Gary Knight: Ambassador profile
The imposing physical figure of Gary Knight has gained a big reputation in the world of photojournalism over the past two decades since choosing his vocation in 1987. As one of the co-founders of the VII Photo agency in 2001 he has been instrumental in establishing the model for the 21st century photo agency, but where did it all start for this giant of photojournalism?
Oakham in the small county of Rutland is the epitome of the stereotypical quiet, English rural town where locals live peacefully and quietly. It was here in 1964 that Gary Knight came into the world and the very peace and quiet that many crave was one of the reasons that Gary developed a desire to ‘spread his wings’ and seek adventure in far off lands.
As a child Gary recalls: “My Dad was a keen amateur photographer with his projector and slideshows and all that stuff.” But it was books, and in particular the writings of the legendary photojournalist Tim Page, that inspired Gary to seek something beyond the confines of a life stuck in middle England.
“I wanted to escape a mundane English middle class life. I didn’t want to stay – I just wanted to go away. You see, I was brought up on great adventure books. So, from reading those you develop a great sense of romanticism, a sense of chivalry and the chance to live that sort of dream,” he explains.
© Gary Knight/VII
“At 14 I picked up Tim Page’s book and I very much understood that photojournalism was a job. I also used to pick up and see the photographs by Don McCullin in the Sunday Times magazine and those guys inspired me.”
It was this mixture of understanding photojournalism and developing a sense of a political conscience that drove Gary on. He recounts: “As a teenager I was very political. I understood the Vietnam War. I had worked with refugees from Indochina.” He adds: “The dream started when I was living in England and, if I remember correctly, my first professional photographs were of Iggy Pop and The Ramones shot at the Reading Festival for a Swedish newspaper.” But clearly a career as a music photographer wasn’t quite enough for Gary.
His wanderlust kicked in and he made the decision to leave England for pastures anew. “I had a lot of issues to escape and photojournalism was a form of escapism. I actually met Tim Page at an early age and he gave me the advice that ‘the only way to go was to go to the story’, so I took that advice.”
But why did he become a photojournalist? “To be honest there are many reasons. We (photojournalists) always say that it’s the need to do the right thing, to address the issues of our time, and that’s obviously a part of it. But I’m often seeking something more.”
His career began in Thailand in 1987, aged 23, when, after a few years travelling, he picked up his camera in earnest to begin a quest that has seen him mix photography with a heartfelt concern for human rights to devastating effect. As a boy his first camera had been a Box Brownie but when he had decided to go professional he started shooting pictures with the Canon AE-1 Program.
© Gary Knight/VII
He lived in Bangkok with friends, including the photojournalist Philip Blenkinsop, and for five years South East Asia provided his photographic platform. Whilst in Asia his pictures documented the internecine warfare within a region that was coming to terms with the end of the Cold War.
As far as cameras are concerned Gary recalls: “After the AE-1 Program I moved on to supplement it with the T90, and then the EOS 620 or 650 in around 1992. The natural progression after that was to the EOS-1 film cameras. I was using a 20-35mm, a 50mm macro, and an 80-200mm zoom at the time. ”
Following several years in Thailand and the Far East in 1993 he moved on to the former Yugoslavia. He reveals: “I met up with a couple of TV cameramen, including Vaughan Smith, and they and other people advised me to go to Eastern Europe because that was where the story was. In late 1992 one of my buddies was getting married so I went home to England and then on to Bosnia where I stayed for a few years, from around 1993 to 1999.”
Whilst in the former Yugoslavia Gary lived in an apartment on the Croatian coast and travelled in and out of the war zones on assignment. Whilst there he met his future wife, Fiona, and fell in love. It was also here that whilst shooting images of the civil war he became immersed in the subject that has dominated much of his photographic work since – documenting human rights abuses and crimes against humanity.
By the mid-1990s Gary was establishing a reputation, as one of the world’s leading photographic chroniclers of conflict and poverty and it wasn’t too long before he began to get recognition from his peers. In 1996/97 he received the first of two Amnesty International Photojournalism Awards and many more honours were to follow.
After his years based in Croatia Gary returned to England in 1999. “I lived in London and I worked in South Africa, Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan, and other places but the principal place I was working was still the Balkans.”
© Gary Knight/VII
Although he became a contract photographer for Newsweek magazine from 1998 onwards prior to that Gary had been freelance. He says: “I was represented by a guy called Simon Gutman who ran a photo agency called Report. He had escaped from the Nazis in Paris and had actually launched Robert Capa’s career back in the 1930s – he gave Capa a camera. When Simon died I went to Saba Press Photos.”
Shortly after the dawn of the 21st century Gary and some of his photojournalist contemporaries began to note that many of the smaller photo agencies were being taken over by larger organisations and even larger conglomerates were forming. In fact, Corbis acquired the agency that Gary was working for at the time, Saba Press Photos, in March 2000.
So, in September 2001, Gary was one of the founders of the VII Photo agency alongside six other photographers – the late Alexandra Boulat, Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil, Christopher Morris, James Nachtwey and John Stanmeyer. The idea, from its foundation, was for VII to be an efficient, technologically enabled distribution hub for some of the world’s finest photojournalism whilst drawing on the collective strengths of its photographers.
© Gary Knight/VII
Gary explains: “In 2001 I started VII. It was really a consequence of the times we were in. You had giants taking over smaller agencies and forming conglomerates, so we wanted to do something different. We thought we’d form; we’d set up; and we’d make our own mistakes. We were basically all at the same place in our heads at the same time.”
