Giles Duley
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Media TribeShaunagh talks to Giles Duley
Award-winning photographer Giles Duley started off in music and fashion, photographing the likes of Oasis, Marilyn Manson and Pulp. Becoming disillusioned with the commercial world, he went on to document the aftermath of conflict in countries like Iraq, Lebanon, Angola and Rwanda.
In 2011 while on foot patrol with the US army in Afghanistan, he stood on a landmine and lost three limbs. Giles is the founder and CEO of the Legacy of War Foundation.
For more on Giles
Follow Giles on Twitter and read about Legacy of War, Giles' project documenting the long-term impact of conflict globally.
Episode credits
Hosted and produced by Shaunagh Connaire and edited by Ryan Ferguson.
Episode transcript
Shaunagh Connaire:
Welcome to Media Tribe. I'm Shaunagh Connaire and this is the podcast that tells the story behind the story. It's an opportunity for you and I to step into the shoes of the most extraordinary media folk who covered the issues that matter most.
Giles Duley:
I said, "This photograph of you and Jamal holding hands." I said, "This is not a photograph of a refugee. This is not a photograph of a disabled woman. When I took this photograph, it was a photograph of love."
Shaunagh Connaire:
This week's guest photographed Marilyn Manson in a fridge. But he also went on to document the longterm impact of conflict through his Legacy of War Foundation. His work has taken him to countries like Iraq, Lebanon, South Sudan, and Rwanda, and so much of his photography has led to real and tangible change. This is Giles Duley. Giles, lovely to see you.
Giles Duley:
Yeah, lovely to see you too and thanks for having me.
Shaunagh Connaire:
No worries. It's been a while. I think the last time I may have seen you was in a bar in Greece, possibly, at 5:00 AM in the morning.
Giles Duley:
Yeah, I think I was the last to leave that bar every night for that whole week.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Love it. Very impressive man, Giles, no doubt. I would love if you could kick start our conversation by telling our audience how you got to where you are now as a very renowned and brilliant photographer.
Giles Duley:
It's kind of a long story to get to where I am now, but it all starts with a small gift. It all starts with an incident when I was 18 years old, when I had a car accident in the States. I was there on a sports scholarship. I was the world's worst boxer, but I thought I was great. Sport was my whole life. I'd gone to America to get a scholarship at a university. And then I had a car accident in San Francisco. And I was flown back to the UK, to London. Found myself in hospital being told I would never do sports again. And really, everything that I treasured in life had been taken away from me. I was a very, very angry 18 year old man. I was not very academic. I'm dyslexic, I failed at school, I had no A levels, no university place.
Giles Duley:
And so suddenly, to be lying in a hospital bed, told I couldn't pursue a path in sports, I really had no idea what was going to happen next. And I was angry with the whole world, with my parents, with the doctors, everything.
Giles Duley:
And then at that very difficult time, my godfather passed away, my godfather Barry, and he left me two things. He'd left me an Olympus OM-10 camera, and a book by the war photographer, Don McCullin. And I had never really seen photographs like Don McCullin's. My parents weren't that interested in art or the media, news, and I'd never seen photographs like these black and white images of Vietnam War famines in Bangladesh, Biafra. And I was just so moved by what I saw.
Giles Duley:
To this day, if I shut my eyes, I can still see those first images of Don McCullins, and I knew there and then, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a photographer.
Giles Duley:
And I've always said, it was really the moment I put that viewfinder up to my eye for the first time, at 18 years old, laying in the hospital bed, was the first time I could speak. As I say, I'm dyslexic, I'm not very eloquent, I'm not very able to express myself in words, but when it came to imagery, suddenly I saw the world and I could communicate with the world. It was like, I'd been in a bubble until that moment. And so that's, how it happened. It was really like an instantaneous falling in love. But I say more than falling in love, it was about really being able to communicate.
Giles Duley:
So I was then obsessed, when I left hospital. I was there for a few months. When I left hospital, I photographed everything I could. Was just, hungry for imagery.
