Joe Humanity's role in the degradation of the natural world is one of the defining issues of our time. But when we're talking about the impact of industry on the environment, it's so easy to get lost in the numbers and the jargon. But seeing is believing, which is why some media organizations have begun to embrace photography as a powerful tool in depicting the environmental and human toll of pollution. Later, this episode, we'll hear from Ian Willms, a documentary photographer who's going to tell us about one of the most powerful photographs he's captured, among the 1000s he's taken over the course of his career. But first, we'll hear from Madigan Cotterill, a journalist at The Review, who's joining us to talk about her own work, and to introduce the concept of conservation photography. Would you mind just telling me a little bit about the feature that you've been working on for the RJ this year? Madigan Yeah, for sure. So my feature, Climate Visuals, is looking into how journalists, writers and photographers can actively use their cameras as tools to combat the climate crisis. So we kind of know that covering the topic of climate change can be really difficult for several reasons. So scientific information is often confusing, and it can easily get misinterpreted. So unlike words, which require an understanding of language, visuals can be interpreted and understood quickly and by almost anyone. So this enables a wider range of audiences to understand the message. So through my feature, I really wanted to emphasize how we can take advantage of the power of visuals to spread messages about the crisis. So you know, images have the power to hold and evoke emotion more quickly. So I hope that my piece is able to kind of resonate with some readers and change the way that we can think about covering the climate crisis. Joe Right, and the topic is kind of a personal one for you, right? Because you yourself are a photo journalist or a photographer. Madigan Yeah, I definitely like to think of myself as a photojournalist. I began kind of my work doing predominantly photography, and then it moved into more writing, because I realized, when you compare images with the written word stories hold much more power than just an image or just written word. So yeah, I do like to think of myself as a photojournalist and like to use my camera to help tell stories. Joe Right. Would you mind just introducing the concept of conservation photography? Y Madigan Yeah, so conservation photography is about using images to help evoke and advocate for action. So it's more about what happens after the image and the impact that it creates as opposed to the initial observations. So conservation images typically focus on the environment or an element of the natural world. And the point is that they're supposed to send a message about the impact humans have. Joe It doesn't matter whether you're documenting drunken hijinx during a night out, or capturing the moment a mother holds her newborn for the first time. With every closure of a camera shutter, a story is told about a tiny corner of the world as it was at a specific moment in time. Over the course of his career, Ian Willms has used his lens to tell all sorts of stories. He photographed the fallout from the rail disaster in Lac Megantic, Quebec in 2013 that claimed the lives of 42 of the town's citizens. He documented his own father's recovery from an injury that left him comatose in a foreign ICU. Telling compelling and emotional stories has often led Ian to bear witness to incredible moments of human suffering. He's here to tell us about one of those moments, a moment that he found to be especially profound, and particularly devastating. A warning to listeners this story contains descriptions of terminal illness. Ian Mr. Fish, how are you? Joe I'm good and how you doing? Ian I'm alright. We spoke before right? Joe We did. We did. I called you last week for a fact checking interview, and I promised to do everything in my power to refrain from using the phrase, 'would it be accurate to say' during this interview. Ian Well, wouldn't bother me anyway. I'll try not to use the phrase shining a light in the darkness. Joe That could be a good title for the episode. Ian Oh, gosh. No, please. I'm so tired of photographers, particularly, but also journalists using that one. Joe So what we've asked you to do, today is select one photograph that that you felt, you know, was particularly poignant. And I was wondering if right now you'd be okay with describing to me the photograph that you've selected. Ian Absolutely. So this photograph takes place in a bedroom. And there are five people in the image. And most of the people are experiencing grief, if not all of the people, very obviously in their in their expressions and body language. And in the middle there's a man laying in bed. And he's quite thin. And all of the grief in the surroundings are clearly directed towards his condition. It's a very intimate photograph. And it's a very warm, domestic familial setting. There's hangers in the background holding t shirts, and there's handmade art on the wall. Various personal effects on the bedside table. There's a couple of angel cherub type figurines on the wall over the bed with an eagle feather. And the art is Indigenous themed. And this photograph does take place in an Indigenous community. This is Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, which is an Indigenous community that's located downriver from the oil sands. And the man in this photograph, who's lying in his bed surrounded by family and friends, is named Warren