tv Charlie Rose PBS August 31, 2015 12:00pm-1:01pm PDT
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>> rose: welcome to the program t is the end of summer, a time when we look back at some of the best moments on this program. tonight photography. an encore presentation of my conversations with three interesting photographers, sally mann, russell james and lynsey addario. >> you take the picture and you are just so fervently pray that you got the tenth of a second that you thought you got. and so many times you don'tment you get the either side of the one that hoped you got. so really it's when you see the negative that the moment happens. and there's nothing like that moment. i said it other times, it's almost sexual in its intensity. you're just ecstatic. >> when i'm photographing a personal be it an aboriginal elder, a member of the seminole tribe of florida, there is a beauty about the
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photograph. an when you're on the other side. >> it is, it is the strangest thing but it's so powerful and engaging, i get lost in that moment. >> i'm always very leary of photographing the same scene that the audience,ed reader has seen so many times before. because i dnted want to be in a situation, take photos, send them home and have the viewer say god, i've seen this so many times before and just ask the page without asking the question god what is going on there. so i'm looking for quiet moments, or intimate moments, moments that are unique, meets where people let their guard down. >> rose: all about photography when we continue. funding is provided by american express. additional funding provided by:
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>> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> sally mann is one of maeferk's preeminent photographers for three decades. she has captured images that are haunting, disturbing and romantic all at once. her 1992 series called immediate family made her famous, created over ten areas it featured her children at home on their virginia farm. this strikingly beautiful photo is deemed a great work of art, outraged some of their composition and nudity. sally writes about that moment as well as her life and work in a new book. it ask called hold still, a memoir with photographs. i spoke with sallie mann for a rare and candid conversation in new york city's gagozian gallery.
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>> when did this affair with photography begin? >> pretty early, really. 17. >> rose: yeah, did your dad give you your first camera. >> he did. he had a leica that he had taken around the world in 1937-- 31ee no, 37ee. and he handed it to me with virtually no explanation, no, this is how you load the film and this light meter, you remember all that stuff. and i just started taking pictures. and it was an instant love affair. >> rose: what was it? >> what was it? what was-- it was just ecstatic. it was-- the joy of looking at a negative, you know, the fixative dripping down your arms and i hold it up to the light, it's just magic. it's still magic. >> rose: it's that more than taking the picture. >> yeah, maybement because you take the picture and you just so fervently pray that
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you got the tenth of a second that you thought you got. and so many times you don't. you get the tenth of the second either side of the one that you hoped you got. so really it's when you see the negative that the moment happens. and there's nothing like that moment. i said at other times, it's almost sexual in its intensity. you're just ecstatic. >> rose: and do you see it instantly, the one that dbs -- >> yeah, yeah, even in negative form which is of course reversed, you can tell right awayment cuz it's got the proportions and the right feel to it. you just know it. >> and you like black and while. >> i do. >> why? >> it's harder. that's not why i like it. but it's harder but it also makes you get right to the essence of what you are taking the picture of. you're not distracted by the color.
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i mean color is just an entirely different process and way of thinking. >> the interesting thing is you live on a farm which is full of color. it's green grass and blue skies and forest and everything. >> yeah, the way my mind works i see everything in black and white. and i also now start seeing things am like i see you now in a little eight by ten rectangle. >> rose: god help me. >> but you start blocking out things. and that's a really important part of taking a picture is the ability to isolate what you are concentrating on. it even, like sometimes when i'm reading a book, i have this, and i don't know if everyone does this or in the but i will be reading a book and it will be describing a scene and i will see the scene in my mind as sort of a vision but i will see it as a black and white photograph. i mean complete with burning and dodging am i will say well, the sky should be a little, daer. there you are in faulkner
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and clinton is about to throw himself off the bridge and i'm saying well, the river should be dark and the trees, i think visually all the time. >> back to putney. >> oh gosh. okay. >> rose: you see, what i heard somebody once said that the reason you liked photography is you like the dark ram because that is a place you and your boyfriend could get together. >> yeah, get together, the euphemism. >> rose: yeah. >> there was that, yeah. no question about that. >> rose: you took your first intimate photographs there. >> i did. i did. and of course immediately got in trouble for it. i got in trouble for everything at putney. i was just a complete forward minx. i was a bad girl. but the pictures, the picture got me in trouble. i was completely for once i was innocence. it was a completely innocent picture but it involved nudity. >> rose: but you wanted to go back to where you came from. you wanted to go back to
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virginia. >> well, i never left virginia. i mean just for the briefest time. and the whom time i was miserable. pretty much. i mean i missed the embrace of the mountains and the kindness of the people and the-- yeah, the whole sweetness of the land. i just-- vermont just didn't do it for me. >> rose: the older i get the more i appreciate kindness with no kidding. >> rose: isn't it funny that the south which is so known for so many unkind acts. >> rose: and violence. >> and violence and prejudice and all that can have what they have boundries, just the sweetest, kindest people. >> rose: do you go back to a place where your father was a general practitioner. >> yeah. >> your husband is a lawyer. >> yesment but he's a black smith. so the first ten years of our marriage. >> rose: immediate family. it came what, 1990. >> i think the book came out
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in '92, something like that. i started the pictures and maybe i said 84. it's probably closer to 85. >> rose: how did you measure getting better. >> i think it's sort of a visceral thing. >> rose: i mean you could see the difference in sally mann cirka 2015 and sally mann cirka 19-- 2000. >> yeah. >> rose: 15 years. >> yeah. again, i don't look at it as an intellectual process. i may have myself intellectual questions, you know. i think the difference is that i used to be taking pictures to save things. that was-- the impulse was to either take pictures to save something or to try and see what something would look like when it was photographed. it was really just kind of an aesthetic exercise. and now it's a lot more important to me to actually say something as opposed to save something.
