Peter Bialobrzeski: A Lot of Work with People Is Very Exploitative

I started with a lot of photojournalist stuff, I have been photographing people with AIDS and similar themes. But then I decided I am more interested in the living conditions, in the buildings, not in their inhabitants. The problem with people in photography is that, I find, a lot of work with people is very exploitative: photographers pretend to care to take their portraits. But then, a lot of these photographs become cliches, in classical journalism the subjects are exhausted. I don’t want to get close to people I am not really close to. And I don’t think I am a very good portrait photographer.

Photographs worth looking at need to be printed. I don’t take a million photographs to choose the best ones later: I set my mind on the story and take only several shots, and I know for sure, what exactly I want to see in a book or at the exhibition.

My projects, Neon Tigers (photographs of Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Jakarta, Singapore, and Shenzhen — Ed.) and Paradise Now (Hanoi, Jakarta, Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur), got a World Press Photo award. After I got the award they were published worldwide, and I got my share of fame.

Currently my 13th monographic book is coming out, and I am finishing a large project about contemporary Germany. Also, I am producing small diaries about Yangon and Bangkok, this is a series of ten books that I am doing with the publisher. These are small books, only 500 copies each, they look fast and they feel fast — no glossy gift editions. I have a different approach, I like small projects, I like that my publishers are my friends, nobody earns much, but nobody loses. When I went to Yangon last week, I went because I had an email from a friend living there, who said I had to come and do a project about it because it is changing so fast. When I get emails like this, I know I am doing the right thing. Cities change fast, and urbanists would find my books useful.

I spent only about 6 days shooting Cairo Diary. I don’t want to make conclusions or give advice, i just use the images instead of words: if you look at the book, it raises a couple of issues about the revolution, Soviet brutalist architecture, and social problems. You see a lot of things that you don’t expect when you hear the word ‘Cairo’, that’s what my work is all about.

A lot of the places I got to are sort of charged by other media coverage, have their story in media communication, and people expect that story to be continued. But I want to go there with a fresh eye and see what makes this place tick.

The Informal Arrangement project was made in Kliptown, South Africa, in a suburb of Johannesburg. Kliptown was a slum on the outside, where everyone is equally poor, and I was interested, what it looks like on the inside. I was interested with how people with very little to arrange their spaces. And it really looked like pop-art installations.

I think I am a documentary photographer, although many documentary photographers would not agree with this, because they think that a documentary image can be made out of two images. I use this technique a lot, and it is still a documentary image in my view: the division into documentary and art photography, is outdated, as well as each of these categories. Images have always been an idea. Photojournalism is just another aesthetic concept.