FRAMES Photography Podcast
FRAMES Photography Podcast
Melissa Farlow
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In today's episode, W. Scott Olsen speaks with Melissa Farlow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning documentary photographer whose deeply human storytelling for National Geographic has explored the landscapes, cultures, and environmental challenges of the American West and beyond.
You can visit Melissa's website here.
Find out more and join FRAMES here.
I was on my way to cover a night football game, high school football game, when I got a call on my car radio. I know this dates me, but uh photo six, we need you to go to uh there's a disturbance in the street in Dixie Highway, and so I looked on my little map in a car and figured out how to get there, and a riot was erupting. Uh it was a tumultuous time in Louisville. Uh court ordered busing was integrating the schools, and uh the Klan came out, and there were riots that began that night. Actually, there were just disturbances, but that night turned into a riot.
SPEAKER_02This photography podcast is brought to you by Frames, a quarterly printed photography magazine. Here is today's host, W. Scott Olson, with another fascinating conversation.
SPEAKER_03Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to another podcast from Frames Magazine. My name is Scott Olson, and you know what, folks? I'm gonna tell you something here at the very beginning about today. Every single one of us has heroes out in the photography world. Men and women whose work we admire, the images have spoken to us, we want to be like them. And you know, you look at them and you think there is uh this level of um talent, of insight, of merit in the photography world. And I like these people. That these people, you know, their work speaks to me. But then you take a step back and you realize not only are there heroes in the photography world, there are superheroes. There are people out there who simply they're doing the work in a way that is intentionally changing the world. That's trying to make this whole thing that we're that we're sitting on a better place. They are storytellers with mission, with purpose, with intent. And they're not just creating images that are striking or pretty or disturbing. They're doing it with a sense of oh, what do you want to say, calling, commitment, um, vocation, whatever you want to call it. And their work, which is not only photographically brilliant, speaks to us because it's trying to say something about humanity, nature, the environment, and it's working. Every single bit of it seems to simply rise above talent into what do you want to call it, insight, being profound. In other words, we're talking with Melissa Farlow today. Melissa's got, you know, more than 20 projects with National Geographic from all over the American West, Africa, South America. You know, oh I'm looking at this. This is this resume here. I don't even know where to start. She's got a you know, a handful of books out there, Wildlands of the West, The Long Road South, which is about the Pan American Highway. I'm not jealous about that one at all. Um, she's got a book called Wild at Heart, which is about wild Mustangs out in the American West. Um, she's not only been a freelancer for National Geographic, she's worked at the Pittsburgh Press, Courier Journal, Louisville Times. We're gonna get to that in just a second. She's done everything from absolutely knock your socks off landscape work in Alaska to socially problematic, um, dangerous situations both in America and elsewhere. Um, let's see, she's won a National Headliner Award when she's worked for the Pittsburgh Press. She's had multiple awards from uh Photograph of the Year, distinguished alumni from Indiana University. She is a graduate and a faculty member of my alma mater, the University of Missouri. Gotta throw a click in there. Uh, she's taught at the Missouri Photo Workshop more than 25 times and served as a judge for that. Her work's been in Smithsonian, Geo Sierra, Stern Life, National Geographic Traveler. Um, it's, you know, it is everywhere and it needs to be there. She's worked for the Heinz Endowments, the Ford Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. You're beginning to see a theme here. This is work that is technically brilliant, aesthetically necessary, and really, really trying to make the world a better place. Melissa describes herself as a photojournalist in the documentary tradition. We're going to unpack for a little bit in that in a little bit. And I'm really, really excited for this conversation. Melissa, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
SPEAKER_00Oh, thank you, Scott. I'm so embarrassed. You're going on and on about things I don't even remember. But uh you are way too kind, and I'm honored to be here. I've uh honored that you wanted to speak with me and hope I can remember some things to tell people that would be interesting.
SPEAKER_03No, no, well, okay. I have no doubt about that at all. But I I want to start in a place in your history that is probably a little bit unusual. Is it true that when you were did you really write to Roy Rogers and ask for him to send you trigger?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I really did. Did he write you back? Yes, he did. He uh sent he sent a uh black and white photograph of him riding trigger with uh the horse uh up on his hind legs, rearing up, and it was signed in turquoise felt tip pen ink. And I still have that picture, although it went through a flood, it's a little crumpled and musked, but I have it. Um yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay. I mean, that that's I mean I love that story. Um I I just have this vision of your parents as they're putting it in the mail thinking, yeah, right, kid. But um why did you want triggered? Tell me about that stage of your life and sort of your relationship with not only with horses, but with the environment, with nature, with wildness.
SPEAKER_00Well, I was just one of those little horse crazy girls who uh, you know, thought about horses, dreamed about horses, drew horses in church, uh, ran around in the backyard whinnying and stomping my feet and blowing. And uh my parents, after that letter, uh bought a little cow pony that uh, yeah, he was really a docile thing with one eye, the donkey kicked out the other, and he chewed tobacco and ate watermelon rinds. And I rode around, I thought he was the most beautiful horse, uh, but it fulfilled that dream uh that I had. I don't know what it is about girls and horses, but um it I was definitely one of those. And this was sort of a recurring theme in my life as I look back. And uh it's it's funny to think that at five or six years old, you know, that something speaks to you that, you know, at my age now still speaks to me.
SPEAKER_03Well, I mean, the projects you did on Thoroughbreds, the projects you did with the wild horses, you know, out west. I mean, clearly that that's a relationship that was founded then. But I'd I, you know, doing a little bit of research, I I I just love this image of writing, you know, not only writing to Roy Rogers and saying I'm a fan, but saying, Will you give me your horse?
SPEAKER_00The audacity, right? I know.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I I love it. So, okay, fast forward a whopping three or four years. You have a great story about being at Yellowstone uh with your family, um, and your father hands you a little Kodak brownie. Tell me that story, because I I I want to disagree with you about the picture a little bit.
