CameraPorn

Hello there fellow camera nymphomaniacs! Today we are very excited to bring you part one of a three part interview with Alex Smailes, a Trinidad-based professional photographer. Alex began his professional career as an underwater photographer, but quickly found an obsession with photojournalism…to be more specific, conflict photography. A small disclaimer before you continue, some of the stories to come are a bit graphic, a little scary and for the most part un-friggin-believable. In Part one, Alex tells of his beginnings, and early experiences as a young photographer trying to make a name for himself.

So grab a a cup of coffee, close your office door and get comfortable, this one’s a doozy…

Where did you get your start in photography?

I first studied photography at Filton college in Bristol, UK, which has a strong reputation for producing students who go on to do many things in either getting places at degree level or entering the work place. They have a yearly internship with Magnum agency in London, which has helped produce many of the UK’s leading documentary photographers such as Stephen Gill.

I took a year off in between courses and shot in the Bahamas, Trinidad and the Red Sea. This started my love of traveling and diving. I was finishing off my degree in Falmouth college based in a south coast fishing town. Due to its proximity to the sea, I was able to continue my new passion for underwater photography. I left early after getting a job in the Persian Gulf in 1996. I got it by going to tea with a filmmaker who had a few links in BBC Wildlife, also based in Bristol and I left him a few slides. They ended up in the hands of a marine biologist, which then ended up in the UAE with a film producer.

What was your first memorable photography assignment?

I chose to leave school and ended up spending 13 months with the Arabian Seas Expedition, a documentary film crew making an underwater documentary film on the Gulf environment. It was an incredible experience that was my further education. We had been given a flat by the oil companies that was filled with; cameramen, marine biologists, film editors, graphic designers and other young environmentally conscious minded people. There were also some really cool technicians from India who could fix anything from an underwater strobe to a huge meal from a bare cupboard. We all lived and worked together, so as you can imagine it was a bit like an East meets West ‘Real World’ show.

We had a couple of Jeeps and a 100ft crew boat. We would spend weeks at a time driving off the Arabian coast, in mangroves, off shore islands on Tora Tora in the crazy old oil field crew boat we converted into a dive boat. It was smelly, dodgy plumbing and bounced all over the place in a 2 ft swell, the crew were Filipino who ate anything and didn’t speak English. The captain was color blind and the engineer prone to seasickness. But we loved it and lived off shore diving up to 4-5 times a day on the reefs and obtained the first footage of under the regions oil platforms. We got shipwrecked at night once in a storm and as I was gathering life vests, our cameraman was stuffing our footage into dry bags.

We had many visitors from all over the world one was Justin, a (Hugh Grant look-a-like and sound-a-like) writer from UK. He popped in to crash for a few weeks and ended up staying for months. He taught me about investigative journalism and reporting. We did a few pieces, as he got a job at a local newspaper.

What was your first real investigative project?

We started a story about animal smuggling. One of the guys we were investigating was a Sudanese businessman who traded in illegal live animals from Africa. He used to sell the Sheiks lions, tigers and orangutans for their amusement. We posed as ‘fixers’ for the new rich Russians that sprung up in the mid 90s. Made business cards and talked the talk.

After 6 weeks of dealing with one of them he showed us a piece of paper with a black and white photograph of a container with a whole bunch of scientific letters next to it. He told us it was weapons grade uranium stolen from a mine in Zaire!

We faxed it to friends at Cambridge just to check what it was. They called right away and said, “Where did you find this? Don’t go anywhere near it! Your balls would drop off!” We told the editor of the newspaper we were working for a regional newspaper. He basically came back and said, “Leave that alone.” The actual owner of the newspaper was a member of the royal family! So we put it in an envelope and dropped it off to the American Embassy. That was the last we thought of it until I started getting phone calls in the middle of the night saying Mr. Smailes can you come and meet me at the Sheraton Hotel I hear you are causing a big problem. I never went.

That must have been an insane experience as a young photographer… Did anything come of it?

