I was introduced to him by a Moldovan Zebra in Boston...

Interview with

John McConnico
Recently I’ve discovered the amazing Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog. After reading
this article please visit them — http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/ — you won’t
regret. The World Animal Day collection attracted me in the first place since I am a
birdwatcher. From the 40 pictures shown there, the one with the zebra attracted me
most. I can’t tell exactly why, but I’ve watched it a little bit, then went down to read-
ing the caption and the zebra was from Chişinău, capital of Moldova, where I actually
live. First surprise.
And the picture wasn’t taken by a Moldovan, of course, but by a guy called John
McConnico. Who’s this guy? Google answered. Pulitzer prize winner, worked mainly
for AP in 70+ countries, covered conflicts in Haiti, Afghanistan, Kenia, Balkans... Why
would a guy like this take a picture of a Zebra in Chişinău?
His home page — http://johnmcconnico.com/ — answered. Because he stays there
right now. There was a Moldovan phone number there, I called, introduced myself
and asked for an interview. “Sure“, said John, “I have two free hours tomorrow, write
down the address.“ I did. Through the window I could see his house. It was 100 me-
ters from the place I’m staying the last 15 years.
- Let’s say that someone hires you to make a
portrait of John McConnico. Please describe
the final picture.
- Well, I usually get uncomfortable when I
become a part of the situation. I’ll get to the
portrait part later. I am the kind of photogra-
pher that hopefully people don’t notice me or
if they do notice me they forget after few mo-
ments that I’m there. Because everything I do
has to do with what people would do naturally,
not what I tell them to do. I have no interest
in doing a picture that tells more about me
than about them. It’s not truly an accurate
way to portray reality if the photographer says
here’s what you’ve got to do… There’s an is-
sue in many countries, especially developing
countries without traditions in photojournalism
that the picture says more about the photogra-
pher than about what is happening. I’m pretty
steadfast against that.
Regarding the portrait…I’m really uncom-
fortable being photographed (blushes). As well
as photographing other people who know that
I’m there. That said, it would have to be some-
thing as close to me being casual and normal
as possible. I think that if I will be ever photo-
graphed by Annie Leibowitz or other portrait
photographer it would probably be a much bet-
ter picture than anything that I’d dream of.
This is something I have to do all the time.
If you have a good reputation, people know
who you are and they assume that you can do
everything. (laughs) I think five years ago if
somebody asked I would say (proudly) “Yeah!
Of course I can do portraits. I’m a professional
photographer! I can do anything I want!” But
now I’m confident enough to tell that is not
what I do.
And that all goes back to the reason why I
chose to do photography. I was so bad at inter-
acting with people that this became a way to
interact with people without having to talk to
them. So, you can show peoples’ lives without
having to physically interact with them. And
you’ll find that a lot of photojournalists spe-
cifically are quite shy, quite withdrawn, and
they’re in photography because the camera
feels like a shield. I feel pretty strongly that
that’s why I started and why I continue to do
photography.
- Do you remember the first picture you
took?
- I think that was when I went to School to
England… I was 18-19… And my mom gave me
one of those little point-and-shoot cameras. I
went to Oxford for half a year and I have never
left the country before and it was such a re-
markable place. And I remember exactly that
my mom told me – I give you that to document
your trip. She didn’t mean anything by it, I’m
sure, but that stuck in me. So the trip became
more about documenting the place than about
learning Shakespeare and literature. And I had
never taken any picture before that so the
pictures weren’t technically very good, but I
came back with 100 rolls of film.
Then, in my first three years in college I
tried Economics, English, Philosophy – every-
thing. I was never good enough to excel in
anything and eventually I took a photography
class and that was one of few things that I was
good at, pretty much right away. And I’ve got a
real passion for it.
- You were still in Texas?
- Yes, University of Texas.
- Do you see yourself as a Texan?
- (laughs) Well, last years, until a few days
ago, I didn’t feel like a Texan at all. Now that
we have a new president I feel very comfort-
able of being Texan and I am very proud to be
American again. Because Bush is from Texas…
I mean he didn’t even have a passport until he
became president. He’s really the antithesis
of everything that I am and most people that
I know are. Being a Texan while he was presi-
dent was very, very… (can’t find the word)
But I’m considering myself a Texan and there
is something about me that is very Texan and
something about him that is not very Texan.
