Abenteuer Reportagefotografie – Podcast über visuelles Storytelling

Kai Behrmann: Visueller Storyteller und Fotograf

Since 11/2016 426 Episoden

Interview with Brent Stirton at the photo festival "La Gacilly – Baden Photo" (Interview in English)

In this special episode, Søren Pagter from the interviews renowned photojournalist from South Africa, who has won the "World Press Photo Award" multiple times. There are more interviews with Søren Pagter and Brent Stirton on this podcast: Brent...

11.02.2024 50 min

Zusammenfassung & Show Notes

In this special episode, Søren Pagter from the Danish School of Media and Journalism interviews renowned photojournalist Brent Stirton from South Africa, who has won the "World Press Photo Award" multiple times.

There are more interviews with Søren Pagter and Brent Stirton on this podcast:

Brent Stirton: "I was a terrible photographer, but I'd like to think I got better" (Interview in English)
Søren Pagter: Photojournalism – why and how? (Interview in English)

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Transkript

Music. Herzlich willkommen zu dieser Sonderfolge hier im Gate7 Podcast. Es ist ein Interview, das Søren Pagda, der Leiter der Fotojournalismus-Ausbildung der Danish School for Media and Journalism in Aarhus mit Brent Sturton geführt hat. Brent Sturton, einer der renommiertesten Fotojournalisten unserer Tage. Er stammt aus Südafrika, hat weltweit fotografiert and won the World Press Photo Award for his work several times. So really a high-profile interview guest, which Sören Pachter had there on the stage. This interview took place in the context of the media days and the so-called long night of photography. Last year at the end of the photo festival in Baden, Lagasili Baden Foto, Europe's largest open-air photo festival, on the shoulders of festival director Lois Lammahuber and his team. Thomas Jones and I were allowed to be there in the past years and had the opportunity to experience these wonderful photographers and photographers live, to enjoy this event. And of course to conduct many interviews. zu führen. Ein Interview mit Brent Sturton haben wir auch geführt. Das kannst du im Gate7 Podcast hören. Und zusätzlich freue ich mich, dir eben auch die Aufzeichnung dieses Interviews im Rahmen der langen Nacht der Fotografie präsentieren zu können. Das Interview, das ich mit Brent Sturton geführt habe, kannst du dir gerne auch noch einmal anhören. Den Link dazu findest du in deiner Podcast-App oder geh einfach direkt in das, This man is so humble and he is so great. Please welcome one of the greatest of all times, Brent Sturton. Thanks, Lewis. Very kind of you. I'd like to just say, firstly, it's very late. Thanks for staying. It's nice of you. We appreciate that. And I'd like to say really thank you to the Barden and Gasili teams for having us. You know, these festivals are always an occasion to see people that we don't get to see very often and who we value and affirm and reinforce what we do. So thank you for that. Yeah, good evening everybody and thank you Brent for being here and thank you Louis and everybody else behind this festival for inviting us. We have planned a little bit of a talk going through some of Brent's work and Louis already introduced you about your achievements. So I will do something else. I will tell something that people might not know. And that is that you initially planned to be a doctor. And then you became a professional soldier in South Africa. And it was while working alongside the black soldiers that you truly understood the implications of apartheid in your country. And this led you to be a journalist, or led Brent to be a journalist. But being a journalist, he couldn't find a photographer who would accompany him on his jobs. So he found an old second-hand camera, and then it worked out, as you can see, it worked out quite well. So from being a doctor to becoming a world-class photographer. You and I have never met, not until now, but actually we have. We actually met in 2008 at World Press Photo in Amsterdam, but we didn't know. I was sitting in the audience and I was looking at the winning images and some of the presentations. And at that time, I saw one image that... Was the one image that I took with me back home from Amsterdam, and actually the one image that is one of the few images that I still remember and carry with me. And I remember saying at that time to one of my colleagues, that picture should have been World Press Picture of the Year 2008. That would have been emphasizing nature and environment in our minds more than any other story. But you won Contemporary Issues, so not bad at all. And you had a nice talk there. So I think that I would like to start with this image for our conversation. And I have read that you said that this image changed a lot for you. It's changed the way that you work. and so can you tell a little bit about the the situation behind the the image but also how what it changed for you sure um okay so this image is a blessing and a curse for me because it comes up a lot and um i think that if you are a photographer you are lucky to have pictures that people remember, but