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straight after hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. today, i'vejourneyed to the south coast of england to meet one of the great women pioneers of photo journalism, marilyn stafford. she was born in the united states, but she moved to paris where she became the protege of the brilliant cartier—bresson. and like him, she loved to capture intimate portraits of ordinary people. she's worked in war zones and on fashion catwalks. and now, at 93, her work is being admired by a new generation. so, what gives her pictures their power?

marilyn stafford, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. let's start way back. you trained as an actress, you spent a while as a nightclub singer, and yet you really found your creative voice in photography. what was it about photography that really reached into your soul? i have been called an accidental photographer, because i really did not set out to do the photography at all. the photography was something that was just there. when i was a child, everybody had a little box brownie, every family had a little box brownie. and so, the photography was just part of life, it wasn't anything, it wasn't "photography". it was just you had a camera and you took pictures. would you say you were a natural observer, sometimes

a little bit removed and looking in on things? i think probably, yes. i think probably to explain it to you, i remember taking my first photograph, and why i took my first photograph. it was on a family picnic and we were by a stream and the stream was of very, very clear water running over pebbles. it wasn't very deep. and i was standing in it, in this stream and feeling emotional watching the water over the stones. and ijust had this urge — i want to have this remembered, the feeling remembered. which is very interesting, because it leads immediately to a thought about your association in paris. once you'd given up

on the acting and you'd moved to paris and were doing some singing, but you were also beginning to use your camera, you got to meet one of the greatest 20th—century photographers, henri cartier—bresson. and his thing was about capturing that decisive moment, being ready and understanding the importance of the moment. and that seems to have resonated with you. that resonated with me in relation, again, to the feeling, because it was what was said in the photograph was what i wanted to bring out. as a child, i was open to life magazine with photography, and also, i went to the cinema and there were newsreels. i saw what was going around and i suppose there was a churning of that same emotion of i want

to capture something and say something. but i was very moved by what was happening around me. and that is why i really became interested in documentary photography rather than just taking the water rolling over the stones. so, it was a desire, in a sense, to tell stories... absolutely. ..and the stories of people. absolutely. and i think that i'm really a storyteller at heart, and i want to tell stories, but i want the stories to mean something, and i also want the stories to produce an effect at the end. but if we are talking now about those early years of photography, the late �*40s, early 1950s, you were a woman in a man's world.

and i'm thinking of some of your very well—known pictures in one of the inner slums of paris where you spent days and days filming particularly street children. you must have been quite peculiar to the local people. this american woman with a camera constantly taking pictures. well, it's interesting that you should say that because when i went out photographing with cartier—bresson, that's exactly what happened. he was very tall, he wore a hat and his little leica was up here. i was very small, and i was a woman and i was carrying a rolleiflex, which was a big camera, and this was postwar france. you didn't walk around and see many people, let alone a woman taking photographs.

so, in a funny kind of way, i was a decoy for him because i would be there with my big camera and he was able to tower above me and nobody would notice him. what do you think cartier—bresson taught you? because he loved your work, he was something of a mentor to you. absolutely. what was it, do you think, that he saw in you? i couldn't tell you. i really don't know what was going on in his mind. i only know that he never taught directly in the sense that when i would show him a photograph, he would say, "now, this is what you have to do," and all that sort of thing. he never behaved like that. he would make gentle suggestions — "if you framed it this way, it would have that kind of a sense coming out, but leaving it this way, it doesn't bring out that feeling."

and one of the things i learnt from him was if you're going out in the street, especially, be unobtrusive. and this lasted for the whole of my life. and you, it seems, really liked being outside, and in particular, in sort of spontaneous moments with ordinary people, i think you made a conscious decision to avoid studio work as much as possible. yes, i think you could say that from one point of view, that was because of the technology, and i'm not a technical person. and ijust hated the whole business of cables on the floor and lights, and i prefer natural light as it comes, and the documentary approach rather than the studio setup.

it seems to me you wanted to find raw subject matter. i mean, for example, you went off to north africa, to tunisia during the terrible french war to try and prevent algerian independence. the french were bombing villages, you went off to tunisia where refugees were pouring over the border, having been forced from their homes, and some of your pictures, again, curved a stir. i think one was on the front page of the observer newspaper at the time. it was my first front page. yeah. so, you were close to that world of war photography for a time, even if you didn't go right into it. but i wasn't interested in the war. i was interested in the refugees. you know, post—world war ii, there were a lot of what they called at the time "misplaced people," but before

that, there were also people who were misplaced, who are migrants. i was very moved, again, when i was younger, by the photographs of dorothea lange who filmed or photographed the migrant workers who had to move because of the dust bowl and the winds... and the great depression. as a child, people would come to the door, selling little rags and things. they were the jewish refugees from the oncoming holocaust. i was made aware of all of these people who were in danger, who needed their story told, and i wanted to tell the story of the people in algeria who were refugees and who had been totally uplifted from their homes.

