Part I: An Unreasonable Profession - Photojournalisms / Feb. 7, 2017

Soon after I moved to the East Coast from San Francisco in 2005, I scheduled a meeting with a well-known curator. I was eager to expand the scope of my work into the gallery world, so I showed up to the meeting with a portfolio of prints. By this time in my career, I had had many meetings with editors, designers and other creatives who routinely judge and hire photographers. But this was the first time I was meeting with a famous curator who ran a prestigious New York gallery: someone revered by photographers and artists.

We sat down across from each other – the respected art curator and the hopeful photojournalist. I handed him the prints I had brought with me and we both fell silent as he began to leaf through them. After the third or fourth print, he stopped.

“You know when I look at work, I really want to feel like I want to fuck it,” he said.

Then he smiled. But it couldn’t have been clearer that he didn’t want to fuck my pictures, which is a rather crude way of saying that he wasn’t interested. I had been in enough good and bad meetings to know that this wasn’t the kind that leads anywhere.

People on the street are reflected in mirrors in the Citadel Frame Shop, opposite Arbil’s historic citadel, in Arbil, Iraq on April 17, 2005. Photo ©Ed Kashi/VII

The name of this piece has been, somewhat cheekily, adapted from an essay by British photographer Paul Graham entitled ‘The Unreasonable Apple.’ If you haven’t read it already, please do so. Graham argues that ‘straight photography’ is valued less in the art world, partly because it is not perceived to have a process that is demonstrable – unlike other forms of photography where the photographer’s approach and technique is as important as what is in the picture. His words are elegant and concise, but it is the sense of exasperation he conveys that I most wish to amplify here, because I too am exasperated. In my case, it’s with the dialectic that exists between the worlds of photojournalism and the art photography. In my mind they are different parts of the same world, and the boundaries that have been drawn up between them nonsensical and artificial. These borders conveniently preserve a ‘precious’ place for the art world, away from the reality-based work of photojournalists, reportage and many documentary photographers.

Before I continue, I wish to acknowledge that writing this essay may give the impression that I am an aggrieved photographer who has been denied something he wants and is thus writing to hit back at those who have denied him. This is not at all my intention. My concern here is less about the acceptance of my work, but rather the attitude that so often excludes reality based and ‘of the moment photojournalism’ from garnering the same kind of respect and appreciation as other kinds of photography deemed “fine art.” This isn’t an attempt to set photojournalism apart: rather, it is an attempt to point out that it is no less deserving of recognition – in this case as it pertains to its value alongside photography that is more conceptual, engineered, directed and constructed. I believe the best of photojournalism can simultaneously be used to convey information while also capturing beauty and challenging the viewer’s mind.

Local villagers fish for saifotsy in the Anony Lake, which is an estuary fed by the ocean. These villagers usually farm, but due to a lack of water, they must resort to fishing. They are fishing using a trawling method with mosquito nets provided by USAID. Trawling is destructive due to the amount of by-catches which further deplete the lake’s fish stocks. Photo ©Ed Kashi/VII

The frustrating part about the meeting I had with the curator was that I didn’t know what to take away from it. As a documentary photographer I was bewildered. What was I supposed to make of what he said? Does he want work that is sexier? What do sexier pictures even look like? It really threw me and it still makes me feel uncomfortable about the photography world he belongs to. I understand the desire of curators and gallerists to explore technique, materials and innovative approaches. I’ve also come to understand the need of gallery owners to pay rent, so they must find and push work that they feel will sell. Obviously, much of photojournalism is too raw and frankly depressing to expect people to pay money for something they would not want to live with on their walls.

I appreciate the thoughtful and conceptual work of visual artists who push our boundaries of perception and creativity. Yet there is something transcendent and deeply meaningful when a photographer observes the world and captures images of real people in real time. There is almost an athletic aspect to this kind of work, which often must overcome imperfect visual scenes, unfriendly situations, poor light and unruly subjects, to produce images that reflect a certain version of reality that has been witnessed and captured. Photojournalism can be truly beautiful and thought provoking, but it also must be based in reality.

