:00:00. > :00:16.terrorism cases. Time now for HARDtalk.
:00:17. > :00:20.Welcome to HARDtalk. Today, I'm eating a photographer who has used
:00:21. > :00:24.his camera to record other peoples lives but his own life dealt in the
:00:25. > :00:30.most remarkable story of all. 12 years ago, Giles Duley abandoned the
:00:31. > :00:35.world of fashion photography to focus on human suffering. He was in
:00:36. > :00:38.Afghanistan in 2011 when a landmine blew off both of his legs and an
:00:39. > :00:43.arm. Since then, he has defied the odds, not just surviving but
:00:44. > :00:49.returning to work, even revisiting Afghanistan. He is still a
:00:50. > :01:18.photographer. Does he see the world through a different lens?
:01:19. > :01:27.Giles Duley, welcome to HARDtalk. Thank you for having me. Photography
:01:28. > :01:31.seems to have given you an enormous sense of purpose throughout your
:01:32. > :01:35.working life. Describe what it means to you. It is literally everything.
:01:36. > :01:44.For me, to you. It is literally everything.
:01:45. > :01:50.in school. I was dyslexic. I was held back a year. I struggled. When
:01:51. > :01:53.I was 18, I found photography, muttering voice, microwave to
:01:54. > :01:58.communicate with the world. Since then, it was the most important
:01:59. > :02:03.thing. Because of what happened to you, it is almost daft to say -- to
:02:04. > :02:10.set it is almost as important as life itself. Reading your view, it
:02:11. > :02:14.seems that way. You can separate the person and the photographer. For me,
:02:15. > :02:19.it is the same thing. It is my form of medication. And I was injured,
:02:20. > :02:28.returning to photography meant returning to life. It has shaped
:02:29. > :02:32.what you are today. Let us go to February 2011. You were in
:02:33. > :02:36.Afghanistan on a photographic assignment, working as a
:02:37. > :02:42.non-governmental organisation, and amazing operation out of the in
:02:43. > :02:49.Afghanistan. He spent time with US military. You were embedded with the
:02:50. > :02:54.75th Cavalry Regiment. You went on a landmine. Explain to me how that
:02:55. > :02:59.happened. I want to do a story with these unit soldiers. It is important
:03:00. > :03:03.to show that conflict is not just affect the civilians caught up in it
:03:04. > :03:09.but the fighting. Many American soldiers come from poor backgrounds,
:03:10. > :03:12.different backgrounds and find themselves fighting in Afghanistan.
:03:13. > :03:17.I wanted to tell their stories. I wanted to show how the fighting
:03:18. > :03:23.impact of them. It's all about story, I had to literally be part of
:03:24. > :03:31.them. Whatever story idea, immerse myself. I was living with this unit
:03:32. > :03:36.on the frontline. Every day, we are going out our patrols and getting
:03:37. > :03:40.ambushed most days. It is close to the village where the Taliban is
:03:41. > :03:45.from. It is the American heart of darkness. A dangerous place where a
:03:46. > :03:50.lot of fighting happens. We were ambushed a couple of days before in
:03:51. > :03:55.a small compound. We searched the compound to find signs of those who
:03:56. > :03:59.ambushed us. When we were waiting, it was a common limit. The Americans
:04:00. > :04:06.laid a perimeter. There was a discussion. -- , moment. I turned
:04:07. > :04:13.around to talk to somebody. As I did, I taught -- I stepped on an
:04:14. > :04:20.AED. What else happened? I never lost consciousness. I sensed a
:04:21. > :04:26.weightlessness. There was a great white heat. I enveloped in this way
:04:27. > :04:34.the two, fleeting. I came down hard. I landed on my site. -- weight heat.
:04:35. > :04:39.Everything gets sucked out of you. I was lying there, panicked,
:04:40. > :04:52.disorientated to see my hands and feet had gone. At that moment,
:04:53. > :04:58.commitment to the vocation of photography. Even though I was
:04:59. > :05:02.conscious, I thought had my right hand. I thought to myself, I can
:05:03. > :05:07.still work as a photographer. I find that hard to believe. It is hard to
:05:08. > :05:14.figure out how the mind works in the position. The chips abroad
:05:15. > :05:19.tourniquets. I had a conversation decided about two laptop memory
:05:20. > :05:25.cards back to me in the UK. He said, did not worry about that right now.