Giles Duley:
And I had a few friends that were in bands, they were musicians. They asked if I'd go photograph a few of their gigs, which I did. And again, it was immediately, what I also realized about photography was, it was a passport into other people's lives. So if something went out of camera, then they were like, "Oh, come and photograph us hanging out backstage." And like I say, it was a passport into somebody else's life. And so I was photographing bands. A few magazines, saw my work, commissioned me. I think my first job was to photograph a band called the Black Crowes, which was this big rock and roll band.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Of course.
Giles Duley:
And I flew out to Detroit. I'm 19 years old. And I'm suddenly on this tour bus with this band. And I remember the bass player. He was drinking from a bottle of Jack Daniels and he said, "Giles, do you want a whiskey?" And I said, "Yes." Expecting to get like a sip of his whiskey. And he just bent down. He got a whole other bottle of Jack Daniels, just passed it to me. And I just sat there, going, "This is the coolest job ever." I don't know if you've seen that film Almost Famous, about the young guy that [crosstalk 00:04:49] with the band.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Of course, yeah, yeah, classic.
Giles Duley:
Well, that was my life. I was say, still in my teens, and I'm on the road with Oasis, with Black Crowes, all these amazing big rock and roll bands.
Shaunagh Connaire:
And you took that iconic photo, Giles, of Marilyn Manson in the refrigerator, isn't that right?
Giles Duley:
Yes. In fact, that was a funny story. I went to Miami to photograph him. And so we were sent there a couple of days before to find a location, to find somewhere cool. And I found this great old motel. And then on the day of the shoot, we had to go meet him at his house. And I turn up, and it was where his parents lived. And so there's this iconic, Marilyn Manson figure.
Giles Duley:
We knock on the door and his dad answers. And his dad's kind of, typical Miami guy, got his Bermuda shorts on. And he just shouts and he goes, "Brian, your friends are here." Which immediately, the whole aura of Marilyn Manson disappeared. And he came to the door, and his press officer was in the car with me. And she said, "Look, you've only got maybe an hour with him. So you're going to have to do it in your hotel room." And, I'd been working for quite a few years by then, and I just said, "Look, if I do it in my hotel room, it's going to be a boring photograph. And one of the challenges of photographing celebrities always was that, is that they would just want to be photographed in a hotel room. They'd maybe done five other shoots that day. They didn't want to waste a lot of time. It's hard to get cool images.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Yeah.
Giles Duley:
And I said, "Look, if I photograph you in my hotel room, I flew all the way to Miami. I've been here looking for locations. If I go back to my magazine, they're just going to look at this and go, is that the best you could get?" And I said, "I found this great place. It's a old motel. Let's go there."
Giles Duley:
And they said, "Well, how long will it take to get there?" I said, "Probably half an hour." They said, "Well, you haven't got time, because if you get there, we'll have to come straight back." And I said, "Look, I'll make a deal with you. We'll go there. If you don't like it, you come back. I lose my job. It doesn't really affect you. I think you're going to love it."
Giles Duley:
So he agreed and we drove there, and even the drive there was amazing. In fact, the whole day was magical. On the way there, we've got this guy, the taxi driver, who was really cool, in his maybe 70s, greased back hair, perfect white shirt. And he's like, "Man, what do you do?" And Marilyn Manson was like, "I'm a musician." He's like, "Yeah, me too, a drummer." And he started telling us all these stories about how he was actually a gangster, and he was with Frank Sinatra, and he knew all these people, but then his life was threatened by the mafia, so he had to escape. And we were like, "Yeah, yeah, right."
Giles Duley:
When we get to the location, and then he opens up his dashboard, and there's a gun in there. And underneath the gun, is all these photographs of him with Frank Sinatra, with all these amazing Hollywood icons. We're like, "This guy's for real." So I said, Why don't you come in and be in the shoot as well?"
Giles Duley:
So we go into this motel. The motel's amazing. Marilyn Manson, I loved to photograph, because up to that point, I'd been photographing all these kind of Britpop people, The Stone Roses, Oasis, and they would sort of turn up at a shoot wearing sweatshirt, going, "We don't want to be photographed." And it was always like a nightmare. Marilyn Manson was cabaret, and he got it, and he wanted to be photographed and he wanted to be part of the whole thing. So he loved the location.