SPEAKER_00Oh. Well, uh when I was in fourth grade, we took uh the family took a trip out west. Uh, we drove to all the national parks, and when we got to Yellowstone, um we were, you know, looking at the sites and went to the waterfall, and my dad handed me this brownie camera, and yes, I took my first picture. But I remember him standing behind me and kind of pushing me forward, and I tried to rise up and I couldn't really see the waterfall over the fence. So I still have this picture, and it means a lot to me because when I see it, it it reminds it takes me back there. It reminds me of the power of photography because it's just a faded out black and white, poorly exposed, poorly framed snapshot. And yet I remember being there with my family. I remember what it smelled like, I remember the sounds, I remember other people around and the kind of confusion and desperately wanting to get a good photograph setting as tall as I could.
SPEAKER_03Well, okay. Now there's several things here. I mean, you you have in another setting, you call it a miserable picture. That that was your term, you know, looking at it. Yes. Um, and and I this is where I disagree. No, I mean it's square format. You got the waterfall nicely centered, um, you know, the the fence that you can't see over, a little bit of dissonance in there, give it some reac, you know, some uh some reality. Um, I actually think, you know, for what it was, you know, it it's not a bad picture at all. But this, I mean, we're talking about Brownie here. There's no digital back here. You couldn't see what you did. Why why was the act of pressing you know, whatever shutter release the Brownie had um something that spoke to you?
SPEAKER_00Hmm. Well, you know, I don't think probably at the moment it did as much as it does now. In that um at the at the I'm at the period of my life where I'm looking through archives, I'm looking through old photographs, and I'm trying to make sense of what my life was about and what it meant and where I was and who I met and all of those things. And what's amazing to me is how the photograph triggers so the reality of being there. You know, it's a frozen moment that brings it all back, uh, just as though it it's so current. Um and I think there are people in my life I wouldn't who were in my life I wouldn't remember. Uh photographs of my family have become so much important now, more important now that my parents are gone. Uh it triggers stories and my memories about uh our life together. And actually, even the stories that I have worked on professionally, uh, those images take me back with those people. Sometimes I'll get a letter and someone will say, You probably don't remember, but I was wondering if I could have a picture of it's like, don't remember you. You know, we spent all day driving in a car or whatever. And it, you know, it becomes, like I said, current again, as though it's present tense.
SPEAKER_03Well, yeah, you have a great quote out there. You you've said, every image is an invitation to wonder, to care, and to act. Um and just in a nutshell, I think you know, that's one of the real powers of your photography in particular, is that invitation to wonder and not just stopping there, but after wondering to care and to act. But you're bringing up the this relationship, this relational stuff. You know, I I remember late nights in the basement with the you know the little Kodak carousel and the slides and the screen that you could never unfold correct correctly. And it whenever those pictures would come out, some picture would come up, you know, he'd hears, you know, you know, mom or dad at the garage, and then a story would be told. Um, you know, the the pictures were always prompts. They they were a relationship to some other kind of narrative. And you you bring up narrative all the time. What what about people that weren't there? What about people that that don't have access to the story? Does the photograph have a way to prompt them to wonder and and create a narrative or engage with a narrative if they don't have that kind of one-on-one experience?
SPEAKER_00You know, that's a that's a difficult one. I don't think you can ever know how a person responds to a photograph other than yourself. Um I mean, even people I know well, like my husband uh is a photographer. We share our work back and forth, and he sees different things in my pictures than I do, and I understand his differently. You know, they all come from our own personal experiences. So I think we interpret them with our own individuality. Um, so I I don't feel responsible to um to try to understand, quite honestly. I try to be honest and truthful, to understand the moment I'm in, and to always, you know, I always try to understand the people I'm with and what their world is. And I know you can't ever walk in someone else's shoes, but that's usually my goal, is to try to figure out what is affecting them, what they care about, what their experience is, and to document that. And I'm probably not always successful at that because I am not them, but that that is my goal.
SPEAKER_03And that's brilliant because I mean the the kind of you know heart truth of journalism is is exactly that. Um, to say, here's the truth of somebody's life, let me document that and convey it in such a way um that that others can begin to understand it. Okay, so nine years old, you take a picture of Yellowstone Falls, you get a bachelor's degree in journalism. Tell me about that space of time. Did did photography appear to you? Was it when when you did the BA, was it writing journalism? How did the camera come back into your life?
SPEAKER_00I was walking through the big gymnasium where you signed up for classes to be a full-time student, and I didn't have enough hours to be a full-time student. So I walked around in a circle several times and walked up to the journalism table. I had taken a journalism class, but really didn't feel uh drawn to it. I think it was a beginning writing class, and I felt uh I I wasn't compelled to continue in journalism, even though that had sort of been my leaning. Anyway, I was majoring in undecided for three years. And when I walked up and signed up for this photography class, which was nonverbal communication, I said, What is that? And they said, Well, it's photojournalism. So that was that was just by accident that I signed up for that class, honestly. Um but in that I felt suddenly at home. I mean, it was technically it was difficult for me. I'm not a technical master by any means, but somehow uh the the idea of meeting people, I'm an introvert, so there was a reason with a camera to go places and talk to people, and it drew me to have a wider experience. And I felt like when I took a picture that there was an understanding that I never could feel with trying to create something writing it. Um, interesting enough, I became a better writer after I became a photographer, but it was um somehow capturing moments where I was watching people and there was sort of insight again into what they were feeling or thinking, and that's what I always tried to capture in the beginning.
SPEAKER_03Do you remember what some of your early stories were? Did you go to the work for the school newspaper, by the way?
