People thought the gun problem in America was crime and gang warfare, but that’s the result, not the cause
War and famine in Somalia, gun conventions in America, street portraits in Hackney – it’s hard to know what Zed Nelson will photograph next. But, as Keith Wilson discovers, these seemingly random selections are connected…
When I ask Zed Nelson to recall the moment when he knew he wanted to become a photographer, he describes the day when he was 10 years old and wandered into a field to take close-up portraits of cows that “made me see and study them in a completely different way.” Fast forward a decade to March 31, 1990 and Zed is a student of photography and filmmaking at Westminster University, only today he has joined a 100,000-strong crowd, protesting in London’s Trafalgar Square against the Thatcher government’s introduction of the community charge, better known as the poll tax. The demonstration turns into a full-scale riot, resulting in more than 100 injuries and 339 arrests. “I remember being there as a student demonstrator, but I had a camera with a few rolls of film and it was the day where I crossed the line from being a student to being a photographer,” he says. “I got this real sense of being able to engage with life and make a point and pass comment through my work and just being involved in history. I guess that was a pivotal moment.” Excited at photographing a major news story for the first time, Zed’s work wasn’t done: he still had to get his pictures published, something he had never done before…
Did you get any of those pictures published at the time?
Yeah, I remember excitedly ringing different newspapers, but no one was really interested. When you’ve been on a demonstration it feels like the most important thing in the world at that moment, and then you realize most newspapers have a policy of ignoring these things unless they become monumental or break down into violence. But this was an enormous event and I ended up getting it published in a magazine called City
Limits, and they paid me £30. Well, it cost me £30 to take the pictures by the time I processed the films and made a print, so it wasn’t exactly a ticket to riches, but it was very exciting getting my first image published on a subject that I felt very strongly about. I think that was the appeal, that combination of getting paid to do something that you really had a vested interest in, so that was a turning point.
So that was your first published photo story, in effect?
Yes, it was. It was the beginning of the end of Margaret Thatcher’s reign. It was a very exciting day where you felt people just said, ‘Enough’, and this picture I took of Trafalgar Square, it looked like a war zone, really.
Yes, I remember some of the photos at the time. It was a pretty feisty demonstration to put it mildly…
I remember all sorts of conflicted feelings as well, being pushed up against the police line. I wasn’t without sympathy for the police, you know, I could see the fear in their faces, and I realized that, as a photographer with a camera, you could walk between the two sides, from the protestors to the police and back again, and it gave you this enormous privilege to be able to do things and access areas that you normally wouldn’t be permitted to.
It sounds like you learned a lot from that you were able to apply later.
Yes, definitely. You learn a lot from those experiences. Later on, I ended up in Somalia and then Afghanistan and Angola, and you have to become street-wise and learn to work under pressure and make decisions and think about why you’re somewhere and what you are trying to achieve. It happens in a little microcosm on a local demonstration, but it can all become useful later on.
Who were your mentors and the people who inspired you?
Well, I’ve done everything back to front. I was too eager to do it all my own way. Now, I wish I had spent more time assisting and reading up about other photographers and looking at more work, but at the time I was just too keen to get out and start working. I mean, at university I had a lecturer who was obsessed by Don McCullin, who had fed us this diet of Marxism mixed with Don McCullin. That sort of photography with a purpose, the idea that photography could have an impact, was very appealing to me. Subsequently, I had experiences that really shattered some of my naivety, or made me really question the power of photography and the media that we work within.
Can you give me an example?
