FREEDOM OF THE PRESSES

commissioned, a paid advertisement. Today it is neither; no one is told
what to do. In a place where “freedom” is fast becoming a dirty word,
this is a real thing. And it isn’tjust talk. You get a picture to take home
for nothing, so it really is “free."

Iwas making art more thanjournalism. The entire process evolved
spontaneously and experimentally; I began by trying to isolate my sitters
from the background beyond the backdrop, but when events became
uncontrollable, I photographed anyway, with crowds surrounding the
sitters, and captured whatever else took place in the frame. A veritable riot
ofwilling participants gathered around the simple chair and backdrop as
I created a work that challenged the typical constraints and exploitative
history of ethnographic reportage.

It was more a street performance than a serious photo session, and as
I began to peel away the Polaroids I saw the magic reveal itself. Iwas blown
away by the effect created by having the crowd and environment showing
around the edges of the frame. This was a new kind of portraiture, one
that mixed directed and collaborative roles between sitter, audience, and
photographer and one that was authentic, spontaneous, social documentary;
the frame was pulled back, the artifice of the backdrop eclipsed by its
supporters. The strength of these photographs was the wonderful gaze of
the subject juxtaposed with the spontaneity of the people in the background
who assumed that they were not being photographed. Without the instant
reveal of image from my Polaroids, I doubt I would have ever discovered
that by allowing events to unfold naturally, the crowd would create powerful
and emotional street portraits, a series of mise-en—scenes that unassumedly
deconstructed the ethnographic isolation of the individual.

In 2005 I created my first digitally printed book, a tomb-sized cloth—bound
unique book titled Tsunami. My obvious interest and fascination with death
becomes clear in this book, and it set the stage for my continual coverage of
disasters, death, and themes relating to death.

In 2013 Typhoon carried on from Tsunami to form the second part of
what will become a trilogy of series depicting disasters. My intention is to
create books of large-scale imagery and repetition that show the power of
these disasters, the human suffering, and the spirit of survival. These are
not comfortable books to View: I want my readers to be confronted by and
feel something about the tragedies that unfold through the pages.

I had a similar aim with Panoramas Vol. 1, 1999—2005, a digitally printed
concertina book produced in 2009 in an edition of fifty. Designed around