Anyway it’s a lot easier being Texan now that
we have Obama in the White House.
- Journalism and photojournalism became
more dangerous the last few years, isn’t it?
- Yeah… I was friends with a few people that
have been killed. A lot of colleagues… Like
Danny Pearl, the guy killed by the Taliban
in Pakistan during Afghanistan war, was kid-
napped and beheaded. And this is weird, be-
cause he wasn’t a crazy guy at all. He was just
a cautious journalist caught off the road. And
there are a lot of other journalists that are
just crazy...
I’ve been in a lot of places and in very dan-
gerous situations, but essentially I’m a coward.
I try to stay – if the guns are going off – I stay
in the hotel room and when things calm down
again it’s safer to go out.
In the last few years, probably since Sep-
tember 11, actually, it’s much more dangerous
to be a journalist or an aid worker. Let’s say
the United Nations bombing in Baghdad… Plac-
es that people would never dream of attacking
are being targeted now. The targeting of jour-
nalists and aid workers proves how much more
chaotic the world is now than it used to be.
Even during Vietnam war… There were times
when they were kidnapped, like Terry Ander-
son in Beirut. But since the war in Afghanistan,
all these journalists are just ambushed on the
road from Jalalabad to Kabul and killed, just
like that. And they knew that they’re journal-
ists.
- You’ve mentioned earlier using the camera
as a shield. Do you feel like you have two
different personalities – one with a camera
and another one without it?
- Completely. It’s like an alter ego. I’m much,
much more daring with the camera. I remem-
ber a time when we had an interview in a me-
drasa in Peshawar, Pakistan. Medrasa is a place
where young Taliban were trained. This was
before the Saudis came I was based in India
and traveling along Pakistan and Afghanistan.
It was the time when the Taliban was getting
much stronger.
So we came out of a medrasa where these
guys were saying in front of the camera:
“Death to America! Death to all infidels! Death
to anyone who’s not a Muslim!” But after the
interview they were telling us: “Don’t worry
– it’s just talk. We say this for the paper be-
cause, you know, it’s our position.”
- Public relations…
- Yeah… They were good hosts. The table was
full of sweets and they had tea. Muslims are
extremely generous, even when they’re the
Taliban. They are really kind people all over
Afghanistan, Pakistan, India…
So we woke up from the table. And that was
a medrasa, a fundamentalist school of Taliban
movement. I mean that were people as bad as
you can get. And a guy opened the door and
came back and said: “No, no… Step back in!”
And all these guys were terrified – there were
the Saudis out there. So they told us that we
can’t leave right now.
And in that moment I’ve got scared – I was
without camera and I thought – well, this is
it. There were two trucks loaded with Saudis
outside. And I remember that I was completely
fearless inside the medrasa when I was shoot-
ing with my camera. And when we got out
from it, I literally was close to wet my pants,
because I was pretty sure that we were going
to be killed.
So, it showed to me the difference between
me photographing and me carrying my cam-
era. I have never been more scared in my life.
Eventually we stopped a taxi nearby and we’ve
been chased by the two trucks all through Pe-
shawar until we returned to our hotel and left
the city immediately.
- Do you consider yourself a person with
good intuition? Do you see the signs before
something happens?
- I think all photographers have intuition,
especially photojournalists. I don’t think it’s
something out of this world, but I think I have
highly sensitive intuition. It’s probably from
seeing things over and over and over again.
It has nothing to do with the spiritual world
(laughs). I can always predict things during a
protest, having covered thousands of them,
they all tend to have the same pattern. All
wars end up the same way they always do the
same things, week after week after week, they
don’t change. I know it.
- How do you manage to being back a nor-
mal person after returning from wars?
- You can pretend, like I do, that you haven’t
seen them. But I think that somehow internally
you’re messed up anyway after seeing so many
deaths and tragedies. Especially for me – I was
really cold-blooded the first 15 years I’ve be-
ing doing this. But in the moment I became a
parent it changed. Now I have my own children
and it changes the whole view on the world. It
changed what I do – I don’t accept dangerous
assignments any more. And even if I did I’d be
much more careful than I was then.
And I am really surprised of myself because I
am really a compassionate person, but I re-
member witnessing deaths and seeing dead
children on streets, but I was completely cool
about that if I had my camera especially. But
now I’m pretty moved and this is quite more
healthy the way I view it now. And I can specif-
ically remember that when I became a parent
everything changed completely.
