I’d just like to say thank you for speaking with me, I’d like to start off with asking you how you got into photography?
Simon: oh well that’s um 25 years ago or something. I wanted to be a sociologist and I didn’t like the idea of making sociology research that wouldn’t be read by anybody. And then my tutor, her husband was a photographer and he showed me one or two photography books, where there is a lot of research with photography as well, the mix meant that it was a much more readable project and so I thought that bond with photography and words was really interesting. So I could put the two together in some way. Sometimes I still do it.
Who inspired you and why?
Simon: I know exactly which the books where, it was a book called “working for ford” by a sociologist called Huw Beynon with a photographer called Mick hedges. Where the writer and the photographer got jobs working with a ford factory and what is was like working in a ford factory and I’ve always thought this was brilliant. A book called "Blood, sweat and coal" by a photographer called John Sturrock it was about the miners’ strike in Britain during the 1980’s. And all of those where books that were a really heavy blend of words and picture like half and half. But it was more of picture paints a thousand words or something.
From looking at your work on your website, I’ve always found interesting the photographs you took on genocide and memory (for most of it a have no words), what was going through your mind experiencing those places knowing the history and what had gone on there?
Simon: it was very moving. Quite kind of humbling, certainly when I went to Rwanda was the first time I’d ever seen lots of dead bodies and it was very upsetting and very shocking. It’s more about really setting my self a task of photographing something that was absent. It wasn’t every day events so you had to tease that out of the place. And because it wasn’t obvious it made me work much harder and make better picture because you really had to compare it to something that happened 60 years ago. So I find it very exciting photographically because it was something I hadn’t really done before. In some ways if you set yourself an impossible task, it pushes you to produce your best work simply because you can’t just knock it off with the easy stuff. it was a very exciting time for me, four years of travelling round the world I had some fantastic adventures but at the same time emotionally it was very difficult because some of the stuff was truly, truly horrible. Some of the worst in Rwanda in particular was just awful.
I can imagine it can make an impression on you for the rest of your life seeing those sorts of things
Simon: yes very much and I was a bit of a kid and I just kind of wondered into this stuff, and the speed that you can get from normal domestic life into something really horrible is quite extraordinary. In an hour’s time you can get from here to really extreme horror cost you about £400. So that speed that you can get to it kind of knocked me over really.
What would you say your best piece of work is?
Simon: oh I’ve only ever shot three good pictures, or maybe four. I think really good ones. Those are the staircase at Auschwitz, the man with the balloons in Afghanistan , a from Iraq of some trees reaching up at the sky with a broken arch on the right hand side and a picture in Bosnia of a frozen lake which had red water on top of the lake. Those are the four that I’ve shoot that were really everything I was trying to do all kind of lined up, everything just fell into place.
Well done they came off really nicely
Simon: well I think four in a career is not bad is it? One every five years
How did you promote yourself to become so successful?
Simon: I’ve always thought I was rather bad a promotion. When you look at some photographers like Rankin, Who are all promotion who must have full time PR people working for them. I think the most important thing I gained is the books, because the books really travel. Quite slowly sometimes but I’m amazed that they always turn up in the weirdest places and then you get a phone call from somebody and say “oh I’ve just seen your book” and I’m like what has it just turned up. And then I got called up by national geographic magazine, like 4 years after the afghan book came out and they said “ oh we’ve just seen your book, it just landed on our desk would you like to work for us” somewhere who I would never of dreamed of approaching. I don’t know why it took 4 years for the book to get in the door but it did and it got me two assignments with them. The books have really paid the path way for me I think, and working through the galleries that I do and the print sales. That’s what really made a difference for me economically because that’s where I make most of my money these days. And I guess the third way is the assignments that I’ve done over the last 10 years for New York Times magazine. It’s given me a real like presents in America, people know me in America because of the New York Times and they take me seriously because it is a serious magazine. If you work for them you’re a proper photographer.
And you can be a proper photographer as far as advertising people are concerned, as far as galleries are concerned, and as far as print collectors are concerned its strange its very wide open. In the UK if you’re an advertising photographer, you will be an advertising photographer till the day you die and you will never be anything else. Its very pigeon holed in the UK and the US is very catholic.
What equipment do you use?
Simon: well I’ve just switched all my equipment around actually so everything that you’ve seen on my website is all shot with a wooden 5x4 cameras and film. I’ve been using that for 10 years since going to Afghanistan. But since 2001 I’ve worked with nothing but the wooden large format new camera. I’m just in the middle of a new piece of work which comes out in May, which will be a new book, a film and a show at Tate modern. And for this I’ve been using a digital back and I was in Afghanistan before Christmas working with the back on a colossal, very high resolution digital back which id had on the back of a wooden camera but when I go back to Afghanistan ill be putting it on a phase one digital back quite a small little 6x4x5 sort of camera like a hasselblad and that’s fairly new to me. Switching over the the digital way of doing things, which is very expensive its cost me so much to buy this digital camera a have to get all the money back by using it. But the quality of the pictures are very very good, but actually using the camera itself it’s not a lot of fun. Compared to the 5x4 that’s fun.
Well my next question was, are you working on any projects at the moment?
Simon: it’s off in Afghanistan and its following in the footsteps of a photographer called John Burk. who was working in Afghanistan in 1879. He went with the British on what became the second Anglo afghan war, as a war photographer. So it’s kind of following his footsteps and re-photographing the things that he photographed. It should be coming out in 2011. So yes I’m making a book, a film and there will also be a show at Tate modern. So I’m working very hard on that at the moment. It’s also a research project because I’m also trying to find out about the life of this guy, who isn’t very remembered at all. So it’s a research project and a re-photographic project
And the final question for anyone starting out in photography what advice would you share with them?
Simon: don’t run with scissors. Well the first thing is I can’t offer you the advice I took when I was starting out in photography because that was 25 years ago and the landscape was very different then. And now days you have a different economy and although people make picture different and where you want your picture to appear are different. When I started all I wanted to do is to work to have my pictures in observer magazine. Whereas now a days when you leave photography and if you go out working the places you want your pictures to appear are on like blogs it’s a very different landscape. I don’t know about advice but the one thing I regret is that I did spend the first 10 years of my career imitating other people, trying to be a photojournalist, trying to be a portrait photographer, trying to be Dom Mcullin. It took me a long long time before I started making picture that where actually my own pictures. Where I actually had something where I wanted to say something. So that’s the only bit of regret I have, I wish someone had told me earlier. The pictures you’re making now are someone else’s picture, so defiantly start making your own pictures and have the confidence to do that. When you take picture and think “they are alright but they look like so and sot’s picture” stop doing it straight away. That’s the best thing I could say really.
Well thank you very much for your time.
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