When the pandemic hit, I told my editors I’d go wherever they needed me—Italy, China, New York, any of the hot spots. Their response was, essentially, Easy, tiger. It’s not going to work like that anymore. Nobody was going anywhere. So I had to figure out what to do to contribute responsibly to a story that has affected everybody in the world. I soon realized it meant working in my own backyard, which for me means the Midwest. I started driving all over, sleeping some nights in my truck. I was looking for what the virus meant to people in “flyover country,” a part of the country that is often ignored.
I had to change the way I work. How do you photograph people from a distance? How do you enter people’s intimate spaces responsibly?
I began using a drone. I would call out to people and say, Hey, do you mind if I use my coronavirus social-distance flying camera to take your picture? Being Midwesterners, the response was usually, Do what you got to do. The drone, which I flew relatively low to the ground, allowed me to take pictures from a distance. But it also amplified the dystopian, surreal mood that we’re all grappling with now.
After I took photos, I’d leave a note with my contact information on the person’s car, on the front step or in the mailbox. I’d say, contact me if you want to tell me more about what’s going on in your life, and I’ll send you a picture. I was moved by the responses I received, long emails from people who wanted to have their story told or just needed someone to talk to. I saw two people chatting in a front yard, one sitting on the steps, the other in a chair six feet away. It looked like a mundane thing, but then I received emails from them. One worked in an ICU; they’d been close friends their whole lives, and now they were both really struggling.
Everybody’s got an important story to tell. To meet people and photograph them, I decided for myself that I was an essential worker. I felt so grateful that I had photography, because I could be out in the world, I could see things for myself. I had a sense of purpose.
Then George Floyd was killed 10 minutes from my house in Minneapolis. I felt duty bound as a photojournalist and a member of this community to document the protests. In the past I’d had the privilege of traveling to other parts of the world to photograph other people’s struggles—and then the privilege of returning home. Now I think that maybe the best thing we can do is work and be a part of our own communities.
A precarious view at the graveside
When Yasser Arafat, the longtime leader of the Palestinians, died in France on November 11, 2004, his death was mysterious and his followers’ grief was overpowering. The Associated Press sent maybe a dozen photographers to cover his burial on the West Bank the next day. “I was one of the roving guys,” says David Guttenfelder.
Most of the other photographers had staked out positions on the rooftops surrounding Arafat’s walled compound, which was being swarmed by tens of thousands of people. When the helicopter carrying Arafat’s coffin appeared over the horizon, “the mourners started pouring over the walls,” says Guttenfelder. “And I just did the same.
“I jumped over the wall, and my feet were lifted off the ground,” he says. “I was just swept through.” He used his shoulders “like a rudder” to maneuver through the mass of chanting, crying, screaming people.
The coffin was handed through the crowd. Guttenfelder worked his way through the swarm to the kind of vantage point he thought his AP editors expected, near the edge of the grave. Struggling to lift his arms against the press of the crowd, Guttenfelder managed to photograph the moment.
Then the crowd surged, and Guttenfelder was hit from behind. He felt himself falling.
“I landed on my back,” he says. “I was looking up as they were shoveling dirt into the grave. I was literally inside his grave looking out.”
People quickly pulled up Guttenfelder, who was unhurt, though dismayed to have fallen into the scene he was covering. At the grave’s edge, he felt he was back where he was meant to be. As a photographer, he says, “your job is to photograph all of that energy, all of that chaos, all of that emotion and make people feel like they’re right there in the thick of it with you.” —PG
A Side Gig With His Grandfather Led to Photography
When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents who lived in the neighboring town. My grandfather was an insurance auditor who drove around the state, checking out people’s fire escapes and whatever. He had to take photographs of emergency exits and smoke detectors. He gave me a camera, an old positive-negative Polaroid Land Camera that looked like an accordion, and that became my job. That’s what I thought photography was.
He also gave me a couple of big boxes of the film, which I brought home with me. I started taking pictures—different kinds of pictures.
At one point I was photographing a lot of farm foreclosures, and I remember walking into this farmhouse. The people had left behind family photos and old, beat-up furniture. There was a hole in the roof where the rain had come in. It seemed beautiful and melancholy to me. Then I opened a door to a room with a ripped feather mattress on an old four-post bed. The window was open, and feathers floated and swirled around the room. I still have that photo. —As told to Peter Gwin
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