A roadside food stand along the Karakorum Highway in northern Pakistan. The Karakorum connects Pakistan to China, and is the highest paved road on earth. Photo ©Ed Kashi/VII

I am a pragmatic person. I always try to figure out what I can take away from an experience: how I can improve, what I can do better, what worked, what didn’t work. I do my best to operate from a place of sincerity. But when you enter these other worlds, that’s not necessarily what they’re looking for. This essay is the first part of a two-part series on photojournalism’s place in the art of photography. There is no question that art photographers have been influenced by how photojournalists view the world, and vice versa, yet I still find myself confronted with the notion that photojournalism is somehow lesser, even among current and former practitioners. I’m writing to disprove the antiquated notion that “straight” photojournalism is somehow too simple or without intentional process, or too obvious to be allowed a place at the table that is the world of fine art photography. There is something magical about observing the world with knowledge and purpose, so that you might take on the difficult task of using your reflexes to make a picture that goes beyond the literal and the obvious. While much of photojournalism is predictable and serves a very defined and narrow purpose, the best of photojournalism transcends purpose, place, time, application and usage, creating imagery that is at once timeless and powerful.

- Ed

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Part II: The Perfect Play - Photojournalisms / Feb. 14, 2017

I’ve been a fan of baseball since I was a kid and my son now plays in college, so the game is firmly engrained in my head and heart. It is the ultimate strategic game. The players must be able to jump into action at a moment’s notice, which they practice to perfection, balancing a complete understanding of the situation in the game at that moment, which could determine what split second decision they must make if they get the ball. To the untrained eye, baseball is boring and slow. Nothing much seems to happen, someone throws a ball and another tries to swing and hit it. Each individual player has a task that is assigned specifically to them, and the success of a team depends on how well each individual link supports all the others, with each situation requiring a different action. I love baseball because when a player and a team execute a perfect play, where all the elements of strategy come together seamlessly, it’s like poetry or ballet. It is a beautiful thing to watch. But the reality is that it is rehearsed to perfection, which makes it more impressive than if it were all happening by chance.

This baseball example is a good analogy for the process behind great photojournalism. There are those who suggest “straight” or documentary photojournalism is simply a matter of ‘snapping your surroundings.’ Considering that Apple suggested the world now has 7 billion photojournalists, I want to be clear that there is nothing wrong with snapping your surroundings, but that is not what my cadre does. We take issue with this attitude because it implies that straight photojournalism is somehow devoid of real process. For photojournalists who also want to market their work as artistic, the implication of this outlook is that because what they do is so easy, it is not as valuable or unique as photography where the process is more visibly complex or where it is reliant on technique, direction and manipulation.

Sheets fly in the wind near the barbed wire fence that surrounds the Bat Ayin settlement. Photo ©Ed Kashi/VII

There is absolutely a process to the kind of pictures I make. There’s a process of research to understand what I’m looking at, there’s keen observation once in the situation, there’s anticipation based on my knowledge and then there’s quick and decisive reaction. The work that goes into making a great photojournalistic picture goes far beyond ‘snapping my surroundings.’ It’s disappointing to me that there’s so little appreciation for great photographs made in the unpredictable chaos of the world, as they are absolutely the product of a rigorous process. You learn to look for visual cues that have meaning, and the ability to translate those cues into great imagery that also conveys important information requires a tremendous amount of training and practice. You have to be able to make the right decision in the right moment. Just like in baseball, it is possible to create something beautiful when in the midst of either chaos or boredom, to approach perfection through practice and instinct.

A local women’s group meets in northern Pakistan circa 1998. Photo ©Ed Kashi/VII

When I work I’m not looking to manipulate materials. Having a strong understanding of my equipment, though it may be considered simple, allows me to be ready to catch the ball. I use my knowledge, perception, anticipation and reaction to tell a story that I think is important. To me, the higher calling is a wider and broader appearance of images that can be the most impactful. As a photojournalist, it has always been my goal to convey the stories that need to be told, which is why I believe in the importance of this discussion.

What I would like to see is more of an appreciation of what goes into the process of journalistic image making. There are many photojournalists who have successfully crossed the boundaries I am alluding to, whether you look at the work of early pioneers like Robert Capa, Henri Cartier Bresson and W. Eugene Smith, or more contemporary greats like Eugene Richards, Sebastiao Salgado, James Nachtwey and Gilles Peress. The list is endless and ever growing – as demonstrated by the new crop of emerging talent. These individuals also reflect the evolving nature of this craft, where work is increasingly produced with a greater sense of authorship and conceptual complexity.

Scenes during Friday prayers at the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan. Photo ©Ed Kashi/VII

Despite this, photojournalism is consistently overlooked and undervalued in spaces reserved for art. The different approaches to photography are symbiotic: they are equal and interwoven. If everything becomes interpretive, it blunts meaning. The same is true of work that is literal – if all photography were straight photojournalism, it would be predicable and uninteresting. The diversity of photographic processes provides the medium with its beauty and power, as well as it’s dynamism. When I see photojournalism denigrated because of its perceived simplicity, it leaves me hungry for a more robust and inclusive dialogue, because I see it as no more or less than an essential component of an incredible form of expression. We must not forget that people still believe that images convey reality and truth, and while it’s important to play with and bend the truth in the pursuit of greater authorship and creativity, there is still a responsibility for visual storytellers to inform and illuminate our world with images that can be trusted.

