George Steinmetz: "Feed the Planet" – Woher kommen unsere Lebensmittel? (Interview in English)
In seinem Projekt „Feed the Planet“ beschäftigt sich mit den globalen Nahrungsketten, ihren Auswirkungen auf Mensch und Umwelt und den Herausforderungen, eine rasant wachsende Weltbevölkerung nachhaltig zu ernähren.
18.02.2024 63 min
Zusammenfassung & Show Notes
In seinem Projekt „Feed the Planet“ beschäftigt sich George Steinmetz mit den globalen Nahrungsketten, ihren Auswirkungen auf Mensch und Umwelt und den Herausforderungen, eine rasant wachsende Weltbevölkerung nachhaltig zu ernähren.
Seit Beginn der Domestizierung von Pflanzen vor rund 11.000 Jahren hat der Mensch bereits 40 Prozent der Erdoberfläche in Ackerland umgewandelt. Bei einer prognostizierten Weltbevölkerung von 9,7 Milliarden Menschen im Jahr 2050 und einem steigenden Lebensstandard in den schnell wachsenden Nationen müssen wir die weltweite Nahrungsmittelproduktion um schätzungsweise 60 Prozent steigern.
Die meisten von uns kommen mit rohen Lebensmitteln nur im Supermarkt in Berührung und sind sich der Produktionsmethoden oft nicht bewusst.
In vielen Fällen unternimmt die Lebensmittelindustrie große Anstrengungen, um zu verhindern, dass wir sehen, wie unsere Lebensmittel hergestellt werden.
Der Zugang zu diesen Informationen ist wichtig für unsere persönlichen Entscheidungen, was wir essen, und hat kumulativ enorme Auswirkungen auf die Umwelt.
Dieses Projekt soll zeigen, wie unsere Lebensmittel hergestellt werden, damit wir besser informierte Entscheidungen treffen können.
Wie er zu diesem ehrgeizigen Projekt kam, wie er es umsetzt und wie es seinen Blick auf Lebensmittel verändert hat - darüber sprechen Pia Parolin und ich im Interview mit George Steinmetz.
Aufgezeichnet haben wir dieses Gespräch im September 2023 im Rahmen der Medientage des Open-Air-Fotofestivals „Open Your Eyes“ in Zürich.
Das von Lois Lammerhuber und seinem Team initiierte Festival will Wissenschaft und Fotografie zusammenbringen, um die drängendsten Herausforderungen unserer Zeit sichtbarer und verständlicher zu machen.
Wenn du mehr über das Festival erfahren möchtest, kannst du dir die vorherige Podcast-Episode über „Open Your Eyes“ anhören: "Open Your Eyes – Weltklasse-Doppel von Wissenschaft und Fotografie"
Über George Steinmetz:
George ist bekannt für seine atemberaubenden Luftaufnahmen und seinen einzigartigen Blick auf die Welt.
Seit Beginn der Domestizierung von Pflanzen vor rund 11.000 Jahren hat der Mensch bereits 40 Prozent der Erdoberfläche in Ackerland umgewandelt. Bei einer prognostizierten Weltbevölkerung von 9,7 Milliarden Menschen im Jahr 2050 und einem steigenden Lebensstandard in den schnell wachsenden Nationen müssen wir die weltweite Nahrungsmittelproduktion um schätzungsweise 60 Prozent steigern.
Die meisten von uns kommen mit rohen Lebensmitteln nur im Supermarkt in Berührung und sind sich der Produktionsmethoden oft nicht bewusst.
In vielen Fällen unternimmt die Lebensmittelindustrie große Anstrengungen, um zu verhindern, dass wir sehen, wie unsere Lebensmittel hergestellt werden.
Der Zugang zu diesen Informationen ist wichtig für unsere persönlichen Entscheidungen, was wir essen, und hat kumulativ enorme Auswirkungen auf die Umwelt.
Dieses Projekt soll zeigen, wie unsere Lebensmittel hergestellt werden, damit wir besser informierte Entscheidungen treffen können.
Wie er zu diesem ehrgeizigen Projekt kam, wie er es umsetzt und wie es seinen Blick auf Lebensmittel verändert hat - darüber sprechen Pia Parolin und ich im Interview mit George Steinmetz.
Aufgezeichnet haben wir dieses Gespräch im September 2023 im Rahmen der Medientage des Open-Air-Fotofestivals „Open Your Eyes“ in Zürich.
Das von Lois Lammerhuber und seinem Team initiierte Festival will Wissenschaft und Fotografie zusammenbringen, um die drängendsten Herausforderungen unserer Zeit sichtbarer und verständlicher zu machen.
Wenn du mehr über das Festival erfahren möchtest, kannst du dir die vorherige Podcast-Episode über „Open Your Eyes“ anhören: "Open Your Eyes – Weltklasse-Doppel von Wissenschaft und Fotografie"
Über George Steinmetz:
George ist bekannt für seine atemberaubenden Luftaufnahmen und seinen einzigartigen Blick auf die Welt.
Seit mehr als drei Jahrzehnten erkundet er unseren Planeten – anfangs aus der Vogelperspektive mit einem motorisierten Paraglider – und hat dabei einige der faszinierendsten Orte und Kulturen eingefangen.
Seine Arbeiten werden regelmäßig in führenden Publikationen wie National Geographic, The New York Times und GEO veröffentlicht.
Seine Arbeiten werden regelmäßig in führenden Publikationen wie National Geographic, The New York Times und GEO veröffentlicht.
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Mit dem Visual Storytelling Kompaktkurs knüpfen wir an das Format an, mit dem "Abenteuer Reportagefotografie" 2020 begonnen hat: Kleine Gruppe, große Wirkung.
Vier Live-Abende, praxisnah, persönlich – für alle, die mit ihren Bildern wieder echte Geschichten erzählen wollen.
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Hast du Fragen, spannende Themen oder einfach Gedanken, die du schon immer mal loswerden wolltest? Dann schreib uns!
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Thomas B. Jones und ich helfen dir, mit deinen Bildern spannende Geschichten zu erzählen - ob in der Familie, in der Freizeit oder auf Reisen. Lerne, wie du die Bilder machst, die dich und andere begeistern.
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Transkript
It wasn't about, like, wow, I love the pictures I was getting.
It was about the process, and photography for me at the time was an excuse to go and explore things.
With that camera, I felt like I had to go and insert myself into situations,
that I normally wouldn't be in as, like, a visitor or a tourist or whatever.
Music.
And I really loved the process, and I still love the process.
Ja, das sind die Worte von George Steinmetz. George ist bekannt für seine atemberaubenden
Luftaufnahmen und seinen einzigartigen Blick auf die Welt.
Seit mehr als drei Jahrzehnten erkundet der Fotograf unseren Planeten aus der
Vogelperspektive mit einem motorisierten Paraglider und hat dabei einige der
faszinierendsten Orte und Kulturen eingefangen.
