In photography, trust and doubt are like yin and yang: You cannot have one without the other, you have to balance one against the other. Trust and doubt exist in a complex relationship. They don't just have to balance each other, they also have to drive each other. Trust has a lot to do with one's photographic instincts: To see the photograph, to take it, and to then know that what was there to be taken has in fact been taken. But doubt interjects, knowing that while what might have been taken has been taken, what was seen could have been seen in a different way. Trust is centered on the realization that one is a good photographer. But there is the doubt, the constant asking whether one might not become a better photographer. (more)

Doubt hovers over everything. Your images could be as good as they get, your edit could be perfect, but you could still doubt everything, wondering whether things could not be better. A photographer has to learn to live with trust and doubt: Trying to eliminate one, leaving behind just the other, is a recipe for disaster. Doubt and trust need to be balanced against each other: You have to be comfortable and uncomfortable with your photographs at the same time.

But it is absolute essential to realize that doubt and trust are not just two sides of the same coin. There is an additional quality to doubt. There is the doubt that operates on a daily level, that questions whether one's instincts have seen things correctly. But doubt also means questioning whether one could not refine one's instincts. And it is this, which, I believe, makes photography so hard. To refine one's instincts means to first accept them the way they are. What this means is that adding new photographs to a project for years, re-working the edit over and over again, is probably not the best way to grow as an artist. Instead, one must learn to accept things the way they are, allowing oneself to let go, to then move on.

Doubting one's instincts must be balanced by trust again, but here it is not the trust in one's images or instincts, but the trust - or maybe confidence - that one will be able to grow. Trust and doubt are thus essentially not a pair, they are two pairs, or maybe more accurately they operate on two different levels: On the level of the photographs themselves, and on the level of being an artist.

On the level of photographs, trust means to trust one's instincts, to realize that the images convey what they are intended to convey and that some gaps serve the work. Doubt means to question all of that, to question whether a photograph is indeed a good photograph, whether an edit doesn't have any holes, etc.

On the level of being an artist, doubt means to question one's instincts, it means to see how and where one's photographs are deficient in an artistic sense. This doubt must be balanced by the trust in oneself, the confidence that if (and only if!) one is willing to live with whatever current limitations there are, there will be less of them in the future.

To learn from your mistakes, you first have to make them. If you're afraid of making mistakes, you deprive yourself of the chance to learn something.

Thus, a photographer has to learn how to balance trust and doubt, how to live with them both. Trust and doubt can fuel one's work in amazing ways, but they can also become enormous road blocks. The creative friction between them can contribute greatly to what drives one's work, and to one's evolution as an artist.

image: vernacular photograph, from the author's collection

If someone asked you what photography's big deal was, all you'd have to say is that it has something to do with "the gaze," and then show this photograph. Of course, photography is not just this image. There is a lot more - or, if you're a curmudgeon (there seem to be many these days) a lot less. But there is a lot to be said for talking about the most outstanding examples of any art form to get an idea of their power - instead of focusing on the detritus. Thus, when talking about photography we'd probably want to talk about photographs of the human form, and out of all those we might want to talk about this particular photograph. Its title is "A woman sits for a final photograph with her dying mother," and it was taken by Eduard Méhomé (the photograph can be found on page 41 of Life & Afterlife in Benin - make sure to view the slightly larger version of this photograph first by clicking on the icon on the side before reading the rest of this article). (more)

So we needn't take the title too seriously, even though, of course, it's a great title. What makes the title so great, in terms of the writing, is that it's nothing but completely descriptive. It's almost the greatest possible title and the most terrible possible title at the same time. "A woman sits for a final photograph with her dying mother." It makes us shudder: We cannot imagine being in that situation. Or actually we don't want to imagine being in that situation. If we just had the title and if someone told us it was the title of an actual photograph what would be going through our heads? Would we imagine it being just that: utterly descriptive?

But when you see the photograph first - as I did - and then the title, it's still a shock. Or maybe more accurately an aftershock. You see the photograph, and you think you know what's going on, or maybe you wonder what's going on, you wonder whether this could possibly... and then there's the title. It's almost as if someone knew what we would be asking and decided, "I am going to tell all these people exactly what they want to know."

Even if your photographic diet only consisted of, let's say, James Nachtwey photographs, I am relatively certain - relatively, not absolutely - that this photograph will move you. It might even shock you. Needless to say, that is not why this is a good photograph. This is not why you might want to use it as an example of what photographs can do. For the shock, all you'd need is something by Nachtwey. But for something that strikes your innermost self, this photograph is an amazing example. It is a photograph that, to (mis-)use Francis Bacon's words, speaks directly to the nervous system.

These two women in this photograph did not find the vulturistic lens of a photojournalist in their faces ("vulturistic" is my own creation, combining "vulture" and "voyeuristic"). Instead, they went to see a studio photographer to have the formal studio portrait taken. There is some more conjecture involved here: I don't really know whether they both decided to do that. Maybe just one of them did. But if it was one, then she convinced the other person to go along. So we have an element of free will here.

We also have an element of dignity, since a studio photographer does just that: He gives his subjects dignity (as an aside, maybe what we call "compassion fatigue" results from seeing photographs over and over again where the subjects for the most part are being denied their dignity as human beings?).

What I am imagining is that the two women went to the photographer to have a final photograph taken together. That seems very obvious, but based on what we see in the photography we almost don't want to believe that. They have both dressed up for the occasion, and they pose for the camera. The daughter is holding her mother, her left arm literally props her up - especially her head (the arm finds a visual echo in the mother's collarbone just below). There is determination in the daughter's gaze, some pride, and there is pain. It's hard to imagine what must have gone through her head, knowing full well that her mother is so close to death.

As for the mother... We have to trust the caption that she is in fact still alive when this photo was taken. Her eyes - we don't know whether they are still able to see - are turned towards the sky. The way her right arm just dangles down, so very lifeless, is shocking.

Often, I find myself questioning the caption. Maybe they got it all wrong? Maybe the mother is already dead? That doesn't make the photography any less shocking. It doesn't meeting the daughter's gaze any more jarring.

This photograph is all about the gaze - its presence and, something we rarely see, its absence. The daughter confronts the camera, her eyes meeting the viewer's. Her mother's... are elsewhere. Which other form of art could capture these expressions this forcefully, this realistically?

But there is more. Much like any photograph, this one is about memory, about creating memory, about holding on to something. The daughter is literally holding on to her dying mother for this photograph while this it - itself a symbol of holding on to something - is being taken. She is holding on to her mother so that the photographer can take a photograph she can hold on to later.

I find it hard to think of an example where this very essence of photography is expressed this forcefully: Photography as memory, as an effort to hold on to something that must ultimately be lost.

Let's face it, all photography is futile. That is part of its very essence.

