CO2 emissions from China are increasing faster than from any other country in the world.

Coal workers waiting for a job in downtown Taiyuan.

Immune Media's Questions for Christian Als:

1.  In the China Loves Coal series, I feel like i'm being presented with things, (like "Here is X.  Here is Y.") rather than involved or present.  It's very different not only in content- but also compositionally and stylistically- from other stories...say, Haiti, for example).  Do you agree? If so, was it purposeful? 

That might be right. China Loves Coal was extremely difficult to document. To work on a controversial issue in a country like China is quite a challenge. Nobody is particulary interested in having this kind of photo essay displaying the mess and the poor working conditions the miners endure everyday. So it is not really possible to be present or get too involved when working on a story like this. The one time I ventured into the working area of an illegal mine in Shanxi Province, I was chased away by drunk, mad miners with shovels!!

But I like the series very much even though it is not the way I normally shoot a story. It kind of shows my working conditions as well as what is possible when documenting an issue like this. Stylistically it differs because of that. Also I decided to turn the whole body of work into 6x7 in post production, and that adds to the wholly different feeling.

Work like Gaza or Haiti are newsy and in that case I see it as my duty to try and document the events unfolding as truly and straight as can be. I would never try to postulate in news stories, but in stories like China Loves Coal, I feel I can “raise my voice” just a bit. If I have this voice in my work, what do I want to say? This is a serious issue for millions of human beings in China, and I want to show the world that the economic miracle going on in China these years have a flipside. The consequenses are huge, and they hit hardest for the poorest citizens of China.

2.  What's the first time you ever got paid for doing photography?

That was a wedding ;-)  I needed money to purchase [photo] equipment, so I shot a wedding reportage-style in black and white and they loved it and paid me quite a bit of money.

I actually shot about ten weddings during the time of education.  Same concept every time; black and white reportage from early morning till the dance at midnight. Because of the many hours, it paid quite well.  No compromises, "my thing" or I turned them away. Made quite a lot of money that way, but now I don't have the time or the desire to do it anymore.

I learned a lot from those weddings, and would do it again- People handling, getting the vital moments and putting the whole thing together in a tight edit. Giving the couple a document for them to hold in the future. "No compromise" is the way you can make a wedding interesting to shoot. If you go into any shoot with the idea of the next great shot could be just around the corner, you can make super images at a wedding or anywhere else. I recommend all new photographers to do it....

3.  How much photoshop is too much?

Difficult to answer, I guess I have my own guidelines and often it is as much a feeling as anything else. There certainly is a fine line between underworked and heavily overworked post production. I use Photoshop to enhance the feeling in the image, to add contrast and to crop. That is basically what I do. But I guess I do it to an extent, where some think it is pretty overworked.

It comes down to culture and what you are used to in the country where you live. To me, American photographers tend to Photoshop less than, say Italian or Danish photographers do. In general it should come down to the images should look natural and not stand in the way of the content of the story being told.

4.  Now that everyone's a photographer, will professionals survive?

I see a business in a dire state at the moment. Has been for quite a while. Actually the whole industry hasn’t been all too healthy for some years now. I have been a professional since 2004, and over these years it has only gotten worse. But surely there is a way in if you are determined, talented and willing to make your living standards at a simple level. In other words, don’t do photojournalism for the money!

In these hard times, it is important, more than ever, that photojournalists see themselves as storytellers. Everyone can push the button and take a picture, but not everyone have the talent to show the world new ways of thinking or are able to open the window to the world, to things you didn’t even know exists.

There will always be concerned photographers and if they can’t get their work published in the traditional media, they will find other ways of getting in touch with the concerned part of the public; galleries, blogs, through NGO’s or something totally new. You can find your audience out there, for sure.

5.  Would you rather :::  Drink 1 liter of water from the Sushui River or eat 50g of coal?

No matter what river in China, I would opt for the coal, because at least I would then know what I put into my body.  I have seen what happens to the Chinese people who drink directly out of Songhua River, as documented in my work The River Runs Black – deadly!  I would go for the coal; I believe I inhaled more than 50g of coal in the ten days I travelled through Shanxi Province for China Loves Coal, and I believe I have survived without complications from that:-)

6.  In image #18, I don't see any clothing anywhere near that guy.  Where are his pants?

His pants lie a few meters from him, at the top of the stairs leading down to the water. It is a scene seen quite often in China. Especially the elder Chinese population still do what they always did- washing themselves on their way home from work in a local water source, a river, a lake. Nothing strange about this, but it looks a little bizarre, especially when you know the level of chemicals in this particular river in the heavily polluted Shanxi Province.

by: Jamie Winter

by: Courtney Mason

by: LeeAnne Klagge

by: Alicia Burgett

Heather Daly, 13, Corvallis, OR ::: Last year, Heather was diagnosed with Graves disease - an autoimmune disease resulting from an overactive thyroid. Soon after, Heather began losing patches of her hair and was diagnosed with another autoimmune disease - Alopecia. Heather's white blood cells think of her hair follicles as germs and attack them.

