Latest / The MOOD Podcast / Why Your Photos Are Boring - Photographer David Chancellor Explains..., E128

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Why Your Photos Are Boring - Photographer David Chancellor Explains..., E128 · The MOOD Podcast

• 0:00
  David: I think the reason I do it is because you can't.
• 0:02
  David: And I can.
• 0:03
  David: And I didn't expect it to be as impactful and as traumatic as it is.
• 0:09
  David: It's worth the effort.
• 0:10
  David: It's worth the trauma.
• 0:12
  David: If we lose the ability to be able to tell the stories and understand what's going on when we're not aware of it, then we're doomed.
• 0:22
  Matt: This is David Chancellor.
• 0:24
  Matt: He has spent his career inside the moral gray areas most of us judge from a distance, photographing not what is right or wrong, but what is true and pushing us to ask questions, promote discourse, and open education and dialogue around issues that really do ask as much from ourselves as they do the wider society.
• 0:44
  David: I also wasn't going to take the obvious route of condemning it.
• 0:48
  David: I wanted to understand it.
• 0:50
  David: So let me walk the fence with you and let me see what comes out the other end and let's see where we go.
• 0:56
  David: If you're producing images of complex and distressing stories that people go, this needs to stop, then you've lost the battle.
• 1:07
  David: If you're producing images that people go, how do we make this stop?
• 1:11
  David: This is terrible, then you've won the battle.
• 1:14
  Matt: This conversation is about whether a photograph can still change anything.
• 1:19
  Matt: It's about how to stand in the nuance and the gray without losing yourself, your relationships, or your hope, and what it truly costs to make work that matters.
• 1:30
  David: No.
• 1:30
  David: I think as a species, I think we suck.
• 1:34
  David: It also became very difficult to separate what you were seeing and what was going on, and the blood and the trauma and watching things die to coming back to your two-year-old son and your wife.
• 1:47
  David: Is the breakup of the relationship a direct result of this work?
• 1:50
  David: Possibly not.
• 1:51
  David: Possibly it's my personality.
• 1:54
  David: I'm not sure I'm gonna get this out.
• 1:56
  David: Um do I find myself in a supermarket somewhere unrelated, tasting dead elephants?
• 2:08
  David: Yeah, I do.
• 2:10
  David: I have accepted the cost, and I do accept the cost, and I'm still working within this particular sphere, and I will continue to do so.
• 2:18
  David: I think that makes me who I am, and I would not want to change a single thing that I've done in my life.
• 2:25
  David: Not a single thing.
• 2:27
  Matt: David's photographs make people look and ask questions.
• 2:31
  Matt: Conversations open, minds shift, and as such, his work has helped end a selection of practices that are morally and ethically charged.
• 2:40
  Matt: That is the true power of photography.
• 2:43
  Matt: David and his work are the proof.
• 2:46
  David: Everything we talked about and the work that we do hopefully has the ability to be able to pull people back from that precipice and understand, in some cases, the significance of what shouldn't be happening, in other cases, the beauty of what is available to us and it and is out there.
• 3:06
  Matt: Are you numbed to it now, you know, seeing so much death?
• 3:10
  Matt: I'm not sure I can answer that.
• 3:12
  Matt: How often do you travel?
• 3:25
  Matt: Are you are you traveling a lot or you try and base yourself for longer periods of time?
• 3:30
  David: Yeah, I mean I travel yeah, I try both.
• 3:32
  David: I mean I travel if I'm if I'm doing stories, then I'll have to travel.
• 3:36
  David: Um, but I try and spend as much time in one place as I possibly can.
• 3:40
  David: Some somebody somebody said to me, actually in Kenya many, many years ago, that it was it was somebody I was working with and it was a difficult project to work on.
• 3:51
  David: And they turned around and said to me, Well it's okay for you because you can just pack up and leave.
• 3:55
  David: And I thought, you're actually you're actually not wrong.
• 4:00
  David: You must look at me, you know, as as somebody who just comes and arrives and takes and doesn't really, at that time doesn't really give much back again.
• 4:12
  David: Um and they described it as parachuting it, you just parachute it, and then you just, you know, you just fuck off again.
• 4:19
  David: I think that's there were various ways I tried to get around it.
• 4:24
  David: Um and I think it's answered your question, really.
• 4:28
  David: I think one of them was you know, is committing to different landscapes and uh committing to be long-term on these projects, um, which obviously has many different uh byproducts of that many, many different um, you know, financially, it becomes much more of a footprint if you commit to be in a place for a a significant amount of time.
• 4:54
  David: But it does mean that you um have long-term relationships with the people that you work with, and those people who give you or allow you access to their lives and those projects.
• 5:05
  David: Um, so you were asking, you know, do I travel a lot?
• 5:07
  David: And you know, I try I try to travel not that much, but I do, um, as I'm sure, you know, you're aware and we're all aware doing this type of documentary work.
• 5:17
  David: There is a large amount of time spent traveling.
• 5:20
  David: Um and you know, there's casualties to that, which I'm sure we'll talk about as well, which is you know, family and relationships and and everything else, when you start to you start to move around and you start to work in these very intense environments.
• 5:34
  David: Um it's that's what we do.
• 5:38
  Matt: There are a lot of casualties to uh these sacrifices that that you're willing to make for something you believe in, but uh you know, just just on the travel side.
• 5:47
  Matt: It's like it's hard to travel these days anyway.
• 5:51
  Matt: And you know, we were talking just before we um uh before we started about uh the world being in chaos and and travel is part of that.
• 6:00
  Matt: Not only is travel uh so expensive these days, it's just it's just uh utterly miserable.
• 6:05
  Matt: There's uh there's nothing enjoyable about it.
• 6:08
  Matt: So um yeah, I guess that's more of a an ironic take on on my career as well as what what you do so much of, but the spending the time in these places directly correlates to better work anyway, not only more special connections, not only uh you know, deeper uh forged uh relationships and understanding with uh what you're trying to capture, but better visuals, better stories, more more meaningful and purposeful and and and deeper um narratives that you're that that you're trying to uh tell, which is exactly kind of the intent behind all of these projects that you do, correct?
• 6:52
  David: Yeah, totally correct.
• 6:53
  David: I mean a great you know great way to put it.
• 6:55
  David: And I think it's also there is an enormous amount of trust that is given um by the people, the individuals and the organizations that you work with on these projects.
• 7:08
  David: Because a lot of these projects are when they are long-term, you know, work is not necessarily released immediately.
• 7:15
  David: And there has to be a trust that when the work is released, and if it's released slowly, then it's it tells the story in a you know in a in a in an understanding, cooperative way that it's actually meant to do.
• 7:32
  David: So um, if people are letting you into their lives, then I think you have to very much have to commit and have to have to return that faith and that honesty that is shared with you.
• 7:45
  David: I think photography is an incredibly powerful tool.
• 7:48
  David: You know, I always used to joke with my son that, you know, there were three or four emergency services, and one of them should be photographer going on assignment.
• 7:56
  David: And it should be maybe it should be, you know, at the time we were sort of thinking maybe it should be a pink and and yellow spotted light or something on the top of a vehicle.
• 8:04
  David: So everyone knew there was a photographer rushing to an assignment, so they should move out of the way because it was, you know, it was urgent and it was important that that person got there, which I know is a bit sort of you know up your ass, but you know what I mean.
• 8:16
  David: You get the principle.
• 8:17
  David: It's the fact that these stories are really, really important.
• 8:21
  David: And I think in many ways we are losing, because we're losing um the markets, other markets are opening up, but we're losing some of the solid markets to present these long-term stories to the world.
• 8:35
  David: Um, you know, I think that's um I think not only is it a big regret, I think it's wrong.
• 8:42
  David: I think we should still have the ability to be able to allow people to um delve into worlds and societies and issues over a longer term and it not just be a social media, you know, you've got 10 images, 20 images to present something to someone who may look at it or may not.
• 9:01
  David: Talking about travel again, I got off like got off a flight the other day and we're standing behind some.
• 9:07
  David: First thing everyone does is turn their phone on.
• 9:09
  David: And she was literally, first thing she did was turn her phone on, checked her WhatsApp, not many messages, went straight to Instagram, and she just scrolled.
• 9:17
  David: And she would find something she liked and she'd like it, and she'd scroll and she'd like it.
• 9:21
  David: That's where a lot of our stories end up.
• 9:24
  David: That's not long-term, that's not a way to be long-term storytelling.
• 9:28
  David: It's a great, it's a great tool, but there needs to be a second level of that.
• 9:33
  David: Um, you know, and there were, and there still are the likes of National Geographic and various other magazines who did this in a fantastic way.
• 9:42
  David: I don't think they do it in as in as in as comprehensive way as they did.
• 9:49
  David: I don't think they necessarily support those stories.
