Matt Brandon interviews Ami Vitale

Young Matt Brandon’s “Depth of Field” interviews are becoming something of a “must listen” for anyone interested in learning about the lives of professional travel photographers and photojournalists.

Matt’s library of interviews are growing steadily and now include Yours Truly, Bob Krist, Nevada Wier, David duChemin, Mario Mattei and, most recently, Ami Vitale.

The “Depth of Field” interviews are now hosted by Peachpit Press, which gives some indication of the high regard with which they are viewed. Matt has a relaxed and informal interviewing style so the interviews are easy to listen to. Importantly, he’s on the inside and understands the field within which his subjects work so the discussions are relevant and revealing.

I had the pleasure of meeting Ami Vitale a couple of months ago. We were in Delhi for the start of a Lumen Dei photo workshop and it was a treat to chat with someone who’s work I have long been an admirer of. One of my abiding memories from that trip was photographing at the Nizamuddin Dargah, a sufi shrine in Delhi, where Ami exhibited her characteristic patience and understanding by putting her camera away until she had spent time talking with the people visiting the shrine.

What can I say about Ami? She’s the real deal. She’s not a wannabe snapper, parachuting into locations, grabbing shots and fleeing at the earliest opportunity. I’d suggest that for people like Ami, the photography is secondary to the experience, it’s simply an effective means of communicating what she has seen. I’d bet that if we didn’t have cameras then Ami would be using some other means of communicating. And, being Ami, she would have invested time and energy into mastering the process, so as to be able to communicate her experiences as effectively and engagingly as possible. I’m not going to make any bones about it, Ami is a gentle, empathetic soul who’s work, approach, sensitivity and passion I admire greatly. Yes, I’m an unashamed fan.

One of the things I’m keen to put across to photography students is that if photography is a means of communicating an experience (and it surely is), then it is essential to have actually had the experience in the first place. That’s the approach that I try to take and, without sermonising too much about it, I have little patience for those who don’t subscribe to that ethic. I’ll talk more about that in the next few weeks and you’ll soon learn about a project that I’m involved in which aims to reinforce the positive aspects of travel photography and photojournalism.

There are too many “photographers” around who claim to have the inside track on photojournalism and seem willing to spout off to anyone who’ll listen to their preaching. All too often these self-proclaimed experts have little, or no, real experience, having never actually worked in the field. Of course, the real photojournalists are too busy telling real stories to pay heed to these loud-mouthed impostors but their ignorant rants appear on my radar from time to time and I’m afraid that’s when my indignation is piqued.

There’s a whole diatribe in there somewhere that I have been suppressing for too long but I intended this to be a positive post so I’ll stamp on it for a bit longer. Let’s make a scale to indicate the levels of integrity, morality and empathy exhibited by people who are working  - or claim to be working – as photographers in our field and see where they stand. And let’s start by putting Ami Vitale at the top end of that scale and the rest of us can have something to aspire to.

At which point I suggest that I button up and invite you to listen to somebody with more uplifting things to say.

Ami Vitale on Matt Brandon’s Depth of Field.

Posted on Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 12:19 am. Filed under: Blog, Opinion, Photographers RSS 2.0 feed.