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Newsha reflected in a window during her Hajj pilgrimage. © Newsha Tavakolian

Miki Johnson: Tell me about why you wanted to do photograph Hajj.

Newsha Tavakolian: I always wanted to go to to the holy city of Mecca. So then when I went there in 2006 for a reportage on the death of the late Saudi king, I said to myself, “It would be such amazing place to photograph, I should come back to take pictures during the annual Hajj pilgrimage.” So for two or three years, I was applying for the visa. And I could never get it. But in 2008, I applied just five months before, and I was pushing hard because I really wanted to go there to take pictures. This time they gave me the visa and in a couple of days  I had to be ready to go.

"Please forgive me if I have done you wrong in any way. I am going on Hajj." Newsha wrote that text message to all her family and friends before the pilgramage. She received 100 messages back, plus gifts like this white Hajj dress. © Newsha Tavakolian

MJ: You mentioned that it was very important for your pictures to be personal. Why was that?

NT: If you look at the first picture [above], I was preparing my Hajj dress. It’s a custom when you go to Hajj, you have to ask all the people around you, family members and friends, for forgiveness, because in Muslim culture, when someone comes back from Hajj, no one should be sad with them. If you had a fight with someone, or you hurt someone, and you go to Hajj, your Hajj is not accepted. So everybody should have good feeling about you.

So I did that. I sent a text message to all my family members and friends. I said I’m going to Hajj…you can read the text in the first picture in the caption. Many of my family members and friends texted me back. My cousin brought me a Hajj dress. My aunt brought me prayer beads, and other relatives came, and they said, “Please pray for us. I want a good husband.” Another one said, “I want a good wife. I want a house.”  Because when you go for the first time to Hajj, they say if you pray for someone, it’ll be accepted by God. So I had to prepare myself before I went to Hajj — from a photographic standpoint as well. Because for me, the pictures should show the emotion in such a spritual place, show how people are, and where they are sleeping, and small details. Because many photographers who go there, they are too newsy. But I wanted to take pictures of the journey I’m going through myself.

But of course Hajj is one of the most difficult places to take pictures. Because it’s so crowded. There are too many people there. It’s hot. You have to walk 10 hours…normally it takes half an hour, but because there are so many people, it’ll take 7 or 10 hours to walk between the religious sites. And I had two heavy cameras.

Men are required to shave their heads during Hajj. © Newsha Tavakolian

MJ: Tell me about being there, taking pictures. How did people react to you?

NT: Before I went there, I was thinking it was going to be hard. Maybe they won’t let me go to a certain area to take pictures. But in Saudi Arabia, when you go to Hajj, you have a minder with you, a rule which goes for all journalists visiting Saudi Arabia. They bussed all the journalists and photographers around in a group, which was a problem for me since I wanted to avoid having the same angles as the news wire photographers. I had to go out of my way to visit other places or shoot from different perspectives. To capture the feeling, the emotions of the Hajj, you cant be like a Japanese tourist traveling through Europe. I wanted to spend time in certain places, hang out with pilgrims. The high point of the Hajj is only four days so you cannot waste any time.

I was thinking many Muslims wouldn’t want to be photographed. As a photographer, I went to many different places; I covered different things. I know how to deal with people. I try focus on faces of people to see if they are ok with being photographed or not. It’s a spritual trip, so you don’t want to go around destroying people’s private moments too much. I try to be like a fly on the wall and don’t attract too much attention to my camera. Everyone needs to wear white, and in order not to stand out, I wore the same with clothes as everyone else.

Business concepts are only intimidating if you let them be. The photo industry is stereotyped as being business averse. Ironically we’re better suited for it than most people. We look outside of the box to solve photographic problems every second of every day. So why should we fail to apply the same thought process when it comes to business issues? All we need to do is learn a bit more about that other world. Not unlike we do when we research an assignment we’re about to shoot.

A few months ago I wrote a comprehensive piece about the current economic situation and how it relates to photographers. In it I touch on an explanation about where the economic crisis came from. But this video makes my simple explanation look like hieroglyphics requiring a Rosetta Stone. If you transact anything more complicated than buying a beer, stop what your doing and watch this video (by Jonathan Jarvis, as part of his thesis work in the Media Design Program, a graduate studio at the Art Center College of Design).