• 9:52
  Matt: I was having my haircut the other day, and two ladies were folding towels.
• 9:59
  Matt: Right and they couldn't get through five towels without checking their phone.
• 10:04
  Matt: Right.
• 10:04
  Matt: And this is like their job, right?
• 10:05
  Matt: This is they're at work and they're literally attached to their phone.
• 10:09
  Matt: I mean, this is one example of billions every day.
• 10:12
  Matt: But I was, you know, I'm very observant and cognizant of this for my own health, as well as just like watching society become degraded and and completely dumbed down to uh to the rot that is social media, soon to be AI and sh this short form content.
• 10:30
  Matt: I mean, I remember when there was no such thing as long or short form, it was just you know, conversation.
• 10:36
  Matt: It wasn't long-form conversation, it was story, not long-term stories.
• 10:40
  Matt: It was just newspapers, it was stories over time.
• 10:43
  Matt: That was just the norm.
• 10:44
  Matt: It wasn't five seconds of a fix and that now we have this long and free.
• 10:52
  David: Sorry, sorry, Matt.
• 10:52
  David: There was still, you know, long-term, I don't know how long you've been doing this, there were still long-term and short and long-form stories in short.
• 11:00
  David: You know, when I worked for a lot of the magazines, the Times and et cetera, et cetera, then, you know, editors would pot would often apologize because they would say, okay, we've only got two or three days for you to go and do this story, and we know this is potentially a long-form story.
• 11:15
  David: And you might go do that story, and that magazine would be published.
• 11:18
  David: In fact, that's how I ended up in Kenya working with the individual that I'm working with at the moment, was a time story where I got three days to spend with him and flying on the light aircraft, just two-seater aircraft with him.
• 11:31
  David: You know, I said, you know, this is this is extraordinary.
• 11:33
  David: There must be, you know, anyone looked at you over a length of time.
• 11:37
  David: And he said, No, no one ever has.
• 11:39
  David: And I went back to the Times and various other magazines, Time magazine at the time as well, and just said, Look, I think there's a great story to be done here.
• 11:48
  David: There's it's it's an important thing to do.
• 11:51
  David: Um I can get access, and I can get access for three years.
• 11:55
  David: Um, is it something you'd be interested in?
• 11:57
  David: And we got funding and we did it for three years.
• 12:00
  David: And I'm here now.
• 12:01
  David: And that was 20 was 2013, and I'm still working on the story now.
• 12:06
  David: So, so yeah, I agree with you.
• 12:09
  David: And I'm not I'm not disagreeing with you at all.
• 12:12
  David: I'm just saying there were there was an opportunity to do that.
• 12:15
  David: I'm not sure where that opportunity would come from now.
• 12:18
  David: Um, I'm not sure even what my vehicle would be um to put something, you know, maybe it would be social media, maybe it would be Smithsonian, maybe on the outside it might be National Geographic.
• 12:34
  David: Um but often I'm limited to 20 images now, which is social media.
• 12:40
  Matt: Which is bizarre.
• 12:41
  Matt: And then you have to play the game.
• 12:43
  Matt: I mean, even the likes of National Geographic are have to play the game if they want eyes on paper.
• 12:49
  Matt: They have to play the social media game to get the portal, get the window of eyes through to their publication.
• 12:56
  Matt: And just as us as individual uh photographers, artists, people with something to say, people with a voice, we almost have to tell our story in a single frame like even a carousel or one image to try and get uh just a reaction or an engagement to then hopefully uh uncover this other world and hopefully uncover you know the rest of your work, a portfolio, or story, or whatever you're trying, you know, music or or poetry or books, whatever you're trying to tell.
• 13:27
  Matt: So you kind of have to play that that game these days.
• 13:30
  Matt: But yeah, I mean you you started this conversation by saying you wouldn't know where to start if you're you wouldn't know what to say to a young photographer, you wouldn't know where to start if you were starting today.
• 13:40
  Matt: And I guess um, you know, I'd I would like to ask you that question anyway, because uh you know I I see it day in and day out.
• 13:48
  Matt: People are so overwhelmed with not only information, but overwhelmed with where to start, how to get out there.
• 13:56
  Matt: You know, they can learn the base, anyone can learn the base, anyone to kind learn the photography, but how to actually uh uh cultivate their voice and where to distribute that voice and how to actually uh get out of the scene and especially if they've got uh stories and impactful awareness uh stories, activism or not, that they want to show the world that they feel so important to get out there.
• 14:20
  Matt: What how do they even do that without connections and without grants and without uh, you know, you know, a history and a and a pedigree of having done this for the last two decades or so?
• 14:32
  David: No, totally, totally agree.
• 14:34
  David: And you know, there's a I get a lot of requests from people and have conversations with people, and not because, you know, I'm I was gonna say a particularly nice person or different to anybody else, but I do think that when you get those requests, you you know, we are we are duty bound because of where we are career-wise and photographically and storytelling-wise, and the access that we've been given to tell these stories, to respond to those and to help wherever we can, because sure, a conversation with not because I'm exceptional in any way, shape, or form, but because I have years behind me, a conversation with somebody like me or somebody like you who's you traveling your particular route, and I've traveled my particular route is incredibly important to people who have um innate visual literacy.
• 15:25
  David: And you can, you know, that's the the beauty for me of social media now, which wasn't it wasn't as easy to be able to read whether somebody can actually see and produce images, whether they have that innate visual literacy.
• 15:40
  David: And if I have somebody present work to me or want to have a conversation or they're working on projects and I see a particular thing that uh makes me believe that they have a future in this industry, then I will support them and move heaven and earth to to help them in any way I can to get the access that they need to achieve what they want to achieve.
• 16:04
  David: Because I think they're still having everything we've just said, I still think there are gaps.
• 16:08
  David: It's just more difficult to find those gaps.
• 16:12
  David: Um but when we do, and when a good story comes out, uh when it's told well, then it has a massive impact.
• 16:19
  David: Because if if you can get it across the various mediums we have available to us now, including um physical print, as well as social media and everything else, then the reach is enormous.
• 16:31
  David: So there it you know, there is there are opportunities, but it's just it's much more difficult than it was previously.
• 16:38
  Matt: Where do you, if you were to pinpoint some of those opportunities, where do you see those opportunities?
• 16:43
  Matt: I mean to look at the the resurgence of film, I look at the print market, I I don't see much buoyancy there.
• 16:51
  Matt: I still think there's a demand for things like prints, and I see the commercial assignment market dwindling as with the budget.
• 16:58
  Matt: Uh I I see generally uh a downturn in so many areas, but also there's the the it a it's cyclical and and every uh action has an equal and opposite reaction.
• 17:11
  Matt: And there, like you said, there must be uh opportunities and social media, I believe, is one of those opportunities, depending on what type of uh photographer you want to be.
• 17:20
  Matt: So where uh where would you see the opportunities for a for an emerging photographer these days?
• 17:29
  David: Um I think you know, remind me if I don't answer that question at the end of this sentence, but I think the for me the you know the biggest advantage I have is provenance.
• 17:41
  David: And again, not because you know it's exceptional or but just for years and time spent, is that you're you know, here you you refer to a muse, an elder.
• 17:57
  David: Um some some refer to people as a muse.
• 18:01
  David: So it's somebody that they would look up to and they would seek advice from.
• 18:04
  David: And by default, when you have you know age and you've spent time in a particular environment so they know who you are, um then you will get access to things and doors will open and people want to talk to you about things.
• 18:20
  David: People might even ask advice, you know.
• 18:22
  David: How do we tell our story?
• 18:24
  David: Somebody who's starting out, to answer your question, I hope, but somebody who started out who doesn't have that, um it's I it's incredibly, I would think it's incredibly difficult.
• 18:37
  David: It's incredibly difficult to get your work out or to get your work in front of the people who need to see it and can make decisions as to um the future of your career and the opportunities that you might have available to you.
• 18:55
  David: Um I know that's maybe dodging the answer or dodging the question.
• 19:01
  David: Um I honestly don't know.
• 19:03
  David: I think reaching out to other photographers who are prepared to share and talk and assisting other photographers, as it always has been, it's a fantastic way to do it.
• 19:13
  David: Um, but the possibility of then or the the strength of them saying um, or thinking, well, then this is what I want to do for the rest of my life, and this is how I'm going to, if I decide to support a family, just the basics, you know, have a mortgage, have a house, have, you know, to just be able to get on a plane, to be able to fly somewhere, to be able to buy equipment, um, generate income.
• 19:40
  David: Yeah, how do you do that?
• 19:42
  David: You know, I remember when I started, um, and I was super young.
• 19:46
  David: I remember having a conversation.
• 19:48
  David: Well, my father had a conversation with me rather, when I was about 16 to 17.
• 19:53
  David: And I'd been doing photography by then for about four or five years.
