A conversation with Documentary Photographer Richard Sharum: Part 1

In this episode of 'Meet the Streets,' host Keith interviews Richard Sharum, a documentary photographer from Texas. This part one of a two-part series covers Sharum's origins in photography, his inspiration, and his acclaimed book 'Campesino Cuba.' Sharum discusses his unique approach to capturing socially conscious stories, his photographic journey, mentorship experiences with notable figures, and shares valuable advice for aspiring photographers. Keith and Sharum delve into the impact of compelling visual narratives, the importance of authenticity, and lessons from iconic figures in photography.

00:00 Welcome to Meet the Streets: A Deep Dive with Richard Sharum
00:26 Richard Sharum: The Man Behind the Lens
01:39 The Genesis of a Documentary Photographer
03:02 From Childhood Fascination to Professional Passion
05:04 A Journey Through History and Photography
07:01 Making an Impact: Documenting Social Importance
13:10 The Power of Photography: Beyond the Lens
17:39 Eddie Adams Workshop: A Turning Point
23:14 Composing Campesino Cuba: A Labor of Love
27:23 Capturing the Essence of Cuba: Beyond Stereotypes
35:06 The Power of Photography and Personal Connection
35:33 Capturing the Essence of Cuba
35:49 Artistic Vision and Composition
36:47 The Universality of Photographic Moments
37:05 The Journey of a Photographer
38:03 The Philosophy of Photography
45:08 Technical Aspects and Challenges in Photography
47:15 Cultural Insights and Personal Reflections
57:43 The Impact of Mentorship in Photography
01:03:59 Photography as a Reflection of the Self

Thank you for listening! If you want to see the video, go to my youtube channel street photography mentor.
To see my street photography you can go to my instagram @keithmpitts or go to my website keithpitts.com. There you can also get info and sign up for my street photography workshops in Paris.

Transcript

Keith: [00:00:00] Welcome to the next episode of Meet the Streets, a podcast for documentary and street photographers. Today is part one of a two part series with Richard Sharum, a documentary photographer based out of Texas. In part one, we'll talk about how he got started, his first book, Campesino Cuba, and some recommendations to documentary photographers out there just starting out.

Make sure to come back each week and see another interview with another photographer from somewhere in the world. And now, Richard. 

So, for those of you who don't know, this is Richard Sherram, and you need to rectify that. Richard Sherram is an amazing, and again, I use the word amazing fairly regularly, but in this case it's an understatement.

This, Richard does some truly, truly socially conscious and important work, so let me have him introduce himself. So, Richard, can you please introduce yourself? Yeah, Keith my name is Richard Sherram. As you said, a photographer based out of Texas. I mostly do [00:01:00] documentary work, you know, that has some sort of socioeconomic or social injustice angle to it.

I'm more interested in getting as close as I can to people as possible, and showing that that work like that is possible. I'm an advocate for human rights. I'm an egalitarian. In the truest sense, almost militant in that regard. And and yeah, I'm, I'm here to talk today with you about all this.

That's awesome. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. And I know you're busy with with your book projects and thanks for the time. So just as a little background, like where did you get into, how did you start what made photography your your thing? Well, it's interesting. I mean, that's, you know, that's a question that kind of goes back a little bit to when I was a kid.

I mean, I was always kind of obsessed with, I was kind of always [00:02:00] obsessed with this notion of time and understanding what time is, you know, trying to understand what time is, and not to be too vague or anything, but, you know, for me, time was, was something that was. Tangible for me as a child, and I knew even as a child that I was a child, I was very conscious of the fact that the time that I was living in at that time, you know, at that moment, whenever I was thinking about it was fleeting.

I knew that it would not last forever. I knew that it would. Not be a permanent situation. And so I would do all these little things to try to trick myself into being more conscious of my time. I was obsessed with death as a child. My very first memory, was my grandfather being buried when I was three years old.

His first, that's the first thing I ever remember when they, when they handed the flag, American flag to my grandmother and she she passed out. That's, that's actually my first memory. [00:03:00] So I've always been conscious of time. And when I was, I was really young, I before I knew what photography was, I was about 5 or 6 years old.

I remember being out in the front yard and I was out there playing with my friends and stuff like that. And my, I, I discovered that as when you're outside and it's really bright that if you let your eyes kind of absorb light as much as possible, and then you close your eyes and you can do this today if you want, you know, but, you know when you go outside next time that you'll see a negative.

Image on the other side of your eyelids. So if you're looking at something dark, it'll come out bright and vice versa. So it's basically like a latent negative. And so it allowed me to, and then I would concentrate on that image and then it would slowly fade away. And then I would open my eyes again and play and do it all these other things.

And so, [00:04:00] so I remember one time, you know, my dad happened to see me in the front yard and he saw me out there just kind of standing there and blinking my eyes and not really doing anything. And he thought something was in my eyes. So he called me in to the porch and go to the porch. And he said, let me look at your eye.

And he starts looking at my eyes and I told him what I was doing. And he was like, Oh, he goes, you're taking pictures. You're taking pictures. So at the time, and I didn't really realize this cause I was only five or six, but my dad had a camera and he, he used to take pictures, but I didn't really quite equate that that's what he was doing.

And that's when he started showing me like his National Geographic magazines, his life magazines and all these other magazines where people were taking photographs that were not just advertisements. And I was able to recognize immediately that these people were photographing kind of what I was doing.

I was trying to stop time. I was trying to stop and concentrate on something. And so that's how I really kind of got into it in the very beginning. And then, you know, I didn't do [00:05:00] anything. I didn't touch a camera until I was. You know, until I went to college and then when I went to college, I actually went to school to be a history professor.

That was my original goal because I fell in love with history and I wanted to teach history in a way that was passionate and get people passionate about history because I wanted them to understand that sort of history is relevant to today. It always is. And understanding why, who we are, who we are today is because of history.

So I wanted to be one of those teachers. That lit people on fire. And, and so when I went to school, I went to college one of my, you know, required classes that I had to take, you know I was able to take an arts class. So I just picked photography, black and white film 101, you know, the very basic how to stop, you know, stop motion.

You know, that kind of thing, and it was in a dark room. It was a [00:06:00] film class. So I just became absolutely almost unhealthily obsessed with this idea. It like, it reignited all these things because thankfully, the guy who ran the photography program at the school I went to, he had all these great books.