Seine Arbeiten wurden in führenden Magazinen wie National Geographic,
The New York Times oder GEO veröffentlicht.
In seinem aktuellen Projekt Feed the Planet beschäftigt sich George Steinmetz
mit den globalen Nahrungsketten,
ihren Auswirkungen auf Mensch und Umwelt und den Herausforderungen,
eine rasant wachsende Weltbevölkerung nachhaltig zu ernähren.
Since the beginning of the domestication of plants around 11,000 years ago,
man has already converted 40% of the earth's surface into agriculture.
With a forecasted world population of 9.7 billion people in 2050.
As well as an increasing standard of living in the fast-growing nations,
global food production must be estimated to increase by 60%.
Die meisten von uns kommen mit rohen Lebensmitteln nur im Supermarkt in Berührung
und sind sich der Produktionsmethoden oft nicht bewusst in vielen Fällen unternehmt
die Lebensmittelindustrie auch große Anstrengungen um zu verhindern, dass wir sehen,
wo genau unsere Lebensmittel hergestellt werden der Zugang zu diesen Informationen
ist aber extrem wichtig für unsere persönlichen Entscheidungen darüber,
was wir essen möchten and has, in sum, also enormous impact on the environment.
This and much more is shown by the project of George Steinmetz.
It is a project that is supposed to show how our food is produced so that we
can make better, more informed decisions.
How he came to this ambitious project, how he implements it and how it has changed
his view on food, we will talk about in this interview with George Steinmetz.
Wir, das sind Pia Parolin und ich.
Pia hat mich ein weiteres Mal hervorragend am Mikrofon mit ihren spannenden Fragen unterstützt.
Wir haben dieses Gespräch im vergangenen Jahr, also im September 2023.
Im Rahmen der Medientage des Open-Air-Foto-Festivals Open Your Eyes in Zürich aufgezeichnet.
Initiiert wurde das Ganze von Lois Lammerhuber und seinem Team,
das ja bereits seit Jahren vor den Toren Wiens in Baden Europas größtes Open-Air-Foto-Festival
organisieren, Lagasili Baden Foto.
Und ja, jetzt auch ein Festival, das Wissenschaft und Fotografie zusammenbringen
möchte, um die drängendsten Herausforderungen unserer Zeit sichtbarer und verständlicher zu machen.
Wenn du mehr über das Festival erfahren möchtest, dann hör gerne in die bisher
darüber erschienenen Podcast-Folgen nochmal rein.
Die Links dazu findest du in den Shownotes der Podcast-App, mit der du diese Episode hörst.
Ja, dass ich momentan mit vielen Dingen hinterherhinke, zeigt nicht nur die
Tatsache, dass dieses Interview mit George Steinmetz schon eine ganze Weile im Archiv gelegen hat.
Auch diese Folge erscheint etwas später als gewohnt. Eine längere Reise nach
Kuba und zuletzt nach Argentinien haben mich doch kräftig aus dem gewohnten Rhythmus gebracht.
So sehr ich den Podcast auch liebe und dir verlässlich neue Inhalte in gewohnter
Qualität präsentieren möchte, so sehr wollte ich die Zeit natürlich auch in
Argentinien und Kuba nutzen, to take as many photos as possible.
I've already given you a few insights on Zoom, last time from Argentina.
If you couldn't be there, you can find the links to the videos in the show notes.
The topics are tango in San Telmo and football in Buenos Aires.
Last time I went back to my roots as a former football reporter.
The project about fan culture in Argentina Tinian wird mich sicherlich noch
eine ganze Weile begleiten und auch
in unserer Visual Storytelling Academy Abenteuer Reportage Fotografie,
die ich gemeinsam mit Thomas Jones mache, eine Rolle spielen.
Alle kommenden Termine findest du unter www.abenteuer-reportagefotografie.de
slash Terminübersicht.
Ja, schau da gerne mal rein und auch in unser Workshop-Angebot,
Die beiden Street Workshops in Düsseldorf Mitte März sind zwar bereits ausgebucht
für die Workshops in Helsinki, Hamburg und Lissabon.
Im weiteren Verlauf des Jahres sind aber noch Plätze frei.
Bei Fragen kannst du dich natürlich gerne jederzeit an uns wenden.
Zu Helsinki und Lissabon veranstalten wir zudem demnächst auch noch zwei Info-Webinare
bei Zoom, wo du Bilder und Videos zu sehen bekommst.
So, und jetzt aber direkt zum Interview, das Pia Parolin und ich mit George
Steinmetz geführt haben. Viel Spaß!
Well, thank you very much, George, for taking the time to do this interview.
We met in Baden a couple of weeks ago. There we didn't have time.
But yeah, fortunately, you are also here in Zurich. So we have a chance to do
it here. Thank you very much. My pleasure.
We were already talking a little bit about getting into photography or what
is the best way to get into photography.
You get asked this question a lot from aspiring photographers.
Photographers um some say that
or very few actually say they were born
a photographer you grow into becoming a
photographer i think this is more common also uh what i've gathered from the
interviews i've done with photographers how was it in in your case uh you dropped
out of college and then the travel bug kind of hit you yeah i i dropped i was
i was restless in college college and I took, um,
I thought it'd be a year off to go traveling in Africa.
And I thought I'd see exotic things like I'd grown up seeing in the pages of national geographic.
And so I, you know, I thought I'd see, you know, exotic people and wild animals and stuff like that.
And so I bought a camera and I fell in love with the process of taking pictures.
Um, I, it was, this is a long time ago. This is like 1979.
I'm 66 years old. That was a long time ago. Um, but back then,
With film, I couldn't see my pictures.
I was mailing the film back to my mother.
You can't always believe your mother, especially about the quality of your work.
Everything you do is wonderful.
I'd go to the capital of a country and I'd mail six rolls or 10 rolls of film to my mother.
And then she would write me you know letters back with glowing reviews how wonderful
they were but like i get them like six weeks later and i couldn't remember what
i had photographed i mean it was like and it was in film and you can't trust
your mother and so it was like i it was the for me so it wasn't about like wow
i love the pictures i was getting it was about the process and,
photography for me at the time was um an excuse to go and explore things with
that camera i felt like i had to go and insert myself into situations that i
normally wouldn't be in is like um,
a visitor or a tourist or whatever and i really love the process and i still
love the process before going to africa what role did photography play in your life,
i mean amusement i mean i would like i wasn't very serious i just you know look
at back then before you know the internet and stuff you just look at pictures
in magazines and books and occasionally be fascinated by something that caught your eye,
And then you said that it was more about the process of the pictures.
What were in that, on your travels, what were the subjects that drew your attention?
What were you focusing on in your pictures? Was it to convey a feeling or situations or a subject?
Jake in africa i became fascinated with
traditional peoples um looking at um kind
of ancient cultures that still persisted largely intact and so i decided i met
a when i was hitchhiking i met an anthropologist quite by accident and i was
in niger and she uh knew the the fulani there and so he went and spent some
time in some fulani villages and in their their little huts and and such.
