Philip Blenkinsop covers conflict

I had breakfast today with Philip Blenkinsop, a photojournalist from Bangkok. It was a very interesting conversation. He as one of the speakers at the convention. I'll give you a bit of background on Philip.

He covers forgotten wars around the world, and has a large body of work on Guerrilla Fighters from many of these conflicts. He travels mostly by himself, only shoots black and white film and almost his entire body of work is done with a Leica rangefinder and a 35mm lens. He usually only carries one camera, but when he has two bodies he keeps a 35mm on both of them... needing the back-up in case he runs out of film. A bit of his portrait work of soldiers is done on a Mamiya 6 rangefinder.

Philip works for magazines like Time and Stern and wins awards like World Press Photo, Eugene Smith Award and the Amnesty International's 2004 Photojournalism Prize.

He questions the industry movement to digital. Not so much the daily newspapers, but the magazine have mostly switched as well. What's the big rush, why does everything have to be transmitted in an instant. Maybe the slower workflow and discipline of film produced better photographs in the end.

Rob Skeoch

www.thepicturedesk.ca