Giles Duley:
And first thing he did was actually, he got in the fridge. That was this huge fridge. So I photographed him, yeah, I photographed him in the fridge. And then we got the taxi driver, was sat opposite of him at a table, and kind of looked like his dad. It's this guy was dressed all in white, opposite Marilyn Manson, all dressed in black, it was a very monotone room. And so it was one of the best photo shoots I ever did. I loved it.
Shaunagh Connaire:
That is so funny. It doesn't... Not in any way, surprised that you kind of just ended up in that situation, Giles. It just seems kind of, classic you, in so many ways. Do you want to tell us then how you came to do what you do now, and do so well, I don't want to call you a war photographer. Because I know it's very important to you to photograph the aftermath of war, and the effect on people. But do you want to take us to how you got there?
Giles Duley:
Sure. So I did this kind of rock and roll fashion photography for 10 years. And by my late 20s, I was getting increasingly unhappy. I was sinking into really, quite deep depression. I couldn't really figure it out why. But a lot of it was to do, I didn't like celebrity culture. The people I photographed were not necessarily interesting anymore. They were just somebody from Big Brother, somebody in a band that was not really any depth to it. I didn't like the way that women were portrayed in magazines. At the time, I was married to somebody who was a model, and I would see her coming back in tears. And I just didn't like the whole way that the industry meant that... You could be shooting for GQ, and you'll photograph David Beckham in a suit, but then Kate Winslet, who's just won an Oscar, would have to be in her underwear.
Giles Duley:
And it came to a climax. Like I say, this has been building up for a long time. And I'd find myself doing big shoots, ending up in my hotel room in tears, because I just felt empty.
Giles Duley:
And one day I was doing a shoot in the Charlotte Street Hotel in London, and it was a young actress. And the shoot was supposed to be her being sexy in bed, with a camera, and I was photographing her. And she didn't like it because she felt too exposed. And there was this argument going on with her agent and with the editor of the magazine, who are both putting pressure on her to be virtually topless and all the rest of it. And it was a moment of just clarity, where I'm sat there, and I'm looking at this happening. And I thought, "Fuck, this is not why I became a photographer. This is not what I set out to do." And it was like everything came crashing down in that moment. All these thoughts I've been having for the last couple of years, I was like, "That's it, I'm done."
Giles Duley:
I mean, the rock and roll story is that I threw all my cameras out the window of the fourth floor of the Charlotte Street Hotel. And bearing in mind, these are big old cameras on tripods and the rest of it. And they smashed in the street below. And everyone kind of turned around and saw me walking out the door. And it seemed like a kind of Rolling Stones moment. I'm as you know, not that rock and roll. I'm a little bit more chilled. I had a little hissy fit and threw them on the bed, that's about as far as I got. It's just unfortunate, it was a very bouncy bed, and they bounced off the bed, and out the window.
Shaunagh Connaire:
I've read that. But I did wonder if that's actually what happened. Oh, that's so funny.
Giles Duley:
You could see the crack in the Charlotte Street pavement for about the next decade. Whenever I walked by, I would see this crack.
Shaunagh Connaire:
That is so good, so good.
Giles Duley:
So, it was at the end. And I moved out of London, moved down to Hastings. I got a job in a bar. Nobody even knew I'd been a photographer. I hid that past. It was dead to me. But also I hoped photography was gone. I really felt lost. I was drinking heavily, drugs, sinking into very, very deep, deep depression. My marriage ended. I lost my home. And that kind of spiral carried on for another couple of years.
Giles Duley:
And then at the lowest point, I got a job as a care worker. It was a coincidence, really, just a conversation at pub led to it. And I started looking after a guy called Nick who had very severe autism or has severe autism. And I became his carer. So I'd spend the day with him. Yeah, he's not able to be on his own, very daily functions are a struggle for him. He self harms a lot. And he needed full time support.