- This may be seen in your photographs, I
believe. There is a switch to more nature
pictures, the big picture type of pictures
from action and conflicts covered earlier…
- I’m probably in a transition phase now. I
tend to do things that are more thoughtful in
a reflective way. I think before about how the
picture will be composed. But I still have the
moment. Henri Cartier-Bresson defined photo-
journalism as capturing the decisive moment.
I still feel very much about him that he’s the
main guy. So what you’ve got to do is choosing
the right position for composure and waiting
the decisive moment. Not changing anything,
but placing yourself and waiting and waiting
and waiting… And all the best photographers, I
mean the ones that are much better than me,
the elite photojournalists like Jim Nachtwey
, all these guys they’re more like fishermen
– they’ll put themselves in a place and then
wait until they get the picture.
- Is photography a drug? Can you imagine
yourself not making pictures any more?
- You know, camera is for me more like a tool.
There are many different ways to express
and photographers try to express themselves
somehow. They try to make some sense of this
world and make sense of the world and news
photographers like I am try to make sense of
the places people don’t want to go to, like
Baghdad, Beirut or whatever. You try to explain
people as accurately as you can what hap-
pened there.
But now that I take my personal life as
more important than my work, since I have
children…Yes, it is like a drug until you have
something else to guide you away from it. So I
try to make sure that my children get more of
my attention. I am less narcissistic now. I don’t
think any more that I am the only person in
this world that could take this picture in this
situation. Things change.
- What was the biggest shot that you have
missed?
- There have been a lot of them. Nothing that
McConnico family— Sandie Blanchet, Liam
(4), Luka (3 months) and John.
would be like career breakers.
I remember my work in Haiti. I was working
in Puerto Rico before the US intervention and
everybody was waiting US troops to come at
that time.
- I recall the picture with two guys welcom-
ing helicopters…
- So that is a picture that was in newspapers
all over the world. So we were a few jour-
nalists before and then more and more pho-
tographers came after the intervention and
AP has also sent photographers from the US.
The new guys have never seen Haiti before
and they didn’t know how you’re supposed to
behave. So I’ve been wearing the same shirt
all the time. For me it was like my passport.
Of course I washed it and I took showers, but
I was wearing it for like 60 days. It was my
lucky shirt. So the new photographers were
supposed to take more of the office work and
allow me go out and shoot more. But they
called back to New York and said “I think John
is going through some mental troubles. He
hasn’t changes his shirt in 60 days.” And the
moment he said “He hasn’t changed the shirt
in 60 days”… I’ve got a call like on the next
morning and it was during the US intervention.
And I was ready for the big picture, I mean I
was there already for four months, what do
you guys want, you just came here… (laughs)
Instead it has been interpreted that I was go-
ing off the deep end. And they kicked me out.
 So I lost the whole occupation and Haitians
went crazy, they started to fire on US troops
and then firing on each other. So I lost all the
dramatic pictures that I prepared for and I
was ready to do it physically and mentally and
all, but they’ve taken me out because I was
wearing the same shirt. If I would just change
my shirt before they got there, I’d stayed on
through…
And then this friend of mine Carol Guzy, this
was before I had won anything, I was a very
young photographer, just out of college. So
Carol Guzy from Washington Post won the Pu-
litzer that year [with pictures from Haiti] and
it was devastating because we would always
shoot pictures together. She was sort of my
mentor and I felt like I have just been there
and… If you go back to her career and she’s
one of the best ten news photographers all
time. And at that time I was really quite jeal-
ous, but now looking back at that it probably
was a good decision to take me out. I probably
was off the deep end. (laughs)
- Have you met any cases of journalists loos-
ing control?
- I’ve had quite a few colleagues that don’t
shoot any more. One worked in Rwanda and
Somalia – conflicts that were really, really
brutal. So I have a mate from college and he
just can’t deal any more. So he was walking
into those villages in Rwanda before the aid
helpers, before anybody else. And he’d walk
in and there would be ten thousands dead
people. The whole village was dead. And he
goes to the next village and the next village
is dead. Dead children on the streets… It was
completely insane. It’s worse than anything
you can imagine. So he looks to the river from
the bridge and there are two hundreds, three
hundreds bodies. Forgetting about being a
journalist it was hard to be a human being any
more. He’s the worst example, but I have a lot
of friends who have gone into that direction
one way or another. They completely dropped
out because they couldn’t handle it.