• 19:57
  David: I'm getting getting images published in a local newspaper.
• 20:00
  David: And um, he said to me, you know, what are you going to do with your life when you leave school?
• 20:04
  David: I said, Well, I want to be a photographer.
• 20:06
  David: And he said, No, you can't be a photographer.
• 20:07
  David: He said, you know, everyone wants to be a photographer.
• 20:10
  David: You're not going to make a living.
• 20:11
  David: You need to do something else that will allow you to generate some income so that you can have photography as a hobby.
• 20:18
  David: I said, but it's not what I want to do.
• 20:20
  David: And he said, Well, you need to have something behind you.
• 20:22
  David: He said, Why don't you do something like banking?
• 20:26
  David: You know.
• 20:26
  David: So I said, Well, I'm never going to do that.
• 20:29
  David: And he said, Well, apply and then, you know, see how you get on.
• 20:33
  David: You continue doing your photography, you earn enough money, you can buy equipment.
• 20:35
  David: He said, And maybe you can do weddings.
• 20:37
  David: So basically, you know, I knew I wasn't going to do weddings, and I thought, well, okay, so let's just do what he suggests.
• 20:43
  David: So I started to do, uh I had an interview and I started to do some foreign exchange dealing.
• 20:49
  David: And I lasted about two or three months, and I had um a meeting, uh, my sort of quarterly meeting, and sat in this office, and the manager said to me, Um, we don't know why you're here.
• 21:02
  David: And he said, I'm I'm not sure you know why you're here.
• 21:06
  David: He said, So I think probably the best thing would be if you weren't here.
• 21:10
  David: And I said, Okay, fine.
• 21:12
  David: So um I left and um I actually rang the BBC and I said to the BBC, I want to work with you, I want to be an outside broadcast, wildlife cameraman.
• 21:24
  David: And they said, Okay, um, what are your qualifications?
• 21:27
  David: And I told them they said, Okay, you don't have um a-level think of time, it was a level physics.
• 21:33
  David: And I said, Okay, why don't I need a level physics?
• 21:35
  David: He said, Well, because if you're outside broadcast, you've got to know what you're doing, etc.
• 21:38
  David: And there were various things they didn't have.
• 21:40
  David: So they said, we suggest you go back and then come back to us again.
• 21:44
  David: And I thought, okay, I want to do this because I want to be a photographer, primarily not moving image.
• 21:49
  David: So why don't I try and uh study photography?
• 21:53
  David: So I found a um I found well, there were two places I found.
• 21:59
  David: One was um Documentary editorial photography, which um the other one was medical photography because I've always been passionate about biology and and medicine.
• 22:09
  David: And so one was in Portsmouth and the other one was in London.
• 22:13
  David: And I applied to them.
• 22:14
  David: I went um I took this portfolio, which was like, you know, four or five feet wide, because that's what I thought you had to do.
• 22:21
  David: Little tiny pictures on whiteboards in the middle, because otherwise that was creative.
• 22:26
  David: And I went to both these um both these people and had these interviews.
• 22:32
  David: And um both of them offered places, but the the one, the documentary editorial photography guy, um said to me, Um, your work is not very good.
• 22:42
  David: He said, in fact, it's it's probably below average.
• 22:46
  David: He said, but I'm gonna offer you a place.
• 22:48
  David: And he said, the reason I'm gonna offer you a place is because you're working in foreign exchange dealing in the city.
• 22:54
  David: So you have a great future in front of you.
• 22:56
  David: So if you're prepared to give that up, then you obviously want to be a photographer, and those are the type of people we want.
• 23:02
  David: So we can hopefully use some of our skills to allow you to generate an income from photography.
• 23:08
  David: So the fact that I'd taken a job, lost a job, and then become a photographer as a result of that gave me a route that um allowed me to do what I'm doing now.
• 23:19
  David: So it's a long story.
• 23:21
  David: But you know, how somebody would um how somebody would do that now, I'm not quite sure.
• 23:26
  Matt: Yeah, it was a wonderful story.
• 23:28
  Matt: And I and I know you've praised that story of your your provenance.
• 23:32
  Matt: Um, so uh, you know, we could we could spend a long time uh getting into that.
• 23:37
  Matt: Sorry to cut away from the episode for a minute, but I wanted to talk to you about something very quickly.
• 23:44
  Matt: Now, I spent a long time thinking that isolation was part of the deal when it came to photography.
• 23:50
  Matt: That if you were serious about the work, you did it alone.
• 23:54
  Matt: You'd consume enough, watch enough, read enough, and eventually it would all cohere into something meaningful.
• 24:01
  Matt: And it sometimes did.
• 24:03
  Matt: But mostly I was just alone with my doubts and no one to push back on them.
• 24:08
  Matt: What changed things for me wasn't a course or a workshop, it was a conversation with someone who was doing the same kind of work and cared about it in exactly the same way I did.
• 24:21
  Matt: The doubts didn't disappear, but they got a little bit smaller and I felt more okay with them.
• 24:26
  Matt: They got named.
• 24:27
  Matt: That's what I'm building with the Mood Insiders.
• 24:31
  Matt: It's a place where the work is taken seriously, where you can bring your questions and of course your half-finished ideas, and where someone will actually engage with them.
• 24:42
  Matt: We have the ad-free extended podcast episodes with bonus content, we have monthly masterclasses, QA sessions, and of course the weekly book clubs and direct direct access to me and my team, because you don't have to do this alone.
• 24:57
  Matt: So the link is in the show notes, and hopefully I'll see you inside.
• 25:01
  Matt: What did uh what did that school or what did that person see in you uh specifically, do you think in terms of skills that you could bring to photography?
• 25:15
  Matt: You know, if your photography is below average, they they know that you can improve photography, like the actual aesthetics of photography.
• 25:23
  Matt: So what was it that they saw in you that uh took you further and took you into kind of the realms of uh uh quote unquote success, whatever that uh definition uh uh means?
• 25:33
  Matt: Was it hustle?
• 25:35
  Matt: Was it was it you know street uh wise knowledge?
• 25:40
  Matt: Was it that you've been bad, you know, um your your way with people?
• 25:44
  Matt: Was it that you knew uh exactly what you cared about and why at that young age?
• 25:50
  Matt: What what what do you think were those skills?
• 25:54
  David: That's such a good question.
• 25:56
  David: I think I I think I mean we should sort of press about this, I guess, with the all the way through with the fact that it's not yeah, um I I'm not particular I don't particularly like talking about I don't think any of us do really, but talking about myself and where where we are, but I think what what they saw and what they still see was um what people still see is that it it define it's it's who I am, it defines who I am.
• 26:38
  David: There was, you know, I wasn't going in there because I'd done an art class that was bolted onto another particular thing that I was studying and it was quite nice.
• 26:51
  David: So I thought, well, why don't I go and do photography?
• 26:54
  David: I wasn't coming from a background where I didn't need to make a living because they knew I needed to make a living, but they thought I had the potential to make a living and I could choose that.
• 27:05
  David: And the fact that I chose a photography for them probably ticked some boxes because I'm sure the intention or their success rate will be judged by the number of photographers who completed the course and then went into working at that time.
• 27:18
  David: And also I was pretty ruthless and I was pretty focused.
• 27:26
  David: And I remember the first uh morning that I had to, you know, I got I got um digs, you know, I rented a room in this in this house um that I stayed in for the whole time.
• 27:40
  David: And I remember the first morning I woke up and I literally remember it, and I just thought, this doesn't get any better.
• 27:48
  David: I have now got the next three years to do nothing but photography.
• 27:54
  David: How the f did I get to do this?
• 27:57
  David: And I thought, okay, I'm not gonna fail.
• 28:00
  David: There's no way I'm gonna fail at this because I don't want to do anything else.
• 28:05
  David: I, you know, I had no relationship at the time.
• 28:08
  David: Um I was completely and utterly dedicated.
• 28:11
  David: I remember at the time Billingham bags were all uh were all the rage, which are, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with Billingham bags, but they're beautiful, but they're unforgiving things to carry.
• 28:22
  David: And um I'd got a billingham bag, I'd got a couple of Nikon cameras and some long lenses, and I thought, right, what I'm gonna do, yeah.
• 28:31
  David: What I'm gonna do every morning when I walk, and it was probably about an hour, hour and 10-minute walk down from where I was staying to where college was, I'm gonna carry the bag full of cameras every day, back and forth, because then it's gonna make me fitter and it's gonna make me more uh capable and understanding of what I need to do when I work full-time.
• 28:55
  David: So everywhere I went, I used to carry my cameras.
• 28:58
  David: Not necessarily because I didn't want to miss a picture, but because I wanted to be in a position for them to be um second nature.
• 29:08
  David: They were always there and I could always carry them.
• 29:11
  David: And it wasn't the last thing I thought of.
