The Digital Camera Interview
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The Digital Camera Interview Photojournalist Pablo Bartholomew A chronicler of the Bhopal tragedy and winner of World Press Photo awards, Pablo Bartholomew’s career is anything but conventional – as Geoff Harris discovers Call it pride, stubbornness or sheer bloody “What I remember most from those holidays mindedness, but the best photographers was my father making contact sheets from the have a bolshy integrity, an independence of rolls of film that he’d sent to the shop to be spirit, that makes their work so memorable processed,” recalls Pablo. “He would do it by and transcendent. A great example of this is gas light in the house that we’d rented for the Pablo Bartholomew, a leading photojournalist summer. There was no electricity, which is why and winner of the World Press Photo of the we used lamps in the evenings. I watched as Year award. His shots of the child victims of the blank paper was put into the developing the Bhopal disaster, the Kashmir conflict or tray and an image would gradually appear. Profile Mother Teresa’s funeral, stay with you forever, There was a kind of mystery in seeing the ● Born in India, Pablo’s and remain benchmarks of excellence in an images that had been taken a few days photographic career age of image saturation. before, of landscapes or of the family, forming began in his teens. Pablo’s a true maverick, and fascinating to on paper as if by magic. I suppose the magic ● Since becoming a talk to for several reasons – as well has having of photography was embedded from there.” photojournalist in 1983, lots to say about the digital versus film his work has appeared debate, he’s someone who honed his craft in Heat and dust in major news the film industry, working with directors from After being kicked out of school at 15, Pablo publications, including both Hollywood and Bollywood. At the same worked as a photographic processor, before Time, Newsweek, time, he’s a successful developer of photo working within the UN and the Red Cross in his Paris Match and management and delivery software, despite native India. His rigorous dedication to The Guardian. his ambivalence towards digital photography. developing his photographic skills bore fruit ● He won his first Talking to Pablo reveals nostalgia for the when, at the tender age of 19, he won his first World Press Photo sensuousness of film, common to World Press Photo accolade – Best Picture award at 19; nine years photographers of his age (he’s 47). As a young Story – for a series of photographs about later he won the Picture boy, he’d go on family holidays into the morphine addicts in India. “It was the end of of the Year award. mountains of northern India with his parents: the hippie movement and the rise of the ● Pablo trained as a stills photographer on movies, working Pablo on learning his art A children’s choir in alongside leading film Kohima, Nagaland in the directors/producers, “If you don’t go through school or any kind of formal including Merchant/ North East of India, Ivory and Richard photographic education, the only way that you can learn proper sings in a playground Attenborough. after having a break for lighting and, as it were, pay your dues, is on the job” Bartholomew / Netphotograph.com Pablo a mango drink 114 NovemberFebruary 2006 2005 November 2005 Digital Camera 115 Reader Photos The Digital Camera Interview Mother Teresa The morning after Mother Teresa died in Calcutta, her body was at her offi cial residence called Mother House. Nuns of the Missionaries of Charity, surrounded her body for a last farewell before the body was put up for public display. Pablo Bartholomew / Netphotograph.com Pablo was a great opportunity to learn and further Interview my career,” he explains. Indeed, Pablo believes passionately that working alongside In the bag Pablo great movie directors and cinematographers On a digital job, Pablo packs a selection of while on location in India transformed his Canon SLRs; three zoom lenses (17-35mm, Bartholomew photography, particularly his lighting 28-70mm and 70-200mm); a camera- technique. He cites the infl uence of Sven mounted fl ash unit; 1GB CompactFlash junkie movement. But although I was thrilled Nykvist, who shot all of Ingmar Bergman’s cards; a laptop with every sort of connector; a phone wire; to win an award, it didn’t do much for my fi lms and, of course, Satyajit Ray: “he wrote, Ethernet, USB and career. I was living in India, and although being art directed, composed his music and was the Firewire cables; a a press photographer was developing, at that operating cameraman on his fi lms. It was a