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i'm working from an intellectual construct and i'm trying to make-- i'm trying to use the photographs in service to a concept. which i didn't start out that way. i didn't start, for instance, the family pictures, i was just taking pictures because the kids were around and gradually a construct was built around them. >> rose: that is what immediate family was b they were just around. >> they were documentary in origin. you know, they grew less so. >> rose: they grew to become what. >> they-- they grew to have a narrative around them. an aesthetic, an intellectual narrative and a met for call implications. you know, they got much more complicated. >> rose: do you know what -- >> i think i had begun to make a commitment to the-- usin- ged commonplace to somehow
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make images that were resonant and ref la tore in universal aesthetic and lyrical way. and what could be more commonplace than children, rug rats. >> rose: your own children. >> yeah. >> rose: at a cabin. >> yeah. >> rose: and what were you seeing and what were you telling us. because on the one hand it is all the themes of what it means to be young, playing, jumping in the water and all that. on the other hand, people read into themes of loneliness, you know, and quiet, sexuality. >> people read unbelievable things into it. i mean that was what was so shocking to me was that, i mean i knew that they were not without undertones. i knew that they were not simple snapshots. but some of the ways that they were interrupted were shocking to me. >> rose: you knew there would be controversy. >> i didn't.
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but i found out soon enough, yeah. i mean i say i was wlind sided and i was. >> rose: by all the things that people said. >> yeah. >> rose: and what they accused you of because you were photographing naked children. >> yeah there was that, yeah. >> rose: on the other hand, people considered them beautiful and brilliant and-- reasons i hope so. >> rose: it marked you as a photographer. people said a great photographer has just appeared. that was the beginning. >> yeah. >> rose: of sally mann's public rep takes. >> yeah, yeah, that's true. >> rose: and then there is too the things that you did, i mean you clearly were conscious of making sure you had them talk to a psychologist. >> uh-huh. >> rose: you were concerned about not showing photographs that they didn't like. >> right, yeah. i mean i gave them editorial control. i mean in as much as a child can have editorial concern. and that is the question, i mean editorial discernment,
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you know. and that is the concern that so many people had. was how could they-- how could they know. but they did. they were visually sophisticated kids. and they knew what we were doing. we talked about the pictures. they saw the conversation. >> rose: what was the conversation? >> well, you know, do you like this. do you think-- what do you think this picture says, does this picture say something about you that you are not comfortable with? >> rose: and what did your husband larry say. >> the same. i mean he-- . >> rose: this is a close family. >> pretty close, yeah. >> rose: this is what photographs have told us. this is what family that has no secrets between them. >> well, i would imagine there are a few secrets but we're a pretty close family, even now. or especially now, maybe. >> rose: so they understood. or they appreciated it. >> they appreciated it. and i think they understood it. that is the argument i make. and i'm sure child psychologists will take issue with that, some. >> rose: after immediate family, sally moved on for
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more than two decades she has been exploring themes of place, history and mortality. i asked her where she finds her inspiration. >> it's funny, because the way it works for me is what i-- i don't really make a decision about what i want to do next. it kind of comes to me. it's like a hidden ardent lover that you keep to the side and then it calls to you, so that while i was taking the family pictures, i had this-- i had this desire to take landscapes. i know this sounds completely hokey but it was true. and i would have my camera set up and i would rotate the camera away from the pictures. and again i'm thinking 8 x 10. i would find these beautiful images on that sort of milky ground glass of the camera. i was just seduced by landscapes. and it was, you know, i was conspicuously available for seduction just because of the fact that the kids were leaving home right about that time. they weren't leaving home
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but they were -- >> you were available to seduction. >> you know. >> rose: i am available for seduction. if the landscapes want me, here i am. >> yeah, there you go, and they did. yeah. >> rose: but it's part of your love for the south because you write about that here in this memoir. >> yes, yes. in full some proceeds. >> rose: yes. and then there's gigi. >> then there's gigi. >> rose: you write about her. >> very important to me. >> rose: in what way? >> well, you know, i write in the book that-- i was raised kind of as a feral child, the whole 1950s thing, it was very hands-off. i don't know what your childhood was like but-- . >> rose: much like yours. >> yeah, i would be gone all day long and no one would even look for me. >> rose: these are 2005. >> you probably know this better than i do. >> rose: that is right, all the landscapes of the south.
