Why Your Photos Are Boring - Photographer David Chancellor Explains...

The MOOD Podcast - Matt Jacob

In this episode of The MOOD Podcast, host Matt Jacob sits down with renowned documentary photographer David Chancellor to explore the profound impact

Key takeaways

• Long-term, immersive documentary work builds deeper connections and more powerful narratives than quick, superficial content.
• Photography's true power lies not in shock value but in fostering dialogue, understanding, and societal change.

Main topics

• The ethics of documentary photography
• Long-form storytelling vs. social media consumption

Notable quotes

"If you're producing images, the people go, how do we make this stop? This is terrible. Then you've won the battle."

"I think as a species, I think we suck."

Conclusion

David Chancellor's journey underscores that impactful photography demands more than technical skill—it

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) I think the reason I do it is because you can't and I can. And I didn't expect it to be as impactful and as traumatic as it is. It's worth the effort. It's worth the trauma. If we lose the ability to be able to tell the stories and understand what's going on when we're not aware of it, then we're doomed. Speaker 1 (0:21) This is David Chancellor. He has spent his career inside the moral grey areas most of us judge from a distance, photographing not what is right or wrong, but what is true, and pushing us to ask questions, promote discourse, and open education and dialogue around issues that really do ask as much from ourselves as they do the wider society. Speaker 2 (0:44) I also wasn't going to take the obvious route of condemning it. I wanted to understand it. So let me walk the fence with you and let me see what comes out the other end and let's see where we go. If you're producing images of complex and distressing stories, the people go, this needs to stop. Then you've lost the battle. If you're producing images, the people go, how do we make this stop? This is terrible. Then you've won the battle. Speaker 1 (1:14) This conversation is about whether a photograph can still change anything. It's about how to stand in the nuance and the gray without losing yourself, your relationships or your hope and what it truly costs to make work that matters. Speaker 2 (1:30) No. I think as a species, I think we suck. It also became very difficult to separate what you were seeing and what was going on and the blood and the trauma and watching things die to coming back to your two-year-old son and your wife. Is the breakup the relationship, the direct result of this work? Possibly not. Possibly it's my personality. I'm not sure I'm going to get this out. Speaker 2 (2:02) Do I find myself in a supermarket somewhere unrelated, tasting dead elephants? Yeah, I do. I have accepted the cost and I do accept the cost and I'm still working within this particular sphere and I will continue to do so. I think that makes me who I am and I would not want to change a single thing that I've done in my life. Not a single thing. Speaker 1 (2:27) David's photographs make people look and ask questions. questions. Conversations open, minds shift, and as such his work has helped end a selection of practices that are morally and ethically charged. And that is the true power of photography. David and his work are the proof. Speaker 2 (2:46) Everything we talked about in the work that we do hopefully has the ability to be able to pull people back from that precipice and understand in some cases the significance of what shouldn't be happening in other cases. The beauty of works is available to us and is out there. Are Speaker 1 (3:06) you numb to it now, seeing so much death? I'm not sure I can answer that. Speaker 1 (3:24) How often do you travel? Are you traveling a lot or you try and base yourself for longer periods of time? Yeah, Speaker 2 (3:30) I mean, Speaker 1 (3:30) I Speaker 2 (3:30) travel. Speaker 1 (3:31) Yeah, Speaker 2 (3:31) I Speaker 1 (3:31) travel both. I mean, I travel. If I'm doing stories, then I'll have to travel. But I try and spend Speaker 2 (3:38) as much time in one place as I possibly can. Somebody said to me, actually in Kenya many, many years ago, that it was somebody I was working with and it was a difficult project to work on. And they turned around and said to me, it was okay for you because you can just pack up and leave. And I thought, you're actually not wrong. You must look at me as somebody who just comes and arrives and takes and doesn't really, at that time, doesn't really give much back again. And they described it as parachuting in. You just parachute in and then you just, you know, just fuck off again. I think that there was various ways I tried to get around it. But I think it's answered your question, really. I think one of them was, you know, is committing to different landscapes and committing to be long-term on these projects, which obviously has many different byproducts of that, many different... Speaker 2 (4:47) financially it becomes much more of a footprint if you commit to be in a place for a significant amount of time. But it does mean that you have long-term relationships with the people that you work with and those people who give you or allow you access to their lives and those projects. So you were asking, do I travel a lot? I try to travel not that much, but I do, as I'm sure you're aware and we're all aware, do them. this type of documentary work, there is a large amount of time that's been troubling. And, you know, there's casualties to that, which I'm sure we'll talk about as well, which is, you know, family and relationships and everything else when you start to move around and you start to work in these very intense environments. That's what we do. There Speaker 1 (5:38) are a lot of casualties to the sacrifices that... you're willing to make for something you believe in. But, you know, just, just on the travel side, it's, it's shit to travel these days anyway. And, you know, we were talking just before we, um, before we started about the world being