SPEAKER_00Uh yes, and I worked on the yearbook. I was the editor of the yearbook. We gave we published the most irreverent yearbook at the time. Uh it was in the 70s, and I think we got professors in trouble uh over what we published because they weren't paying attention to our content. But uh, but anyway, uh yeah, that was so let's see now, early things. Well, they were just really features and uh people-oriented things, although I did do a story on gay women at the time. You know, I went to school at a time where there was a lot of social change that is now uh part of our culture. But you know, we had a Black Panther student body president. Uh gay rights were just coming out, women's rights. It was this is in the 70s, and it was uh uh a very tumultuous time, but I feel so thankful to have entered young adulthood in that period because I was very open to new experiences, I was wide open, I hadn't, you know, formulated all my thoughts and beliefs as an adult. And so uh all these experiences that I had through journalism and meeting people and going places uh sort of formed who I was. I had a fairly protected small town life, you know, growing up in a town of 3,000 people where there was a sense of community and trust. And then uh then going on to uh the university and having these experiences just broadened everything in in my world.
SPEAKER_03You you and I are roughly the same age, and I know exactly what you're talking about. Um, you know, that I was going to school in Chicago in '68 for the Democratic National Convention. Um and your world was exploded every single day. It gave you a sense of questioning what matters, whose point of view. I mean, I did not have a camera in my hand in those days, but oh, looking back at it, I wish I did. You must have been good though, because you graduate from college, and not only were you offered an internship at National Geographic, you turned it down to go get a full-time job. Um, so okay, you had to apply for it, right? They didn't just you know randomly call up people and say, uh, you know, do you want to come work for us? So so tell me the story of the internship that didn't happen, and and I mean, we're gonna get to what happened in your first week at work as well. Um but but tell tell me why you decided to go the newspaper route versus the yellow rectangle.
SPEAKER_00Well, um I was very young and green and impressionable, and in college, uh I did what professors and cohorts uh advised me to do, and I entered the uh Hearst contest for photography, and my portfolio placed well in it. I think it was third maybe, but that got the attention of people like Bob Gilka, um, where this was a period, as I explained the times, where women were just beginning to be working in the field in uh positions that they hadn't been. There had been the era of Rosie the Riveter, and there were women in in newspapers and working as professional photographers, but then during World War II, they when the men came back, the the women became more typically housewives, or they uh gravitated to more traditional jobs like teaching and nursing. And so this was a period in the 70s, I think, where uh there were staffs that were trying to uh mimic more of the communities that they covered. And so women were once again uh being introduced into the workplace. And so anyway, I think I got my opportunity because somehow uh I I got attention through some of the work in these early contests. Okay. So but I took the the job in Louisville that I was offered. Um why why did you turn down Nadgeo though? Well, they wouldn't let me do both. Uh I was offered the job, then I was offered the internship, and I went to the to the workplace to the prospective boss to ask if I could do the internship first and then come, and he wouldn't agree to that. Uh they said they needed me right away. I think uh whatever. Anyway, uh in in in talking to people that I respected, my professor and other mentors, um, they said I'd probably learn more at the newspaper than I would from a summer at Geographic. And so it was hard, quite honestly, because it sounded so exciting to work at Geographic, even if it was just a summer. But it was definitely the right choice. Uh I was very young, very green, and I needed to go to someplace where I could make mistakes and learn from other people. And the atmosphere that that was at the Career Journal in Louisville was exactly the right thing for me at that time.
SPEAKER_03Um you talk I I'm not so sure I'm gonna call this a mistake in in retrospect, but your first week at work had a bit of adventure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you might say. Yeah, I was arrested my first week of work um for lipping off to a cop. You know, again, you have to think about the times, and uh I wasn't allowed in uh well I had been told by some police that I could drive into this rock concert because I worked for the media for the newspaper, and when I tried to do that, another there was so much traffic and confusion, another policeman was uh stopped me and waved me away. And I came back and tried to enter again, and I lipped off to him when he wouldn't let me in. So I parked my car, called, I'm telling this story too long, but I called the officers and they said, They said, Go back and just take pictures of traffic. Don't worry about the concert. So I walked back to this intersection where the policeman was, and when he saw me, he uh came up and said, you know, leave the this area. Immediately, or I'm going to arrest you. And he was a big guy, and I thought, ooh, you know, it kind of scared me. And then I thought, well, that big bully, he can't do that. I'm on public property. I'm just taking pictures. So I stood there and stood my ground and started to slowly walk away, and a hand gripped down on my wrist, and I was arrested. So it was pretty terrible. I uh was taken down. It took a long time to get me there, but I had my mugshot taken, my fingerprints, and I was allowed one phone call, and I called the office to tell them, you know, I was arrested. What I didn't know and found out later was that this was a Sunday afternoon weekend staff on Memorial Day weekend, actually. And so very few people around, and no one had heard of Melissa Farlow. They didn't know I was uh they thought it was a prank call. So it took quite a while for them to call the right people and for someone to come get me out. But then the worst of it was, quite honestly, that that was terribly embarrassing. Plus, they put in the arrest record what I said to the cop, which the next day my parents arrived because they read it in the newspaper and they subscribed. They lived an hour away, and so they came down. And when my father read what I said uh in that arrest record, my parents were mortified and as well as I.
SPEAKER_03Now, did the pictures run?
SPEAKER_00Uh no, no, nothing ran from it. No, no. The next morning, uh, I went out to where I'd parked my car. I cried my eyes out in that uh jail, quite honestly. It was just a horrible experience. And uh the next day when I went out to come back into the office and went to my car, it wasn't there. I had parked that night in the only space in a courtyard that was a driveway. So then I my car was towed, but then I had to call the office to have someone come get me to take me to my car and lend me the money to get my car out because I didn't have a bank account yet. So I couldn't even write uh uh a check to pay for the towing.
