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Rankin interview

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Marie Claire photos: Rankin Congo Portraits

How did you end up going to the Congo with Oxfam?

I did a campaign with Oxfam last Christmas - the one with celebrities wearing ribbons - so I was already working with them. Then we were in a meeting one day, and I raised the point that I felt all documentary photography from conflict areas was, by being contextualised within the conflict, anaesthetising people to seeing people in extreme poverty or in pain or living in these terrible situations and I said, ‘Why don’t we go out and try to do a set of portraits as real people?’ I wanted to take what I do with celebrities to a war zone. I exist in this media bubble, and I took that skill and used it in a different world - people, living in this case in these camps in Congo, that have been through these terrible things. I guess by doing a portrait photograph I wanted to humanise them, and make them real to the people looking at the photographs.

What did you want to achieve with these pictures?

The positivity in people who have gone through these terrible things. They are still living and still surviving. That’s what interested Oxfam. It is about the duality of these people, them looking like a real person with a real life and not just an object in a photograph or documentary.

And why the Congo?

I decided on Congo because you hear about the other places - Darfur, Afghanistan - a lot. And yet five million people, more people, have died in that country since World War Two than in any other place in the world.

How did you feel about being there when you first arrived?

I was overwhelmed by it. You can see the immensity of the problem. Helplessness doesn’t mean you have to feel sad. The kids blew me away - all the hope. There was optimism, people dealing with stuff on a day-to-day level and wanting to change things. There are little shacks every few feet as you drive up to the camp, all selling something. Everything is absolutely right in front of you, and it’s an exciting place to be, full of tension and energy. I wanted to get out and photograph everything. I wanted to make the people who they are: they are farmers, they are hairdressers, tailors, all these different things that they were before they had to run away from their villages and go to that camp.

But it really made me want to give something back so my idea was to do an exhibition of the photographs that we had taken in the main square. That was when we really felt that we had done something for the people. The people of the camp put them all up in the little market in the middle of the camp, and all the people from the camp came and looked and it was really incredible how everybody stood back and moved down looking at them all. We gave them all a photograph and it went crazy! Then I did this mad thing… I asked them to stand at the other side of the rope and photographed them. It was so immediate, it wasn’t planned at all and it came out just like a school photo, all jostling each other. That was great for me as well.

Was it easy for you to talk to and photograph the people in Goma?

Even though they were hungry, they wanted to talk to me on a different level, wanting to change things there. I felt like a bit of a mug trying to get positive images out of people that are possibly not going to eat that evening. The best way to describe it is guilt. I feel guilty trying to do something - it is such a small thing for me to do and it feels like a gesture rather than a lifelong dedication to changing the world.

Did they like looking at their own pictures?

There is a tradition of being photographed for posterity, for your family and for the ancestors - they definitely had a history of portraiture. When Congolese people die they have their photo put on the coffin, and one guy kept the picture I took for his coffin. I knew that giving somebody a picture would mean something in a place where giving an empty plastic bottle means something. I had the idea before we went to do the exhibition but I was not prepared for the reaction. I saw when those people got those pictures that they felt they were getting something back. I had exhibited around the world and had portraits sold for tens of thousands of pounds and never felt the way that I felt in that marketplace in Goma, when I gave them a crappy laser print. It means so much more to them than anybody who has bought one of my celebrity pictures.

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What stunning photos. He is so right about contextualising people in conflict situations. Hopefully this will get us at look at human beings rather a crowd of victims with whom we have no connection. Fantastic.
Comment by Suzanne on October 01 10:50

I Love what Rankin did. His work and massage to the world. I am so touch by his creative each photographs and the testimony of the Village Voice. Rankin worked is so rewarding. Touch the heart and soul. Change people life. I will visit your exhibition of Rankins Congo Portaits.

Comment by Jessiely on October 31 13:13