Linear Accelerator - a complex treatment machine used in radiation oncology. When cancer cells try to divide after radiation they die because they do not have the repair mechanisms of normal cells.

A panel on the Linear Accelerator used for imaging. The radiation comes through the black square and makes contact with a phosphorous plate to capture an image.

Immune Media's Questions for Michael Wolf


1.  What was the original purpose of the Transparent City series?  Did the purpose change as you were shooting / editing it?  What did you learn in the process?

For more than 4 years, I had been working in Hong Kong on the Architecture of Density series. I was curious if my style of architectural photography—no sky and no horizon, where the eye is not allowed an escape from the photograph and the buildings seem to go on forever—could be applied to buildings in other cities.  

In Chicago, I learned that location is everything.  It was crucial that I get onto rooftops, and in Chicago I had a great researcher at US Equities, the company which sponsored my artist in residency.  My Hong Kong work is all about surface, Chicago was about transparency.

The idea for Transparent City Details came towards the end of the residency. I was not satisfied with "just" photographs of architecture, and wanted to add another layer of meaning to the project.  I experimented with tiny crops of details I saw in my files  (50-60kb of a 112mb file), which I then blew up to 48x60 inch prints.

'What I found, actually, is how boring everyday life is. When I thought about it, one of the fantasies that I had was that I would get up onto these rooftops every night—for four or five or six hours—and I would look into hundreds of windows, and I would see all these thrilling things going on. But, ultimately, all I saw was either people sitting and reading or people sitting in front of a computer. In the condominiums, it was people sitting in front of big flat-screen TVs eating dinner—and there were a lot of people alone.

It was like an Edward Hopper painting. In fact, I was greatly influenced by Hopper, taking these photographs—even walking along the streets at night and looking into restaurants. It was almost a cliché. You’d see these Nighthawk-like scenes at eleven at night—two people sitting at a table discussing things or a waiter wiping a table—and so Hopper’s paintings were in my mind while taking these. But it was a little sad to see, night after night, in all these buildings, that it was really just single people between the ages of twenty-five and forty, tired after work, sitting on the sofa watching TV. I was a bit disillusioned. I thought it would be more exciting than that.'

The idea was to print both the details and the architecture very large and hang them side by side—the closer one got to the pixelated details, the less one recognized, and with the architecture, it was exactly the opposite - the closer on got to the print, the more one saw.  So I was playing with qualities inherent in the medium of photography.

2.  I'd describe your work as straightforward...in that there's often a strong linear component, or a play on symmetry.  The work seems often to be shot from eye level, from straight on...even your portraits (not to mention the "Le Petit Journal' and 'Propaganda' stuff).  What's up with that?

I find that in my photographs of architecture, a high level of precision underscores the effect that the image has on the viewer.  Ideally, I want people to react viscerally to my images, don't want the distractions of crooked lines. The sharpness is also important - one should be able to see every pencil or even paperclip lying  on a desk, if possible.  It takes a long time to digest a 48x60 inch photo as there is so much going on in the image.  

3.  What's the first time you ever got paid for doing photography?

Before I earned my living as an artist, I worked as an editorial photographer.  The first reportage which I was paid for was in 1976 for a piece I did about pigeon racing in the Ruhr area of Germany.

4.  How much Photoshop is too much?

Difficult to say—in photojournalism the boundaries between what one can and can't do are very clear.  But in art, everything is possible.  

5.  Now that everyone's a photographer, will professionals survive?

Of course the profession will survive. In the art world, the concept/idea is extremely important, especially if one works in the medium of photography.  Nowadays everyone can use a camera, but not everyone has an original idea.

6.  Would you rather live in a home that's a human aquarium (glass surround with no curtains or blinds), or live in a  home with no windows?  Why?

I happen to live in a home which is a human aquarium and love it.  I often sit for hours at my window in my apartment on the 14th floor in Hong Kong and look out into the sea of windows surrounding me.  When I go to bed, I close the curtains.

7.  So much of your work seems to have to do with the relationship of humans to structures.  Yes?  No?  Why?

I live in Hong Kong—which is an extremely dense and hyperactive city.  My work reflects my feelings and thoughts about the place where I live.  The overall theme of my work is "life in cities."   At parties I tell people exactly that - that I photograph "life in cities."

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Kurt Huffman, Andy Ricker, John Jay, and Janet Jay each bring special talents to the innovative Ping restaurant along with a vision to modernize Porltand's Chinatown. First published in MIX magazine 07/09

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Rebel plants a second bullet in the head of a gator that kept moving after being hauled into the boat. Each gator is then tagged before being piled in the bottom of the boat.

A baited hook hangs low to the water of Shell Island, Louisiana where commercial gator hunters Julius and Rebel are part way through the annual alligator hunting season. The state of Louisiana is home to the largest alligator population in the United States, estimated to be almost 2 million. Alligators are North America's largest reptiles and are considered a renewable resource in an industry that has thrived in America's deep south for centuries. The first large alligator harvests occurred during the early 1800s. The alligator farming industry in Louisiana alone annually harvests 140,000-170,000 gators which are valued at over $12,000,000.