SPEAKER_03Anyway. You know, you would not think this is the kind of first week that would launch uh an auspicious career in journalism. No. Um but no, but coming, you you're standing your ground for principles. I mean, you were in the other than parking in a driveway. Um you know, everything you did was perfectly appropriate and worth standing up for. But that was not the end of your first set of experiences, because two months later, you know, in in a much more profound way, the world does change again.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes. I was on my way to cover a night football game, high school football game, when I got a call on my car radio. I know this dates me, but uh photo six, we need you to go to uh there's a disturbance in the street in Dixie Highway. And so I looked on my little map in a car and figured out how to get there, and a riot was erupting. Uh it was a tumultuous time in Louisville. Uh court ordered busing was integrating the schools, and uh the clan came out, and there were riots that began that night. Actually, there were just disturbances, but that night turned into a riot. And I just have to tell you that I had absolutely no street smarts. You know, I went and I stood in the middle of the street and started shooting pictures, and uh as they it excited the crowd, and when my strobe went off because it got dark, uh uh they started turning a car over, and I realized that I was inciting the situation by even being there and photographing. So I found a place to crawl up on the roof of a garage and photograph from uh you know what I thought was a safe spot until rocks started being pelted all around me, and I got back in the car. How do I even explain? I just was it was very frightening, and yet I felt empowered to to be there, that it was really important what I had seen. Uh so we continued covering riots, and a few weeks later, I was feeling pretty bold when I went to these things because I could walk among the protesters and nobody paid much attention and I could get good pictures. If I stood with the policeman, which we were told to do at that point because uh for safety, uh they had riot gear, you know, and so when the rocks and bricks were being pelted on them, uh they were covered and I wasn't. So I stood with the crowd and but I got surrounded by a group of people and chased by a mob that night. Um they thought they realized I was from the media. They at that point hated the newspaper, and uh I ran I ran across a parking lot after getting uh out of a group of people who were trying to, I don't know, take my film, take my cameras, and uh not let me out and threatening me. And they told me that they said get the women after her, and I was chased, and I got to my car and somehow had my keys in my hand and got in. I remember my heart just beating so fast. And I also remember when I was running, it was like in slow motion. I could hear each boot hitting the pavement. You know, it was I kept thinking if I if I go down, you have to get up. The survival instinct kind of kicked in. And when I asked a reporter the next day what he had seen, because we had just been talking, he saw 50 people chasing me across the parking lot yelling, kill her. And so it was a pretty frightening thing, and yet I actually was ready to go back out on the street again. Uh, you would think at that point I was gonna become a war photographer, which was maybe, maybe once I uh realized the real situation, it was a different thing. What can I say?
SPEAKER_03And and it was these stories that won you won your team that of which you were a part, uh, the Pulitzer Prize.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes. And we did other photography, it's just that this particular situation stands out because it was a threatening situation of life and death, quite honestly. But we we were in the schools and we saw friendships forming. We we covered uh not just the clan, but we covered uh photographed families and teachers and in the classroom and you know, the whole story. So the whole staff pulled together telling a complete story of what happened that year in Louisville.
SPEAKER_03And you spent uh how many years doing newspaper work? More than 16, I think, right?
SPEAKER_00Right. Well, uh nine at the Curry Journal in Louisville, and another seven or eight in Pittsburgh before the press died.
SPEAKER_03And and then you set off to do uh freelance work?
SPEAKER_00Well, yes. Um I actually finished my master's degree in Pittsburgh doing a story for geographic. Um they let me take a leave of absence, and I wanted to finish my master's, I needed to do a project, and I was offered another opportunity to do a story for geographic. I was afraid to leave the newspaper at that point. I wasn't didn't feel confident to just uh start a freelance career. So this was sort of a baby step into it, and to do this master's project. And so my first story for geographic was in the Okie Finokie swamp. And quite honestly, every photograph I made in Pittsburgh and Louisville, or every story primarily was in black and white. So it was a huge shock to me to be shooting color codachrome with one quarter of a stop off can like totally mess up a picture that makes it unpublishable. So I had a lot to learn technically, but also the stories were were broader, you know. Like I understood narrative stories telling from uh from newspapers. Uh I had worked on projects over periods of time, up to four years on a project, but I had never had the kind of time and access to freedom to follow a story the way I felt it should be told. So it was a totally another learning curve to do stories there.
SPEAKER_03Hey, had you done much environmental work when you were at the newspapers?
SPEAKER_00None really at all. Um, they were very people-oriented stories. Um I photographed, for example, a woman in prison uh and then out of prison in Louisville for two years inside and outside, and that taught me how to build trust with someone and how to continue on an ongoing project so that it made it became more meaningful as time went on. And then in Pittsburgh, the story I worked on probably the longest was a woman who had a gastric bypass, and she had her stomach stapled, and I photographed her over the course of a year and a half where she lost half of her bat body weight, and her life became totally different. So they were very personal and narrative stories, often about one person or one social event, and so this was very different to do something, uh do the kinds of stories at Geographic. And um uh one of the things that I think the tobacco, the story I worked on in Louisville with uh following a family that grew tobacco, I was told was the reason I got my first assignment at Geographic. And it was a story about people and land. You know, they they sowed the seeds, and through the summer the plants grew, it was hot. Then I started looking more deeply at this family's lives, and the women were in the kitchen and the men were out, you know, in the hot fields, and uh at the end of the year they sold the crop, and I went back to the farm in the winter, and it was a really subtle story, but somehow the seasonal change made it more interesting, and I think the depth of the characters, even though they were very quiet, introverted people, um, their story was held together and was strong. And somehow at Geographic they saw that doing that and then doing it in an environment where you were also telling a story about issues, that balance of taking photographs of people and moments and landscape pictures sort of came together for me. So it felt like a fit to do that kind of work.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that that is so cool. Um you made mention a second ago, and I want to call attention, you've got a great feature out there at Lens Culture. It's titled Make, Don't Take, Establishing a Rapport with Your Subjects. Um you don't just mean human subjects. So give me the mini lecture on the how you establish rapport, why it's important in 10 easy steps that I can do tomorrow. No. What is it about trust, rapport, that makes a better picture?