:05:26. > :05:33.It is strange how the mind was thinking as a photographer then. I
:05:34. > :05:36.was jealous. Another person was injured in a similar way to meet the
:05:37. > :05:43.managed to get photographs after losing his leg in the same profit to
:05:44. > :05:50.the problem. It must say something about photographers. That sounds
:05:51. > :05:57.insane. Did you think you are going to die? Yes. Initially. I have seen
:05:58. > :06:02.people with far less injuries come to quickly, especially blood loss.
:06:03. > :06:07.On behalf of item I was injured. I saw bits of myself up in the tree
:06:08. > :06:12.above me. My arm was badly damaged. I do not feel much. I thought I
:06:13. > :06:19.would slip away and nothing was going to happen. When that
:06:20. > :06:23.tourniquets on, I thought this pain. That was when I thought, maybe I can
:06:24. > :06:30.make it. I set myself the scholars. I can wait for some minutes. The
:06:31. > :06:34.helicopters can come. Then you go on helicopter and you think, I can
:06:35. > :06:41.survive for another five minutes, ten minutes. I kept raking it down.
:06:42. > :06:48.I get shutting out, and not dying in Afghanistan. We will talk about
:06:49. > :06:56.civilians in Afghanistan. You were lucky. It had all of the resources
:06:57. > :07:03.of the military to get you proper hospital care as soon as possible.
:07:04. > :07:09.That was within 25 minutes. I was lucky. I could use working in
:07:10. > :07:13.Africa. Even if you had a minor car accident there, that could be the
:07:14. > :07:16.end of year because you would not get to a hospital. I knew that if
:07:17. > :07:23.something happened, I was going to get the most important was the
:07:24. > :07:27.American soldiers. Even if I was pulled up in an emergency centre in
:07:28. > :07:35.London, I would have died as a triple amputee. You have been very
:07:36. > :07:44.active as a human being. You have run marathon is. Very energetic. The
:07:45. > :07:50.secular life. You go back to intensive care in the UK. He had in
:07:51. > :07:55.five months of intensive care. You almost died of convocations. In the
:07:56. > :08:02.end, you had survived. Had to come to terms with the effect of loss of
:08:03. > :08:11.the use of three billions. Was that hard than the physical aspect of it?
:08:12. > :08:15.46 days in intensive care. A family were called in to say goodbye. It
:08:16. > :08:20.was touch and go. It was a hard time for those around me. For me, it was
:08:21. > :08:26.simple. You think, I have to survive. Two months after my injury,
:08:27. > :08:30.the first time I was able to take stock and realise what happened,
:08:31. > :08:36.they pushed me to the shower for the first time. That was the first time
:08:37. > :08:44.I saw myself in the mirror. I burst into tears. I was distraught. I did
:08:45. > :08:48.not recognise the person they are. For somebody who has been
:08:49. > :08:54.independent, so the world, it was different. Used -- this sounded
:08:55. > :08:59.vulnerable. I want to look at a picture of you. You managed to
:09:00. > :09:04.organise this and take it for yourself. Let us look at the
:09:05. > :09:10.picture. That is of you clearly in a different place. Two, no longer
:09:11. > :09:15.looking vulnerable and exposed. Actually looking amazingly strong.
