When did you first become interested in photography? During my last year at school in Ireland, when I was putting together a portfolio of work to apply for art college. At a loose end in the summer holidays I did a black-and-white photography course. I fell in love with the process, the magic of shooting a roll of film and processing it. It opened up a whole new world to me. During that last school year, I abandoned the art dreams and put together a photography portfolio.
Looking at the pictures of Days of Anger made me think of the entire history of the uprising. To what degree were you highlighting modern aspects of the revolution, which gained momentum through Twitter and Facebook? I was definitely aware of them whilst shooting. They were hard to ignore. In fact I was aware of them before the revo lution even started, as my girlfriend had
The first thing that struck me looking at the different projects you have worked on is the beauty of the light and colours and the poetic quality of your images. What are you attracted to and how do you work around that? Photography is a visual form of communication and it seems to me that to captivate people and garner their attention, you need to create something that’s unique and dynamic and, dare I say it, beautiful, regardless of the situation. But it’s also more per sonal than that. It’s not just because that’s what people want to see, it’s how I want to represent the people I pho tograph. I purposely look for those situa tions. It often requires a lot of patience and it doesn’t always happen. Having said that, even if the light isn’t very good, you still have to try to take the picture. Light and colour are the two most important components of an interesting image, so surely you’ve got to work with them. I do very little in post-production and given that I shoot film I have to do a bit more thinking than if I was shooting digitally.
foam magazine # 28 talent
‘It quickly became clear that all sections of Egyptian society were out on the streets.’
How did your passion evolve into a love of documentary? When I didn’t get into the two photogra phy courses I had applied for, I was at a loss as to what to do. I had no guidance, but I found out about a course in Ireland, run by a documentary photographer called Joe Sterling. The course was very documentary-oriented and I quickly real ized that this was what I wanted to do. It was a particularly intense and fast-moving year that gave me the opportunity to go and do my own thing, and to interpret what we’d learnt. It set me up brilliantly for going to Newport. It appears from where you are based that you have quite a nose for a story. Were you in Beirut before Egypt happened? My girlfriend, the photographer Anastasia Taylor-Lind, and I moved to the Middle East to be closer to the stuff going on that we were interested in. When the uprising started, I was in Lebanon. I’m not a news photographer but when Egypt started to evolve, I think everyone realized that it was something momentous. I was sitting here in Beirut and thought, ‘I’ve got to go and do something if I’m going to call myself a photographer based in the Middle East’. So I booked a last-minute flight to Cairo.
interview by Anne-Celine Jaeger
done a major story about the blogger movement for GEO magazine the year before. After Tunisia, everyone was aware of the power of social media. It wasn’t the first time either. The uprising in Iran had also been fueled and sustained through Twitter and Facebook although it wasn’t successful. I purposely tried to find some of the main people behind the movement, the activists etc. But having said that, once I was there it quickly became clear that all sections of Egyptian society were out on the streets.You would have these younger forward-looking types alongside families who had come in from the countryside. The stories you have covered, whether in Days of Anger, The Quiet After the Storm (Croatia’s displaced Serbs) or Kablare, are all political in nature. What do you think is needed today to create a picture or a series of images that resonates with the viewer? The stories I’m interested in are innately linked to politics but it’s not necessarily something I try to explore in the pictures. In terms of resonating, I think all I can do is be honest and work on stories I’m pas sionate about. If you don’t feel strongly about what you’re photographing, you will struggle to have empathy or compassion for the people involved, something that I think is integral to making good docu mentary photography. 226
Whose work have you been inspired by in the past or present? I love Simon Norfolk’s early work, the beauty of his images and the serious issues he tackles. It really resonates with me. But I have found the most inspiration from more current, younger photogra phers, such as Ziyah Gafic and Mikhael Subotzky. What would you like to work on next? I’ve been a bit distracted by what’s hap pening in the Middle East. Anything else that I had going on has been put on hold for the time being. But I’ve become very interested in the Caucasus. That part of the world really fascinates me. I’m going to spend a lot of time there in the next couple of years. Some of my earliest projects were in the Balkans, so exploring that axis between East and West seems like a natural progression. •