Latest / The MOOD Podcast / The Healing Power of Photography: Jimmy Nelson on Trauma, Connection, and Truth, E052

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The Healing Power of Photography: Jimmy Nelson on Trauma, Connection, and Truth, E052 · The MOOD Podcast

• 0:00
  Jimmy Nelson: Wow, big question.
• 0:01
  Jimmy Nelson: At the age of seven, I sent to this institution.
• 0:04
  Jimmy Nelson: They indoctrinated me you are not worthy, you are not beautiful, we are going to make you suffer and it's your fault.
• 0:11
  Jimmy Nelson: So an institution and a group of people that were meant to protect me, meant to educate me, the opposite happened.
• 0:16
  Jimmy Nelson: Perhaps their humanity is something that we're seriously losing.
• 0:21
  Matt Jacob: What is your process in this and kind of finding yourself almost and finding that beauty in yourself?
• 0:26
  Matt Jacob: What has it taught you about collective humanity, as a society, as a global population, my beauty.
• 0:33
  Jimmy Nelson: I don't think I ever will see it, your normal projects.
• 0:37
  Matt Jacob: Where you go, you know all over the place and some of the most remote places in the world.
• 0:42
  Matt Jacob: Do you feel?
• 0:42
  Jimmy Nelson: like that's a form of therapy.
• 0:44
  Jimmy Nelson: I am beginning to start feeling again.
• 0:46
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm obsessed with that creative journey.
• 0:48
  Matt Jacob: Do you not think that we have a responsibility to be integral, to be honest, to try and promote a good message?
• 0:56
  Matt Jacob: The only thing that matters is Mr Jimmy Nelson.
• 1:09
  Matt Jacob: Mr jimmy nelson, thank you so?
• 1:10
  Matt Jacob: Much for joining me today on the mood podcast.
• 1:13
  Matt Jacob: It's a privilege to to be sat across the other side of the world having a conversation with you also perhaps we should admit to your audience this is the second time.
• 1:22
  Jimmy Nelson: This is a sort of.
• 1:23
  Jimmy Nelson: We sat opposite each other a few days ago and I wasn't in the best of moods and I as I've just apologized to you and I think it's actually a good beginning I wasn't actually listening to any of your questions and I was giving sort of pre-recorded answers in my sort of my excuse was, uh, time difference, but to be honest, I wasn't actually quite in the zone.
• 1:41
  Jimmy Nelson: So here we are again, so perhaps this is going to be honest.
• 1:43
  Jimmy Nelson: I wasn't actually quite in the zone, so here we are again, so perhaps this is going to be even a richer experience as we get to know each other.
• 1:47
  Matt Jacob: I'm sure it is.
• 1:48
  Matt Jacob: I think that's a good point to kind of segue into how that might apply in terms of our own mindset, being comfortable in our own skin, and how that translates onto the paper, onto the screen or, in our cases, through the camera.
• 2:05
  Matt Jacob: Is that something you think about a lot?
• 2:07
  Matt Jacob: You've got to be in the right headspace before you even start the day and think about picking up a camera.
• 2:14
  Jimmy Nelson: Good question.
• 2:15
  Jimmy Nelson: I think the way I described to you a few minutes ago, before we started recording, was that I didn't give you my all.
• 2:22
  Jimmy Nelson: I didn't give you my best.
• 2:24
  Jimmy Nelson: I didn't, as I said, I didn't listen to your questions, I didn't focus on the original answers that I was aspiring to give.
• 2:32
  Jimmy Nelson: I think that goes the same for making a pincher.
• 2:35
  Jimmy Nelson: If you don't, if you're not obsessive about striving for perfection, I don't believe you can be successful in 2024, 2025, or 2020.
• 2:46
  Jimmy Nelson: I was having a very interesting conversation, challenging conversation, here with somebody the other day.
• 2:50
  Jimmy Nelson: Perhaps that's why I wasn't in the best of moods when we last spoke to one another and they were challenging me.
• 2:55
  Jimmy Nelson: They said you know, do you need their attention?
• 3:01
  Jimmy Nelson: Is your drive, is your search for that perfection, do you need somebody to clap for you, and from which audience do they need to clap?
• 3:10
  Jimmy Nelson: Obviously, the competition is somewhat broader.
• 3:14
  Jimmy Nelson: Again, it's not about I need somebody to clap.
• 3:16
  Jimmy Nelson: It's about I, you or we, the listeners, don't aspire to make beauty.
• 3:25
  Jimmy Nelson: We don't aspire to go beyond where anybody else has ever gone or, for the simple case, it's, it's not sustainable as an artist, as a photographer.
• 3:35
  Jimmy Nelson: So there's this inner urge and we can investigate what that is in the next few minutes, maybe hour.
• 3:41
  Jimmy Nelson: But there's also an existential urge with the five I always sort of speak broadly and I know it's an exaggeration five billion other photographers on the planet nowadays.
• 3:51
  Jimmy Nelson: If you don't aspire to a picture nobody else has ever made, you won't be allowed to indulge in that creative journey.
• 3:57
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm obsessed with that creative journey.
• 3:59
  Jimmy Nelson: I love photography.
• 4:01
  Jimmy Nelson: I don't know whether I will ever be able to find the words to describe the passion that I have for it, and it is an aspiration for greatness.
• 4:09
  Jimmy Nelson: But it's not an aspiration for greatness that you clap.
• 4:11
  Jimmy Nelson: For me, it's this absolute fear, paranoia, that I won't be able to wake up tomorrow morning and be allowed or be asked to pick up a camera.
• 4:20
  Jimmy Nelson: It's terrifying that thought, because I so love the process, I so love the process.
• 4:26
  Jimmy Nelson: I can't, I can't live without it, and that's whether that's healthy or not.
• 4:30
  Matt Jacob: That's for you, the audience, to decide yeah, I think that resonates with a lot of um, true artists, and I use the word true because you know, like you said, there's five billion photographers out there and I don't think all of them could call themselves true artists.
• 4:45
  Matt Jacob: But I think that's really where that inner and we talked about inner urge.
• 4:48
  Matt Jacob: Let's dive into that now.
• 4:49
  Matt Jacob: What do you mean by that inner urge?
• 4:51
  Matt Jacob: What does that inner urge look like for you?
• 4:53
  Jimmy Nelson: And it's very difficult to annotate, but try for us to explain that, okay well, I'll make a segue back to the first conversation that we have, which hopefully nobody gets to listen to, but I'll ask myself the question you first asked me and I think that's a good breach and I was thinking about it afterwards what is humanity?
• 5:13
  Jimmy Nelson: You said to me.
• 5:14
  Jimmy Nelson: What is humanity?
• 5:15
  Jimmy Nelson: Obviously, anybody seen my images.
• 5:18
  Jimmy Nelson: It's primarily people.
• 5:19
  Jimmy Nelson: It's people in portrait, people in landscape, and I started asking myself what is humanity?
• 5:24
  Jimmy Nelson: Humanity is me.
• 5:24
  Jimmy Nelson: It's people in portrait, people in landscape, and I started asking myself what is humanity?
• 5:27
  Jimmy Nelson: Humanity is me?
• 5:27
  Jimmy Nelson: It's you, it's the listeners, it's all of us, it's what we feel, it's compassion we talked about it last time empathy, it's love, it's all those human instincts, that sort of kaleidoscope of the experience, and it's everything but technology.
• 5:45
  Jimmy Nelson: It's everything but computers, it's everything but AI, it's everything but a robot.
• 5:49
  Jimmy Nelson: So that's what humanity is for me has been the whole of my life, ever since early childhood.
• 6:02
  Jimmy Nelson: Although I got my first camera when I was around 16, I was busy looking at the other and analyzing myself since very early childhood.
• 6:12
  Jimmy Nelson: So it's sort of an ongoing reflection on where I fit in the world, how others see me and how I see them, and there have been a variety of sort of waves in that ongoing process and there'll be more waves to come.
• 6:28
  Jimmy Nelson: But it's where I fit in that kaleidoscope of humanity, my validity in that kaleidoscope of humanity in 8.3 or 8.4 billion and what I feel as a human and what I feel as Jimmy and being very, very, very, very connected to that.
• 6:45
  Jimmy Nelson: And I use the camera, literally.
• 6:48
  Jimmy Nelson: I use the camera for that process, for that journey, and it's an obsessive journey because I really, really, really and I can't exaggerate enough want to feel, define, feel, what do you?
• 7:00
  Matt Jacob: feel.
• 7:01
  Jimmy Nelson: I want to feel wealth, but I want to feel wealth of existence.
• 7:02
  Jimmy Nelson: It's not a material wealth.
• 7:03
  Jimmy Nelson: I want to feel wealth, but I want to feel wealth of existence.
• 7:05
  Jimmy Nelson: It's not a material wealth.
• 7:06
  Jimmy Nelson: I want to feel beautiful.
• 7:09
  Jimmy Nelson: Now that's a little bit sort of um?
• 7:12
  Jimmy Nelson: Um, of a bold statement.
• 7:14
  Jimmy Nelson: As I sit here in front of you in front of the computer and I can see myself sort of bald as um, I've spent the whole of my life perhaps if I'm being very honest, it's very early in the morning here, but I'm now somewhat more focused than last time wanting to feel beautiful.
• 7:30
  Jimmy Nelson: But it's not beautiful in the aesthetic, it's beautiful in the validity.
• 7:34
  Jimmy Nelson: I think I felt beautiful as a child, and please bear with me and the audience.
• 7:39
  Jimmy Nelson: When we refer to beauty and when you ask me, what is it?
• 7:41
  Jimmy Nelson: It's a feeling.
• 7:41
  Jimmy Nelson: Beauty is validity, beauty is being seen, beauty is whole to beauty.
• 7:43
  Jimmy Nelson: But it, and when you ask me, what is it?
• 7:43
  Jimmy Nelson: It's a, it's a feeling.
• 7:44
  Jimmy Nelson: Beauty is validity, beauty is being seen, beauty is whole, beauty is wealth and up until the age of seven I really felt that.
• 7:52
  Jimmy Nelson: So I can remember very clearly how my early childhood was.
• 7:55
  Jimmy Nelson: I traveled extensively.
• 7:56
  Jimmy Nelson: I had an enormous privilege because of my father's work internationally and then, between the years of 7 and 17, I was in an internet, a boarding school in the uk, and that's when that, that journey, that concept of being attached to my beauty, my humanity, stops and a different journey started, through early childhood experiences that weren't that positive.
• 8:19
  Jimmy Nelson: I ran away when I was 17.
• 8:22
  Jimmy Nelson: I ran away back into the world, back into all the world's far, furthest and most remote locations, to redefine and rediscover my place, my beauty.
• 8:33
  Jimmy Nelson: I don't think I ever will see it or discover it.
• 8:36
  Jimmy Nelson: Somebody the other day asked me isn't the ultimate journey, jimmy, you make?
• 8:39
  Jimmy Nelson: Start making self-portraits, self-portraits Now.
• 8:46
  Jimmy Nelson: It took me 25 years after the age of 16 to dare to look in a mirror after my hair had fallen out one night and never came back.
• 8:48
  Jimmy Nelson: So I don't know whether I'll ever get that far, but I am beginning to start feeling again and I am beginning to feel held and it's very important for me to feel loved.
• 9:00
  Jimmy Nelson: But that's in the process of making the picture.
• 9:05
  Jimmy Nelson: I, I crawl, I beg, in most cases at the feet of others, uh, uh, to, to, to, to be acknowledged, to be seen, to be trusted and to let me in, let me into their world.
• 9:19
  Jimmy Nelson: Let me into their life, let me into their being, let me into their humanity, let me into their wealth of understanding, their wealth of existence, their traditions, their, their aesthetic, their, their balance, their ability to own their space.
• 9:32
  Jimmy Nelson: Um, that's the obsession.
• 9:35
  Jimmy Nelson: So it is is a lifelong search for beauty.
• 9:38
  Jimmy Nelson: Can I?
• 9:39
  Jimmy Nelson: I don't know ever whether I ever will, and perhaps that's the thrill.
• 9:44
  Jimmy Nelson: That's why it's unending and that's why I have these sort of unending, sleepless nights.
• 9:48
  Jimmy Nelson: The journey has to be sustainable, to get closer and closer to, perhaps one day, that that beauty that I see and I really do see it and I'm convinced it exists will one day reflect back on me, and I will dare to say that I feel the same.
• 10:02
  Jimmy Nelson: What is?
• 10:04
  Matt Jacob: it about the other people.
• 10:06
  Matt Jacob: What is it about?
• 10:07
  Matt Jacob: You know you and I shoot similar types of subjects.
• 10:10
  Matt Jacob: You weigh more and probably more in depth, but I know why I'm kind of curious in those types of subjects.
• 10:17
  Matt Jacob: I think I know there's probably a lot of subconscious layers underneath there, stemming back to childhood.
• 10:22
  Matt Jacob: Is that?
• 10:23
  Matt Jacob: And you talk about your childhood and you know your childhood and you know share what you want, um, but it do you think a lot of this kind of interest in something so different to you and wanting to not necessarily fit in but be part of that, belong in it and get into that world.
• 10:38
  Matt Jacob: Is that something that's followed you from trauma and early childhood?
• 10:43
  Matt Jacob: Or is that something that you that emanated from you in in adulthood, where you kind of figured out what you wanted to photograph I'll take you there, I'll take the audience there.
• 10:52
  Jimmy Nelson: It's very much based on childhood, but I want to be very careful and not lean on it too much.
• 10:57
  Jimmy Nelson: It's not.
• 10:58
  Jimmy Nelson: We all have our experiences.
• 11:00
  Jimmy Nelson: We all have our moments that formed us by default.
• 11:04
  Jimmy Nelson: What happened to me and I'll share it, uh, has ended up enabling me to have an extraordinarily beautiful existence being in the world, with the world, with humanity, up until the age of seven, feeling very safe, feeling seen, seen, not feeling judged, not being hurt, not being punished, not being fed or indoctrinated with guilt.
• 11:28
  Jimmy Nelson: I lived in I don't know.