As a photographer, you won't get around bringing your desire to photography, just as a viewer you do the same thing. You have no choice. As I have argued before, photography must fail if that desire is denied. But desire does not automatically create good photography. An equally crucial factor is trust. As a photographer, you have to trust your photographs. You have to trust that they say what you want them to say. Or more accurately, you have to realize that your subconscious mind is bringing more things to photography than your conscious mind might realize. (more)

Put another way, any of those techniques will become invisible if you have a good photograph. They only appear as a gimmick when they are used to overcompensate for a lack of artistic self confidence: You don't trust your photographs, you don't trust that your viewers will see what you want them to see. So you apply what you think of as your craft.

Even though we're dealing with a slightly different context here, this is why commercial photography (and parts of editorial photography) is (are) so horrible: Their makers (which here includes not just the photographers, but also the people who pay for it and the people hired to Photoshop the hell out of the source images) don't trust the audience. As a consequence - confronted with increasingly artificial looking photography - the audience increasingly mistrusts photography. It's a vicious circle. Given that large parts of commercial photography already looks as if everything was made out of plastic it shudders me to imagine what things will look like in ten years. I'm tempted to think that at some stage the androids that are currently being built in places like Japan (to take care of the elderly, say) will become the only "people" happy with this type of photography - bringing us into a world straight out of a Philip K. Dick novel.

Commercial photography aside, trust is a tough issue. There are billions of photographs online (in reality any person has access only to a very small fraction of them), and the question often becomes how one can have any faith in one's photographs if there are so many others already out there (you might have noticed: I just called it faith, instead of trust - pick the word that comes closer to what you feel). For me, the answer has always been very simple. It comes in the form of a question: What does it matter if other people take photographs? What do other people's photographs have to do with your own photographs?

Again, this seems to come down to trust: Only if you don't have trust in your photographs, if you don't have the faith that your photography expresses what you want it to express, only then can you be bothered by other people's photographs. After all, as a photographer there is only one person that can express what you want to express, and that's you. If you don't have the faith that you can do that, then you might think that someone else can do it, that someone else can take a photograph that expresses what you want to express.

I can think of all kinds of areas where a person could indeed express another person's ideas or thinking - but none of those areas have anything to do with art: A medical diagnosis, a scientific theory, a political slogan, ... But I yet have to come across two novels by two different authors that express the same idea in the exact same way. I yet have to come across two songs by two different composers that express the same feeling in the exact same way.

Mistrust in one's photography can manifest itself in many different way. I already mentioned overusing craft. But there are other things you can do: You can give your photographs overly descriptive titles. You can write exasperatingly long and convoluted statements. You can produce edits that have way too many photographs in them.

Many of these problems have their equivalents in the photobook-making world. If you don't trust your photographs, if you don't trust your audience to see and to make discoveries, you will bridge every gap you perceive, thus choking your work, making discovery impossible. This is why working with an editor is invaluable: A good editor sees what is in your pictures without mistrusting them. So she or he will be able to produce an edit that lets the work breathe, an edit that has the gaps in just the right space so that the viewer will be able to make all those little leaps of imagination - thus not only letting your work shine, but also enabling discovery beyond that which you think there is to be discovered.

When speaking about photography, trust and desire cannot be completely disconnected. I haven't fully figured out what that connection is. But I think we can learn something from the following example. If you take a snapshot on vacation, there is a very clear desire: To preserve a moment and to share it with other people. But there is also trust. The frequent noises and discussions about a supposed crisis in photography notwithstanding, people outside of the narrow circles of fine-art photography don't really have any trust issues with their vacation photographs. On the flight home, people don't seem to be fretting over whether or not their holiday snapshots show themselves sufficiently happy. Instead, they simply trust their photographs.

image: vernacular photograph, from the author's collection

At the core of all photography lies desire, our longing to connect, not to forget, to express love, to reach out to someone else (even if it is just our future selves) and say "Here, look at this! I want you to see this!" (more)

Here also lies the desire to share this special moment. Photography is made to be shared. A solipsistic kind of photography is not photography, it is something else, something entirely pointless (sorry, R.B.!). These shared moments can become our memories, to the point where the memories become as fake as many of the photographs around us (then again, aren't memories always as fake as photographs?).

We are not very worried about the fakeness of our photographs because we don't see them as fakes. We know we are dealing with desire, with our desire - what we wish to be true cannot (must not) be fake. In that sense, other people's photographs are different, especially if they're made with professional intent.

This is why we upload billions of photographs onto websites like Facebook. This is why the idea that photograph is over is foolish, ludicrous: Our desires are not over.

Photographers who deny the core of desire at the center of their work must fail. Photographs can be fake. But if the act of photographing is fake, photography itself makes no sense any longer. It is taking the heart out of photography.

In much the same way, photography done expressively out of a desire tends to fail, since here we have a photographer acting like a dog chasing its own tail.

I can see and feel the desire in the works of the medium's greatest masters, and I can see it in a "careless" snapshot (carelessly done snapshots are never truly careless). There even is an elements of desire in some, albeit not all, seemingly heartless conceptual photography, as shriveled up and anemic it might have become. There is a lot of desire in photographs done by very young photographers, however clumsily it often is expressed (that clumsiness makes it feel more real).

This is why dealing photography, having them on a wall to sell them, often feels so wrong: Can one exchange desire for money? Or, more accurately, what is happening is that one desire is traded on the basis of another, baser desire. We recognize the baseness of the desire that fuels the art world, and we are repulsed.

Seeing or feeling desire in photography is not the same as knowing its actual base. When we view photographs we do not necessarily experience the desire that produced the photograph. Instead, we experience our own desires acting. This is why if we do not know the photographer's intentions we can still have the full experience of her or his images. In fact, since intentions are not communicated in photographs (try as you might to persuade yourself of the opposite, it is a futile task), what really matters is our own desire.

In that sense, photographs (much like art works themselves) work because we cast our own shadows onto them. We see a photograph, and we recognize - usually subconsciously - the shadow we have cast upon it. This might seem like a revolutionary statement - it certainly is if seen in the light of various theories of the past - but in reality it is anything but: A blank, empty mind cannot truly experience photograph. To experience photography one must have lived a life - and continue to do so. Contrary to the usual narrative it gets harder as one ages, since opinions tend to harden. Living a life, however, requires one's ability to be able to change one's mind.

What this means is that photographs are never fully done. A photograph, whether an object in a frame on a wall or an image on a computer screen, is open. It requires us to subject ourselves to it. Only in that interaction with the photograph will it reveal itself, in ways that are different for you than they are for me. What thus makes a great photograph so powerful is not the object itself, it is the effect it has on the viewer (phrasing it that way makes things very obvious), piercing right through to her or his desire, puncturing whatever hard shell might have been constructed around it.

image: vernacular photograph, text on back (hand-written): "John Bouchard, June 1946, N. Syracuse", from the author's collection

A recent work related trip took me to San Francisco, where I saw an installation of Jim Goldberg's Raised by Wolves at Pier 24. Earlier this year, I had already come across an installation that was part of the Deutsche Börse exhibition in Berlin. I had one big impression that I took away from these two exhibitions. Here is a photographer who is really struggling with the medium photography, trying to make it tell the story he wants to tell. To make this clear, by "struggling" I mean a very creative struggle. Maybe "wrestling" would be a better word (if a grown man could wrestle with an abstract concept): Trying to make the medium express something, by bending and twisting and augmenting it. (more)

It would only be a little bit of an exaggeration to say that there was a fairly solid part of photographic history on the wall, in terms of the medium, ranging from black and white to colour, from straight/photojournalistic photography to what is commonly called vernacular, covering various ways of presentation and treatment of images. I don't want to overemphasize this fact. Shouldn't we be talking about the work? Yet I find myself strangely drawn to it. What does this plethora of different photographic images and treatments mean?