He had a W. Gene Smith book that was autographed by W. Gene Smith and like, I would pour through all these images and I'm like, oh, wow, like, this is, This is really where it's at, because these people are photographing history. They're documenting history as it's happening. But not only that, but they're also teaching it in a way that is not loud.

I'm not, you know what I mean? Like, that's what I loved about W. Gene Smith. And he's, he's always been a big idol of mine is that big inspiration of mine is, you know, he photographed these things and the images themselves kind of said something without him having to write an essay about it. Which is why I'm not a big fan of photography like that.

And so that's when I [00:07:00] really just became obsessed with it. I dropped out of my history course and I immediately started getting work as a photographer and it was during those years. I got commissioned by the Meadows foundation here in Dallas. They're a huge philanthropic organization and they had, they commissioned me to photograph 13 nonprofits for them.

And I went in there acting like I knew exactly what I was doing. And I'm like, Hey, I want complete artistic freedom. Like, I want to shoot this the way I want to. And they're like, okay. So they let me photograph these nonprofits in the exact way that I wanted to do it. And so I was able to spend as little or as much time as I want.

It was my first real dive into photographing subjects of importance. I photographed children fighting cancer. I photographed all sorts of organizations that dealt with children. And so I was, I learned how to kind of move slowly and quietly amongst people and be able to really absorb the situation that I was in.

It was, it was [00:08:00] fundamental to me being who I am today. And it was a, it was a two year project. And, you know, they commissioned 37 images and they still have them today. You know, I all, I printed all of them in the dark room at the school. I framed them all, matted them, everything by myself. And, and so it was really fundamental to me learning that.

And so ever since then, I have sought out things that were important to me, even if I wasn't a working photographer where I was making money, you know, I cleaned swimming pools, I worked at Whole Foods I sold roofs, I did roofing. I did plumbing. I've done everything under the sun that you can think of.

And in a way, that also helped me too, because I got to experience kind of like all these different. Lives that people live that still live, you know, I worked in a call center. I worked at the hospital for two years running patients to and from [00:09:00] radiology. I worked at a video rental store, name it. So, I've done all these, like, I feel like I've lived the lives of a thousand people and I felt like that even before I became a.

Known photographer. So but then I just started it. It allowed me to kind of pick and choose what I thought was important in the world by these things that I was experiencing also tied with my history in my past. And the way I grew up, the things that I saw as a child and being around the people that I grew up, you know, it allowed me to really focus in on what I've deemed to be important in this world and not just photograph what an editor wants, or we'll just photograph what a newspaper wants.

I mean, I turned down jobs at newspapers, which sounds crazy to most young photographers now. They're like, holy shit. You got a job at Dallas morning news and you turn it down. Yeah, I mean, because I didn't want some editor saying, okay, go photograph a zoo animal. And then at 2 o'clock, I need you to go [00:10:00] photograph these 2 people shaking hands.

And then I want you to go photograph the car show. And it's like, you know, at that point, I'm not really utilizing the fire in my belly, if you will. Yeah, I can this your your, your admiration of Eugene Smith comes out and and that so the I can see. Well, we're, we're both crazy in a certain way.

I'll tell you. Yeah, stay out of Pittsburgh.

Yeah, that did him in. So that's great that you started off with the whole long term project thing, because most people don't that doesn't happen until later on. You, you got into that early and that's that's key to to. To telling like an in depth story versus just a superficial drive by where you're like, you just want to show the flashy, the spectacular, and then you move on.

So, excellent. So again, that's, that's interesting that that's where [00:11:00] you started. Well, when I just want to bring up real quick to like, it wasn't only that, but I also saw the results of that type of work. So like when I photographed children's cancer fund as part of that commission, I went to go and photograph at Children's Medical Center, and I was given complete access to operation rooms with families.

I photographed families at home, and it was, it was, you know, young Children that were battling cancer. And, you know, when, when those images came out and Children's Cancer Fund used those images to raise a whole lot of money for, you know, you have to think about it. What's the kind of marketing that most people see when it comes to, Children with cancer?

And what it is, is most people are seeing images of You know, you know, kids with balloons and they're smiling and hey, donate to, you know, whatever. That's not the reality of it. So I was in there photographing the reality [00:12:00] of, but not just the terrible things, but also these moments of like, you know, where the little brother comes into up and kisses his older brother who's in the hospital, but who's been in the hospital for 3 months, batting the leukemia.

And those kinds of moments became more universal. And so that's when I discovered that just photographing the sensationalism or just the terrible, right, which is what most photographers kind of aim for because it sells, it gets, it gets clicks these days. I kind of always understood it to be, well, no, that doesn't work because the public is apathetic about that.

I want to go around and kind of flank. The general public's ossification of apathy that they've made over this particular topic and kind of get them where they don't expect it. And that's how you get results. And so. When I saw that children's cancer fund rates, tons of money for this off based off this one week of me photographing, that's it.

Then I know I knew I was like, okay, [00:13:00] this theory of mine is actually the way to go when it comes to photographing anything. And if anything of any sort of social importance, very cool. Anyway, you need to get into, Giving your, your outlook to a whole new generation, which is going to be part of the reasons I'm doing this and I hope tons of people watch and and pay attention and not just say the photographs are beautiful, but get into the kind of the why.

The why is always important. And kind of like you were saying about most people do they go out and they show the, the, again, flashy, the spectacular thinking like in war photos, I feel what they say, I say, in essence, like blood cells and whatnot, but the stories are, the story is never really the front line.

The front line is just what everybody knows, and it sells papers, but the actual stories. Are behind the lines and how all of that is affecting something 20 miles away and yeah, and people [00:14:00] don't think about that because it's not the, it doesn't sell Hollywood movies that people are so apathetic after seeing so much of it, it's easy to just turn away.

Correct. And so for me, you know, if I'm going to invest my time. Away from my family and everything and go invest myself in something long term, I'm going to do it so that it is addressing something versus it just being about, oh, look, I can take good photos to me. That's a huge waste of an opportunity.

You're already doing the work. It's like going to the gym to work out and you're going to the gym, but you're staying on your phone the whole time. It's like, you know, you have all this equipment around you, you have all these people working out around you to give you inspiration, and yet you're going to, you know, look at your Instagram feed while you're sitting on the bench.

And for me, it's like, I'm going to go out and invest my time in something. And the fact that I have a weapon in my hand, which is a camera, the most powerful weapon human humanity has ever created, except [00:15:00] maybe the atom bomb. But other than that, you know the camera has been way more powerful when it comes to getting information across more so than video, which is literally just a collection of photographs more so than painting, more so than writing photography is, I think, still not fully understood by the human, by the human race as to what it's capable of.