• 11:30
  Jimmy Nelson: We lived in the Congo, nigeria, papua New Guinea, iran, tehran, afghanistan, pakistan, venezuela, all before the age of seven.
• 11:37
  Jimmy Nelson: It didn't matter where I was or how people looked or how they dressed or how they spoke.
• 11:42
  Jimmy Nelson: I was cool and they were cool and I was completely unaware of the other.
• 11:47
  Jimmy Nelson: They were just me and my mates.
• 11:49
  Jimmy Nelson: At the age of seven, I sent to this institution thanks to a couple of Catholic Jesuit priests.
• 11:55
  Jimmy Nelson: They indoctrinated me with something else you are not worthy, you are not beautiful, we are going to make you suffer and it's your fault.
• 12:03
  Jimmy Nelson: So an institution and a group of people that were meant to protect me, meant to educate me, meant to bring me from childhood into adulthood safely.
• 12:13
  Jimmy Nelson: The opposite happened.
• 12:16
  Jimmy Nelson: I disconnected from that beauty, I disconnected from that trust and I have, and I am still living, a lifelong journey of guilt.
• 12:25
  Jimmy Nelson: It's all my fault, I am not worthy.
• 12:28
  Jimmy Nelson: Uh, that's.
• 12:31
  Jimmy Nelson: That was the, the beginning.
• 12:33
  Jimmy Nelson: At the age of seven, the teenage years.
• 12:37
  Jimmy Nelson: You disconnect from it, you bury it.
• 12:38
  Jimmy Nelson: One morning I woke up with no hair, uh, all to do with stress and a little bit of the wrong medicine and malaria.
• 12:44
  Jimmy Nelson: Then you, it's your coming out moment, you are ugly.
• 12:47
  Jimmy Nelson: That's how I felt.
• 12:49
  Jimmy Nelson: I wasn't necessarily told, but it's the, the story I indoctrinated myself with.
• 12:53
  Jimmy Nelson: And it's my fault.
• 12:56
  Jimmy Nelson: I was never dark insofar as wanting to sort of end the journey.
• 13:00
  Jimmy Nelson: I wanted to begin the journey again.
• 13:01
  Jimmy Nelson: I wanted to reconnect with the, the beauty, the wealth.
• 13:05
  Jimmy Nelson: And this comes back to reconnect with the beauty, the wealth.
• 13:06
  Jimmy Nelson: And this comes back to your question what am I looking for in the other?
• 13:08
  Jimmy Nelson: But I felt as a child.
• 13:10
  Jimmy Nelson: I didn't understand it when I was seven, but I felt something very aligned.
• 13:14
  Jimmy Nelson: I felt something where I was in flight, I was capable, and I spent the whole of my life trying to get back into that zone, into that space, and I think that space is not necessarily I'm.
• 13:25
  Jimmy Nelson: I didn't study.
• 13:26
  Jimmy Nelson: I haven't studied since the age of 17.
• 13:28
  Jimmy Nelson: I ran away, spent the better part of three years in tibet, between 17 and 19, with my first camera, and that's how the journey began.
• 13:35
  Jimmy Nelson: There's this lifelong autodidact learning of uh.
• 13:42
  Jimmy Nelson: Coming back to the question at the beginning what is human, what is being connected?
• 13:48
  Jimmy Nelson: And it's only until you understand what it is to be connected that you can feel that beauty and that validity and that wish to be a sustainable, healthy human being for the short period of time that we're blessed to be here on this planet.
• 14:01
  Jimmy Nelson: And the closer, the more I invest in the other, the more I invest in the often it could be seen as the misunderstood or the hidden, the more I realize that perhaps their humanity is something that we're seriously losing in the west.
• 14:17
  Jimmy Nelson: Uh, and as we evolve and as we develop and it's been going on throughout history as we get more, more, more technological, more, digital, more and these are many conversations that you have where we're leaving that we're going further and further and further and further away from that, that feeling, that humanity.
• 14:38
  Jimmy Nelson: I was taken away from that when I was seven, brutally, I died in a way, and I've been trying to realign my two states of being the dead j Jimmy and the alive Jimmy back into one whole Jimmy that feels, that's aware of the experiences that they had in the past.
• 14:54
  Jimmy Nelson: And I use, to be honest, I use the learning, I use the wisdom, I use the kindness, the inclusion, the warmth, the caring, the laughter Very important, we don't laugh here anymore.
• 15:09
  Jimmy Nelson: Our egos are so fucking big.
• 15:11
  Jimmy Nelson: Nobody.
• 15:14
  Jimmy Nelson: You know the simplicity of the other, you know I'm very selfish, I have to admit and I use them to come back to that humanity, to dare to feel that Jimmy is okay, jimmy is a sustainable, potentially on good days when he slept well, happy human being to get closer and closer and closer and closer and closer till we sort of become one whereby the wisdom that an enormous amount of these indigenous communities that I meet have ends up sort of reflecting.
• 15:54
  Jimmy Nelson: I sponge it up.
• 15:55
  Jimmy Nelson: So that's sort of what I'm looking for.
• 15:59
  Jimmy Nelson: Align with that, there is an aesthetic, there is photography, there is art, there's a story, there are books, there are exhibitions.
• 16:04
  Jimmy Nelson: But at the very top of the cake fortunately or unfortunately, I have to admit it's very much about me, yeah.
• 16:13
  Matt Jacob: What about?
• 16:14
  Matt Jacob: What has photographing these types of people, photographing the human spirit, humanity, whatever kind of label we want to put on it, and I think you touched upon a little bit there collective humanity.
• 16:27
  Matt Jacob: But what is your process in this, and kind of finding yourself, almost, and finding that beauty in yourself?
• 16:33
  Matt Jacob: What has it taught you about collective humanity as a society, as a global population, and the interconnectedness of all of our stories?
• 16:43
  Jimmy Nelson: Well, big question Whether I have a succinct, one profound answer.
• 16:48
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm not sure.
• 16:48
  Jimmy Nelson: We're all valid, we need each other and all those stories have to be collated and collected.
• 16:57
  Jimmy Nelson: I think the simplistic way of looking at it is how I think it was.
• 17:03
  Jimmy Nelson: The other day I read or heard that by the year 2050, 80 to 85% of global humanity will live in a conurbation.
• 17:12
  Jimmy Nelson: So, in fact we're leaving and leaving, leaving the natural world.
• 17:16
  Jimmy Nelson: As we leave the natural world, we stop having respect for it, understanding for it, kindness for it, a care for it, having respect for it, understanding for it, kindness for it, a care for it and the global collective knowledge that by far the majority of the communities that I visit have.
• 17:34
  Jimmy Nelson: They have that wisdom, they have that awareness of how one can live aligned with the natural world, whereby one has a humility One isn't bigger or better, one is in service of.
• 17:45
  Jimmy Nelson: So I always say that in in the developed world, where I am here in the netherlands, it's you know, come on natural world.
• 17:53
  Jimmy Nelson: You know you're in service from us.
• 17:54
  Jimmy Nelson: You know you gotta you're.
• 17:57
  Jimmy Nelson: Most one immerses oneself in the, the developing indigenous world.
• 18:00
  Jimmy Nelson: It's the other way around.
• 18:00
  Jimmy Nelson: You wake up, as you've experienced, I'm sure, many of your listeners.
• 18:02
  Jimmy Nelson: Often you wake up with the chickens at four o'clock in the.
• 18:03
  Jimmy Nelson: It's the other way around.
• 18:04
  Jimmy Nelson: You wake up, as you've experienced, and I'm sure many of you are listeners often you wake up with the chickens at four o'clock in the morning.
• 18:08
  Jimmy Nelson: It's still dark, the village is rustling.
• 18:10
  Jimmy Nelson: Everybody wakes up in this sort of almost sort of meditative state of how are we going to care for the ground, the earth, the world.
• 18:20
  Jimmy Nelson: Today, before the light arrives, they're busy for hours respecting we are here in service for you.
• 18:26
  Jimmy Nelson: How can you keep providing for us as the light of the day arises and the day begins?
• 18:33
  Jimmy Nelson: It's the complete inverse, and each of these communities have different rituals, different traditions, different ways and different awareness of how they have to be kind to the world around them that will sustain them.
• 18:45
  Jimmy Nelson: As a result of that, I find and I feel a harmony, a humility, a balanced and a total submission.
• 18:54
  Jimmy Nelson: Whenever I leave and I disappear deep into the jungle or high up into the mountains or lost in the desert, there's a silence, there's a silence of humility.
• 19:04
  Jimmy Nelson: And then I walk humbly behind, often with a camera, in the footsteps of the people who walk in balance with that natural world, and I wish, I wish I could take I don't need to take you, I know you take yourself.
• 19:18
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm sure the majority of the listeners also take themselves but the greater world into that state of being, into that place of humility, into that place of of humility, into that place of awe, into that place of wonder.
• 19:29
  Jimmy Nelson: And and again, the camera is just the bridge to take me on that journey yeah, fascinating.
• 19:35
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, I, I often think that as well.
• 19:38
  Matt Jacob: But there's also a beauty in other people not sharing.
• 19:41
  Matt Jacob: It's kind of there's that selfish thing.
• 19:43
  Matt Jacob: Oh no, this is it's just for me to experience.
• 19:45
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, I'd love to show people what, what other real beauty, simplicity, other, just other educational ways of life that we can learn from to make ourselves better people.
• 19:56
  Matt Jacob: But also, hopefully through a portal such as the camera, other people, inspire other people, maybe educate other people.
• 20:02
  Matt Jacob: But yeah, I think I, I do think about the more remote I go, the more I'm like, oh, people need to see this.
• 20:07
  Matt Jacob: But then I'm like I'm no they don't.
• 20:10
  Jimmy Nelson: Yeah, I'm um, doing something which for me, is, I find, very brave.
• 20:15
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm not too and this is no disrespect for you or to all the male listeners I'm not too enamored with male company.
• 20:21
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm not going to point a finger who I'm going to blame for that, when I was a child, but anyway yeah and so this summer I'm going to do something I've never done before.
• 20:29
  Jimmy Nelson: Uh, I have three kids uh 28, 24 and 22 and I'm taking my son, who's 24.
• 20:36
  Jimmy Nelson: Two years ago.
• 20:37
  Jimmy Nelson: I needed to reconnect with him.
• 20:39
  Jimmy Nelson: I've divorced from his mother about 10 years ago and they grew up as teenagers and obviously there was a need for a reconnect and I was sort of you need to understand me.
• 20:47
  Jimmy Nelson: You know you are heavily indoctrinated as to who you think I am, but that's not the case and you will see me in my, in my my highest state of being on the road, so to speak.
• 20:57
  Jimmy Nelson: So I eventually persuaded my son two years ago to come with me to northern pakistan, to the karakoram, and we went seriously hiking, we went on a motorbike trip up into the wakham valley of afghanistan and it was mind-blowing.
• 21:09
  Jimmy Nelson: We reconnected and he sort of said I get it, dad, I get it, you know.
• 21:13
  Jimmy Nelson: So this summer he myself, he and nine of his friends were going for a month-long hike through the karakoram and they're all terrified.
• 21:23
  Jimmy Nelson: He's persuaded them.
• 21:26
  Jimmy Nelson: They're all in their twenties, he's persuaded them.
• 21:28
  Jimmy Nelson: And luckily I have some phenomenal uh, balti guys who are going to look after me, because I don't think I can look after them, but he's persuaded them to come on this journey.
• 21:35
  Jimmy Nelson: Come with me and my dad, yeah, and we're going to go off into the, into the wild wonders of the natural world.
• 21:42
  Jimmy Nelson: That's thrilling A group of men.
• 21:45
  Jimmy Nelson: First time for me in 40 years to be in an intimate situation with a group of other men.
• 21:51
  Jimmy Nelson: But in some of the world's well, not some the highest mountains in the world.
• 21:54
  Jimmy Nelson: In northern Pakistan there are 180 mountains over 7,000 meters.
• 21:58
  Jimmy Nelson: I mean unbelievably epic.
• 22:00
  Jimmy Nelson: There are people that live within those mountains, and so I'm daring to do something at a sort of middle stage of my life that I've always wanted to do not just make pictures, but take people with me, take them into that environment and take them on the journey that I've been, sort of I am still on, ever since that I can remember.
• 22:20
  Jimmy Nelson: So I'm very, very excited about that and, which is interesting, I'm not going to take a camera.
• 22:27
  Jimmy Nelson: They're all.
• 22:27
  Jimmy Nelson: They're all photographers and filmmakers and painters and artists and writers and poets, and I've decided to, to, to not necessarily guide them, but to watch them and be.
• 22:38
  Jimmy Nelson: They're all substantially younger than I, am far, terrifyingly, far more capable.
• 22:45
  Jimmy Nelson: I sort of hide behind you.
• 22:47
  Jimmy Nelson: I use these 10 by 8 analog cameras and they're all looking at me going.
• 22:49
  Jimmy Nelson: You know that's your problem.
• 22:50
  Jimmy Nelson: So, which is also another journey, how can I be reintroduced to this world that I love and the people that live in it, but without a medium in my hands?
• 23:04
  Jimmy Nelson: And let them guide me, let them show me?
• 23:06
  Jimmy Nelson: So I'm terrified, but very, very excited.
• 23:10
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, is there something?
• 23:12
  Matt Jacob: Without trying to analyze this too deeply, but because I know this from a personal experience, sometimes the camera is a, is a, a conduit for me, or at least a barrier between me and the outside world.
• 23:26
  Matt Jacob: Not a barrier, but it's a kind of a paradoxical barrier where I can connect with other people, but there's also then there's something in between me and someone else.
• 23:33
  Matt Jacob: So it's your normal projects where you go, you know, all over the place, in some of the most remote places in the world.
• 23:41
  Matt Jacob: Do you feel like that's a form of therapy?
• 23:43
  Matt Jacob: Do like you're?
• 23:44
  Matt Jacob: That's still kind of a way for you to just feel better.
• 23:48
  Matt Jacob: I know you talked about feeling earlier, but do you think you're on a process of, you know, a therapeutic journey with the camera?