• 29:13
  David: It was something that I always had with me.
• 29:15
  David: So there is definitely um, you know, an autistic focused um drive that just said, no, this is um this is an opportunity, this is something I want to do.
• 29:30
  David: I know it's an opportunity, I'm not gonna fail.
• 29:32
  David: This defines the rest of my life, and that's what I'm gonna do.
• 29:37
  David: And we had a store, so ruthless.
• 29:39
  David: We had a store there um where they had the longer lenses, and I remember the lecturer saying to me, you know, your long lens work is is great.
• 29:48
  David: I wanted to be a sports photographer at the time.
• 29:50
  David: Said your lens, your long lens work is is fantastic.
• 29:54
  David: So um, you know, you should try and shoot as much as you can.
• 29:59
  David: I suggest over the weekend you try and do as much long lens work as you can.
• 30:02
  David: Now we had one 300 to 8 Nikon Men's manual focus in the store.
• 30:08
  David: So I used to just book it out of store every weekend.
• 30:13
  David: So I would put it back on a Monday and I'd book it out on Thursday.
• 30:17
  David: And so no one else had access to it.
• 30:21
  David: So it became my lens, and it allowed me then to just work non-stop.
• 30:27
  David: So I would go to college all week and I would go and shoot all weekend, and then I would process all the next week and then carry on going to college and go to the lectures, and I haven't stopped.
• 30:39
  David: It hasn't changed.
• 30:41
  David: That's exactly what I've done, and it's exactly what I still do.
• 30:46
  David: So there is a drive, there is a there is a passion, and now equipment, although equipment is still important to me because aesthetically I have to like it.
• 31:00
  David: Um, but that's the only reason.
• 31:03
  David: You know, yes, I have to like what the images are, but I don't ever consider what I'm carrying.
• 31:08
  David: I don't ever think, you know, oh, you know, this doesn't work in this particular given situation, because I know it's so intuitive that I know exactly what I want.
• 31:21
  David: Have I got the right tool to get it?
• 31:22
  David: Well, I make sure I have.
• 31:24
  David: So I'm not shooting something and then saying, okay, well, that's rather good.
• 31:28
  David: You know, I can look at something and go, okay, I know exactly how I want to do that.
• 31:31
  David: I know exactly what that light is, I know what I want to produce.
• 31:34
  David: So this is how I produce it.
• 31:37
  David: So it's it's a it's it's turned around from being um learning how to do it, it's now more knowing exactly how to capture exactly what you want.
• 31:48
  David: So now it's access.
• 31:49
  David: It's nothing to do with equipment.
• 31:51
  David: It's 100% access.
• 31:53
  David: If I don't have access, I might as well just I might as well just give up.
• 31:59
  David: It's all access.
• 32:00
  David: The because I killed your questioning.
• 32:03
  Matt: No, no, no, I have too many.
• 32:04
  Matt: I have too many now, so I'm just trying to figure figure out where how to how to go from here because um this I know I know what it feels like to have that that singularity and that that focus and drive.
• 32:19
  Matt: Nothing else matters in in the whole world.
• 32:22
  Matt: Nothing else matters.
• 32:23
  Matt: I this is what I was born to do, this is this is what I want to do, I don't care what it costs, I will do anything to get it.
• 32:30
  Matt: Many people don't have that.
• 32:33
  Matt: And probably more well, I know uh you know, data-wise, more so these days, less and less people have that almost innate uh drive or I identification of what they actually want to do.
• 32:49
  Matt: That obsession.
• 32:50
  Matt: We talk about obsession in photography all the time.
• 32:52
  Matt: I had that when I was a young boy, I wanted to be a pilot, and then I found it with photography as well.
• 32:57
  Matt: I'm extremely fortunate.
• 32:59
  Matt: And I I my my wife never had that.
• 33:02
  Matt: She found it a couple of years ago.
• 33:04
  Matt: I have friends who have never even got close to having that.
• 33:08
  Matt: So can you can you describe you know, it's wonderfully refreshing to hear that you still have that uh, you know, uh alive in you today.
• 33:19
  Matt: Uh, you know, I'm gonna ask you if it's any different in terms of its uh material structure.
• 33:23
  Matt: But explain what that feels like to people who who may be watching and listening to this and may have an interest in photography, but may not have that drive.
• 33:33
  Matt: Because I think you're right.
• 33:35
  Matt: I think you know, I don't know you extremely well, but I I would I would hazard a guess and a strong bet, actually, that what got you through into where you wanted to get to was just pure focus, a drive, and nothing's gonna stop you.
• 33:49
  Matt: Skills or no skills, it's just that intense uh desire.
• 33:54
  Matt: So how can you kind of uh translate that to people who uh what does it feel like to have that?
• 34:02
  Matt: And then did it wane when you kind of got there?
• 34:05
  Matt: When you got your first sports photography job and you became a salaried photographer, did you still have that drive?
• 34:10
  Matt: And I know you kind of questioned it at times and then you kind of went freelance.
• 34:14
  Matt: Can you explain that process and give us an insight into kind of those emotions and that that internal, internal kind of introspection that you're constantly having with what you want to do in the photography world?
• 34:28
  David: Great, great questions, right?
• 34:29
  David: I mean, um yeah, I mean, it really questions really made me think.
• 34:35
  David: Um where do I start?
• 34:38
  David: Uh there was I mean, there was unquestionably there has to be a selfishness there.
• 34:49
  David: It's an odd word, I can't think of a better word, but there there has to be.
• 34:53
  David: But I think at the age I started, um it was wholly acceptable because you were not the only person that was uh going to um not was not gonna have was not gonna benefit from that or was going uh it was gonna be a problem to was me, because there was no one else to rely on to comment.
• 35:19
  David: So I didn't have, you know, I didn't have a wife or family, I didn't, you know, I didn't have to generate income.
• 35:24
  David: If it all went horribly wrong, then it would be it would be my issue.
• 35:28
  David: But I didn't ever consider that it would be horrible it would go horribly wrong, because I was already doing it and I knew how to do it.
• 35:38
  David: And I've thought about you know how why it why is that so?
• 35:43
  David: I thought about that many times.
• 35:46
  David: You know, my father was a was a university principal and mechanical engineer, but general engineering drawing in the in the days when they had when he had a you know drawing board, and he would draw the most intricate things, you know, with the bar, you know, the ruler, and I mean just extraordinary.
• 36:04
  David: Um and his passion was watches and clocks, and he used to go and um find and sometimes get given grandfather and grandmother clocks, those big wooden-cased clocks, that were either not working or were incomplete.
• 36:20
  David: And he used to make the cogs that would then repair the clocks.
• 36:26
  David: Now, you know, I know now, I obviously didn't know at the time, is that you know, one cog turning one way turns another, another.
• 36:34
  David: We obviously know this, but uh all those cogs have to go so many times to turn a finger the right amount of time.
• 36:42
  David: So he's got to calculate back how all those fit into each other and draw them.
• 36:46
  David: And he used to make them by hand, and then he would fit them all together again, and then we would get presented with this clock that would keep the best time and would have to be wound up.
• 36:56
  David: So there was a physical side, now there was an artistic side to that as well.
• 37:00
  David: There's also a very autistic side to it.
• 37:02
  David: There was a this is how we need to do this in this particular direction in order to make that work.
• 37:08
  David: And as a university lecturer, he was really quite severe.
• 37:14
  David: So he was quite a difficult person to get on with.
• 37:17
  David: Now, my mother was a professional window dresser.
• 37:21
  David: So she used to put, you know, the window, dress the windows on chops.
• 37:27
  David: So she was completely the opposite, but she was super, super conscious of colours and styles.
• 37:34
  David: So, you know, you walk along with her and she'd go, what is she wearing?
• 37:37
  David: And you'd kind of go, what?
• 37:39
  David: And somebody would walk past and you go, Yeah, yeah, that's you know, that's a bit kind of bizarre.
• 37:44
  David: So you had this sort of, maybe melange is the wrong, is not the right word, but this sort of blurring of this sort of, I'm gonna do this and this needs this to do that, which for me at the time was mechanical photography, and then an artistic side to it.
• 38:02
  David: Um so there was there was kind of that that made me was a combination of the two.
• 38:12
  David: And for some reason I got this sign-off that basically said, Okay, well, this is this is how if I was to try and do what I wanted to do, and I wanted to be creative, I wanted to work with wildlife, and I loved the ability that uh photography and art had to freeze something and for me to look at it for a long time and study it and kind of go, this is amazing.
• 38:36
  David: And the only way I could do that at the time, because I couldn't really draw a vote, was to take pictures.
• 38:41
  David: So I knew what I wanted to do.
• 38:43
  David: So my my concern was how do I get myself into that position to do it?
• 38:48
  David: And then, as I say, because there was nobody who was reliant upon me, I could be as selfish and self-centered as I wanted to be.