Chris's work for Woods Hole Oceanographic has led to other jobs, like this project photographing the construction of the new Yankee Stadium. © Chris Linder

While my projects with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) take up most of my time, I now spend roughly a quarter of my year running my own freelance photography business. The reputation I have established through my WHOI work has led to some tough but rewarding assignments, like documenting shellfish farmers on Cape Cod, construction workers at the new Yankee Stadium, and medical students at a summer internship. Although the people and the settings could not be more different, the general theme is the same: people working outdoors.

A second tangible extension of my photography for WHOI is my involvement with the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP). My efforts in communicating conservation science topics like climate change led me to cross paths with ILCP Director Cristina Mittermeier several years ago. She encouraged me to apply, and I joined the ILCP as an Emerging Member in 2007. Working with world-class photographers who have been covering environmental topics for decades has been a life-altering event. I participated in a RAVE (Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition) in May 2008 to document the impact of oil and gas development in Wyoming and will be participating in another RAVE focused on the environmental consequences of the US-Mexico border wall in January-February 2009. Working alongside photographers that share my passion for the environment is inspiring. Many of the ILCP Fellows, like Frans Lanting, Gary Braasch, and James Balog have been role models to me as I have developed my own photographic vision. Working alongside them on RAVEs and other ILCP projects is an incredible opportunity.

"Refinery" © Brian Kosoff

Over the course of my advertising career I followed a pattern of continually trading up to larger studios and adding more subtenant photographers to lower the overall cost per foot of the studio. My first NYC studio, in 1980, was about 2,000 square feet. All mine. My next studio, which I built in 1985, was 5,000 square feet. With this one I decided I would rent space to other photographers. My thought was that this would keep my costs more reasonable, and if I were busy there’d be more than enough space to produce the work.  Ultimately I had two other photographers in that space with me. This worked well for 15 years, until the dot-com bubble (the internet!) caused rents in the Photo District, where my studio was located, to go skyward. I had to move.

For my last studio, built in 2000, I partnered with another photographer and we shared responsibility for the space. This space was 7,500 square feet and we built facilities to accommodate us and three other photographers. Around this time the dot-com bubble burst (the internet!). The economy and the ad industry slowed down. I still had a large client list, but they were producing fewer ads, also in part because print media was less effective in a media environment diluted by the Internet. And what they were paying for each assignment was lower. The assignments themselves became less photographically challenging and less satisfying, due to a switch from still life photography (my specialty) which required the creation of sets that illustrated mini environments, to more silhouette-type photographs that could be photo composed into digital environments or stock photos. All the signs said it was time to move on.

Fortunately for me, a few years earlier I had started to shoot landscape photos again. I got married in 1999 and moved to a cute Hudson River town just north of Manhattan that had several galleries, including a few co-op ones. My wife encouraged me to join one, and I thought it would be a good excuse for me to actually print up a few of my landscapes, so I signed on. In April of 2001 I had the first solo show of my work since 1976. It did extremely well and was very profitable –- enough to make me think that I might have found an alternative to advertising photography and the high overhead of a Manhattan studio. Within a week of the show I had representation offers from several galleries in Manhattan. I ended up at Edward Carter Gallery and my new career shooting landscape really began.

"Snowy Ridge" © Brian Kosoff

A few months later were the September 11 attacks, and the aftermath devastated the NYC economy. A large chunk of lower Manhattan was closed off. For the galleries in Soho, it could not have been worse. Many businesses came to a screeching halt. Ad agencies had massive layoffs. The amount of work now available to advertising photographers was dramatically reduced. It didn’t seem like there was a real future in that field anymore. For the first time I thought that I might close my studio and leave Manhattan.

It’s not easy to walk away from something that you built over the course of two decades. My business was still viable, I still had a large client base and they would start to produce advertisements again, but there was a larger change. Even if it was still profitable, the kind of work that client’s wanted was more about cost than content or quality. That’s just not where I wanted to be. So at the end of 2002 I made it official and closed my studio.