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  • CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON: I'm still endlessly fascinated by

  • what is that magic dust that, sprinkled on a certain image,

  • makes it more powerful than another image?

  • It goes so far beyond composition and lighting all

  • those things.

  • But yet, it's kind of all those things mixed together.

  • And that's the essence of what is interesting about

  • photography to me.

  • Oh man, I love when the city looks like that.

  • My name is Christopher Anderson,

  • full member in Magnum.

  • There was a certain idea, the notion that this camera could

  • represent for me, especially growing up in a

  • small town in Texas.

  • This little machine represented a way out.

  • So there was that sense of having an idea of wanting to

  • do something with this.

  • But what that really meant of being a professional--

  • no.

  • When I got out of university, I was

  • planning to go into academia.

  • But a friend of my family got me a job in "The Dallas

  • Morning News" printing pictures and

  • developing film there.

  • I did that as a summer job, and I knew then I wanted to be

  • a photographer somehow.

  • And I was never going to go back to academia.

  • I got really lucky.

  • Someone gave me a job to take pictures before I even really

  • understood that there was a job description of

  • professional photographer.

  • I had no formal training.

  • I really didn't know how to work a camera.

  • I certainly had no journalism training.

  • I became this professional and learned on the job.

  • And I spent many years just trying to do my job as good as

  • I could do it before I ever start really thinking about

  • putting very basic questions to myself, like what is a

  • photograph?

  • And what do I want my photographs to represent?

  • Those sort of questions came to me much later.

  • Here's the Haiti boat story--

  • June 18, 2000.

  • In Haiti, this writer and I--

  • Michael Finkel--

  • met this guy in Haiti who told us an amazing story about

  • trying to get on a boat and sail to the United States.

  • We got on one of these boats--

  • 44 Haitians plus myself and the writer.

  • And we set sail.

  • And a few days later, we started sinking.

  • That moment in the boat when we realized

  • that we were sinking---

  • up until that point, I hadn't taken many photographs.

  • And the guy we were with, David, says, Chris, you'd

  • better start taking pictures now.

  • We're going to be dead in 45 minutes.

  • Without thinking too much about it, I begin making

  • photographs, as we were literally saying goodbye to

  • each other.

  • This is the guy, David.

  • That was the moment we realized we were sinking.

  • You can see the water coming in from the

  • inside of the boat there.

  • And later on, after that, I thought about that moment over

  • and over again, asking myself the question, why make

  • photographs that I assumed no one would see?

  • And the only answer that I could come up with was that

  • the actual act of making pictures, photography in and

  • of itself, it had as much to do for me about explaining the

  • world to myself as it did explaining it to someone else.

  • The very act of photography was part of how

  • I understood things.

  • It crystallized the notion, the idea of what it was I

  • thought about photography and what I

  • wanted to do with pictures.

  • It changed everything.

  • And from that point, I guess editors thought that I was

  • looking for danger and was willing to go through some

  • discomfort.

  • So I started getting offers to do the obvious thing, which is

  • go to wars.

  • And that set about-- the next several years was this kind of

  • blur from Israel, Palestine to Lebanon to Africa to Iraq,

  • Afghanistan.

  • But with a clear idea of what I wanted the

  • pictures to be about.

  • I wanted to find a way for someone to feel what it was

  • that I experienced--

  • an emotional quality that cut through all the ideas of facts

  • and journalism, but went straight to something else,

  • which is an emotional truth.

  • I don't know if I made a conscious decision to stop

  • doing wars or not.

  • Part of it's I had a child.

  • One skill set that I had in doing that kind of work was

  • that I was able to remain relatively calm in those

  • situations.

  • And now, I felt like I didn't trust how I would react.

  • But there's also the other side of me, which is that, for

  • me, there was never this oh, I used to be that and now I've

  • become this.

  • It's just we grow and we change as human beings.

  • So even from a creative standpoint, I'm taken in

  • different directions now--

  • portraits, for instance.

  • And really looking at why I like some portraits--

  • why some portraiture is compelling and others are not.

  • And me, not coming from any formal, technical training of

  • photography, forcing myself to learn some of those things in

  • order to pull off what it is that I want to photograph.

  • Yeah, I kind of like those challenges.

  • [INAUDIBLE].

  • [PRETEND MONSTER GROWL]

  • [LAUGHING]

  • What did you have?

  • What did I have?

  • Mmhm.

  • What do you mean, what did I have?

  • No, a present.

  • A present?

  • Mmhm.

  • If I have a present?

  • Mmhm.

  • The son project--

  • the photographs of my son and my father--

  • really happened quite organically in the sense that

  • I had a kid.

  • It started like any father taking pictures of their kid.

  • At about the same time, my father became ill.

  • And so I was thinking about very obvious themes of the

  • cycles of life and death.

  • And that's the weird thing about parenthood--

  • is completely universal and mundane.

  • And at the same time, it's completely unique and intimate

  • and special.

  • And so I began photographing my father and my son, and at

  • the beginning, just without thinking about it.

  • And it started to dawn on me that what I was seeing in the

  • pictures was that quality that I felt like I'd been on a

  • search for since I first started using a camera.

  • And that everything that I had photographed up until that

  • point was as if it were just some sort of preparation to

  • bring me to that point, to provide me with the tools or

  • the insight or whatever it was in order

  • to make those pictures.

  • And that that was my life's work.

  • It was very quick, also, because that particular set of

  • pictures loses its magic the moment that it becomes a

  • conscious work.

  • Flash card, camera, lenses, extra battery.

  • See, I always want to take a picture right here.

  • And I can't.

  • I'd have to park my car.

  • The work I'm doing now with "New York Magazine," it's a

  • big change for me, because I'm staying mostly at home to do

  • it after years of having worked mostly in strange

  • places around the world.

  • Check this out, this old Bronx courthouse that's just bricked

  • up and empty.

  • And also, for me, it is an extension of what

  • the son work was.

  • The son photographs are this first time where I look at my

  • own world, at this city in which I live, and the people

  • that I live with in this city.

  • And so in that sense, the work retains this personal edge to

  • it, this personal connection--

  • my world of New York and my friendships with other

  • photographers and artists and writers.

  • And it's part of this collective experience that

  • we're having now that I'm privileged enough to get to

  • photograph in a concentrated way.

  • Yeah, I don't know Spanish Harlem as well as

  • I would like to.