:09:16. > :09:20.Explain to me the mental journey from bursting into tears when the
:09:21. > :09:27.best -- first look at yourself the mirror to the mindset of when you
:09:28. > :09:31.took that portrayed. When I took the photograph, which I had planned, I
:09:32. > :09:37.was determined to be the one who took a photograph. I set -- I kept
:09:38. > :09:43.thinking of Roman statues and Greek statues missing limbs. What you look
:09:44. > :09:50.at that and think of the beauty. You do not think is broken. I keep
:09:51. > :09:55.calling this microcassette image. -- like kept calling this might Greek
:09:56. > :10:03.statue image. My friend asked me out of hospital. We went to a studio via
:10:04. > :10:13.the pub. We managed to get me on this plant. It is quite comical on
:10:14. > :10:17.its own. -- plinth. We set it on a laptop and a perceived image. In
:10:18. > :10:25.this progress of recovery, you travelled the world. You had close
:10:26. > :10:30.family. He did not see much of them. You had his new girlfriend. That is
:10:31. > :10:36.beginning when all of this happen. How important is look recovery to
:10:37. > :10:40.the -- to your friends and girlfriend? They were important. My
:10:41. > :10:48.family and girlfriend and friends, everybody. They rallied. Without
:10:49. > :10:52.going into detail, I suffered from depression. I often thought and
:10:53. > :10:58.loved. My brother told me, in intensive care, never say you are
:10:59. > :11:05.not loved again. I felt so much support from so many people. That
:11:06. > :11:11.gave me strength. Let us talk about the depression. It is tied the your
:11:12. > :11:17.view of yourself as a photographer. You seem best have enormous success
:11:18. > :11:22.in the early photographic career. You lost your way and sense of why
:11:23. > :11:26.you are doing it. It seems connected to the sort of glamorous, glossy,
:11:27. > :11:33.high-end photography you are doing, which a lot of it was fashion,
:11:34. > :11:37.celebrity, music. In the end, you no longer believed in it. What
:11:38. > :11:42.happened? I did photography for ten years. Most people saw it as a
:11:43. > :11:46.glamorous lifestyle. It was. Travelling around the world with
:11:47. > :11:51.models and burns. I was deeply unhappy. One of the turning point
:11:52. > :11:56.was I did a leadership with Christian Bale in Dublin. It was a
:11:57. > :12:03.highly paid issued. I had my him there. I went to my hotel room. I
:12:04. > :12:09.cried because I felt deeply unhappy. It is hard to explain. That was not
:12:10. > :12:17.for me. It was shallow and fulfilling. It was fun but
:12:18. > :12:21.meaningless. -- unfulfilling. Each of your camera at a hotel room
:12:22. > :12:26.window when you were supposed to be doing a top celebrity photoshoot?
:12:27. > :12:32.The photo -- story is more rock 'n' roll than the reality. This was
:12:33. > :12:37.around the time with Christian Bale. I was upset. I did this photograph
:12:38. > :12:41.or a nice magazine. There was argument between the editor and the
:12:42. > :12:46.person in the photograph whether they were going to be topless. I
:12:47. > :12:53.thought, this is not why I got into photography. The story is, we were
:12:54. > :12:58.in a hotel. I have two cameras are at the window. The reality is, I
:12:59. > :13:04.threw them on the bed. The debt was by the window and it bounced out. I
:13:05. > :13:11.have to stick to the story. -- the dead. You got very well-paid work to
:13:12. > :13:17.this rock 'n' roll lifestyle. You felt it was not fulfilling. You must
:13:18. > :13:22.have taken a series of decisions that now you look back on and so it
:13:23. > :13:31.was wrong. I would not think, wrong. I was 19 years old. I photographed
:13:32. > :13:35.friends in bands. I got asked to travel around and photograph oasis
:13:36. > :13:41.and other cool bands I lived rock 'n' roll lifestyle more than they
:13:42. > :13:48.did. One of my aunt Christmas said, I thought you wanted to do serious
:13:49. > :13:53.photography. But you are doing this. I said, it is the parties and
:13:54. > :13:58.beautiful women. I was 19. I got carried away with it. I learnt a
:13:59. > :14:05.lot. I do about my trade as a photographer. You thought, you had
:14:06. > :14:08.to change your life. It did not immediately be used to the
:14:09. > :14:16.humanitarian photography that is to be your calling in the end. For a
:14:17. > :14:24.while, the opted out for a while. I moved out of London. I was almost
:14:25. > :14:27.30. It is not old. I thought had this amazing opportunities and
:14:28. > :14:34.brakes and I wasted them all. I messed up my chance. I moved down to
:14:35. > :14:38.Hastings. I drank too much. I was in a dark place. While I was in that
:14:39. > :14:43.place, some offered me the chance to do care work looking after the
:14:44. > :14:49.autistic son. Through that, I found purpose. I found according to do
:14:50. > :14:54.that. It became a full-time thing. That saved my life. Looking up to
:14:55. > :15:36.somebody else is more important than anything else.
:15:37. > :15:45.A woman who suffered an attack. What were you trying to achieve with this
:15:46. > :15:50.new style of photography? To take a step back, when I was doing the care
:15:51. > :15:55.work I worked with a family to document a life through my camera.
