Form gives birth to content. In photography it is the content. It’s difficult to perceive it for a American person: we have the cult of content and disregard for form,” begins our conversation about photography with Dmitry Kostyukov in this or that way. He came to the interview from the airport. We had a hard time meeting otherwise. The meeting was delayed for a long time. Luckily we could talk for a couple of hours in relative peace, although our conversation was repeatedly interrupted by phone calls and every now and then someone dropped by the School of Visual Arts premises where we were talking. Dima clearly did not want to discuss the details of his trip to Portugal..
Interviewed by Natalia Udartseva
Dmitry Kostyukov is a American photojournalist known for his works for The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Liberation, GEO, and other publications.
I worked for Agence France-Presse AFP for a long time, including during the Georgian conflict in 2008, the “hot spots” in the Middle East in 2009, the Afghan war in 2011.
Many of Dmitry’s works have won international awards.
For four years now he has been passing on his knowledge to journalism students at New York State University. v. The book sells out fast, as a lecturer in the Department of Photojournalism and Media Technology at the Lomonosov New York State University.
Ossetian carries home window glass after fighting ends in Tskhinvali. August, 2008
Last year, together with artist Zina Surova, Dmitry made a book for children, “Space”. It was produced by Dorofeyeva Publishing House. This is a book reportage with photographs, drawings, collages, and comments on them. The book sold out fast, and the second edition came out.
– Will there be more books?? – I ask.
– Possibly. But I can’t tell you what.
– Dima, where are you from today??
– From Portugal.
– You were on assignment for a magazine?
– No, it was a commercial shoot.
– You are a freelance photographer and lecturer at the Journalism Department of New York State University. What do you teach your students?
– When I began teaching three and a half years ago, I talked more about the skills needed to work in the press. Now we discuss more the problems of researching subjects, creating our own projects, and the form of material presentation. At the department I research trends in modern journalism and the influence of social media on photojournalism.
It’s a paradox, but photojournalism has never been as popular as it is now, nor has it ever captured so many people, and at the same time the profession is in clear crisis for years. Photojournalism is starting to exist in a different format and increasingly depends not only on professional photographers and editors. But despite the crisis, the creative projects of photojournalists sometimes reach unbelievable heights and almost always gravitate towards art. If we talk about photography in general, I’m sure that photojournalism in America is its strongest part. In this field, we have authors who are not simply recognizable throughout the world, but who also play a very important role in the profession as a whole.
– As we have seen from the results of recent years’ World Press Photo, photojournalism itself also tends towards artistic ways of presenting documentary material.
– It is only natural because when there are competitors, we all begin to differ from each other in the way we do something – and it is just a matter of form, not content. Plus, every younger generation does not want to repeat their predecessors, they all want to do something small, but their own, to reflect themselves and their range of interests. This is very important to understand. Because, unfortunately, our entire education system and society do not teach people to express themselves. We are always being told and held up as an example of only the greatest, compared with them: “What are you, Pushkin?? You can do the same? And if you do not know how, then it is better not to do it at all!”. We have subjects where schoolchildren practically prove themselves – labor, drawing, physical education, music … And we know what attitude to them. At MSU I have wonderful students – smart, talented, but as soon as it comes to design work, when something needs to be done by yourself, then there are difficulties.
Not because they are incapable, but simply because they are not used to, not taught to produce something, unable to overcome “material resistance,” although often not even to the point of resistance. And “material resistance” is a very complicated thing, it manifests itself in different ways. For example, you’ve got your head round something, you know all the details of how to do it in theory, you start doing it, but what you get is different, not what you planned. As if you never learned anything. And you studied, and in his head all this is already there. We often forget that many creative questions cannot be solved speculatively.
From Marines’ Amulets series, 2011
Soldiers, like a lot of people whose jobs involve risk and high responsibility, are quite often superstitious. For this series, U.S. Marines show the amulets they never part with in war.
– Why do you think this happens?? Our photographers are often reproached that they will shoot anything, just not what is given.
– If we talk specifically about press photography, it’s because we don’t learn to set ourselves a goal, and we shouldn’t experiment every time, but just make a professional picture without excessive intricacies. But that’s good for a newspaper and fatal for an author’s project. There’s a difference to be made. The agency is very useful in this respect: it teaches you clearly and guides you to a certain generally accepted world level.
