Q&A with J.B. Russell ← Back to the Interviews
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What drew you to photograph the wounded and tell their stories?
I’ve been following the situation in Iraq for more than ten years now. I made two trips to Iraq in 2001 and 2002 under Saddam Hussein’s regime, a time when it was extremely complicated for foreign journalists to get access to the country. When the Bush administration decided to invade and occupy the country I covered the war, its aftermath and continued to return to Iraq until 2005 when the security situation made it nearly impossible for photographers and other journalists to work in a meaningful way without being embedded with a military unit. Although I have covered my share of conflicts, what has always interested me is the human consequences of conflict rather than the fighting itself. From the beginning, my work in Iraq focused on the plight of the Iraqi people in regard to the long-term effects of the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein’s regime, the 2003 US led invasion and it’s aftermath. I wasn’t so interested in covering Iraq from the perspective of a military embed, so I began to work on the issue of Iraqi refugees fleeing the country. I had a fairly important body of work on Iraq and wanted to complete it. As the anarchy in Iraq continued to worsen and the media began to turn its attention to Afghanistan and elsewhere, it was frustrating not being able to continue working on the subject despite the fact that the conflict and its consequences were far from resolved. Over the past several years, sectarian violence, lawlessness and strife have become a part of daily life in Iraq. We’ve all seen the regular and repetitive statistical accounts of dead and wounded rolling across the bottom of our television screens every time there is another car bomb explosion. Due to the security situation and Iraq fatigue in the media, countless Iraqis are being killed and gravely wounded every week in absolute anonymity. The numbers are completely abstract and meaningless. I heard about the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) program treating wounded Iraqis in Amman, Jordan. I’ve worked with MSF before in Africa and know them to be an extraordinary organization. As US military forces withdrew from Iraq and questions were being raised about the future of the country, I thought that photographing the MSF program and this portrait series was a rare opportunity to quite literally put a human face on the thousands of nameless and unknown Iraqis whose lives have been destroyed by violence and chaos in their country.How willing were your subjects to sit for you?
I’ve been following the situation in Iraq for more than ten years now. I made two trips to Iraq in 2001 and 2002 under Saddam Hussein’s regime, a time when it was extremely complicated for foreign journalists to get access to the country. When the Bush administration decided to invade and occupy the country I covered the war, its aftermath and continued to return to Iraq until 2005 when the security situation made it nearly impossible for photographers and other journalists to work in a meaningful way without being embedded with a military unit. Although I have covered my share of conflicts, what has always interested me is the human consequences of conflict rather than the fighting itself. From the beginning, my work in Iraq focused on the plight of the Iraqi people in regard to the long-term effects of the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein’s regime, the 2003 US led invasion and it’s aftermath. I wasn’t so interested in covering Iraq from the perspective of a military embed, so I began to work on the issue of Iraqi refugees fleeing the country. I had a fairly important body of work on Iraq and wanted to complete it. As the anarchy in Iraq continued to worsen and the media began to turn its attention to Afghanistan and elsewhere, it was frustrating not being able to continue working on the subject despite the fact that the conflict and its consequences were far from resolved. Over the past several years, sectarian violence, lawlessness and strife have become a part of daily life in Iraq. We’ve all seen the regular and repetitive statistical accounts of dead and wounded rolling across the bottom of our television screens every time there is another car bomb explosion. Due to the security situation and Iraq fatigue in the media, countless Iraqis are being killed and gravely wounded every week in absolute anonymity. The numbers are completely abstract and meaningless. I heard about the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) program treating wounded Iraqis in Amman, Jordan. I’ve worked with MSF before in Africa and know them to be an extraordinary organization. As US military forces withdrew from Iraq and questions were being raised about the future of the country, I thought that photographing the MSF program and this portrait series was a rare opportunity to quite literally put a human face on the thousands of nameless and unknown Iraqis whose lives have been destroyed by violence and chaos in their country.How willing were your subjects to sit for you?