And I became fascinated by people having a really ancient way of life in,
you know, the late 20th century.
And, um, so I decided to, uh, go and look at other cultures,
ancient cultures that still persisted. And this is a very different Africa than, than today.
I mean, there were no, you know, no mobile phones, there are very few paved roads and, um.
So I was looking for kind of the pockets of Africa where people were still in
traditional clothes and no tin roofs and stuff, kind of old Africa.
And I went to great efforts to find those kind of last little pockets.
I went out in the pygmy forest with pygmies hunting and they were just like
a little bark cloth and stuff.
And it's really fascinating to see how they, their bushcraft,
how they made a fire, how they made shelter, how they found food in the forest, things like that.
This sounds like for a trip to go from college to Africa and go to these places
to really investigate the cultures.
And how did you gain access to all these places?
It's not easy. But you, I mean, also I didn't speak, I didn't speak anything other than English.
So I had to learn, I had to learn French as I traveled. I learned a little bit of Swahili.
I learned a little bit of Arabic and you have to ingratiate yourself with people.
And I started smoking cigarettes cause I would get, I had no money.
I mean, I spent a year in Africa on $5,000 and largely by not paying for rides
or hotels and people just take me in and you have to make friends with people.
So I get some local cigarettes and I offer them a cigarette. so
you can share something of some commonality even if you can't
communicate you can you know still smoke local uh cigarette
anyway so you just try you know you be curious and
ask a lot of questions and be friendly um how
has that uh or how has that experience informed
your later career as a photographer uh in
terms also of uh well developing all
these social skills to to gain access because it's a
huge part of photography i mean clicking the shutter button is
one thing you can learn all the technical aspects of
your camera how to use it but if you don't if you're not
in the situations where you can take interesting photographs
and know how to interact with people
it's difficult yeah africa for me was was kind of like finishing school i mean
it was like graduate school and i i had i went to stanford university i got
a great education but it didn't you know i I had to be able to ingratiate myself
with everything from like nuns to,
you know, drug smugglers and,
you know, all kinds of people, the whole, you know, loggers and pygmies and whatever.
And you had to know how to insert yourself in a situation. Sometimes it's by being friendly people.
Sometimes it's kind of by being in the background, being like a fly on the wall,
but you have to get a feeling.
And I actually really developed a love for Africa and Africans and,
And I'm in a very kind of grassroots level.
And I feel extremely comfortable. And when I go back there, I feel like I can, you know, it's good.
It sounds like a wonderful adventure, how you started photography.
And I asked myself, was there a certain point where you switched from this kind
of, it's a bit stupid word,
but this ego-focused traveling to I want to do something meaningful with my photos?
Well, I had this kind of epiphany. I was in the pygmy forest.
My idea, I grew up, it's kind of embarrassing to me, but I grew up in Beverly
Hills, California, like one of the richest communities in America.
And I wanted to get away from that. I went to a fantastic university,
but I wanted to look at the opposite side of that.
So the furthest I could get away from that reality, I thought,
was in the Congo with pygmies.
And when I finally got there, I realized it wasn't, what was interesting,
it wasn't about getting away from where I was from. It was trying to understand where I was.
And so I try to understand like how, let's say how pygmies made fire with like
no matches, how they made shelter when they had just the forest,
what the forest provided.
This guy's basically had a machete and bare feet and they're able to make a
living. And it was fascinating looking at that bushcraft and their understanding of their ecosystem.
And so it made me realize there are all these worlds to try to understand.
And then I was trying to capture that in pictures so I could share that and
review with people in my own world.
And did you already have these pictures in mind? You mentioned National Geographic before.
Well, these pictures that you had in mind, or how did you get your inspiration
to make photos that really affect people when they look at them?
I was just trying to basically tell, I was just trying to kind of do documentation
and tell the story of where I was. And I thought that, you know,
I didn't really know what I was doing photographically.
I had no training. But I just figured, you know, somebody's got to do this.
You know, why not me? If I work really hard, maybe I can, you know,
I can make a living out of that.
And it worked out. I felt kind of lucky that it did. it when was
the first time that you realized for yourself that
the pictures that you took actually were uh
or had the quality to be published in
in in in big magazine magazines uh um was there there a point when you yeah
kind of realized oh this is actually quite good what i'm producing well um i
took a i took it when i when i first when i was with films i took a lot lot of bad pictures,
like 99% were really bad pictures.
And you go, because I had no feedback. I was taking pictures and you send it
to my mother. And I remember I got back, I looked at them all.
I stayed up like all night and I went through everything and it was really depressing
because I had all these incredible experiences.
And I looked at all these really shitty pictures I had taken of these incredible
things and like it really had fucked up.
But you go through that and then you find the few things that work and you try
to analyze why that worked and try to understand why everything else failed.
And you get better and and then you collect one of the nice things about photography
is you kind of forget about all the bad pictures they kind of like they they
they they just kind of die and
the ones that that live are your successes and you you build on that and,
um i went you know i took my little my my
collection of my you know my precious pictures and i went
and showed those to people and beyond my mother and
my mother's friends and my mother but but and eventually
you know you see some people and say wow that's really you i saw some professional
people that i would seek out through friends of friends and you get some react
to see if like does this have any value and i did get some positive reaction
but it was many years before i I started actually getting assignments and getting
jobs. It takes time. It's a process.
So it's really autodidactical how you grew, or did you have a mentor at a certain
point or someone who really supported you?
Sometimes single persons can play a key role, and you just need to be lucky
to meet them, or maybe there are also strategies to meet these people.
Yeah, I didn't have a key mentor.
It was more what you call autodidact, self-taught. um but
uh when i was trying to get going in photography i started getting jobs
as a photo assistant because i i i
kept i mean i just sing out letters and trying to get jobs and
we kept failing so i realized that there was things i didn't know and i needed
to find somebody who knew more than i did and um
i went and i met a through a
friend i met a photographer named ed cashy and eddie he's about
my age and he was more successful than i was he
was getting jobs from magazines and so um he let
me go with him on his first couple jobs as an assistant and um and i worked
for ed for about a year before he eventually he fired me for um you recall in
english called insubordination like not following directions and um but anyway
eddie he taught me he's still one of my best friends and he taught me a lot
about how the how the business worked,
and um and the thing i didn't know how to use artificial light like strobes
and stuff and now Now I don't use that material so much, but back with film,
that was really, for taking pictures indoors, that was really key.
Now with, I think with digital cameras are really spoiled.
You can take a really, a picture that would have been absolute shit on film
and you can actually make it look good with Photoshop and some of the sensors now are so incredible.
Really, in photography, we're really kind of in a fantasy era right now compared
to where it was when I got started. Mm-hmm.
Ed Kashi is one of the best photojournalists out there, a brilliant storyteller.
What did you learn from him in terms of storytelling, how to create,
craft a narrative with your images?
I didn't really learn that kind of stuff from Ed. What I learned from Eddie
was we were doing day jobs where he would get a call from a magazine.