SPEAKER_00You know, when I have when anyone takes my picture, I immediately am guarded. I I know what they're seeing, and I feel all my insecurities come out. And uh I don't like my picture being made because of that. Uh and I look for the most flattering angle that they might photograph. Or, you know, my Randy and I were being photographed once, and he remembers laughing and hearing the camera uh clicking away, and so he laughed a little longer. And so I'm very sensitive uh and aware of what it feels like to be photographed, and I think it that sensitivity puts me in other people's shoes to understand how they feel being photographed. So it's very important for me to sort of be comfortable with them, that they forget I'm there, that they think of me, I don't want to say as a friend, but as a non-threatening being, that you know, I'm interested in them. And so I'm just hanging out with people. And it's I think for me, getting more honest pictures comes from that approach. Uh, so that people aren't playing for the camera, they aren't performing for you, but you know, you're there for not only the good times, but the difficult times in their lives and uh the hardships. And those pictures to me are more meaningful because they come from a deeper place.
SPEAKER_03Okay. But I mean, rapport is not you're not talking about hanging out from 3 to 3.30 on a Tuesday. Um, you know, what what is it that really is required? If you're gonna tell a story, you know, just make something up here, you know, about you know, Fisher people in Texas. Um how much time do you budget before you before you're even down there?
SPEAKER_00Well, I uh well the the i I have to answer that in a couple different ways. I never know how long a story is going to be because you don't know how deep you're gonna get. And sometimes you go in thinking it's going to be a story about one thing. Uh like the woman in prison I photographed in Louisville. I thought I was doing a story on mothers in prison. Well, the child never came to the prison, so there was no way to show a mother in prison. I just showed the woman's life. But then as time went on and she got out of prison, uh, I realized that my idea of the story was fixed. It was through my point of view. And so it it made me realize that I was telling her story. And I think the only way you can do that is to continue to return to a situation, to understand it and let it evolve in a natural way, and to be sensitive of what the stor what the points and the moments are that are meaningful in that person's life or in this story. Uh, and that can be done best over time because one time you see someone or spend time for a fixed amount, you it may not lead to where you think it is, and it may take um really involving yourself longer uh to build that trust. Sometimes you have instant connections with people, and sometimes it takes longer. Sometimes you'll never have it, and it's time to walk away. And it's always a delicate dance to know which kind of a story you're in. But it's a gift when people let you into their lives. And I'm very aware the that the time that they give me is precious, and that it's important that I um take that into account how they're feeling and thinking and how it affects them.
SPEAKER_02Let's take just a quick break. We hope very much that you're enjoying today's episode. The very fact that you are listening to this podcast suggests that photography means a lot to you. And if that's the case, you might want to have a look at Frames Quarterly Printed Photography Magazine. We truly believe that excellent photography belongs on paper. Visit readframes.com to find out more about our publication and use the coupon code podcast to receive a recurring 10% discount on your new Frames magazine subscription. And now back to today's conversation.
SPEAKER_03The knowledge you gain, it's it's not so much you're taking a better picture, it's what you're taking a picture of is better.
SPEAKER_00Oh, absolutely. You understand it. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Now, this is not only people. When you're talking about the wild horses, you know, you you've got a quote out there, you know, you said, I became part of a herd, part of the herd in a strange way. Lots of hours of just being there. Uh well, okay, tell me about lots of hours of just being there with wild horses.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Well, wild horses was probably uh, well, it was uh absolutely a wonderful story. It was something I proposed uh at uh when an editor suggested, you know, you love horses, why don't you do this? You've been talking about them. But I'd never done wildlife. I'm not a wildlife photographer, so I really had a lot to learn. But one editor gave me some great advice, and she said that, you know, they're just like people. They have personalities, they have relationships. Look for the things you look for when you're photographing people. Uh so I learned through people who knew horses better than I did and how to approach them, uh, sort of the rules of engagement, uh, of how you hang out, just like you do with people. You know, every time it's different. You have to figure out where you are, who the players are, you have to build trust with someone who will allow you to be there, whether you're in a village in Africa or if you're in a horse herd in uh Wyoming. Uh there's some there's a leader, and there's someone who is uh going to determine to everyone else if you're okay or not. So I learned that, and I learned by watching them, uh they're like I said, the families and watched for behavior and activity going on between them. So sometimes horses, I would get there and they would just run away. They had too much fear of humans, but I I found herds that were more tolerant and I learned to sort of uh approach them slowly. Well, I had people take me out, and uh one particular day uh no one could hang with me, but I'd been shown the ropes for several periods of uh weeks off and on in different places, trying to find water holes where horses would return to because that's usually where I found the herds. Um, and one day I got out of the car, and instead of like stalking them and walking up and hiding, I just sort of walked out and said, Hi, I'm here to photograph you today. And they kind of looked up at me and then went back to eating. So I continued walking, sort of at a zigzag toward them, until I got up to the herd, and one of the females came down, and the night before I had seen her and didn't realize that she was pregnant, but she she gave birth that night, and she came down and showed me her her newborn uh foal and pointed the horse toward me and pushed it toward me. And so I really felt accepted at that point.
SPEAKER_03Um, but you you have another story where you were charged by a horse and your reaction was not to run away but to sit down.
SPEAKER_00Yes, this is the same herd.
SPEAKER_03Okay, but I mean look, I I hate to tell you, if if a horse is charging me, I'm not sitting down. I I'm I'm gonna grow wings and you know. So tell me that story.