• 38:56
  David: And then once I'd got myself into a position that I was doing what I was wanted to do, it wasn't a question of not wanting to let go of it.
• 39:03
  David: It was a question of like why what do I want to let go of?
• 39:07
  David: This is who I am, this is what I do.
• 39:09
  David: So therefore, the relationships that I had and developed as, you know, once I'd done that, and I didn't really, you know, because I started so young, um, they've all been aware and continue to be aware of who I am and what I am and what I do.
• 39:25
  David: So relationships that were not accepting of that just didn't last.
• 39:31
  David: So you develop a network of friends, family, and people who are accepting of the fact that you are likely to get up from a dinner party and leave, that you're likely to be unreliable.
• 39:45
  David: It doesn't mean you don't care.
• 39:46
  David: It just means that you're doing what you do because you're a photographer.
• 39:50
  David: You've got that pink spotty light again.
• 39:52
  David: You've got the ability to be able to drive through traffic and say, but I'm going to an assignment.
• 39:57
  David: So that kind of has allowed me to do what I do.
• 40:03
  David: And it's also allowed me to approach people and say, look, I think you have a really interesting life, and I think what you do is extraordinary.
• 40:13
  David: And I'd like to document it, and I'd like you to allow me to spend the next year, two years, three years with you, understanding what that is.
• 40:25
  David: And also when I get questioned, I have the ability to be able to say, um, this is why I think this is important.
• 40:34
  David: So, you know, I've sat down with people.
• 40:37
  David: I sat down when I first started doing Hunters, obviously it was a difficult body of work to work on.
• 40:44
  David: Um, I remember first of all trying to get into that industry for many, many years.
• 40:50
  David: So there's the doggy determination, but now I wanted to do it because I knew it was it was a good story and it was an important story to do, and also continuing to research it, which again is the is the artistic side of it.
• 41:03
  David: So pulling books, going to Cape Town, where I knew there was a big industry, pulling those 19th-century reference books that allowed me to decide exactly when I got access, how I wanted to do it.
• 41:14
  David: So I'm building the project while I'm doing it, and then constantly talking to people who potentially would let me in and who consistently said no, until one individual just said, sure, why don't you come and tell us what you want to do?
• 41:26
  David: So driving five or six hours into the absolute middle of nowhere in South Africa and arriving at this kitchen table on this hunting farm where the whole family is assembled.
• 41:39
  David: And they basically said, okay, so tell us what you want to do, and we'll tell you whether we want to support it.
• 41:48
  David: And then having the ability and I guess the confidence and the understanding of the project by then to be able to stand and say, okay, this is what I want to do.
• 41:55
  David: And I want you to let me do it, and I want you to let me in.
• 41:59
  David: And I have nothing else to say to you.
• 42:03
  David: And them saying, okay, fine.
• 42:06
  David: Um, a bit like, you know, lecturer university saying, okay, if he is prepared to do this, um, why don't we just why don't we go with it?
• 42:16
  David: And sure, there's always a warning.
• 42:17
  David: You know, the warning then was if you if you do anything we don't want, we'll make sure that you don't ever work again in this in this industry.
• 42:25
  David: Um now I knew that wasn't going to happen because I wasn't going to do that, because I wasn't going to promote the work and that made that clear to them.
• 42:33
  David: But I also wasn't going to um take the obvious route of condemning it.
• 42:38
  David: I wanted to understand it.
• 42:40
  David: So um let me walk the fence.
• 42:43
  David: And let me walk the fence with you, and let me see what comes out the other end, and I'll share it with you, and let's see where we go.
• 42:51
  David: So I don't know whether that answers your question, that, but that's kind of Yeah.
• 42:55
  Matt: I mean, I I guess half the question was more rhetorical, as it is an extremely difficult thing to to bottle and and give to someone else.
• 43:03
  Matt: But I think explaining that that that journey really does help.
• 43:07
  Matt: And I think what what I'm what I get from you so much, David, is that you you know exactly what you care about.
• 43:16
  Matt: And I guess my my follow-up question to that is or you you know exactly what you have cared about.
• 43:22
  Matt: You know, it may change a little bit from time to time if we had to throw you know wildlife in there as a as a kind of uh branch of of things that you care about as many as well as many other things, but you can then focus your drive into those specific things.
• 43:38
  Matt: And I think to to make a good photographer um you really have to understand uh what you care about and believe in what you uh what you want to do with that.
• 43:50
  Matt: And I I get that a lot from you.
• 43:52
  Matt: I I I guess my follow up question would be why not why photography, but uh let's let's touch upon the wild.
• 43:59
  Matt: Life um because you know that project hunters, I I I as an animal obsessed um person myself, I I don't know how I just don't know how you did that.
• 44:11
  Matt: Uh you know, it must have been torture for you to to to see uh as well as an education, I I know, and I really want to hear about that and that that this kind of this balanced um not argument but a balanced opinion and a balanced experience of uh of what you you came away from it with.
• 44:30
  Matt: But I just don't you know you must have had so much drive and focus to do that project.
• 44:39
  Matt: And I want to know why.
• 44:41
  Matt: What what what is it about wildlife that you care about so much?
• 44:46
  Matt: What is it about photographing uh these uh inherently kind of volatile stories and uh very, very fascinating stories that lead so much curiosity and nuance, which is really what we want in the world, you know, going back to the dumbing down of society, we want these interesting stories that have something to say and leave something on a precipice for us to kind of uh pick apart and and discuss and talk about because there's both sides to everything.
• 45:19
  Matt: What why why that project?
• 45:21
  Matt: Why wildlife?
• 45:22
  Matt: Why these projects that you choose?
• 45:24
  Matt: What is it that you get from it?
• 45:26
  Matt: Is it uh is it something that you want to externalize and put out there and feel like you can help the world in a kind of more activism kind of way?
• 45:35
  Matt: Or is it that more that self you just enjoy the process of these projects and you enjoy learning for yourself?
• 45:42
  Matt: Or is it uh something else or a bit of both?
• 45:46
  David: I think I mean photography for me is definitely a diary.
• 45:51
  David: Um you know, I don't if I had the the ability to write, I don't think this is true, but I'll say it.
• 45:59
  David: If I had the ability to write, then maybe I wouldn't be working in photography.
• 46:04
  David: But I but I don't, if I had the ability to draw, maybe that would be a consideration, but I but I don't.
• 46:11
  David: But I do have the ability to take pictures and I do understand the technical side of it to such a degree, and for some reason I can see light, and there is nothing more um more emotive, more um more beautiful for me than than light.
• 46:34
  David: My my son I used to drive my still I still do.
• 46:38
  David: Um I used to drive my son mad because you know, I would just say, my God, the light.
• 46:43
  David: And he would just go, you know, will you stop saying the light?
• 46:48
  David: So now how many times?
• 46:49
  David: And I'm like, but have you seen that?
• 46:51
  David: And he'd go, you know, yeah, okay, it's nice, but you know, and it's that's literally for me, it's the light.
• 46:58
  David: If I'm buying a house, if I'm renting a house, if I'm if I'm traveling, if I'm doing stuff, it's the light.
• 47:03
  David: You know, we'll go back to your we'll go back to your story, I hope.
• 47:07
  David: But you know, the guy who sat me at the kitchen table was a uh a lion breeder and hunter in South Africa, which was the industry that I want to look at because I didn't understand it.
• 47:18
  David: So short answer to your question, but we'll we'll broaden it out, is the fact because I don't understand why they want to do it.
• 47:24
  David: So tell me why you want to do it.
• 47:26
  David: And my medium, my my my way of doing things, if you like, of understanding is to is to photograph.
• 47:34
  David: And he was, you know, he was he became a very, very good friend, and we worked on that project for a long time together.
• 47:41
  David: I want to say worked on it together.
• 47:43
  David: We did, because that's what he was doing.
• 47:46
  David: So it documented him through his life, the changes in the industry.
• 47:49
  David: He became my my sort of my conduit into that particular world.
• 47:56
  David: And from sitting down at that table and meeting this big South African guy, um, about a year and a half, two years into that particular project, um, and I used to spend a lot of time with him.
• 48:08
  David: I got a I had a phone call from him, which I just didn't get.
• 48:12
  David: And he said to me, um, you know, in this brilliant Eastern Cape South African accent, he said, uh, David, where are you?
• 48:19
  David: And I said, um, I'm in Cape Town.
• 48:21
  David: And he said, You can need to come here.
• 48:23
  David: I said, Okay, where do I need to come now?
• 48:25
  David: He said, because we've just got a uh a family who brought over this um this girl, and it's her first hunt.
• 48:35
  David: And um one, she's extraordinary looking, so she's redheaded, and um, they're gonna start hunting tomorrow.