They wanted a photo of, let's say, a winemaker. And I was in San Francisco,
so they wanted for like a winemaker in Napa Valley or some businessman in Silicon Valley.
Computers were just starting. The computer industry was just getting going.
And you get a job for like business suite to go and photograph the president
of some chip manufacturing plant. it.
And we go down there and walk around and it's like, Ooh, this is like,
I walk in and say, man, this looks really bad.
Like there's nothing to photograph here. And Eddie would pull a picture out
of it. And I saw like what he did and with lighting and how he dealt with the
people and how he dealt with the clients.
And I asked him like, you know, a thousand questions and I learned kind of how the business worked.
And, um, I went and saw national geographic, uh, with my little portfolio.
I have my little college sport jacket and went to see national geographic and,
and I I crashed and burned,
but the guy there, he told me, I saw the head photography person there,
and he told me that I had a lot of, he liked what he saw, but he told me I needed
to know how to use artificial light,
and so that's something that Eddie taught me how to do.
When did you go back to National Geographic then after the first rejection and
the tip to work on the use of artificial light?
I went back a couple years. I waited until they had a change of editor.
That's always a really good time to go because usually a new editor,
they want to bring in their own people.
And so they had a change of editor and I went and saw that I was able to get
an appointment with the head guy.
And I showed him my portfolio, and he liked what he saw, and he asked me if I had any ideas.
And he liked one of my proposals.
I suggested doing a story about how oil is found, like oil exploration,
which is what I'd studied in college.
I got a degree from Stanford in geophysics, and I had some summer jobs working in the oil industry.
And so there's an old saying in photography or in writing to photograph what.
You know or write about what you know.
And i knew the oil business because i'd worked in
it and i'd spent a lot of time on i worked in field crews
where these guys would go out i was in mexico on
a crew trying to uh figure out where to drill for
oil and we'd sit around the bar with these guys i hear all for
years i heard all these stories about like of their
adventures around the world these international element and so i
kind of i understood that the industry had worked and i proposed this
to the geographic and they they gave me the assignment and
um it was really quite extraordinary because i i thought
they would get me to texas for a couple weeks and we
went into the meeting and they said no this is an international story so
yeah yeah yeah great idea and
then i i didn't know i didn't know what i was
doing and and and so um but they
i worked in that story for like a year and a half and i went all
over the world it was incredible um i went you know
went to to manchuria in the winter i went to alaska i
went diving in the red sea i went around new guinean helicopters
of course i went to texas um i
went to france in the north sea i got an oil rig in
the north sea i went all over the world this is the old days the geographic
when they had they had gobs of money i mean back then you didn't you didn't
talk about money that was crass there was no budget you just went and all air
travel was first class it sounds kind of crazy now but it was just like there
was the pictures are really valuable back then now it's a very different world in photography.
So it was, yeah, it's quite extraordinary.
Now we are already at the beginning of your career as a photojournalist,
stepping back a little bit when you graduated from college.
Was there ever a time when you said there was a plan B?
Or was it clear to you back then that you wanted to become a photojournalist and pursue that career?
Well, after my first trial in Africa, I thought that was what I wanted to do.
But I was a realist and I wasn't sure if it would work out. And at the time,
oil prices were really high.
This was when Jimmy Carter was president and there was the oil embargo with OPEC.
And my major in college was like the second highest paying major you could have.
And so, I got my degree in geophysics basically as kind of an insurance policy
in case photography didn't work out.
And fortunately for me, it worked out. It did work out.
And at some point you started with this very unique idea to construct a vehicle
that puts you in a place to take aerial photography photographs.
How did that come about? When did that occur to you that it's going to be a
good idea to go up into the air?
Well, when I was, when I, when my first trip in Africa, I was hitchhiking and
when you're hitchhiking, most of the vehicles were trucks and,
and they're open trucks.
And since I wasn't paying, I would sit on top of the cargo up in the roof and
you have to like duck the trees.
But I was like riding high in the truck and it was kind of like flying over
Africa. I mean, in a low altitude way, like, you know, like, you know, 10 meters.
And I just thought, wouldn't it be, wouldn't it be amazing if I could actually
fly over that landscape and see it like a bird? and and.
My first leg across Africa was across the Sahara, and the landscape there is really incredible.
But I thought, oh, if I could have control over where I went,
it wasn't just riding the back of a truck.
I could go flying around. I could really see that really beautiful – I saw the
deserts as really beautiful, and I could see those in a unique way.
And so I, after getting a few jobs from National Geographic,
I thought it was, I thought I had enough credibility that I could get them to
support a big project in the Sahara.
And so I proposed doing a story on the desert and there, the place I wanted
to go, there were no aircraft to, to hire.
There's just like, there's, there are no helicopters in Niger or Chad.
So it was, you had to do your own. and there was a new kind i heard about a
a new kind of aircraft called the motorized paraglider.
And uh i did my research and it
seemed like that would be it would be somewhat reasonable to do it seemed like
it would be um and you know when you my mother my mother i thought a lot of
people thought i was crazy that i get killed but you don't you know when you're
asking about something you don't talk to people who say it's dangerous.
You have to find people actually who've done it. And I talk to people who've
actually done that kind of flying.
And they said it was reasonable as long as I flew early in the morning and late
in the afternoon when the air is really calm. And that's when I want to take pictures anyway.
So anyway, I learned how to fly. I bought my own gear and I talked National
Geographic into paying for it.
And I went to Africa and it was an amazing experience yeah
great great story and um
what were some other challenges that
you had uh getting this uh thing started you said like the the time of the day
is important uh what were other challenges that you met at the beginning and
navigating well the most obvious thing is like yeah i was piling on taking pictures
and to take pictures i have you know i'm not doing like like a selfie stick.
I mean, I had both hands in the camera, so you're flying hands-free.
And if you have any kind of mistake out there, it's going to be really bad because
there's no, I mean, there's no, you know, ambulances, there's no phones out
there. You're on your own.
And when I was learning how to fly, I befriended a French pilot who had one
of these kinds of aircraft. And he was an MD, he was a doctor.
And I talked to him and he went with me. And before he went,
I told him we should probably get some kind of like a medical kit in case there
was an accident, like a first aid kit.
And particularly like maybe like he was a doctor, could he get like some morphine?
Because the most common thing when you have an accident like that is you have a spinal cord injury.
And if you had a spinal cord injury out in the Sahara, you're in four-wheel
drive for days to get any help.
And he goes, no, no, we're not going to do that. We're just going to be really
careful. It's like, that's not an option.
And it was kind of, you know, and back then I used to fly with an emergency
parachute, I thought, because these motors are not reliable.
And even the wings, the paraglider wings were not that reliable back then.
And I was worried about having some kind of catastrophic aircraft failure and
wanting to throw an emergency parachute.
And he said, no, no, you don't really want to do that. And I thought he was crazy, but he was right.
Because if you have an emergency parachute, it actually makes you less airworthy,
you have more stuff. And, and the whole ethos of that is, um, is minimalism.