And so, you know, when it comes to, document anything of any, anything of a social importance. I invest all my time into it if I'm going to do it, because I want those images to say something beyond me. I don't want it to be about me. If I could just work and never, you know, if I could just work and do lectures and stuff like that and talk to younger generations about the, you know, the role of documentary photography and how bad we need it right now.

I would just do that. Like, I wish, you know, my publisher knows this. He knows that I hate all this. You know, dealing with photo books [00:16:00] and book signings and, you know, I don't care about any of that stuff, you know, I'm, I'm here to do work and I feel like I only have a certain amount of time and I have a weapon in my hand and I'm going to go use that.

And so whenever I see somebody invest a lot of time in just photographing about themselves or something like that, for me, it's like a misallocation of resources. It feels like. It feels like I'm watching somebody brush their own hair with a handgun, and I feel like, for me, and I'm not trying to talk bad about anybody, it's just that I feel like, you know, in many instances, whether you want to think about it nationally here in the United States or globally, I feel like, in many instances, we're on this burning ship, and we can either you know, You can either help and grab a bucket of water and put the fire out before we sink, or you can take photographs of your belly button and I, and I don't really have kind of the patients.

You know, I have so much patience when it [00:17:00] comes to stuff like that, because photography is is self discovery. And some people have to kind of go through that. They have to discover that part of themselves before they start to understand that maybe photography is something larger than themselves. And I hope that maybe my words, either through here or other lectures or stuff that I've done, maybe one day will be the thing that, you know, is the catalyst that turns somebody that says, okay, I'm now I'm ready to do something beyond myself.

And that's, that's the only thing I can advocate for. So thinking for people that are watching that again aspire. To take their documentary career further. Do I recall you were in the Eddie Adams workshop? Yeah, I was in the Eddie Adams workshop, I think in 2019. Okay. Cause I just how again, briefly, if you can just like tell your experience, cause I think there's a bunch of people that probably don't know about the Eddie Adams workshop and that is available.

And if I recall, it's free, it just requires, it seems to be a great resource and you're a product of [00:18:00] it. So. Yeah, I mean, the workshop, I don't have anything negative say about it. It's a great place. It's a great group of people. They're dedicated to, you know, helping a young photojournalist out. I wasn't young at the time.

I felt like I was the old grandpa amongst a bunch of young people there. But regardless, it's, it's there to be a resource for photographers who are kind of. Kind of making their way into the world. And a lot of those photographers go on to work for great publications. My roommate at the time, he shoots a lot of stuff in the New York Times now and the guardian and stuff.

And he's great. But, you know, the experience was fantastic. I mean, they really cater to you. When you show up, they have a band playing. Everybody's like welcoming you. It's like you've made it into like photography heaven or something. And they feed you and everything. It's completely free. You just have to apply for it.

It's very difficult to get in. They also have a lot of great speakers and lecturers that [00:19:00] come and talk when I was there. Eugene Richards was there. And, you know, I've always been a big fan of his, so it was, it was a real treat to get to meet him there. And we actually ended up beginning a friendship.

Correspondence since then. But, you know, it's a great place. I recommend anybody to apply for it. You never know where it's gonna leave. You get to meet a bunch of editors. There. A lot of people there from magazines and newspapers and, you know, there's just not a lot of photography. Enthusiasts that are doing photo journalism for photojournalism documentary right now.

It's much more in vogue to do conceptualism or fine art and that work sells and you could be in galleries and you know, you could be a little rock star in that kind of part of the world. And so a lot of young photographers are kind of going in that direction versus going towards documentary photojournalism.

So, you know, I support any institution or any [00:20:00] organization, especially 1 that's been around as long as the Eddie Adams has. In promoting that sort of lifestyle instead of, you know, focusing on the self and focusing on those that are outside of you. So I'm a, I'm a huge advocate for that and a big proponent of that.

That's cool. So it's nice that you mentioned Eugene Richards. You know, I've looked at your work. Oh, pardon me. And and thought of Eugene Richards when looking at it, because of course it's yours and there's obvious differences and whatever, but you know, I, I didn't, I'm hoping that you wouldn't take offense to saying that was you, that I, I get a Eugene Richards vibe out of some of your work.

I love the man. No, I'll tell you what, it's funny. I. I'm at a weird place where, you know, I've been doing this for almost 20 years, you know, I'm not new to this and I just kind of always had my head down and I always worked. I didn't care about who noticed me or anything like that. It was just me kind of working on myself and working on this idea of who I wanted to [00:21:00] be as a photographer all these years.

And it wasn't until composing came out in 20, 20, sorry, 2021. That it, my career just completely changed and, you know, started to become this other thing and I hear all the time comparisons to W. Gene Smith. I mean, bill Shapiro, the guy that he's the former editor in chief of life magazine have brought up W.

Gene Smith about me at a podcast interview that he did and, and. You know, part of me, my heart melts when I hear that. And then the other part of me, I'm terrified of that, you know, and, and when it comes to Eugene Richards, my work gets brought up or he gets brought up talking about my work all the time.

And who knows what he thinks about that? I feel sorry for him, but but I'm humbled by that. I'm very, in a way, I'm proud of that because I feel like I'm doing something right, because I love the work of Eugene Richards and W. Eugene [00:22:00] Smith. And some of these other photographers that I've been compared with.

But in no way, shape or form, do I think I'm as good as them? And, you know, I'm just trying to make a mark on the world and, and, you know, have something that lasts beyond me after I'm gone. So, you know, I, you know, that that's really all I can say about thank you is what I'm trying to say. My pleasure.

The again, the humility is is endearing. You just do your work others like Bill Shapiro, Bill Shapiro is actually the reason that I came across your work. I was one day, it's rare that I can say something overly positive about Instagram, but I happened to look at his Friday feed came across and yeah, yeah, meet the photographer Friday.

Yeah, meet the photographer. And he, he mentioned you and I, so I read it and like, oh, let me see who this guy is. And I was blown away. And from that moment on, I've been following [00:23:00] you. So. Thanks to Bill Shapiro, my well, I hope that at some point I might have come across your work elsewhere, but it's, I remember, it's one of those.

odd things where I actually remember exactly how I ran across you, however many years ago that was. But let's talk about and this is going to come up again when we talk about Campesino, what was it? Campesino Cuba was your first book, which again is right now, I think it's currently your only published book, which is going to be remedied and we're going to get to see more of your work.

