Stories

Everyone loves a good story.

Stories are at the heart of our social and cultural heritage. No matter where we’re from, we all grow up listening to stories and passing them on. They’re an intrinsic part of the social landscape; from religious beliefs and dogma to popular culture and art, stories are at the core of human communication. And when it comes to sharing important information, storytelling is one of the most useful and powerful tools we have.

When we share images online we tell stories. We’re sharing our experiences with the world through a visual narrative. For example the images below from a weekend spent sailing with old friends earlier this year. The images combine to offer a short story that describes the experience.

Many stories follow a tried and tested formula and are intended to inform, educate, or entertain. They often depict journeys as metaphores for transformation or personal development. Not all stories are complete however, just as not all stories carry a responsibility to take a moral stance or make the world a better place. Some are simple tools that deliver a simple message, as in advertising or promotion, and it’s the means of that delivery - the story - that help the message succeed in finding its target. Of course the better the story, the more likely people are to remember it.

The most successful advertising campaigns often rely on comical or emotive narratives in order to engage their audience in this way. Similarly, company websites, marketing and promotional materials, even annual reports or promotional brochures all employ a visual narrative in order to get people’s attention and deliver their message.

Storytelling using stills images can take many forms: it can be a single, compelling image or a series of images taken over a period of time. A small collection of images can be used to showcase a process, a practice, or a product. No matter how simple or complex the narrative, photographic images provide an invaluable means of reaching your target audience.

Stories aren’t necessarily conclusive, they can be open-ended and form a small part of a wider, on-going narrative. For example the images below of skateboarders at the Undercroft at London’s Southbank Center don’t tell the complete story of urban skateboarding subculture; what they do is present a snapshot of that subculture, part of a much wider, on-going narrative.

Sometimes all it takes is a few images that represent an action or a process. I recently took an antique clock for repair and the small, atmospheric shop was so photogenic that I asked if I could take a few pictures when I came to collect it. The pictures tell a little story about the craftsman in his workshop. These pictures don’t offer a complete story, but there are details in them that provide clues which prompt us to develop our own interpretation.

Other stories of course carry a much greater responsibility. There is an established tradition of documentary photography which carries an implicit duty to represent its subject matter with honesty and integrity. The stories that I’ve tried to tell through my own work have been made as honestly as possible, with empathy and respect for my subjects.

There are instances where visual storytelling is by necessity more representative than actual documentary. For an awareness campaign highlighting real lived experiences of young people facing issues of homelessness the charity I was working with, CentrePoint hired young models to portray the true stories being depicted, in order to protect the privacy of the people behind them. While the resulting images could be interpreted as less than authentic, they nevertheless communicate a very real truth. Protecting people’s identities in this way shouldn’t detract from their stories.

As a photographer, my interest has always been in telling stories. Even when I’m taking corporate headshots, making environmental portraits or photographing food or product, I believe there is always an element of storytelling involved. It is, in my opinion, implicit in the very nature of photography.

If you want me to help tell your story, please get in touch.

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Africa's Forgotten War

When I first started out as a freelance photographer I was keen to return to an area I had been to previously during a trip through Africa I made when I was in my twenties.  At the time I knew nothing of Western Sahara or the Polisario Front, but as I started to develop an interest in documentary photography and visual storytelling I wanted to explore the issue in more detail, so in 2007 I returned to the area in South West Algeria where Saharaoui refugees have made their home since their Moroccan enforced exile.

Since 1976 the Polisario Front, the government-in-exile of the Saharaoui fighting for self-determination of the Western Sahara, has been at war with Morocco.  The former Spanish colony was annexed by Morocco after the former colonial power left in 1975. It was later sealed off by a heavily guarded wall built by the Moroccans known as the Berm, stretching the length of the border between Occupied Western Sahara and the Polisario controlled liberated territories.

Since a UN-brokered ceasefire in 1991, Polisario soldiers, young and old, perform field exercises and scout Moroccan positions in the mine-ridden no man's land.  There are an estimated three million landmines and unexploded ordnance littering the former frontline resulting in many casualties and deaths every year among nomadic Berber livestock herders and Saharaoui.