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and you did the battlefields. >> after that. >> rose: and in it -- >> right, yeah. it was sort of linked in well deep south pictures. and then the battlefields. oh, i don't know. i'm sure you have it on that piece of paper somewhere. >> rose: it shows the evolution too. >> it does, yeah. >> rose: what remains were 2003. >> there you go, okay. >> rose: and there it was your greyhounds. >> right. >> rose: what was it about, was it about dying. was it about understanding death and what it means. >> it started out that way. just sort of, almost as a documentary impulse to-- she died and i couldn't bear to leave her, basically. so i had her skinned and then i took the body and buried it and it ended up decomposing in this almost constellation of little bones. and it went from there, you know, it was an odd leap to
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make but i began asking the question about the landscape in which she was buried. and then there was a-- . >> rose: here is what is interesting. you get engaged by something like that. and boy, you just go on a rampage. >> yeah, no, i'm a little terrier like. >> rose: you are, much terrier like. >> yeah. >> rose: and then your dead gray houn, then you get interested in other dead bodies and decomposing bodies. >> yeah. >> rose: what is your camera telling us. >> i done know. >> rose: you just wrote a memoir about it. >> yeah, right, i'm like the dancer pavlofa who did that wonderful dance and when she was done all the interviewers said what was that about. and she said if i could say it in words i wouldn't have just danced it for you. >> rose: that's the reason i dance. >> right. >> rose: so your camera is your story, not your book. the book is part of you thinking about all of this. >> yeah. >> rose: and trying to find some meaning in it. other than just doing it.
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>> and it is a huge translation. usually it's enough to just take the picture and put them on the wall and assume that are you a good enough artist, your meaning is plain, right. but then to have to somehow make the translation from you know visual art to written words. it was really, it was really quite interesting to-- it's a whole different way of thinking to be able to talk about your work as not so easy turned out. >> rose: are you musing on mortality and death and what happens, what remains? cuz that's what you titled it. what remains. >> you mean that show. >> rose: yeah. >> yeah. yeah, i mean, you do ask that question, don't you. it's like lori anderson saying i feel like, you know, a library had burned down when i lost my father. you do.
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you do, it's a sort of notion of what finally is memory about and what does remain and how, how do you preserve the moment. can you preserve the moment. is there such a thing as and after life, so to speak. >> rose: antidum was involved in that, what remains. >> yeah. >> rose: the largest number of casualties ever in an american war on one day, or two days. >> yeah. >> rose: and because you go back to the living in that. you went back to close-ups of your children. >> yeah. >> rose: there is hope and there is a future and we've just seen -- >> exactly. the vitality and the fearlessness of those faces. that's what i love about that body of work are the pictures of the children, their faces. >> rose: you're going from death to life. >> you certainly are, the negative to the affirmative, yeah, yeah. >> rose: and then there is, in 2009 proud flesh. >> yeah, maybe one of my
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favorite bodies of work. and one of the toughest. in so many ways rrz because it was painful, to you? >> it is a difficult, any time you make a picture of vulnerable subjects, and larry is vulnerable. he's got muscular distrophy. so whole parts of his body have lost all of their muscles. so his upper left arm is no-- his bicep is no bigger than my wrist at this point. he has no muscle. >> rose: and you wanted to do this as hard, as it is. >> it's harder for him though, it's harder for them him, you have a subject who is willing to put themselves out like that. and completely unashamed and completely willing to be in a picture that comes at the expense of his vanity. i mean-- . >> rose: vanity, per fillity. >> yeah, exactly,
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vulnerability, exposure, all that. all photographic portrait ture, that is the risk, always. no matter how public a figure you are, how used you are to being photographed, you are always at the mercy of the photographer. we hold all the cards. we always do. >> rose: and the power. >> and the power, uh-huh. >> rose: so therefore can we see trust in him. >> i should say, yeah. >> rose: he trusts you. >> he does trust me. >> rose: in these photographs. >> yeah. and that's what-- there are pictures that i have taken that made me just ache for him. and i would say are you sure you want me to show these pictures. and i said yeah. it's-- there were certain-- that measure of discomfort is worth it to him for the sake of what we liked to think is a good piece of art. >> rose: when did the t just a photographer nott that photographer can't just be art, but it's more than
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taking pictures. >> yeah. well, i was always sort of bifurcated between writing and photography. i loved both of them. i wanted to be a poet but how do you earn a living as a poet. it's hard to do. >> rose: so you --. >> i guess early on. i -- think of it quite that way. i mean i went around wearing a rakish beret and smoking, and all that kind of stuff. i wanted to be an artist. i wanted to look like an artist. >> rose: you were the left bank. >> exactly. the left bank of lexington. i wanted to be an artist but ãdigital. i knew this was coming, right. yeah, yeah, i can't ignore it. >> rose: because it gives you power to do things -- >> yeah, i can do more