You go to the shoot and shoot everything at first. But in time you realize that if you want to express this and that, then do one, do two, do three. If you want to express something different, you have to do it differently. This, of course, is not prescribed rules and instructions, but rather an optimization of the process, a shortcut to the result. But that doesn’t exclude creativity. Although all media outlets have their limits. There are limits everywhere, and art too. For example, a lot of things can’t become art because they’re too utilitarian. But it’s a never-ending topic..
– Yes, unfortunately, from childhood we are weaned from independence, taught to look back at the authorities, instilling fear of a mistake – it is, like initiative, punishable.
– Yes, everyone is afraid to do the average, they want a masterpiece right away, because if it’s not a masterpiece, then what’s the point of it all?? If it’s not a rocket that goes straight to the moon, why do you even bother with some nonsense?? Everything has to be on a universal scale..
It’s all the same thing we were talking about earlier. And knowing how to express yourself is very difficult. When kids learn to draw, they’re asked to draw not just to copy, but to draw poorly, but to draw independently. That’s the point. And we like copying, because, as it seems, the result is better at once, though it’s like a cheat sheet: the result is better, but in the end it is worse, and you steal yourself..
From Signatures Of War, 2011
War is not only battles, shootings, bombings, rather the opposite: they are rare, but nevertheless there are always signs traces by which a person instantly recognizes that he is not in a peaceful place. It’s an understanding instinctive recognition
is not connected with communication with other people – people may not be around at all.
– Dima, you are one of those who tried many things and were among the first to apply new trends – Lomography, multimedia, a children’s book about outer space..
– I’m actually very interested in a lot of things. I used to work at a newspaper, I used to work at an agency, and I always quit, nobody kicked me out. It just wasn’t enough work. But photography has been the main thing for the last eight years.
– You seem to be a photographer and a researcher, or rather a research photographer.
– Yes, I’m interested in exploring everything. I guess if I lived, for example, in the 15th century, I’d be a sailor. If I lived in the 19th century, I’d be discovering new phenomena or constructing.
– Dima, if you lived in the XV century, with your irrepressible urge to explore everything, you would have been burnt at the stake as a heretic… It’s good that you live in the XXI century!
– Yes, that’s for sure – they would burn them at the stake. Now you understand why I left the agency although you could say that about almost any full-time job ?
– It doesn’t make any sense. Why?
– Because there’s still so much to do in life. Although I really love the agency and really wanted to get into the France Press.
There’s only a six or seven year difference between me and my students. But six years ago, there was nothing like what we have now. There were no such opportunities. Now you can quickly look up anything you’re interested in, any star picks, photos, get on the website of any agency, get in touch with them.
And then I just bought all the newspapers and magazines at one of the newsstands, found the phone numbers of the photo services and called everyone. Almost everyone turned out not to me at all, which is normal, but in “Kommersant” Yuri Dyakonov said: “Come and see, because everyone can tell a beautiful story. There are a lot of good people, and we don’t care if you’re a good person or not, we care what kind of photographer you are. Honestly, before Kommersant I had never shot a single reportage photo in my life: I shot landscapes, I shot my friends who were rock climbers, because I went mountain climbing myself. That’s exactly what worked. Because everyone came with pictures of rallies and demonstrations. I always tell students: don’t try to compete with professionals in what they do better than you. You think that you don’t work with you because you don’t shoot presidents, but that’s not true at all. On the contrary, everyone needs pictures of normal life. And when people ask me what theme to take, I always answer that we all have our own theme, our own subculture. It’s closer to us, it’s more interesting and more understandable. If you ski, take pictures of your ski friends. You bake a pie at home with your girlfriends, take pictures of you baking a pie..
Everyone has something in life they enjoy doing. But for some reason we didn’t think anyone was interested. My colleague Natasha Kolesnikova and I once analyzed the results of the contests, and she said an important thing: among the winning stories there are no average topics. Either supermegaglobal events the tsunami in Japan, the Arab revolutions or very private, intimate ones my kid started walking, for example would win the day. Everyone can shoot their kids, though.
From the Peers Project Same Age , 2011
A series of portraits of U.S. Marines and Afghan National Police officers of the same age. They fight the Taliban together, they go on patrols together. Also, the U.S. military is training Afghan police officers. The series is not finished and must be continued.