If form can follow function, maybe it can also follow frustration. Obviously, I don't know whether Jim Goldberg is frustrated with the medium photography. Maybe I picked the wrong word again, but "impatience" starts with the wrong letter. I do realize, of course, that some of the decisions made for the Pier 24 installation were suggested by the curator, such as framing the Polaroids or not displaying an actual drawer filled with confiscated objects (which I later saw at the artist's studio), jutting out of a wall, but merely a photograph. But still...

How does photography function as a narrative tool, as a tool to tell a story? You often get to hear that photography is bad at it (an idea I don't subscribe to at all), that photographs are like lines in a poem (ditto), or whatever else. But maybe the real problem is that we think too much in terms of written stories. As someone who writes a lot I often think that many photographers actually do not understand how written storytelling works. Photographers hate it when someone says that "anyone can take a picture," but honestly this writer hates it as much when photographers talk about writing, saying things like "photographs work like lines in a poem." But I digress.

Obviously, Jim Goldberg is a tremendous story teller, as you can easily see when you look at any of his books or, for that matter, at any of his exhibitions. There is a lot of energy in his photographs, just like there is a lot of energy in the way those photographs are being presented. It's almost as if all that energy wanted to burst out of the frame, out of any frame it's being put into. It's almost as if all the different formats were an attempt to contain that energy, while trying to give it as many outlets as possible.

This is just my own interpretation, but the plethora of formats and styles might reflect the realization that the true story cannot possibly be told, that it can only be approximated, much like how in any form of art the piece one is experiencing, however grand it might be, still always pales in comparison to the feeling behind it, the feeling it evokes. This is, in part, then why we're in awe of great art: It's not the piece of art that we're in awe of. Instead, it's how narrow the gap is between the art work and that which it points at. We're in awe of the artist's achievement, knowing (or at least having an idea) of the struggle that must have happened to narrow that gap so much.

And that is the struggle I talked of earlier. I don't know whether Jim Goldberg struggles more or less than other photographers with how to tell the story using his photographs. But the struggle makes itself visible through the form used to tell the story. It's right there, on the walls, for everyone to see. It's exciting, exhilarating, and it adds a deep layer of humanity to the work - a humanity that all too often is lacking in the sterile presentations of photography, expensively framed and lined up on a white walls of art galleries or museums.

The latest auction record for a photograph was set by Andreas Gursky's Rhein II¹. Gursky is no stranger to being in this position. Previously, he held the record for a while with 99 Cents² - photography, one could argue, that was surely worth more than the value given in its title. Several million dollars felt a bit like a stretch. But it was and still is magnificent photography, the artist's signature achievement. (more)

But auction prices do not reflect artistic merit or brilliance. The reflect the art market at work, a playground for the rich and superrich, spending money on whatever looks like "high art," regardless of whether it holds up to critical scrutiny. Auction prices reflect how much one individual (or organization) is willing to pay for some piece of art. That's it.

So why do we even talk about the fact that some millionaire paid way too much money for a mediocre Gursky photograph?

There is, of course, the fact that photographs, well some photographs, no really just a small number of photographs by a small number of artists are now being sold along the Warhols and Koons and Hirsts. That is, let's face it, a very sad criterion for whether or not photography is an established art form, and it tells us more about the state of the art world itself than about art or photography.

Why do we care abut whether photography is accepted by people who think a badly preserved shark in a big tank is high art? What exactly are we photographers and photography enthusiasts gaining from that? Is that what we care about? Should we care?

For a short while, I was tempted to think that if anybody, it would be Andreas Gursky who would have benefited from his works' new role as record breaker in the secondary market. He is now showing in the beyond-price-tag world, with fabled art dealer Larry Gagosian. But one can't help but wonder why the past few years have resulted in such uninspiring photography by an artist who, not so long ago, was showing if not the new way for photography, then at least a new way. Gursky's latest show at Gagosian's Chelsea gallery, which opened just before the new auction record, looks and feels, let's be honest, just forgettable. It pains me to write this given how much I appreciate work of the caliber of 99 Cents, but it seems that inspiration has run completely dry. As an aside, Gursky is not the only well-known photographers suffering from that affliction. Has the photography-art-market boom led into a creative dead end for some of these artists? It is an intriguing (and depressing) thought...

Specific photographers aside, what have we gained from all of this, from record prices for photographs, from people talking about photography as almost as good an investment opportunity as painting, say? Given so many of us got so worked up about this (and earlier) auction record(s) we might as well ask, especially since there will be many more such records, hopefully occasionally for more deserving pieces than Rhein II.

The most expensive photograph I own is worth a puny fraction of the $4m+ someone paid for Rhein II. I collect photographs, and 99% of them of them are worth way less than my most expensive ones (lest you wonder we're talking about less than $1,000 here). These 99% are old tintypes and vernacular snapshots, along with the prints of my own photography, which, by the definition of "the market", are worthless since I don't have gallery representation. But financial value is not what drew and what still draws me to the photographs I make or own. What I did not buy I received as a gift, often by either friends or by photographers whose art I deeply admire. I give a rat's ass about what those photographs are worth monetarily. Their real value for me lies in their visual power, in the firm grasp they have on my imagination.

With this attitude - and given my own lack of financial buying power - I am a nonentity for the art market and, frankly, I relish that role. Money is not what drew me to photography. It is my ever growing passion for the experience photography has to offer that drew me to it. This is what has me so troubled over the market craze in photography (which, as a nasty side effect, carries with it the self-promotion-social-media industrial complex).

Why don't we talk instead about what photographs tell us - regardless how much they're worth? If Rhein II sells for so much money, why don't we talk about the photograph? Let the millionaires and billionaires play their games at Sotheby's, let them fight with oligarchs and sheikhs over their prints and paintings and sculptures and now photographs. None of that adds anything to photography - other than that little further corruption of the soul, when money is taken as the most important measure of a photograph's value.

¹ The exact number is $4,338,500.
² The Telegraph published a list of the ten most expensive photographs here.
³ Florence Waters begs to differ: "the photograph is a statement of dedication to its craft" - for me, that's not a serious reason, since I think that any serious photographer is (or at least should be) dedicated to her/his craft. Also see Jakob Schiller's article for another attempt to justify the price tag.

Photo (c) and courtesy Will Steacy - Thank you, Will!