Well, it’s a slow process, but when I ended up in Somalia, there was a civil war and a famine, a very bad famine where, as a very young photographer, I was in a situation where I was photographing people literally dying of hunger, and the situation wasn’t getting any attention at that time. I had
I wouldn’t want to look back on 20 years of work and feel it was of no interest or consequence to the world
gone there with very clear reasons (believing that) the power of photography could change the situation, could help them. But then you get caught up in another enormous learning curve – the background politics to the war was much more complicated than I realized, where foreign governments had manipulated the situation in Somalia, poured weapons into that country, buying control. They’d supported this tinpot dictator who had been kept in power as a kind of puppet by foreign governments. And then there’s a famine, but you realize that there’s also food available, there’s a market with food for sale a hundred metres down the road! Then you realize famine doesn’t affect everyone, it’s to do with power and control. All of these things kind of blow your mind a little bit and I started to write longer and longer captions, thousand-word captions, because the image otherwise felt like it would be misleading or an oversimplification, and so I was sending back a lot of text with the images, and then I was sending back images that needed to be put into context to be understood.
Who printed these pictures?
My images were ending up on the front page of The Independent. They were a good newspaper, but I realized how an image cannot always tell the whole story. So that began a struggle that I still have today of how to tell stories.
After your experiences in Somalia, where did you go next?
Later on, I was in Afghanistan and again this conflict was being fought with American and Russian weapons, and I began to realize that in all the countries I went to – Angola, Somalia, Afghanistan, El Salvador – all of these conflicts that I documented, they were all flooded with American and Russian and Chinese and sometimes British weapons, and there was this behindthe-scenes story going on.
What happened in Afghanistan?
I got caught in an ambush. We were in a car that was machine gunned. I was working with a friend, he got shot in
both arms and I had an interpreter who got shot in the neck, so that brought it home that, as a freelance, you’re pretty exposed. If something goes wrong you really are out there on your own. But more importantly that was the turning point where I did this book called Gun Nation, which is about America’s love affair with the gun. I had a feeling, as a photographer, that we can look at gloomy violent subjects in Africa and other developing countries, yet we ignore the real problems in our own countries, or the behind-the-scenes reasons that have caused many of these conflicts. So, I made a decision to turn the tables and start looking at the problems in Western society and try to be a little bit more positive about the developing world, and not produce work that just confirms stereotypes and clichés.
Did you begin work on Gun Nation with any preconceived ideas?
Well, I wanted to strip the glamour away, having watched a friend get shot and feeling I was about to die. It wasn’t like the movies. The wounds I had photographed in different hospitals were not like the gunshots in the movies where the cowboy heats up his hunting knife and picks out the bullet. So, I wanted to show that America was the source and manufacturer of many, many weapons, not only in its own country but also around the world. When I started reading up on it, the number of deaths in America from gunfire were the statistics of a war. I thought, okay, I’m going to document that phenomenon. I was interested in exploding some of the myths about guns and investigating this enormous statistic of 30,000 people who die by gunfire every year in America.
As you say, that is a statistic that belongs to a war zone rather than an allegedly peaceful society…
Yeah, but the key to the project was to avoid the stereotypes, so I didn’t photograph any gang members with guns. I looked at white middle class America, who were the people who manufacture the weapons and advertise them and sell them and buy them mainly. That was what made the project unusual at the time and that’s why it ruffled a lot of feathers as well, because people were just used to this idea that there was a lot of crime and gang warfare in America and thought that was the gun problem. My point was: no, that’s the result of the gun problem, that’s not the cause of it.
Did Gun Nation alter your views in any way? I’m thinking of the picture of the women sitting around the coffee table comparing their guns…
The Memphis housewives! That was extraordinary, that won the World Press Photo Award, that series. Did it change my views? No, I just became more amazed at what I found, but I was mostly shocked by the disconnect between people’s actions and the consequences. The violence and the death was shocking, but the most shocking thing was this complete disconnect or unwillingness to make links between cause and effect.
How do people respond to you, a stranger with a camera with an almost unnatural and intense interest in them? How do you put them at ease?
Well, one of the great benefits of being
a photographer is that human beings like attention. I just think that we, as humans, like attention. I’m amazed at people accepting me entering their lives and asking questions, I’m often surprised that people seem to enjoy it.
There’s a lot of very basic psychology on how you approach people and how your own demeanour affects people. So, if you’re agitated or nervous, or feel that you’re doing something wrong, people will pick up on it. If you lurk around with a handheld camera, rather than being discreet, sometimes you make people nervous, and so sometimes I do the opposite, I put the camera on a tripod and I become as obvious as possible, and it sends out a signal that you’re not trying to hide.