SPEAKER_00I have no idea why I sat down, but it felt like the right thing to do. Uh I mean, this horse came out of nowhere. I was I was uh near the female mares that were generally a little more tolerant, and the yearlings were curious, so they would come up to me. But it was the stallions who were sort of testing each other, and then and he and also fearful of anyone approaching the herd. So this young stallion came just charging at me. I'd seen him uh running around and chasing others, so I was aware of him, but I didn't realize he was focused on me, and he came running at me, and like I said, I don't know why I just sat down. It just I it just was an instinct. It was almost like when I was being chased in Louisville by the mob, you know, the instinct was get up, you know, don't be on the ground. But it was the opposite. It was, I thought, don't be, I guess I was thinking don't be threatening. And that just you know, uh it it stopped. He just stopped and was calm then. He realized I wasn't threatening.
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, it's one of those things that I I was reminded of it because I saw some video the other day, uh, and this was uh a photographer in Africa. I'm embarrassed, I don't remember who. But this elephant was repeatedly doing felt false charges at this guy. But he knew what he knew that's what was going on. Um and and the time he had spent with the herd and learning the behavior and learning, I mean, he knew what this elephant and and you know it was it was almost like playing. You've been with the herd, you understand the personalities, um, you you learn to behave in a community based on that community. So I I do love the patience that it takes, though, to be accepted in any story so that you can learn what the better pictures are. One more story I want to hear, then I want to switch to a couple of particular images. You mentioned a number of times that you drove 20,000 miles for a magazine story. And again, that makes me jealous because I'm a road trip junkie. Uh but but tell me about the miles. Tell me about the story. Um, this became a book on public lands, but that's a hell of a trip.
SPEAKER_00Well, I made two kind of long road trips. And yes, um, well, this wasn't one trip. I mean, the the public lands story often uh required me flying somewhere. And then I'd rent a car, but then I'd drive all over the West. I didn't want to keep spending my time in airplanes. I remember Bill Allard one time talking about his cowboy story and saying he spent more time in airplanes than in the saddle. And I didn't want to do that. I wanted I really enjoyed when I was driving, seeing the landscape change. I felt like I could understand where I was instead of uh just bolting out of a car and being parachuting into someplace and finding the most dynamic landscape that the subtlety of some of the landscapes like in South Dakota or in Nevada, uh, you could only really understand by feeling it when you were driving and coming across things. I often had uh a goal, a place I wanted to be, or places I planned people I planned to meet for something, but uh part of the experience of being there that was important to me was uh to see and feel where I was, uh, which I think you could only get by driving it. And so I would be by myself. You know, a lot of uh the work I've done has been in North America, and part of what I love about working there is being on my own and experiencing things. When I work in other countries, since I don't speak foreign languages, I often uh wouldn't be traveling with someone. And whenever there's a dynamic of you and another person, it changes your experience. And it's not like you can't enjoy things together, but your focus is well is often on uh your relationship with that person and where you're going and what your plan is gonna be. And when you're on your own, you're making your own decisions in how much time you're gonna spend somewhere, or which road you're gonna go down, or where you're gonna be for the night, or whether you're gonna eat alone or try to, you know, meet people that night. And so uh there's something about that exploration that is very appealing to me to be in the moment.
SPEAKER_03Are you an extrovert? I mean, are do you do you walk up to people in restaurants and say, Hi, I have a camera?
SPEAKER_00Um or Well, I'm very shy and I'm it I'm an absolute introvert. Um I I think I mentioned earlier the camera sometimes uh gives me a reason to talk to people. And so yeah, I would go to a restaurant and eat alone, but sometimes I look around and just sort of survey the landscape, who's there, you know, and I will walk up to people and just chat with them, even if I'm not wanting to photograph them, just to figure out where who they are and what their plan is. And I would learn all sorts of things like, oh, well, there's a rodeo tomorrow night, you should go. And the the worst thing, by the way, that just triggered something, was when you would uh go somewhere or meet people on any assignment, and they say, Oh, you should have been here last week, or you know, next month they're gonna do this, you should come back, and you you know, you know, you can't, you there's no way. But the best thing, honestly, about working for geographic, you know, it's a very it's a very seductive place to work, quite honestly. And the work I did there was very, very different than the work at newspapers. But part of that seductiveness for me was not the image of being a national geographic photographer or the reputation that it has that people admire, which I'm very aware of. But for me, the seductiveness was the time in the field that I was given time and a budget and to determine where I wanted to go and how much time to spend there, and how you know, you work with an editor, so it's not like you're totally telling your own story from your point of view. You know, there are there are things and requirements about the story, and there is a uh, you know, uh uh uh an outline and uh a plan that you're making, but you're really free when you're in the field, and the time is what's really important to me.
SPEAKER_03You've nailed it because you're talking about you know when people would say, Oh, you should have been here yesterday, or but there's a rodeo tomorrow. The freedom to say, okay, I will stay till tomorrow. Because so many people, when they go on a road trip, no, I've got a reservation, you know, 900 miles down the road, I've got to be there. And they really take away serendipity. Uh they take away the ability to say there's a rodeo tomorrow, let me stay. You know, not a month from now or three months from now, but to go fishing, to go just I mean, and I don't mean with line and sinker, but to go exploring, to go um figure out something as inspiration hits.
SPEAKER_00You you hit it, exactly. I'm sorry, go ahead.
SPEAKER_03Well, no, because I'm I'm looking at, I mean, you you've got you know the Pan American Highway story, you've got the National Road story, and and I'm looking at your images for both of these. And these are not, you know, hey, I slowed down for the Amo station, and this is what I got. The ability to be present. So, well, that's the actually, you know, one of the pictures I want to talk about um are the nuns playing volleyball, tell which is a great picture. Thank you. I mean, t tell me the situation, but yeah, give me this, give me the story of this one image.