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things. >> rose: you can tell your story better. >> yeah. yeah, i can get what i want better. i'm not quite clear sure i will give up silver print. i just-- i love it. >> rose: it's your liquid, isn't it. >> well, yeah, it is, that and bourbon. >> rose: i knew that was a reason i loved you so much. >> yeah. >> rose: silver and bourbon. >> bill silver and bourbon. >> that say really good titlement don't you dare steel it from me. >> rose: but you have why did you title this whole steel. >> well, i pulled it out of the text. there is one point where i'm describing the feeling of taking a picture and you're going hold still hold still hold still. because it is that important. but someone said it should be titled hold still, sally mann, because i'm so, you
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know, friend etically hummingbirdish. >> rose: you are tough. you are tough. >> i don't know. >> rose: you are tough and you are-- you are tough on yourself and tough on your art, demanding a lot of yourself. you live in a cocoon of family but you attack the world. >> i'm so painfully insecure. i have this self doubt that i said in the book, it masquerades as vanity. one success piled on toer another success. right? i see myself as legalling from bosch to bosch-- reeling from bosch to bosch. failure to failure. >> rose: where have you failed. >> oh, god, don't ask. >> rose: i'm asking. >> oh. i don't know. i never think it's good enough, yeah. i lack back and well, you know, i'm obsessively reshooting things trying for
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perfection, entirety, perfection, those are the goals. >> rose: would you recognize perfection if you saw it? >> there are a few pictures that i would say are perfectch an what do they contain. >> that ineffable something that gentlemen they say quoi. what a-- je nais se quis. >> what a cop out right. >> rose: when people saw your work they knew, they sea something special. they don't see what goes into it, they sea what comes out of it. >> isn't that true of everything. every book that you hold up when are you interviewing someone is five years of their life. >> rose: exactly. >> yeah. >> rose: what was hardest about this book. was it the memories. >> no. >> rose: or was getting it right. >> well, that's always the hardest, of course course, the getting right why should a book take five years.
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i'm talking about eight, ten hour days, weekends too. >> rose: . >> you believe me don't you. because other people have said this to you i'm sure. >> rose: absolutely. the hardest thing they have ever done in their life was to write, put your thoughts. >> no question about it. i remember robert frack was talking about-- he lived in a pardon me, a court yaurd across from dekuhning and he said he used to see dekuhning pacing back and forth trying to put painting on canvas and realized as a photographer all he had to do was hold the view find tore his face and finds a decisive moment. but when you're a writer, you start or a painter, so much more difficult. and that's why it took five years. is because i had to con sure the whole thing up from scratch. photography is all about choices, right. but writing is about choices too but you also have to create the choices.
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they are not out there in the world for you. >> rose: let me talk about family too, about gigi. tell me more about her. >> well. >> rose: because there was a gigi in my life as well. >> i think there was a gigi in a lot of people of our generation in the south. i mean there were extremely important. -- price wrote a lot about the importance of that person. and in particular if you are were just a little oddball, a little truman capote like and needed extra coddling and attention or a difficult little-- like i was. i don't know what you were. i'm sure you were not an easy child either, right. and i don't know how your parents were. but in my case they just weren't particularly available to me. they had other things to do. and she was always there. >> rose: that was fine with me. >> yeah, exactly. >> rose: let me talk about
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your family, your father and mother, the legacy. e is just one of the mostyok complex, interesting. >> rose: among other things an atheist. >> yeah, he was that. he was that. >> and that say difficult thing to be in the south as you can imagine. but he was also contempuous of television and very much an intellectual and he was an art lover. and he was a foodie and a sophisticated on almost every level. >> rose: probably read "the new yorker" magazine, didn't he. >> you bet he did. and the atlantic and the harpers and the new republic. he got them all. "the new york times" and the washington post every sunday. and he was just-- they were very, they were intellectual was he happy. >> i'm not entirely sure. i think he probably -- he was a doctor. he was a medical doctor but he gave up to be a medical doctor and to be a devoted one, he gave up a great deal, yeah. >> rose: he gave up what you are. >> he gave up what i am. >> rose: he gave up what i
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am. >> he gave up literature and art. and those were the two things he loved. very interesting. >> rose: what questions have you not answered through photography for yourself snz what do you owe us you haven't done? >> i touch on it a little bit in the book, and it's all devoted to gigi. it's actually a testimonial perhaps to gigi and her importance to me. i'm looking at pictures of black men and it's bigger than that, though. i'm working on the legacy of slavery in the south which i think is one of the most underdiscussed and profound phenomenon. and in the whole united statesment but particularly in the south and i'm particularly focusing on the nature of what kept the slave as live. what kept their hope alive. and focusing a little bit on the nat turner rebellion. >> rose: how will you do
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this? >> you think i would have an answer to this but i don't quite know yet. i'm working, i'm photographing the swamp and the rivers in the neighborhoods of nat turner's rebellion, because that is where he was going. he was going to the dismal swamp which offered refuge to the particularly intrepid or desperate slaves because they wouldn't track them into the dismal swamp. >> rose: fear of alligators. >> fear of everything. that place is awful. and so now they've discovered these whole villages, these towns in the dismal swamp so i'm photographing those. it's fascinating. the whole question is what, how slavery has affected the south which is a kind of large topic. >> rose: because you have looked at history so much and because you have looked at death and decay so much, do you feel any sense of mortality and rushing to
