An Excerpt
Director Thomas Nordanstad's newest documentary follows award winning Swedish photojournalist Paul Hansen in his travels. Thomas brilliantly captures Paul’s unique attributes along with the emotional commitment his job requires. One is left to appreciate the import role that photojournalism plays in bridging the gap between people living very different lives by skilfully capturing the collective and individual struggles that exist around the world. His exceptional ambitious and compassionate approach has successfully contributed to bringing our world closer together.
What do you do for a living?
Well, I wish it was for a living, but I make documentary films mostly, and sometimes I make television programmes for cultural magazines, for example, in a Swedish one called Cobra. I make ten minute things about places very far away like Libya, I did Cambodia, Liberia, Japan, but mostly I do longer one hour documentaries.
Could you please tell me a bit about your most recent documentary about Paul Hansen?
It is my second film in this so called trilogy about documentary photography, and is in Sweden at least, called conflict photography. It’s a good term I think. It doesn’t need to be a war, it can be a starvation, an earthquake, like in Nepal recently, or the Ebola crisis. I am following this Swedish-Danish photographer Paul Hansen. But instead of just following his footsteps I’m going parallel to him, so I’m going into the actual conflicts together with him. I think this creates the difference between the ‘portrait' of a photographer and actually portraying his working conditions and what he sees. So, for example, I follow him to a family in Palestine and for a while you actually forget that you are watching a film about a photographer. You actually think you are watching a film about this family. And then you go back with the photographer, to his hotel, he does his editing before he sends it of to the newspapers, and the next day we're in Gaza and we're meeting another family who has been devastated by a bomb and then you follow that for a little while. So the difference between this film and a portrait of a photographer is that you are actually with him as opposed to just watching him photographing. It actually gets really boring watching people just photograph things.
What was it like working with Paul Hansen?
Delightful. He is a very interesting man and he is a very jovial, humour filled and relaxed person who switches completely into a somewhat of a work-devil. When he switches into his operational work mode you don’t exist anymore, only what he sees through the lens exists and he will run you over if you’re standing in his way. He himself is not really aware of this and its interesting psychologically how he completely snaps into this mode and then when the session is over it takes about a minute for him to be back again. Its as if it never happened. But when he’s in his work mode he is extremely focused and concentrated, which I think is a very good thing.
Have you noticed any similarities between Paul and other successful photo-journalists?
The link between them all is that they are extremely focused and extremely devoted people and that they have a humanitarian focus. It’s as if they have a need, a drug in their blood, which drives them to right the wrongs in the world through their pictures, revealing the message of other peoples plight, and other peoples evil. They tend to have families who are very understanding to a point of being almost submissive to the role of the photographer because the role of the photographer means they have to be ready to go in very short notice. He could be in line at the theatre with his wife and the phone rings and suddenly he’s of to the airport. To have that sort of private life unifies these people that I have worked with, including Martin Adler, and now James Natway. The difference with James Natway is that he was always single and never had a family. He was a bit of a loner. He is 65, the oldest in the group. He is one of the world’s most famous photographers, and faces the same thing as Paul Hansen and as Martin Adler in the sense that he always puts top priority in his pictures and whatever may come of it so the rest of the world has to stop.
What other qualities besides being an exceptional photographer does someone like Paul Hansen need to be an award winning photo journalist?
That’s an interesting question because the people who tend to win these picture awards are people with enormous compassion, which is something you can’t learn. You could perhaps learn to recognise that side of yourself. I think everyone has compassion, but some may just suppress it. Photographers like that also need an extreme capacity to focus, with a whole lot of patience because there are so many hours of the day, or days in the week, or weeks in a month where nothing happens whatsoever, and then suddenly everything happens. There is no actual technical skill needed, even though the best of the best tend to have them. With these cameras that are made today you can shoot on automatic. The camera is quicker than you, and in photography it is all about speed.
Do you believe that Paul justifies the large emotional burden that comes with this job by the rewards of the job?
Yes, I do think it is justified for anyone who does this kind of work. Paul is actually married to a woman who does something similar to him and is very concerned with human rights so they have a lot of things in common in their life. They both have grown up children so they can both organise their jobs a little easier now. But i think that theres a lot of pain involved in being exposed to everything that they see and there are obviously consequences of that when they get home. Depression can follow. It can be really hard to adapt back to everyday situation and hard to focus. If him and his wife were to go to a dinner party with a couple who, lets say, works for a company in Sweden Paul can just completely zoom away. He’s not even there because in his head he is following a conflict. Very often he will follow a conflict that he had to break away from because he had to go home. But the conflict continues. It’s as if he’s sitting on needles waiting for that call like the junkie would wait for his next fix.
Is quite an addictive job then?
Yes, but to my amazement Paul has an amazing capacity to relax when he is not working. As opposed to what I just said he could, for example, go to the beach with his wife and completely switches of for two weeks to re change in preparation for his next trip.
Is that one of the reasons that Paul is so successful?
The ability to turn on and of is very very beneficial to a photographer of this kind, or at least to appear turned of. I think that in the case of Paul it’s a mixture between the two. With Paul, it’s as if he can’t see the world without his photographs. He is so immersed in his own work that it becomes his life. I think that his success is also due to the fact that he has a very good eye for the small elements that would otherwise have been missed. This is due to his compassion. He will see a small girl playing over there and a mother just trying to lead an ordinary life in the middle of this mayhem.