Simpson. And this image was taken in the last hours of his life. The condition that Warren Simpson had was called cholangiocarcinoma, which is an extremely rare and aggressive bile duct cancer, which typically occurs in one in 100,000 people each year. In Fort Chipewyan, which is a community of 1200 people, they have had six cases of this cancer in the last 15 years, along with numerous other health problems, cancers and neurological problems, complications with births. And doctors have been raising alarm about this for gosh, almost 20 years now. 2003 it started. So this photograph is very important, because it gets to the heart of why I spent as much time as I did photographing in that area. Joe So you're a photographer, and you're there along with Warren's family. And, you know, you're standing there bearing witness to the end of this human beings life. And I'm just wondering, you know, what it's like to do that to be there as a photographer, in this moment, and yet outside of it and trying to document it. Ian Well, there's a real dichotomy of feelings happening. Obviously, it's very hard. It's hard to watch anybody suffer. Especially somebody as sweet and kind as Warren was. As a professional, it's also a tremendous honor to be entrusted with that responsibility, to be there and to impose the presence of a stranger, not just a stranger but a stranger wielding a camera upon not only this man who's chosen to live the last minutes of his life in front of a camera, but also his family and friends who would very much rather grieve in private I mean, Who wouldn't? Right? So it's challenging because to get access to a photograph like this, you absolutely have to be emotionally invested in the people you photograph. There has to be sincere connection and trust and friendship, and possibly even love. So, Warren's death affected me like it affected many of his friends. And I was dealing with that on one hand, but also professionally, I felt a tremendous amount of pressure to do a good job. Because Warren did invite me to be there in his home in the last days of his life. I stayed in the home, I slept there for over a week. And so I was working, but I was also a member of the household. I was helping with dishes, I was making coffee. I was holding people while they cried. I cried. So the line between journalist and subject is nonexistent in a scenario like that. And that's why I say I'm a documentary photographer. This is what I learned from the photographers who influenced me most deeply. People like Mary Ellen Mark, who were intensely invested in the people that they photographed. Joe Right. And would you mind just talking a little bit about how you came to be embedded with Warren and his family in that way? Ian I mean, in a word, it was time. I first went to Fort Chipewyan in the fall of 2010. And this photograph was taken in the late fall, early winter of 2019. There's a woman in the photograph in the middle, Alice Rigney, and she's a relative of Warren's and Alice and I first met, on my very first trip to Fort Chipewyan. Alice remained a friend and a sort of mentor to me over the years as I worked on this project, and she was the connection, she introduced me to Warren. And she told me when Warren and I first met, that he had this cancer. And I discussed my work with Warren and he trusted me, we became friends. And we spent quite a bit of time together over two of my trips to Fort Chipewyan, and when I got word that Warren's health was declining. You know, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to go or not, but it was Warren who invited me. And it was Warren who made the choice that I was to stay at his house while I was there. Joe Right. And and what, if any, was was the effect of this photo, when you released it publicly? What were some of the reactions like? Ian You know, some people can't really comprehend how you would get such a photograph or how you might end up gaining access to such a situation or how you would handle it. But by and large, the public response so far has not really been seen, because it has yet to be published widely enough. Joe And I'm also I'm also wondering about Warren's motivations, why do you think he wanted you to be there to photographically document what ended up being the last moments of his life? Ian Well, Warren wanted people to know about cancer rates in Fort Chipewyan because he knew like anybody else that the cancer rates were unnaturally high. And for years, he had heard warnings about how the industry is getting people sick and he worked for the industry like many able bodied people in Fort Chipewyan and Fort Mckay because there are almost no employment opportunities there anymore because of the oil industry presence. He worked for Suncor and he loved his job at Suncor. He loved the lifestyle that it afforded him but when he got sick I think a lot of things changed in his mind about what that industry meant for his community. So he started a blog. And he wanted to chronicle his experiences as he died. He wanted the story to be out there, he wanted people to know that, Fort Chipewyan is being poisoned by this industry. And he was, he was absolutely certain in his mind that his cancer was caused by his community's proximity to the industry. So, he made a very selfless and courageous choice to invite me to be part of this process, he was he was too weak at this point to continue writing, and he knew that I had been invested in this for a long time. And so he invited me to take it on with him. Joe Right. Right. Wow, that's, that's...you mentioned the pressure of being asked to fulfill a task like