Richard Sharum On 600 Deaths And His New Book 'American Homicide', E132

The MOOD Podcast

Richard Sharum, acclaimed documentary photographer and author of 'American Homicide,' shares his profound journey through 600 deaths across homicide

Key takeaways

• Photography's true power lies in fostering empathy—something beyond sympathy—and can create timeless, universal connections across cultures and languages.
• Documentary photography is not just artistic expression but a moral responsibility; Sharum criticizes the industry for prioritizing commercialism over meaningful storytelling.

Main topics

• The role of empathy in documentary photography
• The psychological toll of documenting violence and death

Notable quotes

There's nothing I enjoy more than punching people in the gut.

The image is just the receipt. It's the experiences that are captured in the images that I can't easily forget and that I never will forget.

Conclusion

Richard Sharum's journey reveals the profound cost and enduring purpose of documentary

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) There's nothing I enjoy more than punching people in the gut. Speaker 3 (0:03) I've never really considered myself a photographer. I'm just an activist. I'm a visual mediator. The images remind me of experience. It's the experiences that are captured in the images that I can't easily forget and that I never will forget. Speaker 1 (0:17) Yeah, the image is just the receipt. This is Richard Shirem, documentary photographer, 22 years in the work, several books exhibited internationally. and held in permanent collections. He believed photography exists to create empathy, and he carried that belief into 200 murder scenes. The result is American Homicide, out this September. I Speaker 3 (0:41) wanted to understand why people, especially Americans, are obsessed with death until it reaches their front door. A lot of these mothers that I talked to that were victims, oh man, they loved watching movies like that. How can I put myself in the lion's den? I was told three times over 19 months no Speaker 1 (1:00) to get into a homicide unit. Speaker 3 (1:01) And I was told no the day before I was supposed to start, after it Speaker 1 (1:07) had already been agreed to. In this conversation, why he calls most of the photo industry a mirror, the night a cop planted drugs on a 16-year-old Richard, how he got into a homicide unit that said no for 19 months, what the families of murderers taught him about grief, why almost every killing he documented was impulsive, and what all of this truly cost him. Speaker 3 (1:33) Because I had access to all four squads, I was on this assembly line of death. I went to close to 200 homicides throughout the time that I was with the detectives, and at least double that in suicide. The suicides bothered me more than the homicides after a while, to be honest with you. And it really started to make me question my reality. and whether or not that was a viable alternative. What do you mean? To leaving this world. I would meet people at community neighborhood parties and I would automatically see them as dead. I still think it's worth it. I don't think that candle extinguished for me. But it damn near tried. Don't believe the bullshit when you're told by professors and other photographers who don't know anything because they haven't been out in the world and photographed. Don't believe that that photography doesn't make a difference. That's bullshit. I'm living proof that it does. The solutions to all of our problems are literally found in the spaces found between us. I believe it. Speaker 1 (2:30) But what do you want people to do with it? You don't know that secret now. Speaker 3 (2:34) What Speaker 1 (2:34) are you going to do with it? Speaker 2 (2:56) Okay, Richard, Speaker 1 (2:57) welcome to the Moo Podcast. Thank you for joining me today. Speaker 3 (3:01) Thanks for having me, Matt. Glad to be here. Speaker 1 (3:04) Yeah, let's dive in. Let's dive straight in. And I wanted to open with a question that may put you on the spot a little bit, but I think it will lead us into some of the wider talking points that I want to cover. And what I want to ask you to start off is the one thing that you perceive that we are not talking about enough as photographers today. Speaker 3 (3:29) Yeah, you're diving right in. That's a big question for me. And at the risk of sounding preachy, I'll just say, I have always had a belief that photography is the most powerful medium in which to convey, express, Speaker 1 (3:46) and initiate empathy. Speaker 3 (3:48) And you have to think about what is empathy, right? So what is empathy? Empathy is an impossible state. It's almost like... Schrodinger's cat, right? It's like if you observe it, it doesn't exist. Speaker 3 (4:00) You know, and so it's like with empathy, a lot of people get that confused with sympathy as if they're part of the same thing, but they're actually not. Sympathy is actually, you know, very possible. You can feel sympathy for something or somebody or a situation. But empathy is absolutely impossible because all we can do is an attempt at it because I can never live in your shoes. I could never live in your mind. I could never live with your experiences growing up and how you determine and interpret the world around you. Speaker 1 (4:29) All I can do is just attempt to empathize with you Speaker 3 (4:32) and based off of your communication and your stories and the things that we and how we interact