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finish so many things. >> oh, do i ever. >> rose: all. >> all i have to do is look in the mirror. i done have to look and death and decay. all i have to do is-- . >> rose: what do you see when you lack in the mirror. >> i'm shocked every time i do, yeah. i don't waste any time. i don't waste time. i work all the time. i never leave home. i mean i just-- i just stay home on what is ahead. >> rose: thank you for this. >> thank you . >> rose: russell james is here. he is an australian-born fashion photographer, many say he has the best job in the world. for the past 15 years he's been the main photographer for victoria secret. his work has appeared in vogue, "sports illustrated" and w magazine. his new book focused on the female form. it is called angels. i'm pleased to have russell james on this program. and how did you come to photography? >> i am probably an
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accidental photographer. out of curiosity was my single answer. i had a very diverse background that i left school early. i was working, making trash cans. i trained dogs. i was a police officer for five years. i did many, many different things. but what that all amounted to was i had a fascination for the world. i started traveling. eventually back in the year 1989 i was in the dark room with a photographer, i was arist-- assisting him as a means of income and i became fascinated with the process. i saw an image lift out of the paper. and we're talking a time when photography was-- digital was still amiss. and it was a singular moment that grabbed me. and i said this is what i want to do. >> rose: regardless of what the camera is, whether it is digital, not digital, analog, whatever it might be, separate good from best. >> subjective.
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it's who you ask. i stood before a picture with 20 different people, you may get 20 different opinions. >> rose: one is not necessarily better than the other, you might argue. >> i would argue. one is not necessariy better than the other. it is in the eye of the beholder. but certainly for me there are very specific aspects. i look at, i was inspired greatly by irving penn, such a deliberateness to his photography, such an absolute-- an art to it in the balance of the photograph. so to me it's lighting, the connection, if there is a person involved or whether it be an indigenous elder or a model, the connection to the camera, is it real. and a balance. and the perspective to the photograph so what digital has done is kind of equalized the playing field. meaning anybody can get in an entry level with a camera. >> rose: how did you come to this? i mean angels, these are beautiful women photographed in a beautiful way. >> it wasn't that i planned to do a book that was on the newgen re, going back to the early it,000 when i was
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inducked into the fine art gallery camel work in berlin representing the archives of people like ining penn and helmut newton. and i, my passion was divided. i had as i said a landscape to a portrait of someone that i had seen significant leigh but never known them. they all compelled me in the same way. and nude photography has a-- there is a very special thing about it. it is an empty came pass-- canvas. so if you are shooting photographs for let's say a male viewer of a concern kind, you can take the photo like this, pretty much. take a photograph of a woman, and not offend her but have her partner in the photograph and have her come back and what i do isn't o fensive to them, rather it's a partnership, it has em pore-- empowerment. >> rose: how do you create that. >> there comes a moments when the subject is nude and i'm not and i have a camera and i will take a
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photograph. the worst thing you can do at that moment is take your camera back and take this full body picture, so i tend to go and start shooting very close, directly that the eyes and there is something amazing about doing that because the thing about the eyes being the window of the soul is absolutely true. once i find the calmness of the person and they start to look at the camera and understand i'm interested in their overall. >> rose: they're communicating with the camera as well as you are communicating with them. >> they get to communicate with you and they get to exclude. >> rose: they go through the blens to you. >> yes. i think-- it's about, there is this technical object but the conversation has to be at a level although tone has to be at a level. so the opposite of helpful, are things like sexy, stunning, that's the opposite of helpful. in that environment what is helpful is talking before i start shooting, we can be talking about anything about lunch, food, kids, life, current politics, you know, many things but thened moment when i feel the tension drop, i just start taking the photographs and i
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think everybody understands that the shoot has started at that point. >> rose: does beauty mean something different to you now because you thought about it and photographed it and tried to reflect it? >> it means, yes, bultee has changed as i have matured, as i have developed, as i have lived life, spending a lot of time in places like haiti and taking portraits of people down there. i certainly don't say this as-- i say it with complete honesty. when i'm photographing a person albeit a aboriginal elder, a member of the seminole tribe of florida or a beautiful girl there say beauty about the photograph and when are you on the other side, it's the strangest thing but it's so powerful and engaging when you are in it, i get lost in that moment. >> rose: the other thing that comes up often, is they say you are objectifying women this is all about creating women as objects. >> it's a challenging, balance. balancing act that we do.