that, documenting the end of someone's life. And I'm just wondering, on a personal level, how do you cope with the pressure of that moment, with the closeness you develop to your subjects, and then having to sometimes witness negative things that happen to them? Ian Self care, it's very important. You have to talk, you have to take care of your physiological health, stay active, eat well. Open up to friends and family, talk to professionals. Be aware of signs and symptoms of depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder, and if you have those symptoms, then tell the doctor and follow their advice. Journalism often comes with trauma. So you have to be proactive about it. Otherwise, you're not going to last as a professional, either that or you become kind of callous and detached. Joe Right. And, in an ideal world, when people see this photograph, and the whole series of photographs that you've captured in Fort Chipewyan, that illustrate the fallout from the proximity to the oil industry. What do you hope to accomplish with these photos? I mean, what do you want to inspire within the viewers when they see them? Ian Outrage. People should be outraged. Because the Government of Canada in concert with industry has deemed communities like Fort Chipewyan as sacrifice zones, and everybody within them. And the cultural practices that have existed in these places for centuries. It's all sacrificial to them in the name of progress and economic growth. And Fort Chipewyan and Warren story, it's just one example of a trend that exists right across this country. Colonialism never stopped. It's just the forced industrial contamination and destruction of Indigenous territories is just the latest incarnation of that process. So I want people to understand that, I want people to understand the historical context of the industrial destruction of Indigenous lands and vote accordingly. Joe Well, that's, you know, it's an admirable goal. And I certainly hope you're right. And I hope the photo does get people thinking, about the colonial history of this country and how we can all work to better understand and remedy some of its worst effects. So Ian, I just want to say a heartfelt thank you for agreeing to take the time out of your day to talk to me, and discuss this photograph and tell us about Warren story. Ian It's my pleasure, Joe, I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity. Joe It's not the first time on Pull Quotes that we've discussed the power of photography. In 2017, former review journalist Emily Pardo sat down with photo journalist Ed Ou. Ed was discussing some work he had done in a region of Kazakhstan known as "the polygon". Beginning in the late 1950s, the area had been used as a testing ground for the Soviet nuclear program. Over the course of four decades, over 450 nuclear weapons were detonated within a large patch of uninhabited step in the region. Ou traveled to the area to photograph residents of the towns and villages adjacent to the test site. The people who live there suffer from extremely high rates of cancer, birth defects, premature aging, and various other maladies due to exposure to the radiation. We thought it'd be interesting to revisit the interview with Ed who speaks candidly about his own struggle to come to grips with the ethical implications of photographing human misery. Ed So when I was in Kazakhstan, I think, I try to spend as much time with people as possible and often in very intimate spaces where people can be vulnerable, but also show their humanity. And so when I first met, Mayra, she had, at that time, a 16 year old daughter, who was born with microcephaly, and she was conscious, but basically couldn't do anything for herself. Zhannoor had to be by her mother's side 24/7. And so I met them in the morning. And I interviewed them, and I learned about their day. And we would keep going back there for days and days and days. And I thought to myself, like, how do I show that Zhannoor never leaves her mother's side and a mother's love is such that she will never leave her daughter side? And so I asked, you know, is it okay to stay during the night and film you at night? And I know that's a lot to ask. Because how does a journalist come in and ask to basically, like, photograph them in bed sleeping? But that's what I asked. And I built up that trust over multiple visits. And I told them, I want to show your emotion and how much you love your daughter, and just that attachment. And so I stayed there for quite some time, and just like waited until they drifted off to sleep. And I kind of got on the bed and photographed them from above. And that's something that you can't just walk into, you need to build up to that. Like, why would you want to photograph that? And I told them, 'look, I need to show this love and intimacy so someone, regardless of their culture, their language, no matter where they are, can relate to this image.' And, you know, I showed them that photo and the mother started crying. And she said, that's everyday for me. And if we can try to capture that semblance of intimate truth, I think that's why we do what we do. Emily Was it hard emotionally, to be learning about these people that, you didn't know about how this had really impacted them? Unknown Speaker It was difficult getting people's trust at first. I think, clearly, when you're meeting people who have been born handicapped, or they're visually deformed, there is an immediate reaction that a photographer is coming in to exploit, you know, their tragedy and to exploit the way they look. And so going in that was what I had to