i this one uh there are some times where i would like rather put this one down you know but um. I worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo for a number of years before I took this picture on what was happening. My first international assignment was the Rwandan genocide. And we made pictures in Congo that I think were strong and really moving. But we found that people's apathy really grew and that they became used to seeing images from that region that were not. and they became less and less effective. I was working a lot for Newsweek at the time and they asked me to go and spend some time with a group of rangers who'd received specialized paramilitary training in South Africa because they were working in a park the size of Israel that had 17 different armed groups as well as a rebel army and the Congolese army inside the park. And I thought that was an interesting idea. So on day three, we got word that a group of mountain gorillas had been killed. And I knew nothing about mountain gorillas, but at the time, there were just under 400 left in the world. So, you know, when it comes to gorillas, second only to chimps in terms of their closeness to us, um, There were very few of these animals left. So we got word that these gorillas had been killed. And we went to find out what was going on. And when we got there, on the first day, we found six filled with AK-47 holes. And the following day, we found another four. And this is the silverback who was killed defending the females in the group. Yeah, and what was amazing, Soren, was that I shot this picture, I filed it, and then we had to leave because there was an issue with the Congolese army. So myself and Scott Johnson, we crossed the border, we got arrested in Rwanda, and the US embassy got us out. And then I got back to the US and I moved on to my next job, you know, because we were working in the news, it's fast and you don't dwell on stuff most of the time. But we got a tremendous response to this picture, which was really surprising to me. And it ended up raising over $50 million for conservation, which was, you know, so when that happens and you've been working in a place where you haven't had much reaction to your pictures, despite it being a really horrific place, you take notes. So it changed my perception of how I could talk about conflict and how I could talk about the fact that these things were not just affecting people, they were affecting environments and animals. And what I learned from this picture was that people have a perception of innocence when it comes to animals. And that allowed me to talk about all three of these streams, you know. So from that moment onwards, I became really interested in how can I work with environmental themes to talk about some of the more pressing issues affecting humans as well as animals. Thank you. And you continue to work on stories on the mountain gorillas. Yeah, we can go through these ones fairly quickly. But so what happened then was Nick Nichols at National Geographic someone who I respected tremendously asked me if I could slow down stop shooting the news and do my first assignment for Geographic, so they sent me back for 12 weeks and after three weeks they said you have to come back we need to publish now. Anyway fortunately for me that worked out these are some pictures of the massacre site This particular gorilla I'm showing you because you can see she's pregnant. And her baby was the only survivor of this massacre. And for the next 13 years, I tried to photograph that baby as often as I could. So essentially, this is just a little vignette into the life of that little gorilla. So these are the evacuations. This is the sort of respect that the locals pay to these gorillas. Then it's the raising of this baby and the relationships that develop between this baby gorilla and these incredible caregivers. Again, people without degrees, people without PhDs, etc., etc., but global experts on what mountain gorillas really mean. And you know three weeks on one week off more time with the gorillas than with their families you know and extraordinary relationships you can keep going you know. And so after 13 years, Indakasi developed an infectious disease and a disease that despite all the efforts of guerrilla doctors and a number of other organizations, she got sick and lost a lot of weight. And maybe in the next picture, and these were her last moments. So you know as a photographer you're very lucky to you're very fortunate to to be able to witness something um at the beginning and have impact and then have impact again at the end of something and this picture this picture actually ended up having almost the same effect on people that the first picture did so i feel very blessed that i was able to be in the right place at the right time and and i can't emphasize enough you know photojournalism you know preparation and research church is everything, but you got to be lucky. And often we just don't give enough credit to that particular idea. But this was Indicasi's last moments. And I actually didn't know that she was passing at the time of this picture. Andre Baumer was with this baby