• 23:56
  Matt Jacob: Do you see it like that at all?
• 23:58
  Jimmy Nelson: if I'm being honest yes, I mean I don't think I can ever get away from that narrative, but it's, hopefully it's evolving into a healthy therapeutic journey.
• 24:10
  Jimmy Nelson: So the best way that I can describe it is the evolution of, of the medium, my understanding of the medium.
• 24:17
  Jimmy Nelson: I always used to and this is the guilt and I'm not worthy issue from the past I'm not a photographer and I'm not good.
• 24:24
  Jimmy Nelson: And it's not about photography.
• 24:28
  Jimmy Nelson: Well, I have to admit I love photography, I love the medium and I'm aspiring to be good at it.
• 24:35
  Jimmy Nelson: Aspiring it will always be subjective, but I'm beginning to really, really enjoy it.
• 24:41
  Jimmy Nelson: So I don't feel now that I'm hiding behind it.
• 24:47
  Jimmy Nelson: I think perhaps I did in the past.
• 24:48
  Jimmy Nelson: Now I'm living with it, I'm owning it, I'm holding it, I'm loving it, I'm caring for it, I'm letting it care for me.
• 24:54
  Jimmy Nelson: And in the last five years the transition I've gone deep back into analog.
• 25:00
  Jimmy Nelson: I had a friend of mine design a portable 10x8 analog plate camera, a young Italian designer.
• 25:08
  Jimmy Nelson: It's epic when you meet these young people who are far more capable than we will ever be.
• 25:11
  Jimmy Nelson: And I had this idea and he's built it.
• 25:13
  Jimmy Nelson: I take that with me.
• 25:16
  Jimmy Nelson: I take a limited number of sheets.
• 25:18
  Jimmy Nelson: Obviously, it's extremely expensive.
• 25:20
  Jimmy Nelson: But it's also that narrowing down of the moment.
• 25:23
  Jimmy Nelson: When you expose the film, you don't arrive somewhere and just spray and pray.
• 25:27
  Jimmy Nelson: It takes days, sometimes weeks, before you even expose one plate.
• 25:31
  Jimmy Nelson: And you're not.
• 25:32
  Jimmy Nelson: When you make the image.
• 25:34
  Jimmy Nelson: You're not standing behind the camera.
• 25:35
  Jimmy Nelson: You're next to the camera, as every photographer knows.
• 25:39
  Jimmy Nelson: You've you've set the camera up, you've attached the lens, uh, aligned it, focused it with a hood over your head.
• 25:47
  Jimmy Nelson: It's upside down and back to front, and then when you expose the image, you're looking at the subject.
• 25:52
  Jimmy Nelson: You're not hiding behind the camera.
• 25:53
  Jimmy Nelson: And I do that on my own.
• 25:56
  Jimmy Nelson: We were talking about just before we started talking.
• 25:58
  Jimmy Nelson: I don't take assistance.
• 25:59
  Jimmy Nelson: It's my burden, my suffering that I've got to carry all this gear up the mountains across the, it's a whole other story.
• 26:06
  Jimmy Nelson: And when I'm there sweating and sort of crying and bleeding, and then it's all set up and there's that one sheet, you know, and 10 by eights, you know about this big and uh, am I going to expose that?
• 26:17
  Jimmy Nelson: Am I not going to expose it?
• 26:19
  Jimmy Nelson: Uh, it needs three seconds.
• 26:20
  Jimmy Nelson: There's eight guys standing under a waterfall in the middle of nowhere.
• 26:23
  Jimmy Nelson: I'll never come back here again.
• 26:24
  Jimmy Nelson: I'll never find it again um, do I dare?
• 26:28
  Jimmy Nelson: And?
• 26:30
  Jimmy Nelson: And when you put the image in, you're looking and you're in total focus with the waterfall, with the light, with the guys standing in front of you, that they've all got to be looking at you and I'm looking at them.
• 26:39
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm not hiding behind anything.
• 26:41
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm totally naked, I'm totally vulnerable.
• 26:45
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm totally in the zone, in the space, in the moment, daring to expose that film which I will not see for another one and a half months.
• 26:52
  Jimmy Nelson: Did or I didn't, I get the picture.
• 26:55
  Jimmy Nelson: And so, to answer your question, I'm not hiding behind the camera anymore.
• 26:59
  Jimmy Nelson: I think I did.
• 27:00
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm embracing the camera, I'm embracing the medium, I'm embracing the moment'm I'm embracing the camera, I'm embracing the medium, I'm embracing the moment, I'm embracing the subject, I'm aspiring to be all one.
• 27:09
  Jimmy Nelson: The camera is there.
• 27:10
  Jimmy Nelson: The camera is the validation of the journey, but it's become much more.
• 27:15
  Jimmy Nelson: It's become an obsession of the aesthetic, of the art.
• 27:20
  Jimmy Nelson: Can I record the feeling, that humanity, that I feel where I'm aligned?
• 27:25
  Jimmy Nelson: It's taken me one and a half months to get into this location.
• 27:27
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm physically more connected with the environment than I've ever been before, with my vulnerability, with my need to make that picture, all the senses they raise and raise, and raise and raise, until it becomes a cacophony of alignment it's just the best way to describe it and I'm buzzing.
• 27:48
  Jimmy Nelson: And then you know, you expose the picture and you're looking at everybody you're not looking through the camera and all five of them didn't blink and didn't move and you go I think I have it and you, I mean I'm not going to use this sort of, I'm not going to refer to a sort of orgas, but it could be it actually goes far beyond that.
• 28:04
  Jimmy Nelson: And it's a high and I scream and I run to them and I hug them and they hug me and they're not quite sure what all the excitement's about.
• 28:14
  Jimmy Nelson: But I've obsessively been looking at them for weeks on end and I think I saw you.
• 28:20
  Jimmy Nelson: I think I saw you, I think I've recorded you in the highest aesthetic that I could in that moment, and I want to share this beauty with the world.
• 28:30
  Jimmy Nelson: And it's total ecstasy when you strip yourself down.
• 28:35
  Jimmy Nelson: You dare be in that moment and you dare want to believe that you have that image.
• 28:41
  Jimmy Nelson: Your emotions are shared, they become mutual and more often than not I don't know whether you've ever experienced this parties ensue and you're in the middle of nowhere and these epic parties start happening Because we're one.
• 28:56
  Jimmy Nelson: I saw you, I saw you, I saw you.
• 28:59
  Jimmy Nelson: I saw you in your highest state of being and we can't see the picture's no polaroid, there's no computer I never take laptops with me but we're in the moment.
• 29:09
  Jimmy Nelson: I saw you.
• 29:10
  Jimmy Nelson: And then as a result.
• 29:12
  Jimmy Nelson: As a result, you know, and what I'm looking for and this is the selfish journey is, jimmy, we see you, you're one of us, don't leave.
• 29:20
  Jimmy Nelson: And then I, then I melt, that I invariably cry because I'm exhausted and I feel safe, I feel held.
• 29:28
  Jimmy Nelson: I feel held by humanity and it doesn't matter where it is, whatever dangers there could have been in reaching these destinations or indoctrination of the potential, jane, there's kindness and this humanity, these very rich, valid, knowledgeable human beings holding me and say we see you, you're different from us, that we're not here to hurt you, we're not here to punish you, we're here to see you and hold you.
• 29:56
  Jimmy Nelson: And that's sort of the bridge to what is humanity.
• 30:01
  Jimmy Nelson: Humanity is love, without being all airy-fairy and putting candles on my head and coming in in a few minutes wearing white robes.
• 30:07
  Jimmy Nelson: Yes, I'm a little bit down to earth, but it is.
• 30:11
  Jimmy Nelson: It's all about love and I think if we as human beings I've got to give a talk next week for a whole lot of politicians here in the Netherlands and they'll go yeah, you're going to give us the.
• 30:25
  Jimmy Nelson: We need to make a 10-year plan for humanity, jimmy.
• 30:26
  Jimmy Nelson: First of all, I have to do it in dutch, which is quite complicated.
• 30:28
  Jimmy Nelson: And then you know, 10-year plan for humanity, you know.
• 30:30
  Jimmy Nelson: And then majority of these politicians, you know I hope none of them watch this podcast um are sort of somewhere.
• 30:36
  Jimmy Nelson: You know like politicians are, and I'm going.
• 30:39
  Jimmy Nelson: You know how on earth?
• 30:41
  Jimmy Nelson: First of all, we have no idea what's going to happen in 10 this time.
• 30:43
  Jimmy Nelson: But how on earth can you care about anybody else or have any understanding of anybody?
• 30:48
  Jimmy Nelson: Well, look at yourself in the mirror Again.
• 30:50
  Jimmy Nelson: I don't mean to be unkind, I don't mean to point fingers, I don't mean to Come on, fatty.
• 30:56
  Jimmy Nelson: It's not about fatty, but it's do you love yourself?
• 30:58
  Jimmy Nelson: Just joking.
• 30:59
  Jimmy Nelson: Do you love yourself?
• 31:00
  Jimmy Nelson: Are you in this role for the greater glory of humanity?
• 31:06
  Jimmy Nelson: Are you in this role for your own ego?
• 31:07
  Jimmy Nelson: Reflect on yourself.
• 31:08
  Jimmy Nelson: If you dare to love yourself and if you dare to give yourself a 10 year plan.
• 31:13
  Jimmy Nelson: I, ex-politician, want to be in 10 years time.
• 31:16
  Jimmy Nelson: The only way you can do that at middle age and I'll tell you about to the age of 56 is you've got to look after yourself.
• 31:21
  Jimmy Nelson: Only when you align with that and love that and embrace that can you embrace the other or have an opinion or care about the other.
• 31:28
  Jimmy Nelson: So, yeah, I use again bridging back to the camera, to again to be careful at this time in the morning, to love myself, to be kind to myself, to say, jimmy, it's not your fault that you feel this or you look like this or you carry this guilt.
• 31:46
  Jimmy Nelson: You're okay.
• 31:47
  Jimmy Nelson: You're okay.
• 31:48
  Jimmy Nelson: Just keep doing what you're doing and love what you're doing and celebrate what you're doing.
• 31:52
  Jimmy Nelson: And you're just a photographer, you have no qualifications.
• 31:55
  Jimmy Nelson: Guilt, guilt, guilt.
• 31:56
  Jimmy Nelson: But that's enough.
• 31:57
  Jimmy Nelson: That's enough.
• 31:58
  Jimmy Nelson: You're allowed to carry on in that process.
• 32:00
  Jimmy Nelson: You're not an anthropologist, you're not a politician, you just love humanity and you're doing that because you're trying to love yourself.
• 32:08
  Jimmy Nelson: It's a very, very, very simple, simple, simple journey.
• 32:11
  Jimmy Nelson: It's become my obsessive journey, but it's not very complicated, and I would love other people to not necessarily pick up a 10 by 8 camera and disappear off into the jungle.
• 32:20
  Jimmy Nelson: It's complicated, but to dare to go on that, that, that that creative journey of discovery but it's a discovery of self.
• 32:27
  Jimmy Nelson: Why do I need to do what I need to do?
• 32:29
  Jimmy Nelson: How can I sustain it?
• 32:31
  Jimmy Nelson: And if it's involving other human beings, how can I uh, learn, feel, align, be inspired?
• 32:38
  Matt Jacob: yeah, I think there's.
• 32:40
  Matt Jacob: There's so much to learn from what you're just talking about.
• 32:43
  Matt Jacob: The phrase I think I saw you really resonated with me.
• 32:45
  Matt Jacob: I haven't really heard it explained that way before, but it makes total sense, certainly from portrait photographers, you know, you just get it.
• 32:56
  Matt Jacob: Not only are you able to see other people, but you are also to see yours.
• 33:02
  Matt Jacob: You're able to see yourself more, I mean you.
• 33:04
  Matt Jacob: Sometimes I just react in the way, in ways I never knew I could react, you know, or could behave in most, hopefully, good ways.
• 33:12
  Matt Jacob: But it's really fascinating that symbiosis between seeing other people, allowing this camera to, to kind of formulate that, allow you to be present in that moment.
• 33:24
  Jimmy Nelson: I think it's such an underrated uh power not power, but it's very powerful, I should say.
• 33:35
  Jimmy Nelson: But yeah, go on.
• 33:36
  Jimmy Nelson: Thank you.
• 33:36
  Jimmy Nelson: I don't know whether I related this story the other day when we did our pre pre pre podcast, which is hopefully down the pin.
• 33:41
  Jimmy Nelson: Um, something happened to me not so long ago.
• 33:44
  Jimmy Nelson: This is the, the, the antithesis of of seeing this story, and.
• 33:49
  Jimmy Nelson: But I don't have a picture, I don't have a name, I don't have a telephone number, I only have a memory of a few minutes.
• 33:56
  Jimmy Nelson: But it's all about this obsessive uh, uh curiosity of the other and humility.
• 34:03
  Jimmy Nelson: What can I keep learning by connecting with the other?
• 34:07
  Jimmy Nelson: Not so long ago, here in the winter in the netherlands, I was on a station platform very early in the morning.
• 34:11
  Jimmy Nelson: I didn't really want to be there.
• 34:13
  Jimmy Nelson: It was 6 30, wet, cold, rainy, as it invariably is.
• 34:17
  Jimmy Nelson: Here in the netherlands, not like in bali, everybody's wearing black, including me.
• 34:20
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm, for one stupid reason, another got a big bicycle.
• 34:23
  Jimmy Nelson: I want to carry onto the train and at the other end of the platform there's a, a red person wearing a red coat, and I'm sort of a bit curious, as always, and I'm a bit half sleepy.
• 34:34
  Jimmy Nelson: And red coat at 6 30 in the morning in november on a station platform in the netherlands are you mad, you know?
• 34:41
  Jimmy Nelson: Well, you know, we should all be with our head in our telephones in the darkness and I said, oh, wow.
• 34:47
  Jimmy Nelson: And I looked a bit closer, very beautiful woman, forgive me said wow, interesting.
• 34:53
  Jimmy Nelson: So I sort of well, you know, okay.