• 48:44
  David: And um two, um, the light now at this time of year is incredible.
• 48:51
  David: I was like, this guy is telling me the light is incredible.
• 48:54
  David: This guy would not have known the light was incredible prior to the time we'd spent together if it had knocked him out, you know.
• 49:01
  David: So I'm like, okay, so one, he's telling me that this person's amazing, and two, to photograph is two, he's telling me the lights are right, so okay, I need to go.
• 49:08
  David: So I literally just got in the car and drove and uh threw the knives and arrived there for them to go out in the morning, and that's Josie.
• 49:18
  David: That's the image that won the Taylor Westing portrait prize.
• 49:21
  David: That is entirely due to this guy, because she was exactly what he said.
• 49:26
  David: She was extraordinary looking, and he understood the light.
• 49:30
  David: So he'd learned what I was looking at.
• 49:33
  David: So he was learning, he'd learned that you know that he knew exactly what I wanted to tell, the story that I wanted to tell, and he was engaged in it.
• 49:44
  David: So I don't know whether that answers your question or whether there's a there's a there's a broader part to it.
• 49:51
  Matt: I'm interested in the concept of beauty all the time.
• 49:54
  Matt: And I I I'd love to I'd love to hear what beauty is to you.
• 49:58
  Matt: I think the way I see your such incredible work is a is a is a crossroads, is it, is um, is it almost a symbiosis between a moral issue and a story and an artistic one, and you seem to marry the two so well, which I think is kind of the holy grail in documentary photography.
• 50:19
  Matt: Now, when it comes to photography, the whole infrastructure of the internet rewards speed.
• 50:24
  Matt: Post more, post faster, be first, be everywhere.
• 50:27
  Matt: The algorithm doesn't care whether you went deep, it cares whether you showed up yesterday.
• 50:32
  Matt: And I guess that's not photography specific.
• 50:35
  Matt: Now, for me, I built my work around a different bet that there are people who would rather go slowly and understand something fully than go fast and understand probably nothing.
• 50:46
  Matt: That depth is not a liability, that the work you make when you take your time is categorically different from the work you make when you're chasing the feed, maybe, or chasing the algorithm.
• 50:57
  Matt: Now, the Mood Insiders is built on that same bet.
• 51:01
  Matt: It's a private community for photographers and visual artists who are serious about the slow work.
• 51:07
  Matt: We have monthly masterclasses where we actually go deep on craft and thinking.
• 51:12
  Matt: We have a weekly book club, monthly QA's.
• 51:16
  Matt: We have the podcast, of course, but ad-free with bonus content, and we have direct access to me and my team.
• 51:22
  Matt: It's not another newsletter you'll forget about, not a Discord server full of noise.
• 51:26
  Matt: It's a room with a small number of serious people and a very clear and supportive focus.
• 51:32
  Matt: It's just $19 a month.
• 51:34
  Matt: The link is in the show notes, and I really hope I can see you inside.
• 51:38
  Matt: So I'm interested in what be uh what beauty means to you in in that sense, because when you nail it with a with a portrait like that that wins awards, you gotta go, well, I nailed it.
• 51:51
  Matt: Yes, I I had some help.
• 51:53
  Matt: But what you know dissect that image.
• 51:56
  Matt: If we dissect that image, why does it work so well?
• 51:58
  Matt: So, you know, what is beauty to you when it comes to photography?
• 52:02
  Matt: What does that that mean to you?
• 52:04
  David: You're very good at this, Matt.
• 52:05
  David: Well, what it what it it's a tool, it's a tool.
• 52:08
  David: It's a tool.
• 52:09
  David: It's always a tool.
• 52:11
  David: It's a tool to tell what I see and what I want people to understand.
• 52:17
  David: And I learned a long time ago that and National Geographic uh used to batter batter you over the head with it.
• 52:25
  David: Is if you're producing images of complex and distressing stories that people go, this needs to stop, then you've lost the battle.
• 52:37
  David: If you're producing images that people go, how do we make this stop?
• 52:44
  David: This is terrible, then you've won the battle.
• 52:47
  David: So you have to have a conversation and a dialogue.
• 52:50
  David: So I knew with Hunters that the majority of people were going to want to condemn it or just say, well, it's exactly what I thought.
• 53:01
  David: And I didn't believe it was because um, you know, there's too many of us on the planet.
• 53:08
  David: So that's the the the side of the research.
• 53:11
  David: And we need in many cases, we need to commodify.
• 53:14
  David: For wildlife to survive with us, alongside us, it needs to have a value.
• 53:20
  David: And South Africans would always say if it pays, it stays.
• 53:23
  David: If it doesn't pay, it doesn't stay.
• 53:24
  David: And it's never a truer thing said, as far as wildlife is concerned.
• 53:28
  David: It needs to pay for itself in many landscapes.
• 53:32
  David: If it ceases to pay for itself, then communities who have to live alongside it will see no value in it, but they will still because they can't benefit from it.
• 53:41
  David: So there's so many different things in there.
• 53:43
  David: There's communities that need to be allowed to benefit from living alongside it.
• 53:47
  David: If we want to send, so the Mara is an example of that.
• 53:50
  David: If we want to send tourists in there to generate income and say, isn't this amazing?
• 53:54
  David: Then we have to allow them to benefit from the fact that predators, lions, and other wildlife and elephants will be causing issues.
• 54:03
  David: And how do we deal with those issues?
• 54:05
  David: So, from a trophy hunting point of view, I wanted to look at how we manage wildlife in complex environments such as Naina in Namibia, alongside the Sand people, um, the Bushman people.
• 54:21
  David: Um, how do we do this?
• 54:23
  David: And in order, I needed to be able to produce images that confused people and made people want to understand more and drew them in rather than turn them away.
• 54:35
  David: So a classic example of that is the beautiful curved giraffe that was on the cover of the book, um, which is an incredibly complex image and um is just the most beautiful place to photograph that image.
• 54:52
  David: And for many people, it's a sleeping giraffe.
• 54:55
  David: It's obviously you it's not, you can see the bullet holes in the giraffe.
• 55:00
  David: It's it's a it's a hunted giraffe.
• 55:02
  David: But by the time people have bought into the fact that this is beautiful and they see the mist and they see the animal and they they see they've they've softened somewhat to the subject, and then they learn that it's trophy hunting.
• 55:19
  David: Now you can have a conversation with them.
• 55:21
  David: And so that's for me, my work is increasingly trying to do that, which is why I shoot on the format I shoot on, and why, you know, going back to the tech the technology in the in the beginning, you know, up until COVID, I shot six, seven film and would continue to shoot six, seven film on the Mir sevens because it's slow, it's considered, nobody can assess it.
• 55:44
  David: If you're with a group of hunters who you don't particularly want to be with, but you have to, you know, you have to be.
• 55:49
  David: And in many cases, like elephant hunting and lion hunting, I would be sleeping side by side in the tent with three or four hunters for a week or two weeks.
• 55:59
  David: They didn't have the opportunity, which was part of the consideration of the project, to look and see what I was shooting on the back of the camera because I was shooting six-seven film.
• 56:07
  David: So I'd walk away with a bag of film and a relationship that would be based on what they thought of me and what I learned from them and what I thought of them, rather than do they like what I'm shooting on the back of the camera.
• 56:20
  David: So there's many, many different reasons why that was shot in that particular way in that particular style, and why I felt it was a project that I wanted to work on, and why all of my work, even you know, um handle-like eggs, the documentation of if you like, the collapse of my relationship due to work, is shot in a particular way that is formulaic.
• 56:52
  David: I'm not using long lenses, I'm not using wide, I'm not, I'm using a camera that shows pretty much what you see, and something comes into that square and I capture it and leaves that square and it's gone.
• 57:05
  David: But it's in the square.
• 57:07
  David: And if you put those squares next to each other, you begin to tell a story because you're not seeing something shot in a different way on a different format.
• 57:15
  David: Consistent camera, consistent lens, consistent film stock, consistent processing, consistent printer, consistent scanning, consistency.
• 57:23
  David: So the only thing that changes is the image within the frame.
• 57:27
  David: So that's all you have to concentrate on.
• 57:30
  David: Strip everything down to its basics.
• 57:32
  David: You're in the middle of the bush, you know that your 65 millisecond on the left side of your body, and your 55 is on the right side of your body.
• 57:41
  David: All the batteries are the same.
• 57:43
  David: Everything's the same, nothing changes.
• 57:45
  David: If something charges you, something attacks you, you know exactly how aware everything is at that time.
• 57:52
  David: The only thing you need to concentrate on is the image.
• 57:55
  David: The technology does not come into play.
• 57:58
  David: It's nothing to do with it.
• 58:00
  David: I'm not going, oh, what shall I shoot that song?
• 58:03
  David: If I need to get closer, I walk.