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so on a-- from an art perspective working with brands like victoria secret, the good thing is i'm shooting women for women. so you know, it can be measured on how women receive it. i've got daughters. so i am very conscious of the objectification of women. and it's a balancing act. at the end of the day for one part of my career i'm taking photographs of nude people. and i, at the same time i have to think how do i balance that so that i am actually empowering young women. so i do a lot of work with young women, don't photograph them nude but we do a lot of work bringing them into the industry, see the inside and see it's to the about objectification. and i think this business was very much about objectifying women, and made a big transformation in the last 15 to 20 years, probably in the last ten
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even more so. >> rose: this is am brosio in new york city in 2013. >> a lot of the nudes there is no nudity. that is the irony. >> rose: this is lily aldridge too, what should i notice about this. >> what i notice about lilly is i photographed lilly very much as a girl next door for sort of come metic brands but lily is about as rounded a person as you can get. she is a remarkable mother. she is a remarkable spokesperson. she is philanthropic in her nature. and she is an absolutely gorgeous woman. and then there is this, this is a picture of a man from newer nomad series. tell me about this. >> bonny semper taken in the northwest of australia. i was with an elder and his name was donie-- and literally i think some things are self-explanatory. i looked at the eyes of bonnie and i just said, i can literally see the 50,000 years of your culture in your eyes. and there wasn't a lot of explanation to it. >> rose: what's that?
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>> nomad 2 worlds is my vehicle, it was started as an art project where i would collaborate with indigenous cultures. and i did it because there were so many issues in indigenous culture, whether they had been marginalized. and for many of the indigenous groups that i meet, there have been extraordinary-- there is extraordinary suffering going on. but this tribe is the seminole tribe of florida. they have one of the greatest success stories that i have ever experienced. so i have been working on something that we call seminole spirit. and what i hope to show is a positive vibe to what is often an negative. >> rose: exactly. >> so this tribe kept their culture and at the same time has adapted as good as or better as anyone has to the modern day. >> rose: the next, what are you looking for, you are looking clearly into his eyes. >> president clinton, for me somewhat-- an absolute mentor. i have hit great privilege to travel with president clinton to haiti. when people like president clinton and richard branson
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said don't be ashamed about socially conscious business. people said you can't mix philanthropic endeavor with commercial activity. and i completely flipped it and said yes, you can, it is entirely possible so when i look at president clinton, that's what i am seeing. i am seeing my mentor in the space of this social commitment. now this is outside of politics and who sits which side of the fence. a person who i believe is really engaged. >> rose: are you talking to him to create that particular thing you are looking for there. is there communication between the two of you or he is simply posing and you are waiting for the moment that you want? >> in that case we were talking about the citadel which is the biggest fortress in the western hemisphere and it represents the first nation formed by free slaves. hi just interviewed the president on that subject. and i asked if i could take some photographs. and i did. and so really i guess the closest thing for me is it was just his personality is what i was looking for, like
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who he actually is. >> rose: where is the biggest passion for you now, if you could go out today and somebody said just take a moment and go, whatever you want to do. what would you do? >> that would be-- a hard choice for me, it would be very hard because my passion for photography is really broad but clearly i would go to the roots, and that is really around indigenous culture and many ways marginalized culture. and i-- and again i probably would want to bring all the elements that are involved in angels that are involve in nomad two worlds and bring them together in one world. >> rose: thank you for coming. >> thank you very much. >> rose: pleasure to you have here. lynsey addario is here, a pulitzer prize winning photographer and former macarthur fellow credited with changing the way we view conflict zones. for the past 15 years she has documented human rights issues and the might of women from some of the most difficult places on earth.
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in 2011 she was kidnapped with three colleagues in libya while covering the civil war. that experience inspired her to write her first memoir it is called it's what i do, a photographer's life of love and war. i'm pleased to have lindsay addario back at this table. welcome. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: tell me about writing a memoir why did you decide to do this. >> it was an interesting process. after we were released from captivity in libya i was approached by several literary agents. and my first priority was to do a photo book. i have never done a book of my photographs, a solo book so i really wanted to focus on that. and i was meeting with aperture and we had all of my photos on the table. and i got a e-mail that tim heting-- hetherington and chris hondros had been killed in that meeting. and and sundly i was sort of overwhelmeded by not only what i had been through in libya but the loss of friends.
