175 - Patrick Brown

Patrick Brown has devoted himself to documenting critical issues around the world often ignored by the mainstream media. His groundbreaking project on the illegal trade in endangered animals won a World Press Photo Award in 2004 and a multimedia award from POYi in 2008. Patrick’s book Trading to Extinction was nominated in the ten best photo documentary books of 2014 by AmericanPhoto. In 2019 he published No Place On Earth which provides an intimate portrait of the survivors of the persecution of the Myanmar’s Rohingya population in 2017.  Patrick has been the recipient of numerous awards and prizes including the 2019 FotoEvidence Book Award and two World Press Photo Awards. His work has been exhibited internationally at Centre of Photography in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo, Visa pour l’Image in France and his work is also held in private collections. Patrick is a regular contributor to a wealth of publications, including, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, TIME, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, National Geographic and Mother Jones, and has worked with such organisations as UNICEF, UNHCR, Fortify Rights and Human Rights Watch.   On episode 175, Patrick discusses, among other things: His peripatetic upbringingHow the surgeon that saved his young life also changed its trajectoryFinding it difficult to photograph people he knowsMoving to ThailandThe Thai/Burmese borderTrading to ExtinctionWhy the book was such a ‘painful’ experience he nearly quitNo Place On EarthWhy you have to go to editors and not wait for them to come to youThe ethical questions of documenting horrific situationsSuffering from ‘moral injury’Why he included images of tools in No Place On EarthHis involvement in the Alex Gibney film The Forever Prisoner   Referenced: Josef KoudelkaJames NachtweySebastião SalgadoAdam FergusonEmphas.isStuart SmithDewi LewisAlex GibneySir Roger Deakins   Website | Instagram “I’m always asking myself on these kind of stories, these kind of issues, ‘am I doing the right thing? Am I in the right position morally?’ If you stop asking those questions I think you w