matter of research and time and sometimes I make huge trips across the world and end up getting there too late .
ANDREA : Given that you photograph the floods in different places , are people more receptive to you in some locations than others ? Let ’ s say like Americans versus Indians .
GIDEON : There ’ s not much of a difference between the lesser developed countries and more developed countries , the only thing being that in developed countries people are sometimes more suspicious . I tell people what I do and frequently they whip out their phones and they Google my project to decide if they want anything to do with it . When I ’ m part of a whole gathering of media , people don ’ t really respond well . They proceed to react to all the media being vultures .
ANDREA : When you go to a place where it is flooded , how do you choose your people ? How do you approach your people or find them if you don ’ t know anyone there ?
GIDEON : Completely random and a matter of circumstance . You find people , you speak to them and see if they are willing to be photographed . In some situations , I ’ ve found people outside of the area and we travel back to their home on a boat and other times there ’ s quite complicated research . In Nigeria , there was this camp for people outside of the town where the flooding was and I met people there and they took me back to their homes . When I was in Brazil , a lot of people went back to their homes after the flooding had gone down and they used the flood water to clean the mud and dirt off their homes . So a lot of people were in their homes and I could approach them there . I think people are generally , for the most part , open to doing this . When there ’ s water in your home there ’ s not much you can do , but as soon as the water is gone , there ’ s so much you have to be doing and don ’ t have a moment to spare . While the water is there , it ’ s kind of a suspended moment and it ’ s a space that I look into . People keep asking why I go back to these flooded areas , and for me there ’ s something about a flooded city or a flooded community that I find very compelling , something about the lights , the reflection , and the color , and a sense of things being reversed . There ’ s water where there ’ s not meant to be water , and it ’ s a very weird place . There ’ s a lot of solidarity amongst the people and they often tend to be very open .
ANDREA : I had read that you considered yourself at one time a “ photojournalist ” but then you wanted to start manipulating the photographs so you went from black and white to color . For activism , you thought color works better and I ’ m wondering why that is ?
GIDEON : I had an exhibition at a national gallery in Africa around 2001-2002 that I tied into the national campaign for AIDs treatments , and the black and white work was quite a strong exhibition of black and white photojournalism . It was painful for the people who were dealing with the diseases themselves . It ’ s distancing whereas color felt much more approachable and a much better tool for being able to change the situation there . I suppose it turned photography into a tool of visual activism at that point in time .
ANDREA : Do you ever think images from photojournalism can be considered art ? What ’ s the difference between being a photojournalist and being a fine art photographer in your opinion ?
GIDEON : That ’ s something people have been debating for a while . The analogy I draw is with the American embassy in Saigon . Do you remember those images of the helicopter leaving the rooftop of the embassy and everyone trying to climb up ? Every single photojournalist was trying to climb onto the helicopter . Photojournalism is such a mess and was the solution to the people who could never really find themselves as artists ’ and their career problems .
ANDREA : In what way ? Recently , and I ’ m sure you ’ re aware of this , brouhaha was made over someone who ’ s considered a really well known photojournalist and he changed the color of what somebody was wearing in the photograph .
GIDEON : Steve McCurry ?
ANDREA : Yes , everyone thought that was terrible .
GIDEON : I think the point is that if you ’ re putting images into the newspaper and into the media , they are , on some level , premised on the idea of a truthful reproduction of that situation . In that context , it ’ s not alright if you ’ re going to physically manipulate the colors or objects or physically remove something because once you ’ re starting what ’ s the limits ? I think photographers working in newspapers and media are very different from the art context and for me in situations my photography is very different in the art context than in the media context .
ANDREA : I was curious as to how you feel about this .
GIDEON : If I ’ m looking at a magazine or a newspaper and I see a photograph , I ’ d like to believe that it is an attempt at a truthful reproduction of that situation . Just as much as you ’ d want a written article to be a truthful reproduction . You need to state to people that a situation or photograph has been deliberately changed to make it more attractive and let them know in the media ’ s journalistic practice . There is a lot of debate about photography and art and a lot of photographers
22