Meanwhile, refugees from the Western Sahara who fled the conflict have been subsisting in dusty camps in neighbouring Algeria, Polisario's main ally, who have closed their border with Morocco.

Polisario estimates there are 170,000 refugees in the camps in South Western Algeria who rely on international aid, distributed by the United Nations.  Despite daily hardships the refugee camps are well-organised: women's rights are widely respected, literacy is above 90%, and many children go on to study at universities abroad.  A fragile ceasefire exists but tensions are high.  Saharaoui who remain in the occupied territories are subject to police discrimination, detention and regularly report incidents of human rights abuses.

I lived with Polisario soldiers in the desert and was able to travel with them to locations where they carried out military training and operations.  I also met some incredible people working with Landmine Action who were training local Saharaoui to clear mines from what is still one of the world's heaviest land-mined areas.

To see the picture gallery I shot for the BBC, click here

For more information on Western Sahara check out the amazing work being carried out by Sandblast

Cuban Rap

Towards the end of 2014 United States President Obama announced that America would restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba, more than 50 years after President Eisenhower imposed a trade embargo on Cuban exports during the cold war.   What this means for the future of Cuba is uncertain, but it will no doubt mean that a big change is on its way.  

Cuba and the US have had a long-standing love/hate relationship but in it's cultural heritage, especially through music, Cuba has managed to bridge any divisions and reach a truly international, even global audience.

When you think of Cuban music, you think of the wealth of fantastic talent that has come out of Cuba over the years - artists like Willie Colon, Celia Cruz, Irakere and Buena Vista Social Club.  Nowadays, there is a big Reggaeton scene in Cuba (as there is elsewhere in Latin America) but what many people don't associate with the island is a flourishing Rap and Hip Hop scene.  Perhaps typical of Cuba, this American import has been enthusiastically adopted by Cubans and is steadily increasing in popularity.  In 2002 the Cuban government recognised the significance of the Rap music scene and even provided a degree of endorsement through a Ministry of Culture sponsored record label to promote local artists.

However, not all Cuban Rap artists are so enthusiastic about what they see as the State sponsored, somewhat sanitised version of their art form.  Alongside the officially recognised Rap scene there exists a slightly more subversive, slightly more critical scene.  Ironically, a lot of the artists aren't anti Castro or anti communist, but simply critical of the state and its methods of control.

Some years ago I travelled to Cuba with Zoë Murphy and we produced a picture slideshow for the BBC about the underground Rap Music scene.

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Moments of Truth

It’s long been said that the camera never lies.  That’s not true.  It may not be the camera itself that does the lying but the person holding it is certainly manipulating the truth every single time the shutter is released.  Take for example the famous pyramids in Giza.  I’ve never been there but I’m reliably informed that Cairo’s urban sprawl encroaches right on to the edge of that so often photographed vista in the desert.  The fact is, most shots of the pyramids are taken from an angle that excludes views of Africa’s second largest city.

Whenever we take a photograph it is up to us as photographers to make decisions, often sub-consciously, about what we include in the shot, how we frame it, how we expose it, what camera angle we choose and so on.  But just as important is what we choose to leave out.  That is often a more conscious decision and one that can lead to much controversy if not taken carefully.  And it’s not only photographers who manipulate truth and reality in this way.  When it comes to reporting current affairs, Picture Editors decide which images best tell the story that they want to be told, thereby immediately introducing a second level of decision-making in to what is finally presented to the picture consuming public.

Take for example the emotionally powerful image of a four-year old refugee taken at the beginning of the current conflict in Syria, seemingly lost and alone in the desert and found by UN workers.  In reality he had become separated from his family but was far from alone in the desert.  The image had been cropped to represent a "cropped" version of the story.  So while the camera itself isn’t actually lying, it is being used as a tool that is selective about what is represented.  And as such it is able to focus the viewers’ attention on specific elements which are particularly significant or effective in creating a response.

Similarly, images posted on twitter in 2014 depicting state violence and brutality towards civilians in protests in Venezuela were a mixture of both truth and fiction.  Alongside genuine shots of the Venezuelan protests, images of police brutality from other protests around the world were also used, presumably in an attempt to create a stronger reaction and thereby generate sympathy and support for the protesters, especially given the lack of media attention they were receiving.   However, if people are trying to tell the truth through the use of photographic images, they aren’t doing themselves any favours when they use them in this way.