with one another. So for me, photography, the invention of photography, the act of stopping time, the act of stopping light. I think we did it way too early in our evolution as a species because we didn't quite understand the power of it when we did it. It's kind of like being able to touch the sun. before we even had electricity and as a result it's become so common and so regular within our society up to this point with a lot of photos being turned into video and animation and all these things that we haven't really quite I think grasped or at least dealt with the the fact that photography is in my opinion the most powerful medium in which to express these feelings and to also be connected with other people, um, better more so than painting, uh, music, even, uh, writing and especially video, which is highly edited. Um, so photography is, you know, if done, I think correctly and ethically, um, you have one shot. And if you don't line everything up all at the right time, uh, not to mention light and composition and whatever's happening in front of you, but also your spirit and your soul and your heart. If all of those things are not connected, then it becomes easily understood by the viewer as something that is not worth paying attention to. And when that photographer does get those things correctly, when that photographer knows thyself, if you will, and has a better understanding of the world around him or her, and has a better understanding of what's important when taking a photograph, and how connected and vulnerable they have to be as an individual, right internally then it becomes almost like a form of enlightenment and that enlightenment passes through that image that experience does and it affects the viewer in a timeless fashion meaning that you can look at a photograph from the 1950s maybe of W. Eugene Smith that he photographed uh sorry in the 1940s whenever he photographed in Japan um Okinawa and all that that he was photographing during World War II and you look at an image like that you can feel that image and uh And that's just one example of many, I'm sure that you and I, as fans of photography and many of your viewers, understand what I'm talking about. When you can look at a photograph and you have a feeling of it, almost like you can understand the history of the world by just observing this one photograph and everything within it. And that's the sort of connection that is timeless, almost on a quantum level. And it affects all people everywhere, regardless of language. socioeconomic status, border, nationality, you name it, race. And so that's what I'm talking about. And I think that if that is possible, if we're talking about a medium that has those types of possibilities, I find it very frustrating as a fan of photography to witness people wasting, in my opinion, that act. The potential of that act on food, commercial items, handbags, sunglasses, photographing themselves all the time. I'm going to do 100 selfies over 100 days and make a book about it. I just think that those types of expressions using this medium, I think, is, to be frank, a waste of time and energy. And I just wish that people would reach for something a little higher when it comes to photography. Is that bold enough for you? That's Speaker 1 (8:23) a Speaker 3 (8:23) great Speaker 1 (8:23) answer. We can expand, unpack all of that for the next two hours, which I'm going to try to. A lot of what you said there, I feel, comes down to responsibility. And responsibility we have as people who want to... do something with this thing called photography or not even photography artists or craft or something that, that might be, um, expressionist or, or some form of, um, beauty that we want to put out in the world that has some kind of meaning and purpose and intent attached to it. And I feel like once you step over that line, you get into the realm of uh some kind of responsibility that one should or may have with photography now you know talk about this with with other photographers and a lot of people agree with that a lot of people don't you know very much a you know free market philosophy in terms of who who is anyone to tell us kind of what to do with our camera who's that who's anyone to tell us how to go and act with this this thing called photography so What you were talking about there for me sounds like we have a duty and we have a responsibility to do more and to actually try to make a difference in this thing that we call photography. Would I be correct in that kind of summary? Speaker 3 (9:45) Yes, but I do want to clarify that I do think obviously there's room for different forms of expression. I'm not a photography fascist. I don't think that everybody should just get in line and do as I do. I think that like I mentioned earlier, I think that it's a path of enlightenment. I think you have to find that path on your own. But I do think that they all almost end up towards the end in a sort of collected fashion. And that maybe some people reach it later, some people reach it earlier, that they start to tend to understand that there's much more value in this world, especially with a camera in your hand, whenever you tend to focus more on the window instead of the mirror. Speaker 1 (10:25) So where did we go wrong? Is it a fact of, you know, the society dumbing down as a whole and, you know, having photography being more accessible than ever with the light, with the, you know, the advent of smartphones and social media? Speaker 3 (10:40) Well, I think that, I think that we have, it's not just sense of social media. It was before that as well. I mean, you can go back and read the writings of Bill Jay, the wonderful Bill Jay, who was a teacher. and a writer about photography. He passed away, unfortunately, but he wrote a fantastic book called Occam's Razor. It was put out by Nazarelli Press. I think it should be required reading for all photographers. But no, I mean, it's always been a sort of battle between Team Mirror and Team Window. It just seems that a lot of the people that... Speaker 3 (11:17) tend to get the attention and it's usually just a flash of the pan and then it goes on to the next person, the next new name in photography, at least, that those people are very, very focused on themselves or focused on some sort of conceptual hyper fine art MFA program where the curators are taught that that's what's important and not the people that are out there in the trenches doing the work. trying to understand humanity. And there's this, I think there's this fallacy in photography that the path to understanding others is first has to come through yourself. You first have to photograph the lint in your navel in order to turn the camera around and start exploring the world. And I think it's actually the opposite. Yeah, Speaker 1 (12:10) I was Speaker 3 (12:10) going to say. tend to learn more about yourself and you become more of an individual, you become more of a confident person and more of a confident photographer, more of an individual that understands your personal conviction, whatever that may be in the world, only through the act of observing and ingratiating and becoming vulnerable to others. And I don't think that that just happens in photography. I think that happens in other things as well. I think that with photography, we're on an accelerated path. Okay, we're living a charged, a highly charged lifestyle because instead of waiting a long life and trying to understand the secret to it all, with our camera, we are essentially perpetually trying to focus the world, not just physically within a frame, but also trying to understand it. What are we placing it? Why am I here photographing this? What is my role? What am I really talking about? Am I just interested in this nice, comfortable, aesthetically pleasing image that will look good on a calendar or might make a good coffee table book one day? Or am I actually producing something that has potential beyond me throughout all time? And that's kind of the potential I think that photographers are missing out on when they don't at least strive for that. And I see so many photographers and so many students coming out of these programs. I get emails all the time. And it's like, I gave a lecture at Columbia University. I don't know if you watch, I sent you a link, but if anybody's interested, it's on my Vimeo page. Speaker 3 (13:56) I gave a lecture at Fordham University in New York City in collaboration with the Center for International Human Affairs and Columbia University. And I was excited about that lecture, not because of the fact that I was speaking at an Ivy League school, but also mostly because I had the opportunity to speak to students. Speaker 3 (14:22) I said it in my lecture and I've said it many times since then at other lectures at public universities, begging the students to please do not go out. If you're interested in something like migration, do not photograph your feet to talk about migration. You have to go out there and you have to experience it. You have to go and meet the people. Do not make assumptions. Almost all of my work is based on combating and confronting my own assumptions as an individual. not accepting something that has been told to me. I'm interested in childhood poverty and childhood homelessness. Oh, yeah, their parents are probably terrible. Their parents are probably alcoholics and drug addicts. Why else would they be sleeping in a car? Oh, never mind. I just spent two years in a homeless shelter photographing families and realized that all of them work or almost all of them work or trying to work and almost all the children go to public school. That they're there for other reasons. Well, then it becomes obvious to me that it's not because of morality or ethical issues on the parents or responsibility issues. It boils down to something as simple as, or sorry, rather complex as the fact that we have no solid health care system in this country. And also that we've had wage stagnation for over 20 years and haven't raised the minimum wage. Or that we don't have any affordable housing left in our major cities. And that's how these people are falling through the cracks and can't get out. So then I decided, okay, I'm going to do a book about that. And that's American Avenue that'll come out in 2030, hopefully. But that's how these things happen, right? Like I assumed all cops were shitty. I assumed because of my personal experience with police officers growing up in an impoverished neighborhood, an impoverished area where there was lots of crime and drug use. uh and and you know gun gun violence i grew up around that and so i had no trust for police officers and instead of just assuming right after george floyd died uh in the united states and we had this huge upheaval about law enforcement in this country even though i was on you know the team that said you know the police need a ton of reform and and i still believe that into a certain degree but i i said you know what