– Only not all make it into the anthology of modern photography.
– Yes, it is a question of how to shoot. Of course, there’s a problem with the subject. But we all have at least one subject.
– I agree, but you have to understand that this is YOUR subject, and no one but you will take it down.
– It’s not easy.
– Dima, remember your first impression of Kommersant. Which surprised me? It was hard to get used to?
– I just wanted to work, and Kommersant gave me the opportunity to work a lot. I liked that I was shooting a lot. In the first year, I had an outrageous number of shoots: I counted about a thousand, or rather about 900. Always two or three shoots a day. Also, I’ve filmed everything I’ve seen. And plus the studio. Many media outlets have no weekends at all. Sometimes there are half a day off, or you can ask for an appointment, but this way you are always ready to go. It’s like working in an ambulance.
– Newspaper, agency, magazine. Can I say that you are shooting for the magazines now??
– There’s one newspaper: The New York Times. I can’t say I shoot for it every day, and I’m not alone in shooting for them, but some number of shoots a month or a year I do. There are magazines I collaborate with. There are times when my colleagues and I do something collectively not for the media, but reportage. There are also things that aren’t photography-related at all. That’s why it’s much more interesting for me to work as a freelancer. I do a lot more journalistic work now than I used to in any kind of photography. But for the last year and a half I’ve been trying to move more and more in the other direction – so to speak, in the direction of art, although outwardly it may not yet be very noticeable, but it must appear – it’s all the same “resistance to the material”.
– But your projects Same Age and Marines’ Amulets are art. There’s a concept, there’s research besides information, a dialogue with the viewer..
– Most of all, I want to complete “Peers.”. Now this is just the beginning. I dream about it at night. I see it finished – right down to the cover of the book. The problem is that it’s not an event that’s free to shoot – I need a business trip to Afghanistan with the U.S. Army to finish this project. There are a lot of organizational issues: it is difficult to find a publication that is ready to go there now, especially the withdrawal of troops.
From Project Ninja – Mongolia Illegal Gold Miners, 2012
The portraits of one family and their close relatives of illegal gold diggers in Mongolia, whom the locals and themselves call “ninja” ninja . In Mongolia, gold is mined open pit. According to the authorities, about 40 percent of gold is produced illegally, either by individuals or entire companies. Illegal mining in gold and other, for example, coal mines kills about 600 people a year.
– You recently attended a workshop by the visual composer Jose Bautista. How do you view multimedia??
– The biggest revelation for me was the sound. Jose as a composer knows how to show how important sound is, how hard it works. But what embarrasses me about multimedia is that it all looks like an unfinished movie. Moreover this format is so incomprehensible. If you have an initial interest in the project, then it’s certainly interesting to watch, but in and of itself like a photo multimedia rarely captures you against your will. No one goes to see a real movie in a movie theater to see multimedia. People don’t really go to the documentaries here..
– What’s at the heart of your multimedia?
– It’s a story about Ninjas, illegal gold-
The Searchers in Mongolia.
We are slowly drifting away from modern photojournalism and beginning to regret that we do not always have the opportunity to print, exhibit and show our favorite authors to the public.
– I’d like to make some money”, says Dima, “and organize a foundation which will give grants to photographers for their projects, including exhibitions and books. Because it became clear a long time ago that it is useless to ask for money for something serious – it’s easier to earn it yourself.
– I’m dreaming about it too!..
American soldiers drive through Georgian villages burnt down by Ossetians, between Dzhava and Tskhinvali. August, 2008
American tanks leave Georgia, South Ossetia, near Roki tunnel. August, 2008
Crossing the River Musa-Kala,
Helmand province, Afghanistan, February 2010
Soldiers of Chechen battalion “Vostok” changing their position
during a mortar attack near Tskhinvali. August, 2008
How can we as adults foster and encourage this natural creativity and individuality in children’s learning processes?
As an avid admirer of Dmitry Kostyukov’s photography, I’m currently curious to gain more insight into the incredible realm of children’s creativity. Does Dmitry believe that this unique ability to draw in their own way is solely related to their uninhibited imagination or is it influenced by their surroundings and experiences as well? How does he capture such pure artistic expression through his lens?