What can contemporary art do
that reportage photography can't?
And what does reportage photography
what is it weighted with that art tends not?
You know, I struggled between these two poles, I suppose
of contemporary art and documentary photography
which were representing human suffering
A lot of photographers don't want to get accused
of synthesizing that
Beauty and esthetics are the sharpest tool in the box
and I believe that they can be used effectively
to more adequately and more powerfully communicate
complicated and difficult narratives
In 2014, there was more than a million people
landing on the shores of Europe
who were claiming asylum, in other words, refugees
I discovered through a friend
the thermal military-grade weapons technology
which is a camera
So the camera is very unique and interesting and powerful
in that it can image human body heat from 30 kilometers away
or 18 miles
It was designed specifically for long-range border enforcement
battlefield situational awareness
detecting, tracking, and targeting insurgents
We were using it against its intended purpose for filming
in other words, refugees coming across the sea
on boats, or sometimes drowning, or dying of hypothermia
But I was doing it through
a current design to keep these people out
This tragedy touch upon the ambiguity of the subject
and to provoke in the viewer a sense of their own
an uneasy sense of their own complicity
Film and photography are very different
The way I've used them has been almost counteractive to each other
The photographs are very-- I suppose, passive
reflective of video work
It's very visceral, very immersive, sometimes quite emotive
quite aggressive
After I graduated, I went off to Berlin
I'd been reading a lot
about the Serbian-Croatian tensions of mid-20th century
And, of course, then in the '90s, it all broke out again
and I drove down to Bosnia, and I began to snap away
I wanted to document the missing persons crisis
But I immediately began to struggle
because I was trying to document an absence
The subject is missing people
You cannot put them in front of the lens
So really, I began to think
about the sort of limitations of documentary photography
at that very early age
I find that very interesting
I spent five years working in Congo
and I began in early 2010
That was around the same time that Kodak had announced
the discontinuation of Aerochrome
which is one of their more eccentric film stocks
and it represents the world
in these bright hues of red and pink and fuchsia
It's an extraordinary way of seeing the world
But that film was originally designed as a weapons technology in World War II
So the film has this tension in its history
and there's a specific aspect of wars and conflict in eastern Congo
which I felt tallied with the film
that the scale of the conflict is so huge
but it's not really translating
The mass media wasn't really paying attention
It was unseen
And so I was interested in that, the fact that the film was able to see
or perceive an invisible spectrum
like to reveal something hidden to the human eye
I suppose this was a way for me to mediate this situation
to try and understand it for myself
And I suppose I realized there was a potential to, on some level
communicate these tragic narratives to a wider audience