nobody was talking about the refugees. and that focus on people in the gravest of circumstances who had suffered so much, ijust wonder what impact that had upon you? i'm very mindful — not so long ago, i interviewed don mccullin, the great british war and conflict photographer, and he says, "sometimes on assignments in war zones, sometimes i felt like i was carrying — not carrying the negative so much as pieces of human flesh back home with me. it was as if i was carrying the suffering of the people i had photographed." did that kind of intense, deep, emotional response come for you too? of course. it can't but not do so. when you see people in terrible situations, you want to do something, and maybe through the photography, one can do something. i believe it can do something. you think photographs can change things? possibly not as we think

of change as this becomes that immediately, but i think it can bring thoughts to people and, certainly, there are very iconic photographs, which you will remember, which make people think. you clearly had that campaigning spirit as a photojournalist. idid, yes. and yet, i'm also mindful of your personal life, because even when you were covering the algerian war and the refugees, you were heavily pregnant. yes. and it is often different for women because they do have to bear children if they choose to have children, and that of course has a huge impact on their lives. and we've reflected already on the degree to which photography was a man's world. do you, when you look at the arc of your career, think that in the end, some of the choices you made, for example, later in your career, specialising a lot in fashion

rather than travelling quite so much to difficult places, was it partly driven by being a mother, by choices you had to make in your personal life? you know, when i came to england in the mid—60s, there were probably about ten, 12 women photographers on fleet street. of those, most of them were doing feature—type photography, not news, and the door was pretty much closed against women. i came here, and i had separated from my husband by then, i had a small child. i had to earn a living. the only open door was fashion, because fashion, homes, decoration was women's area. and so i had to go there, and i was able to get work

in the fashion area. but, i mean, to be blunt about it, did men who, by and large, ran the newspapers back then and ran the picture desks and the newsdesks, did they actively at times work against the interests of women, actually belittle women, seek to keep women out? there were some men who were marvellous and really helped me, and i'm very grateful to them because as they were the ones in power, so to speak, they helped open the door. there were the others who were exactly like you say. i remember going to a very big film company and asking for work as a stills photographer, and this smug gentleman said,

"i havejust the rightjob for you," and he said, "we have a scene that's going to need you to get out on the wing of an aeroplane in the sky and shoot from there." and ijust looked at him and said, "i'm sorry, i don't do that sort of thing." and he said, "well, there you are, you can't hire women, they won't do these types of things." well, i am sure that there are some men who would not have wanted that sort of thing either. one thing you did do, and it actually began very early, even before you left the united states, was from time to time, you got the opportunity to film in sort of stills portrait terms, some of the iconic people of the 20th century, starting i suppose with albert einstein. you got the most incredible opportunity to go to his home and film him, photograph him. later, it was indira gandhi and a host of other famous names, edith piaf at one point in paris. when you were faced with that,

with the challenge of capturing something about these world—famous people, how did you go about it? i suppose with naivete. ijust felt i could do it. and i'm not really a thinker, a planner, oranything. i just go with my feeling. and the albert einstein thing was, first of all, he was so gentle and kind. he made us very welcome. i went there with these documentary film—makers who wanted him to speak out against the atom bomb. and he did — in the film. but before we were filming, they were filming, it was all on 16mm film at the time, there was the producer

and the director, and while the lights were being set up the director was talking to him. and he looked at the director and he said, "i have a question for you. can you please explain to me about how many feet per second per second the film goes through the camera?" and the director explained all of this. i couldn't explain it to you. and einstein listened there like a little boy. and after all of this had clarified he said, "thank you very much. i understand now." and given your access to these remarkable people and photographs that live long in the memory and continue to be looked at today, do you, going back to this point about photography in your era being, by and large, a man's world, a man's profession, do you feel that you never quite got the recognition that your

male peers got? no, not really. i was doing my work and ijust did it. i didn't think in terms of recognition at all. you worked a lot in fashion, as you've described it, you weren't so much a catwalk photographer, but you did a lot of glamour and fashion. i mean, if i look at — and i have looked at a lot of your fashion photography. you did do it in a particular way, which was quite different from a lot of others working in the field at the time. for example, you often included ordinary people in yourfashion shots. you'd have this beautiful woman were beautiful clothes, but then in the corner of the picture or to one side there would be just a passer—by or a kid who happened to be watching. and you let them be in the picture. yes. well, partly that was because, in the early days, in the 1950s, when i was doing

fashion, it was the early time of ready to wear. i was also having my love affair with the streets of paris. and it pleased me to take these clothes, which would be worn by women like me, in places where i would be walking about. and, of course, in some of these places, were the local kids. and, of course, any place you go with a camera you're going to have masses of kids trailing behind you. and so i figured get them in the act as well. and they loved it. and they had a wonderful time. and i had a wonderful time. the models had a wonderful time. and i think that the photographs had a littlejoie de vivre — you know, they weren't just fashion photographs. they were fun photographs. when you look today at the celebrities with their stylists and their image controllers and everything is so orchestrated, could you be

