20.05.10
Photojournalist Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert Speaks Out
Glaswegian photojournalist Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert started out in photography by using his redundancy money to travel to Romania to shoot his first project. Now he’s based in Japan. Grant Scott caught up with him to find out about his career, clients and approach to personal projects.
We first met back in the mid nineties through a shared black and white printer in Glasgow. At the time, your ambition was to join Magnum. What happened with that?
Some ambitions you achieve and some you don’t! The important thing is to have them and to try, but sometimes you realise that what you wished to achieve wasn’t ultimately that important. In my early days, when I was starting out, I looked at the work that photographers from Magnum and other reputable agencies were producing, a lot of which was inspirational, and it was educational to read their stories, meet the photographers and to learn from them. But, ultimately, you have to find your own voice within your photography, find your own projects, your own way of working, and ways to disseminate your work, to get it published, to get it seen.
What route did you take to become a photojournalist?
I had studied at what was then Glasgow College of Building and Printing for three years, before a 10-month stint as an assistant photographer for an industrial company. Having been made redundant from that job, I used the severance pay to travel to Eastern Europe in early 1990. It was a tumultuous period just after the fall of Communism. I went to Romania because, at the time, it was in the news on a daily basis. A wealth of stories were coming out of the region and I wanted to experience the area for myself. That trip lasted about three months and my work from it was published in a few places, but I was still learning. When I came back, I showed my Romanian work to picture editors at The Guardian, The Independent etc, and immediately I started to pick up assignments from them. Shortly after that, a portfolio of my Romanian work won the inaugural Sunday Times/Ian Parry Memorial Award, and that helped to raise my profile, which in turn helped me to get more assignments and to find outlets for stories I’d shot.
Starting out must have been difficult. How did you finance your early projects?
I self-financed projects on many occasions. I would shoot them and then sell them to magazines that I was working for regularly. In time, with a bit of a track record, it became easier to persuade editors to guarantee money or a few days’ assignment based on a proposed idea, and then to go shoot it. If you’re producing self-initiated work, getting it published and bringing ideas to picture editors, then assignments will follow. I’m lucky that I’ve only ever financed my photography via my photography; I’ve never had to hold other part-time jobs to finance my work.
Initially, you worked in Europe. When did you first go out to the Far East and why?
I first came out to Japan, where I now live, about six years ago. I’d met someone on an assignment who I wished to spend more time with and I moved to Japan to be with her. My job was more easily transferable than hers.
Has working there changed your approach to your photography?
In many ways, the transition from being a Scottish-based photographer to being Tokyo based was seamless. I notified all of my clients that I’d be working from Tokyo instead of Glasgow, and for the majority of them, this was something positive. Many of my editorial clients could make more use of me in Japan, or the Asian region, than in Scotland. But in some small ways, yes, my photography changed a little. I was unable to speak Japanese and found myself shooting a lot more in the streets – where I didn’t really need to converse with people – instead of shooting stories where the need for communication was paramount. While I’d never done street photography before, I discovered how hard it was, and how interesting. As I walked the streets daily, exploring and photographing, I discovered and learned about the city and society which had become my new home.
You’re based in Japan full time now. How does that work for you?
It works well for me. As a photographer, I’m someone interested in my surroundings and life in general. It is great to be somewhere new, to get access to new situations and cover stories that are new to me, and to travel to new places, learning new things. And Japan is also a good base from which to explore the Asia Pacific region, both on assignment and on self-initiated work.
And how has your work developed?
In the nineties I worked a lot in black and white, and managed to get the stories published. Now, that would be nigh on impossible. With the advent of the digital era, magazines and newspapers have come to expect the images relayed to them instantaneously, and therefore shooting in digital has become the norm. For me, this brought me into shooting more and more colour, and in this respect, my few years here in Japan have seen me embrace colour photography more and shoot black and white less. Other than that, though, I think my work has developed as it would have anywhere else. Other than shooting more street photography from time to time, I think the location hasn’t influenced it so much.
As a Western photographer, are you seen as a rarity, and does it help with getting commissioned by Western clients?
There aren’t so many Western photographers here working in the editorial field. There’s a small group, most of whom are friends now. Certainly, most of the time, Western editorial clients do seem to prefer to work with a Western photographer, so assignments do come in. And over time I’ve also developed a Japanese client list.
Japan is notorious for being an expensive place to live. Is this reflected in the fees?
These days, Japan is no more an expensive place to live than a UK city. For some things it is more expensive; others, less. Occasionally, I can convince a client that they have to pay a premium as “it is Tokyo”, but in general, the fees are pretty much the same as elsewhere. But I try to price things more on the fact that they are hiring me, for my skills and images, as opposed to hiring a Tokyo-based photographer. Though occasionally clients do get a shock at the expenses bill, for the Bullet train travel, for example.
Do you get much time for personal projects?
It is imperative to be working on personal projects and I try to always have things on the go. I enjoy assignments and, luckily, I get them, but it is always important to shoot for yourself, to work on projects large and small. Invariably, this is the work that means the most to you, and hopefully to others, and which will perhaps stand the test of time.
What do you see as the future for your genre?
There is no debating the fact that, for freelancers such as myself, it is becoming harder and harder to work in this industry. Magazines and newspapers the world over are struggling with tighter budgets due to falling advertising revenues, and this is having an effect on how much photography is commissioned and fees paid for completed stories. A worry is that stories that need to be told might not be covered in future because there is no money to commission the photographer, or the photographer cannot afford to spend long periods on a story using his own money, only to then not be able to sell the work.But hopefully there will always be the committed photographers, the ones who always find a way to get a story shot, and always find a way to get it seen. We have to think in new ways now, work with new business models, and new sources for the financing of work, or sponsorship. And likewise with getting the photographs seen.Magazines and newspapers may be closing down, but there are other ways to show the photography we produce. We have to look for new openings, and as ever, tie all the threads together and somehow make it work.
www.jeremysuttonhibbert.com
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