Still in his mid-twenties, Matt Eich has an impressive list of achievements under his belt already. I had a general sense of curiosity about his work, and I figured the best way to learn more about it - and the person behind the camera - was to ask some questions. Find our conversation below. (more)

Matt Eich: LUCEO formed in 2007 as a collective of six photographers. We knew one another's work through the online photo community, primarily the A Photo A Day listserv, and were all on the same path together, just beginning to work as photographers. In 2009 we became a business and now operate as a cooperative, with five of the founders and one newer full member who joined us in 2009. Some of us had previous experience with agencies, but all of us were fairly new to photography and interested in creating a very intimate and supportive community for our work as well as a platform that would allow us to counteract some of the trends within photo agencies and the industry at large that we felt were not sustainable for photographers. So in short, we don't see LUCEO as "another agency," but an evolution of what presently exists.

JC: What were/are some of those trends within photo agencies and the industry at large? And how do you counteract those trends with LUCEO?

ME: Some agencies (though certainly not all) seem stuck in a way of doing business that hasn't kept up with the changing media industry. We no longer need a representative to pick up film from the plane or answer the phone. Our clients reach out to us directly and usually prefer one-on-one relationships with photographers. The standard agent cut in the photo world averages 30-35%. This is three times as much as a musician's agent charges, why? An agent helps manage your contracts, but then you don't know how to handle them for yourself at the end of the day. After a while for me it didn't make sense to continue contributing 35% of my meager income to support a business that I had no say in that was looking out for their bottom line before their photographers. I wanted to be part of something that allowed for me to have a voice and to be investing my hard-earned dollars in something that I believe in instead of a business model that is just treading water.

Within LUCEO we represent one another. We go to meetings with clients together and speak about one another's work as comfortably as our own. We actively subvert the lone wolf mentality that pervades photography by combining resources and supporting one another creatively and financially. There is also the "strength in numbers" argument, which is valid. Lots of organizations have a way of introducing new contracts and then twisting their contributor's arms to sign it. It is much easier to have a reasonable conversation about finding a middle ground when the interests of six photographers are on the table, not just one. This all might sound a bit socialist but our form of cooperative is borrowed from a model that is applied to everything from farmers to car dealers. We have no intentions of reinventing the wheel; we're just trying to oil it and make it work for the path we are on.

JC: It would seem that given all the problems it faces - a lot of them business related, but there are more - photojournalism is a very tough field to get into. What made you decide to become a photojournalist?

ME: Though I studied photojournalism I don't believe the title fully encapsulates my work, or that of my colleagues. It can be a rather limiting term but tends to be a catch-all for the kind of work that I am drawn to, which is try and distill a scene or to "thin-slice" moments as they occur, to use a term coined by Malcolm Gladwell in "Blink." In high school I played music in some bands and by graduation I was burned out on the petty rock star drama that can occur within a band. I felt a strong desire to create something that matters that is greater than myself. This is what drew me to photography in the first place. Starting out, I found myself intrigued by the realism of reportage, the grit and the drama offered in pictures by people like Richards, Nachtwey and others. I used to bristle at the term "artist," but in time I've learned to get over it, it's more applicable than "photojournalist." Like most, I've gone through phases where I've been influenced by a variety of predecessors. One phase in particular included Soth, Jacob Aue Sobol and Eggleston simultaneously. Most of these folks work within the documentary practice, but are less beholden to the newsworthiness of a situation. I still admire the idealism of photojournalism, the belief that an image in the right context can change people's minds and ultimately, the world around us.

JC: Can it? Can an image - in the right context (whatever that might be) - change people's minds?

ME: This has proven true in the past with images like Nick Ut's napalm girl from Vietnam. Photographs of discovery, exploration, of humanity in its brightest and darkest moments have helped to form opinions and influence the civilized world for the past century. I think the commonality behind all of the images that have had a weighty impact on opinion is that they aren't about the photographer. Certainly the photographer has a perspective, a voice, but the photographs that speak the loudest resonate to a wide audience because the vision or voice has become a conduit for something larger than itself. The flipside of photography is its ability to be read multiple ways. Another image often said to have altered public opinion is Eddie Adams' execution photograph from Vietnam. Adams however regrets the photographs and its consequences and is quoted as saying "Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. ...What the photograph didn't say was, "What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad buy after he blew away one, two or three American people?"

JC: Let's talk a little about "Baptist Town," one of your ongoing projects. What is the background? How did you find out about the town and its people?

ME: Originally I was sent to Mississippi by Michael Wichita, Director of Photography at AARP Bulletin for a story about rural healthcare. After a three-day trip, I knew I was just scraping the surface of something much larger and convinced Michael to send me back for five more days. I began bringing prints back to the people I was photographing, and the doors opened a little more. I returned three more times in 2010 and twice thus far in 2011 for a total of about 25 days on the ground. My primary focus to this point has been one neighborhood called Baptist Town in the town of Greenwood, cut off on all sides by train tracks. The place is a pocket for poverty, crime and violence. It is also an incredibly historic community, one where the neighborhood is knit together like family. It is beautiful in its own way, and brimming with life. From here, I plan to branch out to show the more affluent and predominantly white side of town and examine the similarities and differences between daily life in both places.

The South lives under a legacy of segregation and racism that causes interesting ripple effects in the community. Now it is not really about black and white, it's more about the economic disparity, which is an effect of the history. 50.9 percent of the black population lives below the poverty line, as opposed to 15 percent of the whites. The black community is largely distrustful of the whites, who more often than not don't harbor ill will, just an unawareness of how dire their neighbor's circumstances can be.

JC: I'm a little curious about your process of work. For this particular project, how has it evolved? And where or how do you look for new pieces of your story?

ME: My process is always evolving to fit the needs of the project, but when boiled down is pretty uncomplicated. I walk around in places where I don't belong and if you're there long enough, people will ask you what your deal is. I'm a small guy, rather unthreatening and don't carry much gear, so people usually don't pay me too much mind. I listen and share because communication is a two-way street. In a place like Baptist Town, I am called on to make photographs of people projecting a representation of themselves to the camera. "Yo Matt, take my picture" is usually how it starts before the hands come up, the head cocks to the side and I'm expected to record them as they want to be seen. Sometimes I just snap what they present to me, other times I pull them aside into some light or to a cleaner background to make it more collaborative. What I'm always striving for is time - less these passing photographs, snaps, portraits, street photos, but more what happens on porches and in kitchens and bedrooms. There people sit, talk, drink, smoke and live.

This pattern repeats itself over multiple visits. Each time I try to bring pictures back, to help people understand that I appreciate that they accept me and to show them how I see them. Eventually characters begin to emerge that I connect with and I try to get to know them and peel back the layers of their situation so I can get at a deeper truth than their age, race, occupation or socioeconomic standing. This usually takes a long time with many repeat visits. As my knowledge of a place changes, the story deepens. I start out most of the time as an outsider and eventually position myself as a "knowledgeable outsider" who is always on the fringe trying to step inside. Unless you are actually part of the story, there is no way to truly be an insider.

When it comes to the larger ideas, they stem from the unanswerable questions that always nag me after I leave a place where I have been making pictures and I let them evolve organically.

