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Photo Journal: Kibera Karma
Maybe the best two hours of my photographic life
So often when photographing out in the world, I pray to the photo gods.
It’s important because many things have to fall into place for a decent photo. Sometimes you just pray for something, anything, to work with. You pray for good light. You pray for moments and serendipity. You try to not screw up if those things do find you.
Sure, you can manufacture something. But there are ethics in photojournalism and documentary work, one of the primary directives is no fake/directed action. I never did that. Either it happened or it didn’t, and either you got it or you didn’t. If it’s fake, it’s nothing, a bit of theater. The power is that it’s real, authentic. Even as my work has moved to somewhere between art and documentary, I adhere to this. You become a kind of scavenger, a human divining-rod.
It’s getting harder in the modern world as life gets more conformist, regulated and suffocated, especially now that people live in front of screens. Years ago when I started as a photojournalist for newspapers, I would sometimes get sent out by an editor to find a ‘stand-alone’, meaning an everyday-life photo without an article. Just go find a good photo to fill space on the page.
