Marat Kozhagaliev, Almaty, Kazakhstan, 2006
Almaty, Kazakhstan, 2006
Kamila Sulnatova, Almaty, Kazakhstan, 2006
There’s lots going on in this picture for me. Here’s this guy on a horse in the middle of the dump. And I’m thinking you have this Indian with one eye and a baseball cap in the middle of the garbage dump not far from where Cortez and his men rode in and conquered the Aztecs over 500 years ago. It’s like the classic photos of the Indian on a horse in a landscape, but all gone wrong. Mexico is a place where you still see the collision of the European and indigenous cultures. What was once this beautiful valley, with lakes in the middle, is now covered with cement and garbage. The Spaniards came to Mexico City looking for gold and now Indians leave their villages to go there looking for money.
‘El Pirata’, Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico, 2003
This is a dump lord. He was very proud that everything in his office had been found in the dump: the television (which worked), the painting of the Mexican revolutionary Zapata, the desk, the rug, the trophy, everything. The plastic wall covering was kept in place with bottle tops nailed to the wall.
‘Don Jose’, Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico, 2003
I was on a shoot taking photos of Congolese politicians. We were trying to photograph Joseph Kabila, who at 29 was the youngest president in the world. While we were waiting I photographed many of the senior government figures around him. The Congo was kind of scary. I didn’t feel comfortable there. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Africa, really liked it and never had a problem. But here, because they’d been in a civil war for so long, everyone was on edge. Everywhere there were guys with guns. But the portraits worked out well. I had brought my camera and lights and once I took them out they loved it. People often like to get photographed with a large format camera. It’s not something that happens every day.
Pierre Marini Bodho, Senate President, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2004
Theophile Mbemba Fundu, Minister of the Interior, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2004
The Lukole Refugee Camp is in Tanzania, on the border with Burundi and Rwanda. About 120,000 Hutu refugees who had fled the civil war in Burundi were living there in 2000, when I visited with photographers Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin and James Mollison. With the support of UNHCR, we were commissioned to do an issue for Colors – the first designed by Fernando Gutiérrez, after Oliviero Toscani left. It was unusual to be working as part of a group. I was working by then with a large-format 5x4 camera, so I used that, while the other photographers were all using smaller formats. Knowing what had happened in Rwanda, we wondered if we were photographing only victims of the genocide or some who were responsible for it. It was an ambiguous situation because everyone at the camp seemed like a victim. In the camp, we heard stories about some of the worst imaginable things people do to each other. On the first day there, I was at the food distribution centre when this man, in a dark blazer and a velour shirt, asked me to take his picture. His friends rolled up his sleeves, to show me that he had no hands. They had been cut off he said, by Burundian soldiers. His wish was that the men who had done it would serve him for the rest of his life. He was 19. He wanted this picture taken to show what had been done to him.
Bernard, Lukole Refugee Camp, Ngara, Tanzania, 2000
I saw these kids riding wooden bikes down the road. I asked one if I could take a picture of him with his bike. He agreed, but then a bigger kid came up and pushed him off, telling me ‘Take my picture. It’s my bike, I built it’.
Anicet, Lukole Refugee Camp, Tanzania, 2000
Lukole Refugee Camp, Ngara, Tanzania, 2000
Lukole Refugee Camp, Ngara, Tanzania, 2000
Mohammed Yasser and Kaherine Bennett, Birmingham, UK, 2002
Azucena Preciado Hernandez and Claudia Janet Prado Terrazas on the set of Amarte Es Mi Pecado (Loving You is My Sin), Televisa Studios, Mexico City, Mexico, 2003
Daniel Cortes, Telavisa Acting School, Mexico City, Mexico, 2004
Emergency Room, CHU de Rouen, Rouen, France, 2006
Emergency Room, CHU de Rouen, Rouen, France, 2006
Emergency Room, CHU de Rouen, Rouen, France, 2006
Alexandra Ansanelli, New York City Ballet, USA, 2005
Dance hall, Mexico City, Mexico, 2005
We did an issue for Colors about psychiatric hospitals around the world, and I went to this hospital in Cuba. Access was difficult, but on the first day, when I got in I set up a little studio in the corner in one of the big rooms where whoever wanted their picture taken could have their picture taken. Soon the patients formed a line. They ranged from being seemingly fine to definitely insane. I think some of them joined in because their friends were doing it, or just because there was a line. Others knew exactly what was going on. There’s something about madness that’s fascinating. It’s the things people say. The distance between truth and madness is very short. There are moments of incredible wisdom and clarity. And madness is part of life. A lot of times people don’t necessarily want to acknowledge it, or they want to put it out of view. But I’m interested. I think it’s the same reason why I’ve photographed death in my family. It might be hard to deal with but it exists and it’s not bad for people to look at. Everyone can identify a bit with someone who’s mad.
Yuriel Bring Scharlet, Rene Vallejo Psychiatric Hosp, Cuba, 2001
Ivan and Silvia Darkin, Rene Vallejo Psychiatric Hospital, Camaguey, Cuba, 2001
Rene Vallejo Psychiatric Hospital, Camaguey, Cuba, 2001
Rene Vallejo Psychiatric Hospital, Camaguey, Cuba, 2001
Balu Deshak, Madhaya Pradesh, India, 2002
Altiplano, Chile, 2001
Naples, Italy, 2002
Jenna Jameson, Scottsdale, USA, 2004
I went to Las Vegas for the Miss Rodeo USA contest. It was this week of events where at the end a winner is chosen to be kind of the representative for rodeo and cowboy culture, helping to sell agricultural products, things like that. The winner has to sign this agreement where she isn’t going to have a boyfriend for a year. What I liked about the contestants was that although they’re all clearly different people, they almost all had the same expression. They wore the same type of outfit, the same hair. I don’t try to make fun of people, although perhaps sometimes there’s a level of irony.
Selena Ulch, Miss Rodeo Nevada 2004, Las Vegas, USA, 2004
Kaydee Nelson, Miss Rodeo Utah 2004, Las Vegas, USA, 2004
Amy Jo Hubbard, Miss Rodeo Wyoming 2004, Las Vegas, USA, 2004
Liza Minelli, New York City, USA, 2002
Cheetah, Palm Springs, 2008
Brian Wilson, New York City, USA, 2002
This is James Brown, shot at his home in South Carolina, very near to the place where he was born – outside Augusta, Georgia. You drive out in the middle of the country and then you come up to these big gates that are like the Queen Mother’s gates in London, but you don’t have to open them, you just drive round them through an opening in the fence to the side. Then you’re on James Brown Boulevard, and you drive through the woods until you get to his house. The picture is in a room he’d just had built. There’s a sunken bar in the centre but he didn’t want any references to alcohol in the pictures.
James Brown, Aiken Country, South Carolina, USA, 2002
This is my step-grandfather. He raised my dad and his two sisters after their father left them. My dad always considered him as his father. He came from Mexico during the war when they were letting a lot of Mexicans come in to work in factories. For Years and years he kept his papers in a closet because he was afraid he’d get deported. His father was German-Mexican and his mother was a house cleaner. He is a product of that mix. He used to be an enthusiast for climbing mountains and exploring caves. This picture was taken after we buried his wife Lucy, my grandmother
Andrew Hernandez, Fresno, USA, 2005
This is my dad’s sister at her house in Fresno.
Eleanor DeOrona, Fresno, USA, 1999
This is my sister Phe. She’s a painter. She’s one of my closest siblings.
Phe Ruiz, San Francisco, USA, 2002
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