• 34:55
  Jimmy Nelson: And then the the curious sort of what on earth is somebody's making an effort here and I want to understand why.
• 35:01
  Jimmy Nelson: So I sort of fought the crowd, put my bike on the train, everybody's huffing and puffing and grunting and being very direct and very dutch I'm one of them now, by the way, so don't worry, I'm not judging park my bike, sort of walk down a couple of carriages and there at the end of the carousel is a lady sitting and uh, great coincidence this is serendipity, I love serendipity there's the only chair that's empty opposite her.
• 35:28
  Jimmy Nelson: So I said I'm gonna go and sit there.
• 35:30
  Jimmy Nelson: So I sat down opposite it's not that I'm some sort of, you know, overly confident, uh sort of gigolo, but just curious of the other sat opposite her and within seconds of sitting I understood why I'd sat there.
• 35:42
  Jimmy Nelson: She was sitting very straight, a little bit like a sort of Mary Poppins figure, very classically dressed, tight jacket, flowers in her hair, beautiful colors, and she was sort of waving from side to side, a little bit like Stevie Wonder.
• 35:56
  Jimmy Nelson: And then she started folding a white stick and she put the white stick on her lap and then it clicked.
• 36:03
  Jimmy Nelson: She's blind, okay.
• 36:06
  Jimmy Nelson: So now this is interesting.
• 36:07
  Jimmy Nelson: So now you know you're thinking I knew there was a reason, I knew there was a reason.
• 36:13
  Jimmy Nelson: And then the story evolves and then she, in a very high, beautifully pitched Dutch voice, says I need somebody's help.
• 36:20
  Jimmy Nelson: Everybody cringes.
• 36:23
  Jimmy Nelson: And she says I need your help like this because today's a special day and people are looking but sort of cringing, and you know, oh, my god, you're not going to talk to each other this time.
• 36:35
  Jimmy Nelson: In the morning people are turning up with olive.
• 36:36
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm going on a date.
• 36:39
  Jimmy Nelson: As you can see, I've made an enormous effort today to look.
• 36:43
  Jimmy Nelson: I've got my heels on, but I need to get out of the station platform further down and I've never been there before.
• 36:48
  Jimmy Nelson: So no white stick's going to help me get anywhere.
• 36:50
  Jimmy Nelson: So I need somebody's help to get off the train.
• 36:52
  Jimmy Nelson: Nobody replies.
• 36:54
  Jimmy Nelson: Nobody replies, including me.
• 36:57
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm sort of dumbfounded again, first of all not knowing where she needs to get off and I've got my bike, so I'm not going to abandon my bike and help this beautiful lady off the train.
• 37:05
  Jimmy Nelson: So I'm quiet, her surroundings are quiet and then she's sort of flustered, but also, you know, accepting.
• 37:14
  Jimmy Nelson: Well, here we go again.
• 37:15
  Jimmy Nelson: You know, this is the way of the world.
• 37:17
  Jimmy Nelson: Doesn't look like there's anybody else sitting on the train with me.
• 37:20
  Jimmy Nelson: Doesn't look like there's anybody else sitting on the train with me here today.
• 37:23
  Jimmy Nelson: I suppose I'll just have to look after myself.
• 37:25
  Jimmy Nelson: Like always, it's okay.
• 37:27
  Jimmy Nelson: So she's rummaging in her handbag and she pulls out a pair of headphones on a cable and they're in a knot.
• 37:36
  Jimmy Nelson: And then I said, I leaned across and said excuse me, I'm Jimmy.
• 37:40
  Jimmy Nelson: I don't know where you're going and I don't think I can get off the train and help you, but I can help you untangle your headphones.
• 37:47
  Jimmy Nelson: And she goes oh, finally somebody to talk to.
• 37:50
  Jimmy Nelson: So I sort of untangling the headphones and then I sort of gather a little bit of bravery.
• 37:56
  Jimmy Nelson: I said can I, can I ask you a question please?
• 37:58
  Jimmy Nelson: And she starts to smile.
• 37:59
  Jimmy Nelson: She says yeah, I love questions.
• 38:01
  Jimmy Nelson: And I said I noticed you earlier and I was a little bit confused.
• 38:10
  Jimmy Nelson: Where and why has all this effort come from?
• 38:11
  Jimmy Nelson: Where do you, where do you find the daring to to be so beautiful?
• 38:13
  Jimmy Nelson: I simply said look at us, look at this carriage.
• 38:17
  Jimmy Nelson: And you said you're going on a date, but I'm sure there are other reasons.
• 38:22
  Jimmy Nelson: And she started to beam from end to end of her mouth.
• 38:25
  Jimmy Nelson: It was wonderful to watch.
• 38:27
  Jimmy Nelson: Everybody starts now listening and looking up from not that they have newspapers anymore, but from their telephones she goes thank you for asking.
• 38:35
  Jimmy Nelson: You know, this is epic.
• 38:37
  Jimmy Nelson: She says I know I'm beautiful, but I haven't seen for 25 years.
• 38:43
  Jimmy Nelson: But I feel beautiful.
• 38:47
  Jimmy Nelson: Many, many years ago, when I was a young child, my mom came up and said you know, sweetie, you're slowly going blind.
• 38:53
  Jimmy Nelson: You'll never see again, but that's okay.
• 38:55
  Jimmy Nelson: You're going to go on a journey most people will never go on.
• 38:58
  Jimmy Nelson: We're going to discover what your real, real beauty is and when you connect with that, this will carry through your life and it doesn't matter whether you can, you can't see.
• 39:06
  Jimmy Nelson: So that's the journey.
• 39:08
  Jimmy Nelson: She went on with her mother and she said today I wake up every morning and I invest.
• 39:13
  Jimmy Nelson: Obviously, people taught me how to do it.
• 39:15
  Jimmy Nelson: I invest in looking beautiful.
• 39:16
  Jimmy Nelson: Today is an exception because I'm going to meet somebody, but there's not one day in my life that people don't come up to me blindly, using a metaphor, on the street and thank me for my beauty.
• 39:28
  Jimmy Nelson: She stood up.
• 39:29
  Jimmy Nelson: As she stood up, three other men got up and said we need to help you.
• 39:32
  Jimmy Nelson: So they grabbed her, they sort of carried her and she sort of floated across the platform, up the escalator and I sat behind in the train.
• 39:37
  Jimmy Nelson: I hadn't made a picture, I hadn't got a number, I didn't know her name, I just listened to her story and I had envy beyond your wildest imagination.
• 39:46
  Jimmy Nelson: Here's somebody who has I have all the assets, I have all the privilege, perhaps missing a little bit of hair, that's it.
• 39:52
  Jimmy Nelson: And here's somebody who hasn't seen for 25 years and she felt beautiful and she was beautiful and she is beautiful and and that's that journey, that's what I'm looking for, that incessant curiosity, to be in stories, to be with humanity, to be searching, to be looking for answers and learning as you go, realizing you'll never get there to know it and learn from it.
• 40:26
  Jimmy Nelson: Whether it's in papua new guinea or wherever, or on a train in rainy netherlands, those stories are all there and that so it's.
• 40:29
  Jimmy Nelson: It's not about the camera, it is.
• 40:31
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm an obsessive photographer, but even if I don't have the camera, I'm innately curious about other human beings.
• 40:38
  Jimmy Nelson: I want to listen to their stories.
• 40:40
  Jimmy Nelson: I want to, I want to learn yeah, so where does that mean where?
• 40:46
  Matt Jacob: where do you belong in the world in that respect, then, and where does your photography sit in the photography hemisphere?
• 40:55
  Jimmy Nelson: um, good question, I don't know.
• 40:56
  Jimmy Nelson: To be honest, I'm Jimmy, nothing more, nothing less.
• 40:59
  Jimmy Nelson: Uh, every night I go to bed worried that I won't be able to wake up in the morning and be allowed to take pictures.
• 41:04
  Jimmy Nelson: I love the art of photography.
• 41:07
  Jimmy Nelson: I would love to inspire other people to see the world the way I see it.
• 41:13
  Jimmy Nelson: And it's very subjective, it's very romantic, it's very directed.
• 41:18
  Jimmy Nelson: When I arrive, I don't take pictures, sometimes for weeks.
• 41:22
  Jimmy Nelson: It's all about the interaction, it's the stories, it's the awareness.
• 41:25
  Jimmy Nelson: All about the interaction.
• 41:26
  Jimmy Nelson: It's the stories, it's the awareness, it's the understanding, it's the observation, and then it's the safety that we mutually feel.
• 41:32
  Jimmy Nelson: And then I ask a community to present themselves to me as they would like to be seen, as they feel in their pride, in their honor.
• 41:39
  Jimmy Nelson: So I'm not a journalist.
• 41:41
  Jimmy Nelson: I will never win any award.
• 41:44
  Jimmy Nelson: I think I'm just an.
• 41:46
  Jimmy Nelson: I think I'm just an artist.
• 41:47
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm just jimmy, I'm an artist and I use a camera, and nothing more, nothing less.
• 41:51
  Jimmy Nelson: And whether my art or my aesthetic resonates, uh, that is to be seen in time.
• 41:57
  Jimmy Nelson: I don't know.
• 41:58
  Jimmy Nelson: It does with me.
• 41:59
  Jimmy Nelson: Um, I used to worry that it wasn't valid.
• 42:03
  Jimmy Nelson: It is valid for me and I love it.
• 42:05
  Jimmy Nelson: And if the rest of the world never looks at another picture that I make, I will carry on making them until I sort of disappear.
• 42:11
  Jimmy Nelson: Um, so does that answer the?
• 42:14
  Matt Jacob: question it does.
• 42:15
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, I find that sometimes, including myself, it's difficult to have that feeling of belonging.
• 42:20
  Matt Jacob: You know photography.
• 42:21
  Matt Jacob: If we, if we take photography just as a craft right, just the technique of taking a photograph, it's kind of an individual sport, it's an individual pursuit, so it's not like you're in an office.
• 42:33
  Matt Jacob: I mean, I know we have studios and we work with other people, but you kind of know what I mean.
• 42:37
  Matt Jacob: Like pressing that shutter button is just you and getting the project, the idea, the concept.
• 42:41
  Matt Jacob: You know.
• 42:42
  Matt Jacob: Most of the time, in your case especially, you don't really want other people helping you.
• 42:52
  Matt Jacob: There's, you know, you, you, you are the, the, the person that is, you know, on that journey.
• 42:53
  Matt Jacob: You're the only person that's on that journey for that specific journey.
• 42:56
  Matt Jacob: We're all on different journeys, but I mean photography specifically, and sometimes it can be lonely, sometimes you, you know, all the time imposter syndrome you know, sets in.
• 43:07
  Matt Jacob: So I only ask that question because sometimes it's difficult for us to and I only say us because I've spoken to other people about that and, and me included, it's sometimes too difficult to grab onto that feeling of, okay, I belong in this world, in terms of this world of photography and world of art, and you know the community of photographers and the community of travelers or the community of the tribe that I'm, I'm visiting, so it's, you know.
• 43:31
  Matt Jacob: That's the reason why I kind of asked that question where do you kind of fit in.
• 43:34
  Jimmy Nelson: Where do you belong?
• 43:35
  Jimmy Nelson: Okay, it's a very, very important question.
• 43:38
  Jimmy Nelson: You asked it again and I'll I'll evolve my answer.
• 43:43
  Jimmy Nelson: So I'm losing my english.
• 43:45
  Jimmy Nelson: Having lived in holland for more than 33 years, sometimes I'm sort of struggling for dutch words, but also english words nowadays.
• 43:50
  Jimmy Nelson: That's why I'm a photographer.
• 43:51
  Jimmy Nelson: We can put subtitles.
• 43:52
  Jimmy Nelson: Um, um.
• 43:55
  Jimmy Nelson: I think it.
• 43:56
  Jimmy Nelson: My advantage is, amongst others, I'm 56.
• 44:00
  Jimmy Nelson: I'll be 57 in november.
• 44:02
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm I'm.
• 44:03
  Jimmy Nelson: I personally am not on social media.
• 44:05
  Jimmy Nelson: I have a small team here.
• 44:06
  Jimmy Nelson: Anybody who sustains themselves as an artist, like I do, has people to help them.
• 44:10
  Jimmy Nelson: They, more than help me, they look after me.
• 44:13
  Jimmy Nelson: They care for me.
• 44:13
  Jimmy Nelson: There are five amazing ladies.
• 44:15
  Jimmy Nelson: One of them does the social media.
• 44:17
  Jimmy Nelson: I have no idea how to open social media or apply something to social media, and I'm not watching other people on social media.
• 44:24
  Jimmy Nelson: That has advantages and disadvantages.
• 44:27
  Jimmy Nelson: Let's talk about the advantages is I'm free, I'm not counting, I don't feel I'm being monitored.
• 44:34
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm in the zone.
• 44:35
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm in my zone.
• 44:36
  Jimmy Nelson: It's very indulgent.
• 44:38
  Jimmy Nelson: Uh, whether that zone's healthy or not or it's complete madness could be time.
• 44:43
  Jimmy Nelson: Time will tell.
• 44:44
  Jimmy Nelson: They'll go.
• 44:44
  Jimmy Nelson: Oh, that poor guy.
• 44:45
  Jimmy Nelson: He thought he was making images that were valid.
• 44:48
  Jimmy Nelson: But if you leave that zone and you start analyzing where is my place, what is my validity, what is my legacy?
• 44:56
  Jimmy Nelson: It's paranoia that sets in, and it's not that I haven't occasionally been there.
• 45:01
  Jimmy Nelson: Perhaps last week, when we spoke a few days ago, I was there.
• 45:04
  Jimmy Nelson: I'd sort of gone in and started getting objectivity.
• 45:07
  Jimmy Nelson: Oh my god, jimmy, you are not worthy.
• 45:09
  Jimmy Nelson: Um, maybe that was the issue.
• 45:11
  Jimmy Nelson: It's extremely important not to to, to, to.
• 45:15
  Jimmy Nelson: I don't, I don't want to preach, uh, but but to be in that space.
• 45:20
  Jimmy Nelson: What, what matters to you?