But the question of “telling the truth” goes far beyond using images from other conflicts in a different context and claiming they are genuine, or cropping in to a small section of a wider scene for maximum effect.  It starts with what a photographer chooses to represent in an image.  The history of photography provides many examples of staged scenes depicting a supposed truth.

The obvious example is of Robert Capa’s famous picture of a falling soldier shot during the Spanish civil war which has often been accused of being faked, although Capa himself denied this.  Fred Morley’s image of a chirpy milkman delivering milk through ruined London streets during the Blitz is on the other hand a confirmed fake.  Nevertheless, both are powerful images which reflect a genuine representation of real events.

By contrast, in 2004 the Daily Mirror published fake pictures of British army brutality in Iraq, resulting in the newspaper sacking it’s then editor Piers Morgan.   In this instance the intention was less about offering a genuine news story or an insightful perspective on a conflict situation, more about selling newspapers through the use of shocking imagery.  Shock, like sex, sells.

But it’s not only the question of staged scenes which cast doubt over the authenticity of photographs.  Photographers are often accused of photo-shopping images as if it’s a crime.  There was huge debate about truth in photography in relation to Paul Hansen’s winning image of the 2012 World Press Photography Award on the basis that the image had been overly photo-shopped.  For a detailed discussion of the controversy, click here.  This year again, the debate is revisited in the same vein, with 20% of images being disqualified in the penultimate round due to manipulation in post production.  

The fact is that photographs have always been manipulated in some way or another.  It is in the very nature of photography to be selective in what is represented in and by an image.  If a photograph has been digitally processed to enhance tonal contrast or increase saturation for dramatic effect, that’s no different to dodging and burning techniques used by dark room technicians in the days of processing film and making prints.  The extent to which an image is re-touched during this process is subject to endless debate in terms of what is acceptable and where to draw the line.  There is no end of debate surrounding fashion photography and the impact that has on image-conscious teenagers with aspirations to look like something that could never possibly be achieved without the aid of Photoshop and the damage that can lead to.

The point is, photographic images are powerful tools and their manipulation has existed as long as photography has.  Manipulation here refers not only to the image itself but also its use as a medium to communicate information.  If a photograph can lead us to question what we see and in so doing nurture a better understanding of the world and the events that take place in it, that is surely a good thing.  Furthermore it can also shine a spotlight on our reactions to those events and help develop a better understanding of our collective sense of morality.  The difficulty can be in filtering the good from the bad, the genuine from the fake, especially in an era where so many image manipulation options are so readily available to so many.

We as consumers have become so used to seeing powerful and arresting images that we are becoming increasingly desensitised to them.  After Kevin Carter shot his Pulitzer Prize winning image of a starving child in Sudan in 1993 it was used by an international aid charity as a poster campaign to raise awareness of dreadful human suffering and tragedy.  I wonder if it would have the same impact today.  The fact is, that image was also slightly misleading.  The child was starving.  There was a vulture in the background.  But the child was in a camp where international food aid was being distributed, not alone in the desert as the image might make you believe.  And if you’ve been to certain parts of Africa, you’ll know that vultures are as common there as pigeons are in Trafalgar Square.

The success of the shot lies in the photographer’s decisions on how to take the shot for maximum impact in order to tell the story, in this case an undeniably true story of human suffering.  It’s precisely that ability to make those decisions that defines great photographers.  Sadly, Carter committed suicide only three months after taking that picture.

So while truth may or may not exist independently of a person’s interpretation of what they think it is, and the camera remains a tool used to selectively represent reality, a great photograph is still one person’s moment of truth captured at around 1/125th second.

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Appleby Horse Fair

Appleby Horse Fair in Cumbria is the largest annual gathering of Gypsies and Travellers in Europe. In 2010 I shot a series of images for an audio slideshow for the BBC with the help of Zoë Murphy who recorded the audio and carried out the interviews.

Audio slideshow of Apple Horse Fair

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