Maggie’s Funeral

A long time ago I was given some great advice about being a photographer. “If you find yourself surrounded by a lot of photographers, you are probably in the wrong place.” Being a photojournalist and covering news events that is not always possible. Probably more so today in an age where everyone is carrying a camera of some sort. I had to photograph Margaret Thatcher’s funeral recently…yes its true she died…anyway I was amazed at the number of professional photographers in attendance. I saw so many of my colleagues I hadn’t seen in ages that it was hard to concentrate as I kept bumping into old friends every few minutes. I find it hard to work those big occasions sometimes as I feel like I am making the same image over and over again that hundreds of other photographers are making. I photographed the crowds, the funeral cortege and the protesters. The same stuff everyone else was doing. To add to the photographic tidal wave was that every person in the crowds also was recording the funeral with their iphones and point and shoots. Rare was the person actually watching, mourning, experiencing the event itself. Only the soldiers, police, and those actually in the procession seemed without a camera. And of course Maggie herself wasn’t snapping. She was THE Subject. I felt as though my images would be drowned in a deep sea of images. My saving grace was that my images would have a platform in the Guardian and the Observer.

This is why these days I tend to stay away from demonstrations and staged news events. Too many photographers around and I feel like I have nothing to add to all the noise. Instead I look for stories to tell and make images that I feel are distinctly mine that no one else is making. I think that is the saving grace of professional photographers in the journalism/documentary business. We should be storytellers and not news gatherers solely. I was once had the pleasure of working for a few weeks with Larry Towell and I remember asking him why he didn’t shoot colour or switch to digital etc etc..really dumb questions in hindsight. He looked at me and growled “I am a story teller, all these changes in photography have nothing to do with me. Those who tell stories will always have a role to play. Technology is irrelevant to me” or words to that effect…. I never forgot what he said.

Don’t get me wrong. I love to cover breaking news and work on big stories. I enjoy the part of my job that is journalistic and a recorder of history if I am lucky. I get commissioned to photograph some amazing people and events. But I think if you want your images to be seen these days you have to seek out those things that are rarely looked at, talked about and pondered upon. So on my own steam I will try to stay away from my colleagues.

The image above was the only one I really liked from the Thatcher funeral. I turned around while the funeral procession went by and saw this quiet moment. Mostly I like it because I know none of my esteemed colleagues took it. I hope.

I am doing a workshop on Street Photography for Guardian Masterclass. There is still few places left. I strive to make the workshop thought provoking, a chance to learn valuable skills and a lot of fun.

My thoughts on Street Photography

San Pedro Sula

I was reading Stuart Freedman’s Blog yesterday about San Pedro Sula being the most violent city  in the world. The Guardian did an article on the city’s high crime rate and like Stuart, I thought about the city I visited on assignment for Christian Aid in the late 90s. Even then I remember being told that it was dangerous to go wandering around on your own and more so with a bunch of cameras around my neck. Of course I instantly rebel when told I can’t do something and I go wandering around on my own. The image above was taken in one of the city’s meat markets.

When I am on assignment I always end up seeing things and places that are not part of the story but want to photograph. I always do what my  colleague Peter Beaumont calls “Dawn Patrol”, meaning I get up at dawn or work late at dusk to look for images that sometimes lay outside the confines of the story. Those periods of the day tend to be when I am free from whatever assignment I am doing. In regards to San Pedro Sula, a city I have visited twice, yes it is dangerous but life goes on. It is mostly dangerous for the gangs vying for control of the drug trade. If you don’t inhabit that world your chances of being a victim reduce considerably. If I worried about being a victim of crime I probably couldn’t take photographs. One because I would be too frightened but more importantly if you view people with suspicion how are they ever gonna trust you to inhabit their lives if you don’t trust them.

Every place I have ever worked including London, someone always comes up to me and says “you really shouldn’t be walking around with those cameras showing, you could get mugged.” or something along those lines. The core of everything I do means that I have to walk the streets to make photographs. I want to make photographs of people. If you worry about crime you probably should stick to photographing puppies.

I am doing a workshop on Street Photography for Guardian Masterclass. There is still few places left. I strive to make the workshop thought provoking, a chance to learn valuable skills and a lot of fun.