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and silver had lost his legs in afghanistan it all just sort of hit me in that moment. and i said you know, i don't want to spend the next year looking at these photographs of the last decade. and i wanted to write. it was something that i wanted to do. and i was meeting with literary agents and it just seemed right. >> rose: take me to the moment you are lying face down in libya and the soldier is standing over you saying shoot them, shoot them. >> so we had been covering the front line and it was shifting pretty quickly. >> rose: you and tyler hicks and anthony shadid and farrell. >> exactly there were four of us. and at that moment it was incredibly violent. i had been kidnapped before and it's always the initial moments in a kidnapping that are the most aggressive. and they sort of pulled everyone out of the car. i myself put my head in my lap and was trying to figure out what to do. there was a moment where i thought well, i can make it go away. and so eventually i crawled over the front seat of the car and called out to the right where my colleagues had jumped out. and started running across
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the street and eventually in that moment,ed rebels that we had been covering started shooting at cad of aye's troops and we were literally caught in a wall of bullets. and we had to make a run for it. and we ran to a small cement building that was off to the right. not very far away but we had to get protection. and when we got around that building there were four of cad avi, four or five of their troops. and they told to us lie down on the ground, lie down on our stomaches. we each knew what that meant. there is no, in that moment when are you asked to lie face down on the ground it means you will be executed. >> in the back of the head. >> in the back of your head, they put their guns to us and i remember this moment of looking up into the gun barrel and just thinking, please, like, there was nothing else i could say. but please don't shoot us. and we each, and i looked to my right and we each were doing the same thing. >> please don't shoot us. we're just begging. i mean it was really a moment of just begging. and luckily they decided,
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commander walked over and said you can't shoot them. they're american. and they decided not to execute us. that is something that anthony shadid who spoke arabic translated for us after the fact. and instead they then tied us up and carried us off and placed us in vehicles on the front line in the middle of the battle. and we had to sit there for hours on end while bullets and artillery everything landed around us. >> rose: why did they do that? >> i think to scare us and to play games with us. i mean when are you captive, a lot of it is about instilling fear in your-- in the people you are holdings captive. >> rose: you say that moments like these force you to ask the obvious question, why dow risk your life. >> sure. and i think every time i have been confronted -- confronted with death i ask myself this question, what the hell am i doing here, why am i in libya.
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why do i care so much about this particular story that i'm willing to give my life. and i don't think there's an answer. certainly not in that moment t it is an answer that it believe this work has to be gone. and i believe i have the tools to go to these places and tell these stories and bring it home for the reader in a way that is accessible. >> rose: does it get easier? >> yeah, i think the more one covers, war, the easier it is to go back to war. in fact it gets harder when you start pulling away from covering war. it's much harder to go back because it's almost like there were moments when i was covering iraq, for example, and i was there in 2003 and 2004 pretty of all the time. and i felt much more comfortable in iraq than i did at home. i would go home and say god, no one cares there is a war going on. and i couldn't, i didn't feel like i fit in. i felt most comfortable when i was in iraq with fellow journalists and iraqis and soldiers and covering the war. >> rose: when you were there,
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what dow look for? >> i think things present themselves. situations present themselves but i'm always very leary of photographing scenes that the audience or the readers have seen so many times before because i don't want to be in a situation, take photos, send them home and then have the viewers say i have thine that photograph before and just turn the page without asking the question of what is going on there. so i'm looking for quiet moments in war. or i'll looking forint mat homes, moments that are unique, moments where people let their guard down. >> rose: take a look at some photographs here. let's look at the first one. kabul, 2000 this is afghan women shielding their faces at the women's hospital. >> so i first went to afghanistan when it was under taliban rule and i was living in india. and i had a roommate at the time who said he had gone to afghanistan and was working for dow jones. and he said, you know, you're a woman.
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you should photograph women in afghanistan under the taliban. and i thought okay, why not. so i sort of, you know, as one does when they are 26 years old, they don't think about anything. so i went in and i lined up access through unhcr and through a land line organization. and i went to the women's hospital because i knew as a woman i would have access to women, in a way that men wouldn't. an also it was a place the taliban couldn't go or wouldn't go. and so photography was illegal at that time. the taliban prohibited anyone from photographing any living being. so i had to sneak around. and women's hospital seemed lake a very good place to do that. and also a place to photograph the medical situation for bim. >> rose: does gender make a difference in photography in war zones. >> i think it does not make a difference on the front line. i think that it does make a difference when i'm covering stories that have to do with women in the muslim world some i do think am islam the
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gemders are segregated so i'm often put with the women and i have great access to the women. and so i am able to ef to them in a way that possibly my male colleagues cannot. >> rose: next slide afghanistan december 2001. taken during the fall of the taliban in kandahar. >> so we drove in there, the day kandahar fell. and we were some of the first journalists to go in. it was a big "new york times" con voichlt i forgot how many of us there were. almost a dozen "new york times" people. and i was absolutely terrified to get out of the car. i was sitting in a car with ruth a "new york times" photographer. and we pulled in. and we pulled into, in front of the governor's mansion, self-appointed gulag and we pulled up and i remember looking out the window and there were all these big bearded men with rockets on their backs. just looking at us. and it was not common to see a woman with her face
