Giles Duley - Photographer HARDtalk

terrorism cases. Time now for HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk. Today, I'm eating a photographer who has used

his camera to record other peoples lives but his own life dealt in the

most remarkable story of all. 12 years ago, Giles Duley abandoned the

world of fashion photography to focus on human suffering. He was in

Afghanistan in 2011 when a landmine blew off both of his legs and an

arm. Since then, he has defied the odds, not just surviving but

returning to work, even revisiting Afghanistan. He is still a

photographer. Does he see the world through a different lens?

Giles Duley, welcome to HARDtalk. Thank you for having me. Photography

seems to have given you an enormous sense of purpose throughout your

working life. Describe what it means to you. It is literally everything.

For me, to you. It is literally everything.

in school. I was dyslexic. I was held back a year. I struggled. When

I was 18, I found photography, muttering voice, microwave to

communicate with the world. Since then, it was the most important

thing. Because of what happened to you, it is almost daft to say -- to

set it is almost as important as life itself. Reading your view, it

seems that way. You can separate the person and the photographer. For me,

it is the same thing. It is my form of medication. And I was injured,

returning to photography meant returning to life. It has shaped

what you are today. Let us go to February 2011. You were in

Afghanistan on a photographic assignment, working as a

non-governmental organisation, and amazing operation out of the in

Afghanistan. He spent time with US military. You were embedded with the

75th Cavalry Regiment. You went on a landmine. Explain to me how that

happened. I want to do a story with these unit soldiers. It is important

to show that conflict is not just affect the civilians caught up in it

but the fighting. Many American soldiers come from poor backgrounds,

different backgrounds and find themselves fighting in Afghanistan.

I wanted to tell their stories. I wanted to show how the fighting

impact of them. It's all about story, I had to literally be part of

them. Whatever story idea, immerse myself. I was living with this unit

on the frontline. Every day, we are going out our patrols and getting

ambushed most days. It is close to the village where the Taliban is

from. It is the American heart of darkness. A dangerous place where a

lot of fighting happens. We were ambushed a couple of days before in

a small compound. We searched the compound to find signs of those who

ambushed us. When we were waiting, it was a common limit. The Americans

laid a perimeter. There was a discussion. -- , moment. I turned

around to talk to somebody. As I did, I taught -- I stepped on an

AED. What else happened? I never lost consciousness. I sensed a

weightlessness. There was a great white heat. I enveloped in this way

the two, fleeting. I came down hard. I landed on my site. -- weight heat.

Everything gets sucked out of you. I was lying there, panicked,

disorientated to see my hands and feet had gone. At that moment,

commitment to the vocation of photography. Even though I was

conscious, I thought had my right hand. I thought to myself, I can

still work as a photographer. I find that hard to believe. It is hard to

figure out how the mind works in the position. The chips abroad

tourniquets. I had a conversation decided about two laptop memory

cards back to me in the UK. He said, did not worry about that right now.

It is strange how the mind was thinking as a photographer then. I

was jealous. Another person was injured in a similar way to meet the

managed to get photographs after losing his leg in the same profit to

the problem. It must say something about photographers. That sounds

insane. Did you think you are going to die? Yes. Initially. I have seen

people with far less injuries come to quickly, especially blood loss.

On behalf of item I was injured. I saw bits of myself up in the tree

above me. My arm was badly damaged. I do not feel much. I thought I

would slip away and nothing was going to happen. When that

tourniquets on, I thought this pain. That was when I thought, maybe I can

make it. I set myself the scholars. I can wait for some minutes. The

helicopters can come. Then you go on helicopter and you think, I can

survive for another five minutes, ten minutes. I kept raking it down.

I get shutting out, and not dying in Afghanistan. We will talk about

civilians in Afghanistan. You were lucky. It had all of the resources

of the military to get you proper hospital care as soon as possible.

That was within 25 minutes. I was lucky. I could use working in

Africa. Even if you had a minor car accident there, that could be the

end of year because you would not get to a hospital. I knew that if

something happened, I was going to get the most important was the

American soldiers. Even if I was pulled up in an emergency centre in

London, I would have died as a triple amputee. You have been very

active as a human being. You have run marathon is. Very energetic. The

secular life. You go back to intensive care in the UK. He had in

five months of intensive care. You almost died of convocations. In the

end, you had survived. Had to come to terms with the effect of loss of

the use of three billions. Was that hard than the physical aspect of it?

46 days in intensive care. A family were called in to say goodbye. It

was touch and go. It was a hard time for those around me. For me, it was

simple. You think, I have to survive. Two months after my injury,

the first time I was able to take stock and realise what happened,

they pushed me to the shower for the first time. That was the first time

I saw myself in the mirror. I burst into tears. I was distraught. I did

not recognise the person they are. For somebody who has been

independent, so the world, it was different. Used -- this sounded

vulnerable. I want to look at a picture of you. You managed to

organise this and take it for yourself. Let us look at the

picture. That is of you clearly in a different place. Two, no longer

looking vulnerable and exposed. Actually looking amazingly strong.