JC: You're one of the first users of Emphas.is, a crowdfunding website for photojournalists. How/why did you decide to use crowdfunding?

ME: Baptist Town is one of the first projects I've worked on where I have been able to push the project out in multiple platforms to make it more viable from the outset. It began with an editorial assignment, I went out-of-pocket for a few trips then received a small grant, then sold some fine art prints, then crowd-funded a portion and most recently received a larger fellowship that will allow me to push into early next year. In my experience, relying on one market to support your projects or pay your bills is a bad idea. The idea is diversification in the ways we disseminate work will open up new ways to fund our projects. If a photographer can apply a consistent vision to anything handed to them what's to stop them from pursuing editorial, commercial, advertising, fine art and grant writing simultaneously?

These projects are long-term and develop a life of their own and require different kinds of funding at different phases. Crowdfunding is perfect for a project at this stage because it gets a group of people intimately involved in its development. The backers form a crucial support group, not only financially but also creatively, because if done successfully, they feel invested in the work. I feel I haven't been able to utilize the platform to its full extent yet, but hope to continue learning how to tweak the model to create value for the backers. Another part of why I decided to use Emphas.is in the beginning was that LUCEO wanted to be a part of the conversation about crowdfunding early on to help shape the dialogue. For the model to survive it needs to steer away from looking like charity and it needs to offer tangible incentives for the people who support your work.

Yaakov Israel's The Quest for the Man on the White Donkey, complex, multi-faceted project, featuring portraits and landscapes, was my personal pick as a winner of this year's Conscientious Portfolio Competition. For me, the project captures seemingly disjointed moments in time, offering many hints and as many red herrings. The viewer is invited to come back and re-look at these photographs, to find a slightly different world each time. New details reveal themselves, while old details change their meaning ever so slightly. Instead of pointing at something and saying "This is the way it is" the photographs ask their viewers to discover what is to be found and to ultimately come to their own conclusions. Find my conversation with the photographer about his work below. (more)

Yaakov Israel: I think of photography as a language or tool which can be used in many different ways. I like to talk through it about the act of seeing, registering and experiencing the world. I love adventure both in the real world and very much in fiction. I'm constantly thinking of the world around me, how intensely interesting it is and if or how it may be possible to express this fascination. I am always thinking of reality versus realities. In all this is mixed my personal history and my interest in the history of my country and its population. Together with all the personal and local aspects I find that I'm constantly thinking of the history of photography and how I would like my work to relate to it. In a way I think of myself as a visual collector, an anthropologist, a social commentator and a contemporary story teller.

I am particularly interested in using certain qualities of the medium to try and evoke in the viewers a connection to the image. I would like the viewers to feel that they are standing in front of reality and forget for a few seconds that they are looking at a photograph. Obviously this is very ambitious and not really possible, but it's still something I think of. Part of what helps me come close to achieving this is the use of a large format camera, in this medium I am able to make certain that the information I choose to portray is there for the viewer to see. This last thing may sound like a technicality but is a real necessity as I believe that information helps create this feeling I'm after, allowing the viewers to understand more about what they feel when looking at the work.

JC: Can you talk a little bit more about "reality versus realities" and how you approach it photographically?

YI: I have always loved the idea that there isn't just one reality. As a kid I was reading a lot of science fiction and fantasy. In recent years I've been reading Haruki Murakami, who deals a lot with reality and parallel realities which exist in the human spirit and influence their reality. I have also been rereading Calvino's Invisible Cities, which is an unending source of inspiration; this is a book that for me deals with perceptions of reality and ways of experiencing it. These and many more literal influences are imbedded deeply in this body of work. They are always on my mind and affect my everyday life and the way I experience the world. When I speak of reality versus realities I'm simultaneously talking about my personal way of thinking of life and of how I experience my country. I feel that there is no 'one' reality in this place. There are as many realities as there are people living here and all of them get mixed together. I'm constantly experiencing these different realities and the more I experience the more they shape the way I think of things. Referring back to Calvino; this all may be the same idea that is experienced and told in different ways but always refers back.

JC: The Quest for the Man on the White Donkey centers on Israel, where you've been living your whole life. I'm always very interested in how people approach photographing a place they know so well: How do you do that? How do you know where to look and where not to look? How can you make that interesting?

YI: At the moment I see myself as a photographer who deals with local issues, my work deals with my reality in the context of my country's reality. For many years now I find that I am interested in doing work which deals with the place I grew up in and live in today. I find it is crucial for me to know a place to be able to say something significant about it. I get excited when discovering the little nuances that can only be discovered by someone who is very familiar with the place. At the moment I am not interested in observing other realities but am deeply interested in looking deeper into my immediate surroundings and trying to better understand this place in which I live. I find that the artists who influence my work are ones that show and discuss places and matters they know well. For me it is not finding the locations, they are right here where I am, the interest is finding the nuance that will shed a new light on it and a new understanding.

JC: What kind of new understanding are you interested in?

YI: It isn't really a new understanding that I am after, it is more the idea of heading out every time on a new adventure. I never know where I'll land up and who I will meet. Out of this experiences I build my story, the story is very much connected to these one on one encounters; sometimes with people from completely different socio-political backgrounds and many times with people to whom I as an Israeli represent the unwanted element in their reality. In these encounters all the differences disappear and we become friends, talk or have a meal together always inviting me back. Not always are people that nice and they can be hostile, but the nice encounters are what keep me going, making me feel that there are a lot of good people out there and this allows me to present the human aspects, which I feel are the strong reality of this country.

JC: Israel, of course, also is a very complex place; and most people not living there still get to hear about it a lot given the Palestinian situation. I remember the two times I visited Israel, there was always some politics question, some argument around the corner. To what extent did you want that to be part of your work? Is that easy to navigate?

YI: I consider myself part of Israeli society and am very familiar with the "on- goings" in my country. The fact that I am the son of immigrants gives me a different edge when looking at things. My father was a writer and journalist who came to Israel from Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe), he was always striving for social justice and wrote many articles against the apartheid government in South Africa and Rhodesia. At one stage it was made clear to him he wasn't welcome in these countries because of his opinions. My mother was from South Africa to and had similar feelings. Social and human rights agendas were a thing we discussed on a daily basis. Growing up in this kind of environment certainly shaped my personality and social matters are very much present in my work. The Quest for the Man on the White Donkey is a story about contemporary Israel, and I show it as I find it. In a way I think of it like a puzzle, each time I go out I find a missing part, the pieces present themselves to me everywhere, my conscience reflecting back to me from my surroundings. And each piece gets me closer to the whole story. Each piece depicts a certain thing or is a metaphor of an issue that reflects on Israeli society. In a way I think this is my responsibility, to create discussions on aspects of the reality I see and share.

JC: With your approach to image making (or taking) how do you determine when you're done with a project, when it's time to move on?

YI: For the last nine years I've been working on three projects simultaneously, thinking mostly about the ideas behind them, and finding the best way to do the work.