The week after Justin hopped on a plane and left the country. While I was waiting to leave, I had a job at the other end of the country so I was driving through the desert, and suddenly this black jeep was coming up behind me flashing lights and hugging my bumper. It was night so obviously I was scared to hell. That happened for about five minutes till they overtook me and sped on. When I came into a valley there was a police roadblock and a queue of cars, I thought it was a speed trap or something until I saw the same car. A guy waved an AK47 in the air, jumped out and pointed at me shouting. The police came around in my face and took my passport.

Nothing was said in English everything was in Arabic. When I would ask questions they would say nothing, there was just silence. We were just driving in the desert at night on a pitch-black road. My initial impression was that I would be killed and left in the desert. I didn’t drink and didn’t socialize so I guessed it was because of the story we were working on. They did a blood test looking for drugs and then I was taken back to this square building with short turrets, a police station. They made me sign a document in Arabic and told me if I signed it I would be let out.

So, they just let you out?

Well… that didn’t happen. They then walked me out the back, handcuffed, and put me in a cell. Behind this door there was this dark, dank corridor and there were just bodies everywhere sleeping on the floor. When my eyes adjusted to the dark I saw some had swollen eyes and were bruised, and one Filipino lying on a piece of cardboard on a wet, filthy floor was badly beaten and bleeding from his nose and mouth. I later tried to speak a little tagalog to him that I had learnt.

There were about 10 cells on the left. They opened one of those and inside was just the most bizarre sight. There were about 18 people stuffed into a little cell. I just greeted everyone in Arabic and an Indian guy who could speak English asked me to take off my shoes and wash my feet and they made room for me on the floor. There was a Russian guy in there he worked for AEROFLOT the Russian airline. He was there because he was in a taxi taking him to work and the taxi driver was drunk and they arrested both of them.

There was another Sudanese guy in there with big Malcolm X glasses, and guess what he was listening to… Bob Marley… on a little pink cassette player! So at least I knew we had good music.

A little good music can go a long way, especially Bob… How did the situation end?

So in the end, I only did a long long night there, had a cup of tea and they just let me go. They did it just to scare me I think. I got the hell out of that country fast. With experience in the region I ended up returning several times to work on book projects for a book producer in London.

Wow. It seems that from the beginning you were very driven to make a name for yourself… Where did you end up next?

“Village disputes are sometimes settled with a bow and arrow, their ancestors used to eat each other…”

I moved straight onto Papua New Guinea and undertook a personal assignment, which took 5 months to document the effects of deforestation in the unique Rainforests in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

One of the people on the previous film crew’s parents were part of the British High Commission. They told me about what was going on there. So after a few drunken nights with some Samoans in Australia, I was in Papua New Guinea: a wild, wild place. It is one of the most undeveloped but natural countries in the world, which also makes it one of the most bizarre. You have to fly everywhere, there are few roads, little communication, huge mountain ranges that cut off whole communities, only accessible by a chopper. Over 200 different languages, the worlds tallest tree, largest butterfly, a huge ostrich type bird that has prehistoric talons that can rip a man in half, and a huge amount of poisonous snakes. Rivers teamed with crocs and the seas with sharks, sea snakes and amazing reefs. I once read about a magical cave that opens and closes. Village disputes are sometimes settled with a bow and arrow, their ancestors used to eat each other and they revere the pig that grows to the size of small car and has terrifying tusks. Oh, and they recently found the world’s first poisonous bird! I was in heaven!

Sounds like an awesome place to shoot. What stories did you go after while in Papua New Guinea?

A lot of Asian logging companies were going to local tribal chiefs and bribing them for logging rights and concessions for some of the world’s prime rain forest and turning them into chopsticks. It was obviously a controversial and dangerous place to be poking about with a camera. So this is where I learnt to start being sneaky about getting pictures. I dressed up as a bird watcher in beige with a pair of binoculars and a bird book in case they searched me and they actually ended up giving me lifts into the logging camps!

You also must remember I was still discovering myself and my mission, I was 25-26 just breaking through as a photographer especially in the UK is incredibly difficult. So I knew early on my stories had to be different, have impact and have a human angle so audiences could empathize.

I didn’t really know what I was going to do with the work but knew a lot of people should know about this. Luck played a part again whilst riding down the Sepik river in known for the crocodile tribes, I met the South Pacific directors of Greenpeace and WWF who commissioned some work from me. That’s what got me involved in environmental missions.