instead of just assuming i'm gonna go photograph police and not just photograph any police doing general police work. I'm going to go photograph the most intense part of being a police officer. And that is the life of the homicide detective. Speaker 1 (16:56) And Speaker 3 (16:57) so I embedded myself with four homicide squads over an entire year, almost nonstop, you know, to see what it was like being a homicide detective. And I became one for a while. I mean, I was living like they were. And, um, um, so, I mean, it's always been a battle of team mirror versus team window. And I've always been team window knowing that all windows eventually become mirrors. And so what's the point of finding the window through the mirror first? You know what I mean? Speaker 1 (17:35) Yeah. And what you said earlier as well about knowing thyself, you can only really start to know thyself by putting yourself out there and externalizing a lot of your curiosity. I think it stems a lot from, you know, trying to figure out what you actually care about and why. And in that act of exploring what you care about, you end up knowing so much about yourself in the process anyway. And, you know, the best artist that I see doing that, are able to tell that story that they are interested in or show and document this subject matter or this topic or this narrative that they're interested in with a camera. And in the same time, it's able to perform that mirror in the process and you're able to see them in the work as it is. So I think that's easier said than done, of course. And, you know, a lot of people may be listening to this saying, well, I don't really care about any of that. I just want to use the camera as a way to express myself and I don't really need to overthink it or take it too seriously. Speaker 3 (18:46) But that's okay. I mean, like I said, I mean, that's why there's a cover band. You know what I mean? Like, I don't mean that in an insulting way, but there's people who make good money, you know, touring the country, copying Pink Floyd. But they'll never be Pink Floyd because they didn't come up with the music. And all I'm saying is, is that if here's, let me break it down to an even weirder level, if you want to do that, because I'm down. Right. So here's what, here's how I think about everything. All right. I think that all living. things and not just living but also otherwise right we are all products of this universe i think that we all live on a spectrum of consciousness whether it be a tree a ladybug a person a rock and all these things in uh exist on this spectrum of existence and we are all tied intrinsically molecular on a molecular level right I feel that there's quantum entanglement happening all the time throughout the day for all things. Because we are all just expressions of the universe and of the earth itself, right? So let's go from there. So beyond that, I think that you have individuals just like animals, right? Because we are animals. We're primates. And so I think that you have certain individuals that are, in a sense, more sensitive to things, right? You have some people that think that they can see the future. You have some people that think that they have psychic abilities. You have some people that, you know, are savants in some certain way where they can hear a thing of music and then write a whole piece, compose a whole piece based off of that. And they have these sort of sensitivities to this, if you will, collective consciousness that is happening, that has happened throughout time and will continue to happen whether we're here or not. And I think that if you are naturally drawn towards observing the world and observing others around you and in the act of trying to understand and piece it apart and break it down and quantify it, I think that you have been given a gift. And I think that you can, yes, use that gift to just photograph a plate of food. If that's all you ever want to do with it, that's up to you, right? You know, you have your path, you choose your path and you do that. But I think there's a lot of instances where a lot of photographers. are either convinced externally or have convinced themselves internally that the only way that they can make it as a photographer is if they go and photograph the things that are socially acceptable. Speaker 2 (21:25) Yeah. Speaker 3 (21:26) Right. And so what I mean by that is. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I get emails and messages from photographers asking for me to look at their portfolio. And I do, even though I charge for it on my website, I never charge these people because I remember what that's like. Yeah. And so, you know, I'm lucky enough to have work, you know, exhibited internationally. I'm lucky enough to have several books and, and, and my work collected in permanent collections. Like I'm lucky to have reached that point, but I did it for, I've been doing this for 22 years. Right. I work to that. But when people send me work and they say, and it's the same old low contrast, broken spider webs, uh, piles of sticks, um, you know, that kind of work. And, and it becomes, it just becomes so introverted. I can't tell you how to become a better photographer. How do you, you cannot ask me, how do I get access to a prison? And then show me your work and you've got piles of sticks because we're not looking at the world in the same way. So yes, you, you, or at least I'm not, you're not, you're not making those things. And the things that I deem