:15:56. > :16:00.We got him some more support that I needed. I realised that I used my
:16:01. > :16:05.skill to give somebody else a voice. So really when I set out to places
:16:06. > :16:09.like Bangladesh, it was to do that, to take stories I didn't think were
:16:10. > :16:14.getting the attention that they needed. Something like this was
:16:15. > :16:18.incredibly difficult story, you know, these were women and men in a
:16:19. > :16:23.refuge, where they were rebuilding their lives, to go along and to take
:16:24. > :16:29.their photograph is difficult. But I wanted to do that in a way to try to
:16:30. > :16:33.empower them. You talked about it being important to not see the
:16:34. > :16:38.people that you focussed upon as victim yous but victims of terrible
:16:39. > :16:45.circumstances and you talk a lot about empathy and dignity. But how
:16:46. > :16:49.as an outsider who comes into their world as a few minutes, take as
:16:50. > :16:53.picture and goes away, can you really give these people dignity? I
:16:54. > :16:58.never go somewhere for a few minutes. I won't take a photograph
:16:59. > :17:03.unless I am there for a few days, or at least a day and preferably weeks.
:17:04. > :17:07.Because it's important to build that trust. A good photograph is never
:17:08. > :17:11.taken, it's always given. There is a moment of trust that develops
:17:12. > :17:18.between a photographer and subject when a person just gives you that
:17:19. > :17:21.photograph. I am thinking of so many pictures of amidable -- amid
:17:22. > :17:25.terrible suffering. I am thinking that there cannot have been an
:17:26. > :17:30.opportunity for the photographer to have gotten to know those people and
:17:31. > :17:33.to have had a relationship and sense of being given the photograph. That
:17:34. > :17:37.doesn't always happen. It doesn't always happen. My work, mainly, I am
:17:38. > :17:41.based in a hospital for a while and I get to know the people after they
:17:42. > :17:44.are injured and see if they are happy with the photographs. There is
:17:45. > :17:48.a huge responsibility for a photographer in the most important
:17:49. > :17:54.thing is not the editor back home, yourself, it's the person that you
:17:55. > :17:59.are photographing. You are obliged to have a huge responsibility. You
:18:00. > :18:04.taking the pictures have got to be so very close to your subject.
:18:05. > :18:08.Uh-huh. Often in the most extreme circumstances. I think the famous
:18:09. > :18:11.World War II American photographer said if your picture wasn't good
:18:12. > :18:17.enough t means that you weren't close enough. There is the argument
:18:18. > :18:19.to be a long way back, involving no connection with the person or being
:18:20. > :18:23.close to that person. When somebody is injured, you are in a hospital. I
:18:24. > :18:28.never get my camera up, I'm always by my side. And you try to get eye
:18:29. > :18:31.contact with the personment I am probably one of the few
:18:32. > :18:34.photographers photographed himself moments after being injured. I
:18:35. > :18:37.understand what that is like. It's not a pleasant thing. It's not
:18:38. > :18:41.something that you want to be public. So you have a huge duty of
:18:42. > :18:46.care to the person that you are photographing. We will get to your
:18:47. > :18:53.current photograph in a second. One other quote from another renowned
:18:54. > :18:57.current photograph journalist, a guy called Adam Fergusian, he won a
:18:58. > :19:02.global award, who happened to be close to a suicide attack in
:19:03. > :19:06.Afghanistan and he took amazing photographs in the aftermath. He won
:19:07. > :19:11.a big global award. He said, "When I won the award, I felt sad because
:19:12. > :19:17.here we were celebrating over what was an intense tragedy that I had
:19:18. > :19:22.captured" thinking back, around the meldics, personnel, and it is
:19:23. > :19:27.painful sometimes to be taking pictures when they are doing their
:19:28. > :19:32.work. It's terrible, you know. It's a horrible, horrible thing to do.