A local man dries off after a dip in the Kaduna River in Kaduna, Nigeria on April 3, 2013. Photo ©Ed Kashi/VII

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Forging Relationships: The Challenges of Long Term Projects / Dec. 13, 2016

In 1995 I published this piece in Salon about photographing messianic Jewish settlers in the West Bank. At the time, Salon was a pioneer in the world of online journalism. It was one of the first digital media outlets that focused solely on online distribution, so I felt as though I was entering new and uncharted territory for journalism and visual reporting. I had returned many times over a period of three years to photograph two specific communities: one militant enclave in the Arab city of Hebron and another called Bat Ayin – a newer, smaller settlement five miles from Bethlehem. I gained their trust and they let me into their lives. I lived inside their houses while I was there. One man even moved his daughter out of her bedroom so that I would have a private space of my own – sometimes for weeks at a time.

These were people to whom privacy was extremely important, but they let me see things that most other journalists were never allowed to see. Although I had been working on this project intermittently over three years, I was far from finished. It was a finalist for the W. Eugene Smith Grant in 1996, which only strengthened my resolve to continue traveling to Israel and Palestine to make the project deeper and more intimate. I was confident that a story as important as this one needed to be pursued. So confident, in fact, that I wrote this in the aforementioned article: “I plan to return to the West Bank at least twice a year for the next few years to record the settlers’ reactions as the West Bank is relinquished to the Palestinians. No matter where the peace process leads, the ‘true believers’ of the West Bank will remain a community with a powerful story to be documented.”

Things did not work out as I predicted. The West Bank has not been relinquished to the Palestinians, quite the opposite, and the peace process can no longer be described as such. But those weren’t the only things I was wrong about. One day, a few months after the piece in Salon was published, I arrived back in Hebron to continue my work with the settlers. The same man who let me sleep in his daughter’s bedroom met me outside the settlement. He handed me a printout of the article I had written for Salon and said: “You’re done here. You cannot work with us anymore.” And just like that, my project was over.

This is what I wrote that so angered the settlers: “As the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has shown, militant Jewish settlers in the West Bank present a formidable obstacle to the country’s quest for peace with the Palestinians. While Hamas and other Arab terrorist groups wage war on the peace process from without, a group of extremist Jewish settlers, unmoved by their government’s policies or public sentiment, are waging war within.”

I stand by those words. Their truth is reflected in what has happened over the past 20 years, and they also accurately reflected my interpretation of what was, and still is, happening. My frankness destroyed my access and I was left at a standstill. Not only would the work remain forever incomplete, I also felt disgraced. They accused me of being cheap and of selling them out. They thought I was a liar, and I couldn’t help but dwell on this most personal feeling of shame.

I still feel torn about my decision to publish those words in Salon. The benefit of hindsight has not been much of a benefit at all. While part of me wishes I had been more circumspect about publishing my personal opinion, there is another part of me that stands firm behind being candid about my beliefs, particularly on an issue such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. My point in recounting this story is not, however, to draw conclusions about what I should or shouldn’t have done. Rather, it is to point out the inherently complex nature of human relationships – in this case as it pertains to my role as a photojournalist and documentarian. What happened to me is a prime example of what can happen when people let you into their lives, which is my overarching goal with potential subjects. At the time, the feeling of having been bitten by the internet seemed cruel and novel. The ability to see everything an individual publishes anywhere in the world has created a system where we now have to assume that our subjects will see everything we publish. I welcome this development, even if it sometimes puts a crimp on our ability to work as freely as we had been able to in the past. It has made relationships with subjects even trickier to navigate than before, but in general, more accountability and transparency in our process is a positive development.

As you get closer to the people you photograph, the process become more complex – something we don’t seem to talk about enough in our field. I’m in the early stages of developing a new project that will require intimate access to a married couple who have been separated for the past 12 years while the husband served a 25-year prison sentence for murder. He was released only two months ago and we’ve been spending time getting to know each other. Forging a relationship of mutual trust and respect is without question the most important aspect of making this project succeed.