Giles Duley:
The idea was, I'd do maybe one day a week. It ended up becoming seven days a week and me living there with the family. And what happened is, for the first time in my life, I could see the direct and positive impact I had on somebody else. Nick needed me every day and I didn't value myself anymore. I was to say, very depressed. I didn't see any value to my own life, but I could see the value I had on somebody else's. And so that's really what kept me alive at that stage.
Giles Duley:
And I did that for two years, full time carer. And people couldn't really understand, going from hanging out with Marilyn Manson, Mariah Carey, Oasis, and all those kind of people, to suddenly being a job that a lot of people would look down to, you're being a carer. And I said, "But I'm happy for the first time." I'm happy, because for the first time, I could see the direct and positive impact I had on somebody else's life. And up to that point, everything I'd done was about me, it was about this industry, it was about money, about commercialism.
Giles Duley:
And after about two years of looking after Nick, his family said, would I consider documenting his life? Because he was struggling to communicate his feelings when he saw psychologists and doctors. Nick is often nonverbal, but he obviously got on very well with me. We have a very close, and still to this day, have a very close relationship. I still see him regularly and count him as one of my dearest friends.
Giles Duley:
He used to describe his autism as being at this amazing party with all your friends, everybody you love in the kitchen, but you're stuck in the basement, and you don't know how to get up the stairs.
Giles Duley:
And so, photographs were a way we could tell his story. So I started documenting him. And at one point, he even let me document him when he was self-harming, when he was punching himself in the face and bleeding. And when those photographs were seen by the psychologists and by his healthcare professionals, they suddenly saw how serious the situation was. And whereas they'd been ignoring some of the things his mother was saying, some things I'd been saying, the photographs prove the point. And it really started to change the care he was getting.
Giles Duley:
And that was the Eureka moment. That was the moment when I thought, "Shit, this is what I can do with photography." Photography had always been this kind of fun element. It enabled me to go to great parties and all those things. Suddenly, it was a tool for changing people's lives and being their advocate.
Giles Duley:
So, I just knew there and then, the same feeling I've had when I was 18 years old, and I looked at Don McCullin's photographs, I had that same feeling again with my own work. And I knew that was my purpose.
Giles Duley:
So I moved to Angola. I had a friend that worked for the UN there, so I could stay there for free. I offered my services to charities, NGOs, to document the longterm impact of conflict. As you said, I'm not a war photographer. You will never see a photograph I've taken of a gun, of a tank, of a plane, of an explosion. I don't think it's possible to take an antiwar photograph. Because I think, any photograph with any weaponry in it, romanticizes it to some people. And I'm not a photo journalist either. I've not never done commissions. I don't work for magazines or newspapers. The way I describe myself, when I started that work, I guess I was like 33, 34, was, I was an angry man with a camera. And I wanted to change the world. I maybe naively believed that my photography could somehow impact the world and conflict.
Shaunagh Connaire:
That leads perfectly on to my next question, Giles, which will be a hard one for you but, is there a project or a character or a family that you could look at and say, actually, there's somewhere I've had impact and something I'm quite proud of in my career as a photographer.
Giles Duley:
Yeah, I wouldn't say I'm proud of anything I've done as a photographer. I think it's a very weird job to photograph people's suffering. I was talking to somebody about this recently, that I always feel I'm a custodian of people's stories. I'm there, but I'm also custodian of other people's suffering. And you take that on board and you hold that and try and do something with it. And it's hard to feel proud of that. But I would say that I'm learning how to use that to have a greater impact.
Giles Duley:
So a good example, which was a turning point in my own career, was a family, a woman called Khouloud, who is a Syrian refugee, who'd been shot by a sniper in Syria. She was paralyzed immediately from the neck down. She actually fell on top of one of her own children.
Giles Duley:
Her family managed to get her to Damascus. She got emergency treatment, and then they had to escape to Lebanon. And when I met her, she was living in a makeshift tent, made a bits of cardboard, and even billboards ripped down off poster boards, and used as a roof. So if you imagine, a tetraplegic woman paralyzed from the neck down, living in a tent made of cardboard and bits of plastic. The children slept on the floor, she was on the bed. Her husband, Jamal, was her full time carer. You couldn't really think of somebody that more desperately needed help.