My thoughts on Street Photography

Boxing

I have always been fascinated by Boxing. Intellectually it is not a sport I can defend. On the surface its cruel and violent. People can get seriously hurt, it can cause brain damage and perpetuates the idea that the male needs to possess the skills to fight. And yet I love it. Not to say I follow the sport. I probably stopped following the sport in the 80s. Professionally its a very corrupt sport.

But at the amateur level it is fascinating. I have thought about what it is about boxing that appeals to me. I think partly its political social. It is one of the most obvious working class sports. It ranks have been filled by those escaping poverty, discrimination and the bad hand one was dealt by fate. The champions of the sport have been populated by working class heroes. The sport gives one a sort of martial honour that is rare in modern life. Young men can find a release to all that pent up rage that otherwise has no outlet except in negative ways.

Another thing I love about boxing is something that never comes across to those watching the sport on television. It is amazingly beautiful, graceful and balletic.Maybe this applies to all sport but I see it most in boxing. And maybe I am fascinated by the violence. I don’t think I would watch boxing on my own but having a camera gives me an excuse to inhabit/watch a world where brute strength coupled with balletic grace is honoured. The boxers I have mostly photographed are amateurs, kids and young men looking for a bit of a thrill that can be had in organised fighting. I have been to a few pro fights, most recently at the Olympics but for the most part I enjoy it more at the street level. Photographing boxing to me is photographing beauty. Maybe that is the real reason I am attracted to boxing.

I am doing a workshop on Street Photography for Guardian Masterclass. There is still few places left. I strive to make the workshop thought provoking, a chance to learn valuable skills and a lot of fun.

My thoughts on Street Photography

 

Angola

I am always asked what was my rewarding commission ever. I am usually inclined to say my trip to Angola in 2001 with the journalist Peter Beaumont. We went to cover what was then the longest war in Africa with the largest number of internally displaced peoples in the world. We spent a few days in Luanda after a flight from Paris on a chartered plane full of oil workers. Angola was about to become an oil giant and the continuous war it had suffered since its war of independence from Portugal in the early 60s seemed to be coming to an end. After sorting ourselves out we got on a UN flight to Kuito which had been labelled the Stalingrad of Africa. It had been under continuous siege by UNITA for about 8 years when we visited. Our plane had to make a corkscrew descent into the city to avoid anti-aircraft fire. The city was indeed symbolic of war with every building scarred by shelling. But during my time there Unita had been pushed away and the city was safe to wander around. Something I did for days as we waited to get on a convoy to the front line. Eventually we managed to get to the frontline towns of Cuemba and Camacupa. We were greeted by the sight of thousands of people on the move away from war. The Angolan army was carrying out a deliberate policy of emptying out areas of people that had been UNITA strongholds.

My abiding memories from the trip are how kind and generous everyone I met was. I expected Angolans to be angry from years of war and conflict but nothing could be further from the truth. I remember a landscape emptied of trees. I remember how every tree still standing seemed almost a magical apparition and how everyone seem to gravitate toward them as though they held a secret to survival. During our travels we saw the wreckage of years of war and I kept wanting to stop and take photographs. Destroyed tanks, armoured personnel carriers and jeeps littered the roadside, something i would only see again in Afghanistan and Somalia. I still think about the millions of dollars wasted on these battlefields just rusting away. But rarely did we stop as the threat of mines was still quite high in the rural areas and it seemed every field on the roadside was labelled with a skull and bone sign warning of mine fields and death. I remember sleeping on concrete floors, the clearest night skies, drinking in very dodgy bars full of soldiers in the middle of nowhere. I remember long talks with Peter about our looming personal dark clouds. We both sensed we were witnessing the end of a long war. And I still get angry when I remember being tackled to the ground by an over zealous NGO worker when I tried to photograph a column of Angolan Army tanks as they scattered refugees from the road. He said it was against the law to photograph tanks !!! It still pisses me off years later thinking of the amazing photograph I never took.

Peter and I had heard about a head on a stick on the River Kwanza near a destroyed bridge. It seemed something out of the Heart of Darkness and I wanted to photograph it to illustrate the savagery of the war. On reaching the river, the head was no longer there but instead we were greeted by languid soldiers guarding a chaotic mass of steel that was once a bridge. It was as far as we got and soon we were headed back to Luanda. It is one of my goals to one day go back and see the country  properly. We did spend a day on an unspoilt beach south of Luanda in awe that such places still existed on this over commercialised and developed world.

