I've been spending a lot of time this week looking at the photo's of Zoriah Miller. The critically acclaimed photographer specialises in what he describes as "concerned" or "humanitarian" photography. He started off working in disaster management and humanitarian aid in developing countries but found that aid organisations are horrible to work for and the waste and miss-management made him angry. I can relate to this because I felt the exact same thing during my time in Kenya. He says that you need to find a balance: you need to spend enough time in a place to understand the situation and get close to the people you are photographing , but often if you stay too long, things start to become normal to you and you are not able to capture the intensities of a situation. This was a huge problem for me while I was in Kenya, but it's something I have learned from and will change when I go back. He also had some good advice for photojournalist's about how to cope with intense situations - 'it is important to realise that these situations exist, whether we see them or not. The choice is whether or not we do something about them. I choose to do something, but not let the sadness or depression ruin my life.' (some advice Kevin Carter could have done with.) When asked about his motivation, he simply says "My motivation is pretty simple..... I just want to change the world........ and I'm pretty sure I can do it."
It's difficult to get Zoriah's images, but you can check them out on his website -
www.zoriah.com. he also has a separate website specifically for war photography -
warphotographer.org .