This process of intimately connecting with your subject is near impossible to teach. If you are someone who wishes to delve into projects, themes, issues or stories of any kind, it is critical to remember that you will only succeed if you maintain the trust of your subjects. The world of journalism, to say nothing of the world as a whole, is badly in need of people who are willing to do this kind of in-depth work. It is impossible to include every detail and point of view in the stories we tell, but the subtleties and nuances of these stories have a much better chance of being understood if you spend extended periods of time fleshing them out. It is an incredibly rich part of being a visual storyteller, and it is one of the main reasons I continue to push forward. It has arguably never been more challenging to do this kind of work. The disruption within the editorial world caused by the digital revolution, the advent of the 24/7 news cycle and, most recently, social media mania, have all contributed unique obstacles to documentary storytellers.

When you are successful, the results go far beyond a meaningful photo essay. It is an incredible privilege to witness so much of life, to explore, and become a part of the vastness of the human experience. A profound illustration of this in my career is Aging in America: The Years Ahead. It was a project about how a society is growing old, so it involved finding people who were willing to let me into their most private and at times vulnerable situations. Many powerful events happened between the moment I met a new subject and the moment their story ended. I was privileged to photograph four deaths for Aging in America, but I was only able to do so because I developed trust.

In 2000, I met Maxine and Arden Peters, who were living in a farmhouse in rural West Virginia. They were both ninety and had been married for seventy years. Maxine was a tough lady who was fighting the end stages of Parkinson’s disease. With the deterioration of her body, the quality of her life had become abysmal, so Arden’s dear friend Warren de Witt came to live with the couple in order to help care for her. I had been staying with the Peters’ for a few weeks in October of 2000 when one morning it became apparent that it was Maxine’s time to pass. Arden seemed to be struggling with how to handle his wife’s suffering, so I took him aside and assured him it was okay to tell Maxine that she could let go. I’m not sure what his exact words to her were, but she passed away an hour and a half after he shuffled into their room. My head was swimming and my heart was pounding the whole time. I couldn’t help but wonder: ‘What gave me the right to intervene like this? Who was I to tell Arden what to do at such a pivotal moment?’

When you make the commitment to develop and maintain a relationship with your subjects in order to get access, it is essential to create trust, cooperation and collaboration. However, in a case like Aging in America, you’re also taking on more than that. You need to be prepared to stand up when these kinds of moments happen and act as a human before acting as a photographer. Later on, Arden invited me to the funeral to speak to the church congregation. He appreciated my intervention in that crucial moment. Being welcomed into the church by this close-knit community was one of the most powerful moments of my life.

The message I wish to convey is that you take on a tremendous amount of responsibility when you do this kind of work, but therein lies the importance of being a visual storyteller. If you have the ability to assume this responsibility, your work will benefit on every level. It will be more powerful to the people who look at it because it will be deeper, which also holds true for your personal experience. Our lives move at a blinding speed now, so it is crucially important that we as visual storytellers take the time to slow things down: to notice the details and stay in it for the long haul. We must listen to our subjects and give them time to express their voices, which sometimes means being a companion to them. A lot of life happened before I was able to get to that most intimate moment with Maxine and Arden. Much of the time was spent going on drives, photographing her being cared for, sharing memories and stories late into the evening, and just hanging out in the house doing nothing. These moments were precious and they showed the Peters’ that I cared for them and understood their dignity. It was a privilege to spend time with Arden and Warren and to witness the care that they provided Maxine and how beautifully their community supported them. I became part of that community for a brief period of time, which allowed me to photograph them in ways a complete outsider never would have been able to do.

In today’s world our lives are increasingly being played out in real time on social media. But there is another parallel universe where life moves slowly: in actual real time. It is important, perhaps now more than ever, to inspire more people to pursue the kinds of long-term projects that reflect the intricacies of human life. It is crucial to understand that learning how to maintain relationships with your subjects is an essential component to making this kind of documentary and photojournalistic work. Accessing private moments in other people’s lives is magical. But more importantly, it is what leads to memorable, intimate images that go beneath the surface and reveal a unique part of the human experience.

- Ed

Edited by Gabriel Ellison-Scowcroft

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Imperfectly Invisible / April 28, 2016

For those contemplating the life of a photojournalist, beware the personal challenges and questions that await you. I have spent a lifetime trying to become invisible. As a documentarian my goal is to disappear, to observe without disturbing the world I’m trying to capture. It is obviously impossible to actually achieve this, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying. Disappearing into the background is an effective strategy to bear witness to moments that would otherwise be inaccessible. Candid intimacy is the term I’ve used to describe my work, and my vanishing into nothingness is the imperative.