A month after we returned to London the world was turned upside down by 9/11 and the world forgot about places like Angola. Not that it really ever had the world’s attention. A year later Jonas Savimbi, the UNITA leader was killed in battle and his death marked the end of Angola’s 40 years of war.

A gallery of my Angolan photographs

Peter Beaumont’s Observer Piece

 

Talking About Hipstamatic, iPhones, etc

 

I did a blog for the Guardian Website recently about using the Hipstamatic. The links are below. Read the comments left by readers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/photography-blog/2013/mar/01/hipstamatic-smartphone-photo-antonio-olmos

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2013/mar/01/antonio-olmos-derry-hipsta-in-pictures

A Desperate Journey

In 2011 I had an exhibition of my Nicaraguan Refugees photographs for the Amnesty International Human Rights Festival in Jersey. The photo essay is now a new gallery on my website. Below are the words from a short speech I gave introducing the photographs.

A Desperate Journey

“In 1989 the reporter Guy Gugliotta and I joined a group of 42 Nicaraguans who had sold or pawned everything they had to buy a ticket on Central America’s underground railroad. A journey that would take them to the United States and hopefully a better life. They travelled through Guatemala and Mexico by foot and bus guided by 3 ‘Coyotes’ and eventually they crossed into the United States through Brownsville Texas.

The 1980s had impoverished Nicaragua as the United States funded the Contra War against the left wing Sandinista government. The hopes of the 1979 revolution had turned to dust as Nicaragua struggled to cope after 10 years of war. In 1989 tens of thousands of Nicaraguans rushed to get to the United States to beat a March 1^st deadline because immigration rule changes meant that Nicaraguans would no longer be considered for political asylum if they reached the American border.

The journey from Central America to the United States that I documented in 1989 is still taking place today. Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans, Central  and South Americans still make the journey today. They brave corrupt police and army, dodge arms and drug smugglers and criminals hoping to exploit the vulnerable migrants. Once in the United States, they will join families and communities from their own countries and begin the process of starting a new life.

Having been born in Mexico, I had a strong affinity to the 42 migrants whose journey I documented. I was a young boy when my mother took me and my sisters and crossed into the United States. In my 20s I returned to Mexico and lived in Mexico City. In my 30s I came to the United Kingdom to work as a photojournalist, basing myself in London. I have been an immigrant all my life.

 The photographs  hopefully will remind you of the struggles that human beings voluntarily take on to seek a better life. Migration is the history of human beings. The photographs document one small journey of the many that take place every day around the world.”

The Newbury Bypass Protest & Combe Haven Protest

Right now as I write this there is an eviction of environmental protesters going on near Hastings. The coalition government in its wisdom seems to have found in times of austerity the money for dozens of new road schemes around the UK. One is located near Hastings, the Bexhill to Hastings Link Road, which if built will cut a swath of destruction through beautiful unspoiled countryside. A new generation of environmental campaigners, The Combe Haven Defenders, have descended on the site and built camps to delay and try to stop the cutting of trees and other destruction.

Their Blog states “We are local people, determined to prevent the environmentally disastrous white-elephant that is the “Bexhill-Hastings Link Road” from devastating one of Hastings’ and Bexhill’s most amazing natural treasures. We demand an affordable, sustainable transport system for our area, that improves the quality of all our lives without costing the earth.”

I am sure there are good economic arguments for building the road but that misses the bigger point, which is we have got to stop damaging the environment solely for short term economic benefit. Surely the money for roads could be better used for education, the NHS, social welfare and public transport.

The UK and the planet do not need new roads. The planet Earth needs to be protected. I came to believe this deeply in 1996 when I covered the Newbury Bypass Protests. I dont remember if “global warming” and “climate change” were in common use back then but awareness of the environmental damage surely was rising. The automobile seemed a perfect symbol for the selfishness of our society. The need of the individual trumped the need of many.

The Newbury Bypass Road protest was the high watermark of a series of protest around the country to stop dozens of road building schemes. The road protesters knew that the cost of each road rose dramatically if its building was impeded by them. The higher the cost of each road, the more likely fewer would be built. One argument I remember hearing a lot is “why do we ask nations like Brazil to stop destroying the Amazon when we in the UK can’t even protect a small ancient woods”. The point was rich nations like the UK have to take the lead in protecting the environment. And building more roads was clearly not going to provide that leadership.

