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

• Trading to Extinction

• Why the book was such a ‘painful’ experience he nearly quit

• No Place On Earth

• 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:

• Josef Koudelka

• James Nachtwey

• Sebastião Salgado

• Adam Ferguson

• Emphas.is

• Stuart Smith

• Dewi Lewis

• Alex Gibney

• Sir Roger Deakins

Website | Instagram

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

• Tier 1 membership: access to complete archive of past episodes, plus exclusive member-only content including a second fortnightly episode.

• Tier 2 membership: access to complete archive of past episodes.