important in this world, which is a sort of connection that we have with all other people and how we can solve the problems basically by only, you know, collapsing the spaces Speaker 2 (22:55) in between us. Speaker 3 (22:57) And that's how I've been able to do the work that I've done and get access and get close to people and photograph as if I'm not there. It's because I am there and they know that I'm there. I'm not hiding. I'm not hiding. I'm never hiding my camera. But I guess getting back to my point is that it's hard for me to kind of quantify that understanding of the world to a photographer who is so terrified of looking outside of themselves. And it's self-destructive in a way. And so that's why photography for me is so sacred. It's not just the act of putting things within a frame and taking a picture. That's the, I mean, that's 1 % of it to me. That's the end result of it to me. And I'm just trying to get other photographers who have this gift of sight, this gift of wanting to be connected to all things around them, right? And you can do that just photographing flowers in your yard, but that's a phase of that. I did that. Right? So we all go through these phases, like these phases of enlightenment, if you will. And I just want people to not get plateaued. I don't want them to get stuck because some curator is telling them, I'm not interested in you photographing your neighbors. I'm interested in you photographing yourself in the mirror for 40 days straight in a row because, hey, it would make a nice print. oh okay I need to do that as a photographer or I'm being told as a professor who never succeeded in photography who never put themselves out there I'm being told by this professor, oh, it's not ethical for you to go and photograph this community because you don't speak like them. Speaker 2 (24:36) Yeah. Speaker 3 (24:37) Right? Think about all the opportunity you're shortcutting out of that photographer's life of just becoming a more well-rounded individual, a more knowledgeable individual. Forget photography for a second. And so that's why I just don't buy that argument. I think it's a lazy approach to trying to understand the world. It's like a shortcut. It's a very cheap way. It's like saying, I'm probably going to piss people off by saying this, but it's probably like, it's like taking Ozempic instead of working out and eating better. It's like you cannot take a shortcut to learning thyself. You cannot take a shortcut to learning about the world around you. It's not enough to just get pissed off at the things happening in your world. In my opinion, if you have something like a camera, you have the ability to go and talk about those things that are pissing you off. And not only just talk about them, but also share that information with other people that are terrified. to go and learn those things. I've never really considered myself a photographer. I'm just an activist. I'm a visual mediator. I'm someone who is mediating between this group of people and this other group of people who may never meet or may never speak either through distance or through lack of desire. And that is my role as someone who is photographing and living in this world, in addition to being a human who cares about my fellow man. Does that make sense? Speaker 1 (26:11) Absolutely. Sorry to cut away from the episode for a minute, but I wanted to talk to you about something very quickly. Now, I spent a long time thinking that isolation was part of the deal when it came to photography, that if you were serious about the work. you did it alone. You'd consume enough, watch enough, read enough, and eventually it would all cohere into something meaningful. And it sometimes did, but mostly I was just alone with my doubts and no one to push back on them. What changed things for me wasn't a course or a workshop. It was a conversation with someone who was doing the same kind of work and cared about it in exactly the same way I did. The doubts didn't disappear, but they got a little bit smaller and I felt more okay with them. They got named. That's what I'm building with The Mood Insiders. It's a place where the work is taken seriously, where you can bring your questions and, of course, your half-finished ideas, and where someone will actually engage with them. We have the ad-free extended podcast episodes with bonus content. We have monthly masterclasses, Q &A sessions. and of course, the weekly book clubs and direct access to me and my team because you don't have to do this alone. So the link is in the show notes and hopefully I'll see you inside. Where did this, where did you, you know, if we were to rewind from today and how you're talking about photography today, let's rewind all the years you have lived as a photographer and adult to the moment, you know, these types of answers were conceived. What do we find in your childhood and your upbringing and the way you were introduced to photography? Speaker 3 (28:00) So going all the way back, you know, I was a child that grew up in a mixed race family. My grandmother was born in Dia de los Negres, which is a city or a town just on the other side of the U.S.-Mexico border. She was brought over the river, the Rio Grande in Texas when she was a child, became a citizen. And soon thereafter, both of her parents abandoned her. She was raised by her aunt. She dropped out of school in the third grade or was made to get out of school in the third grade. She barely knew how to read or write. So she started