It's kind of like people who go free climbing, you know, without an,
when you, when you free climb, you're really light and you're really fast.
So it's actually, if you're, if you're good, it's safer. You know,
it's like, you don't have all this stuff.
And particularly if you want to get up a mountain really fast,
you have all that stuff. It's going to actually could make it safety can be
dangerous. Too much safety equipment can be dangerous.
So anyway, um, that was what big challenges was trying to be able to pilot and
take pictures and then when you're taking pictures, you have to forget about
the flying to a certain extent. And it's challenging.
Challenging also to frame the pictures.
I mean, it's one thing to go up there and have this aerial view of a scenery,
which is a unique perspective for many people.
And these images always have a certain novelty for people. but what was your
like focusing or your idea of composing these kind of pictures that you were able to take from?
Now I think we're kind of spoiled now in this period of drones,
like anybody with $1,000 can go and buy, or 1,000 euro can buy a drone,
When I was flying this back in like the late 90s, there was nobody who was taking
pictures between like 100 feet and 500 feet.
You know, like in a helicopter, you wouldn't fly that low because you have all this dust.
And so I kind of own that altitude all to myself.
There was nobody else doing it. And that kind of, and with the paraglider,
you're flying, it's like you're in a flying lawn chair. There's no window.
There's no wheel underneath you. There was just, it's just, you have to watch
out for your knees if you use a really wide angle lens. so I could photograph
relatively close to the ground with a wide angle. It was a very intimate kind of aerial view.
And so I was seeing things that nobody had seen in the world,
that part of the world anyway, in a way that had never been seen before.
And that was really exciting.
But when you're low and slow, if you have a problem, you're going to be landing quite quickly.
And the first pictures you took in Africa, or where was the first...
I started in Niger my proposal to the geographic was to go to Niger and Chad and.
I had this kind of an epiphany moment where we were trying to photograph salt
caravans. These are caravans of camels that carry salt out of the Sahara.
There was an oasis that was kind of a saltwater oasis.
And we got there at the right time of year and there were caravans of hundreds
of camels loaded with salt.
And it was just one of these kind of like epic things. It was just like,
it was like, you know, kind of the real Lawrence of Arabia. Maybe,
and these guys are all, you know, in turbans and they're camels and going up
for days and these big chains of camels.
And I went up on a flight and we got really lucky.
There were two caravans passing going opposite directions and I got pictures of the two of them.
And I just had like what my friend Ed Cash used to call a fogasm,
where it's like, you know, visual orgasm.
You get this kind of like retinit of brain shock when you see something that
you've never seen before.
And I had like a major fogasm and I came back and I was just like,
I felt like, you know, Like this is going to work because I was seeing things
and I was seeing something.
A lot of people had photographed those caravans, but I was seeing it from above,
like from like 150 feet, I was seeing it in a totally different way that opened
up the landscape and it kind of decoded the landscape for people who didn't really know the Sahara.
So I felt like, wow. And then as I kept going with the glider,
I had a lot of fogasms in that trip and seeing really amazing things.
And it was an epic trip.
And I was actually, when I, when I remember like getting on the plane,
when I, when we left Niger, I was like, I like, I, I fricking survived.
Cause I was, I wasn't really sure if, I mean, I want to, I don't want to sound
dramatic, but it's, it's, it was, it was a risky game.
And it's like, I, you know, we made it and then it was like,
you know, but it's like, it's kind of like when you play, you know,
a video game and you get to the next level, you say, oh, that was really tough.
And then it's like, oh, that was a harder level. And so it kept getting harder.
And I kept at it for about 15 years with the glider.
How important is planning and research that you do beforehand?
And how much do you just rely on your skills of your capacity to adapt to the unexpected?
And did this change during your lifetime and growing experience?
Experience research is key uh and um it's not to me getting great pictures not
about having a you know a magic retina it's about um knowing your subject and
and doing your planning and um,
before i went to the sahara for example i went i spent a few weeks going around
europe um going to see experts because the sahara is um it was that it was best known by the.
Some of the colonial era scientists who had the resources to study it really well.
And so I went and saw some of the best scientists who knew the geography and
the geology of the Sahara.
And I went and talked to them and asked them where to go, where the most best
places, and asked to see pictures of places and got their maps and went through
like I went and saw Theodore Manot when he was still alive in his library in Paris.
And he gave me a few hours before he finally kicked me out going through his
books. And I found some really cool stuff.
Um, and so I, I had like all these certain areas that I wanted to go to cause
it's just, and I went to, um, the Institute of Geography National in Paris and
they had these incredibly,
detailed maps, these colonial era maps that would show me like the dune patterns
and all these different parts of the Sahara.
So I could see like what the dune forms look like in different parts of the
Sahara. So, Ooh, I want to go here because you have these kinds of dunes going through a lake.
And then when it's dry, they'd be sticking out of the lake.
And I, it was, it was very detailed research. research.
It sounds as if it takes a lot more time to do the research before and to travel
to places to talk to people before you go to the real spot where you take the photos. Yeah. Yeah.
And these are, you know, you go out there and there's nobody to talk to in the
Sahara. I mean, mostly it's just sand.
And so, yeah. And it's also expensive to travel out there. I mean,
we were doing, to travel these areas, we had to have at least three cars.
And these are expert four-wheel drive cars in a very poor country.
So you had, there's a lot of money to do that.
To sleep in the sand with a bunch of guys with guns. But it was,
you know, we were looking at a couple thousand dollars a day to be in the field.
And so you want to know exactly where you're going, and then you have a bad
weather day, or a sandstorm is up, you have to say, you know,
do we go here, do we go there?
You have to be, it all has to be very planned out. And I had,
you know, I went and saw scientists who had like satellite images and different
things, and I really knew where I wanted to go.
And did you also connect to local people and keep up something like a relationship
or long-term projects following up on the same people and telling their story
over years or something?
Well, you know, communication, this is before cell phones, so it was really,
you know, it's difficult to keep up with people out there. It was really in person.
And you certainly go and talk to the guides, and we get to, you know,
one of the key things is finding the right guide,
to take your resume, who really knows the area, and they can tell you where
it's safe to go because there's a lot of insecurity out there,
there, especially now after the demise of Libya,
there's a lot of weapons out there, but you have to, you have to have somebody
who can tell you, is it safe to go here because of, you know, do we have enough range?
Can we get fuel? If we go up there, can we get fuel? If you can't get fuel,
you're going to die. You're going to die in the desert. So you have to know.
Somebody you can really trust and you go and you meet these guys i met remember
the first i went to this hair i met muhammad iqsa and i gave him like twenty
thousand dollars in cash and this guy's like you know wearing a turban you meet
him in a little hotel and he gets a guy 20 grand
and then you hope to hell that he shows up the next morning with the vehicles
and he rocked up with like these three fabulous land cruisers you know with
like three drums of petrol in the back and we were like we're ready to rock
and roll but i knew that he was the guy because i went and saw
I saw Uwe Georg, I saw Uwe in Hamburg.