Giles Duley:
I spent the day with her and got on really well with her family, took, I think, a beautiful portrait of the two of them. She's laying in the bed and Jamal, the husband, sat at the end holding her hand. And that was part of a whole series I did. And when I came back, both pictures were published and appeared around the world, and I thought I'd done my job. I thought, "I'm a photographer. I've done my job. I've done this powerful story. I wrote it, it's published."
Giles Duley:
And a couple of years later, I was back in Lebanon, and I tracked down a lot of the families from that original story. Obviously, a lot of them had moved, a lot of them had changed numbers, I couldn't find everybody. But most I had.
Giles Duley:
On the last day, I got a phone call from Jamal, Khouloud's husband, because I hadn't tracked them down. And he said, "Oh, we hear you're back in Lebanon, we'd love to see you." And I asked, "Where are you now? Where are you? Of course, I'll come and see you." And I'll always remember his answer. He replied, "We're in the same place." And it was like I'd been punched in the stomach. I felt myself gasping for air, because naively, I had assumed... I hadn't even bothered to look for them there. Because I thought, "Well, my pictures had appeared, this was a terrible situation, lots of aid agencies had seen this and even used the images themselves to campaign. Surely something would have changed." And I kind of repeated the question, "But, but, no, where are you?" And he said, "The same place."
Giles Duley:
So I went there the next day, and there they were in that same tent, and I walked in, and I burst into tears. And I looked at Khouloud and I said, "I failed you. I failed you, because you told me, you trusted me with your story, and I told it and nothing has changed." And I thought, what's the point of being a photographer.
Giles Duley:
So I thought, "Well, the only thing I can do, is to try and tell the story again and do more with it." So I did, and I documented them over that whole week. And on the last day... I always take photographs with me, that I've done before to give back to people. So I had this bag, which had all these images of the families I've documented before. And one of them was of Khouloud and Jamal, that I'd taken of her lying in the bed and him sat at the end of it. And I was really unsure, because looking through my viewfinder, I was seeing the same scene in front of me two years later. And I thought, "If I give them this photograph, won't it remind them that nothing's changed. Won't it make them feel that I had failed them, that their life was stuck in this terrible limbo?" But I thought, "No, I have to give it to them."
Giles Duley:
And I handed this photograph, taken two years before, to Khouloud. But before I gave it to her, I said, "This photograph of you and Jamal holding hands." I said, "This is not a photograph of a refugee. This is not a photograph of a disabled woman. When I took this photograph, it was a photograph of love. It's a couple who are so in love with each other. And that's all I saw." And, that's when I realized I'm not a war photographer. I don't photograph guns, tanks. All my images, if you look through them, are of people holding hands, of a mother feeding her baby, of a grandmother, brushing a granddaughter's hair, of a father on the floor, doing a math class with his kids, of a couple like Khouloud and Jamal holding hands. And that's what I document, is in the shittiest places in the world, I see love and humanity.
Shaunagh Connaire:
And that photo, Giles, then I believe the story goes that somebody in San Francisco sold that photo and they eventually Crowdfunded, was it quarter of a million dollars?
Giles Duley:
Well, so I then said, "I need to do something more with it." So this is where the kind of switch to realizing it would never be enough, from that day on, it would never be enough to just ever hand over photographs. This was about eight years ago. And so, I campaigned, spoke to lots of people. I actually managed to get... She's quite well known in that... In that little tent, in the middle of nowhere, I got Angelina Jolie to visit, and I got Hillary Swank to visit on two different occasions.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Amazing.
Giles Duley:
So she [crosstalk 00:19:51] two Oscar winning actresses coming in. Her husband was always like, "Who are you bringing in next? Who are you bringing next?"
Shaunagh Connaire:
Poor Khouloud.