Explain to me the mental journey from bursting into tears when the

best -- first look at yourself the mirror to the mindset of when you

took that portrayed. When I took the photograph, which I had planned, I

was determined to be the one who took a photograph. I set -- I kept

thinking of Roman statues and Greek statues missing limbs. What you look

at that and think of the beauty. You do not think is broken. I keep

calling this microcassette image. -- like kept calling this might Greek

statue image. My friend asked me out of hospital. We went to a studio via

the pub. We managed to get me on this plant. It is quite comical on

its own. -- plinth. We set it on a laptop and a perceived image. In

this progress of recovery, you travelled the world. You had close

family. He did not see much of them. You had his new girlfriend. That is

beginning when all of this happen. How important is look recovery to

the -- to your friends and girlfriend? They were important. My

family and girlfriend and friends, everybody. They rallied. Without

going into detail, I suffered from depression. I often thought and

loved. My brother told me, in intensive care, never say you are

not loved again. I felt so much support from so many people. That

gave me strength. Let us talk about the depression. It is tied the your

view of yourself as a photographer. You seem best have enormous success

in the early photographic career. You lost your way and sense of why

you are doing it. It seems connected to the sort of glamorous, glossy,

high-end photography you are doing, which a lot of it was fashion,

celebrity, music. In the end, you no longer believed in it. What

happened? I did photography for ten years. Most people saw it as a

glamorous lifestyle. It was. Travelling around the world with

models and burns. I was deeply unhappy. One of the turning point

was I did a leadership with Christian Bale in Dublin. It was a

highly paid issued. I had my him there. I went to my hotel room. I

cried because I felt deeply unhappy. It is hard to explain. That was not

for me. It was shallow and fulfilling. It was fun but

meaningless. -- unfulfilling. Each of your camera at a hotel room

window when you were supposed to be doing a top celebrity photoshoot?

The photo -- story is more rock 'n' roll than the reality. This was

around the time with Christian Bale. I was upset. I did this photograph

or a nice magazine. There was argument between the editor and the

person in the photograph whether they were going to be topless. I

thought, this is not why I got into photography. The story is, we were

in a hotel. I have two cameras are at the window. The reality is, I

threw them on the bed. The debt was by the window and it bounced out. I

have to stick to the story. -- the dead. You got very well-paid work to

this rock 'n' roll lifestyle. You felt it was not fulfilling. You must

have taken a series of decisions that now you look back on and so it

was wrong. I would not think, wrong. I was 19 years old. I photographed

friends in bands. I got asked to travel around and photograph oasis

and other cool bands I lived rock 'n' roll lifestyle more than they

did. One of my aunt Christmas said, I thought you wanted to do serious

photography. But you are doing this. I said, it is the parties and

beautiful women. I was 19. I got carried away with it. I learnt a

lot. I do about my trade as a photographer. You thought, you had

to change your life. It did not immediately be used to the

humanitarian photography that is to be your calling in the end. For a

while, the opted out for a while. I moved out of London. I was almost

30. It is not old. I thought had this amazing opportunities and

brakes and I wasted them all. I messed up my chance. I moved down to

Hastings. I drank too much. I was in a dark place. While I was in that

place, some offered me the chance to do care work looking after the

autistic son. Through that, I found purpose. I found according to do

that. It became a full-time thing. That saved my life. Looking up to

somebody else is more important than anything else.

A woman who suffered an attack. What were you trying to achieve with this

new style of photography? To take a step back, when I was doing the care

work I worked with a family to document a life through my camera.

We got him some more support that I needed. I realised that I used my

skill to give somebody else a voice. So really when I set out to places

like Bangladesh, it was to do that, to take stories I didn't think were

getting the attention that they needed. Something like this was

incredibly difficult story, you know, these were women and men in a

refuge, where they were rebuilding their lives, to go along and to take

their photograph is difficult. But I wanted to do that in a way to try to

empower them. You talked about it being important to not see the

people that you focussed upon as victim yous but victims of terrible

circumstances and you talk a lot about empathy and dignity. But how

as an outsider who comes into their world as a few minutes, take as

picture and goes away, can you really give these people dignity? I

never go somewhere for a few minutes. I won't take a photograph

unless I am there for a few days, or at least a day and preferably weeks.

Because it's important to build that trust. A good photograph is never

taken, it's always given. There is a moment of trust that develops

between a photographer and subject when a person just gives you that

photograph. I am thinking of so many pictures of amidable -- amid

terrible suffering. I am thinking that there cannot have been an

opportunity for the photographer to have gotten to know those people and

to have had a relationship and sense of being given the photograph. That

doesn't always happen. It doesn't always happen. My work, mainly, I am

based in a hospital for a while and I get to know the people after they

are injured and see if they are happy with the photographs. There is

a huge responsibility for a photographer in the most important

thing is not the editor back home, yourself, it's the person that you

are photographing. You are obliged to have a huge responsibility. You

taking the pictures have got to be so very close to your subject.