He said, who's like the best guy? And he goes, oh, you need to talk to Mohammed.
So, and then I called Mohammed up like, you know, months in advance to reserve
his time for the best time of year with the camel caravans.
It was all, I mean, it's not like you, you're not setting up pictures,
but it was incredibly detailed planning.
And I try and do that as much as possible on every project.
Project another project that
you're currently working on feed the planet is also
very when it comes to doing research very um
challenging i see lots of research going on into the the topics and the things
you photograph there when did that uh idea uh occur to you to to dedicate uh
such a yeah a big part of your career to this long-term project um well it came
as um it was kind of a gimme.
I've been working and I've been flying for a long time with the glider and I kind of ran out of sand.
And an editor friend of mine at National Geographic asked me if I'd be interested
in doing a story about the global food supply.
They were trying to do a story about how we're going to meet the future food demands of humanity.
And he thought that my aerial perspective could could be an interesting way to look at farming.
And I didn't know much about farming, but I thought, oh, that could be interesting.
But it would be best if I could photograph like mega farms because I knew from
like I'm working in Africa, like you don't want to photograph like two zebra under a tree.
You want to find like 5,000 zebra migrating, you know, and then all in a line,
then it gets really interesting.
So I just wanted to look at like the mega farms.
And um and he thought that would be
interesting because it would communicate the idea of feeding nine
billion people when you saw like you know uh let's say a feedlot with you know
50 000 cows that would communicate feeding the feeding the world so anyway that
was their it was their general idea to look at food from the air and then when
i started working on it um i realized that there There was a deeper story to be told.
And I worked on it for them for about a year, which seems incredibly luxurious to most people.
But when you're looking at something like the global food supply,
that's just scratching the surface. And so I...
When I was working for the Geographic, I decided to go to three countries.
I decided to work in the United States, which has the most industrialized food
system in the world, and Brazil, which has the fastest growing food system.
And then I wanted to look at China, which has become the world's largest importer
of food. So look at kind of supply, demand, and industrialization.
Because industrialization of food is the dominant trend in the food systems.
Anyway so i i did that for a year and i
realized i was still just there was it was
really complicated like i went to it was like going to the coast of china
and when you go south from shanghai on the coast it looks
like a floating sea there's so much so many fish farms
out in the ocean it's just as far as you can see it's like little dots and people
living in these little huts out in the ocean and then
i realized that like that basically the chinese had fished out
the whole east china of sea it's all the
fish are gone and so they had these fish
farms like well where is the fish meal coming from when i looked at the
bags and it's oh it's coming from peru it's like when in
peru so it's like and basically they're they're using ground
up peruvian anchovies to feed the
fish in china and then some of that stuff it gets exported to the united states
and i realized there were all these like food chains that were really complicated
international food chains and as i started working i just found more and more
things like that that were internationally related and I found that really fascinating
and there are all these stories to be told and so when I finished that story for the Geographic,
I proposed another on China's food system and then I wanted to look at marine
fisheries and I spent a few years looking at ocean fishing.
And then I realized Europe has very different food systems so I got an assignment
from Le Figaro to do a story on European food systems and now I've been doing this for 10 years.
It's kind of a crazy project. I can't really find, the magazine industry has deteriorated so much.
I can't really find funding for a lot of things I want to do.
So I'm just doing it with my own money.
I went to India three times because
I couldn't find somebody to pay for a stirrup at India's food system.
It was just too, I found it fascinating, but for most people,
it's kind of a little bit too obscure, you know?
But still going, it's still an ongoing project. You keep on working on it?
Well, I'm kind of finishing up now. It's been 10 years and I
haven't lost lost interest but i've done i've done
most of the big you know the major pieces and i was
just shooting um last past week in the alps um
looking at sheep and and goats and cattle that migrate up in the summer and
down back down in the fall and two days ago i was photographing the hops harvest
north of munich um but because hops are kind of a usual crop anyways i'm kind
of finishing up but but it's kind of a crazy,
obsessive project. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yesterday at the dinner table, we were also touching on this topic and Pia,
well, you're a biologist and you asked a quite interesting question or you were
talking about the difference between the United States and Europe and the way
the landscapes are constructed and the impact of man on the environment.
Environment um yeah maybe we can uh because it
was so fascinating we didn't have the recorder uh running we
can reproduce a little bit
of that conversation yeah i i feel i feel a
little bad about the conversation i felt like i was the the ugly american it
was over a glass of wine and it was not the first glass of wine that evening
so it was fun no don't worry but i i thought it was really interesting that
you had such a different approach or or point of view uh obviously than than
we have from Europe, so, yeah.
So we were talking about how, like here in Switzerland, for example,
most of the farmers I've met here, they get about half of their income from
the government for these, you know, for having their animals graze up in the high pasture.
And it seems, to me it seems very odd that they're getting paid by the government
to maintain an artificial system.
And from an American perspective, it seems like it might be better to just let
it go, So let it rewild, but that's not what people want to do.
Well, it's a controversy in Europe as well. There are some people who say it's
better to just leave nature to itself and let it develop.
But what we do most of the time or what the political decisions are is that
we try to maintain this man-made diversity.
Because it's something that occurs naturally, that you have open fields where
specific species of plants, of flowers and beetles occur,
and they will not occur once the forest grows back.
So what we do in
europe a lot we preserve these open areas by cutting
the trees or by having cattle or sheep or
whatever to maintain these artificial or
man-made uh environments because we like this diversity and i fully understand
that from a point of view from outside you say this is crazy but there is a
certain value of having diverse landscapes and my argumentation last night was
that, anyway, in Europe.
I mean, we messed it up pretty much for several thousands of years.
So there are not very many trees that have been just naturally grown.
Most of it is planted, it's managed.
And so why not use this landscape, which is already pretty spoiled,
to have this diversity of potential landscapes that otherwise would be covered by forest everywhere?
Yeah, well, you're right. right, there are very few natural landscapes left here.
In fact, you know, the Brazilians get really upset when the Europeans come and tell them what to do.
It's like, look what you did to your place, who are you to tell us what to do?
You know, and they've got a good point.
And I mean, you could say, to me, my argument to the Brazilians would be,
well, you're right, the Europeans, like they wiped out all their natural land.
So they're trying to tell you the voice of experience, maybe you want to save some of yours.
In the United States, it's a little bit more of a a balance between the two
where we have a lot of national parks and
wilderness areas where um you can't
you know wilderness areas in the united states you can't you can't bring
any kind of mechanized equipment in like not even you know a chainsaw nothing
um and they preserve that but we have we have a lot more abundant land um than
you have in europe yeah that's that's one of the problems we're really not we
we don't have many areas that we can just leave to themselves but we And there are some forests now,
some national parks in Europe that we just leave to themselves,
where we don't take away the trees that fell down or something.
We don't go and clean the landscape, we just leave it.
But it's a small part still.