Some of the subjects were slightly hesitant, particularly some of the women for cultural reasons, and they naturally wanted to know who I was, why I wanted to photograph them and where the images would be published. In situations like this when you’re asking someone to sit for a portrait or you are working on a subject where you have to immerse yourself into someone’s daily life, I always take the time to get to know them a little and to be very upfront and clear about who I am and why I’m asking to photograph them. In the end, a portrait session or a daily life story is a collaboration, a dialogue, a shared moment of time between the photographer and the subject. To be successful, there has to be an honest exchange. Once they understood my project and why I was doing it, the subjects were surprisingly willing to cooperate. The only people who declined did so primarily for fear of reprisals. Many Iraqis continue to be threatened by various militia, criminal and extremist groups. Their families are still in Iraq and even in Jordan they do not feel safe. This is something I of course respected without hesitation.Speaking about injuries of this magnitude seems extremely intimate, how did you get your subjects to come out of their shells?
I really didn’t have to do much at all. As I mentioned before, once people understand who you are and why your are there, there is a certain trust that is established. I think that the subjects sensed that I was genuinely interested in them and their stories. These people have suffered ineffable tragedies in their lives, but despite having horrible injuries and sometimes being permanently disfigured, you value them and honor them by taking interest their stories and wanting to photograph them. Most of the patients spend many months or even years in Jordan being treated. They have suffered enormously, they have often lost loved ones, lost their jobs, they are away from their homes and away from their families for long periods. When they are not at the hospital or in therapy, they don’t have much to do. They need and want to talk about their situation, to evacuate. It even helped I think that I was a neutral outsider. The interviews I conducted with the subjects were often very difficult and emotional, but they willingly talked to me at length. Personally, I was profoundly struck by their courage, humanity, dignity and by their generosity in sharing with me some of the most painful and intimate aspects of their lives.
I really didn’t have to do much at all. As I mentioned before, once people understand who you are and why your are there, there is a certain trust that is established. I think that the subjects sensed that I was genuinely interested in them and their stories. These people have suffered ineffable tragedies in their lives, but despite having horrible injuries and sometimes being permanently disfigured, you value them and honor them by taking interest their stories and wanting to photograph them. Most of the patients spend many months or even years in Jordan being treated. They have suffered enormously, they have often lost loved ones, lost their jobs, they are away from their homes and away from their families for long periods. When they are not at the hospital or in therapy, they don’t have much to do. They need and want to talk about their situation, to evacuate. It even helped I think that I was a neutral outsider. The interviews I conducted with the subjects were often very difficult and emotional, but they willingly talked to me at length. Personally, I was profoundly struck by their courage, humanity, dignity and by their generosity in sharing with me some of the most painful and intimate aspects of their lives.
What future travels/projects do you have planned?
I have a couple of other stories I’m working on related to Iraq and Iraqis that I want to finish up. I think they will be the final chapter of this (very) long-term Iraq project that hopefully will be published in a book in the not too distant future. I’ve also been working extensively in Africa the past few years and may be returning to Sudan this Spring, depending on the situation there.
What’s one noun you haven’t had the opportunity to shoot that you would like to?
Jackpot, so that I can shoot all the stories I think are important and do them in the way that they need to be done.
I was born in California to long line of adventurers and wandering mystics, but I grew up in Princeton, NJ among other places. I discovered photography standing in a high school dark room watching an image magically appear on a blank piece of paper in a chemical bath. Although I didn’t initially consider pursuing photography as a profession, throughout high school and university photography was a creative outlet for me; a means of interpreting and expressing how I perceived the world around me. After graduating from university, I worked for a couple of years and was preparing to go to graduate school. Before getting locked into more studies and a career however, I decide to take a year or two off to follow a genetic predisposition for wanderlust and go see the world. Naturally my passion for photography was a part of that journey. After a couple of years of meandering about Europe, Latin America and the Middle East photographing everything from travel images to landscapes to nudes, the Berlin Wall suddenly fell. I realized that the world as I had always known it was changing irrevocably and I wanted to witness and photograph that changing world. I had been bitten by the photojournalism bug and I never looked back.
See J.B.’s work here:
