He was 19 years old, he was in Mérida and he had bought an old camera. But he wasn't interested in photographing sunsets or landscapes. Mads Nissen was preoccupied about the people, the poverty in which some of them lived, the cracks in the buildings. It was then that he realized that photography meant curiosity, social awareness and expression.
Mads Nissen is a Danish documentary photographer, he worked as a staff photographer for the Danish newspaper Politiken and as a freelance photojournalist for Newsweek, Time, Der Spiegel, Stern and The Sunday Times. În 207, he moved to Shanghai, to document the human and social consequences of China’s historic economic rise. In 2015, his photograph of two gay men in St Petersburg, from a series on homophobia in Russia, was selected as World Press Photo of the Year. In 2021 he was nominated, for the prize once again. Nissen has published three photo books: The Fallen, Amazonas and We are Indestructible.
Mads will arrive in Romania for the first time, at Bucharest Photofest (October 6-15, 2023). At its 8th edition, the festival will host over 50 events under the theme IDENTITY, a meaningful visual journey with artists from Greece, Germany, Iceland, Spain, the UK, the USA, Denmark, The Netherlands, and more.
We talked to Mads Nissen about photography, vulnerable communities, truth and the need for transparency in this day and age, where images can so easily manipulate the public.
The trigger
I was 19 years old when I realized that I wanted be a photographer. It was in the crowded streets of Mérida during a nine-month stay in Venezuela. I had bought an old camera from a friend but found myself not interested in the landscape or sunset. Instead, I was interested in the people, the poverty and the cracks in the surroundings.
One day, one moment actually, when I was browsing around like that, the realization came to me: that by taking pictures, I could combine the three major interests that I had since early on in my life. A social awareness, a curiosity and a personal need for self-expression.
How did your perspective on photography change
Sometimes if I’m in doubt, or just need to choose and navigate in life, I go back to that initial feeling. That motivation – and that guides me.
I’m too young to remember the ‘good old days’. If you put yourself and whatever talent you may have on the side of the poor, the neglected, the vulnerable then it will obviously always be a challenge to make a living for yourself no matter your talent.
But during this kind of work brings you so much more, something stronger and much more important. It gives your work importance to others. To our world. It’s not just about you anymore. And that is very needed, and even healing on your own mental health, in this ego-driving-super-greedy society we seem to have Today.
I feel like a young man trying hard. Sometimes too eager to preach in his images, rather than to investigate and be honest about is doubts.
Themes that obsess you
Currently I’m full on working on the project “Sangre Blanca – The Lost War on Cocaine”, which is in progress and will be exhibited at the festival. Right now I’m making images across Europe and in the fall I will travel to Mexico to investigate the global cocaine business as it moves to and from central America, leaving it bloody tracks.
Your press experience
The ethics of honestly, trustworthy, authenticity and transparency – that no one or no case is to be hidden from the light of day.
In China
China at that time was the center of the world. And I was right in the middle, a young man, just graduated, trying to understand the wheels of history as they were turning. I worked in so many provinces, making new friends and during important work. In the end I went back home to Europe to develop more as I photographer than I felt I could do in China.
Bucharest Photofest
I heard only good things about the festival and I look so much forward to coming.
A personal ethics guide
The ethics of honestly, trustworthy, authenticity and transparency – that no one or no case is to be hidden from the light of day.
The present in which everyone takes pictures
If it was not for ordinary people’s smartphones in their pockets, we would not have the videos of George Floyd, from the protests in Iran, Myanmar – even some of the most hard core footage in the war in Ukraine are not taking by professional photographers, but from go-pro-cameras on the soldiers helmets. It feels like as close as you can get and it’s terrifying. Obviously, those amateurs do not necessarily have the same ethics as a good professional journalist or photographer, so we need to be 100% critical towards this material. And not just the plain manipulation, also what came before and after, what is outside the frame, what are their agenda ect.
So besides having a trustworthy journalistic ethics, I believe the role of the modern photographer is to actually be able to engage the audience and to bring perspective and contexts on the issue rather than just to simply document it.