• 45:21
  Jimmy Nelson: What is the wealth of the process, what is the wealth of the pigeon?
• 45:24
  Jimmy Nelson: If you're happy making it, if you're satisfied with what you've seen, with what you've experienced and you love yourself again.
• 45:32
  Jimmy Nelson: We're getting back to that.
• 45:32
  Jimmy Nelson: That should be enough.
• 45:33
  Jimmy Nelson: That should be enough.
• 45:35
  Jimmy Nelson: And I've had sort of many cycles in my sort of life journey and there'll be many more to come.
• 45:41
  Jimmy Nelson: But I can remember very clearly 16 years ago, big onset of digital photography.
• 45:48
  Jimmy Nelson: I've been working as a commercial photographer.
• 45:50
  Jimmy Nelson: I mean basically the work I do now.
• 45:52
  Jimmy Nelson: I started as a kid.
• 45:53
  Jimmy Nelson: I let go of, or it became.
• 45:55
  Jimmy Nelson: I got married very young, when I was 23, had three kids amazing, as I said, I'm separated and then I worked as a commercial photographer for many years to pay, and she said the gas and the lights and the bills and the nappies for many years to pay.
• 46:06
  Jimmy Nelson: And she said the gas and the lights and the bills and the nappies and the schools and the handbags for the wife sorry, I shouldn't go there and I ran and I ran and I ran and then one day I sort of you know, had this sort of you know crisis moments.
• 46:20
  Jimmy Nelson: You know, let's say, I crashed and the onset of digital photography and, uh, commercial photography was nose-dicing.
• 46:27
  Jimmy Nelson: My day fee went from 10 euros to one euro and, jimmy, we like you, but we're not gonna, you know, we're only gonna pay the market price.
• 46:33
  Jimmy Nelson: So essentially, my business died, amongst other things, um, and I can remember thinking, going back to that child, going back to that voice of when I was seven what matters, what matters is being in the world, being with humanity, being with a camera, with people that I see, I want to connect with.
• 46:56
  Jimmy Nelson: And I remember having this sort of you know, this sort of a moment of inspiration and people around me were going well, you're mad, photography's dead.
• 47:06
  Jimmy Nelson: Nobody's interested in pictures of indigenous cultures.
• 47:10
  Jimmy Nelson: I can remember saying very clearly what I am.
• 47:12
  Jimmy Nelson: I am.
• 47:13
  Jimmy Nelson: It's.
• 47:14
  Jimmy Nelson: The wealth of my journey is what I need to be happy.
• 47:17
  Jimmy Nelson: It's what I need to be whole.
• 47:18
  Jimmy Nelson: It's what I need to sustain.
• 47:20
  Jimmy Nelson: If I carry on on this journey, I will will go mad, and I can't go mad because I have the responsibility of three young kids.
• 47:27
  Jimmy Nelson: You will never earn a single penny ever again.
• 47:30
  Jimmy Nelson: Well, it's not going very well at the moment, is it so?
• 47:33
  Jimmy Nelson: Everything's more than where I am at the moment.
• 47:35
  Jimmy Nelson: So, but at least if I go down this path, which I chose full time 60 years ago, I'll be a happy bunny, whether I earn any money doing it or not, but I'll be happy and, as a result of being a happy person and a healthy person, I may be a better dad than I am being at the moment.
• 47:55
  Jimmy Nelson: I was earning quite well, and that was a very profound moment.
• 48:00
  Jimmy Nelson: And then I disappeared.
• 48:01
  Jimmy Nelson: I ran away I have the habit of doing that every now and again and I disappeared into Mongolia in the depths of a winter that was the worst winter they'd had in decades and got lost, didn't have the right clothing, froze, but came back to life, and that was 16 years ago.
• 48:19
  Jimmy Nelson: And then, from that day on, this is happiness.
• 48:22
  Jimmy Nelson: This is me, maybe very eccentric, maybe very odd, maybe very obsessive.
• 48:25
  Jimmy Nelson: There may be no reason for it, but this is where this is me maybe very eccentric, maybe very odd, very, very obsessive.
• 48:26
  Jimmy Nelson: There may be no reason for it, but this is where I belong, this is who I am and I'm going to do everything in my power my limited power and it is quite limited, unfortunately to sustain this happiness.
• 48:40
  Jimmy Nelson: To get back to jimmy's okay, and here we, 16 years later, and it's still a daily process.
• 48:46
  Jimmy Nelson: There's no cruise control.
• 48:48
  Jimmy Nelson: I wish or not, there's no cruise control.
• 48:54
  Jimmy Nelson: Every morning, I wake up as early as possible, do my hair, put on my makeup and go right, seize the day.
• 48:58
  Jimmy Nelson: How are we going to survive today?
• 49:00
  Jimmy Nelson: But I love it.
• 49:02
  Matt Jacob: So, you know, let's touch upon that a little bit before I come back to something you talked about earlier how, without sounding too crude how do you make money?
• 49:10
  Matt Jacob: I know you, you know it must be so liberating to not be under the pressure of you're under many pressures, I know, but just commercial jobs and commercial pressure.
• 49:21
  Matt Jacob: Tell us a little bit about your business model, because I know some of my audience who are just kind of getting into photography, who look up to you and want to kind of do what you do, but they also need to pay the rent and then it was pay the bill.
• 49:32
  Matt Jacob: So, you know, tell us a little bit about your current business model and how that's sustainable.
• 49:38
  Jimmy Nelson: First of all, I'm not a businessman.
• 49:39
  Jimmy Nelson: Uh, I can't add that one in one.
• 49:42
  Jimmy Nelson: That's perhaps one of the reasons I ran away from school.
• 49:44
  Jimmy Nelson: It's 11.
• 49:44
  Jimmy Nelson: It's 11.
• 49:44
  Jimmy Nelson: I thought it was 32.
• 49:49
  Jimmy Nelson: I tried to be, when I was younger, a businessman, an entrepreneur, and I failed on more occasions.
• 49:54
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm not going to show you the evidence or the crash landing.
• 50:05
  Jimmy Nelson: The first and most important thing in the business model is I delegate all the things I can't do, and that's nine out of the ten.
• 50:11
  Jimmy Nelson: So if you look at my ten fingers, I often say this is me, I'm, I'm the industry say the pinky, the small finger, and my team supplied the other nine.
• 50:16
  Jimmy Nelson: Um, that's the most important aspect.
• 50:20
  Jimmy Nelson: As a result of that, I need to their salaries, so I need to work my ass off.
• 50:27
  Jimmy Nelson: But that's also a bit like sort of you know, here we go into sort of Catholic education.
• 50:32
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm sort of flagellating myself to run like hell to to enable to pay their salaries.
• 50:36
  Jimmy Nelson: But that gives you the power I.
• 50:39
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm so not good at all those other things.
• 50:42
  Jimmy Nelson: They so don't make me happy because I'm reminded how not good I am.
• 50:45
  Jimmy Nelson: The only thing I can do is or I think I can do is make a picture.
• 50:49
  Jimmy Nelson: So perhaps I it's not that I work even harder, but that really sustains me, that really drives me, because without those, that team, I can't make the picture.
• 50:59
  Jimmy Nelson: What they do for me, they manage.
• 51:02
  Jimmy Nelson: I have a studio here in amsterdam that's where I am at the moment.
• 51:04
  Jimmy Nelson: It's a studio, workspace, gallery.
• 51:08
  Jimmy Nelson: Um, they, we publish our own books.
• 51:13
  Jimmy Nelson: So we design, invest, publish and distribute our own books.
• 51:19
  Jimmy Nelson: So that's one very important part of the business model.
• 51:21
  Jimmy Nelson: I've been publishing and selling books, not personally, but we've published this in for the last 15 years.
• 51:27
  Jimmy Nelson: Um, very important, and this is also important for listeners.
• 51:35
  Jimmy Nelson: You, as you will enter the artistic world, there's a multitude of people around you that will indoctrinate you into being insecure.
• 51:43
  Jimmy Nelson: You can't, you can't, you can't.
• 51:44
  Jimmy Nelson: We will do it for you.
• 51:46
  Jimmy Nelson: For that we need a percentage.
• 51:47
  Jimmy Nelson: One of them is publishers.
• 51:49
  Jimmy Nelson: The first few publishers I went to, uh I and you ended up earning, you know, not more than a toothpick for every book that was sold, and in some cases hundreds of thousands of books were sold and we never had more than a toothpick because after a long process of attrition all that money sort of dissipated.
• 52:05
  Jimmy Nelson: So that business model we flipped.
• 52:08
  Jimmy Nelson: So we will do it ourselves, we will control it, we will make it, produce it, print it, design it and distribute it.
• 52:16
  Jimmy Nelson: That requires part of the team.
• 52:19
  Jimmy Nelson: It's a very expensive process, but at least you can control the return.
• 52:30
  Jimmy Nelson: I exhibit in galleries and museums and I sell limited edition prints.
• 52:31
  Jimmy Nelson: That's a very interesting, difficult process.
• 52:34
  Jimmy Nelson: You can do it in one of two ways you can do it yourself, where you can control the business model, or you do it in the artistic world, and when you do it in the artistic world you have to disconnect 50% to 60 percent of the income, but then the curatorial word validates you, but for that they earn in return, yeah, and you have to choose option a or b.
• 52:58
  Jimmy Nelson: Option a is both options are so insecure, uh.
• 53:03
  Jimmy Nelson: Option b when you do it yourself, you will never perhaps be validated in artistic or in the curatorial world because nobody's earning directly from you.
• 53:12
  Jimmy Nelson: But you can perhaps control the narrative, uh.
• 53:17
  Jimmy Nelson: Thirdly, uh, I do quite a bit of public speaking.
• 53:20
  Jimmy Nelson: Uh, this is a uh.
• 53:24
  Jimmy Nelson: A medium, uh, that I fell into accidentally about 10 years ago.
• 53:28
  Jimmy Nelson: I did a ted talk by accident and that resulted in quite a bit of corporate speaking and that's a very important business model, um.
• 53:38
  Jimmy Nelson: Thirdly, fourthly, I have a small foundation and once or twice a year I will take a group of CEOs with me on a journey and they contribute to the foundation.
• 53:50
  Jimmy Nelson: The foundation is a pot whereby all the excess income that we earn gets put back into and I return it to the people I work with sort of theme of reciprocity.
• 54:08
  Jimmy Nelson: I am given something, I monetize your identity and your with a picture, but I have to return an element of that monetization and that's what we do within the foundation.
• 54:14
  Jimmy Nelson: So I think I mentioned this last time at the end of the month there's never anything in the pot.
• 54:19
  Jimmy Nelson: There's no.
• 54:20
  Jimmy Nelson: It's no pension, there's no, there's no mortgage to be paid.
• 54:25
  Jimmy Nelson: So whatever comes in goes out.
• 54:27
  Jimmy Nelson: That's terrifying, to be honest.
• 54:31
  Jimmy Nelson: But if I don't do that, if I don't reinvest everything to the people who work with me to sustain the little business and to give back within the foundation, I don't believe I'm and this is where we all get sort of, you know, into guilt I'll be allowed to carry on doing what I'm doing.
• 54:49
  Jimmy Nelson: So I don't believe I'm allowed to hold any of that material asset.
• 54:53
  Jimmy Nelson: So I will never be a rich businessman, but I'm aspiring to be a very rich individual.
• 55:00
  Jimmy Nelson: So I think, as artists, as photographers, everybody who's listening don't go on this journey hoping to go on this journey to feel that wealth.
• 55:11
  Jimmy Nelson: And I think one can get very close to becoming one of the richest people, humans, in the world if one indulges deep on this journey.
• 55:19
  Jimmy Nelson: But you will always have an empty bank account, so there, you go everyone, or you don't have to.
• 55:24
  Matt Jacob: But then here's another part of the business model an empty bank account.
• 55:25
  Matt Jacob: So there you go everyone.
• 55:26
  Jimmy Nelson: Or you don't have to.
• 55:27
  Jimmy Nelson: But then here's another part of the business model.
• 55:29
  Jimmy Nelson: So I'm regularly asked by commercial organizations.
• 55:32
  Jimmy Nelson: Let's say I'm going to mention that Shell wants to come and put a sticker on my head.
• 55:36
  Jimmy Nelson: A nice irony.
• 55:38
  Jimmy Nelson: It's the company my father used to work for.
• 55:39
  Jimmy Nelson: Oh Jimmy, here's a pot of gold and never have to have to worry about money again.
• 55:44
  Jimmy Nelson: Then I would believe I would solve all my financial issues.
• 55:48
  Jimmy Nelson: But then I would believe I wasn't walking the talk.
• 55:50
  Jimmy Nelson: Uh, then I would become a hypocrite.
• 55:52
  Jimmy Nelson: Then, uh, I would be using funds to and there are a number of other people whose names I'm not going to mention, who wallow in their self-worthiness, but behind the scenes they're being funded by large corporate organizations and I think that's somewhat hypocritical.
• 56:07
  Jimmy Nelson: But it's for them to feel that and know that, without for me outing them.
• 56:10
  Jimmy Nelson: I uh feel very, very strongly.
• 56:14
  Jimmy Nelson: Um, you have to not.
• 56:17
  Jimmy Nelson: Uh, yeah, do that, but that's my own suffering and that's my own journey well you.
• 56:23
  Matt Jacob: You're clearly a person with a lot of integrity.
• 56:27
  Matt Jacob: That comes across just in an online conversation.
• 56:30
  Jimmy Nelson: I try, I'm failing the whole time.
• 56:33
  Jimmy Nelson: I mean, the other day, when I was in a bit of a bad mood, that was because I was worrying, I was panicking.
• 56:37
  Jimmy Nelson: And here I am.
• 56:38
  Jimmy Nelson: It doesn't matter how many books I've published or how many exhibitions I've had or how kind people are on their compliments.
• 56:43
  Jimmy Nelson: You're always on that narrow edge of but perhaps you have to be there to be alive, to be alert, to not be complacent, to not be sanct.
• 56:55
  Jimmy Nelson: What's the right word?
• 56:56
  Jimmy Nelson: No, I think you get what.