Giles Duley:
Part of that, and then other people I knew in the States, we teamed up with a guy called Misha Collins, who's an American actor. And he does a Crowdfunding campaign every year. He does a scavenger hunt with an amazing group called Random Acts and GISH. And he said, "Would you share this story?" So we did. And we raised a quarter of a million in Crowdfunding, in space of a week. And most of those donations were just $5 or $10 each, smaller amounts. But it proved that when people come together around a story... And in fact I'm now his kind of, official storyteller each year. So we've raised over a million now. I set up a foundation. So I have my own charity now, which means we directly look after families like Khouloud and Jamal and any many other families.
Shaunagh Connaire:
And Khouloud's an integral part of the Legacy of War Foundation, which everybody should go and check out, and buy your book as well, Giles. But I'm also really familiar with the amazing story of Aya, who we all love to channel for. Is there a sense that you can really relate to people like Khouloud and Aya, having sustained injuries like you did back in 2011. And maybe, if you're comfortable, telling our audience a bit about that time?
Giles Duley:
Yeah. Well, starting with the injuries, what I would say, it was just a bad day at the office. It was 2011. I was in Afghanistan documenting the impact of the war there. I was embedded with a group of American soldiers. Again, I wasn't actually telling... I wasn't photographing them. I wasn't photographing the action, but it was part of understanding the whole dynamic of what was happening there. We'd been ambushed a few times and I say, on that particular day, my luck ran out, and I triggered an IED, improvised landmine. And yeah, was very badly injured, I lost both my legs and my arm. I never lost my consciousness though, so I remember the whole experience and flying to Kandahar, the medical base.
Giles Duley:
It's a terrible thing to have happened, but I still think of myself as being lucky. I'm a tourist when I go to these places. I traveled to some terrible places, but I can always get on a plane. And the same happened that day. I got injured, and I was picked up by a Medevac helicopter and taken to a hospital. For the people that live it, they don't have that option. So, I always find it very difficult to talk too much about it because I still see it as a position of privilege, that I got injured and got all the treatment. And it's like it discredits those people that have to live with this everyday and wouldn't have survived what happened to me.
Giles Duley:
But what's interesting is, of course it affected my work. I spent a year in hospital. I had 37 operations that year. Probably one of the biggest changes though, was not the injuries. I spent 46 days in intensive care. 46 days when my family was told I wasn't going to make it, 46 days when I was told I wasn't probably going to make it. In fact, on two occasions, my family was called in to say their goodbyes, formally. I was on dialysis. I had kidney failure, heart failure, pretty much every vital organ failed.
Giles Duley:
But the worst thing is, if you can imagine lying in a bed, the lights don't go off, because it's intensive care. You've already got somebody coming to you, because you're literally trying to keep you alive. The average day is about three days. I couldn't move. I was actually strapped to the bed. I'd lost my legs, obviously, so I couldn't move. I had one remaining hand that was in a cast. So I couldn't use that remaining hand. I had a colostomy that I shat in. I had a tube that fed me. I had no control over any bodily function, whatsoever. I could not move. And I could only communicate, because I had a tube down my throat, by blinking. So my whole universe was inside my mind.
Giles Duley:
And at the beginning, it was like being thrown into the freezing cold water, you're in this blind panic. And you want to tell people things. And you're in pain and you're scared, because you're choking on all those tubes. And you can't talk to anyone. You can't let anyone know what's going on. You're blinking furiously and they can't understand what you're trying to say.
Giles Duley:
And I quickly realized that this couldn't go on, that I was going to lose my mind. So I had to build some kind of discipline into my thinking. So I started to create a universe inside my own mind, conversations and what have you. I couldn't tell the time, because there's no windows, there's no clock. It's constantly light. I had no idea what time it was. And sometimes I was unconscious, sometimes I wasn't. But I realized that the nurses came very regular interviews to take my bloods and vital signs. So I thought, "That's my unit of time."
Giles Duley:
So I separated my days into every time the nurse came, that was the next unit. And I would set myself exercises in each unit. So my favorite was a hundred portrait before I die.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Wow.
Giles Duley:
And I imagined the hundred people I wished I'd done portraits of in my life. And I would visualize. And I say visualize, because it wasn't just imagining it, I'd visualize the shoot. So I would see the person arrive, what I would say to them, we'd go to the studio, how I'd set the lights up, what camera I was using, what film I was using, what I said during the talk. Then I would see the print at the end of it. I would even, then critique it and see how I could do better. And then the next shoot I would develop what I was doing. And I imagined every moment of it. And it was things like that that kept myself sane. But 46 days like that is hard.