So yeah, I think it's still interesting to see this point of view from outside.
So did you find other points of view while you were traveling?
Like African people, maybe they have a completely different approach to how
to interact with natural systems.
I haven't been working in Africa much for the past five, ten years,
but I don't think there's...
I think the sense for Africans, the sense of...
I think that the sense of protecting nature there is relatively new for Africans, indigenous Africans.
And I don't want to, I feel hesitant to try as a foreigner to be speaking for
Africans because it's not my place.
But I just, you know, when I was a young guy traveling Africa,
the crass view was like nature was to be exploited.
It was the natural world and we're going to take the resource.
It's kind of like the kind of the Wild West sort of attitude.
But it was this very extractive mentality towards the wilderness and i think you know is is um,
say particularly in east africa is the wild places have
all gotten overrun like the you know nairobi national park
is now like a fenced in area near the airport um is it's
because there's been more and more population pressure i think people are starting
to to realize that they need to preserve that but that's relatively new um and
um i think it's a good thing but i mean it's a good thing but it's a good thing
because they're enforced to do that because the wild spaces are getting gobbled up. It's very sad.
And there's been so much poaching. It's really sad.
And doing the research for this interview, correct me if I'm wrong,
but I got the impression that it's not so much your point to moralize with the
images about how we produce our food and to make a statement or to encourage
everybody to become vegan all of a sudden,
but more to show man's impact on nature and what our way of producing food,
yeah, what the effect is on nature and landscape.
Is that correct? Yes, that's correct.
I don't want to tell people what to do. I don't think it's my place.
I don't think it's very effective.
And I think you have to make people come to their own conclusions.
People come to their own conclusions, it's much more powerful.
So if you tell people, you know, you explain some of the facts.
But for example, like the amount of, let's say, protein consumption there is
in the United States or in Europe compared to what it is, let's say, in China or India.
And you say, well, we consume like a multiple of the protein,
but like the Amazon's getting deforested by Chinese demand for protein.
Well, who are we to tell the Chinese that they can't eat the same amount of
protein that we're eating?
You know and who and just
like if you know if everybody in the world has as many cars per capita
as we have in the united states we're fucked and so like
well that you know if you're an american you hear that say it was like geez well maybe that means
that we shouldn't have three cars you know we
should have two cars or one car per family um also
in america's defense i mean you know europeans think
americans are gross with their car consumption but we've got much less
population density than you have in europe and so
we can't there aren't there aren't train networks works that are subsidized
by the government to get around like there are here and
so if you would live in most of america you
need a car to travel and um you can't
get around by by bike and train it's different system i like that uh approach
or um to to not moralize with your uh message or don't have a message that you
want to uh convey to to others and it's um it's more powerful if you you come
to your own conclusions.
Having had that much insight into the food production, what were your personal
conclusions that you drew from everything that you saw along the way? Is there something?
You know, I'm actually sincere in that I'm not like a moralizer.
I'm not biting my tongue. I just like, you know, I mean, it's,
you know, I have to be able to go into a slaughterhouse, for example,
and talk it's very difficult to get into slaughterhouses and I find them fascinating to photograph um.
I never miss an opportunity to go to a slaughterhouse, to be honest, but we're in that way.
But, but I had to, when you talk your way in, you have to, you know,
be able to make the people there feel comfortable with you going in.
And so you, and you, I can't lie to them, but you can say, wow,
it's like, you know, you know, the like 30,000 pigs a day. Like,
how do you do that? That's incredible.
And like, you know, what do you do with all the noses? And what do you do with the feet?
And what do you, you know, can I see? and and and i actually am sincere but
you try you try and put it forward in a good way um,
but you also know i know in the back of my head that you know the vegan is
going to go crazy when they see these pictures and people it's
going to be upsetting to people and i also think you know if you're really upset
by looking at slaughterhouses then you shouldn't be eating meat because that's
where it came from and you know in in the industrialized world everybody goes
to the supermarket and they buy something a little piece of meat a little foam
tray with a piece of clear plastic and a little barcode on it.
And they don't see the pig or the chicken or whatever. And that's a problem.
And I also, when I got into this project is I realized that there are segments
of our food systems that the people who make the stuff don't want us to see
because they saw we wouldn't buy it. And that's a problem.
Yeah. Like we need more transparency. Yeah.
Today, we are here at the festival Open Your Eyes, which is trying to build
a bridge between science and photography,
which is a very interesting topic to touch on, to close this interview.
Of you um today at the panel discussions there
were photographers and scientists both on on
the on the stage and there was a quite interesting uh
discussions uh and and one of the questions that came from the audience later
on was uh and i'm going to steal this question uh from anna maria she asked
uh in what way photographers can serve scientists to to better um convey their their, yeah,
the research or the results of their researches.
What would be your answer to that question?
Well, I mean, in what way? I think that photography is a great way to get people
interested in science, but you have to do pictures that actually decode the
science that explain it.
And some things, I mean, something I've worked at a lot in.
I used to do a lot of science photography. I won World Press Photo.
I went first place twice for science photography and, and to do it well,
you have to be able to visually explain what's going on.
And sometimes, um, with some kinds of science, it's not very obvious how to do that.
You have to think really hard and be a little creative to, to find out a way
to, um, you know, decode it.
And, but if you can do that, it's, I think it's incredibly effective and it
helps get people interested in science,
which I think is really important to, I mean, that's one of the reasons humans
become the dominant species because the advancement of science and knowledge
so it's really key to our uh our our survival and our sustainability,
yeah i had a discussion around this also last night around with lots of wine
with gerd ludwig and the question came up i mean with photography you document
as you say you you visually explain things but can photography also show solutions.
Solutions? I personally don't feel like photography can, I don't feel that's
the role of journalism is to tell people what to do.
Um, and I think you can, you, you, I mean, I think that the classic role of
photography is to, is to point out problems is to like, you know,
the news and what are the issues of the day and what are the challenges we're facing.
Um, but it's not like a, it's not like an instruction guide to how to make the world a better place.
I just don't, I think if you, you know, if you, if you show,
you know, uh, there have been like in the panels yesterday, it came up like
how the civil war pictures, it changed people's idea about war.
People never seen pictures of what it was like. And that really communicated the horrors of war.
This entire, the American civil war, um,
There were famous pictures taken of, let's say, slaughterhouses in Chicago back
in the turn of the century, Jacob Rees, and people were like,
whoa, these sweatshops, it's really awful.
And so it started the labor movement in the United States. And so they can be
really effective in making change, but I don't really believe,
to be honest, in advocacy journalism.
I think when you start advocating, you lose your credibility.
It was said that uh science usually
goes goes deep and is more
more complex and and abstract and that photography
has the power to to show things in a more
accessible way and to to kind of target
uh emotions and and try to to whatever uh yeah reach people on that level to
uh how what How do you go about your own images when you go somewhere to make
them so that they become accessible,
that people can relate to them?
I really like pictures that tell a story.