in chaos and, and travel is part of that. Not only is travel so expensive these days, it's just, it's just utterly miserable. There's, there's nothing enjoyable about it. So, um, Yeah, I guess that's more of an ironic take on my career as well as what you do so much of. But the spending the time in these places directly correlates to better work anyway. Not only more special connections, not only deeper forged relationships and understanding with what you're trying to capture, but better visuals, better stories. more meaningful and purposeful and deeper narratives that you're trying to tell, which is exactly kind of the intent behind all of these projects that you do, correct? Speaker 2 (6:51) Yeah, totally correct. I mean, a great way to put it. And I think it's also... There is an enormous amount of trust that is given by the people, the individuals and the organizations that you work with on these projects. Because a lot of these projects are, when they are long term, you know, work is not necessarily released immediately. And there has to be a trust that when the work is released, and if it's released slowly, then it tells the story in a, you know, in a... in an understanding, cooperative way that it's actually meant to do. So if people are letting you into their lives, then I think you have to very much have to commit and have to... have to return that faith and that honesty that is shared with you. I think photography is an incredibly powerful tool. You know, I always used to joke with my son that, you know, there were three or four emergency services and one of them should be photographer going on assignment. And it should be, maybe it should be, you know, at the time we were sort of thinking maybe it should be a pink and yellow spotted light or something on the top of the vehicle. So everyone knew there was a photographer rushing to an assignment so that they should move out of the way. because it was urgent and it was important that that person got there, which I know is a bit sort of up your ass, but you know what I mean. You get the principle. It's the fact that these stories are really, really important. And I think in many ways we are losing because we're losing the markets. Other markets are opening up, but we're losing some of the solid markets to present these long-term stories to the world. I think that's... Speaker 2 (8:39) I think not only is it a big regret, I think it's wrong. I think we should still have the ability to be able to allow people to delve into worlds and societies and issues over a longer term. And it not just be a social media, you know, you've got 10 images, 20 images to present something to someone who may look at it or may not. Talking about travel again, I got off a flight the other day and I was standing behind someone. First thing everyone does is turn their phone on. And she was literally, first thing she did was turn her phone on, checked her WhatsApp, not many messages, went straight to Instagram. And she just scrolls and she would find something she liked and she'd like it. Scroll, she'd like it. That's where a lot of our stories end up. That's not long-term. That's not a way to be long-term storytelling. It's a great tool. but there needs to be a second level of that. And there were, and there still are, the likes of National Geographic and various other magazines who did this in a fantastic way. I don't think they do it in as... Speaker 2 (9:47) comprehensive way as they did. I don't think they necessarily support those stories. Speaker 1 (9:51) I was having my hair cut the other day and two ladies were folding towels and they couldn't get through five towels without checking their phone. And this is their job, right? This is their work and they're literally attached to their phone. I mean, this is one example of billions every day. But I was, you know, I'm very observant and cognizant of this for my own health, as well as just watching society become degraded and completely dumbed down to the rot that is social media, soon to be AI and this short form content. I mean, I remember when there was no such thing as long or short form. It was just, you know. It wasn't long-form conversation. It was story, not long-term stories. It was just newspapers. It was stories over time. That was just the norm. It wasn't five seconds of a fix. And now we have this long-form... There was still... Speaker 2 (10:50) Sorry, sorry, Max. There was still long-term... I don't know how long you've been doing this. There was still long-form stories in short. You know, when I worked for lots of magazines, The Times and... etc, etc, then, you know, editors would often apologize because they would say, okay, we've only got two or three days for you to go and do this story. And we know this is potentially a long form story. And you might go do that story and that magazine would be published. In fact, that's how I ended up in Kenya working with the individual that I'm working with at the moment was a time story where I got three days to spend with him and flying on a light aircraft, just two seater aircraft with him. I said, you know, this is extraordinary. There must be, anyone looked at you over a length of time? And he said, no, no one ever has. And I went back to the Times and various other magazines, Time magazine at the time as well, and just said, look, I think there's a great story to be done here. It's an important thing to do. I can get access and I can get access for three years. Is it something you'd be interested in? And we got funding and we did it for three years. And I'm here now. That was 2013. And I'm still working on the story now. So, yeah, I agree with you. I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I'm just saying there was an opportunity to do that. I'm not sure where that opportunity would come from now. I'm not sure even what my vehicle would be. Speaker 2 (12:23) to put something, you know, maybe it would be social media, maybe it would be Smithsonian, maybe on the outside it might be National Geographic, but often unlimited to 20 images now. which is social media. Which