a photographer in that world today under that sort of control? i suppose if i had to earn my living i would do it — one does do certain things because of necessity. and some of the photographs that i did were out of necessity. i had to survive. i had a child. and i set up, at a given moment, a small agency with another photographer to cover the fashions in paris, milan, rome, new york, london, four or five times a year. and i was earning my living with this kind of photography. and it allowed me to work very intensely four times a year and have enough money to go and do the kind of photographs that i wanted to do —

for instance seven or eight trips to india — and to pay the bills. which brings us to the present day and your determination to promote women in the sort of campaigning documentary journalism that you've talked about, and which obviously is your first love in your own career. you've got a prize now in your name set up by the fotodocument group, which seeks out the best woman documentary photographer. what do you think defines the best of this campaigning documentary photography that you're talking about — whether it be social,

economic, environmental — what is it, do you think, that defines it? it's really the way that the photograph is taken to tell a story. it's all telling stories. and the winners of the two years that this award has been going are telling stories that people rarely hear about. and they are also showing, in some way, either a way that this problem that they are showing can be solved or helped, or what is being done or trying to be done. the three winners of this year's award, one is a turkish woman who is revealing the story of young syrian refugees in turkey.

women who are married off, very often probably sold by their families to survive, and then after they've been used up a bit, they're cast off, they're divorced. another of the winners is writing about female genital mutilation in europe. she's presently in france doing this story. another woman is showing the plight of the villagers in wales where there have been mines that have been closed. how the people are pulling themselves up and the ravages of the closures of the mines, but how the people are helping themselves and what is

being done to help them. in other words, it's a negative situation that is showing what could be done or what is being done — if only people would get in there and do it. it sounds to me like you believe in the power of the picture, the power of photography, as much today as you did when you started out right after world war ii. i think so, yes. very much. in one image that can be a very big emotional thrust that makes people think, feel, and, i hope, do something about that feeling. marilyn stafford, it has been a pleasure talking to you. thank you for being on hardtalk. thank you very much.

hello then. week two of january 2023 has been another wet one and in fact we are starting to see the signs of that out to the west. there's been some localised flooding. this was carmarthenshire thursday afternoon and through north—west england and parts of wales, some areas have already exceeded their monthly average rainfall totals and we're not even halfway through the month yet. now thursday's low pressure continues to pull away. this little ridge of high pressure builds and quiet thing down for friday until the end of the day. more wet weather waiting in the wings. so we'll start off with a northerly wind driving in some showers on exposed coasts here. a narrow band of showery rain

into northern ireland, south—west scotland, north—west england. but elsewhere we will still see blustery winds, but some sunny spells coming through and pleasant enough, mostly dry, with temperatures peaking between six and 11 degrees. but as we move out of friday into the early hours of saturday morning, we'll start to see more wet weather. and unfortunately, the heaviest of the rain is likely to push across those areas that have already exceeded the monthly rainfall totals. so that mightjust exacerbate any potential flooding so that a frontal system is going to move away and then a trail of showers tucks in behind. so it's a wet start for england, wales, for northern ireland, southern scotland. the rain pushes off to the north, say a trail of showers packs in along north and west facing coasts. but there will be some sunny spells into the afternoon. still mild in the southeast with 12 degrees, but somewhat cooler conditions starting to kick in now across the far north. and that is going to be the tone into the third week of january.

so from sunday onwards, noticeably colder. we will start to see some frost and we haven't seen those so far this year. and yes, any precipitation may well turn wintry because we're going to see that northerly flow. and with any little weather fronts moving into that cold air, some of those showers could turn wintry even at lower levels. so you need to keep abreast of the forecast over the next few days. on sunday, we'll see some showers, rain, sleet and snow along north and west facing coasts and noticeably colder afternoon just a couple of degrees above freezing in scotland, highs of seven degrees further south. cooler with further wintry showers to come monday into tuesday. take care.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm karishma vaswani. the headlines: president biden faces tough questions from reporters, after a second set of classified records are found, this time in his garage. classified materials next to your corvette? what were you thinking? mi; your corvette? what were you thinkin: ? y ., , your corvette? what were you thinkin: ? g ., , ., thinking? my corvette is in a locked garage, _ thinking? my corvette is in a locked garage, all _ thinking? my corvette is in a locked garage, all right? - thinking? my corvette is in a locked garage, all right? it'sj locked garage, all right? it's not like _ locked garage, all right? it's not like they were sitting on the street. as more storms are forecast to hit california, the human cost of the floods become apparent. it's hard to process. ukraine says heavy fighting

with russian forces is continuing in the eastern town of soledar, with a senior