• 56:57
  Jimmy Nelson: I mean Sanctimonious yeah, sanctimonious yeah.
• 56:59
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, well, I think again, you may be being too harsh on yourself.
• 57:03
  Matt Jacob: You're the first guest I've had to admit that.
• 57:07
  Matt Jacob: You know I didn't present myself in the best possible way, and can we do it again?
• 57:10
  Matt Jacob: I mean, I was, I was shocked, what, the what I mean?
• 57:14
  Matt Jacob: I mean I, I didn't, I didn't notice it, but but that's, that's pure honesty, right, that's that's ego aside, that's, yeah, I mean.
• 57:22
  Matt Jacob: So, you know I, I think you know you may everyone's human in those aspects like you will have a shit conversation every now and then, or you may not turn up to be the best version of you at various points in your life.
• 57:34
  Matt Jacob: Of course that's going to happen but yet be able to a be aware of that, acknowledge it and admit it, and then not just to yourself but to the other person that it may have affected, affected.
• 57:43
  Matt Jacob: That is true integrity.
• 57:44
  Matt Jacob: I mean that's and that is surely and I talk about this all the time in terms of honesty and dishonesty.
• 57:50
  Matt Jacob: You know, if you live a dishonest life, however kind of nuanced that definition is you, you will escape happiness until, until you realize what true honesty is.
• 58:00
  Matt Jacob: And but I wanted to dive in on that you know, certainly as as photographers who have the little devil on their shoulder.
• 58:06
  Matt Jacob: It may not be a devil.
• 58:07
  Matt Jacob: It may not be as big conglomerate like Shell, who's, you know, got that pot of gold ready for you to dive into.
• 58:12
  Matt Jacob: It may just be a sponsor who's going to pay you a little bit of retainer every month so that you can live and therefore able to go out and do more meaningful work.
• 58:22
  Matt Jacob: Right, you know, there is always this fine balance between commercialism and passion and I think it's difficult to remain integral all the time when you might be able to free up some of your capacity, some of your creative thinking.
• 58:38
  Matt Jacob: Maybe you might be able to afford that trip to somewhere that you want to go and explore.
• 58:43
  Matt Jacob: So it's a constant conveyor belt of temptation versus, you know, honesty and meaningful and trying to be just a better person as well as a photographer.
• 58:53
  Matt Jacob: So I do understand people who who have that battle and and most commercial photographers do have that, that battle and some, some, don't care.
• 59:02
  Matt Jacob: It's the people that don't care and then lie about you, like you said, have this persona and, you know, chase that status.
• 59:08
  Matt Jacob: That's a little, a little bit different, but on the kind of smaller scale I do, I do have a lot of sympathy with with.
• 59:14
  Jimmy Nelson: I mean, I'm there, I am that, I, I I do.
• 59:17
  Jimmy Nelson: And you know I've been struggling, and I'm still struggling, as a photographer since I was a kid.
• 59:23
  Jimmy Nelson: It was always a struggle from the beginning, but maybe that's my nature, maybe that's my narrative.
• 59:27
  Jimmy Nelson: I think the only thing that's important is for you to know your narrative.
• 59:30
  Jimmy Nelson: If you flip it and, like you, I'm often asked yeah, I want to do what you do and the simple question what camera should I buy?
• 59:39
  Jimmy Nelson: Oh, that's the wrong question, and I sort of flip it, I said, well, that's okay, I understand why you've asked that question.
• 59:47
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm not judging you for it.
• 59:48
  Jimmy Nelson: When I was 18, I bought a box of cameras with long, long lenses because I thought that was the package that I needed.
• 59:56
  Jimmy Nelson: The only thing that matters is what's the story you're going to tell.
• 1:00:00
  Jimmy Nelson: And that story gets richer and richer and richer and richer as life, as for as long as we're given life, passes, and you have to be aligned with that story and resonate with that story and listen to that story and love that story.
• 1:00:13
  Jimmy Nelson: And then how you tell that story, with whatever medium, whatever camera, whatever lens, whatever sponsor, whatever business model, is up to you.
• 1:00:21
  Jimmy Nelson: Right, and it's all valid.
• 1:00:24
  Jimmy Nelson: It's all valid.
• 1:00:28
  Jimmy Nelson: And if you want to go and save the rainforest but be sponsored by a mining company, go and do it.
• 1:00:34
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm not judging, but that's your story and, as long as it's true to you and it's the narrative you want to tell, be my guest.
• 1:00:42
  Jimmy Nelson: We, we've sat here for the last few minutes and I'm sort of, you know, woe be me.
• 1:00:47
  Jimmy Nelson: And suffering the fear.
• 1:00:48
  Jimmy Nelson: But that's what makes me tick, that's what keeps me alive, that's what pushes me.
• 1:00:53
  Jimmy Nelson: Without that I wouldn't be obsessively running around the world with a 10x8 analog camera.
• 1:00:58
  Jimmy Nelson: So that's my story, that's my journey.
• 1:01:01
  Jimmy Nelson: I think I now understand the narrative, but it's not the journey.
• 1:01:05
  Jimmy Nelson: I'd advise everybody, everybody, to go but don't only think go on.
• 1:01:09
  Jimmy Nelson: Sorry, the only thing that matters is it in an artistic context.
• 1:01:13
  Jimmy Nelson: And if I'm what's trying to sound like I'm gray, wise, old man, I'm obviously not gray and definitely not wise.
• 1:01:21
  Jimmy Nelson: But getting old is is you have to be obsessive.
• 1:01:24
  Jimmy Nelson: You have to be obsessive.
• 1:01:26
  Jimmy Nelson: There's an amazing ted talk on with this young chinese lady, american chinese, and she's epic, and she goes, you know what success?
• 1:01:34
  Jimmy Nelson: And bam, bam, bam, she reels it all of good looks, height, money, and she says no, it's grit, obsession, never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever giving up.
• 1:01:43
  Jimmy Nelson: And if one doesn't have that, I don't think it's possible to sustain this journey as a photographer or as an artist.
• 1:01:51
  Jimmy Nelson: And you have to deeply align with that obsession, and that's the narrative.
• 1:01:55
  Jimmy Nelson: And if you understand the narrative then you know where you get the, the, the energy from.
• 1:02:02
  Jimmy Nelson: Now you've got to be careful.
• 1:02:03
  Jimmy Nelson: The obsession has to be healthy, because it can sort of take you the wrong way it can.
• 1:02:08
  Matt Jacob: And there is a line, I think, whether you agree with me or not on this, there there is a.
• 1:02:13
  Matt Jacob: There's a point as a photographer, as an artist or someone, if, if your work is in the public most people's work is in the public now, for reasons that we know about.
• 1:02:23
  Matt Jacob: But do you not think that we have a responsibility to be integral, to be honest, to try and promote a good message where you know obviously it has to be true to you, otherwise it will mean nothing and you won't do it.
• 1:02:38
  Matt Jacob: You won't find that obsession to make it better and better and better and better and spread that voice.
• 1:02:43
  Matt Jacob: I think voice is so important, especially as a photographer, do you?
• 1:02:47
  Matt Jacob: Do you not think, then, that there is you know, it's not like, go and do whatever you want, as long as it's true to you.
• 1:02:52
  Matt Jacob: I, I do think there is a line that we, we can influence people for the for the good or or bad things, and we have to be aware of that, especially if we're in a public facing role, whether we like it or not.
• 1:03:06
  Matt Jacob: I'm not talking about super famous or anything, but you know a thousand loyal followers, whether they're followers who buy your books, clients who come to your talks or followers on social media, whatever.
• 1:03:16
  Matt Jacob: There is an element of responsibility.
• 1:03:18
  Matt Jacob: We can't just go around, you know, shouting shit and just you know creating outrage, just because it's going to make us money.
• 1:03:25
  Matt Jacob: Right, so I did I.
• 1:03:26
  Matt Jacob: Would you agree with that?
• 1:03:27
  Matt Jacob: It's not like go do whatever you want.
• 1:03:30
  Jimmy Nelson: I, I seriously agree with it.
• 1:03:32
  Jimmy Nelson: But I don't want to judge.
• 1:03:33
  Jimmy Nelson: I know how difficult it has been and still is for me to be, to be honest, and it's this lifelong obsession.
• 1:03:45
  Jimmy Nelson: It's this lifelong obsession of understanding why certain things happen, uh, but, but, but I can't, uh, I can't.
• 1:03:54
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm not going to preach or advise others.
• 1:03:56
  Jimmy Nelson: It's not for every individual, but I think if humanity was vulnerable and honest, then we would be in a far different place than we are.
• 1:04:05
  Jimmy Nelson: And that's the biggest issue and that's what so upsets me, because the potential for humanity, the potential for kindness, for compassion, for empathy, all these aspects we need as photographers, if that could sort of saturate into other parts of society, then we would be in a far better place.
• 1:04:24
  Jimmy Nelson: But the individual themselves, you can, would be in a far better place.
• 1:04:25
  Jimmy Nelson: And but, but the individual themselves, you can't be indoctrinated, you can't be told to do that.
• 1:04:30
  Jimmy Nelson: You have to be it and feel it.
• 1:04:32
  Jimmy Nelson: So the same goes for photographers.
• 1:04:34
  Jimmy Nelson: Um, they themselves have to.
• 1:04:36
  Jimmy Nelson: You, the listeners, have to discover that truth.
• 1:04:39
  Jimmy Nelson: All that I can say is passing the pivot of Mivel Life and getting a little bit older, it's liberating.
• 1:04:49
  Jimmy Nelson: That truth, that honesty.
• 1:04:51
  Jimmy Nelson: It's wonderful, it's terrifying, but you're alert, you're alive, you're flying in that fragility.
• 1:05:02
  Jimmy Nelson: The story I told last time, and I'm not going to rabbit on about that feather of Forrest Gump, that's letting it fly and it taking you to the lightness of being, when that feather is whole, when that feather is pure, when that feather is the essence of the wing, that child.
• 1:05:14
  Jimmy Nelson: It flies, is the essence of the wing, that child, it flies, it flies and that comes through being honest and being vulnerable and being human and being fragile.
• 1:05:26
  Jimmy Nelson: And in that fragility you're, as you say, all armed, you're gathered and held by the world.
• 1:05:33
  Jimmy Nelson: And I'm still here.
• 1:05:36
  Jimmy Nelson: I've been to done some perhaps stupid things over there, but I never go over the edge.
• 1:05:40
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm always touching the edge.
• 1:05:40
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm always here.
• 1:05:40
  Jimmy Nelson: I've been to done some perhaps stupid things over there, but I never go over the edge.
• 1:05:41
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm always touching the edge.
• 1:05:42
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm always looking over there.
• 1:05:43
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm touching the void, to use the term of the title of the book.
• 1:05:46
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm looking over the edge, but I never get so close that I fall off it.
• 1:05:49
  Jimmy Nelson: But by always looking over the edge, I'm getting, I'm learning, I'm learning.
• 1:05:53
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm getting closer and closer to a very, very fine line of, yeah, fragility and honesty and it's liberating.
• 1:06:03
  Jimmy Nelson: And to answer that question to the person who asked me the other day would you one day end up taking self-portraits?
• 1:06:10
  Jimmy Nelson: And it's not perhaps about vanity, but turning the camera on yourself.
• 1:06:15
  Jimmy Nelson: What do you see?
• 1:06:16
  Jimmy Nelson: And you can only do that if you're totally honest.
• 1:06:19
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm not there yet, but I'm trying.
• 1:06:23
  Matt Jacob: How do you then it?
• 1:06:25
  Matt Jacob: Are we going to talk about this in in two facets of your, your images.
• 1:06:30
  Matt Jacob: So first of all, it's going to be the process where I want to talk about the, the logistical and physical process, because I know that's it's interesting to me, but I know it's interesting to to many people out there.
• 1:06:40
  Matt Jacob: You know how do you go and get these images.
• 1:06:42
  Matt Jacob: But really more important for me I want to dive into it is how you go about thinking of a story, how you go about creating that story with the camera, with you, with connections, and we talk about film.
• 1:06:57
  Matt Jacob: Photography allows you to be more present.
• 1:06:59
  Matt Jacob: Is that a conscious decision or was it a evolutionary decision?
• 1:07:03
  Matt Jacob: But talk to me about those two kind of sides of your images and your projects and that, the art that you put put together.
• 1:07:11
  Matt Jacob: Talk to me about that process and then talk to me about the storytelling.
• 1:07:15
  Matt Jacob: How do you, how you go about telling a story and creating a story?
• 1:07:19
  Jimmy Nelson: um, good question, thank you.
• 1:07:20
  Jimmy Nelson: I'll try and begin with the first part and then we'll evolve into the second part and I'll take you and your listeners on the creative journey I'm on at this moment today, not necessarily sitting with you, but I'm manifesting a project in the Middle East.
• 1:07:35
  Jimmy Nelson: The working title I don't think it will be the title it's called the Souls of the Sand.
• 1:07:41
  Jimmy Nelson: I think most of the books I make are fairly ambiguous titles because I don't want to be specific before they pass away between the sea and the sky.
• 1:07:50
  Jimmy Nelson: It's more about a sort of poetic, artistic interpretation of a subject.
• 1:07:53
  Jimmy Nelson: So when you refer to the Middle East, often you think of religion, you think of economy, you think of anger, think of anger, fear, hate.
• 1:08:01
  Jimmy Nelson: I think the middle east has been more documented than any other part of the world in the last 40 years, but there's only one form of documentation that comes out of there.
• 1:08:09
  Jimmy Nelson: I want to invert that narrative.
• 1:08:13
  Jimmy Nelson: I am traveling on a regular basis to a variety of countries between the Stans and Morocco, which are it's the greater Nima Um, and I'm trying to retell a narrative.
• 1:08:26
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm trying to look for, uh, indigenous, authentic culture that still exists to, to make a picture, to tell a story that's a positive as opposed to a negative narrative and, as I said, this part of the world.
• 1:08:41
  Jimmy Nelson: I've just been in Yemen, on the border of Saudi, and I'm going back there again next month and I'll explain what I'm doing.