About three years ago I decided I wanted to publish The Quest for the Man on the White Donkey as a book. I came to the conclusion that to understand this project it was important to see it as a whole and the most suitable was in book form. I started editing the project from the beginning. I didn't understand how much work it would be until I was in the middle of it. As I photograph very intensively, usually making many photographs despite the fact that I work mainly with 8x10 and 4x5 cameras, I found myself looking at and arranging a very large number of negatives and slides. It was very interesting reviewing all the work from the beginning, seeing how the idea slowly evolved into a body of work. After that I made high resolution scans and prepared them for printing. This project now has a deadline for closure as it is scheduled to be published as a book in spring 2012 by Schilt Publishing in Amsterdam. Basically for the last year I have mainly worked on this project knowing that it has to be finished by the end of this year. This is the first time I have decided that a body of work has been finalized.

I have learned many things from this process, amongst them the importance of determining a deadline even if a personal one. Taking this kind of responsibility helps build a deeper understanding of the work. So I've decided to put my other two projects into a time frame. I now think it crucial to the fact that I'd like to start new work, I'm always thinking of new things under the umbrella of my interests that I would like to explore photographically. To do so it seems I need to finish the majority of my current photographic endeavors.

Mirjana Vrbaski's Verses of Emptiness was picked by Caroline von Courten as one of the winners of this year's Conscientious Portfolio Competition. About the work, Caroline writes "These very simple and yet dense complex photographs invite me to look more closely and to have a conversation in my mind with these photographs and the persons portrayed." and "Here the limitation and the concentration of the photographic medium reveal themselves at once in an extraordinary way." I talked with Mirjana about her work in a conversation that you can find below. (more)

Mirjana Vrbaski: I try to explore the portrait not as a way of representing a specific person who is sitting in front of the camera, but as a way of portraying a more universal, iconic expression. Trying to capture the model's personality and character feels at the same time too confining and too impossible to me. It also renders the image uninviting. I believe that talking just about the model's character is too superficial, because we can never - not in real life and especially not in a two-dimensional image - grasp something as complex as a human personality. In this sense, I don't see the portrait as having to do with the individual shown on it, but as being a completely new territory, an amalgamation of the model, the photographer and the viewer. An image of a person that doesn't exist but does resonate a familiar feeling or atmosphere.

Because of this, my process is mostly based on removing 'classifiable' attributes my model chose for herself (for example, labeled clothing or modern hairstyles). This minimizing of visual codes helps me get to a more essential, elementary feeling, to something almost archetypical.

JC: I'd be happy to argue that in general clothes don't make you a person, though (the fashion industry might disagree). That aside, I'm curious why you're interested in what you call "the essential and elementary," and how you then work on bringing that out?

MV: Clothes don't make a person but in a two-dimensional medium such as photography, the viewer has much less to go on when forming his interpretation than s/he does in real life. We can't hear the model talk or interact with her, so we base our reaction on what we see, on our accumulated experiences and memory, and on our standard ways of classifying. I guess what I'm saying is that I try to eliminate context in my images. Our choices related to our appearance (clothes, style etc) do communicate a sort of belonging, belonging to a type, class or 'genre' of a person. I am interested in suspending such traits of belonging so that the image - as much as that is possible - stops being informative and becomes more of a silent, meditative 'space'. This ties in with the notion of the 'essential and elementary'. Silence, nothingness and emptiness are elementary. It is out of those states that all further meaning gets constructed and yet they remain essentially mystical.

JC: And what is the allure of the icon? We live in the age of the celebrity - and those people are often considered to be icons. But I'm assuming that's not what you're after?!

MV: No, I'm interested in iconography in the traditional sense, and in particular in the way icons are made. Old Byzantine icons and their contemporary Christian Orthodox versions are painted according to a strict protocol, which instructs iconographers to paint all saints in a uniform, generic way, so that you can hardly distinguish one saint from another. If I asked somebody to describe Virgin Mary's face, they would probably have a hard time and I probably wouldn't be able to pick her out of a crowd, unless I was told that she has a baby in her arm. And yet she is so real to so many people and touches them in such a profound way. For the same reason, the face of Christ was conceived as particularly uncharacteristic and general by the Byzantines. This generalizing behind iconography interests me because it has to do with that 'emptying', with conscious reduction to a bare minimum, with removing specifics and characteristics, so as to allow things to lift themselves beyond the immediate and the mundane.

JC: I'm a bit curious about your process, about the taking of a portrait. How do you prepare for one? How do you work towards the final photograph?

MV: The most important and the most difficult part of my process is finding the right models. It is really important for me that the persons I choose to photograph move something very fundamental in me. Seeing that I approach strangers after having passed them by or seen them for a moment or two, it's hard to pinpoint what it is that moves me. But I think it has to do with their honesty, with them seeming pure and 'true' to me. The rest of the process is just searching. I am very insecure when I photograph and my portrait sessions are usually 1-2 hour highly concentrated searches for a look, an atmosphere or a gesture that reinforces that feeling of honesty and truth. I never know in advance where and whether I will find this.

JC: So you don't know in advance what you will get out of a person or how to get it out of the person, you just know there is something there?

MV: Usually, all I can do is hope that the feeling I had when choosing the model was right and that the portrait will be successful. I make dozens of portraits before I am able to select a few that work. Often, I am moved by the model when I approach her but her image just doesn't seem to contain the qualities I talked about above. I think a good photograph is always a combination of skill and luck, and a photographer's whole process is much less controlled than we like to think. The best photographs I made happened when I stopped trying to control.

JC: I might as well ask you what I asked a large number of photographers before: What makes a great portrait?

MV: For me, a great portrait is one that surpasses the person it depicts and captures something of the mystery that we are to one another. As I said at the beginning, I don't think it's possible to know another person in their totality. So in a sense, there will always be an element of an enigma between people, in real life and in imagery. I think that a good portrait communicates a familiar feeling and yet is ambiguous enough for the viewer to be able to engage with that enigma.

JC: Maybe giving an example (or two) might help? Thinking about other photographer's portraits are there any that you can't get out of your head?

MV: I love Gerhard Richter's portraits. They seem to be of actual people yet they're always very mysterious and distant.

JC: Who are some of your influences as an artist?

MV: My influences change often. But I'm always amazed by artist like Hiroshi Sugimoto, Andreas Gursky, and Tony Scherman, who combine very powerful emotional impact with incredible vision and technique, and who have a refined ability to combine these three elements in a balanced way.

Nigel Bennet's Silence Has an Echo was picked by Michael Mazzeo as one of the winning entries to this year's Conscientious Portfolio Competition. Michael wrote: "This portfolio offers enough information and ambiguity to elicit countless narratives. Nevertheless, the mood of the work is certainly unsettling and, I believe, very appropriate given the current state of the world." I talked with Nigel about the series in an extended conversation that you can find below. (more)

Nigel Bennet: Well, it's a whole lot of things, but primarily a reaction to political violence. I moved to Bangkok at the end of 2008. I had studied Thai language at university a few years earlier and wanted to finally spend a decent amount of time there before I completely lost the ability to speak. This really coincided with the beginning of the most turbulent period the country has seen politically in recent years.

