12 / 09 / 2008
Philip Blenkinsop - A citizen of the planet
Philip started to take photgraphs for The Australian newspaper in Australia. He quit that place one year after in 1989 to settle in Asia. He is a member of the NOOR agency. He has been covering numerous subjects such as the forgotten war of the Hmong in Laos in 2003, Phnom-Penh coup d’état in 1997, conflicts in Kalimantan, etc. He offers this year a report about people living by the Yellow river in China.
As I start the interview, wanting to ask Philip about how he came to photography, he just does not let me finish my sentence and declares: “let’s skip the part about me, there are much more important things to talk about.”
“What do you want to talk about?” I reply. “About the future, and more precisely the water.”
Philip is definitely worried about the future of the planet, observing the environment problems and global warming. China’s economy and industry are developing intensively and so is the pollution resulted. This is why he wanted to go to this country and show the deplorable way of living.
He admits that he still wants to work on wars and political conflicts but he is very aware that “we have to wake up and take responsabilities” for our children.
Philip had no problem with Chineese people. “People were very welcoming, inquisitive and compassionate.” “I never felt at any moment that I should go” he says when I ask him about how he managed to take photos during somebody’s funerals and if the situation was not embarassing.
“It was done in a very discreet way.”
But Phlip had to deal with local police officers who often came to him to ask about his work. Photographs are not very allowed in that area.
As we can see in his exhibition in the couvent des minimes, several pictures are put together as a kind of panorama. But the photographs are not straightly arranged. Phlip explains:
“This is how your eye works, you first look up and then down and then up. Life is not straight and put in a box. So you can capture different moments. This is also a reflection of what I’m feeling.”
The photographer confesses he has a special preference to Yuri Kozyrev’s work. He also appreciates him as a friend and would love to work with him.
Visa pour l’image is a wonderful chance for him to get to meet photographers he did not know before and would have never met otherwise.
Jim Lefeuvre