Shaunagh Connaire:
That's extraordinary, Giles. I've never spoken to you about this directly, actually. And with all of your work in your photography, and in the documentaries that you've made as well, you've just such a deep sense of empathy and humanity, about everything you do, and I can't, not talk to you and not bring up Aya, because Aya stole everybody's hearts. As I mentioned, the fiercest... Well, back then, I think she was three years of age, with spina bifida, who also was in the Bekaa Valley. And as Khouloud has moved to Holland, I believe Aya and her family, off the back of your work and your photography, has moved to France, isn't that right?
Giles Duley:
Yeah, absolutely. And that was the point, I was going to say, it wasn't my injuries that build that relationship with people, it's suffering. And that's what I connect with people. So the injury itself made no difference to my life. It means I'm a little bit slower, I don't dance so well. What changed my life was 46 days when I couldn't speak to anyone and I thought I was dying and I was in pain, and that suffering. And that's what connects me to Khouloud, to Aya and her family, and everybody that I photograph, which is why, actually, most of the people I photograph are women, but they connect with me in a different way because they often say to me, I see in your eyes, suffering. And that's what we build that relationship on.
Giles Duley:
So Aya I met the same time I met Khouloud, in the Bekaa Valley. Her mother loves to tell the story that when I turned up, she saw me and knew that I would be their savior and her best friend. I always point out that that's a complete lie. Because actually, when I turned up, she scared the hell out of me and she told me to go away. So it's a kind of funny thing. Her mother is the most protective mother you could imagine, which is exactly as she should be. And the idea of some journalist photographer turning up and photographing her daughter. She didn't like the idea and she was quite aggressive, and all the rest of it. So, but I've now become very, very close to her and the whole family.
Giles Duley:
And at first I didn't want to even photograph Aya. She was sat in a tent, it was muddy, she has spinal bifida, meaning she's paralyzed for the waist down. At the time, she was three, four years old, couldn't sit up on her own. I thought, "If I photograph her, she looks like a victim." And I don't ever photograph people as victims. Victims of circumstance, but not in their own rights. So I decided not to photograph her and just to hang out.
Giles Duley:
But I soon realized that actually, Aya was the feistiest four year old I'd ever met. She didn't just run her family. She ran the whole refugee camp. And it kind of started with her older sister, Iman, who had actually saved her life and carried her all this journey to Syria. She looked at her sister, Iman, and Aya just said, "Hey, donkey, pick me up." So Aya was picked up and then we walked around the camp and she'd see somebody selling bread and she'd be like, "Hey, donkey, give me bread." Somebody had water, she'd be like, "Hey donkey, give me the water." And everybody did what they were told, and everybody was called donkey. And she would say, "Hey, donkey, take my photograph." And so I knew that she liked me once she started calling me donkey as well.
Shaunagh Connaire:
What a legend.
Giles Duley:
Yeah, absolutely. And she was just this amazing character. So, in the end, I photographed her, and she's actually playing hopscotch with her sister. And it's a fun photograph. And so, yeah, I went back, I made an Unreported World on Aya and her family and then kept campaigning after that. And eventually, they were relocated to France. And I went over to Lebanon to help them pack. And they only had a couple of days. And I turned up, and they had one suitcase, which was all they were allowed. And I opened it up, and [Sheehan 00:28:10] Aya's mother... I looked in it and there was just two blankets and a load of herbs and spices. And I said, "But you're leaving all your things behind, you just take that." And I said, "What have you got the stuff in here?" She said, "Well, I've been told it's cold in France. So I have the blankets." And then I said, "What about the herbs and spices?" And she said, "I'm so scared." She says, "To go to France." She goes, "But if I have a taste of home, I know I'll be okay."
Shaunagh Connaire:
Amazing.