But it was also a kind of difficult time for me personally as well: I'd gotten funding from Canal+ in France to make a short film in Thailand, but just as we were due to start shooting, protests shut down the airports and neither the French actors and crew, nor my wife, were able to get into the country. So although we did eventually get to make the film, it didn't start well. Then in the end my wife found it very difficult there because of the language barrier, so she left earlier than me... then money problems... and meanwhile there's the whole political situation just getting worse and worse, and quite a few of my friends were directly involved in the protests on one side or the other. So this all just made for a pretty tense period.

I don't know how interesting it would be for people if I went in to the finer details of Thai politics here, but my very crude analysis would be that it's a power struggle between the old military/royalist elite who've run the nation for the last 70 years and are basically born into power, and an "upstart" new-money elite, who ultimately rely on popular support for their power. Meanwhile, as is inevitably the case in such situations, ordinary people are stuck in between as cannon-fodder.

My own view is that neither side have anything much to offer beyond furthering their own personal interests, and despite introducing the occasional token policy of benefit to the working class here and there, they really couldn't give a shit about the average citizen. It's just smoke, intended to distract while they continue to line their own pockets. But, having said this, one side enjoys huge support from a clear majority of the population, and if you believe in democracy then obviously you have to give people their choice of leader, no matter how much you might dislike him or his policies. This has now happened, more or less, but it took the deaths of roughly 90 people and the burning down of some very expensive real estate to get to this point.

So that's the background, basically. And when things really started to get nasty I knew that I had to react in some way. Although I started out as wanting to be a classic documentary photographer - covering wars and disasters - I have no interest in that genre of photography now, and nor am I in any particular rush to die, so when the violence really got heavy I stayed cowering in my apartment and obeyed the nightly curfew like everyone else. But as soon as it looked like the worst was over and the risk of sniper-fire had lessened, I went out with my camera, flashes, stands, softboxes... and basically dragged all this heavy stuff round half the city for a day... without even taking a single frame. Things were very tense, and what with all the burnt out buildings, discarded personal possessions left behind by the protestors, and heavily armed troops all over the place, there was plenty of material there. In fact I later learned that a bomb went off right were we'd been 20 minutes earlier. But I just felt like I had nothing positive to add, and therefore it was better to say nothing.

Instead, the images you're looking at are what came to me with a little time and reflection. I wasn't so much interested in the "spectacle" of political violence anyway, so much as the experiences of individuals. Those who pay the price. Not in any hugely dramatic way. Just ordinary people who live with the consequences of these power games: the people who inevitably stand to gain the least (when compared to the profits made by the victorious political leaders) and yet ultimately pay the most. You and me basically.

The "landscape" images were something I'd been noticing increasingly at that time. I've thought a lot about the "why", and I was conscious of, for example, some of the things that Michael Mazzeo said about these photos when I started producing them, but I quickly just decided to put all allegory and symbolism out of my head. A lot of my previous work has been a little too premeditated and constructed I think, and I just wanted this to be a lot more emotional... a gut reaction to what had happened, so I went with instinct more than reason. I like to think of it as "internal reportage".

I was hoping to continue the project further when I was back in Bangkok at the start of this year - in the months leading up to the elections - but I'd moved away from Thailand by then, and therefore a lot of the tension that I'd felt from being there in that situation day to day had dissipated. And it probably had to a certain extent even for the people living there to be honest; as the massacre at Rachaprasong slowly faded from memory, a lot of people I know seemed to have just become tired of the whole conflict and wanted an end to the violence and all the disruption to their lives. It seemed pointless to continue without the tense undercurrent which was present when I first started making the work.

JC: This just seems like one of those topics that one might want to come back to. Or maybe it's simply my fascination with stories that center so much on actual events - on things we in the West hear about - but that have huge undercurrents going through, with a long build-up, the event itself, and then the aftershocks that might travel through the system for a long time. So much of photojournalism and even of documentary photography is only concerned with the drama on our front pages (paper or web), which basically leaves us in this state of incessant drama: There's always some explosion somewhere in the world, yet we never know (or learn) why it happened. It's hard to imagine there wouldn't be many traces left - maybe not quite so openly on the surface, but deeper, underneath?

NB: In a way I was already returning to the subject, having spent well over a year researching for a project about exactly the kind of "traces" you're talking about: the subtle knock-on effects of political violence...their "echoes" if you like.

I actually made a series of short films back in 2007, which came out of this research, and I was really hoping to develop it further, into a major photographic work. I still am, but the subject (the history of US instigated/funded/backed military interventions since WWII) is just so vast that there's no way I could afford to produce it, and then anyway this whole situation blew up...

In some ways it made my research all the more relevant, as obviously what goes before paves the way for what comes after. And some would probably argue that there's a direct - albeit rather long - thread linking the pentagon's support of Thailand's cold-war era dictators with those responsible for the military crackdown last year...But how could I expect those around me to take any interest in shit that happened perhaps over 40 years ago when people were dying right there, right then? It just seemed perverse.

Going back to your question though, I think part of the reason we sometimes don't learn about the-stories-behind-the-stories is because journalists are not necessarily that well informed themselves. This really came home to me during the crackdown in Bangkok, when locally-based amateur bloggers on twitter and facebook were often more informative than the big news corporations (not that I have either twitter or facebook, but I was happy for the info they provided).

I began my career stringing for Reuters and some other rather less prestigious wire-agencies for a year or two while at university (before I worked out that there wasn't much of a market for gloomy pictures of nothing-in-particular), so it shouldn't have come as any surprise to see how the media really works, but still I was quite shocked by just how poorly informed some of the articles were on the protests. CNN came under a lot of criticism within Thailand for anti-government bias (though I think they were perhaps more guilty of just running the more marketable story rather than of not having done their research). Meanwhile the coverage in some European papers looked like it had been put together by an intern in the back office.

The Guardian at one point commented with surprise about youtube footage showing the police helping ambulances get through to the protestors, like it was some mysterious twist and the police were now defecting, but anyone who's spent more than a week following Thai politics will know full well that the police (as opposed to the army) have always been aligned with the protestors. Hardly surprising, given that the (then) opposition leader, Thaksin, used to be their boss!

And that's basically the problem; most of these journalists hadn't spent a week following Thai politics, 'cos last week they were in Baghdad, and next week they're onto the next big "spectacle" somewhere else. I don't want to criticize too much as it's a hard job, and the world needs journalists, but the big names have to spread themselves very thinly in order to follow the news. The effect being that we get caricatures. Or, as you say, just the big bangs...and few of the echoes.

I think with documentary photography this focus on front-page drama has a lot do with machismo as well. For some people it's just a form of showing off to go into some fucked up situation. The content of their photos reflects on them personally. It's like, "look how hardcore I am!", so they play up that side of the story and ignore anything else that doesn't fit the script.