They don’t want to feel intimidated or threatened?
No, exactly. It’s different for different situations, like sometimes doing street portraits I’ll get a friend to come with me: a female friend with a dog. And when it’s like me, a woman and a dog on the street, it gives a completely different atmosphere than just a lone male. In Israel and Palestine, I dressed like an idiotic tourist because I didn’t want to be killed by an Israeli drone while I was photographing near the security walls, so I wore shorts and a straw hat. I was using a tripod with a 5x4 camera and I was worried that I would look like an insurgent with a weapon like a rocket launcher, so I made myself look like a typical American tourist!
When I went to an American gun convention, I flew all the way to Dallas, walked in on day one, I had press accreditation, walked around all these stands selling modern weapons. I had a 35mm camera and everyone refused to let me take their picture. I was dismayed by the end of the day, it was a disaster. So on the second day, I built a studio complete with backdrop and lights and then people queued up to be photographed!
Apart from that story, I imagine you work mostly in a minimalist way with your choice of kit, for instance when you were photographing famine and civil war in Somalia?
Well, then I’m more minimalist in a way. It would be probably just two cameras and a few lenses. That would be it. It depends on the project.
APortraitofHackney was mainly on a medium format camera, even dispensing with most lenses.
Do you have preferred focal lengths to work with?
I tend to steer away from ultra-wideangles, or even fairly normal wideangles. It’s just a stylistic thing. I used to shoot much more wide-angle and I’ve erred towards more standard lenses. In documentary photography, the wide-angle tends to give the image an immediate sense of drama, but it’s just a style I’ve grown out of a bit, I think. I like images where you don’t feel the technical aspects, I don’t like anything gimmicky. You can make too much of the effect in a way, so my favourite images are the slightly more direct and simple, and the subject really does the talking. Some projects I’ve shot almost exclusively on a standard lens. If it’s on medium format it’s around a 90mm, but if it’s on 35mm then it’s a 50mm.
What were you using during the poll tax riots because that sounds like a classic 35mm format situation?
Yeah, yeah. I can’t remember the camera I would have had then. For 35mm I have Nikon cameras. I have a D810 and I’ve got a D4 and a D850. I’ve only had that one a couple of months. Generally, I have always used Nikon for my 35mm work.
What was your first Nikon?
Oh god, It’s so long ago that I can’t remember! I never had one of those FM2-type ones. I would have had manual lenses on it. I’m just going to look in my filing cabinet where I keep my old equipment. I’ve got a Nikon F5, but I did have one before that as well, the F4. Ithink they were autofocus, weren’t they?
One of the great benefits of being a photographer is that human beings like attention
Yes, the F4 was the first pro model autofocus SLR from Nikon.
Yes, it seemed like a really modern camera in its day.
Do you prefer to use prime lenses rather than zooms?
I’m not one of those prime lens freaks. I find the zooms like the 24-70mm f/2.8 and 70-200mm f/2.8, they’re both very, very good and they cover everything I need. I’ve also got a 35mm prime and 50mm prime.
What is the most important that lesson you have learned in your time as a photographer?
Just ending with an easy question there, are you? A nice simple one! My god. It’s such a broad question it becomes impossible to answer. I can’t even think of an imaginary answer!
I don’t know if I’ve learned it or just observed it, but I think it is to work on subjects that are important to you or that you want to know more about because your work and the process of being a photographer essentially becomes your life. It’s a world you inhabit so you had better be sure that you’re working on subjects that you feel are important. I wouldn’t want to look back on 20 years of work and feel it was of no interest or consequence to the world.
Or to yourself…
Or to myself, yeah. So, stick to subjects that are worthy or important or interesting because when things aren’t going well, or if you can’t get funding and you just have to take a huge gamble, when it feels like it’s not being appreciated, you need to believe in work that you’re doing to get you through those stages. That’s it really.