for 14 years in total. And it's him who took the baby from the breast of the dead mother, put her inside his shirt, walk down the mountain you know remember again this is a mountain full of paramilitary it's dangerous and then for the next 14 years learned how to become the world's foremost guerrilla expert okay, yeah so yeah. Thank you. I think that one of the things that photographers often do and that you also started out doing was kind of photographing the consequences. You were a news photographer and you kind of focused on the events and the consequences of war and stuff like that. But I think that many of your stories, maybe after this, also focused on the fighters, on the heroes, like this man. On the protectors. On the protectors, exactly. So can you tell us a little bit of how you find these people and how you work with them and also what it benefits for your stories to kind of go in that direction with your storytelling? Telling you know there's there's a lot of great photographers out there there's a lot of good photojournalists and and you see with ukraine you see with libya you see with the arab spring you see with the refugee crisis you see the body of work that comes out of these things but there were not a lot of people doing this kind of work so i felt i could be more helpful here and i felt that um these people that i was seeing doing this work in these remote places to to really be the the stewards of our environment, the protectors of world heritage, were not getting much credit and weren't really, like they were working in the shadows. So for me, like this first picture here, this is Emmanuel Demerode. He's a biologist who now runs Virunga National Park, the most dangerous national park in the world. And at the time of this photograph, three weeks prior to this, he was shot four times and refused all medical care until he could apportion responsibility for the park before they airlifted him to Kenya. Three weeks later, the guy left his hospital bed. The doctors didn't want him to leave, but he was back in the park. And then I shot this picture. So I feel, you know, I am more interested in photographing this man than I am in photographing George Clooney. You know, I like George, you know, but I think these people deserve equal credit. And they die, you know. I mean, it's just common sense, guys. You know, we have a very beautiful planet and I'd really like to ask Elon personally, what is it that makes you want to get out of here so quickly? Why can't we look after what's here? here, these are the guys that are doing it, and can we help them more? These rangers on this bed here, this is a colleague that's been killed by a rogue member of the Congolese army. And at that time, I think the total now is 211 in this one park that have been killed in the last 11 years. And I would see this time and time again. I mean, the next picture, these are clashes with poachers that have come out from the Sudanese army into the Democratic Republic of Congo. You know, I also saw the empowerment of women in this process where, you know, a friend of mine who's an Australian SAS guy decided to, let's go to the next picture, decided that it would be an amazing idea to harness the energy of African women because they were the toughest, you know, most effective force that he could think of in the African landscape. And he's proven his point. So, I mean, this young woman here, she's undergoing, you know, subterfuge training. She's learning how to be invisible in the bush while she sits and observes people coming through an entry point into the park. But, you know, in this particular instance, you're taking women who are the most disadvantaged, the most, you know, the poorest, the most disregarded and disrespected and empowering them. And the difference that it's made in a country like Zimbabwe, yes, phenomenal. There's now 5,000 of these women across Africa that have been trained by this particular group. You could say that somehow you also photograph some of these as heroes, I think. And I especially look at this image where it's more like it almost feels like an outdoor studio shot or like a magazine shot more than your regular reputas pictures. So what are your thoughts behind kind of using this, the artificial flash, the way of kind of giving them this power through the light, basically. Soren, there's a couple of things happening here for me. One, I have really little time in the field most days. It's not uncommon for us to get a magazine assignment and you have a week to cover a country. You have a week to cover, you know, you have no time. So I develop techniques where some of it's documentary portraiture. It's a relationship between me and them. but more often i will employ a local person i will teach them um this is how i need you to hold this this pole with this light on the end and this is the distance that i need you to stay away from me so that i know the exposure is going to be right and i've done that i must have done that 200 times but that's what you're seeing so you know she's um i mean this is a sequence of her crossing this river but you know it's the middle of the day the light's