James Whitlow Delano has lived in and documented Asia for a decade and a half. His work has been awarded internationally from the Alfred Eisenstadt Award (from Columbia University and Life Magazine), Leica Oskar Barnack, Picture of the Year International, Photo District News and others. Delano’s series on Kabul’s drug detox and psychiatric hospital was awarded 1st place in the 2008 NPPA Best of Photojournalism competition for Best Picture Story (large markets). His first monograph book, Empire: Impressions from China (Five Continents Editions) and work from Japan Mangaland have been shown at several Leica Galleries in Europe and Empire was the first ever one-person show of photography at La Triennale di Milano Museum of Art in Italy. His second monograph book, I Viaggi di Tiziano Terzani (Vallardi / Longanesi) was released in spring 2008. His work has appeared in New York Times Magazine, National Geographic Books, GEO, Newsweek, Mother Jones, Time Asia, Internazionale, Le Monde 2, Vanity Fair Italia, and others. His work has shown in international photo festivals from Visa Pour L’Image and Rencontres D’Arles to photo festivals at Angkor, Cambodia, Lianzhou, China, Noorderlicht, Netherlands, Rovereto, Italia and Foto Freo, Australia.
Academy A: To start things off, I guess we should start at the beginning. So forgive me if you’ve been asked this a million times, but when did you first know that a career in photography would be possible for you?
James Whitlow Delano: That is a little ambiguous; I probably took a different route than most people photographically. At the risk of writing a life story, here is how things roughly unfolded. While (unhappily) studying physics at the University of Colorado, I wondered into the rare books room and found original prints of masters like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Kertesz, Robert Frank and others. It was a jaw dropping moment and my attraction for photography was sealed.
That was the easy part of it. I set off for New York City in the mid-80′s and worked for people in the fashion and celebrity portrait field like Annie Leibovitz and Deborah Turbeville. I met a hero at the time, Joel Meyerowitz, and he invited me to his studio unloading prints from his seminal work, “Cape Light.” Meyerowitz pulled out a little quiet camera and began a portrait session, that was my introduction to Leica cameras which to this day I use on the streets.
After moving to Los Angeles and carrying on working with people like Greg Gorman and Michel Comte, I realized that my heart was not in fashion photography but doing street photography. I learned from a friend of an opportunity to work in Japan, and getting a visa for teaching English. This provided the stability to live and photograph on the streets of Tokyo. This was 1993.
Finally I decided, if I could not make my sustenance doing reportage, then I would find another way to earn a living. China was waking up and Asia is still so rich in cultural diversity that I have been fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.
Academy A: I think the aspect I love most about your photographs is that you primarily shoot them in black and white. As I start out, I find myself taking all my photos this way. The emotion and rawness of the image seems more present in black and white photos than in color. Why do you think this is?
JWD: This is almost unanswerable. It is an organic, elastic relationship one develops with one medium or another. I like the immediate step back from reality you get with black and white. I feel more for black and white photographs. There is a thread to the past that makes those who came before more human and less ‘those stiff people’ in old photographs. There is a way to comment on the future and scratch just below the surface suggesting at the spirit underneath.
I work fast, color is a much more finicky a medium. I need to move fast and think about what is around me, I do not want to be too consumed with the camera. It is a means to an end, not an end unto itself. I want it to be an instinctive process making photographs.
Academy A: What inspires you to immerse yourself in a story, like the one you did on sex workers?
JWD: I like to be surprised, the sex workers series surprised me. It broke down barriers. The series came out of a smaller series on the sex workers in Tijuana, Mexico called “Paraditas.” I was surprised that I could enter their world and work. It definitely had an edge and I have to use all my instincts to enter into these locations.
When I began photographing the series I liked what I saw and thought to take this as far as it could go. I wanted an existential look at that world, without blinking and then let the chips fall where they would.
Academy A: In a story like the sex workers one, how do you gain the trust of the people in this trade? Many of the photographs you took are so compelling because the women are being so open and allowing you to see them at their most vulnerable.
JWD: I approached them as one person to another, they know clearly and inherently that I would not touch them or violate their space in any way. There were clear limits to what I wanted to show of their lives. For example, I have no interest in the sexual act. That dehumanizes these women. I wanted to show their humanity, vulnerability and strength.
If a woman were not interested in being photographed, I thanked them and moved away. Just like anyone, they want to be respected. There may have been a limit to how much they wanted to reveal about themselves, I stopped where they wanted me to. Most were simply single mothers who had come on hard times.
Academy A: In your Faces of Islam story, I was especially struck by the picture, “Moor nomad and his camel, Sahara Desert near Algerian frontier in Morocco.” How did this image come to be? When viewing it, all I could think was that I would want to meet this person, he seemed completely fascinating and mysterious.