Uh-huh. Often in the most extreme circumstances. I think the famous

World War II American photographer said if your picture wasn't good

enough t means that you weren't close enough. There is the argument

to be a long way back, involving no connection with the person or being

close to that person. When somebody is injured, you are in a hospital. I

never get my camera up, I'm always by my side. And you try to get eye

contact with the personment I am probably one of the few

photographers photographed himself moments after being injured. I

understand what that is like. It's not a pleasant thing. It's not

something that you want to be public. So you have a huge duty of

care to the person that you are photographing. We will get to your

current photograph in a second. One other quote from another renowned

current photograph journalist, a guy called Adam Fergusian, he won a

global award, who happened to be close to a suicide attack in

Afghanistan and he took amazing photographs in the aftermath. He won

a big global award. He said, "When I won the award, I felt sad because

here we were celebrating over what was an intense tragedy that I had

captured" thinking back, around the meldics, personnel, and it is

painful sometimes to be taking pictures when they are doing their

work. It's terrible, you know. It's a horrible, horrible thing to do.

Every picture that I do and anything people see when looking back towards

my work has been alongside an NGO. I don't go anywhereas a news

photographer. I try to tell their story. Do you think there is

something dangerously detached? It's a terrible thing. You see somebody,

a child, in pain and you pick up a camera to take a photograph of that,

I was joking with somebody the other day, it's like the opposite to a

wedding. You take photographs of people in their worst, darkest

moment. If it doesn't make you feel slightly sick, stop doing it. You

have had guilt and you once said I've often been left with a feeling

like a vulture. I photographed a boy in South Sudan who had been shot

through the liver and arm and the doctor couldn't help him. I had to

make the choice of taking a photograph. I took two frames, sat

with the boy for the rest of the day. That evening I felt sick for

having taken that photograph. Talking to the doctor present, he

said to me when he was young, he had seen pictures and photographs from

Australia and that had inspired him to go and do what he does. In some

small way, I hope it makes a difference. God, it's a terrible

thing to do. On a physical basis, how do you take pictures now. You

lost the use of one arm. How do you take photographs? They are a little

more out of focus. One of the hardest things is balance. Taking a

picture you lose your balance a little bit anyway. I tend to keel

over. So that's difficult. I was always quite a lazy photographer. I

was somebody that used to stay in one place and take pictures. I

developed my style to continue that and found ways around it. From the

trip that you made back to Afghanistan and there you did a lot

of work with civilians who had been caught up in bomb blasts. Clearly,

this boy had lost a leg and I think we have a second image as well of

another boy on the operating table. Do you think that the way these

people look at you and regard you as a photographer doing the work is

fundamentally different now. Because they can see that you have been

through the most terrible experience yourself. I still feel uncomfortable

taking these photographs. We were talking earlier, but the difference

now is people can see that I have been through something similar, I'm

in a better position to tell their story. It builds up a certain amount

of trust. But it's for me, personally, you know, I have to see

people now. The first picture there was of a young boy, only 7 years

old, he was walking to school, stepped on a landmine. He lost an

arm and leg in the same way that I did. I look at him taking that

photographs and I feel so much more of what he is going through than I

did obviously before this happened to me. You feel so much more

viserally for the individuals you are taking photographs of. Do you

feel fundamentally different of the stories you cover and the way in

which the world looks to you? I mean, have you become more of a

crusading photographer, for example, are you more antiwar than you were

before? I mean, I was never for example a war photographer. I was

somebody that was always dealing with civilians caught in conflict.

If anything, I was an antiwar photographer from the start. I think

for me, it wasn't about photography, I went to the places because I

wanted to tell the stories. I hoped in some small way it would make a

difference. I wish I was a doctor, a politician. But I had a camera. Now

maybe because of my story more people will pay attention to my

work, pay attention to what I am saying. If that's so, that's great.

Final thought - one of your great heroes is Don Mconn. He stopped

working for many years and said that he has a store of thousands of

images in my brain and had a feeling that he was a manager, he knows

death and those cut pieces of the human body. Well, if he could say

that, you could say it only more so. How damaged inside your head do you

think you have been by your experience? I go and I see some of

the worst a man can do against people. I can see some of the worst

in humanity. I also get to see some of the best. In a lot of these

places you can see the strength of people. In my own story I see the

strength of those around me, the amazing doctors and nurses that got

me back walking and working again. That's what I focus on. You not

stop? No, I just started. Thank you very much for being on Hardtalk.

Thank you very much