It's on my bookshelf right over there, signed by you. Thank you very much. And, Yeah. So what was a little bit, I'm going to get into the pictures in two seconds, but like a little background on what led you to Cuba? Yeah. So, you know, once again, I mean, I had been shooting long term project way before Cuba, but I didn't feel like I was ready.

to kind of reach this other stage of [00:24:00] public knowledge about my work. You know, I was very kind of insecure about working on who I was as a photographer before I made my first book. And I only say that because You know, I do mentoring for young photographers sometimes, and they're always so anxious to put a book.

Right. They think that, you know, that I want to put a book out, you know, and it's like, I worked on that for God, 17, 16 years before I before I wanted to put a book out because I didn't think I was ready. So I just put I'll just put that out there for any young photographers watching. But so for Camposino, you know, once again, it was about these larger American issues.

I'm an American photographer. I'm interested in American issues because we have a lot of them. And I became interested in Cuba from way back because where I grew up, which is Corpus Christi, Texas, it's on the Gulf of Mexico. There's a huge naval base there. And so [00:25:00] my entire life growing up, I heard about the Cuban Missile Crisis and about how one of the missiles in Cuba, one of the Russian warheads, was aimed at Corpus Christi because of the huge naval base there.

If something were to have pop off between Cuba and the United States at that time, there most certainly would have been ships that have left Corpus for the war. So, You know, I was told this as a child over and over again. Well, I grew up in a very big, wonderful, beautiful family. My grandmother was from Mexico.

She was from Vietas negatives. She had 10 children with my grandfather and they lived in this very modest wooden house that he built. By himself. And all the children grew up together. They, none of them split off from the family and left. So when I grew up as a child, we would go to my grandma's house every Sunday and all the cousins would be playing in the backyard and all the, the, [00:26:00] brothers and sisters, my dad and his brothers and sisters were all very, very close and very joyful, happy people, no drinking, no drugs, like there was no violence.

Like it was just a absolutely. Idyllic family to grow up in. And so when I heard these things as a child, I thought, well, had that happened in 1963, my father would have been wiped out at the age of 14. All of his family would have been wiped out. I wouldn't have been born. And so I grew up not with a distaste or a hate for Cubans, but with just a general disdain for, you know, who are these people?

You know, who, who are these people? And then as I got older and I became an adult and photographer, I started You know, beyond that, like, okay, obviously there's another side to this. What does that look like? Who are these people? Do they hate us? We don't know anything about them because of this political embargo we've had for over 60 years.

So I looked like most people do at books about Cuba and most photography books coming out of Cuba [00:27:00] were all based. And Havana. So they were all based in the same area. They're all based on the same stereotypes, classic cars, colorful buildings, ballet dancers in Havana, that kind of thing. And so I thought, well, obviously Cuba is more than Havana.

That's like doing a book on the United States and just doing a book on New York all the time. So I decided at that point, and this was in 2016 right after Obama opened up the diplomatic relations to Cuba when they opened up other airports besides Havana, I decided to say, I'm just going to go to Cuba and I'm going to go see who these people are.

And so I went out there and I was out there for almost 4 years and, and I traveled all over eastern part of Cuba and western part of Cuba. And that's when, over time, over the, as the project was progressing, because I went there to [00:28:00] go meet. The, the compositional people, but not knowing they were called compositional people, I just wanted to go see the rural people of Cuba.

And when I did that, I started to kind of realize this bigger picture of things, because I was, I was being treated like a son, wherever I went. It was absolutely the most hospitable place I've ever been to in the world. And I've been photographed on five continents and no matter where I went, no matter what village I went to, especially in the mountains, in the sea, at a Meister on the, on the Eastern side of the Island, I would go to these.

Villages and they would just welcome me. It was as it was as if I had come from there. That's how it was. I mean, it was, it's hard to quantify and explain to people who aren't used to that kind of thing here in the United States, that level of hospitality and, you know, and, and then I would come back to that same village a year later.

And people would just, I mean, they would come out in droves. They would throw a party because I had returned. [00:29:00] And it was just something as simple as the interaction between them and me had nothing to do with my camera, you know? And so I was given complete freedom to photograph these people. And they, they, instead of seeing me as a, as a stranger from a hostile land with a camera, they saw me as someone who they could learn from about my own country and they could teach their country about.

And so it became this kind of cross pollination of knowledge and culture and information and stories and. All these things. And I thought, man, if I could only show what it's like this, it's, it's almost like paradise here if I can only show what that's like. Photographically, then, then I can, then I'll do the good job.

So I wanted to put out a project. I wanted to, that's when I decided, okay, I'm going to put out a book finally. And, and I wanted to put out a book, even though it's a compositing of Cuba, it's actually for Americans. I wanted Americans to see a side of Cuba that they have [00:30:00] never seen. And that's essentially the comment I get all the time.

I still get messages today about that book. And, you know, people say, I, you know, I didn't know Cuba looked like that. I thought it was all, you know, terrible streets, everybody hungry and that kind of thing. And no, I mean 85 percent of the people in Cuba are accomplices. It's rural, most of the country is rural.

So, if 85 percent of the population is like this. And 15 percent is in the cities in lines for food. What's the real story in Cuba? So, you know, who are the real people? And so, you know, I so yeah, I mean, that's, that's why I put out the work and that's how it started and it's a wonderful part of my life and I miss those people dearly.

Let me, get some photographs up here. To let people know what we're talking about. I'm going to start off with this first slide again, from Bill Shapiro, where I've got the highlighted part where it says his 2021 book, Composita Cuba is flat out, [00:31:00] extraordinary, visually stunning, and clearly made by a man whose heart beats with empathy.

So the I don't think I've ever even seen that. Yeah, that was this is what led me to find out who you were. I, I, I decided before was who we we started this day to look this up. I was able to scour his his page. This is back in my 21 something. I had to go way back. It turns out actually the easiest way is Google.

I just said bill Shapiro, Richard Sherm, and bam, this is the first thing that popped up technology, right? Yeah. Otherwise I would still be looking for that. So let me shut up and let's go. Maybe you can talk about this. Yeah, you know, this is an example of kind of what I was talking about, right, like instead of just photographing the sensationalist images of classic cars and, you know, old men playing guitars and stuff, you know, that we always see in Cuba I wanted to see how [00:32:00] their life parallels everyone else's life.