small, light tripod; and time it didn’t mean too much”. So Pablo great learning process.” a good canvas camera moved to Bombay and started working on Pablo then began working on commercial bag with padding. Bollywood fi lm sets. projects, but the same drive for independence A spell with famous Indian fi lm director that ignited his career soon made him tire of Satyajit Ray in Calcutta led to an introduction the demands of a brief. “I got fed up, I was to Richard Attenborough, and Pablo became impatient and the art directors maddened me. Needless to say, Bartholomew’s the stills photographer on his 1981 production I was angry all the time.” Not for the fi rst time independence was undiminished: “During that of ‘Gandhi’ and later on Merchant Ivory’s ‘Heat in his life, he decided that enough was time I followed all the big Indian stories but, and Dust’. “If you don’t go through school or enough. “After ‘Gandhi’ I was able to gather much to my agency’s horror and anger, I’d any kind of formal photographic education, the enough money and go to Paris and New York take off for three or four months and go to a only way that you can learn proper lighting and I fi nally found an agency,” he recalls. The very remote area, where they couldn’t reach and, as it were, pay your dues, is on the job. agency was the Gamma Liaison Network, me, and work.” Working on fi lms, with renowned directors, where he worked for almost 20 years. As time went by, various agencies were being bought up and subsumed into super agencies and, as Pablo describes it, “We Pablo on working for picture agencies could see the digital era galloping at us. I I hitched a ride from Chittagong decided that if I was going to be with a big airport in Bangladesh with a minister “I followed all the big Indian stories but, much to agency and I was going to be far more who was surveying the area after the independent, I was going to have to develop 1991 cyclone. The pilot went as low my agency’s horror and anger, I’d take off for three an internet delivery system. Having built mine, as possible to this horrifi c scene, or four months and go to a very remote area” I was then able to offer it as a system to other which looked straight out of hell. photojournalists who had been in the Pablo Bartholomew / Netphotograph.com Pablo business for 20 to 25 years and were going 116 NovemberFebruary 2006 2005 NovemberFebruary 20052006 Digital Camera 117 The Digital Camera Interview The Digital Camera Interview Chittagong, Bangladesh Manganyar After the 1991 cyclone that hit the Chittagong area Fine musicians and singers, who come mainly from the of Bangladesh, there was tremendous sadness and Jaisalmer and Barmer districts of India. ‘Manganyar’ a lot of crying by women who had lost their homes means ‘one who begs’, and indicates the low status of and families. these superb artists. Also mostly converted to Islam at some time, they do still continue to sing for their Hindu patrons the Rajputs and Megwals, and like the Langas, are the guardians of the oral tradition of the family they belong to. Interview Pablo Bartholomew / Netphotograph.com Pablo Bartholomew / Netphotograph.com Pablo Bartholomew independent or not sure what to do. Initially, curse,” he says. “So I think I’m of the old 20 years and had thousands of images but commissions. Of his return to commercial the rawness of youth and the freshness it put us on a par with the digital age in terms school. Whenever young photographers ask couldn’t or didn’t want to work with the newly work, he says, “I often wonder ‘what am I of the eye and not knowing. When you become of a delivery system. Now, more and more of me about photography and how they can learn cobbled agencies, were going to be left out in doing here?’ But I’ll do it because it more sophisticated in your looking you tend Inspired? us are shooting with digital.” more, then I say that there’s no better way the cold. It was for these reasons that to have supplements my income and allows me to do to want to be more controlled and I think that Pablo’s top 5 tips than to be able to shoot print and process in a presence on the internet, your work needs my own longer term projects.” sometimes, control can be a bad thing.” A blessing and a curse black and white. The gamut of it allows you to be seen, searched and delivered.” But doesn’t the celebrated photographer When it comes to advising younger ● Avoid backlight as cheaper digital For Pablo, the biggest advantage of digital is understand each of the processes and how Pablo’s company is also a technology of the Bhopal tragedy have mixed feelings photographers, Pablo also points out the cameras still don’t handle this well.