:19:33. > :19:38.Every picture that I do and anything people see when looking back towards
:19:39. > :19:42.my work has been alongside an NGO. I don't go anywhereas a news
:19:43. > :19:47.photographer. I try to tell their story. Do you think there is
:19:48. > :19:51.something dangerously detached? It's a terrible thing. You see somebody,
:19:52. > :19:55.a child, in pain and you pick up a camera to take a photograph of that,
:19:56. > :19:59.I was joking with somebody the other day, it's like the opposite to a
:20:00. > :20:02.wedding. You take photographs of people in their worst, darkest
:20:03. > :20:08.moment. If it doesn't make you feel slightly sick, stop doing it. You
:20:09. > :20:15.have had guilt and you once said I've often been left with a feeling
:20:16. > :20:19.like a vulture. I photographed a boy in South Sudan who had been shot
:20:20. > :20:22.through the liver and arm and the doctor couldn't help him. I had to
:20:23. > :20:26.make the choice of taking a photograph. I took two frames, sat
:20:27. > :20:30.with the boy for the rest of the day. That evening I felt sick for
:20:31. > :20:35.having taken that photograph. Talking to the doctor present, he
:20:36. > :20:38.said to me when he was young, he had seen pictures and photographs from
:20:39. > :20:43.Australia and that had inspired him to go and do what he does. In some
:20:44. > :20:47.small way, I hope it makes a difference. God, it's a terrible
:20:48. > :20:52.thing to do. On a physical basis, how do you take pictures now. You
:20:53. > :20:57.lost the use of one arm. How do you take photographs? They are a little
:20:58. > :21:02.more out of focus. One of the hardest things is balance. Taking a
:21:03. > :21:07.picture you lose your balance a little bit anyway. I tend to keel
:21:08. > :21:11.over. So that's difficult. I was always quite a lazy photographer. I
:21:12. > :21:15.was somebody that used to stay in one place and take pictures. I
:21:16. > :21:18.developed my style to continue that and found ways around it. From the
:21:19. > :21:22.trip that you made back to Afghanistan and there you did a lot
:21:23. > :21:29.of work with civilians who had been caught up in bomb blasts. Clearly,
:21:30. > :21:35.this boy had lost a leg and I think we have a second image as well of
:21:36. > :21:39.another boy on the operating table. Do you think that the way these
:21:40. > :21:42.people look at you and regard you as a photographer doing the work is
:21:43. > :21:45.fundamentally different now. Because they can see that you have been
:21:46. > :21:51.through the most terrible experience yourself. I still feel uncomfortable
:21:52. > :21:54.taking these photographs. We were talking earlier, but the difference
:21:55. > :21:58.now is people can see that I have been through something similar, I'm
:21:59. > :22:02.in a better position to tell their story. It builds up a certain amount
:22:03. > :22:07.of trust. But it's for me, personally, you know, I have to see
:22:08. > :22:12.people now. The first picture there was of a young boy, only 7 years
:22:13. > :22:16.old, he was walking to school, stepped on a landmine. He lost an
:22:17. > :22:20.arm and leg in the same way that I did. I look at him taking that
:22:21. > :22:23.photographs and I feel so much more of what he is going through than I
:22:24. > :22:30.did obviously before this happened to me. You feel so much more
:22:31. > :22:34.viserally for the individuals you are taking photographs of. Do you
:22:35. > :22:38.feel fundamentally different of the stories you cover and the way in
:22:39. > :22:45.which the world looks to you? I mean, have you become more of a
:22:46. > :22:49.crusading photographer, for example, are you more antiwar than you were
:22:50. > :22:54.before? I mean, I was never for example a war photographer. I was
:22:55. > :22:57.somebody that was always dealing with civilians caught in conflict.
:22:58. > :23:01.If anything, I was an antiwar photographer from the start. I think
:23:02. > :23:05.for me, it wasn't about photography, I went to the places because I
:23:06. > :23:10.wanted to tell the stories. I hoped in some small way it would make a
:23:11. > :23:14.difference. I wish I was a doctor, a politician. But I had a camera. Now
:23:15. > :23:17.maybe because of my story more people will pay attention to my
:23:18. > :23:23.work, pay attention to what I am saying. If that's so, that's great.
:23:24. > :23:28.Final thought - one of your great heroes is Don Mconn. He stopped
:23:29. > :23:33.working for many years and said that he has a store of thousands of
:23:34. > :23:37.images in my brain and had a feeling that he was a manager, he knows
:23:38. > :23:45.death and those cut pieces of the human body. Well, if he could say
:23:46. > :23:48.that, you could say it only more so. How damaged inside your head do you
:23:49. > :23:52.think you have been by your experience? I go and I see some of
:23:53. > :23:56.the worst a man can do against people. I can see some of the worst
:23:57. > :24:00.in humanity. I also get to see some of the best. In a lot of these
:24:01. > :24:04.places you can see the strength of people. In my own story I see the
:24:05. > :24:08.strength of those around me, the amazing doctors and nurses that got
:24:09. > :24:17.me back walking and working again. That's what I focus on. You not
:24:18. > :24:20.stop? No, I just started. Thank you very much for being on Hardtalk.
:24:21. > :24:21.Thank you very much