Giles Duley:
Yeah. And so they got there. Apparently, they were all scared on the plane, but Aya was screaming, "Go, go, go." Yeah, they got to France. And yeah, it's so moving for me to see a family that really has suffered so much, and now flourishing in France. I get photographs. I got a video a couple of days ago of Aya's birthday. She's in school now, she's making things, she's having a great, great life.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Last question. This might be another hard one for you, but is there a crazy moment within your amazing career, that you can tell us about, that perhaps isn't so well known?
Giles Duley:
I remember once doing a shoot of a band and coming back to see the editor a week later, and him go through the pictures and said, "Giles, there's only one picture in focus."
Shaunagh Connaire:
Oh, stop.
Giles Duley:
And he goes, "And that's of you." And I'd been so drunk, I'd actually given the camera to the band. I didn't even take any photographs. I don't remember it, and got back. So it was amazing they kept giving me work. But in terms of the work I do now, I love what I do. And maybe it's not a crazy story, but it's something that I've maybe learned over my career. One of the first photographs I ever did in Angola, was of women who'd survived the civil war, and were hiding in a building. And it had taken me a few days to get their trust. And it's a beautiful, very Salgardo, Don McCullin esque image of these women around the fires, cooking their food. It's a beautiful image.
Giles Duley:
But at the time, I thought I had to show them in a very reverential way. What they were actually doing, because they'd never seen a white guy, and they finally got used to me, is, it was their game that they'd come behind me and pinch me on the ass, when I was taking a photograph. So these women pinched me on the ass, and then all kind of burst into laughter. And I didn't take that photograph, because I thought I shouldn't portray them that way, because I had this idea of how I was supposed to do it. That was 20 years ago. Now I would only photograph the laughter.
Giles Duley:
And so, I'm thinking of a story I did in Congo, recently. Actually it was in Rwanda, but it was, sorry, in Angola, but women who'd come from [inaudible 00:30:38] Congo, and I'd gone there with a UN body. And they had some people that I was supposed to interview. I always do what I normally do, which is sneak off when no one's looking, and I headed off in the wrong direction, and I'd gone around the camp. And I saw these two women sat outside a tent. And I went over and sat myself down next to them. I looked at them. And they kind of just stood there, looking at me. And I said, "well, you two look like trouble." And they went, "Oh, we are." And I said, "Right, you're the people I'm going to hang out with." The person from the UN comes running over, looking panicked. And I'm like, "It's all right, I found the story. You can go."
Giles Duley:
So I stayed there and got to know these women and we had such a laugh. And they said, "We want to do pictures like you did with your fashion stories."
Giles Duley:
And so, we got rid of all the men, we got rid of the kids. We don't provide the alcohol, because they made homemade alcohol. You just have to bring the batteries for the radio. So I did. All the men were sent away, looking at me a bit kind of disgruntled about who's this guy and why is he allowed to stay and we've got to go? I brought these batteries for the radio, so we put that on. And they had this homemade alcohol that was vicious. And we spent the day just drinking, dancing and making photographs. And it was a joyous day. It was an amazing, full of laughter. The kids turned up and one of the women, the kids were like, "Who's this?" They go, "This is your Uncle Giles." And you can see the kind of look at the confusion, they're looking at this white guy going, I don't quite see how this works.
Giles Duley:
But it was a beautiful thing. And that's the outcome of the suffering that I went through, the years of learning about my unconscious bias and how I should tell stories. And that, for me, it means I'm still having a rock and roll life. And I'm still enjoying, I'm partying like I ever did. But now with people who have real stories, real things, and hopefully, creating real change.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Well, that is absolutely amazing, Giles. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Giles Duley:
Pleasure.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Honestly. No, it really is my pleasure. Thank you so much, Giles.
Shaunagh Connaire:
If you liked what you heard on this episode of Media Tribe, tune in next week, as I'll be dropping new shows every week with all sorts of legendary folk from the industry. And if you could leave me a review and rating, that would be really appreciated. Also, get in touch on social media at Shaunagh on Twitter, or @shaunaghconnaire on Instagram. And feel free to suggest new guests. Right, that's it. Until next week, see you then. This episode is edited by Ryan Ferguson.