And then if you really, if you kind of think about all my work in that regard, whether it's homicide or Spina Americana. Like, what are these moments where, that they translate universally beyond border, beyond language, beyond socioeconomic status, beyond power, what are these moments that we can all relate to, you know, no matter where you live or what time you live, you know, I'm trying to think about images that are humanly timeless.

That, you know, other than a bus, as you see here, these sorts of moments where things just kind of line up has happened as long as we've had time and, you know, it's just about being conscious of the time that I'm in at the moment and trying to capitalize on what time gives me. So this is a, this [00:33:00] image is a good example of that.

Well, if I interest, again, aside from just the the composition and the white subject, it's interesting. You got the Apple logo on like, that was everywhere in Cuba. It was like a, it was like a fashion statement, but it was on taxis. It was on cars. It was on windows and it was just like a, it was just like a, you know, something to do, I guess, if you're cool, but this was a, this was a bus, you know, that took people from one city to the next.

This isn't a bus station in Bayamo. What can we say about this? Yeah. So this is in a wonderful, beautiful place called the Valley of silence. And it's just outside of in Dallas and the Western part of Cuba. And this is kind of exactly what I'm talking about. Also, right? Like the, you know, what I was waiting for time to give me something and, you know, [00:34:00] that's just, that's just the training of the photographer, I think, and being conscious of the time and the space that you're in and shapes.

And the light and I was waiting for things to China kind of just really take place across, across the frame. That for me translated exactly how I felt in that moment. It was, I mean, it was, it was a beautiful landscape and the way the water curves around. And ends at the the animals, and then you have the boy running across the field and the cow in the foreground.

I mean, that to me, that's photography 101 and I'm just trying to understand how these things are all playing in front of me and how I can translate how I feel, because it's when I feel a certain way that prompts me to hit the shutter. I want that feeling to be conveyed accurately. And like I said, [00:35:00] even beyond, you know, that's the, I equate it to almost like, you know, when you read a book that was written 2000 years ago.

Yeah. Right? You're reading the words directly out of someone's mind about how they feel about something, and that's an amazing experience to know that that person's been gone for 2, 000 years, and they can still convey exactly how they feel about something, and you can feel it. And for me, a photograph has that same power, and I want this image to convey how I felt in this moment 100 years from now after I'm gone.

And you know, Cuba is a very, very beautiful place and full of beautiful people. And to me, that was more important of the message of getting out about why I was there versus just taking a pretty photograph. Your use of light and geometry I mean, your, your compositions like Spot on. There was like Salgado's work.

Again, [00:36:00] it's gorgeous to look at regardless of the subject matter, which I think was one of the, it's an interesting thing when something can be so beautiful that you almost forget the tragedy that's behind this, the the image. And this isn't necessarily tragic. This is just a, a people going and doing their thing, but A lot of your work is just so, like, beautifully printed and well done, beautifully done, like, you can just see hanging it.

Again, it does multiple things well. It's not as, well put together, should I say. It seems to be more askew, more raw. Yours are, again, for lack of a better word, art, at the same time that it's telling a deep story. Well, I mean, I think what it is is all I'm doing and I don't think I, I don't think what I do is anything special in this regard.

I think that anybody is capable of doing this. And I guess that's kind of what I'm advocating for just by [00:37:00] doing this kind of work is saying that these moments exist in real time all the time. Right when I looked at when I was growing up or when I was, you know, starting photography and I would pour through these books of like, I said, to Eugene Smith and some of these other magnum photographers, Elliot Erwitt and Henry Cartier for song and all these big names that we know, especially.

So God is a good example. I saw how they had the ability to be hyper conscious of the time and the space surrounding them and they, they were able to interpret it. What was happening around them in a way that was almost magical. And I wanted to do that. So it became really this mission to be hyper conscious of what is around me and to understand how these things are moving together or moving against one another.

And what does that mean once you put that within a frame? And so, [00:38:00] obviously, you have motion here. You have lots of things happening. And for me, a good photograph. And this is why I try to photograph. I don't always accomplish this. Of course, I tried to, but for me, a great photograph is one that, has several things working for it.

And it doesn't rely on one element within the photograph. So, like a good song, when you go back and listen to it, you hear something different. And you're like, Oh, I didn't, I didn't notice the high hat before, or I didn't notice that guitar lick before. Oh, I love the way he comes in with that kick drum.

Like, that's the kind of thing that I think visually needs to happen with photography. And so I aim for that. I want someone to look at this image and then come back to it a month later and say, oh, I didn't notice that thing in the background, or I didn't notice, you know, This or that, you know, to me, that makes a good photograph.

And so whenever I'm looking at a situation and I see these things kind of happening all at once, [00:39:00] you know that's the practice. And that's what I was talking about earlier. Is that as a photographer, I wanted to kind of work on those things before I made my public debut. If you will, I wanted to be able to.

Say that I was confident enough in what I was doing in order to put that work out into the world because once you put that work out there, guess what, Keith, it doesn't belong to you anymore. You know what I mean? Like this photograph, like this book, the book on your shelf belongs to you. You look at that work and you feel about it a certain way.

It means something to you. That means something individually. That's not going to mean the same thing to someone else who looks at that book. They may look at this book and say, all these photos are boring as shit, and they don't, they won't have that same effect. Right? So once you put that work out there into the world, it doesn't belong to you anymore.

You don't have no idea how it's going to affect other people. You can hope. That it's going to affect them a certain way, but you have no [00:40:00] idea. So, for me, I'm just trying to interpret, like I said with the other image, how I felt in this moment. And the lines, everything, all the, all the competing lines, and the movement, and the action, and everything working together.

It was all so Orchestral. And I wanted to try to feel like capture what that, what that felt like, you know, for you, that worked for other people, you know, the the beauty of. Again, just, visuals and just everything. Two people get the same thing and come up with two completely different ideas of it.

I got mentioned to somebody the other day, the first time, first time I saw Gary Winogrand's work. I still remember. I didn't know who he was. I was, I had, I was at my first studio in New York. And this kid who had a more of a fine art kid. Down [00:41:00] the hall, he came in, he's carrying this brand new Gary Wintergren book, and he wants to show me, and I go, let me see.

I had no idea what I was looking at. I was looking at this thing going, being polite, going like, smiling, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool. And I could not figure out why he was so excited about this book. I just didn't get the work. And now I look, I look back at it and like, I'm in awe of what a grant, like I, there's a, museum here right now.