explain to people, is if people don't know what happened, then how can any meaningful policy change come out of it? And how do we make sure that something like this doesn't happen again. And so I think that's the baseline going in, is you have to get people to trust what your intentions are. And that I think, at first, if people are hesitant to speak to you, I think that's completely fair, because you're a foreigner coming in, and you're asking to be a witness to very intimate moments, very private moments in people's homes. And that's a lot to ask. And I think you have to be sensitive to how people would feel being photographed. And I think what it takes is time, and it takes building a connection before you even start to take a photo. So a lot of the times in the stories I do, I will just go without a camera or go with a camera in my bag. And you connect with people, from human being to human being first. And only when I personally feel like I've been able to build up a sense of rapport and trust, and they understand what my intentions are and what I'm trying to do, do I take out the camera and start to photograph. Ed Every story is different. But I think in the story did in Kazakhstan. It's a very specific context because it's not like there's anything immediate happening. And one question that people would ask me is like, you know, journalists come and go and nothing changes. How are you so different? And that's a question that I really struggled with when I first got there. And it's a question that I still ask myself to this day, was it worth doing the story? Did I help at all? Did it lead to anything meaningful? And there are a few cases where the photos I published led to people internationally, you know, donating money to some of these families, there were cases where research companies would see someone who was disabled, who couldn't move, and then one person was offered like, an experimental device to help them like type, you know, and that's because they saw our photos. So it's hard to say if my photos did anything super groundbreaking, but you know, I can at least feel to myself that like for a few individuals I photographed maybe something good came out of that experience and their story being shared with the world. And that's really all that you can really ask for sometimes. Emily Earlier, you were talking about being wary of being exploitative. And I was just wondering if you do ever feel that way? And is there like a list of ethical things you have running in the back of your mind when you go to photograph someone? Ed I think about exploitation and representation like, every day, and I think about, why is it that I'm here to do this? And oftentimes, like maybe I'm not the best person to do a story. I think, you know, working in the Middle East for the last decade or so, oftentimes, you know, as journalists, as foreign journalists, we are immune to so many of the things that local journalists face. If there is backlash, for any story, at best, I get deported. But if you're a local journalist in Turkey, for example, you can be imprisoned. So for example, recently, I was banned from Turkey. And, it's a shame that I can't go back. But at the same time, like, I'm really lucky to have a Canadian passport, that that's not my home. But if you're a Turkish journalist, like you are in a completely different situation, I think a lot of times people don't think about the dangers that local journalists face. And the reason I bring this up is because there are things that sometimes only a foreigner can do, because of let's say, the dangers or having an outside context. And there's other stories that a local should do. And I think the best kind of journalism is when outsiders work in tandem with the people who have a stake in that community. Because oftentimes in conflict, it takes an outsider who has zero stake in any side to be able to seek out a more impartial version of truth. Whereas if you're living in a conflict, and you're a part of, let's say, one sect, one culture, one religion, you might be biased in a certain way. And so I think it really takes the consideration of how are we best representing truth by working with people there, and by being an outsider. So when I think about all those things summed up, sometimes then, I think to myself like, I can offer an objective point of view for let's say, a conflict or a story that I have nothing to do with, but that applies in some contexts. And other times like that doesn't apply because you're coming in as a Canadian or Westerner, are clearly more privileged. And you have your own preconceived notions of things. So I think it's just really important to keep all those things in check, and always be questioning what you're doing, why you're doing it and your motivations behind it. And you'll never have the right answer, but I think it's important to ask the question. Joe This week's episode of Pull Quotes was produced by Emma Jones with technical support by Lindsay Hanna. Our executive producer is Sonya Fatah. The music you hear right now was written and produced by Paisley Sears. If you'd like to read Madigan's article about the way photo journalists are using photography to document the climate crisis, make sure to pick up a copy of the review this spring. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, Pull Quotes is available on Apple and Google podcasts as well as Stitcher and Spotify. Tune in for our next episode in two weeks, where I delve deeper into the question of how far the press should go in reporting on the perpetrators of violent attacks. Transcribed by https://otter.ai