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uncovered in kandahar. and i looked at ruth and said i'm terrified to get out. she just jumped out of the car and started shooting. i thought i'm just going to pretend that i'm not scared. i jumped out of the scar, started shooting and i walked up to these guys and they had all taken there was a huge amount of men who have lost a limb to landmines in afghanistan. and so they were all sitting around with flowers. they are carnations in their legs off, and it was just a very funny scene. >> rose: the next slide is northern iraq, 2003. >> this was the first time that i had been in any sort of attack. and i was covering, i had gone into northern iraq in labor february. and i think this is mid-march, the u.s. started sending cruise missiles into norp iraq to hit al ansar which was a fundamental group. and so this was right around that area. and so a group of journalists bent in a convoy an were waiting on a road
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where these villages were emptying out of civilians. and we were standing outside of the road interviewing people as they would come out of these villages. and i remember all the locals were saying to us get out of here, it's not safe, go, go, go. and we said okay, we'll leave. and but as journalists linger a little bit and want to get a little more reporting. we were sort of doing our final interviews and taking our final photos. and suddenly i got this feeling in the pit of my stomach and i ran to our car, shut the door and a massive explosion went off like 20 yards behind us. and it had been a car bomb. >> rose: next slide is iraq in 2003 as well. >> so shortly after-- . >> rose: bodies discovered in a mass grave. >> exactly. all of the white sheets are filled with the remains of bodiesment and we had found out that there was a mass grave south of baghdad. and that it was several weeks after saddam hussein
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was deposed. we went down to look at the mass grave and the initial scene i went to was this incredible landscape of just the earth dug out and people walking around pulling plastic bags out of the ground and looking at the remnants and trying to identify the relative through a bag of bones. and sleds of clothing. and it was the most unbelievably tragic scene. and so we went to another building where where they had moved some of these bodies and i walked in one of the rooms and here was this man leaning against its wall just weeping. >> rose: you were embedded with dential ter, were you not. >> yeah, we've done a lot together. >> rose: it was a piece on the taliban. >> so we did, a lot of times together in iraq and a lot of time together in afghanistan. and then in 2009 he called me up and said, i think it was 2008 or-- no, 2 was 2008, he called me up and said hey,
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i got a great story for us. and i said yeah, desk, he said it's on the talibanization of pakistan. and and i remember my husband was sitting next to me and could hear dexter saying what, you going to meet the taliban. so i very smartly don't answer my husband and desk says look, i'm going to go and line up access and then you come in. so "the new york times" magazine assigned me to work with him and so he went in and spent a long time lining up access. and the night before, the commander in the tribal area gave us permission to come. and the night before the one thing they said is do not bring a woman, no matter what you do, do not bring a woman. and so dexter and i look at each other and say we're not separating. there is no way we're separating. and our translator was toremented because he said you know, he said you can't bring a woman. what are we going to do. we can't disobey him. we said look, we have to figure it out we're not separating.
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finally he said i know, we're going to say you are mr. dexter's wife and he can't leave his wife alone in the hotel room. and so we said okay, tell them whatever you want but we're going together so we got all dressed up the next day and i was wearing basically, you couldn't see an ounce of my skin and we got in the car and we go to meet the commander. and dexter and the translator get out first and they go into this room and they ask permission to bring dexter's wife in. and so i get let into this room and there are like i don't know, 15, 20 talib sitting in this small room with their weapons everywhere. and a woman walks in. and they sort of just look like what on earth is a woman doing here. and i am tripping over myself and i sit down in the middle of this room and dexter says this is my wife. and he doesn't look at me. he just says okay. and you know what, my wife has a camera, dow mind if she takes some photos. so he says yes, so i pull
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out this like massive camera and start shooting that is how we did it. >> rose: did you win a pulitzer prize for that. >> we were part of the team ternational reporting ines" 2008 for afghan and pakistan and my pictures were supporting evidence in that package. >> rose: what is the satisfaction for you? >> the satisfaction is educating people and making them think twice about things that they thought they understood. giving people a new perspective on war and on what happens to civilians in war. >> rose: is it getting much more dangerous? >> i think so. there are no rules with isil. they don't have like guidelines that they go by. and particularly for journalists. i think that isil has made it very clear. >> rose: they will behead them. >> they have no respect for journalists at all. in fact, we are seen as a dollar sign. we are strictly a way for them to make money. and it is sad because journalism has always been respected and in fact in 2004 i wad kip in addition-- kidnapped outside outside of fallujah by a group affiliated with al
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qaeda and we convinced them we were journalists and there to do the honest job of telling the story of the war and they let us go. and i think that speaks volumes. >> rose: this book is called it's what i do, a photographer's life of love and war. thank you. >> thank you so much. >> rose: lindsay addario. >> for more visit us on-line at pbs.org and charlie rose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org
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man: it's like holy mother of comfort food.ion. woman: throw it down. it's noodle crack. patel: you have to be ready for the heart attack on a platter. crowell: okay, i'm the bacon guy. man: oh, i just did a jig every time i dipped into it. man #2: it just completely blew my mind. woman: it felt like i had a mouthful of raw vegetables and dry dough. sbrocco: oh, please. i want the dessert first! [ laughs ] i told him he had to wait.
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