That's that has some of his work in it. And I just standing in front of it, some pictures that I recognize, I'm like, I, this is amazing to me that I'm this close to this photograph that just inspires me almost 30 years ago, 20 and change years ago. I looked at it and I completely different thought, nothing.

I'm like, I just didn't get it at all. So, well, because you hadn't developed. That part of yourself yet. So I have a similar story with Mary Ellen Mark. So in the dark room that I was working in at school, they had a poster of one of her [00:42:00] photographs and it was the, the young girl that's in a wedding. I think she'd photograph I forgot what the project was, but she photographed like in West Virginia or Kentucky, somewhere very rural and poor.

And it was a young girl who was like 14 or 15 that was wearing. Like a wedding thing or she's wearing normal clothes, but she's just like trying on this wedding thing. The, I forgot what it's called, but you know, the brides where, and she's standing, it's just a, it's just a portrait of her outside. And I thought, man, why is this even in here?

Like, this is a kind of a boring photograph. And this is what I was like all into Henry Cartier Bresson's like timing of everything. His decisive moment. I'm like, what a bore. Boring photograph and then as I became older and I became a documentary photographer and I started to do a little bit of portraiture, which, by the way, I never did portraiture until compass.

You know, I cause I was terrified of it, but once I started to kind of do that and, you know, now I look at Mary Ellen's Mark's work and I'm like, man, like I can see where I was [00:43:00] influenced by this and I wouldn't wasn't even conscious of it because I photograph. Portraiture in a lot of the same ways as her and August Sander and some of these other photographers that in the past I didn't care about, but now I understand them.

And so, you know what I mean? And so it's kind of one of those things. I will say though, for the record, and I don't mean to piss you off or disappoint you or anybody else out there. I will never be a William Eggleston fan. I've tried. It's like eating olives. I've eaten olives probably 30 times to try and like them.

I will never like olives and I will never see the value in William Eggleston's work. I just want to make that public. So. Again, I 50 50 split. I adore olives. I I haven't. Evolved into the point where I actually understand Eggleston's work, like I, it's like, I just, I like to think I evolved beyond Eggleston.

That's why I don't like him. [00:44:00] Yeah, I'm not going to throw anybody into the bus. I'm just going to go. I haven't landed in the spot yet where I can appreciate Eggleston's work. I'll just leave it at that. So picking coffee is that yeah. Coffee beans. And that's in the Seattle Meister mountains. I mean, it was just absolutely gorgeous.

I went up with them in the morning. It was, it was actually really dangerous because the hillside was very steep and always wet because it was in the mountains. So it was always precipitous and there would be these low hanging clouds that we would literally, literally walk through to get to the area of where the coffee beans were and growing on the mountainside.

And if you slipped and fell, which I did with my camera, my hand holding it up like this as I was sliding down about 30 yards. Mud all over my back and everything. They're all laughing at me. But it happens and it happens to them too. So, [00:45:00] you know, I've, I got a lot of respect for them after that, but.

Because I just, I just climbed back up and kept working. But but yeah, that's what he's doing. Getting caught. This is, so what were you shooting with that? You're obviously that's, you're, you're not holding up a four or five over your head or anything like that. What do you what are you using? No, I'll tell you what I don't have it here next to me, but, when Sony released the RX one R.

It was, it was the RX one R one, the first version of it, which is what these images were taken with 42 megapixels, small mirrorless, full frame camera, fixed 35 millimeter lens. So you couldn't replace it with anything. And it was just really small. It has a, it has a leaf shutter. So it was extremely quiet and it's, it's literally the most perfect camera for a documentary photojournalist ever made.

And then Sony stopped making it. So they made, they put out another version of it that. Had better autofocus and better battery life, and it was the RX [00:46:00] one or two. So I bought that and that's been out now for maybe seven or eight years or something like that, or no, not even that long. Yeah, it must've been seven or eight years.

Cause I got it, 2017 and and I still have it. So I've shot the majority of, and on top of that, I have, a seven or three. Sony sent me an A7R IV and it crapped out on me in South Dakota, so I sent it back, but the A7R III is what I use with a 28mm lens on it, but most of the stuff that I shoot that you see for all of the Campesino and Homicide and Spina Americana and American Avenue are all shot with the RX1R II, that's still the same camera that I shot, Campesino with and It's the same way.

It hasn't crapped out on me and I'm going to be really sad when it does because they don't make it anymore. They when, so when it rains, they have to stop picking coffee because of the [00:47:00] danger on the hillside. So we all came down from the mountain this day and he's just, you know, watching the rain.

Okay. Obviously something completely different. Yeah, yeah. So this is outside of Hibata, which is in the northeast coast of Cuba. And these guys were actually illegally fishing. It's illegal to fish with a net in Cuba. But they live off of the sea. I mean, these people that live off of the land and they live off the sea, they're not.

You know, they're catching no fish for essentially there was, I think, eight guys and they're, they're catching no fish for they're, they're all their families and their friends. So they're not like selling fish or anything like that. It's not for capital reasons which is mainly why it is illegal because Cuba doesn't want these large fishing companies to come in and get all the fish.

So but these guys would put out a net for 2 days. [00:48:00] And then bring it in and then they would essentially have a party on the side of the beach, which, you know, I was a part of. And they're cooking fish right there, fresh off the ocean and drinking homemade wine, homemade rum. It was wonderful.

That's quite good versus having some huge ship just dragging the bottom and pulling up sharks, dolphins, whales, and, and any other thing that's going on indiscriminately. So this is understandable. This is very reminiscent of my childhood. You know, I, I grew up in a poor environment. I grew up in a, you know, both my parents were working working class, never went to college.

And so I grew up not knowing what a clothes dryer or a dishwasher, dishwashing machine even looked like much less how to use one until I was 18 when I moved to Dallas and I was in an apartment that had both of those things. So when I grew up, you [00:49:00] know, when we, our house was so small, our washing machine was right next to the, stove.

So we would wash clothes and then my sister and I, every weekend we'd wash sheets and clothes. And it was my sister and I was responsibility to take those outside and hang them on the line. And so, you know, this is one of those moments where, I mean, this could have been from my childhood right here. You know,

yeah, so this is on the, this isn't a river and this is actually a young man and he he's, he's, he's gone under the water under the shelf of rock to see if there's fish hiding under there and there was. So he came back up, grabbed a spear. Went on back under the shelf and stabbed one and got his dinner that night.