I just came back from Medellin in Colombia, and researching before the trip it was almost impossible to find newspaper articles that weren't just about drugs or violence. I mean, maybe 1% of what I found spoke of anything other than these subjects. And yet, what percent of the Colombian population are actually involved in either drugs or violence? Certainly not 99%! Not only has the average citizen spent the last 20 years being terrorized by the cartels, paramilitaries and a drug-crazed underclass, but on top of that they are now portrayed by the foreign media as being the very people that have made their lives such a misery in the first place! Try getting a visa to go abroad if you're traveling on a Colombian passport.

I saw the work of one photographer who'd gone repeatedly to Medellin and just photographed in the poorest neighborhoods, following hitmen and other low-lives - in dirty black and white naturally - and it was thoroughly fucking scary and depressing. And you know, I could partly understand this if the photos were from the mid-90s, when things were much worse there, but the hitman story was from like 2 or 3 years ago! I'm not saying this side doesn't exist, nor that we shouldn't talk about it, but Medellin has got to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world, surrounded on all sides by spectacular mountains and blessed with a climate of year-round spring. It's so green and fertile that I felt like if we stopped too long at a traffic light then flowers would start growing over the car. Seriously, there are flowers everywhere, it's not this filthy slum like some people want you to believe. Apparently it's now one of the safest cities in latin America too, and the people I met were seriously good people, very generous, and very concerned as to what foreigners think about their country. But of course, you don't get to see any of this in most documentary photographers' work, because for all their talk of "the human angle" they are actually making action movies, not honest portrayals. Where's the humanity in stereotyping an entire nation and fucking up their visa applications? Not to mention ruining the economy.

Anyway, back to my own badge-of-honor bravado project ha ha...no, the story is by no means over, and sadly there may even be worse to come, as the rifts have definitely not yet healed, no matter how sick of it all the average person may be now. Likewise, my interest and involvement in the lives of the people I know there has far from weakened. So, yes, maybe...

JC: I'm curious how you "find" your pictures. How do you pick the persons that you choose to portray?

NB: Well worded.

I "find" my pictures in a variety of different ways. Some are very close to reportage, others heavily constructed. But I guess the one thing they all have in common is that none of them fit very easily into either one category or the other, by which I mean that even in the cases that they could perhaps be considered "documentary", I have inevitably intervened in some way. Or, at the opposite end of the scale, even if they are basically fabricated, shot on a "set" and directed like a film, I try to leave as much room as possible for the situation to develop organically. And the subjects are of course "real"...whatever that means.

I suppose all of this is just a long way of saying that photojournalists, with their endless discussions of ethics and "truth" in photography, appear to me a little like headless chickens running round the farm yard. Of course, news photography is a little different, and I'm not particularly comfortable with the idea of front page images being heavily manipulated in Photoshop either, but the idea that a photograph can be anything other than a manipulation of reality seems slightly ridiculous. My method of working is to embrace this rather than get worked up in a fret over it.

How I choose the people in my images depends on the project. Generally they are people I know. Others I find on the street and just approach them. In the case of Silence Has An Echo they are nearly all friends, or friends of friends, my next door neighbor, a guy I know at the mechanic's down the street. There was one couple who I didn't know previously who I just stopped and asked, but most were people I already had a relationship with. This was important, as really the work is about our experiences in that time, and in the case of some of my closest friends, one or two of whom I've known for over 10 years now, I'd seen them change a lot with the political situation. With many of them I knew already which side of the political divide they fall on, as we'd discussed - or in some cases argued about - the issue endlessly, but although when producing these images I asked the subjects to think about certain issues personal to themselves, it wasn't important that I knew what they were thinking about, just that they entered into the way of working, so I never asked them.

JC: So how much manipulation works for you? To what extent do you feel you need to interfere?

NB: Well, the short answer to this is: "As much as it takes to make the work mine".

Actually, that's maybe all the answer that's required. Or you want to know more?

I just mean that I could be considered a documentary photographer only in so much that I sometimes photograph real-life events that take place, naturally and spontaneously, in front of me. But the real subject of the image is not necessarily that surface detail; it's more that this is a vessel for me to put other things into, to discuss separate issues, which may in some cases be only tenuously linked to that which is placed in the foreground. And these issues are often very personal, even subconscious I think, so at times reality needs steering back on course. By which, naturally, I mean back on my course ha ha.

A few years ago I went through a period where I really felt the need to script and storyboard everything, but I look at some of that work now and I find it really ugly - perhaps in part because it's almost too personal, like seeing yourself as others do for the first time, or hearing your own recorded voice - so I've started to move back a little closer to my documentary beginnings again. I still try to operate in my own aesthetic universe, but ultimately there are many more interesting people in the world to talk about than myself. And anyway it's often easier to discuss your own problems by talking about others.

Yet at the same time I wouldn't want to move too far in that direction - to just give up control - as my reasons for producing the work in the first place are ultimately selfish. I'm sorry I've got to bitch about social-documentary photographers again, but they don't really convince me with their "empathy" posturing...endlessly repeating the word like some kind of mantra. Which isn't to say I don't feel empathy for others, but just that the primary reason I produce my work is for me, and I'd be surprised if that isn't the case with everyone. Or at least anyone who is honest with themselves.

But I'd love for the work I produce to make some kind of difference to people's lives, and I wouldn't choose to tackle the subject matter I do if I thought that discussing these issues was totally in vain, but I cant say I'm 100% convinced of the value of what I, or any of us, do. The world doesn't need art anywhere near as much as it needs food, medicine, education. And even Journalism is self-indulgence when compared to the essentials of life.

If my empathy outweighed my egotism then I would put down the camera and get involved in something that actually causes direct and tangible change on an individual level.

JC: I don't know whether you'd consider yourself a portrait photographer but since there are some in Silence Has An Echo I might as well ask you what I asked many other photographers before: What makes a great portrait?

NB: No, I don't really consider myself a portrait photographer - though I guess to a certain extent that is what i do. Maybe this is because what I think of as being portraiture, in the classical sense, always puts so much emphasis on capturing the true personality of the subject, something which A) doesn't especially interest me, and B) seems a little overly ambitious anyway (see my answer above regarding "truth").

I'm working on a project now that discusses national stereotypes, and more generally deals with the way in which we humans categorize the world in order to make some sense of it - reducing what is a murky grey to black and white, a subtle analog gradation into rigid ones and zeros. This series could easily be classed as portraiture too I guess, especially as it's about giving the subjects the choice to decide how they would categorize themselves, portraying them in the way they feel most comfortable, with the category they most identify...Oh! I said "portray". Ok then, I guess I am.

But no, I have no idea what makes a great portrait. I'm sure it's different for everyone, and I don't believe in fixed rules for anything anyway, they really don't help. As I said to you before, I generally don't get at all excited about formal, straight-to-camera, studio photography, and yet I think Mirjana's work is great [Mirjana Vrbaski, one of Nigel's co-winners - JMC]. I couldn't tell you why, and even if I could it wouldn't necessarily be a formula that would work for the next photographer.

The one thing I do know though is that choice of subject is 70% of the job. Get the casting right and the rest is almost irrelevant.