Por Hiphopapotamus

http://www.brianfrankphoto.com

Brian Frank recently won the Global Vision award for Picture of the Year International’s annual competition-http://www.poyi.org/67/GVA/index.php, I caught up with him to get the details of his most recent project and his views on the current state of photojournalism…

Hippo: How would you describe the current state of photojournalism as a career?  

BF: Right now there is absolutely no money to do projects.  There are so many photographers and photojournalists who are laid off right now that have decided to  go out and do what they want to do with the absolute freedom that happens when you don’t have an employer and are unsure of what the future holds.  They are working off their savings and severance packages and selling whatever they can.  They are producing epic work as we are in an epic time with environmental and economic disasters everywhere to photograph.  It’s also a really strange time for photojournalism, the sad thing is  that a lot of these amazing projects will never see the light of day.  For a lot of us, Newsweek was the last refuge because they had a photo director who really believed in photojournalism, but the magazine decided to take a shift towards text and away from photos so the director of photography walked away.  They laid people off and the photo department was decimated, it went from being a haven for photojournalists to a somber, depressing atmosphere with little potential for getting work published.

Hippo: What inspired you to do a photo essay on the Colorado river?

BF: when I was working in Ejido Hermosillo with Project Luz (http://www.myspace.com/project_luz)  I saw this whole area that was not only economically depressed but also culturally and ecologically depressed because of this previously abundant water source that was now gone.  Before then, I hadn’t realized the devastating impact of losing water.  I fell in love with the people of the community and wanted to show their story.  It went against my journalistic principals because I was already biased by my attachment to the community, but I wanted to show the U.S.’s responsibility and it’s impact on this community that I cared about.  The project and my vision changed with time because as I traveled on the U.S. side, I realized that there were plenty of Americans that were screwed equally.  It was far less black and white than I had imagined. I went to Arizona with the intention of photographing this suburban paradise, but found the place to be hell on earth in a lot of ways. I discovered that people were living in 120 degree weather and not interacting with each other at all.  I also found families with no air conditioning, hosing their kids off on their concrete driveways.  I found that in Mexico, although the situation was bleak, there was a much larger sense of community and interaction between individuals and families.  There was a depressing sense of solitude and desperation on the Arizona side.  The Salton Sea was also devastated.  It used to be a thriving tourist area and is now void of almost all business.  People were desperate to escape the area.  The only people who wanted to stay were the fringe of society who were there for a reason.

 Hippo: Did you encounter any hardships along the way and/or do you have any funny/interesting stories from your adventure?

     BF: (laughs) Well, I killed 2 cars and 2 transmissions during the making of the essay. Driving across the Southwest US without air conditioning is a challenge.  I was also traveling with my girlfriend, and at one point, on our way to Las Vegas (I had a gig there) it was 120 degrees and we had my dog Oscar, her cat, and two stray kittens in the car with us.  My girlfriend Jasmin spent the entire road trip soaking the animals with ice and water.  We had to stop every 30 minutes to get more ice.  The animals probably hated us, but they survived (laughs).  We would continuously have to leave at 3:30 am and Jasmin would have to wait for me in the cheapest motel rooms we could find that had air conditioning while I was out trying to make photos.

Later, I wrecked my truck in Colorado trying to get to Grand Junction to take pictures of a Peach Harvest (an assignment) and was trying to get to another assignment in Denver that I was working on in an attempt to subsidize this essay.  I was overdoing it.  I tried to get from Grand Junction to Denver in dumping snow and ended up wrecking my truck and having to drive the truck with a hole in the side of it to San Francisco…luckily it was still drivable but there were broken windows and I was driving in the snow.  Miraculously, I didn’t get pulled over. 

The second car I bought was  a Jeep Wrangler, I spent 5 days trying to get a picture of an group of indigenous fishermen near Mexicali, and finally got permission, woke up in the am at 4:30 am and realized that someone had blocked my car in.  So, I spent an hour trying to get my car out (Austin Power’s style), and ended up blowing my transmission… it still got me to where I was going but by the time I got there the family was gone.  Luckily, the car made it home, and then it blew up. I had some bad car luck.  I bought the first car for about $1500, wrecked it, bought the wrangler, then took my last (to my name) $1000 to buy a new transmission and that one blew out as well.  At that point I was pretty much over taking pictures for the story, I wasn’t finished and averaging one picture a week.  The entire story took about a year on and off to complete.  6 months straight, and then here and there. I was on the road for 6 to 8 months. 

Hippo:  Can you make a case for the importance of photojournalism as a field, i.e. why journalists shouldn’t just take a point and shoot on assignments and take shitty pictures?  

BF: Photojournalism visually depicts this unconscious societal memory.   The same way that studio art is quoted at keeping a record of pop-culture and the political climate at any given time.   It provides a record and materializes the subconscious of a community.  Without it, there won’t be any type of visual historical record of what was going on at the time.

Hippo: What exactly is Pictures of the Year International and why is it revered in the photojournalist community?

BF: Poyi is a yearly competition that is sponsored by the University of Missouri and Nikon.  A competition recognizing the best work of the year.  It is one of the two major photo contests of the year. It is the U.S. equivalent of World Press photo. It has a stronger U.S. photo base.  World Press Photo is probably a bit more prestigious because of the sheer number of entries, but Poyi is probably the runner up in the world for photojournalists.  The Global Vision award recognizes a body of work that shows an ecological and or economical issue and successfully links it to a human element.  It is not for essays about natural disasters.  The reason why it is an interesting category is that you can enter up to 45 images, and it doesn’t limit you.  This is important because they can look at each photo in context.  As a photojournalist it is extremely difficult to get your message across in just one image.

Hippo:  What is one of your favorite experiences working as a photojournalist in Mexico?

BF: One of the most fun experiences I had in Mexico was when I took a picture of a bunch of kids in a swim hole, and after swimming with all of the kids and shooting in the water, and getting my cameras wet, I sat back on the bank of the water and watched all the kids playing in the water and I had that summertime feeling that I haven’t felt since I was a little kid, and didn’t have a care in the world.  I think that feeling is only possible in Mexico, at least it’s hard to find in the states.

Hippo: Can you describe a little bit of the thought process/technique behind your Global Vision Award winning photo?

BF: I originally started the project in a mix of color and black and white because I thought I would get vibrant colors in the us to contrast with a bleaker style in Mexico, in the end, that didn’t work, so the entire essay went black and white.  Black and white forces you to focus more on the content of the photo.  It’s grittier and more straightforward.  I prefer working with composition and light rather than color, for me, stylistically this project was a big divergence from my usual style.  I had been looking at a lot more art photography or art based photojournalism, Alec Soth was a major influence (http://www.alecsoth.com). The photos aren’t totally conventional and the value of the work comes more from the total essay rather than each photo.  The overall work is non-linear, a lot freer and loser, but you have to have the ability and opportunity to show a lot of pictures which is non-conventional for photojournalism. 

I took the picture of the power plant at dusk, I always try to shoot at dawn or at dust, mostly because I think humans in general are less uptight and less likely to notice you or be bothered by you at this time of day.  You can walk down the same street at dawn and the middle of the day and people will treat you completely differently.

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