an award named after them.
Q13. What are your thoughts on the rise of AI tools? Are you concerned about fake images or the ease with which these tools can change or create false narratives? Can photographers protect their intellectual property and creative output from giant tech companies with unlimited resources and few legal constraints?
All photographs ‘lie’ to the extent of what they omit. They are the visual creation of a single photographer who focused on a certain aspect, and framed the image in a particular way, driven by personal instinct and taste, in an instant. And right from the start there have been hoaxes (most celebrated – and innocent, perhaps – being images of the ‘Cottingley Fairies’ that took in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Theosophical Society and a great portion of the English public in the period following the end of the First World War), or, even earlier, claims that US Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner rearranged dead soldiers on the battlefield to produce a more powerful image. Did Robert Capa stage his famed Spanish Civil War shot of the Falling Soldier? Where does art end, and propaganda begin? It is becoming ever more difficult to humanly discern visual AI manipulation. Ironically, it may eventually be only AI that is able to tell us the difference between the real and the fake.
Is the ubiquitous ‘Photoshop’ program an AI tool? If so, then I and most photographers can be accused of manipulating our images, since we use it every day to touch-up – though, crucially, not to alter – our photos, improving sharpness and color contrast, dodging and burning exposures, and so on. The program is simply the digital manifestation of procedures previously carried out in the red glow of the darkroom. Most working photographers can instinctively tell when AI has been used to generate a shot, though, since we live for images. We can spot when something is ‘off’, having personally tried to capture a similar image ourselves.
AI joins a long tradition of technological advancements that have, unwittingly, accelerated the seamless division between real and fake. Maybe, though, we need to dismount our high horses at this point and ask ‘what’s so precious about reality, anyway?’ A whole generation are growing up using TikTok and Instagram filters (which are basically AI algorithms) to disguise the ugly reality of skin blemishes, and much more. Possibly they won’t feel the same moral outrage that my older generation do about whether an image has been tampered with; do they expect things to be faked? Are they accepting of this new ‘reality’?
So far, AI is limited in that it can only utilize images which are already out there in the public realm (increasingly, I guess, it will ingest previously AI-generated images, too). The photographer will still be required to physically carry the camera, to recognize and capture the ‘moment’, and to be creative. Certain markets, like weddings, portraits, sports coverage and food, should be secure for now, as these require images taken on a certain day and place, and of a specific subject. I’ve seen amazing computer-generated renditions of buildings, inside and out, that leave me a little concerned about the future of my ‘career’ in architectural photography. Advertisers generally, too, can switch to using cheap AI-generated material.
I suppose a fine art market for ‘human-made’ photos, as exists for other handmade, artisan products, will emerge, though that is very niche. And increasingly we will be forced to identify our work ‘non-AI generated’, like the labels on organic foods that show they don’t contain GMO crops. It’s a new minefield we’re going to have to learn to navigate. Very much like when digital photography took over from film.
I imagine not using AI – at least somewhere in the process – will, in the near future, become impossible. Big Tech views all the digital information it harvests as simply data to be processed, repackaged and sold on. Unless new contracts emerge that make it legally binding for them to inform the creator where his or her original work is going to end up – and offer the chance to opt out if they disagree – then the tech companies will continue to hoover-up all our images and store them for future use. But photographers are, in my experience, too individualistic and disorganised as a ‘profession’ to gather together in sufficient numbers. We lack the collective clout, and are too busy competing against each other, to fight the machine. Opting out and going back to shooting on film may, ultimately, be the only way left to avoid the coming ravages of AI.
The only AI function that I would personally welcome into my photography work stream would be a program that could caption all my individual images for me. Captioning is the most tedious task, but so far no one has worked out how to fully automate that procedure!
Q14. Please share any favorite books, publications, blogs, podcasts or other resources that readers could use to improve their understanding of photography, photojournalism, geography, travel, any other related topics.
Ten books I will never part with, and find endlessly inspirational (fictional, non-fictional, biographical and historical) about or by photographers, travel reporters, adventurers and photojournalists – and in no particular order – are:
Graham Greene – The Quiet American
Peter Fleming – News from Tartary
Nicholas Bouvier – The Way of the World
Robert Byron – The Road to Oxiana
Robert Capa – Slightly Out of Focus
Don McCullin – Unreasonable Behaviour
Evelyn Waugh – Scoop
T.E. Lawrence – The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Arthur Herman – To Rule the Waves
Stanley Cloud & Lynne Olson – The Murrow Boys
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