Photojournalist.

Being a photojournalist implies accepting some laws: you can't manipulate the context of what you get in the picture, you can't delete anything or add anything, it's up to you to talk to the subject, define the feet of photo... It is an exercise of honesty guided by one's own vision. When you write a text, select the adjectives, decide where and how to do it, choose between the expressions. Giving a sense to what I have in front of me and what I have in my head, I do the same with the pictures. Photography has historically been recognized for the strength of truth, the ability to freeze what lies ahead, but no, photography is not true. It has a number of truths, a factor of truth, but behind a picture there is always a unique point of view. I decide where to focus, I decide when to click. It's me who gives orders to a technical machine. There is no objective photograph as there is no objective text. That the reel is objective? You mark the view from the moment you select Kodak or Fuji or color or black and white, and also in the laboratory you can do everything you can do with the current photoshop. Both analogue and digital, all photographs are subjective. So, tweaks are our adjectives.

Where is credibility?

Honesty. I've always argued that photography is subjective. I always say that I've chosen what to focus on and when to click, but I haven't taken anything off, nor added anything to that picture. One thing is what has happened in my eyes and the other is the message I want to convey. I work in total honesty, I want to reach out to people in total honesty, and although I know photography is not objective, because of that total honesty, people give credibility to my work. Oddly enough, the text allows for more manipulation than photographs, but the news continues to have an objective tone. Photographers, on the other hand, have to fight constantly for our credibility, and that is done by claiming subjective photography and our honesty. If I've taken a black and white picture, it's because it's an aesthetic that reinforces what I mean, not because I see the world in black and white.

What is a good photo?

A good picture is an image that comes in through the eyes and claps into the head. Our brain doesn't remember the video sequences, it's the image chains that we get tattooed. If I mention the photo of Robert Capa, the militia, it doesn't take long to remember the image. We remember images that resonate with us, that have a spark that ignites something in us. That's why it's the way to communicate feeling. Every time I take a picture, I have to empathize with what I see and what I'm going to see that picture. I can't forget the behavior that we have in our society in terms of image. If I show a picture of an airplane to an Amazon tribe that has never seen an airplane, it will not react as you do. It's not the same to show a picture of a dead body to a child as it is to an adult. The fact that this camera appears in the photos does not mean the same for a photographic world as for a general public. I have to have the code, I can't take away that culture. So you never take a good picture for the whole of society, but for a part of the society that you belong to.

In front of the bodies, a smell of blood in the corners, shots everywhere... In those cases, does it take only empathy to take pictures?

I'm not going to go in front of you to care for the wounded or to escape a shooting. My work would be of no use. I must fight my instinct to keep my head cool and reflect what is happening in front of my eyes. Reflections like “What have I come to here?” have to be done in advance. I know that in our society cadavers appear fluttered and in frames. I know that the dirty corpses that have spread across the earth will crash into us, and why deny it, I'm looking for that clash. When I talk about empathy, it's clear that I can't empathize with a dead body, but I can empathize with the one that's going to see the picture. It comes to reflection from empathy. So I also use black and white when there's blood. I don't want to see the red of my blood. I'd rather take away all the information that color brings and underline the expression of the moment.

But your eyes see the red blood. How is it managed?

For the moment, I am well with him. When I come back here, I feel privileged. It's beautiful to be able to come from home to the tavern without looking back. In addition, I have great support from my family and friends. Yes, I don't tell you what I've suffered or what I've lived, I just tell you the funny side. It's a shield for me. But I'm afraid if I'm still in my office, the experience holds me back as if it was a piece of lead. Lead is a very heavy material, our body breathes but is not able to expel it. So, little by little, your teeth fall down, the time comes when you can't release that lead from your kidneys and your liver, and you're dead. My colleagues tell me that what you've lived in front of you is lead, that it doesn't hurt you at first, but when you can't throw yourself on you, you can potro. For now I have my nightmares, I woke up with cold sweat, but it happens right away. However, the moment I take the picture out, my body asks me to cry until I empty it. I shed tears to the sollozo. That is my weapon of escaping lead. Thanks to that, I come here and I laugh at everything.

Are you ready to make a good photo?