My own understanding of the environment became deep because of my time at Newbury. Endless conversations with the protesters was a revelation and an education. I came to admire and know the protesters and was in awe of their bravery as they tied themselves to trees, dug tunnels, suspended themselves on ropes, anything to slow to a crawl the building of the road. I spent over 3 months off and on covering the protest. In the end the road was built but at a huge cost. And I think it led to the end of the large road building program. Until now.

While I was deeply moved by the protest I can also add that I enjoyed covering the protest. I was part of a small band of photographers that worked closely together. Andrew Testa, Nick Cobbing, Adrian Fisk, and Karen Robinson all covered the protests with me, and shared cars, food, hot drinks, tents, ropes. I certainly could not have covered the protest without their help and each of them took amazing photographs. I slept in trees, learned to absail with ropes from trees, but I balked at going down tunnels. I shot photos many of those eviction days while sitting on a tree. Or suspended on ropes between trees. Every day I was caked in mud. There never seemed to be a dry day. Always cold and foggy and miserable but it made for great light for those of us shooting Black and White film.

So the Combe Haven protest in Hastings takes me back but also reminds me that our fragile planet is still under attack. Yes it may be just a a small road being built but if rich societies like ours cant make the sacrifices and smart choices to save our planet, how can we expect emerging economies like India and China to even listen to us about climate change. The future is Green or its disaster. The protesters at Combe Haven are reminding us of that.

The Newbury Bypass Road Protest photos

Memories of Palestine

Happy New Year to Everyone,

Its back to work for me. In my “To Do” list is finished updating my website. I have consciously added a gallery every few weeks to give each story time to be viewed. Next up is my new Gallery “Palestine“.

I started working in the Palestinian Occupied Territories in late September 2000. I was commissioned by the Observer Magazine to cover the uprising that came to be known as the Second Intifada. I still remember being on the plane to Jerusalem, nervous at the prospect of covering another conflict. I hadn’t covered that many but after each one I always asked myself why did I do this. I also had never been to Israel/Palestine but I was (I thought) well versed on the conflict.

I was shocked at first at the intensity of the anger felt by the Palestinians on the streets. I watched how the uprising spread from Ramallah to the rest of the West Bank and beyond to Gaza. I photographed the disproportionate response of the Israelis to what at first was just stone throwing. The difference this time from the first Intifada was that many Palestinians had guns. The security forces, the various factions of the PLO and Hamas. As the casualties mounted on the Palestinian side, many of those armed men started to shoot . I still remember the day in Ramallah when a stone throwing by Palestinian youths suddenly became a shootout between Palestinian security forces and Israeli soldiers. It scared the hell out of me but I also remember thinking this was a big mistake by the Palestinians. They had the high moral ground, stones vs guns, and they were about to throw it away. I still believe that had the Palestinians in unity had chosen non violent protest or at least non lethal resistance like stones they would be much closer to their national aspirations. Easy for me to say as I don’t live under the humiliation of occupation.

As time progressed I tired of the clashes, confrontations and endless funeral marches that seem to define the early months of the 2nd Intifada. I took to walking the streets of Hebron, Nablus and Gaza City and looking not for violence but opportunities to do portraits, street life and engage in conversations with Palestinians. I tired of being surrounded by dozens of other photographers doing the same pictures. Walking around in the streets I found myself alone able to see more clearly the corrosive effect the occupation had on everyday life for the Palestinians. I saw Palestinians through a new prism which was not defined by violence but by the daily struggles common to all human beings.

I travelled to Israel/Palestine dozens of times over the next decade and while I cherished my travels there the conflict’s seeming inability to resolve itself was exhausting. I felt more at home in Israel than in the Occupied Territories as it was on the surface a society closer to the one I was familiar with. But I being Mexican I was constantly stopped because of my brown skin, mistaken for an Arab. I was always rudely approached sometimes with downright malice before Israeli police realised I was not a Palestinian. Apologies would follow with tales of visits to London/Latin America (all of Latin America recognises Israel and as such many young Israelis back pack on their holidays there.) . In the decade of working there I saw Israeli society become more intolerant, more militarised and more isolated from the rest of the world. The Israel that was supposed to be modern, western and democratic in fact more and more resembles the bankrupt nation that Milosevic/Karazdic/Mladic dreamed of for the Serbs. Today’s Israeli political leaders dream of a Greater Israel that treats Palestinian national aspirations with the same disdain that Militant Serbs once held for the rights of Bosnians and Kosovars. What we found intolerant in the Balkans we seem to put up with Israel. Unlike the Serbia of the 90s, Israelis would be shocked at the comparisons because they think of themselves as part of mediterranean Europe. Probably deluding themselves like the French Colonials did in Algeria. Meanwhile Palestinians have been blessed with mostly bad leadership. No Mandelas in the horizon.

The big tragedy is that the national aspirations of the Palestinians mirrors that of the of Jewish Zionists of the first part of the 20th century. Israelis should recognise something of their own past in the struggle of the Palestinians today. The future of the Israelis and Palestinians are so intertwined in so many ways that I think one day there will be a binational state not two separate states.

But I digress as I always do when I talk about the Middle East. I miss days of endless walking with my Mamiya C330s, Mamiya 6s and Leicas. All loaded with wonderful Tri-X. I miss the heat, the slippery paving stones of the Old City of Jerusalem after the rain, the best Falafels/Humous in the world, countless of street arguments, the sound of the call to prayer at 4am, reading the English edition of Haaretz in a nice coffee shop near Hillel Street, Taybeh Beer and sharing a cars & taxis with Kai Wiedenhoefer and Ethan Eisenberg.

The greatest joy of working in Israel/Palestine was the amazing ability to enter people’s lives and struggles simply because I had a camera around my neck. This is the greatest privilege of being a photojournalist.

The Andes

The best reward for being a Photojournalist is that having a camera around your neck is a passport to see the world. I have been commissioned to work in every part of the world minus East Asia (and I am working on that…) And of all the places I have seen , nothing takes my breath away more than the Andes Mountains, The Altiplano of Peru and Bolivia. I love the people, the thin air, the giant sky, the never ending mountains…I could go on and on about how much I love the place.

My commissions to Peru and Bolivia always asked for colour and so I always made time to wander around wherever I was at and shoot some photographs for myself in Black & White. I just put up a new gallery on my website called The Andes which collects this work. There is no story per se in this gallery, but instead its a collection of photographs from one region taken for the sheer joy of being there. These photographs may not be my best but I think they are the ones I most enjoyed taking. I really wanted to capture the beauty of the place and these photographs are free of journalistic intent.

I am lucky enough to make a living as a photographer. I am busy enough that I sometimes forget that when I first started making photographs I really enjoyed just wandering around looking for a photograph to make. Every visit to the Andes I made I made sure that I gave myself a few days to just wander around and enjoy the place. Time to enjoy taking photographs for the sheer pleasure of it.

Memories of Gaza

I want to write something profound about what I am witnessing on my TV about Gaza. I cant help but be angry at the unequal conflict being portrayed as a war. As though two armies are facing each other in the battlefield. It is nothing of the sort. It is a rebellion against occupation, apartheid and the continuing theft of land. Everything I have witnessed for myself  confirms that.

I believed in a two state solution but I fear that option has passed. Israel has to decide what it wants more, to be a democratic nation or to be an apartheid state.  Does it want peace or does it want all the land of the Palestinian mandate.. I think Israel  is slowly committing suicide.

I came to really love Gaza despite all the hassles of working there. I loved the people and their generosity. Except for the kids who seemed never to leave you alone once they spotted you, I cherished my time there. I honestly feel it is the Palestinians that are the victims in this conflict. They will continue to fight until they have a state based on the 1967 borders or they have their rights as citizens of a binational state in what is now Israel/Palestine.

I wish the Hamas would stop shooting rockets into Israel. They are in-effective and muddy the waters of the conflict. And yet you can see why Hamas won the elections of 2006. Its Palestinian rival, the PLO/Fatah have negotiated with Israel for 20 years and all it has gotten for its moderation is more settlements, more land theft, more checkpoints and its further away from statehood. I am sure Hamas would win a landslide in all the Palestinian territories if elections were held today.

I dont have anything politically in common with Hamas and when I am in Israel I feel more comfortable in what is a familiar western environment. Still I don’t understand how a nation born from the ashes of the Holocaust cannot understand the rage of the Palestinians. I wish Palestinians were not so wilfully ignorant of the Holocaust. They might understand their oppressor better. Both sides are human with all the failings that come with the title. But until the Israel accepts the national aspirations of the Palestinians, the rockets and the rocks will continue to fly.