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Here and below: Alan's images from the floor of the DNC. © Alan Chin

At the DNC, typically we would talk in the morning. Michael was there with his son, who works for Talking Points Memo, so the two of them were in what’s called the big tent, which is the press tent for bloggers. They were live-blogging the event and keeping an eye on everything going on, and they would text or call if they saw something I should cover. I would do the same for them. In the morning we would discuss things on the calendar, and I would spend the day doing those things. It meant not sleeping a lot because the big speakers were in the evening. We were working from 9am to midnight. We would meet in the evening and discuss how to we were going to put everything up on the site.

Basically I said to Michael, I trust you as an editor. It’s your site. If I file a picture to you, it means I’m willing to have you use it. Obviously you can’t file every picture. And actually I think it was a real learning experience for him as an editor. Because at the beginning he was using every picture I sent him. And I said, you don’t have to do that. Nor do I think we’re serving ourselves well by doing that. If we do four pictures or three pictures or one picture, sometimes it’s a lot more powerful than doing a 15- or 20-picture slideshow. So we talked about that a lot, and he got more comfortable being a kind of editor. And of course he’s wearing so many hats at once and ideally he would have a bigger team; there would be someone who’s thinking about aesthetics, someone else doing analysis, someone else doing really technical stuff — and then at that point you really are getting to be like the New York Times. You’re really starting to emulate how traditional media works.

At the National Geographic Photo Camp that Ed taught in Rajasthan, a "city kid" photographs a cow. © Ed Kashi

1/4/09

We’re in Jhadol, a small village nearly two hours drive outside of Udaipur to teach 20 teenagers, 10 from the city of Udaipur and 10 from the villages of this area. This is one of several National Geographic Photo Camps, which use photography and visual storytelling to foster cultural exchange and to open new vistas of awareness for these kids. The goal is not to create photographers, although that would be lovely. Instead, we are trying to empower these young people to tell the stories of their lives, communities, and families, thereby opening their eyes to their own world while sharing their vital and meaningful stories with outsiders.

I believe strongly in the power of photography to teach, to raise awareness, and to intimately and dramatically bring to life our stories, our issues, and our subconscious concerns. I have witnessed this power in countless situations, including refugee camps in Uganda, rural villages of Oaxaca, Mexico, the Latino district of San Francisco, and the South Bronx. These are the other National Geographic photo camps I’ve been a part of, but beyond this one set of experiences, I’ve been reminded repeatedly that photography has an uncanny, unique power to inspire, to prick the questioning mind, to discover beauty, and to express the intimate and personal.

It is this nexus of passion for, belief in, and commitment to the unique universe of visual storytelling that compels me to keep on driving forward, moving against the current odds, the dire predictions and blatant economic and structural trends. I cannot stop, nor do I believe I should. There is a usefulness, potency, and necessity to photography.

Showing my work from the Niger Delta to teens in the south Bronx or a village in India elicits the same response: indignation, surprise, and horror at the social, economic and environmental injustices of that story. These reactions exemplify the universal language of photography and the power of what I can achieve with my work.

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.

Biden and Obama during the DNC, published at BAGnewsNotes. © Alan Chin

With a sense of duty but not much true excitement, I had planned on traveling to Denver for the Democratic National Convention, months before. Then, in August, war broke out in the Caucuses between Russia and Georgia. I called Michael and said, I want to go to Georgia. And he said, do you have an assignment? And I said, no. And he said, what about the DNC? I said, forget about the DNC. And he said, are you going to forget about the DNC if I can “assign” you again? I said, what do you mean? He said, if I can commit to paying you, would you think about not going to Georgia on your own?

If someone gives you a good assignment, you take it, right? I’m not going to be able to pay my rent from this blog, but, a) it’s the thought that counts, the fact that he’s willing to commit; and b) every bit helps. When I thought about it, it came down to: Michael Shaw is offering me an assignment to cover the DNC.

So Michael came to Denver as well, because he’s not only the editor, he’s also the main writer and journalist for the BAGnewsNotes blog. It was the first time we worked together face-to-face, because he lives in San Diego and I’m in New York. And it was enormously productive. We were able to get decent access, because the political parties take blogging very seriously, so they gave us standard press credentials. Of course it’s funny for me because I ran into all these photographers I know, and they asked me, who are you working for? They say, Time or Newsweek or whoever, and I say, it’s a blog called BAGnewsNotes. But just gauging from their responses, many photographers had already heard of what Michael was doing, and were already reading the blog. So within the small world of photojournalism, people know and appreciate it.

They thought what we were doing was fabulous, but also that it was incredibly ironic because I’m known for being very analog in this digital age, and developing film in hotel rooms. I do all these really old-fashioned traditional things, yet here I am on the other end of it. I’m shooting black-and-white film, processing it in a bathtub, and uploading the images to a blog. I was shooting digital as well at the DNC, but the New Hampshire and Ohio primaries I photographed entirely on film.

I believe that BAGNewsNotes has real credibility. Aesthetically, we’re not there not yet, I’ll be the first to admit that. When it comes to design and how we present the images and text, it’s not perfect. But that’s growing pains, technical issues. In terms of mentally and conceptually where we want the site to go, we have a good idea and I think we’re succeeding. Sometimes I feel like I’m really sticking my neck out, because I’ve put a lot of work into this in the last couple years, especially the last year. And I do wonder if maybe that was time that I should have spent trying to get traditional assignments. But then I look at the fruits of our labor, the photography and the analysis, and I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished, on less than a shoestring. Hopefully, the more people who look at what we’re doing, and the more people we’re able to get turned onto this, the more viable it becomes.