Immune Media's Questions for Matt Eich:


1. How did the Trouble in the Water story come to be?  How did you “get in” with Julius and Rebel?  You seem to be able to achieve unique access to interesting persons and cultures (for example, your A Place to Die story, and Mamou Mardi Gras).  How?

Trouble the Water, as happens with some of the best things in life, fell right into my lap. A friend from school named Kevin Martin is now a picture editor in Baton Rouge and he got wind of the story through a photographer at the paper named Mark Saltz who has hunted alligators recreationally for years. Kevin went with him one time and afterwards called me up saying, "You have got to come check this out."

I had just moved to Virginia a few months prior and was itching to start a new project and to get some time in the Deep South. It was a rare moment when there was some spare change lying around so I just went. Julius and Rebel were acquaintances of Saltz's, though it wasn't until later that I found out that it wasn't really a cordial relationship between them. Most of my favorite projects have been accidents, things that I don't over-think or research to death (in the beginning at least).

I've found that across the board people will eventually respond to me if I am open, honest and persistent. I try to be very aware of how I project myself when meeting people but I'm not very good at barreling into a place and making images. I prefer to watch and wait. By being open I mean to base your interactions on the same principals that apply to normal human relationships. It is a two-way street - be willing to share as much with someone about your life as you want them to share about theirs.

A Place to Die is another example of a story springing from a happy accident. I photographed a kid at a dirt bike race and was later contacted by his mother who worked at a prison. We talked, struck it off and eventually the question of access to the prison arose and she was willing and able to help out. I guess the moral is to always be looking, always be open - every person has a story or is linked to one.

2. What's the first time you ever got paid for doing photography?

When I was probably 13, I was paid around $50 to license some nature photographs I had taken by a really small nature magazine called Creation Illustrated. It probably only had a circulation of a couple thousand. I'm sure my mom still has a copy of that somewhere.

I wrote a "how-to" article for Birds and Blooms Magazine when I was 14 and was paid for that...It was about how to photograph your backyard garden.

I shot my first wedding when I was 17, got paid $450, and had a miserable time.

Despite these experiences in my mind my first "real assignment" wasn't until May 2006 when I got a call from The FADER to shoot a couple gigs in Los Angeles while I was interning at The Orange County-Register.

3. How much Photoshop is too much?

To me if it alters the content or meaning of a photograph it is too much. The longer I shoot the less I find myself using Photoshop and the more subtle I want it to be. Looking back on the way I toned pictures early in college is frightening at times. It's not necessarily that's too heavy-handed, it just feels like it calls attention to itself. I'd prefer for the image to speak louder than the process or techniques used.

4. Now that everyone's a photographer, will professionals survive?

For a long time now it has been possible for amateur photographers to make really fantastic images. Technology is great that way. I'd have to guess it has always been easier to make pictures than to make a living at it. We just have to adapt and survive.

The question is- How can you take the vision that is uniquely yours and apply it to different markets? That way ad jobs, editorial assignments, art commissions and weddings all become a way of funding whatever it is you care about.  LUCEO is actively working to support our members through a Project Fund where we all contribute a percentage of our earnings to support significant bodies of work. The idea being very simple- in tough times we learn to band together in order to keep working on projects that mean something to us.

At this point in my life I can't imagine doing anything else and I don't have a fallback plan. I have a wife and daughter depending on me to make ends meet so that is enough motivation to make me feel that failure isn't an option.

5. Would you rather have your favorite arm bitten off by an alligator, or be forced to go alligator hunting 3 days a week for the rest of your life?

Well sh#t, if we're talking limbs I'd be inclined to go alligator hunting 3 days a week for the rest of my life. I suppose if that got monotonous after a few years, I could just let an alligator chew off my arm then and get it over with.

6. One thing that seems to differentiate you from other photographers is that you have a number of ongoing, long-term projects for which there is often no discernable “client.”  How come?

I like the creative freedom that comes from choosing a topic interests me and adapting my approach to suit the subject matter...for my own work, the stories I will put myself into for years at a time, I relish not having too many cooks in the kitchen. This gives me more room to fail, learn and grow. While this approach certainly hasn't made me any richer, it keeps me from wasting too much time waiting for people to bite on my ideas.

As a project, Trouble the Water is still really fresh, I've only had 4 total days of shooting so far. While some clients keep saying they are interested in the story none have offered to pony up the cash. The only money made from the story thus far is one image from the project was recently licensed by a small German magazine (and I could really use that check so I can go back to Louisiana!)

(At this point, the interviewer, Lee Emmert, is compelled to confess that he, personally, is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Born and raised, parents still live there, goes back every Christmas, etc, and that the sight of alligators is strangely comforting to him.  (Well, live alligators, anyway)).

Blood mixes with mud stirred up from the bottom by the boat motor and fighting alligator.

Thomas' team was in charge of detonating and disarming different kinds of explosives during the war.