• 58:05
  David: If I need to get further away, I walk back.
• 58:07
  David: So it's stripped down, but it's then putting images within those particular squares that makes people or steers them in a pit in the direction that you want them to go in because they're going in the route that you're going in, not telling them anything.
• 58:23
  David: I'm saying I don't understand why these people are slaughtering these elephants.
• 58:27
  David: But I want to understand, if you want to come with me, I will produce images that you can look at, and the they may be complex and they may they may be conflicting with what your sensitivities are.
• 58:44
  David: But at the end of it, when you get spat out, spat out the other end, you will understand a little bit more about the subject than you did when you started the journey.
• 58:57
  Matt: Yeah, I think there's uh there's a lot of ignorance in in you know, not necessarily deliber deliberate ignorance, we can't all know everything, but you know, I when I see projects like this and I see your Hunter's project, I uh you know, and this is a while ago now, uh, but I you know I immediately go, fuck these guys.
• 59:17
  Matt: Um this is everything that I uh I stand against in principle and and in and uh in my own ethics.
• 59:26
  Matt: It's really difficult for me then to somehow dig deep and find compassion or a willingness to and you s you've hit the nail on the head of this kind of willingness to try and understand.
• 59:38
  Matt: Well, why the fuck should I understand?
• 59:40
  Matt: Like these these people are killing innocent animals.
• 59:44
  Matt: Uh uh, you know, and it's like going to watch a bullfight.
• 59:47
  Matt: It's not like that, it's different, but you you're kind of cheering for the bull.
• 59:51
  Matt: And so, you know, I see these pictures and I go, you know, I'm cheering for the lion, uh, unfortunately it's too late, or I'm cheering for the elephant, or unfortunately it's too late.
• 59:58
  Matt: And then when you go to these places, and I've also I've also been very fortunate to go to some of these places and and talking to the the the locals and the people that are living within uh these areas and alongside this wildlife, you get to understand a little bit more their perspective.
• 1:00:15
  Matt: I still feel there's still kind of the cynic in me feels that you know, these uh these you know, uh you know, I'm not gonna uh I'm not gonna say any any bad names, but you feel like these people are just uh are paying to play a a cruel sport.
• 1:00:32
  Matt: Whether that helps uh the wider picture or not, I don't know.
• 1:00:37
  Matt: But I'd throw that over to you and you say you you say these images are a portal to a further conversation.
• 1:00:43
  Matt: What is that?
• 1:00:43
  Matt: Let's take Hunter specifically.
• 1:00:46
  Matt: What is that conversation we should be having and play it out for me?
• 1:00:50
  Matt: Play play both sides out for me so I can understand a little bit more in terms of the predicament and the nuances that we are presented with.
• 1:00:59
  David: Sure.
• 1:00:59
  David: I mean, you know, Hunters was um it wasn't purely based in South Africa.
• 1:01:06
  David: Um, it was based all over Africa.
• 1:01:08
  David: Uh we I worked all over Africa doing it, but yeah, it started in South Africa and it was looking at a country that had private ownership ownership of its wildlife.
• 1:01:19
  David: So um they could define the destiny of the wildlife because they owned the wildlife.
• 1:01:24
  David: So the next project I wanted to look at was here, it was Kenya.
• 1:01:27
  David: Because here it's not owned by individuals, it's owned by the governments and it's managed by Kenya Wildlife Services.
• 1:01:35
  David: So here you you can't, you know, if you're going to commodify, you have a different, if you're going to make money for wildlife, or if you're going to allow.
• 1:01:44
  David: And allow is a word that comes up a lot because it should not be our decision in my mind, but it has become our decision, because we are conflicting with wildlife to such a degree that we have to try and find a way for um communities who we are asking to live cheek by jowl with wildlife to benefit from it.
• 1:02:08
  David: So how do we do that?
• 1:02:10
  David: And what happens in those given situations?
• 1:02:14
  Matt: Are we wait, David, are we asking them to live or we we we found ourselves in that position because of urbanization, pushing people out of certain areas or encroaching on land because of just good just population growth?
• 1:02:30
  Matt: Both.
• 1:02:30
  Matt: Both.
• 1:02:31
  Matt: We're encroaching on land.
• 1:02:33
  Matt: So then why should the animals pay for that?
• 1:02:37
  David: Well, the animals shouldn't pay for it.
• 1:02:40
  David: And and that's the point.
• 1:02:41
  David: We should well, we're gonna get into some really sort of deep conversation now because you know, something something something like COVID might might have might have helped the situation in as much as you know, we need to lose the numbers of us on the planet because we are destroying this planet.
• 1:03:00
  David: Now, you know, no one wants to say, well, everyone, everyone should die.
• 1:03:06
  David: And we've all been inflicted by what happened within COVID, but we are now incredibly skilled at keeping ourselves alive for an enormous amount of time and defending ourselves against disease.
• 1:03:20
  David: And if we look at what's going on now, you know, in the in the wars that are spreading across the planet, you know, they are being waged, particularly something like Ukraine, remotely.
• 1:03:31
  David: So there are deaths and it's appalling what's going on, but it's not mass slaughter the way it was, and we are continuing to expand our own species and find ways of keeping our own species alive, and we are conflicting with wildlife in so many different locations that no, it's not their fault, it's our fault.
• 1:03:55
  David: But we need, in order to say to a community in a remote landscape such as the Samburu or the or or the Maasai, that you shouldn't kill that lion when that lion kills your cattle.
• 1:04:10
  David: We need to find some way of giving them compensation if that's what we want to happen, or we need to push back on the development in those lands.
• 1:04:18
  David: And that's what all this work is about.
• 1:04:20
  David: So you look at the most defined way of commodifying wildlife, and that's putting a price on its head and killing it.
• 1:04:28
  David: The other is to keep it alive, but in order to keep it alive, you have to put in place something that allows the community to say, okay, I am not, I'm either not going to use a lion as a rite of passage, therefore, how do we allow them to continue their traditions without killing lions?
• 1:04:53
  David: And and how do we allow them then from a community conservation point of view to live alongside them?
• 1:05:01
  David: And how do we compensate them?
• 1:05:03
  David: And there has to be there has to be the same honesty and trust.
• 1:05:10
  David: And this is where, again, where I we started this conversation with something like: if you're going to say, okay, we will shoot an elephant in this landscape and we will then give the meat to the community.
• 1:05:21
  David: Doesn't the community want the meat?
• 1:05:23
  David: Or is it just an excuse for us to kill an elephant?
• 1:05:25
  David: We'll give a large percentage of that money to the community so they can open schools.
• 1:05:29
  David: Is that actually happening?
• 1:05:31
  David: And this is what I look at, this is what I document.
• 1:05:34
  David: If you say to the Maasai, when a lion kills your livestock, you shouldn't kill it.
• 1:05:40
  David: We'll compensate for you it for you so that you can replace the livestock because that's how your family makes the money.
• 1:05:46
  David: We're making the money because we're putting tourist vehicles in there.
• 1:05:50
  David: And those tourist vehicles are paying a fee.
• 1:05:52
  David: Is that fee going down to the community?
• 1:05:54
  David: And if it isn't going to the community, and that lion is you, we don't want you.
• 1:05:59
  David: To kill that lion, and we say we will compensate you within 24 hours.
• 1:06:04
  David: Are we compensating with 24 hours or are we taking three months?
• 1:06:07
  David: And if we're taking three months, in that three months, have you killed the lion?
• 1:06:11
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:06:12
  David: So this is all, this is everything that we need to look at.
• 1:06:15
  David: So, you know, part of the references and part of the stuff that I keep going back to is Peter Beard and Peter Beard's work and a lot of other stories and a lot of other, um, you know, the end of the game, a lot of other opportunities where we had in the 60s to be able to look at what was happening and where we were and to look at where we are now.
• 1:06:37
  David: So, yes, there's a passion within me that says this is wrong and this shouldn't be happening, but there's also something in me that says the more people that I can bring on board to understand these subjects and to have a conversation about these subjects, um, then the better.
• 1:06:54
  David: You know, I've spent, you go back to um people, people, I can't remember how you put it, but you put you put it beautifully, you know, to track an elephant for the amount of time that we tracked elephants, um, you know, two, three weeks, to for a hunter to choose which was the elephant that he wanted to shoot.
• 1:07:16
  David: So you live the life of that elephant, and in many cases, those elephants are the same age as me.
• 1:07:22
  David: Um, and so to think what I've done in my life, and we've talked about it here on this podcast, and to think that that elephant, while I'm going, okay, I've got a billing and bag that I'm going to walk with every day, and that elephant is now 17, 18, 19 years old.
• 1:07:38
  David: And now you're in your 50s, and you're tracking that elephant, and you're and you're seeing where it's laid in the mud under a tree, you're seeing the print of its ear, they're judging the size of the elephant by the print of the ear, you're seeing the footprints, you're seeing how worn the footprint is.