Not everything is worth it. If I knew they were going to kill me for taking a picture, I wouldn't. I fear death, I fear suffering. A picture is not worth my life or my suffering. Knowing that, I keep doing what I do. When I was photographing a demonstration in the Sahara, I started the work because a coal mine had been made to an 18-year-old who was standing in front of me. It was a meat massacre. I approached him to help him, the photos were posted both in Gara and in Paris Match and were seen by a Danish NGO. The money from those publications paid me the ticket to Denmark to be cured there, and today is the day I was walking through the Dajla camp. I thought, thanks to the photos, I could get something. Since then I have achieved nothing more, but I have not lost hope. I know that one of my photos is not going to interrupt the war, but if it serves to alleviate the suffering of one person, I am willing. That's also why I try to inform myself as honestly as I can. I don't live from war, I'm not a parachutist.

You don't live from war, you're not a parachutist, but you've been kidnapped in war.

At first, we didn't know who they were. What you know is that he is kidnapped and that in those places, in addition to long kidnappings, most of the time does not end well. When you find out who they are and what they want, you realize that everything is over, that you haven't properly valued a risk, that you've gone too far. But fortunately, the result was quick and satisfactory. It was 12 hours. Anyway, I don't like to talk about it. I have not told my parents or my relatives the cruel and stressful face. Nothing but funny anecdotes: what we did when we had a chorizo, when I stumbled, snore from a neighbor ... I don't want to tell the rest, I wouldn't bring anything. The kidnapping has taken me off the heap of straw I had around me and helped me see the real flowers I had in front of me. It's given me the experience of going back in front of me, of remembering that a picture doesn't deserve my life, my freedom or my health. Now I focus with my right eye, but I don't close my left.

It's me who closes both eyes when I see some pictures. Where is the limit of pornography?

I take pictures full of corpses, casings and blood, because I'm there and, above all, because censorship comes later. What does the appearance of a child with tripes in the air bring to my work? Nothing, it is a morbid, a pornographic violence, and it leads me to wonder about the legitimacy of the photographs. People tell me that in the photos I've taken in Aleppo, there are few corpses. I tell you, I've clicked on rotten corpses on sniper avenue. But there's a context in which mortars also kill civilians, and dead bodies cannot be removed. How many times have we seen the children of Gaza without head, dead body? I think there is no contribution there, it is pure violence, it is not what I mean. Some of the photos taken in Libya are so hard that I have not taught them to anyone. They accuse me of hiding reality, but I don't want to show that part of reality. The bombs are supposed to explode in the war and human massacres are taking place, and this must not be explained. War is chaos, chaos of violence. Despite being there, it's very difficult to understand the transformation of people's sweetness into cruelty. That is why I say that not all conflicts are wars, but that all wars are conflicts. When does the war begin? When do you end up? Has the war in Yugoslavia ended? Here we are still talking about civil war. I don't know where my uncle is. What is that if it is not a conflict that stems from a war?

However, some conflicts are more evident than others. Who decides what the news is?

The big media. I do not believe that the United States or the European Union are sending the agenda directly to the media, but it is news events that move our well-being and our daily comfort. When the United States was in Iraq, it was talked about every day. When they left, the number of deaths doubled, but no trace was left in the news reports. Until recently there were more deaths than in Syria, but the news was Syria. Why Syria? Because it's a strategic space, a big candy for our authorities. Now we hear Syria and refugees come to the forefront, but when have we started talking about refugees? When they have arrived in Greece, when we have felt our well-being and comfort in jeopardy. Who knows that now many more refugees arrive in South Africa or Côte d'Ivoire than in Europe?

…

Everything is a business. An agency will never send anyone to Côte d'Ivoire. He knows that the media will answer “that to us five!” There will be a journalist who is picking up all of that, but he will have a very limited field, huge economic difficulties ... However, a distinction must be made between economic observation and that of the sheep. It's time to stop being sheep. Of course we have to tell the story of the refugees escaping to Europe, but who knows nothing about the exile of coal from Mozambique? A whole state is being moved to get coal out, people are being condemned to landfill, but because we want coal, you can't see it anywhere. Curiosity moves me. If a medium secured me a minimum wage, I would leave weddings and so on and fly to deal with those secret stories. But it is not possible, I do not know what means are prepared for it. However, I do not want to continue to work with the agencies as I have done so far. I know that is going to close many doors to me, that the covers of The New York Times are over, but for those of us who have this job as a calling there is nothing missing.