terrible so i'm looking for any way that i I can maintain your attention just that five minutes longer. And this helps. And who are these guys? I mean, Rodrigue, you know, there was a movie called Virunga, guys. It was an Oscar contender a few years ago. The guy in the front chair is a former child soldier. And he was one of the lead guys when Laurent Kabila marched on Kinshasa and deposed Mobutu. You know, and when they made the movie, he's the guy that did all the undercover work of the Congolese military. The guys plotting against the park to extract oil from the park. As a result of that, he was tortured for four weeks, nearly died, had to be evacuated to Kenya for medical treatment, lost his home, lost some of his family, and two years later was able to come back. And on this particular occasion, they're pursuing a group of elephant poachers, across the river. In fact, he was annoyed with me because I was in the way, as I often am. But yeah. A little while ago, there was a large volcanic eruption in Goma. And the thing with these rangers in so many places is that they are not only the largest employers, but they are the only source of infrastructure and of assistance, etc. So, you know, in this particular park, They've set up major hydroelectric schemes, and when the volcanic eruptions disrupted power to the largest towns, it's these guys that brought it back online. And I might be seeing things here, but I always feel that this man is standing on top of what looks to be a gorilla skull. Now, you tell me if you see that, or if I've been drinking too much. But this is a former gorilla and chimpanzee habitat that's been destroyed by these eruptions and by deforestation. Yeah, so I'm always looking for something, you know, a picture within a picture, as it were. Yeah, Ivory. Yeah, this was in Garamba. This is the place where the Lord's Resistance Army would most consistently raid, because the Lord's Resistance Army is one of four terror groups in Africa that financed the operations through Ivory. You know and then you know in the next picture you see um you know there's an argument um that's become popular against green militarization but um what you have to understand is that these guys aren't arrayed against these ranges that you see are not dealing with someone with a bow and arrow they're dealing with full-on militarized outfits that are professional industrial poachers. They come in with LMGs, RPGs. It's a war. Okay, so we looked into this for National Geographic and we looked into what the ICRC was doing. And the ICRC did a three-year study and they designated the rangers in these areas as paramilitary groups who need to meet force with necessary force. So the green militarization argument. You know, look, there have been some incidents where locals have experienced some level of abuse, but it's a tiny percentage. And as I said earlier, um, in many cases, these guys that you're seeing, these men and women are the only peacekeeping force in the region. So, yeah, I mean, this is a group that's come out of an ambush waiting for the ADF. The ADF is an ISIS affiliate in Congo. Yeah. Okay. What is happening to the, because I guess that this is stuff that they found or that poachers have. Yeah, this is a dawn raid on a known leopard poacher. So what do they do with the items, with the ivory or the furs or stuff like that? What is happening to that? That's up to the government. So it passes up the chain. And there are some cases where some of the stuff is sold out of the storage. That does happen. but for the most part it's destroyed. I mean, this was Sudan, the last northern white rhino, the last male of his kind. There's a number of programs going on at the moment to try and bring these back in vitro using stem cells. We're going to have to see. But in the next picture, I never knew you could do that with a rhino. You know so what's always interesting for me in these conservation stories is how you can have relationships with these animals they are so much smarter we are we are just scratching the surface of what what kind of communication what we could have we could we are scratching the surface of you know understanding these animals yet we are destroying them so quickly that the opportunity to gain this knowledge and these relationships is slipping away from us. Yeah, you know, again, it's just, I've been amazed. You know, a crow has greater intelligence than a dog. You know, it's possible for a rhino to seek affection from you. I've seen a pangolin, you know, play games with a keeper like go and fetch a stick and bring it back and climb up a keeper's leg and demand affection. I've seen African grey parrots It's climb into your lap like a child, you know? So it's, again, for me, it's just, we are losing these things so fast. And it seems a great pity not to know them before that happens. This was Amazon Defenders, you know? Like what we were finding is that in places like Ecuador, in Brazil, et cetera, there was, a lot of people are dying. They're being targeted by powerful lobbies and so for Human Rights Watch we compiled a series of portraits of people who are defenders of the Amazon who have received death threats and we use those to try and give those people more profile in an attempt to make them safer, It has a pangolin-demanding affection. It's the world's most trafficked animal. So they estimate that over a million of these have gone overseas to China in the main, China and Vietnam, over the last 15 years. And the thing with so much of these species is that we have no idea how many remain. So I think we're going to talk about a particular story. Yeah, because in the beginning, we talked about how the the picture of the of the gorilla or actually raised some awareness and it raised some money but but one of the things that we often talk about with documentary photography and photojournalism is journalism is how can how can it help how can it uh create awareness how can it help the planet and and you mentioned when we talked about this you you mentioned this uh this particular case here sure sure so um so this is the first ivory story that i ever did and what we did was the journalist the journalist looked at looked at this issue and brian christie was his name and he he saw something that's been staring us in the face and that is the fact that ivory has been used across all major religions as a as as a way of of honoring God, but the irony is that you must kill the animal in order to obtain the tusk, in order to use the ivory to do the carving. That's a life-size, you know, that picture of the Christ on the cross, that's a life-size piece in a university in the Philippines. Yeah, but this is the reality on the ground. I mean, this is what that looks like. So, you know, these are all various kill sites from different places I went to in Africa. I mean, at this particular site, a group came in from the Sudan. 120 guys came in on a donkey train with RPGs, LMGs, a full-on, like, armed paramilitary unit, came in, walked across Chad with the permission of the various governors walked into the north of Cameroon and killed 670 elephants over two months. That's the largest killing of elephants since the 50s. So we covered that for geographic. But the fact is that by the time we heard about it, it had already happened. Ivory burns, you know, these are, So this is when governments make concrete decisions about what to do with these substances. It's just the Kenyan military protecting that. It's ironic because I shot that burn the one day and then the very next day, this was at Nairobi airport. So you question the effectiveness of things, you know. In the next picture, we went to Thailand. land. And with the Thais, they manifest their belief system in a series of amulets that they tend to wear. And the highest, the most aspired to amulet is ivory, with the blessing of the monks. And this particular monk was very interested in the fact that I was South African, because he thought that his followers who worked at the Thai International Airport would be able to help me smuggle ivory into his country. Can you, before we come back to how this actually gained some awareness, can you say a little bit about how it is to photograph some of these things that, where you're actually not invited? I guess that they're not like, they haven't sent out an invitation for you to come and make these images. Is you know when you do undercover work i always find it's it's important to do it to to go as close to the truth as possible and and what what we said was that um we were interested in how people manifest their religious beliefs which was entirely true you know so we could speak honestly about that um and that that allowed us some access you know um this was the largest ivory a carving factory in China at the time. That particular carving is a Buddhist symbol of prosperity. And what we found time and time again with the Asian carving was that it was either a Buddhist legend or a symbol of success. And in many, many cases, these are very high-profile business gifts or investments because invariably they would gain in value. I mean, that's a carving of the hundred monks, which is a Buddhist legend in China. And in the next picture, this gentleman bought one for himself, for his house as an investment, and the bigger one is for his boss in order to curry favor. And what do you tell people when you want to make an image like this? I met him in an ivory shop in China. It was completely transparent. So I said to him, look, we're interested in your thinking on this. I am trying to be as honest as I can possibly be. And so it's a matter of why are you buying these pieces? And he was quite happy to tell us. And I said, look, would it be possible to come home while you show this to your family? The guy said please come around and after i took the picture he made us lunch again you know the thing is there's no perception of wrongdoing because he's buying it legally in the shop okay and each of those ivory pieces has a tag that comes with it and a certificate but what we found in that particular trip is two places within two days where i could just buy the certificates and slap it on anything i wanted so yeah okay so um the picture that you had of the parade before four. Okay. So this is a big religious festival in the Philippines. And that image of Mary, that's a life-size figure. And in the next picture, you see that the head and the hands are made of ivory. So often the stuff is right in front of your face. You see it, you don't think about it, but it's there. In the next picture, this is a guy who's been collecting ivory for for only three years, everything you see is ivory, okay? And again, this is a situation where when you talk to the priests, when you talk to like the guys who are behind the trade, they feel this is a manifestation of their belief system. So they feel it's completely justified. And a number of them told me that the elephant should feel blessed, that its tusks should end this way. Yeah, interesting. And again, you know, these things are not, this is not new stuff. And in the past, when there were sufficient elephants, maybe we could let this happen, but not anymore. Again, remember, everything you're seeing here is ivory. So these are underground workshops. These are places, these are illegal. This is, you know, only, okay, since 1988, only two permits have been issued by CITES. Both those permits were for Japan and for China, okay? This is the Philippines, all right? And in the next picture, Facebook is an incredible tool, you know? Facebook is how people trade, do this trade, you know? So, yeah, this woman, we met online, and she invited us into her store. And again, yeah, it's all African ivory. But there's no reason for it to be there. But can you tell us so what happened with this story okay yeah sure so the what happened with the story was that it was brought up in congress okay and they changed the law on some of the stuff because of where the ivory was coming from they improved support from AFRICOM the US military wing in Africa for anti-poaching efforts and the Vatican, excommunicated one priest and issued edicts against ivory so they said specifically Stop using Ivy for this purpose. You also, when we had our little talk, you also wanted to address this story about falconry. Yeah. So look, sometimes, you know, I want to do a particular story for a very particular reason. So, guys, there was such a thing as the silent spring where DDT came out in the 60s, and what DDT did was it compromised egg integrity for falcons and for other birds. So falcons very nearly went extinct. And the reasons falcons survived is because of the Arab world and their passion and interest in falcons. Now, if you consider the Arab world and how that culture has accelerated so massively over the last hundred years, there's really no other culture in the world that's moved that quickly out of the desert into skyscrapers, into what you see in Dubai today. And they see their lineage through falcons. So it's not unusual. usual, like in this next picture, that's the minister of defense of Dubai, um, flying Falcons in the desert at four o'clock in the morning. Cause it's the only time it's cool enough to do it. It's about five o'clock. But, um, what was interesting for me with the story was I thought that, you know, through conservation, there was greater opportunity to talk about the Western Islam, you know? Um, and that's not something that, you know, manifested the way that I would would have hoped but i think that like something like conservation is a common value system for the world um and the ability for us to get past you know what ultimately are in many cases are petty differences um really differences that in the face of the crisis that's occurring on the planet really don't make any difference at all um conservation remains something maybe just let's have a look at this gentleman yeah so um i mean this is shake booty so shake booty is you know He's one of the wealthiest men in the world, but he still feels that he wants to get up at 3 o'clock in the morning, drive out into the desert and fly his falcons and do the same thing in the evening and do that five months of the year. I think that's powerful. I think there's something you can use there. So they're involved in cheetah. They're involved in scimitar horned oryx. They're involved in many different restoration projects. But I see conservation as one of the tools that you can use to build bridges between the West and Islam. And then we'll actually make quite a big jump right now because one of the things that I would like you to talk about are of course also ethics in stories like this and also in many of the stories that you do because you get very close to your subjects and you have some quite intimate moments in some of your portraiture and images. Images so i would like to to talk a little bit about so how is it to uh to be with people in these vulnerable situations and uh and and how do you how do you kind of pay them the respect that they they need and also make them understand where the story will go and and where the the image of them will will eventually end up so it's it's always hard it's always hard it depends if it's It's an active situation where there's gunfire, there's artillery or whatever, or it's a passive situation where the damage has already occurred and you're seeing a person in extreme vulnerability. So I think that the most