• 1:07:52
  David: So you're judging the and then you find that, yeah, okay, it's a big elephant, so they want to shoot it.
• 1:07:58
  David: And you are a passive observer, and you are a passive observer, you have to be.
• 1:08:03
  David: But you also can't be combative in that situation because you want to get to the stage where they either, as you quite rightly said, go, okay, this is not the one I want to shoot, and you go, or this is the one I want to shoot, and you go, fuck.
• 1:08:20
  David: But you now need them to shoot it because you now need to document it.
• 1:08:25
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:08:26
  David: And if they don't shoot it, then you have no story.
• 1:08:29
  David: If they don't shoot it, you go down a different direction with that story.
• 1:08:32
  David: Because now you've got a group, and this has happened on several occasions, where the hunter will do this for two or three weeks, and then he will say, I don't want to shoot this elephant.
• 1:08:41
  David: I've got what I want to shoot, I do not want to shoot it.
• 1:08:44
  David: I'm done.
• 1:08:45
  David: And they'll walk away.
• 1:08:47
  David: So you are living in a you again, you put it quite beautifully, you're living in a in a um in a globe, you know, in a snow globe that things can go in in any particular direction.
• 1:09:07
  David: And how do you tell that story?
• 1:09:11
  David: And once you're in that snow globe, you're committed to either saying, okay, this has happened and this is the reason that's happened.
• 1:09:20
  David: So your subject matter never never changes.
• 1:09:23
  David: But the way you depict the story and what you're trying what you're learning from that particular situation does change.
• 1:09:29
  David: So they shoot the elephant and you go down one route.
• 1:09:34
  David: They don't shoot the elephant, you go down another particular route.
• 1:09:37
  David: So, how does the community then benefit?
• 1:09:41
  David: And how does the community what does the community understand from the fact that they haven't shot that elephant?
• 1:09:47
  David: And how they how do you now then allow that community to benefit from the fact that they haven't made the money from the trophy fee and they haven't got the meat?
• 1:09:55
  David: Did the community want the meat in the first place?
• 1:09:58
  David: The only way you could do that is to spend time and to do this.
• 1:10:01
  David: And yet it's it's you know, there's a huge price to pay for that.
• 1:10:07
  David: Huge price.
• 1:10:09
  David: But, you know, you are, you know, Linzidario and various other individuals who you might, whose work you will look at, um, pay a far greater price for uh allowing us to understand what's going on in parts of the world where there's human conflict.
• 1:10:27
  David: Here for me, this is human wildlife conflict.
• 1:10:32
  David: It's human wildlife coexistence.
• 1:10:34
  David: My my work is human wildlife coexistence.
• 1:10:38
  David: And as I can't remember the lovely guy's name now, Time magazine, you know, it's the it's the bloody intersection between humans and wildlife.
• 1:10:48
  David: And that's that's what I work on.
• 1:10:53
  Matt: Yeah, it's it's unfortunate that you you have uh found that role uh i i in itself, just the fact that it exists.
• 1:11:03
  Matt: Um you know, obviously like that what you do is so impactful.
• 1:11:08
  Matt: I'm I'm interested to know how how let's take hunters because we're talking about it already.
• 1:11:13
  Matt: But uh, you know, you've done for people who well, you know, we didn't even introduce I didn't even introduce you probably, but but people can go and find out, you know, you go and look at your website and look at all of the you know projects and awards and incredible pieces of work that you've done.
• 1:11:27
  Matt: But let's let's let's just stick on hunters.
• 1:11:29
  Matt: Um because I'm interested in your concern, if any, of glamorizing these types of uh issues or um or the opposite.
• 1:11:42
  Matt: Um but in reality, how was that project seen?
• 1:11:48
  Matt: What was the feedback?
• 1:11:49
  Matt: And did it do what you're basically talking about?
• 1:11:52
  Matt: Did it actually uh succeed in the goal of opening up discourse uh around these types of 100% it did?
• 1:12:03
  David: And um I don't think there was um I don't think there's a single image in there that glamorizes both sides of the argument.
• 1:12:14
  David: And that for me would be uh the biggest mistake will be either giving something to a hunting community that says, see, isn't this amazing?
• 1:12:24
  David: Or giving something to an anti-hunting community who says, see, this is appalling.
• 1:12:29
  David: It was so confusing and it was so deeply confusing.
• 1:12:33
  David: And that for me is again going back to your one of your other great questions, is it's producing images that are singularly beautiful, but the subject matter is appalling.
• 1:12:45
  David: But they're shot in amazing light, consistently, not super wide, not anything.
• 1:12:52
  David: They are just you have walked onto a scene of a sleeping giraffe, but guess what?
• 1:12:57
  David: The guy who shot it is a trauma surgeon from an LA hospital.
• 1:13:02
  David: And so if you want to know more, you scroll through and you'll see the guy on his hands and knees in the carcass, trying to find the bullet and the track of the bullet that has just killed the giraffe, so he understands the trauma that is being caused to that giraffe because that's how he gets his particular kicks or justifies what he's doing.
• 1:13:26
  David: And, you know, how do we show that?
• 1:13:28
  David: You know, the leopard, the guy with the leopard is is a is a is a classic example of that.
• 1:13:34
  David: You know, I mean, we could go into the statistics in the leopards.
• 1:13:37
  David: I mean, you know, I looked at leopard hunting in Namibia because there was a certain number, I can't remember the number off the top of my head, um, but there was a certain allocation for leopards within Namibia at that particular, I think it was 2011, at that particular time.
• 1:13:54
  David: Um, and a South African guy had produced a group of um of hunting dogs that had turned something that was 90-95% of failure to 95% of success because he had dogs that could track leopards.
• 1:14:15
  David: So they crashed the leopard population in Namibia in a very short amount of time.
• 1:14:20
  David: Um, and I went over there to work on leopard hunting with that particular pack of dogs.
• 1:14:26
  David: And the hunter that I worked with was a hedge fund manager from the US who received um the picture of the leopard that he was going to shoot from a trail cam on a baited carcass in a tree at his desk in the US and decided that yes, this was a big enough leopard.
• 1:14:45
  David: Got on a private plane, flew over, arrived on the Monday, shot the leopard on the Tuesday, and flew back on the Wednesday.
• 1:14:54
  David: And I asked him, you know, why did you do this?
• 1:15:00
  David: And he said, Because I can and I've always wanted a leopard.
• 1:15:05
  David: But it was a result of that work, and as a result of that particular situation, the leopard leopard hunting was stopped, and hunting with dogs in many parts of Africa was was stopped because people are constantly finding ways to beat the system and to get what they want from wildlife.
• 1:15:32
  David: Whether it be lion breeding, whether it be trophy hunting, whether it be um the overcommodification of the of the of the migration in the Mara, you know, you know, there's it it's a constant pushing and a constant pulling and you know the the the patty between all of this is well and it's where you exist, and this is you know, could trying to bring this back.
• 1:16:04
  Matt: I could talk to you for hours about kind of the these types of uh tensions that that human society has either put themselves in or find themselves in.
• 1:16:14
  Matt: Um, you know, we don't you just have to look at the animal population for slaughter that we, you know, there's one thing having uh an argument against hunting, but if you eat meat, you're contributing to, you know, 10 times more torture and and suffering than than that yourself.
• 1:16:32
  Matt: So we we you know we we'll leave that aside because that's a whole other conversation that I'm sure a lot of photographers may not be that interested in.
• 1:16:41
  Matt: But when it comes to to the the photography side of things, that's that's where you are most uh drawn to.
• 1:16:49
  Matt: So tell me what you know the the I guess the most difficult some of the difficult experiences you've had.
• 1:16:59
  Matt: And are you kind of numb to it now, you know, seeing so much death?
• 1:17:04
  Matt: I guess.
• 1:17:05
  Matt: Uh no, not numb.
• 1:17:07
  Matt: I don't think you could probably ever be numb, but uh do you find does it ever get easier?
• 1:17:11
  David: Numbers, yeah.
• 1:17:15
  David: I'm not sure I can answer that.
• 1:17:19
  Matt: Okay.
• 1:17:20
  Matt: Sorry to stop you here in the conversation, and thank you so much for listening up until this point.
• 1:17:28
  Matt: Now, if you're enjoying it so far and would like to hear more, then the remainder of this episode, including bonus questions, extra content, and conversations I don't release anywhere else, lives inside my private community for photographers called the Mood Insiders.
• 1:17:46
  Matt: So if you would like to listen to the rest, you'll find the link in the description to find out more about this community.
• 1:17:53
  Matt: And if not, of course, thank you so much for listening this far.
• 1:17:56
  Matt: It really does mean a lot.
• 1:17:58
  Matt: And I hope to see you inside.