People congregate at the Gare St. Charles – the main train station in Marseille, France on Sept. 24, 2010. Photo ©Ed Kashi/VII

But what happens when you become so expert at this that you begin to disappear in your own life? After more than 30 years of perfecting this routine in my work I am now confronting the residual impact on my personal life. It’s as though I am nothing without my work. Over the last three decades my energy has been channeled into forging my identity as a documentarian, in the process becoming very good at slipping into the mentality that has led my career to where it is today. So much so that I now feel solely defined by the roles of photojournalist, filmmaker and mentor. A work machine.

Yes, I have two beautiful and incredible children that are my lifeblood. And a mate who gives love and commitment unconditionally. But most of the time I’m alone perfecting my disappearing act. The result is a deep sense of loneliness and abject uncertainty. I have been exposed to pain, suffering, violence and death, the cumulative effects of which have posited me into voids of nothingness more often than I ever could have imagined, and more often than my wife deserves to have to live with. I am also disturbed by how every reentry into my personal life with friends, family and colleagues, invariably begins with questions that I have come to dread: ‘how long are you home for this time?’ or ‘where did you just return from?’, or ‘where are you going next?’ While they are innocent enough questions, they reinforce my sense of alienation. Even those closest to me always expect me to be gone, absent, disappeared.

Brian Crothers, a teenager from Belfast’s working class Protestant neighborhood of Tiger’s Bay, keeps his night-time protection safely within reach in Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 1989. He lives within two hundred yards of a Catholic estate that staunchly backs the IRA. Photo ©Ed Kashi/VII

Losing myself in other people’s lives, whether in their dramas of joy, pain, or transition, has turned into not being able to find myself in my own life. I now have to relearn how to be with others and relax in joyful and calm moments. I now have social anxiety and it can be difficult, sometimes overwhelming, to engage with others outside of prescribed and controlled situations. I know veterans of war, survivors of trauma and sensitive souls that life has trampled on who experience similar and often far worse symptoms.

The Wounded Warrior Project is run by American veterans of war to help returning veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq adjust to life at home. Through confidence building group activities, these vets are sharing experiences, problems and issues that continue to haunt them and keep them from living healthy lives and reintegrating into society. Vets share a group hug and moment of unity. Photo ©Ed Kashi/VII

The cliche of wanting to be a “fly on the wall” is necessary for journalistic documentary work. When I was first starting out I didn’t understand how to do it or what it required. I worked on gut instinct and through trial and error. The stress and frustration was nearly constant, but I did my best. There were countless situations in the Middle East or Africa where I wanted to capture some element of daily life, only to find myself loitering in the lives of people in a small village. It was  awkward and frustrating to feel I was constantly standing out and being so far from the fly on the wall I was hoping to be. I can remember trying to capture a family meal only to encounter the generous expectation that I would consume their carefully prepared food with them. I tried to explain that they should eat without me, but soon realized that I had transitioned from being awkward to being just plain rude.

It took me many such encounters to learn that it’s much better, from the human graciousness of a guest to the naked ambitions of a photojournalist, to go with the flow. My pictures started to come much easier and connections with others developed with more harmony and soul, and with the intimacy I had strived for in my work.

Maxine Peters finally passes away at home, surrounded by her family, friends and hospice aides. In rural West Virginia, people still live – and die, the old fashioned way. The Hospice Care Corporation sends health workers into rural homes to make sure that people can meet a dignified end, surrounded by their families. Photo ©Ed Kashi/VII

But through all this shape-shifting, however genuine and heartfelt, I lost myself along the way. I have become accustomed to experiencing the graces of those who have excruciatingly less than I do. When I’m in my own milieu I feel uncomfortable and anxious. It’s not that I feel guilty: I just don’t feel comfortable in my skin. Certain questions have become too unsettling to ignore. Has my camera become my protective skin? Am I no longer myself when I don’t have a recording device? How can this be? My life is rich, entitled, some could say even spoiled. Is this another ‘first world problem’ and I should just shut up? I often joke, although sometimes I don’t actually find it funny, that Descartes’ famous saying for me would translate into “I record, therefore I am.”

As a photojournalist, you can have the privilege of expansive knowledge of the world, cultures, the processes of technology and business, and the small yet magical moments of daily life. You can experience exquisite beauty, both of the natural world and within human nature. You will also witness pain and suffering, hatred and violence. It is an intoxicating mix and I urge you to jump in. But as you shape yourself to better practice your art and your work, be mindful of what can be lost when you let that consume you. Or you might lose yourself.

– Ed

Nguyen Thi Ly, 9, who suffers from disabilities because of Agent Orange contamination, in her home in Ngu Hanh Son district of Da Nang, Vietnam on July 9, 2010. Photo ©Ed Kashi/VII

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