important thing is what is your intent? Why are you asking this for this moment from these people? And it's hard. I mean, it really is. But what I find is, you know, one, I'm almost never alone because language is an issue. So in the research, I've communicated my intention to my fixer. In certain cases, I'm working with humanitarian workers, psychologists, psychiatrists. That's happened before. Yeah. But the number one thing that I'm doing is when I take an example, usually of the publication that I have with me, I try and explain what I'm doing. I bring examples of my work and I try, you know, you do not arrive and just start shooting unless, like you say, it's a dynamic situation, you have no choice. Then I think, take the photo and then you can decide whether you use it later, but take the photo. But the one thing that has rung true for me on every one of these occasions is that, these people want me to take the picture you know and i think that sometimes as westerners we are tremendously patronizing in assuming that these people are naive and that they don't understand what we do um and that they don't understand that um you know that they don't understand the value you of communicating what's happened to them so look there are there are just so many examples of of how photography has informed an issue and created momentum around that issue that's that is the story of our time you know um i really i really believe that but again um it comes down to your intention so let me tell you about this first picture um forgive me if i'm waffling guys Sometimes I get a bit carried away. In this first picture, I was doing a story on lions, and I was doing a story on lion and human conflict. And what occurred to me a number of times in the course of doing stories on wildlife was that we are very hypocritical in terms of what we ask of Africans that we would never agree to as Westerners. Um so in this case we're in the we're on the on the the border of a game reserve in tanzania and i am looking for a person that um that is an example of that hypocrisy so the reserve is unfenced um this is some of the poorest population in the world that live around these reserves and um, The only way for this guy to make money is to go fishing, but the only place to go fishing is inside the reserve. So it's illegal for him to go in there. But in order to pay school fees for his kids, he does it. And it's common practice. They all do it. And to a large extent, the guards look the other way unless it's blatant and they take too much. But on this occasion, the guy got jumped by a lion and the damage to both of his arms was so great that he lost it. But it was 48 hours before he actually made it to a hospital. So he suffered. And now he's in the care of his elderly uncle. His wife has left him. His five children have no support. So what do you do as a photographer? You ask and you explain. Look, this is why you're important to me. And this is the audience I'm communicating to. And I have an opportunity to put you into a magazine that speaks to millions of people who are interested in this issue and interested in what's happening. And the guy agreed, you know, the guy agreed. You know, we were fortunate we were able to get Handicap International to help him with the wheelchair and to take it from there. And again, that's, you know, it never feels like enough, you know. And it's always something that needs to come after you've made the picture, after you've done the journalism. That's not something that can ever come before. But yeah, you know, if you're looking at this picture and you don't feel something, then I think there's something wrong with you. So imagine what it's like to be there, shooting this guy. It's extremely humbling. And I'm terrible. I always end up in tears at some point. Yeah, you also asked me to show this one. It's one of your very early pictures. Yeah. So this picture has become controversial. It's really interesting how things have changed. because this, I was covering the war in Liberia and the war in Sierra Leone, and it was a period in Sierra Leone when the SAS came in and killed a particularly brutal group called the West Side Boys, who were part of the Revolutionary United Front. These are the guys cutting arms, cutting legs, very bad people. And what was happening at the time was they took bushwives. They would take women from the villages and turn them into sex slaves. They would, you know, be cooks, but they they would also become wives. This girl is 12 years old in this picture. And when the SA had come in and killed these guys, the UN went in and they found these women and they found 12 of them. Not 12, there were 15 in total. And they were put into a house and I was doing a report for the UN. And at the time, there were no psychologists and no psychiatrists in Sierra Leone. No mental health care at all okay so um so i took someone from human rights watch and i took a couple people from the un well they took me and we went to this house and um, This girl answered the door, you know, and, you know, what happened to her was that she tried to escape and they took battery acid and they burnt off