JWD: I had traveled down from the Atlas Mountains and through striking date palmeries that are planted around Kasbahs that follow the courses of rivers. Finally the rivers all die in the Sahara. I met this man beyond the last oasis town on an ominous, windy, sandy afternoon. He had put the end of the turban to cover his face and make it easier to breathe. For a camera, sand is more a problem than water, so I had to work in bursts and then protect the camera. It can be a fairly lawless place and was exceedingly so in the past. So, the people are pretty tough down in the desert.
Academy A: You photograph some interesting and somewhat dangerous locations, like the Kabul Psychiatry and Drug Dependency Hospital. Has there ever been a time that you have felt scared on any of your travels?
JWD: I have been concerned a couple of times. Mostly, when travelling to some place like Afghanistan, Yemen or the Southern Philippines, 98% of the people are quite friendly; the other 2% can really ruin your day and they can come out of nowhere.
In Yemen, I was in a vehicle coming down from a region along the border of Saudi Arabia that is now closed off because of a separatist movement that was just about to boil over while I was there. A military escort was required to travel up to the city of Sa’dah to photograph the weapons bazaar, where one can buy an AK-47 as easily as buying an I-Pod in the US.
My travel partners did not want to pay a baksheesh to the second guide as they viewed him as a hanger on. I did not view him that way and wanted to pay him a modest commission/tip. On the trip back south to the capital, the military escort inexplicably deserted us half way at the border of two governorates.
Less than 30 minutes later, on a sparkling sunny day, a man stood in the road in a small ravine with a Kalashnikov and told us to stop. His weapon was pointed down and not at us, the driver used this tactical error to gun the engine and make a run for it. We put a couple of hundred yards between us and him before he opened fire. We escaped. It happened too quickly to get shaken up until later, I was more prudent the next time.
I had been in a vehicle that screamed out “foreigner.” The next time I returned to the mountains, police insisted I hire a slightly less conspicuous local taxi, not an SUV favored by NGO’s. To be on the safe side on that return trip, I donned a turban and took my place in a local Yemeni group taxi. I watched the exact scenario unfold again, when a man armed with an AK-47 entered and paused in the middle. He looked at our vehicle and thought he saw a vehicle full of Yemenis. We passed by safely.
Academy A: What has been your most rewarding experience as a photojournalist, thus far?
JWD: I suppose that the most gratifying on a certain level was the privilege of exposing the truth about Cyclone Nargis. The Burmese junta did not want the truth about the severity of the disaster to be shown to the outside world.
I was there by chance on another assignment and returned to Yangon the afternoon the cyclone struck. There had been no warning that I could see. Burmese television did not warn the people properly, or at all, as far as I could tell. I had access to CNN the afternoon I returned to Yangon and they warned that a category 4 storm was about to bear down on the Irrawaddy River Delta. The brunt of the storm passed right over Yangon that night snapping trees like pencils and taking out electricity and water for days. Still I knew that it was worse in the delta. I hired a car with a colleague and we got down into the delta before the incompetent regime could close the handful of roads down there.
I still find moments when I return there in my mind. It is never easy to erase the horror on the faces of the gentle families I met down there. Death was everywhere and the waters had risen to chest high or higher in a flat estuary driven by 100 mph+ winds where most people live in bamboo houses raised three feet off the ground. There had been nowhere to run. To stand among them, I knew that I could not have fared any better. Without the good fortune of being on higher ground in a concrete building, I would have perished just like anyone else. I got the film out of the country and it ran in Vanity Fair Italia. I feel like this story affected more people positively than any other.
Academy A: Lastly, what advice do you have for beginners in photojournalism that no school can teach?
JWD: I advise you to take as much control as you can. Do not wait for opportunity. Go out and find it. This process is a marathon, not a sprint. I found opportunity by moving to Asia, it is still possible to do that. This can set you apart.
For a very long time, I had no option. Given that situation, I would advise you to find stories in your own life and ask yourself, will anyone outside of my area find this interesting. Is it a universal theme? Does it have national or international ramifications?
Produce stories. No matter how much technologies change, people do not. We still love a good story. Do not be afraid to develop your own style even if you might lose certain clients shooting that way. BE YOURSELF. Don’t be afraid to take calculated chances. War photography is often viewed as a way to rise quickly, I think you are better advised to develop human stories around social upheaval as opposed to showing barbarism.
Finally, photography must be an obsession. You must love it enough to eat, sleep and drink photography because it will test your resolve. Only if you love it, will you have the tenacity to follow through on your goal.
All images © James Whitlow Delano
Excellent interview, Jeff.