That's resourceful. Imagine, imagine what's your average American having to say, okay, if you want to eat today, we said, you've got to go look, I swim under that rock or, and then come back, grab a spear and get [00:50:00] it. That's not going to happen. I mean, I saw some of the most amazing things and it really changed my perception of what is possible in this world.

Right. And. You know, I saw I remember I went with one gentleman and he was his whole thing is he would go into, into the mountains and essentially find wild honey and subdue the bees and he would cut the tree down if he had to open up the honeycomb, squeeze it into a bucket all without any protection, by the way.

And then ride his bicycle back to the village with bees chasing him and give honey to the village. Right. And so he would have honey for the, for the other people in the village. Well, I saw this man when he pulled up, he literally just him his bicycle and a machete and in a lighter in his pocket.

And he proceeded to cut down these termite mines and then light them on fire at the end of his machete. And then he [00:51:00] smoked out the bees. Oh, and he had his axe. And then he cut down like some branches and some vine. And then he made a ladder. This man probably weighed about 200 pounds. It's all muscle.

And he made a ladder that was strong enough to hold him in about five minutes and climbed up this tree, cut it down and got to the honeycomb that day. You know, all in a matter of about an hour and, you know, so yeah, absolutely. Beautiful. This is cool. Yeah, it's a school and this is also in the mountains.

And you know, their school environment is absolutely wonderful. Their community all comes out for school events. They all bring food. This day, this photograph is actually taking on International Women's Day. They're, they're very big into celebrating the equality of women in Cuba, something that we still haven't really done here in the United States.

It's actually written into their, [00:52:00] it's been written into their constitution since 1958 that women are to have equal pay and equal status in society something we still haven't done in this country. And so this is on International Women's Day or National Women's Day. And so this is right after every morning they all meet, they say their pledge of allegiance to Cuba and they sing songs and then they break, they break off into their individual classrooms, which is what this moment is right here.

And then, you know, on this day, the whole neighborhood, the whole community, whole village brought food. They sang music celebrating women in Cuban history. All the lessons were about women in Cuban history that day. And yeah, it was, you know, once again, just a beautiful place.

Interesting situation where you had, one of the reasons why, you know, I would find myself getting really pissed [00:53:00] off in Cuba was because I would start to see the effects of the political. Embargo that the United States has against Cuba, because a lot of people don't realize that it's not just a political embargo from the United States to Cuba, but it's also all of U.

S. allies in Latin America, which is the vast majority of. Everybody, right? Everybody wants to be on America's side. So the only country at this time that was providing supplies to Cuba was China through the Panama canal, which you can understand how long that takes. And then you also had Venezuela that was basically crumbling.

Their economy was crumbling and everything like that. All the sanctions that were out against Venezuela at the time, it was going into chaos. So they were, their supplies were getting less and less from Venezuela. So their medicine. was extremely hard to get, especially in these rural areas. So what you're witnessing right here, this is a kind of like a country [00:54:00] nurse, a lady that goes all over the villages in the mountains.

She's the only nurse in the whole region, and then she she goes and does visits on people. And so this gentleman that she is giving a shot to, this is actually the last flu vaccine in the entire region. And so I went with her that day as she made her rounds, and this was the last visit of the day.

Because it was the farthest. So we climbed up about a thousand feet up the side of a hillside where this man lived. She changed out his catheter, who, which, he had had the same catheter for a month, because that was the last time she was able to go and change it. So he had a full, it was so full, it was on the ground, this huge catheter, this bag, and it was absolutely full of urine.

If you can imagine a month's worth of urine. I can't imagine. He was two, he was like 92 years old. And and so she did this whole thing to give him the last flu vaccine. And so that's what this moment, that's what [00:55:00] this moment is. That's insane. And these are just young men working in the, in the rice fields.

I'm sorry, in the sugar cane. Okay, cool. Beautiful. The the hawk in the like over the mountain, lemme put that right there. Yeah, you know, once again, it's just about rhythm, right? It's about feeling like this, this orchestra was playing out in front of me with the light coming down and the bird and everything and I was just waiting for it to get into the right position.

I don't, because I started photography shooting film, I didn't, I didn't have the, convenience of just photographing willy nilly like we, you know, like we do with digital or like a lot of these students that are learning photography with digital, you know, you can just erase the image or, you know, photograph, hold your button down and just pick out the best one.

And I think that's terrible that kids are [00:56:00] learning like that, because I grew up on film and I was broke in college. And so I would buy bulk tri X film and make my own rolls. And then, you know, I would go and photograph something. And that was that that film you have is that's it. That's the only exposures you have.

So you're not gonna waste. You know, you get, you know, I got I got pretty good at waiting for something to happen in front of me before I pulled the trigger. And, you know, so I wanted to photograph what the Seattle Meister looked like and what it felt like to give a kind of sense of place of where these people live and, I mean, you look at it, it's it's beautiful.

It's like paradise. And so. It makes me think of like a National Geographic, one of the things you have to, it's in the title. It's like you, you might be photographing it up close, but at some point you have to show the geography and show, give a sense, an [00:57:00] overall view of where what you're showing is happening.

So beautifully done. Yeah. And I waited, I mean, I came back to this spot three days in a row. It's beautiful. And I waited and I waited and waited, and I took maybe a total of five photographs in three days for this. I wanted this photograph and, and this was the last day that I was going to go because I was like, I'll just, I'll just find something else and I waited and waited.

And then as this, you know, son kind of broke through those clouds, it all just kind of happened. So so this is the last one we have for Composino. I'll just keep this up here, but I shouldn't be able to stop it. And go back to this. So, in the editing, I think I recall you writing something a while back that you have obviously been doing Composino for a while, and you Presented and there was some editor gave you some great advice [00:58:00] about how to proceed like that might there might have been something missing something or like a way to go about that.

I think I recall it but again it doesn't sound good coming from me so if you could throw that out there for people that want to know how to actually do this. Yeah so Joan Lifton is the editor you're speaking of and and you know I miss her sorely she passed away last year and no almost two years ago now.

And she was just a fantastic human being. She was 80 something years old when I met her, I think she was 82 and she was, you know, like four foot 11 reminded me of my grandmother. That's what my grandmother was very small, but just had, you know, quick, the quickest wit you could imagine. Super smart, super funny.