one of her breasts. And they did that as an example to the other woman so that they would stay in line. And, you know, when you look at that, that's a 12-year-old looking at you, you know. So I think she has amazing dignity. And when we went to the house, we talked to the woman first. And we asked, listen, we need to make a record of this. And not one woman in that house said, I don't want to do this. Not one woman came up and said, I'm ashamed, I'm this. They wanted people to understand what had happened. You know and um as a result of that report and um when i went into the media they built a separate house and a facility and they got a permanent therapist into the region etc um but yeah that's one of those pictures where when you when you're looking at it and you're in the moment with this person it's it's it's really yeah it's a beyond word situation but i feel like um i made the right decision to photograph this woman. Thank you. I think we will just jump to this one, which is a more recent picture, but of another woman. So I'm working on an essay right now, which is quite challenging, and that is how fundamentalism is affecting conservation across Africa, particularly in the Congo Basin and in the Sahel. Um this is a woman who was attacked by the adf i mentioned earlier they are the the u.s declared an official affiliate of isis in the congo um this woman woke up late at night to hear cries of al akbar and having her door kicked in um they dragged her outside and this is machete wounds um yeah so i have been in the process of photographing many of the victims of this and then some of the countermeasures that are being established. But I, you know, again, this is one of those things where you have to talk first. And again, I went in there with people who were representatives of her community. I worked with a woman's group in that village. And ultimately, you know, this picture actually got, you know, National Geographic ran this and we got such an outpouring of support that they built them a sewing center. Within two days they had the fundings for it because people really really care so now there are 36 women inside a sewing center and all those women have suffered at the hands of this group so um yeah again it's one of those things when you know you cannot imagine what's happened here i mean this the irony as well is that this woman's husband left her as a result of the damage because because she could no longer use her right arm, and she has nine children. So, you know, I ask you, like, would you take the photo? Because, you know, I think you have to. I think we will we will jump to the to the final section here sure sure where um because one of the things that that i'm also a little bit curious about is is what you are what are you what are you working on right now what are what are your present uh tasks or ideas so i'm a bit of a workaholic here so i'm working on i'm working on i'm always working on like four or five things at once but one of the things that i'm really interested in is is elders wisdom um and how that manifests um these pictures are actually um they're not from that series but they're the pictures that i used to propose the idea um i can't i'm sorry i can't show you what i'm doing right now um but this was ritual in south africa there's a circumcision amongst the kosa nation Mandela went through this. The next picture is talking about land. This is Khoisan Elder, first nation of South Africa people, standing at a fence that's now farmland through what was his hunting area. The next picture is of a woman who, she's the matriarch of a village in Ethiopia. Ethiopia, and the slopes across there, across from her, are now filled with sugarcane for Saudi Arabia. And then the final image in this of this very dignified chief in a village again in Ethiopia. What I'm hoping to get to is that I think, you know, the technological gap between the youth in Africa and the elders is just, and I think this is happening globally, but I feel like, you know, these are wisdom keepers and we're losing so much of what they have to offer. So I'd like to work on that. So will you only be in South Africa or all over Africa or all over the world? Or you know the way it works now is like because of funding you work on these things piecemeal you try and get an assignment here and an assignment there and a grant here and you try and build a story yeah, thanks very much so you don't know when it will end or when oh it's always I mean I'd ask George that question I mean what you saw with George and that incredible body of work that's obsession you know because you have to you have to be obsessed to go that far and to jump through that many hurdles to do a story like what george showed um but yeah so much of the time nowadays um our stories come to an end because of funding but again you know it's a i mean it's an incredibly privileged job i don't i don't stack bricks for a living and i'm super grateful for that great thank you very much for sharing your work and your thoughts and uh thank you for listening everybody nice guys. Tanya Thank you. Reviewer:" Peter van de Ven Subtitles by Tanya Cushman. Music.