• 1:08:48
  Jimmy Nelson: The only images and only stories we've had from that part of the world are negative, ever since I can remember.
• 1:08:55
  Jimmy Nelson: The narrative that I'm going to tell is something very different and experiencing as a result.
• 1:09:01
  Jimmy Nelson: So a part of this greater story.
• 1:09:04
  Jimmy Nelson: I wanted to visit some tribal communities on the border of Yemen and Saudi, in the Asir region, in the far southwest, right down in the corner.
• 1:09:14
  Jimmy Nelson: You straddle the border, so you're working in Yemen.
• 1:09:17
  Jimmy Nelson: I've never been there before.
• 1:09:19
  Jimmy Nelson: The only narrative and information I have is online, which is negative Don't go.
• 1:09:25
  Jimmy Nelson: So how I normally go, so I go anyway.
• 1:09:27
  Jimmy Nelson: When they say don't go, that's the first thing.
• 1:09:30
  Jimmy Nelson: I go.
• 1:09:30
  Jimmy Nelson: Everywhere they say don't go, I go on my own and I go with no cameras.
• 1:09:35
  Jimmy Nelson: So I was there last month, went with a little backpack and I did take an iphone with me, and I went on a two-week journey, two and a half week journey right the way down, just as a tourist, and I went to, to see to to to see is what I read on the internet the real story or is there something else going on?
• 1:09:55
  Jimmy Nelson: I discovered what I knew was there uh, I didn't make any pictures had a variety of conversations and said can you help me if I was to come back on my own with cameras?
• 1:10:07
  Jimmy Nelson: And this is what I would like to do.
• 1:10:09
  Jimmy Nelson: I obviously took copies of my books with me and it's basically a two and a half three weeks conversation.
• 1:10:14
  Jimmy Nelson: The answer was yes and we will look after you and we understand what you're trying to do.
• 1:10:19
  Jimmy Nelson: So I'm going to go back again next month.
• 1:10:21
  Jimmy Nelson: I will go on my own.
• 1:10:23
  Jimmy Nelson: I've got a small team on the ground going to meet me, a translator, a guide, a couple of tribal leaders and I will turn up with a lot of kit.
• 1:10:33
  Jimmy Nelson: It's always a bit of a struggle getting the 10x eight camera, probably about 10, a hundred, 10 boxes of 10 sheets, so it's a hundred images tripods, backgrounds, reflectors I only use ambient lights, never artificial light gear.
• 1:10:52
  Jimmy Nelson: So it's probably about a hundred kilos.
• 1:10:56
  Jimmy Nelson: 50 of that kilo I carry as hand baggage because I've got to get on four different flights.
• 1:11:03
  Jimmy Nelson: I could write a book about that one day, how you travel around the world with 50 kilos hand baggage.
• 1:11:07
  Jimmy Nelson: It's fun, it's an art into itself.
• 1:11:10
  Jimmy Nelson: We could have a whole other podcast if you want to talk about that.
• 1:11:15
  Jimmy Nelson: You can't check in any of the gear because I will never see it again.
• 1:11:19
  Jimmy Nelson: It's not only bespoke made, but I just won't see it.
• 1:11:22
  Jimmy Nelson: I know through experience.
• 1:11:23
  Jimmy Nelson: By the time there's three or four flights, I will not see it.
• 1:11:26
  Jimmy Nelson: So I carry it.
• 1:11:28
  Jimmy Nelson: That's a whole other story.
• 1:11:29
  Jimmy Nelson: If and when I get there, I will disappear and hopefully come back.
• 1:11:34
  Jimmy Nelson: Be careful what I say, touch wood and hopefully come back.
• 1:11:36
  Jimmy Nelson: Careful what I say, touch wood.
• 1:11:39
  Jimmy Nelson: 95% of the time is conversation and 5% of the time will be making the image.
• 1:11:45
  Jimmy Nelson: Of that 5%, 4% is portraits.
• 1:11:49
  Jimmy Nelson: It's the meeting of the individuals.
• 1:11:53
  Jimmy Nelson: It's creating a set using ambient light and reflected light, photographing the primary individual within the community, praising them, honoring them, worshipping them in essence.
• 1:11:59
  Jimmy Nelson: And reflected light photographing the primary individual within the community, praising them, honoring them, worshiping them in essence, and gradually the rest of the community come to the camera and then, as the climax, we go off into the mountains and I try to make these landscape shots.
• 1:12:11
  Jimmy Nelson: The region I'm going to is unbelievably beautiful.
• 1:12:15
  Jimmy Nelson: It's not online.
• 1:12:17
  Jimmy Nelson: You can't see any images there.
• 1:12:18
  Jimmy Nelson: I mean, if you think Wadi Rum in Jordan is spectacular, just you wait and see what I'm going to do, if and when those images are complete, I come back and then I'll go back again with one of my colleagues here and we'll film it.
• 1:12:31
  Jimmy Nelson: So it's a three-tier process 90% of the time.
• 1:12:38
  Jimmy Nelson: So that's the build-up.
• 1:12:40
  Jimmy Nelson: So, for example, I'm going the beginning of next year to Iran.
• 1:12:44
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm going to go and live with the Qashqai nomads for a month.
• 1:12:48
  Jimmy Nelson: I've been there once on my own.
• 1:12:50
  Jimmy Nelson: I'll go back again on my own with the camera and then I'll go back again for the third time and film it, and that tends to be the more difficult and complicated regions in the world.
• 1:12:58
  Jimmy Nelson: It's always on my own at the beginning.
• 1:13:00
  Jimmy Nelson: That's when I'm most fragile.
• 1:13:10
  Jimmy Nelson: If you arrive with an entourage and there's a whole crew and there's drones and there's bags and there's pelican cases, it's very intimidating.
• 1:13:15
  Jimmy Nelson: If you arrive, fucking terrified, on your own and you show it, there's that fragility and in that fragility there's an enormous sort of oh dear, somebody's lost, Not too different than I was when I was 17, wandering across Tibet as a lost teenager, but you're sort of almost reenacting that moment of abandonment, vulnerability, nakedness.
• 1:13:36
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm a little bit eccentric, I'm a bit odd and oh wow, this is somebody we don't normally want here but being on his own, he's not here with any long black things and he's crying, sitting, shaking, sweating.
• 1:13:52
  Jimmy Nelson: Perhaps he needs our help.
• 1:13:54
  Jimmy Nelson: And then that's the beginning of the process.
• 1:13:56
  Jimmy Nelson: It's extremely important to be in that way and to be very, very, very, very patient.
• 1:14:01
  Jimmy Nelson: And then I mean I'm covering a lot of ground.
• 1:14:04
  Jimmy Nelson: The longer-term dual, we say in Dutch process is it's not about the quantity of images, it's about that small, small, select handful where everything is aligned.
• 1:14:14
  Jimmy Nelson: It's the investment of the story, the journey, the understanding, the connection, the knowing, the learning, and that's where you're aligned with your narrative.
• 1:14:21
  Jimmy Nelson: This is what I want to put into the picture.
• 1:14:23
  Jimmy Nelson: That helps with being older.
• 1:14:25
  Jimmy Nelson: You know, when I was younger you would spray and pray, although we didn't have digital, but still with analog.
• 1:14:29
  Jimmy Nelson: And as time goes you narrow down the image that you're looking for.
• 1:14:33
  Jimmy Nelson: So it's very much about the experience up front, the that I'm going to tell I have no idea right second part of the question.
• 1:14:44
  Jimmy Nelson: I have no idea.
• 1:14:46
  Jimmy Nelson: Uh, the best way, this is how I always, and people look at me and they go.
• 1:14:50
  Jimmy Nelson: But but you must know.
• 1:14:51
  Jimmy Nelson: You must know who you're going to meet and what it's going to cost and how many pictures you're going to make and what time you're going to come back.
• 1:14:55
  Jimmy Nelson: Now I have this is the analogy of a good chef.
• 1:14:59
  Jimmy Nelson: I cannot cook to save my life 10 years in an institution.
• 1:15:02
  Jimmy Nelson: But let's use the analogy of a chef.
• 1:15:04
  Jimmy Nelson: A really, really like.
• 1:15:06
  Jimmy Nelson: My eldest daughter can cook like nobody.
• 1:15:09
  Jimmy Nelson: She can walk into any kitchen anywhere, she can analyze the ingredients, but she instinctively knows and trusts that she can align all those ingredients and make something spectacular.
• 1:15:18
  Jimmy Nelson: She doesn't have a something spectacular, she doesn't have a menu, she doesn't have a picture and she's not going to publish a book.
• 1:15:23
  Jimmy Nelson: But she's, she trusts that process.
• 1:15:26
  Jimmy Nelson: It's in her blood, it's in my blood.
• 1:15:30
  Jimmy Nelson: For a variety of reasons since my birth that I intuitively know, I've gathered a variety of ingredients and it will align to something.
• 1:15:38
  Jimmy Nelson: But what it will align to I don't.
• 1:15:40
  Jimmy Nelson: What it will align to, I don't know.
• 1:15:41
  Jimmy Nelson: There is no menu and there is no picture and there is no expectation Because there's no client.
• 1:15:46
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm my own client.
• 1:15:48
  Jimmy Nelson: This is very important and because I'm the only one who's responsible for the investment, I can trust that process.
• 1:15:55
  Jimmy Nelson: There is no expectation, so I don't have to promise anything to anybody other than to myself.
• 1:16:00
  Jimmy Nelson: So I'm my own beast of burden, so to speak.
• 1:16:06
  Jimmy Nelson: So my expectations are beyond here.
• 1:16:10
  Jimmy Nelson: So if I'm to make a new book, it has to be beyond anything I've ever made before for it to be valid.
• 1:16:16
  Jimmy Nelson: What it will look like and the story that I'll tell, I don't really know.
• 1:16:20
  Jimmy Nelson: All I instinctively feel is that it's a journey that I have to go on.
• 1:16:25
  Jimmy Nelson: I have to retell that narrative of that part of the world.
• 1:16:29
  Jimmy Nelson: I know and I've seen and I've already recorded it and I'm not going to show yet.
• 1:16:33
  Jimmy Nelson: There's unbelievable beauty there, human beauty From the last part, I the most.
• 1:16:41
  Jimmy Nelson: If you talk about civilization, it all began here, but for ever since I can remember uh, uh and younger people around me, it's only one story.
• 1:16:51
  Jimmy Nelson: I want to flip that story.
• 1:16:52
  Jimmy Nelson: How I'm going to flip it and whether I will survive to tell the tale, time will tell.
• 1:16:58
  Jimmy Nelson: So that's how I go about a journey making a book.
• 1:17:03
  Jimmy Nelson: Does that make sense?
• 1:17:07
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, it does.
• 1:17:07
  Matt Jacob: I mean you've got an overarching concept right, you've got a narrative and you decided, like I want to put a positive spin on it.
• 1:17:14
  Matt Jacob: I want to see what it's really like.
• 1:17:16
  Jimmy Nelson: It's not necessarily a positive spin.
• 1:17:18
  Jimmy Nelson: I want to tell a different story.
• 1:17:19
  Jimmy Nelson: I visited a number of these countries as a child.
• 1:17:29
  Jimmy Nelson: I spent many months in Afghanistan.
• 1:17:30
  Jimmy Nelson: When I was in my late teens we lived in Iran, so I know there's something else there.
• 1:17:33
  Jimmy Nelson: For the last 30 years I haven't been brave enough to go there because I was told it's not safe.
• 1:17:38
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm now curious enough and it's not about being brave, but in my own narrative to want to go and discover for myself, and I know that the medium I'm using and I know the context of the story that I want to tell.
• 1:17:54
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm looking for beauty.
• 1:17:58
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, that's what you're trying to.
• 1:17:59
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm looking for beauty in humanity, yeah.
• 1:18:00
  Jimmy Nelson: That's what you're trying to evoke in your images that is the story, that, yeah, yeah, nothing more, nothing less.
• 1:18:06
  Matt Jacob: And that's aligned with, yeah, my own search quick one on the process, because I get this all the time.
• 1:18:11
  Matt Jacob: Like half my images are semi-staged, right, I'm directing, I'm, you know, putting in specific positions to, in order to create a beautiful aesthetic and also have something underneath that.
• 1:18:22
  Matt Jacob: Right, I, you know, people, ignorant people, kind of criticize that a lot and I'm sure you may get that I mean a lot of your.
• 1:18:31
  Matt Jacob: I understand why you have to stage these things and why you want to stage them, but when you talk about I, you and and and, uh, you know, getting into the soul of these people with a staged photo is almost like a um, a contradiction in terms.
• 1:18:47
  Matt Jacob: Right, how do you, how do you, analyze that?
• 1:18:50
  Jimmy Nelson: long answer, short term.
• 1:18:51
  Jimmy Nelson: I'll start with the short answer you were.
• 1:18:52
  Jimmy Nelson: I listened to your podcast with the amazing photographer joey l, and he said there isn't, there hasn't ever been one picture since the beginning of time that wasn't essentially staged in a variety of forms.
• 1:19:04
  Jimmy Nelson: It's, it's, it's, it's a a farth to say that a picture isn't staged.
• 1:19:08
  Jimmy Nelson: And again, I don't want to use names of other photographers, we're not going to go there, but every single picture is subjective to the eye of the photographer and how they're going to build the frame around and how they're going to choose when or not to expose the shutter speed.
• 1:19:22
  Jimmy Nelson: But then, at the same time, there's a whole arc of what can be perceived as staging.
• 1:19:27
  Jimmy Nelson: But it's all staging.
• 1:19:28
  Jimmy Nelson: It's the subject of recording.
• 1:19:30
  Jimmy Nelson: I do stage, but I stage for me.
• 1:19:35
  Jimmy Nelson: What is a different truth?
• 1:19:36
  Jimmy Nelson: So I don't take I really take a reportage pictures.
• 1:19:41
  Jimmy Nelson: Oh, I'll use my iphone every now and again to record a few things for myself.
• 1:19:45
  Jimmy Nelson: Uh, my pictures are a climax at the end of a meeting and an end of a knowing and end of an understanding, but it is as truthful as running in a spring and praying with an iphone at the beginning.