And I want to see something that's visually interesting, but they look at it
and they understand something they didn't understand before.
And so it works on multiple layers. But first you have to kind of dazzle people
with something they haven't seen. and then it's like, oh, wow,
that's really interesting.
Look at that. And so I actually believe that photography can actually be quite
deep, but it's a deep and different way than science is.
But it's just, and sometimes a picture can communicate a scientific concept
incredibly quickly and people are like, oh, go, I get it.
And I've had some moments, some projects I've worked on when I was successful
with that and it's very, very satisfying when you can do that.
I would like to know what you would tell a young person that comes up to you,
maybe someone who just finished college and wants to go into photojournalism.
What kind of advice would you give someone like that?
Like try to get some assignments, try to get a job, or try to,
as you did, just go someplace and do something that you're interested in or
something that is meaningful to yourself.
What would you suggest? Well, you know, those kinds of passions are very,
you don't realize it when you're young, but they're very precious and you should
follow those passions because they're not going to be there forever.
And I think you should, you know, and you should photograph what you know or
what you're really curious about or write about what you know,
what you're curious about.
But at the same time, photography is getting, the profession is under a lot
of stress and it's getting more and more difficult to make a living as a professional photographer.
So I would also advise somebody to have a plan B I had a plan B and photography
is a lot tougher now than it was when I got started.
It also what ties a
little bit into what we've talked about earlier that you started
at a time when budgets were big and
another difference is today maybe there's not that many gatekeepers anymore
like as a journalist or as a photographer you have you can create your own channels
to get out your images and to become known for a topic.
And you are a good example, actually, of that.
Like, if you look at your Instagram account, for example, you are very successful
there. You have more than a million followers there.
Do you sometimes think about that? Is there something that's important to you,
knowing that you also have a channel that you can reach people on a large scale
with your images? is or is social media a game that.
That you don't care so much about the numbers and what it might imply i i don't
get i don't get often like you know the ego of having like you know a million followers to me,
it's helpful in photography because it you know you're like i'm trying to get
access to something it kind of it validates you for uh for to get access to
something um but um the frustrating thing about uh editorial photography is
i've got like a million followers and it's really non on non-monetary.
I don't, I don't do sponsored posts and it's not because I'm like,
you know, hyper-ethical, like nobody ever, there's no offers,
you know, and I don't want to spend my time trying to say, Hey,
you know, what if I wore your shoes and take a picture of my shoes,
you know, on a mountain, would you, you know, give me a free pair of shoes.
I don't want to be that guy.
And so I just don't, it's nice, but you, um, you know, you get a lot of,
of likes and it is really fun when I, I'll do a post that might get,
you know, tens of thousands of, of likes or lots of comments and you know, you, you reach people.
Um, but, um, I think it's still important to take pictures that satisfy yourself
that you think are important.
And sometimes I'll do something that I think I'll do a great picture.
And I said, well, this is not going to do well Instagram. It's a great photo,
but it's just not going to do well.
And something else that's kind of a superficial thing. Oh, this is going to
go crazy on Insta and I'll post that.
And so it's, It's a different medium.
And I've had pictures that like my editors, let's say National Geographic,
wanted me to take, pushed me really hard to do.
And I would go and be successful getting that picture, put up on Instagram, it would go nowhere.
And then something else that's just like, you know, it's like lots of color
and pattern. A lot of what I'm seeing on Instagram now is pictorialism.
It's like pretty pictures, colors and patterns and, you know,
all these like, you know, dogs and cats, whatever. but there's a lot of that
stuff where it's just kind of like thumb candy and doesn't have a lot of depth to it.
I would like to listen to a story, like something that you really like to think
back of, a situation, an encounter that you had.
Maybe the story that touched you most or something. Is there something like that?
Well, in terms of pictures, the ones that I'm, to be honest,
I'm often most satisfied with are the ones that are most difficult to take,
where it's like physically or something was really difficult to get access to.
It's kind of like the heart of the struggle, the sweeter the success.
Um, but that's not always the best picture. And, um, probably the picture I'm
best known for is a picture I took in, uh, um, in Arabia many years ago,
I was looking down on, on some camels going out to, to grace and it was looking
straight down in the camels.
It was early in the morning. And so when you look at it, you see the camel shadows
and it looks like the camels, but it's actually, you're looking at the shadow.
It's like an illusion, uh, optical illusion.
And it was, it was a relatively easy pick.
I mean, I was paragliding. English was not that easy, but in Arabia,
but it was, it was a pretty easy picture to take compared to other things I've
done, but it just became like this.
It went, it went viral and, um, it's been praised and whatever.
And it's like, I'm not embarrassed about the picture, but it's,
I didn't put that much into it compared to things where I really actually almost
risked my life taking a certain picture. And I'm more proud of that.
But it's okay. You mentioned that you feel that you're coming to the end of
this project, Feed the Planet, that's kind of slowly fading out.
Is there already an idea for what's going to come next for you?
Are you thinking about new projects?
I'm thinking about it. I'm trying to figure it out, and I haven't settled on
something. I wanted something that's impactful.
I feel like I'm 66. I feel like I've got one other mega project in me.
And I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do. It's interesting seeing
what other people are doing, trying to find, I like to do something that's unique
that can make a significant contribution to our understanding of our world and
the challenges we're facing as people these days.
But I haven't settled on the next big thing yet.
But I've also found like you don't really find something until you need it.
And so I'm starting to need it and hopefully I'll find something.
Something's going to come up. Usually does. Yeah. Yeah.
One question more related to
the panel discussions we had today about the scientists and photographers.
There were many questions coming up. Was there something particular that you
took away from this dialogue?
Some thought that stayed with you? Something that you're going to be pondering?
Well, I thought it was interesting. They're talking about how younger people
are looking at consuming photography information. information.
And, um, I think a lot of it is right now there's with, with the,
how we're so bombarded with information, like with social media,
it's just kind of like people, very short attention spans.
Um, but, um, I found that conversation really interesting.
And it was also curious hearing about scientists that you were saying earlier,
like, you know, scientists are deep and photographers are kind of superficial
and I don't quite agree with the signification of it, but, um,
I, I do think they have a unique role to play.
It's interesting when I was up in the the alps last week with
a scientist and he didn't you know he he was
kind of dismissive like oh a photographer photographer but then
you know i'll take pictures and the the work would get would get get read more
in pictures than it will be by in scientific journals and um uh i think he was
making actually a kind of a mistake not to um uh be more accommodating to what
i wanted to do that's right.
Great well thank you very much George it's been a pleasure talking about your
photography here in Zurich thank you very much for taking the time and all the
best for your upcoming projects thank you for taking the time to sit down and
talk appreciate it thank you very much,
yeah that was the interview with George Steinmetz together with Pia Parolin
at this point Pia again a very very Thank you very much for being with us.
If you want to have more information about the Gate 7 podcast,
then feel free to look at the website www.gate7.de.
Seven, spelled out, not as a number. Thank you for listening and see you soon, your Kai.