175 - Patrick Brown
© Patrick Brown
Patrick Brown has devoted himself to documenting critical issues around the world often ignored by the mainstream media. His groundbreaking project on the illegal trade in endangered animals won a World Press Photo Award in 2004 and a multimedia award from POYi in 2008. Patrick’s book Trading to Extinction was nominated in the ten best photo documentary books of 2014 by AmericanPhoto. In 2019 he published No Place On Earth which provides an intimate portrait of the survivors of the persecution of the Myanmar’s Rohingya population in 2017.
Patrick has been the recipient of numerous awards and prizes including the 2019 FotoEvidence Book Award and two World Press Photo Awards. His work has been exhibited internationally at Centre of Photography in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo, Visa pour l’Image in France and his work is also held in private collections.
Patrick is a regular contributor to a wealth of publications, including, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, TIME, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, National Geographic and Mother Jones, and has worked with such organisations as UNICEF, UNHCR, Fortify Rights and Human Rights Watch.
On episode 175, Patrick discusses, among other things:
His peripatetic upbringing
How the surgeon that saved his young life also changed its trajectory
Finding it difficult to photograph people he knows
Moving to Thailand
The Thai/Burmese border
Why the book was such a ‘painful’ experience he nearly quit
Why you have to go to editors and not wait for them to come to you
The ethical questions of documenting horrific situations
Suffering from ‘moral injury’
Why he included images of tools in No Place On Earth
His involvement in the Alex Gibney film The Forever Prisoner
Referenced:
“I’m always asking myself on these kind of stories, these kind of issues, ‘am I doing the right thing? Am I in the right position morally?’ If you stop asking those questions I think you will fall off into the precipice. You really need to be constantly re-evaluating yourself.”
This episode of the podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club - the latest and greatest photobooks, expertly curated and delivered to you door with free shipping and no hassles.
INFORM THE MIND, INSPIRE THE SOUL
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