- And then the case of Kevin Carter…
- Boy, that was a lesson. People asked him
questions. Because he won the prize and
then he was celebrating, congratulated by his
friends… Then people started to ask questions
what happened to the chilled. And he went
like I… I… He basically didn’t have an answer.
So I think he just said I don’t know. And people
asked – what do you mean you don’t know!
There was a child alone and a vulture hang-
ing on… What happened to the child? And then
after several weeks he just killed himself.
- His partner then said that the vulture
wasn’t the kind able to kill a person and
that kid’s mom was close. She left him for a
moment as the plane with food arrived and
then took him back…
- Of course the baby wasn’t eaten by the vul-
ture, but this became a symbol of how bad it
can get. It was such a powerful picture.
[…]
- Then, there’s a quite side of this planet,
like Greenland for example…
- Yeah. Stylistically it is very refreshing, but
from a tragedy point of view what happens in
Greenland can make the conflicts completely
trivial. World I set on this spin of destruction.
The climate changes in Greenland and in the
moment the Greenland ice goes, everything
goes. You know if Greenland ice melts, even
Moldova… Well Moldova may be not affected
directly, but places like Florida, New York,
Louisiana, California, Bangladesh, almost half
of Africa goes under water…
- So people fighting in Africa and Middle
East and other places look like tourists
fighting for a better place in a sinking
boat…
- It’s true. Nowadays in Greenland they are
growing tomatoes in November! It changed
radically since five-six years. I remember
staying on the top of this glacier that was the
symbol of Greenland and it’s receding like two-
three miles per year. And sitting on the top
of the glacier you can hear it cracking and it
makes you feel unbelievable small, like you’re
not a part of this planet, thinking that possibly
we did this and we’re about to cause our own
destruction. There’s still a discussion if we
caused climate change or it’s a natural phe-
nomenon. It’s a possibility that we did it and I
take it as a 50/50 proposition that human be-
ings have caused this and we’re about to pay
the ultimate price. So on my first assignment
to Greenland I though it’s like a joke and I’ll
take some pictures of ice that melt and that’s
it. But then I understood that that is an incred-
ible greater problem, hundreds of times more
important than any wars that I have covered.
- You’ll stay in Moldova three more years.
After seeing so many countries, what could
inspire a photographers’ eye here?
- Mainly what I’m trying to do is before I start
picturing anything as Moldovan… In any other
countries that I go to I know what story I cover
and I know what kind of pictures to take. But
Moldova is an unbelievable complex place. A
country with a thousand of years of civiliza-
tion that has been occupied for hundreds of
years has virtually no concrete identity. It was
occupied by Romanians, Russians, Turks… you
name it… This is again generalizing things, but
there’s thousands of years people live here and
yet they have no concrete identity.
I’ve been trying to think of how that could
be showed. This mix of cultures between
people who consider themselves Russians or
Soviet and people who consider themselves Ro-
manians or Moldovans. So a lot of pictures that
I’m taking now I don’t do anything with them. I
take lots of pictures and I’m trying to fit them
into one bigger, cohesive essay that would
explain what is happening in Moldova. I think
that after two three years from now I’ll have a
pretty remarkable project about what’s hap-
pening here. But I wouldn’t pretend yet that I
know what it is. I’m just photographing things
and hopefully pictures will become more and
more powerful and I will understand what is
actually happening in Moldova, if I ever will or
anybody will. Moldova is a complex country,
like our country also that woke up with a black
president suddenly… (laughs) This was beyond
imagination a hundred years ago.
- I’ve seen that you also became interested
in wildlife pictures in Moldova…
- Certainly when you’re being affected by
climate change and what is going to happen
to the planet, this drives you more to the
things that didn’t cause the trouble. So may be
that’s why I’m a little bit more interested in
wild life. Because I think that what is going to
happen in the next 20-30 years may be pretty
sever. No matter what we do at this point.
No matter if we blow up air conditioners… No
matter what we do, something really dramatic
is going to happen.
- That’s not what I’d like to hear from a guy
with a good intuition…
Interview by Ion Grosu
www.iongrosu.com