is bizarre. Speaker 1 (12:41) And then you have to play the game. I mean, even the likes of National Geographic have to play the game if they want eyes on paper. They have to play the social media game to get the portal, get the window of eyes through to their publication. And just as us as individual photographers, artists, people with something to say, people with a voice, we almost have to tell our story in a single... Speaker 1 (13:09) like even a carousel or one image to try and get just a reaction or an engagement to then hopefully uncover this other world and hopefully uncover the rest of your work or portfolio or story, whatever you're trying, you know, music or poetry or books, whatever you're trying to tell. So you kind of have to play that game these days. But yeah, I mean, you started this conversation by saying. You wouldn't know where to start if you wouldn't know what to say to a young photographer. You wouldn't know where to start if you were starting today. And I guess, you know, I would like to ask you that question anyway, because I see it day in and day out. People are so overwhelmed with not only information, but overwhelmed with where Speaker 2 (13:54) to start, how to get out there. Speaker 1 (13:56) You know, they can learn the basics. Anyone can learn the basics. Anyone can learn photography. but how to actually cultivate their voice and where to distribute that voice and how to actually get seen. And especially if they've got stories and impactful awareness stories, activism or not, that they want to show the world that they feel so important to get out there. How do they even do that without connections and without grants and without, you know, you know, a history and a pedigree of having done this for the last. two decades or so. Speaker 2 (14:32) No, totally, totally agree. And, you know, there's a, I get a lot of requests from people. I have conversations with people and not because, you know, I'm just going to say a particularly nice person or different to anybody else. But I do think that when you get those requests, you, you know, we are, we are duty bound because of where we are. Speaker 2 (14:57) career-wise and photographically and storytelling-wise and the access that we've been given to tell these stories, to respond to those and to help wherever we can. Because sure, a conversation with, not because I'm exceptional in any way, shape or form, but because I have years behind me, a conversation with somebody like me or somebody like you who's traveling your particular route and I've traveled my particular route is incredibly important to people who have innate visual literacy. And that's the beauty for me of social media now, which it wasn't as easy to be able to read whether somebody can actually see and produce images, whether they have that in individual literacy. And if I have somebody present work to me or want to have a conversation or they're working on projects and I see a particular thing that makes me believe that they have a future in this industry, then I will. support them and move heaven and earth to help them in any way I can to get the access that they need to achieve what they want to achieve. Because I think they're still having everything we've just said. I still think there are gaps. It's just more difficult to find those gaps. But when we do and when a good story comes out and when it's told well, then it has a massive impact because it... If you can get it across the various mediums we have available to us now, including physical print, as well as social media and everything else, then the reach is enormous. So there are opportunities, but it's much more difficult than it was previously. Speaker 1 (16:38) If you were to pinpoint some of those opportunities, where do you see those opportunities? I mean, I look at the resurgence of film. I look at the print market. I don't see much buoyancy there. I still think there's a demand for things like prints. And I see the commercial assignment market. dwindling is with the budgets. Uh, I, I see generally a downturn in so many areas, but also there's that, that it's cyclical and every action has an equal opposite reaction. And that, like you said, there must be opportunities and social media, I believe is one of those opportunities, depending on what type of photography you want to be. So where, where would you see the opportunities for a, for an emerging photographer these days? Well, I think, you know, Speaker 2 (17:32) remind me if I don't answer that question at the end of this sentence, but I think that for me, the biggest advantage I have is provenance. And again, not because it's exceptional, but just for years and time spent is that you're you know here do you you refer to a mosaic an elder um some some will refer to people as the mosaic so it's somebody that they would look up to and they would seek advice from and by default when you have you know age and you've spent time in a particular environment so they know who you are um then you will get access to things and doors will open and people want to talk to you about things. People might even ask advice, you know, how do we tell our story? Somebody who's starting out, to answer your question, I hope, but somebody who started out who doesn't have that. Speaker 2 (18:33) It's incredibly, I would think it's incredibly difficult. It's incredibly difficult to get your work out or to get your work in front of the people who need to see it and can make decisions as to the future of your career and the opportunities that you might have available to you. And I know that's maybe dodging the answer or dodging the question. Speaker 2 (19:02) I honestly don't know. I think reaching out to other photographers who are prepared to share and talk and assisting other photographers, as it always has been, it's a fantastic way to do it. But the possibility of then or the... Speaker 2 (19:18) The strength of them saying or thinking, well, then this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. And this is how I'm going to, if I decide to support a family, just the basics, you know,