Amateur Photographer Magazine

Roger Hicks is Back From the Front - Life as a photojournalist can be difficult. So you must ask yourself, 'What do I care about?'

Friday 2nd May 2008

Roger Hicks

It's a slightly frightening question. It's also a bit woolly. How much do you have to care? If someone started shooting, there are only two people

in the world whom I would protect with my own body: my wife, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Prime ministers? Presidents? Royalty? No way.

However, if you care about something, you can make a difference long before it comes to stopping bullets. And you can do it with your camera. Photography for a cause gives you a reason to take photographs, and a chance to do something with them.

All campaigns need pictures. Words on their own, no matter how worthy and well reasoned, pall after a while. Yet where do these pictures come from? Well, why not from you?

My first attempts at photography for a cause were hardly impressive. Thirty and more years ago, there was an organisation called CycleBAG: Cycle Bristol Action Group. I took a some pictures for them, but very few were any good. I can't recall if any of them ever made it into print, which almost certainly means they didn't – if they had, I'd remember. But they laid the foundations for what came later.

Now, cycling is a classic 'worthy' cause, but that doesn't matter. All that matters is that it is something you care about. You might campaign for a new playing field, or against selling off an old one. You might try to promote a small steam preservation society, or to raise the profile of the local branch of a much bigger organisation. In that same era, I was moderately involved with the local Friends of the Earth. And taking pictures.

The most effective propaganda I've done came later, for the Tibetan Government in Exile. It even included a book, Hidden Tibet (Element Books, 1988). I had the time of my life. I was taking pictures, and I was helping a cause I believed in. And I learned quite a bit.

Inherently, photography for a cause is a photo essay. It has to be. Sometimes, there's One Big Picture: think of Capa's photo of the dying soldier in the Spanish Civil War. But you can't just swan in, take One Big Picture, and swan out again. You have to work with other people. You need to take the pictures they want, as well as the pictures you want. You need to learn the subject, usually from people who know more than you.

You must, therefore, control your ego. This can be hard when people praise your pictures, and harder still when you are funding everything yourself, putting your expensive equipment and hard-won expertise at others' disposal. Tough. If you can't handle it, don't get involved.

Also, you have to prove yourself: you can't walk in at the top. At first, you're just another foot soldier, though after a while, you may start to get some of your expenses paid, and you will also start getting access to places that formerly were barred. Both happened to me when I was working for the Tibetan Government in Exile.

Even then, you may sometimes have to suffer for your art.

Once, I was shooting a demonstration about boycotting Chinese goods. People were smashing Chinese porcelain soup bowls and the like. Afterwards I had to pick splinters of porcelain out of dozens of tiny cuts on my hands and face. And I was glad I'd had a protective UV filter on the lens of my Leica…

Now, though, comes the really good bit. Photography for a cause is a lot easier today than it was when I started doing it in the 1970s. In those days, you had to make a lot of original prints, and send them out. Today, you can make a single print and scan it, or you can simply bypass the film or print stages electronically and do it all digitally.

The most important thing, however, is to be a realist and not a prima donna. You can try to work on your own, but in the nature of things, photography for a cause is a team effort. Once again, subdue your ego. Work with the best writers they've got, the best layout people, the best webmasters. Do what you can.

Give it time. You might be the next Sebastião Salgado. Or you might make a difference. Either way, it's got to be worth a try. AP

Roger and Frances website

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