• 1:19:58
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm just trying to tell a different story and I can remember 10 years ago when one of my first books came out and there was quite a bit of online discussion Jimmy Nelson and his Before they Pass Away and I remember thinking, well, this is a bit odd.
• 1:20:14
  Jimmy Nelson: And a number of journalists, what do you mean?
• 1:20:18
  Jimmy Nelson: It's odd.
• 1:20:19
  Jimmy Nelson: And I said, well, ever since time began in our world, let's say in the western world, uh, every picture, that's the majority of the pictures that we, we see, we publish, we show, are all staged, but we never comment on that.
• 1:20:29
  Jimmy Nelson: That it's this aspired state of being, it's this beauty, it's this wealth, it's this elegance.
• 1:20:34
  Jimmy Nelson: 90 of all images are this, this sort of celebrated podium, but we've never commented about that.
• 1:20:42
  Jimmy Nelson: Whether it's true or untrue, this is our aspired state of being, this beauty, aesthetic, if I, in my eccentricity need and want to disappear into the developing world and apply that same narrative sorry, they're the poor people.
• 1:21:01
  Jimmy Nelson: No, no, no, no, no.
• 1:21:02
  Jimmy Nelson: They run around the jungle with feathers on their banging drums.
• 1:21:04
  Jimmy Nelson: No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 1:21:05
  Jimmy Nelson: The same is what happened if you spin it back up more than 100 years to edward sheriff curtis.
• 1:21:10
  Jimmy Nelson: Edward sheriff curtis if any of your listeners don't know who he is, please google one of my heroes.
• 1:21:15
  Jimmy Nelson: He spent 30 years of his life documenting the native american indian.
• 1:21:20
  Jimmy Nelson: He made 30 volumes, the most extraordinary aesthetic documentation of one of the richest cultures to ever walk this planet that was annihilated.
• 1:21:30
  Jimmy Nelson: When he died, the same narrative was being told oh, you're a loser, this is a waste of time.
• 1:21:36
  Jimmy Nelson: This is poverty.
• 1:21:37
  Jimmy Nelson: This is backward.
• 1:21:38
  Jimmy Nelson: This is ancient, this is primitive.
• 1:21:40
  Jimmy Nelson: Uh, the last 30 years of your life are wasted.
• 1:21:44
  Jimmy Nelson: We're going to destroy 90 of your images and you're going to die a pauper.
• 1:21:48
  Jimmy Nelson: That's what happened to him.
• 1:21:50
  Jimmy Nelson: In the 1970s, a few of the negatives were found in a bookshop somewhere in new york.
• 1:21:54
  Jimmy Nelson: They were published and contemporary American society went oh, was this?
• 1:22:00
  Jimmy Nelson: Did this used to be the people who walked this nation?
• 1:22:04
  Jimmy Nelson: Yeah, and look at them.
• 1:22:06
  Jimmy Nelson: And they entered the world.
• 1:22:09
  Jimmy Nelson: And then there was this massive conversation around it.
• 1:22:11
  Jimmy Nelson: But this wasn't real.
• 1:22:12
  Jimmy Nelson: He staged them.
• 1:22:15
  Jimmy Nelson: Now, he spent the last 30 years of his life and the last 30 years of the Native American Indian on this tour and he did do not too different to what I'm doing.
• 1:22:24
  Jimmy Nelson: He would walk into their communities and he said this is about to go and disappear.
• 1:22:28
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm here to record it for posterity's sake.
• 1:22:30
  Jimmy Nelson: It's valuable and it's important.
• 1:22:32
  Jimmy Nelson: Come to me at your most dignified, come to me at your most beautiful.
• 1:22:35
  Jimmy Nelson: Come to me when the light comes from here and the mountains here and the winds here and the feathers are there.
• 1:22:40
  Jimmy Nelson: I don't want to photograph you in disrespect or in poverty.
• 1:22:44
  Jimmy Nelson: Your wealth, your beauty.
• 1:22:51
  Jimmy Nelson: I want to put you on a pedestal, so not too dissimilar to him.
• 1:22:52
  Jimmy Nelson: That's what I'm doing now.
• 1:22:53
  Jimmy Nelson: There are two different narratives.
• 1:22:54
  Jimmy Nelson: You can disappear off into Yemen, which is where I was, and run around with a reportage camera and follow everybody with the guns.
• 1:23:01
  Jimmy Nelson: Or you can walk into their communities, spend weeks sitting watching, watch their ceremonies, look at their traditions and ask them to come to me in a kind space and tell a different narrative.
• 1:23:11
  Jimmy Nelson: Show you and the world and wait until you see what I've made, and I'm making some of the most beautiful people I've ever seen in my life, with traditions that do not exist anywhere else on the planet.
• 1:23:23
  Jimmy Nelson: It's unbelievably, and that's staged or is it?
• 1:23:29
  Jimmy Nelson: That's the conversation, or is it just a different narrative?
• 1:23:34
  Jimmy Nelson: Do I go in with a flak, jacket on with press and photograph a couple of dead bodies on a street?
• 1:23:39
  Jimmy Nelson: Or do I disappear off into the mountains and live with the community and say what's going down there in the city is a very different story.
• 1:23:46
  Jimmy Nelson: What's happening up here on the mountains?
• 1:23:47
  Jimmy Nelson: Tell that story with me, show that to me.
• 1:23:50
  Jimmy Nelson: Show that in its dignity, its beauty and the way I do it is obsessively with a camera, because I'm trying to make an artistic aesthetic.
• 1:23:57
  Jimmy Nelson: So I totally stand behind my process of working and it's not too dissimilar to Edward Sheriff Curtis, many other photographers, and in all honesty, I don't think as a photographer, as an artist, you should worry about that.
• 1:24:14
  Jimmy Nelson: The only thing you should worry about is where we were half an hour ago, is what is your truth, what is your story?
• 1:24:20
  Jimmy Nelson: And if you, if you connect with that and hold it, it's fine.
• 1:24:25
  Jimmy Nelson: If you want to stick a sticker with shell on your forehead and that's your truth and you earn it, fine.
• 1:24:31
  Jimmy Nelson: Who am I to say any different?
• 1:24:34
  Jimmy Nelson: It's all about the narrative you're telling to yourself and if you're truthful to yourself and that can only come when you love yourself, then it's fine what other people think of it, don't, don't worry about it.
• 1:24:46
  Matt Jacob: Don't worry about it I love, I love, I love what you said about a different truth.
• 1:24:51
  Matt Jacob: I mean narrative, yes, but there are.
• 1:24:54
  Matt Jacob: There is not just one truth that photographers can um express right.
• 1:24:59
  Matt Jacob: There are many.
• 1:25:00
  Jimmy Nelson: It is subjective and therefore there are your own subjective, it's all subjective, but that's what, that's what's beautiful, but the stories that last, the work that I would believe, or hope they believe, is the one that's closest to the truth yep, your truth.
• 1:25:15
  Matt Jacob: Let's round off with with something similar to that and and that's the the, I guess, a dilemma, but the responsibility you have as a photographer to represent ethnic groups in a way that is with dignity and is with beauty and allows you to serve them the way you want to serve them.
• 1:25:34
  Matt Jacob: Talk, to talk to us about that pressure that you probably put on yourself but also feel from others externalities and how do you get around that, or how do you do it.
• 1:25:44
  Jimmy Nelson: You don't get around it, you jump into the narrative.
• 1:25:47
  Jimmy Nelson: There's no avoidance, it's a lesser of two evils.
• 1:25:51
  Jimmy Nelson: This is the way I look at it and this is the narrative I told myself, and, whether it's true or not, it's my truth.
• 1:25:56
  Jimmy Nelson: You ignore them, you don't document them, you don't share them, you don't show them.
• 1:26:05
  Jimmy Nelson: They will disconnect from their self, their beauty, their respect.
• 1:26:09
  Jimmy Nelson: They will perceive themselves to be less wealthy and, more often than not, when they're hidden and not celebrated, they will be abused by us.
• 1:26:22
  Jimmy Nelson: We will exploit the land that they live in and on and with.
• 1:26:26
  Jimmy Nelson: If you go in and you put them on a pedestal and you say I'm here to see, you, celebrate you and show you in a particular narrative to the world and you open the door to their existence, to and to themselves.
• 1:26:40
  Jimmy Nelson: It's a different narrative.
• 1:26:41
  Jimmy Nelson: Now you change the narrative, you interfere, which is what I do, uh, unintentionally, but it's, it's inevitable.
• 1:26:50
  Jimmy Nelson: Other people follow in your footsteps.
• 1:26:52
  Jimmy Nelson: Having seen the pictures and it's.
• 1:26:55
  Jimmy Nelson: I've been back to many of the communities I've worked with over the years and they literally said you were, if not the first, one of the first people to ever come and visit us with a camera.
• 1:27:03
  Jimmy Nelson: As a result, we have many other visitors, but now, listen, they say that's a good thing for two reasons.
• 1:27:12
  Jimmy Nelson: One, because we now earn an income from it.
• 1:27:15
  Jimmy Nelson: Other people visit and they ask to make a picture.
• 1:27:20
  Jimmy Nelson: We now charge for that purpose.
• 1:27:22
  Jimmy Nelson: As a result of that, in many cases, the communities grow, people realign with their culture, their tradition, with the environment that they lived in, and they come back from the urban zone.
• 1:27:36
  Jimmy Nelson: The other thing is, though, jimmy, it's changed, we're evolving.
• 1:27:41
  Jimmy Nelson: It's not the tradition that it was many years ago, and we're applying it.
• 1:27:46
  Jimmy Nelson: We're maybe even making more aesthetic, maybe even making it more visual for the picture to earn more money, but if it wasn't for that, they all say unanimously, we wouldn't even be here anymore.
• 1:28:00
  Jimmy Nelson: So you either open up the door and let us rediscover ourself, that you perceive us as valuable.
• 1:28:08
  Jimmy Nelson: There is a wealth in our tradition, uh, and we all end up running around with a smartphone, which is more than 80 percent of the places I now go to in the world, even the most remotest corners.
• 1:28:18
  Jimmy Nelson: There are smartphones there, so they're connected.
• 1:28:22
  Jimmy Nelson: Or you go like this or don't touch, don't tell, don't relate, don't record, don't photograph, and this will happen.
• 1:28:30
  Jimmy Nelson: So it's off off either, or that's my opinion, it's a very sort of simplistic way of looking at it.
• 1:28:38
  Jimmy Nelson: So I'm owning the narrative, owning the story and owning the discussion, and then that's the bridge to the foundation, the majority of places that I've worked that I have the opportunity to go back to.
• 1:28:48
  Jimmy Nelson: We go back and say how can I help you consolidate your heritage, your traditions, your state of being?
• 1:28:55
  Jimmy Nelson: How can I enable you to believe and realize that that's value?
• 1:28:58
  Jimmy Nelson: Don't abandon it like we have and all become homogenous and disconnect.
• 1:29:02
  Jimmy Nelson: Stay connected where you need you to stay connected.
• 1:29:05
  Jimmy Nelson: I use these pictures to tell that story.
• 1:29:07
  Jimmy Nelson: Let me use some of the income to persuade you to hold on to that.
• 1:29:10
  Jimmy Nelson: Time will tell.
• 1:29:12
  Jimmy Nelson: I'll be long gone and somebody will write something somewhere one day and say, well, I got it totally wrong, or maybe right, and that's the uh, yeah.
• 1:29:23
  Matt Jacob: Wonderful.
• 1:29:23
  Matt Jacob: Well, thank you so much for joining me again.
• 1:29:26
  Jimmy Nelson: Uh, I probably kept you way too long again.
• 1:29:28
  Matt Jacob: Um, but it's.
• 1:29:29
  Matt Jacob: It's been even more pleasurable as, as I get to know you a little bit deeper and, um, I want to, I want to just thank you for taking the time out to represent yourself in a second way to the world, and you've certainly done it justice.
• 1:29:46
  Jimmy Nelson: So thank you, thank you for your patience, thank you for providing this platform.
• 1:29:51
  Jimmy Nelson: It's a privilege to have been with you in and on it for the second time.
• 1:29:56
  Matt Jacob: And good luck on your trip.
• 1:29:58
  Matt Jacob: Thank you so much.
• 1:29:59
  Matt Jacob: Where can we find you?
• 1:30:00
  Matt Jacob: What's coming up?
• 1:30:01
  Matt Jacob: I know you've got some online gallery events and I know you're traveling soon, and what are we looking out for?
• 1:30:06
  Jimmy Nelson: I'm in the middle of this project, but I have an immersive exhibition in Carrière des Lumières Even though I have a French girlfriend she mocks my accent, it's not very good In the village Beau de Provence, just an hour north of Marseille.
• 1:30:24
  Jimmy Nelson: It's where I believe the first immersive experience started about 10 years ago.
• 1:30:29
  Jimmy Nelson: It's from a company called Cultural Spaces.
• 1:30:31
  Jimmy Nelson: They have Atelier de Lumiere in Paris, so it's this sort of massive halls with 150 beamers, so it's in a sort of audio-visual experience.
• 1:30:40
  Jimmy Nelson: That's for six months there, starting in the summer, and I have a traditional uh framed exhibition in a museum in barcelona we haven't got the right date, opening in the autumn, and then here in anselm there's a gallery.
• 1:30:54
  Matt Jacob: People are welcome to come and visit me here if they'd like Well if I'm ever there, I'm definitely going to come and visit, if you're happy.
• 1:31:01
  Jimmy Nelson: Yeah, welcome Come.
• 1:31:01
  Jimmy Nelson: It rains a lot and it's a bit like living in the Truman Show, but they're nice people.
• 1:31:08
  Matt Jacob: Thank you so much, Jimmy.
• 1:31:09
  Matt Jacob: Take care of yourself.
• 1:31:10
  Jimmy Nelson: Thank you very much.
• 1:31:11
  Matt Jacob: And hopefully speak to you again soon.
• 1:31:13
  Jimmy Nelson: Thank you for your time and your patience.
• 1:31:14
  Jimmy Nelson: Good luck, bye.