The images were used for a book on Papua New Guinea by the International Institute of Environment and Development, Greenpeace and also Geographical magazine and WWF.

On the same trip I made it to a secret eco-war in Bougainville Island over a copper mine in the South Pacific that I had actually heard about while in Papua New Guinea.

Could you tell us a little more about your experiences on Bougainville Island?

“Local tribes picked up arms against one of the world’s largest copper mining companies who were strip mining the island ….”

Due to my knowledge of the local pidgin language, I accompanied a Channel Four film crew and was one of the only British photographers to cover the Bougainville war ever. The film Coconut Guerrillas was nominated for several international media awards and the images have featured in magazines worldwide.

Local tribes picked up arms against one of the world’s largest copper mining companies who were strip mining the island and destroying the local environment. When Papua New Guinea Army started to lose to the Rebels, the Australian government helped them with helicopters and gun boats and blockaded the island for 10 years with no imports, no fuel, no medicine or food. Noone was aloud to leave or get in. It became a almost socialistic society, like a Pacific Cuba. The thing is, they were all trained in Australia by the mine so they were engineers and electricians and highly skilled trades, they could do and make stuff.

How did the island residents learn to self-sustain?

They just set about starting a new lifestyle. They invented a coconut fuel, which they made to run 4×4s jeeps on which they had stolen from the mines. Then they made their own hydro-generators out of car engines and tool workshops.

To get in and out of the island you had to sneak in on a speedboat and hope you don’t get spotted. We got half way and started sinking with faulty engines packing up. We had to dump our fuel and other supplies; it was getting to the pretty scary stage. It was dark and cold, and after ten hours lost at sea with the boat barely afloat, we spotted a fire on the horizon and headed for it. That single moment saved our lives; I had read enough about tragedies at sea to know how the next few hours would have gone.

But we ended straight into an Army base we didn’t want to be in. At least it was land. We were dehydrated, exhausted and just got caught. They were drunk with big guns which isn’t a good combination and questioned us, but a local who was a undercover rebel sympathizer fed us and put us up for the night. We escaped the next morning hidden under fishing nets as we had to pass the base again. But in the end we were some of the only foreigners ever to reach the island in 10 years.

How was the story received back in London?

The story did really well with the men’s magazines, alternative press and I did an exhibition that generated coverage in the Independent on Sunday - my first big press spread.

It seems you were well on your way to breaking into photography… Where did the success with this early work take you?

“Greenpeace flew me to Amsterdam to meet their photo-editor and he commissioned new work for me…”

“They told me to ‘Fuck off before they broke my knee caps,’ an old Irish favorite…”

When I went back to the UK, I was showing my work around London newspapers and magazines. I sold a lot of that early work, but two major things happened. The first one was; I got picked up by Sygma (now Corbis) a famous French news agency, and secondly Greenpeace flew me to Amsterdam to meet their photo-editor and he commissioned new work for me.

I started looking at huge industries and the beginnings of globalization and its effects on people worldwide. Like the mining, we needed these elements to produce products we buy. I was really interested at looking at the root of subjects. So in Venezuela I looked at the gold and diamond mines on the Brazil and Colombian border and how it’s linked with the civil and drug war.

Did these investigative projects lead to more work?

Yes, after slightly impressing my agency, my first real hard news assignment was in Belfast, which got me in interested in social conflict. I got some decent stuff, although I got my film taken off me by three masked men whist they were throwing petrol bombs at the British Army, they told me to " fuck off before they broke my knee caps," an old Irish favorite. The other photographers laughed at me when I told them when I got back to London.

In 1998 I undertook an assignment for International Rescue Committee of New York and CARE International in Bosnia, and stayed to cover the unfolding war in Kosovo in 1998 and early 1999.

Alright folks, that’s gonna just about do it for Part 1, but keep an eye out tomorrow for Part II, where we discuss Alex’s experiences in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Haiti and more. Also, Alex tells us a little bit about how he was able to cope with high-stress situations as a young photographer.

**Click Here to Continue with Part II