Tom Stoddart
Getty Images photographer Tom Stoddart is one of the world’s most respected photojournalists. His stories inform, inspire and move us as only photography can
Every now and then, a photographer shoots images that literally change our view of the world. Don McCullin and Philip Griffith-Jones did it in Vietnam, Eamonn McCabe and Chris Smith did it with sport, and Tom Stoddart has done it with all manner of subjects, from AIDS in Africa to war in Bosnia, publishing a stunning collection of his work in his book iWitness back in 2004.
By his own admission, Stoddart has taken pictures ‘that shouldn’t exist’ and has witnessed some of the most terrible suffering in the world today. But without his hard-hitting images we, back in the comfort of the UK, wouldn’t realise the true extent of what is going on thousands of miles away.
Shooting as he does in signature black & white, his approach is traditional and his results honest, upfront and at times brutal. Stoddart himself, on the other hand, is quiet and unassuming. Ferociously intelligent and politically astute. And as Pro’s editor Ian Farrell found out, fascinating to talk with.
IAN FARRELL: Were you always going to be a photojournalist?
Tom Stoddart: As a kid I didn’t have a background in photography. My Dad didn’t introduce me to a Box Brownie, or anything like that. I lived in a small Northumberland fishing village and the first time I ever had a connection with photography was when a Daily Mirror photographer, Dennis Hussey, visited to cover a story on the death of the fishing industry. There was this next generation of kids in the village that wouldn’t be going to sea. My Dad wasn’t a fisherman, but all my mates at school were and consequently were in his pictures. I remember all the families who’d taken part being sent 16x12in prints, and I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my life. I’d only ever seen snapshots before, so these really stuck in my mind.
When the time came to leave school I was 17. I didn’t know what to do, except for that I was quite good at English and I thought I might try my hand at being a reporter for the local paper; it seemed to be a glamorous job. I saw a job in the classified section for an apprentice photographer, and I thought that if I took that I could work my way into being a reporter.
I didn’t know anything about the media, but within three days I knew I’d never want to do anything else than be a photographer. That was 36 years ago. On the first day the senior photographer/picture editor told me that I’d have a champagne lifestyle on a beer salary. That’s how it’s been.
The pictures you’re most famous for, like those in iWitness, are very different to ‘usual press photography’.
When they look at iWitness, people forget my career has slowly evolved over the years. I was five years on that weekly paper and that experience is invaluable. My way, and the way that everyone did it back then, was to start at the bottom and keep going. If I’d have stopped on the Berwick Advertiser I’d have been very happy, but I always felt that I wanted to improve as a photographer and that I’d got something to say. In recent years, the camera has been a tool to let me do this. The work you are referring to [iWitness] is very much who I am: me railing against things that I don’t feel are right. In the years working in Fleet Street, on The Sunday Times or whatever, I was hemmed in to what the newspaper wanted. One of the reasons I freelanced, and have been doing so for the last 20 years, is that I wanted to tell my own stories and present the work in the way I wanted to. It’s still the same today: powerful black & white imagery is what I do. And that’s one of the reasons I’ve managed to stay ahead: after all if you tell a story and it’s not interesting, who’s going to buy it?
Do you ever feel intrusive photographing people in such a time of crisis?
What’s important is to believe that, when you are working in those kinds of situations, you have a right to be there. There are photographers who get involved and think of themselves as relief workers or policemen. When I’m there, I do my job – as a human being first and a photographer second. If there’s something going on that you have to stop then you will.
I once took a picture in Sudan of a man stealing a bag of maize from a starving kid. I got an awful lot of stick about that, and still do actually. It was published in an American magazine, and people wrote to the editor saying why didn’t the photographer get in there and stop this from happening. They asked me if I wanted to reply but I decided not to at the time.
Then a schoolteacher showed it to her class and asked them what they thought. They all wrote to the magazine and it’s then that you have to say ‘hang on – I’m the messenger. Don’t write to me, write to your congressman or your senator. Ask them why we’ve allowed this famine to recycle every five years in Sudan? There are bigger issues here.’
Is it important to you to ensure your pictures get used correctly?
I get a lot of requests for material to give to education projects, and I do think you have a responsibility to make sure these pictures are used in the right way; they’re not entertainment. I don’t want them being flashed all round the world. A few months ago the BNP were campaigning, and I had a call from someone to say did I know that one of my images was being used in a leaflet issued by them. They had blatantly stolen pictures from the AIDS project images on the web, and created a fear factor: ‘if we don’t take black nurses from Africa, this person could still be alive.’ It was racist spin, but this is one of the problems you have when your pictures are out there. If your shots are on some magazine’s website then people can lift them and you have to protect your name. There’s no way I want my picture being used by [the BNP], and more importantly I have to protect the people who are in my images, and who allowed me into their lives. All this sounds very high-minded and I don’t mean it to be. I just believe that serious photojournalism is a very valid tool.
There’s a lot of hypocrisy in photography and publishing though. Undoubtedly, we will all see pictures of the dead and dying in Baghdad on our television screens tonight, but you’ll never see the picture of Diana dying in her car. I’ve seen it – it exists and you can’t see it.
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