Is the attention to the small elements unique to Paul?
I think that all the pictures that are ‘winning the awards’, although that is only one measure of quality, are always about very very small, fragile moments that people can identify with. Nadine Gordimer, a nobel prize winner, said that if you can read one hundred fact books about the Russian Revolution you will get all the facts, but if you read Leo Tolstoy’s novel ‘War and Peace’ you will understand what people actually went through, what they actually thought about it, and how it affected their daily lives.
Do you believe that the meaning behind and the intention that Paul puts in his photos are perceived by the public in the right way?
I think they are because his pictures are both very complicated yet very simple. When you see them, which many people testify in the film, you will immediately know that it is one of his pictures. It is not always easy to distinguish exactly why.
Is there a barrier between these photojournalists and those who view these photos in the news? Do we come with any cultural prejudices that the journalists have removed?
One of the scary things that happen nowadays is that everyone thinks they can do this because they have a smart phone. They think that they can watch the world objectively. But they are mistaken because it takes a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge to do what Paul and those like him do. Sometimes when ordinary people look at these pictures their first instinct is to question whether this photo is actually real or whether it has been manipulated. ‘Did he arrange that?’, or ‘did he sit that child there in the mothers lap for the picture?’ can be asked. That is a very naive thing to ask because why would he do that? There is absolutely no reason in the world why someone would spend a whole week running around in a refugee camp and then arrange a picture. He might just as well have stayed at home. So that is a sad discord between someone who works so hard to get it right and to be honest and the person sitting at home on the internet.
Is the documentation of these photojournalists an effective way to try to bring the world closer and to increase understanding in an attempt to live better in harmony?
Yes, you only have to imagine a world without these pictures. What would you actually know? It is as if they are providing a sort of google ‘street view’ service for us. They open up a connection for emotional contact between people. It doesn’t have to be a conflict, it can be any situation. Someone on the streets, a beggar for instance. Paul captures the humanity that all these people share and brings out everyone individual character and charisma. He gives us the message that we are all the same in the end, and that barriers don’t actually separate us as people.
Is there a particular positive situation that you have seen come about because of the service of photojournalism?
Yes, very much so. James Natway made a TED pledge where he made a speech and TED contributed with some money for him to work with tuberculosis. It was on the rise and had mutated to become more resistant so it is harder to find a cure for it. A lot of people were dying. His pledge was to wake up the two presidential candidates, which at that time was Mitt Romney and Obama. After a year he presented the whole thing on the Time Square Billboards and another lecture. Both these candidates said that the first things they would deal with was to eradicate tuberculosis by putting a lot of funds into it. Obama won and he promptly held to his word and the situation was drastically improved. James traveled all around the world documenting the extent of this disease and he did something very positive and powerful with those photos.
There has been a lot of debate about freedom of speech lately, especially due to the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris and Raif in Saudi Arabia. Do you believe that photojournalists use free speech in a positive way?
Yes, absolutely. Without these people we wouldn’t have any information. The internet by itself isn’t sufficient enough. If a car bomb goes of in Iraq and someone happens to be standing next it with a smart phone, we will only know that a car bomb went of. Photojournalists provide an intelligent and impartial representation of the situation. The only difference is that the journalist would have to arrive at the situation and probably wasn’t there to begin with. That is why one of the sub-titles of my film is ‘the art of being the first one to arrive late’. A swedish poet said that. You will get a documentation of the carnage of the car bomb, but not of the guy putting it there or who was around when it exploded. Therefore the dilemma of these people working for the news is that they are being sent to situations that have already happened. I suppose that some of these people, including Paul, are keen to re visit a conflict, like Ukriane, and tries to see a conflict before it happens. I think that only people who are so professional and objective and compassionate at the same time are able to do that.
Is there one thing in particular that you have learned from Paul that you will carry with you in your future work?
Interesting question. I am definitely jealous of a few of his qualities. I am jealous of his way of organising himself and the way that he keeps being alert throughout the entire day and then he probably sleeps very well I suppose. I wish I could have that organisational skill and discipline that he has. If I have learned anything I have learned the importance of that.
What are you hoping to teach people with your documentary?
Somebody once told me that a documentary can be anything, be made in any way and be about anything as long as the viewer feels that they are there. I wish for people to feel that they are there in Palestine with Paul and that they are sharing something with him. I actually stand back, which is an interesting situation for a documentary film maker. I stand back and let the audience meet this guy and follow the stories of those he is documenting. It’s an interesting experience getting yourself out of the picture while putting the viewer into the picture. There is no teaching involved I suppose. It is portraying the importance of what Paul does. Nobody else is capable to do it. Nobody watching the documentary will say ‘I could have done that’ because they didn’t. This guy did, and he keeps doing it. The message of the film is that we need these people. We need these strong seekers of truth, justice and making the wrongs right. In my other documentary about Martin Adler it was different because he is gone and we are trying to piecing together remnants of his work which would otherwise have been forgotten. It was a testimony to his talent and ambition to transcend his life.