In recent years Gary has covered the invasion of Iraq, the occupation of Afghanistan and the Asian tsunami, and he is currently working on a series of photo essays on the issues of inequality, injustice and prejudice. His extra-curricular commitments include being a board member of the Crimes of War Foundation and a trustee of the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation.
In addition to this he was a founder of the Angkor Photo Festival, a registered charity in Cambodia, which began in 2005 with the ethos of establishing a permanent home for photography in Asia paying special attention to the emerging photographers from the region.
When it’s suggested to him that this sort of work is humanitarian Gary baulks at the idea. “I don’t see it as that. I wouldn’t call it humanitarian – that’s the wrong word. For example, the Crimes of War Foundation is actually more of a lobbying group and the Angkor Photo Festival is really all about fund raising and organising teaching for photographers for all of Asia.”
© Gary Knight/VII
Today Gary’s principal photographic tool of choice is the Canon EOS-1D Mark III. He explains: “I don’t care about the number of megapixels, I just care about the quality of the file and the files from the EOS-1D Mark III are very nice, better than the 5D. I think this is the best quality file that Canon has produced. It’s sharp and it looks a little crisper than before. In the RAW file, I really don’t have to do much work on the images afterwards. I just upload them, adjust the white balance and that’s more or less it.” However, he adds: “The EOS 5D is still my favourite camera because of its size.”
“Actually I still shoot a lot of film. I love the EOS-1V and use to with the EF 35mm f/1.4L USM and the EF 50mm f/1.2L USM. I have a darkroom and I print a lot. To be honest I think film is the new digital. That’s probably not the right thing to say but it’s what I enjoy,” he laughs.
Gary's work has been published in magazines all over the world, including Newsweek (for whom he has been a contract photographer for the past 10 years), and is held in the permanent collections of several museums. His numerous awards include an Honourable Mention in the Robert Capa Award 2003/4, first place for features in the Picture of the Year Awards 2000, and first place for magazine spread in the Picture of the Year Awards 2008 for his coverage of the civil war in Zaire.
But he ruefully observes: “None of these honours have made a significant impact on the conditions in which the people I photograph live”. Nevertheless he remains optimistic that this situation may be reversed.
When pressed for any favourite image, or the one that had the most impact, from his career he refuses to pick out anything. “Really for me it’s the total of the images. I don’t think that any one photograph changes things and in any case on any given day I might choose a different image.” He adds: “I’m much more interested in creating image. They’re just photographs that are useful and powerful. They’re important because they are of today.”
Although he has just agreed to become one of the first four photographers to be involved in the Canon Europe Ambassadors Programme, alongside Ziv Koren, Lorenzo Agius and Michael ‘Nick’ Nichols, Gary has already been very busy during the first few months of 2008.
In February 2008 he served as the chairman of the World Press Photo Jury 2008 and in May 2008 it was announced that he has helped to launch Dispatches, a new current affairs quarterly. This publishing project, for which he is art director and co-editor, has been founded with his colleagues Simba Gill and Mort Rosenblum. The first issue has the theme ‘In America’ and features the photo essay ‘In God’s Country’ by Gary’s fellow VII photographer Anton Kratochvil.
© Gary Knight/VII
He explains: “I’m very interested in publishing, developing my foundations and using photography in many ways. Dispatches has lots of great writers contributing, such as Paul Theroux and Samantha Power, and, of course, great photography.”
Gary is currently working on a series of essays that address poverty and other issues of inequality, injustice and prejudice but what of the future? “As time goes by you seek something more. For me, I’m interested in going beyond what I’ve done before. I like to focus on the things I think are important, so I want to distil what I want to do and be working on more focused projects. So, I’m looking at exhibiting, being connected to museums, the Angkor Photo Festival and the publishing ventures. I want to keep pushing in multiple areas.”
Plans are already well underway for the future themed issues of Dispatches with more big name writers set to come onboard and a series of multimedia presentations to tie in with the photography featured in the publication.
Although when not visiting the ‘trouble spots’ of the world with his camera in hand, he lives in the South of France with his wife, Fiona, their two children and an assortment of animals it’s clear from talking to Gary Knight that he’s a driven man. A driven man, with camera in hand, who seems to have a clear path for the future even though he is already over two decades into his own photographic journey.
- Technical
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Gary Knight’s equipment:
Cameras:
EOS-1D Mark III
EOS-1Ds Mark II
EOS-1D Mark II N
EOS 5D
Lenses:
EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM
EF 17-40mm f/4.0L USM
EF 24mm f/1.4L USM
EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM
EF 50mm f/1.2L USM
- Click through to page 4 of this article to read Gary Knight's opinions on the Ambassadors Programme.
Gary Knight - shooting from the lip
What do you think about the Ambassadors Programme?
“I like the idea of it and I am looking forward to seeing how it works - I think it is a great initiative and I like that. I have used Canon cameras all my life so it’s a nice natural fit for me.”
Why do you think the Ambassadors Programme is important?
“I think any direct connection between producers and consumers is vital for product development and for the free flow of information that will help Canon continue to produce great equipment for photographers. I think it is also important for Canon to demonstrate this openness to the photographic community.”
What got you started in photography?
“Dreams.”
What does photography mean to you?
“It’s a tool, a vehicle that allows me to fulfill many of my dreams and aspirations.”
What kind of photographer do you consider yourself to be?
“A fortunate one.”
What would you advise someone who is just coming into the business?
“Don’t be in too much of a hurry, read, and maintain an open mind.”