SPEAKER_00Okay. You picked one that I really love, and there is a story behind it that uh is uh different, I think. Um on the Pan American Highway, there was a lot of just driving and trying to show where you were, but I knew I was gonna be I had a guide book that talked about Arequipa and this uh convent that was closed. And I thought, closed convent, huh? But you can go visit it. And so I uh had um a contact in Lima and asked her if she could look into it before we got there. And she wrote the archbishop and said, Can we come to the convent? And the archbishop said, Well, we'll have a meeting when you get there. So when we got to our Arequipa, we had a meeting. He sent us over to talk to the head nun at the convent, and everything was going smoothly. I was gonna get into this closed convent, and the nun said no. So for another, oh, two hours, um, my con my uh fixer, we called them, people I was traveling with and who was uh uh uh talking for me since I don't speak in uh Spanish, uh, she convinced them through whatever we both said uh to let me in. And but they said you can only photograph the novices and now, so they let me come in. Thank goodness I had my camera with me. Um I mean, actually, I always carry my camera. That's another point. I'm sorry, I'm gonna diverge here. Sometimes people say that they don't carry a camera when they meet people, and I always carry a camera because I want them to know I'm a photographer, and if there's a problem, I want to know. And I may not use it, but I want it to be on my shoulder. Anyway, I happen to have the camera. We walked in, and as they took me around to the courtyard, I heard laughter, and when I came around, I saw these young women with a a ball playing like kickball in in this courtyard, and it was beautiful light, and it was just an amazing scene, and there were only like five or six girls, and they were laughing and they were shy, but they were playing. So I took a few pictures and then they went into the garden and they sang and they picked roses, and they were there for maybe 15 minutes, and then they left, and that was it. So I uh thought, wow, this is gonna be fantastic tomorrow when they let me in, and I can really spend a day with them. It was horrible the next day. When I went, everyone was like expected to be following the rules, and they were ironing and they were doing work, and it you know, it had none of the spontaneity and everything I had seen the day before. It was just a lucky moment, truly.
SPEAKER_03Oh, and it it it's a great picture. And by the way, you talk about letting people know uh that you're a photographer. Um, a friend of mine came through town, he's a photographer, um, and we went out for a photo walk. He got out the khaki vest, he got out kind of you know, bandolero, straps, camera on each hip, and people loved him. I mean, he would he would he would declare to the universe with every inhalation that he was a photographer. You know, he wasn't trying to hide it or be, you know, uh surreptitious or anything. Um, and and when he would walk up to somebody, they knew 20 paces away what he was gonna ask them.
SPEAKER_00So yeah.
SPEAKER_03Another picture from the Pan American Highway with I'm really curious how you discovered um are these women collecting grasshoppers for dinner? Um I mean that that I wouldn't even have been in my imagination that that this this happens. Um so tell me that story.
SPEAKER_00Uh well, there was a community which I'm the name is lapsing right now. I'm sorry, it's very famous for its black pottery. And uh we planned to go there and somebody we were gonna find a potter that or someone we knew of someone to ask where a potter was. And when we went there, I photographed this woman in her home making this pottery that is, you know, it's it was simple but beautiful, elegant, black when it's polished and done. But it was kind of dull pictures, and her granddaughter came home during when I was there photographing, and she was very um animated and running around and uh causing problems, and the grandmother was trying to make her be quiet, and so finally I could just I just wasn't getting any pictures, it was pretty dull, it just wasn't working for whatever reason. It may sound great, but it wasn't working. So, you know, sometimes you call it off, you know, that's it. Well, thank you very much. And we started walking. She said, Well, we were gonna go get dinner anyway. Would you like to come and join us? And um, I thought, where are you going to get dinner? And they said, Well, we're gonna get grasshoppers. I mean, this was translated. I said, Oh, oh, Nancy, we have to stay for this. So we went, that was it. They were collecting grasshoppers for dinner.
SPEAKER_03So Okay, how do grasshoppers taste?
SPEAKER_00Well, I don't know, but I will tell you about fried worms.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um, I in on the same book, I was in Mexico, we went to Chiapas, and uh it was rather tense at that time. The military were coming into communities, there was a lot of unrest and tension. And uh my guide uh got me somehow into a situation where we met. Oh, I know, we were at a roadblock, and somehow we got invited to come to breakfast the next morning because I desperately wanted to get in to photograph some of the families that uh we were told about. And oh, when they were doing health care, they had uh nurses and doctors who were uh seeing people and their families. So I wanted to see this, but I there was this sort of little test. So the next morning we went for breakfast and they brought out a plate of fried worms and sat it down in front of me and just watched to see what I would do. And uh when I was told what it was, I and everyone else was eating it, I thought, okay. So, you know, it's just kind of like earthy French fries, quite honestly. They were good.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Okay. Do you ever stage your photos? Because I'm looking at the um America of the first highway. And clearly a lot of these are serendipitous, but a couple of them, you know, like the guy on the big wheel bicycle. Um, you know, I'm wondering, was it was this arranged? You heard about a guy with this bicycle said, you know, will you ride by at three o'clock?
SPEAKER_00Most everything I do is spontaneous as I find it. But I do sometimes have an illustration I need to make. And for this particular story, the National Road, we were looking for parts of history of the this was America's first highway. It went from uh across the Midwest as far as Illinois, and it was supposed to be the road that they were during Thomas Jefferson's time that they were building West. And anyway, one of the parts of the history of this road was that when um uh let's see now, I'm trying to remember. Bicycles, oh I know, the roads were oh I know, the railroads came through, and so the roads, the railroad came through, and everyone thought that that's how transportation was gonna go. And so the roads started being in disrepair, and it was the American Bicycle Association, the Wheelman's Association, that kind of kept the road up, and so they had these big-wheeled bicycles that they would ride, and that was why the roads were cleared and continued to why we had highways then when the motor car came along and that continued. So I love this little piece of history, and I found out about people who still rode these big-wheeled bicycles on these back roads. So I found a family that did that, and uh, and it was on the national road, and I asked them when they ride, and they they had this getup that they would put on when they rode. So it was it wasn't a planned thing for me, but definitely I knew about it, called them, and went to find them.