She was actually the wife of Charles Harbutt, who was a Magnum photographer. And he was the president of Magnum for many years. And Joan Lifton worked at Magnum. She was in [00:59:00] charge of their archives. So, you know, if you were a publication and you needed a photo of dogs, you know, she would go through the archive and say, okay, here's a photo from Elliot Irwin of dogs, and there you go.

And so she was kind of in charge of that. She ended up becoming a photographer on her own. She put out three books with Damiani, great photographer, herself, great writer, and, just a, no nonsense, no bullshit, kind of a woman. And the first time I met her was through meeting Mary Virginia Swanson, who is a kind of a consultant for photographers here in the United States.

Knows everybody. And she was a longtime friend of Joan's. And so she introduced me to Joan and Joan, wanted to meet me and was interested in possibly editing the Campesino work. At this point, I had already been shooting and come in Cuba for almost two years and kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier is that for a while in Cuba, I was kind of photographing what [01:00:00] I thought people wanted to see in Cuba, which was like, you know, people working in fields and landscapes and like, beautiful, you know, this greenery and everything, even though it's in black and white.

Like I didn't really have a grasp on what exactly I was trying to do. And I remember I was so nervous about meeting Joan. I flew out to Arizona because Joan was doing a workshop there. Excuse me. And I brought my 50. She goes, bring your 50 best photographs. So I bring my 50 best photographs from the last two years.

I go out there to lay them on the table. She's very quietly. She's like, like Yoda. That's what she looked like going around the tables. And then she pulled one out, walked a little bit, pulled another one out, and ended up with about five photographs. And she comes to me and she says, Those are all pretty and fine and they would make a great calendar.

She's like, but these are you. [01:01:00] She goes, there's something in these five that are not in the other ones. And so we ended up becoming really close friends. She helped me edit the work all the way until it got to Gost and then Stu Smith at Gost and I took over. But for the next two years after that, you know, she, she basically asked some very basic questions, but for some reason hadn't dawned on me at the time.

And she said, you know, you have all these beautiful photographs of men working and men, you know, being men. And she, he goes, but, but she goes, but where are their children? Where, where are the women? You talk about women having equal rights there. Where are they? I don't see them in your photographs or they're barely in your photographs.

You know, do these men party after they come back from the fields? Do they make love to their wives? Do the children play outside? Well, of course they do. Well, why don't you have images of that? I don't know. And I didn't really kind of really thought of that. You know, I, I discovered [01:02:00] that I had gone out there with this kind of predetermined idea.

Of what I wanted to do. And that's when I learned that that is the absolutely wrong way to go about any long term work. And so that was fundamental in me changing. But when I went back out to Cuba for the next two years, I felt completely free, completely free, because I didn't realize I wasn't conscious of the fact that before that I was taking images that I thought other people might like.

All right. Once I went back out there, I just started photographing for me. I started translating for me. And so now in the book, the actual book that got published, I'd say about 85 percent of those images come from those last two years. So that's the kind of impact that she had on me after that. And, you know, when she said, you need to stop photographing for everyone else and start photographing for yourself and how you feel, it should be about your journey and about how you, you are [01:03:00] feeling and how you're synchronized with the environment around you.

And that is absolutely the truth. And I had, I had moments of that in my previous projects when I was learning and, you know, at the very beginning of my career. But, you know, I go back and look at that stuff when I photographed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I have these moments where I'm able to recognize now.

Oh, yeah, this is just me being me. And then this is me photographing what I think people want to see and I'm able to kind of designate those two. I can see them clear as day now of who I am. And now when I do work, it's all me. I don't give a rat's ass what people think about whether something's pretty or whether it's, you know, I, you know, one of the best compliments I got was from a art person here in Dallas.

She's really big in the art scene. I won't say her name, but she said, you know, Richard, I love your work, but it's not pretty enough. And I was like, that's a wonderful statement. That's a wonderful statement. [01:04:00] So that's again, that's goal right there is for, again, people that want to go out and document and just again, for almost any photographer, like unless your job is to go your commercial photographer and you're trying to sell, you makeup, you gotta make yourself happy again, because then it's going to, it'll reflect in the work more truly, honestly, because if you're trying, if you're trying to just do what you think other people want, it's kind of a moving target.

And you're, you have no idea exactly where that actually needs to be. You're not being true to yourself. Therefore, what's good. I'm not sure that you even appreciate your own work after a certain point. Absolutely. It is, it's a farce and I, and I, and I feel like I can recognize that sometimes when I see it and other photography, I'm like, oh, this is, you know, this has given me what it thinks I want to see.

And I want to see who the photographer is. And, you know, Bill [01:05:00] Shapiro and I had a good conversation about this a while back for an interview that he did of mine. And, you know, I was talking about how he's like, how do you come up with You know, these ideas or whatever wants you, right? He goes, are you determining all that?

You know, are you doing tons of research before you go and do something? I said, no, I said, because when I go out to a particular subject or an area like in Spina, man, it's like jazz. I'm riffing, right? It could be something where I'm drawn to the way of mailbox looks or the way a tree looks or the way the clouds are under over a cornfield.

Or the, maybe I see somebody raking leaves in their front yard and they've got a really interesting face. So I'll pull over and talk to them and take their portrait. Like I'm riffing off the environment and that is me expressing myself through that environment and then it coming back to me in a physical manifestation as a photograph.

So that photograph is [01:06:00] merely a receipt. Of my experience, and that's the way I think about it. And so if that's not a true receipt, then that's a waste of my time. That's a waste of the subject's time, even if it's a mailbox. And so that's me cheating and not being conscious of the time that I'm that I've been given.

It's a privilege for me to travel and photograph and meet people and fall in love with people and get to know them and become their friends. And I mean, I have friends all over the world now doing this for almost 20 years. And so, you know, once again, and we were talking about that earlier, right? Like, what are you going to use that time for?

Are you going to use it to just, you know, do things that are, you know, and it sounds kind of counteractive to what I just said. As far as doing things for yourself, you have to be conscious of what you're doing because [01:07:00] it has to translate to public, to the, to public knowledge and to public discourse.

So, yes, you are photographing for yourself in that regard, but you're also photographing in the mind of how does this fit into a larger conversation? How does this fit into a larger understanding? And that gets into that, what we were talking about earlier, that strategy of getting around public apathy.

For me, it's always been, how can I make this image relatable to all people everywhere? Not just one person. Person of a certain class or person of a certain color, you know, to me that when you subjugate those things like that, you do a disservice to this larger conversation of humanity that we have or that we should have.