SPEAKER_03Okay, that that is exactly what I was hoping. That's fantastic. Um, I I I the picture of the wagons with the McDonald's sign, though. I I have to imagine you were chuckling when that happened because it's just like you know, you know, th thank you, universe, for sending me. Uh you're halfway to an egg, McMuffin, and then here comes uh a shot for National G.
SPEAKER_00No, no, no. I was uh on the national road with a wagon train that they were recreating the the ride over the mountain, and when they got to uh the hillside uh over the mountain where they were ending that day, there happened to be a McDonald's, and they drove in and on their with their wagon train and got off their horses and went in and got their McDonald's. So I was with the the wagon train traveling.
SPEAKER_03So okay.
SPEAKER_00I wasn't in the McDonald's.
SPEAKER_03Oh, okay. That's what I where I would have been. I would have been sitting in my car, you know, halfway to a cheeseburger and thinking, thank you for sending these wagons along. Um brilliant, brilliant, intimate shot of of a father and daughter um watching horses in this story as well. And and the comfort that they've got um and and you know, intimacy in the situation is really, really special. Was that well, just tell me the story of that one. Then we're gonna move on to something else.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm trying to remember which picture you're talking about from that same story, father, daughter.
SPEAKER_03Father in a white hat, they're in a barn, they're watching horses.
SPEAKER_00Oh, oh, oh, oh. That was just the end of the road and one of the farms I found on it. It really had no special story behind it, to be very honestly. Um, it's just some some of the families that I found, I would go home with them or spend time with them hoping that there would be some photograph that would be made that would somehow mm make meaning to the road story. And so that just happened. But it there's no particular great story behind it. Sorry.
SPEAKER_03Okay, well, well, it's a moving picture. I would even even there's not a you know a big story behind it. Thank you. So many of your images really, really um leap off the page for me. But one of them, and and this is the one that Vital Impacts is is selling, is this beautiful landscape shot up in Sitka uh in Alaska. Um is being is doing landscape different than the rest of your work?
SPEAKER_00Uh absolutely. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03There's no horses, there's no alligators, there's there's no people. Um, you know, how do you make such a compelling image of something so still?
SPEAKER_00Well, uh, when when I first began photography, there was a school of photography that admired uh Ansel Adams, and then there was a school of photography that loved Eugene Smith. And so I was more in the Eugene Smith, Dorothy Alang, you know, the the human stuff. And and the Ansel Adams pictures left me cold. I just didn't understand, didn't feel anything, didn't know why people liked them. I mean, this sounds kind of nuts now, but that's the way I felt. And I heard someone speak one time, uh, actually Annie Griffith said, uh, you know, uh I I photographed the land, and it's important that we make beautiful pictures of the land because I hope that by recording this it will make people care and want to take better care of it. And so suddenly there was a purpose behind taking a beautiful picture of landscape that I understood and could relate to. And then also working at geographic. I mean, it was a magazine about geography. How could you not be paying attention to the landscape around you? And because I had this wonderful assignment you mentioned earlier on the public lands, people took me to the most special places they knew. Uh, you know, they were private places, they weren't necessarily uh dynamic with signs that all the tourists would come, but they were their special little spots. And I learned um through, you know, going with them to see these places and what it meant to them and what the land meant. Well, even when I'm thinking back, I'm sorry, my mind is jumping, but even in West Virginia when I was working on um mountaintop removal mining, uh, the people that I went with who were gathering mushrooms in the woods and all had a different kind of relationship with the land than people driving through or tourists might have by looking at the sites of the waterfalls in the mountains. And so somehow in doing all this, these landscape pictures began to resonate with me. And I'm not a great landscape photographer, but in this particular situation, the um there was a group of environmentalists who were taking me to see some of the uncut trees so I could see the spectacular forests because I was looking at clear cuts in the Tongas National Forest in Southeast, and uh they wanted me to see uh well and what they were also calculating, they were measuring them and taking their own uh data for their research. So I went with them on this boat trip, and it was just an early morning when we were drifting toward one of the islands where we were gonna hike, and it was just uh a really quiet, special moment.
SPEAKER_03Oh, well, and it it is a really, really special image uh as well. Um you have a short Instagram video, and you say is inspired by Jane Goodall, but there's a quote in there I want to hear you say a little bit more about. And and you say, what we fail to see, we cannot save. What is the importance of seeing that this goes to your other quote, the invitation to wonder, to care, to act. Do you see your images as prompting or hopefully prompting action?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think one always hopes that people respond to your photographs and in the case of the environment do care and want to do something. Uh, I think it's the most honorable thing that as a photographer you can do is to inspire change for good. Um, I look back at the social change that I photographed, uh, the stories that I did. I hope that it opened people's eyes to see their world differently. And I would feel the same way about uh landscape and wildlife and the natural world that uh, you know, when I was started photographing though, and for magazines and newspapers, uh it was a profession where very few people got access to see the things we did. And now um everyone carries a camera, you know, everyone's got a phone with them, and the quality is great. And I use my phone a lot for for photography. But I think that the purpose behind it is uh it's still important to record these things and to share them so that uh we can make a difference. You know, once wilderness is gone, it's gone forever. You can't plant back wilderness.
SPEAKER_03We could I mean we could talk for hours and hours and hours about your work and then the stuff in there. Um you've got a I we should tell everybody there's also another short film out there, Wild Horses, um, which is really cool. The uh and I have enjoyed every bit of this. You are, as far as I'm concerned, one of the superheroes that are out there. Um this work is important and tremendously good. Thank you very much. I have enjoyed this conversation.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. I appreciate this opportunity, and I'm near the end of my career of actually making uh images that I think make a difference, and my hope is that the next generation will continue this following. Um, I was inspired by many people before me, and I feel it's important uh in their honor to share what I can and hope that they continue that tradition.
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