Interview with David Butow: The West, China's Youth, and the Sichuan Earthquake

David Butow is a photojournalist based in California, USA. Asignments have taken him to Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and South America. His primary interests are social issues and the effects of public policy at local and international levels. Butow also works extensively in the United States covering issues of politics, education, race, immigration and poverty among others.

As a photographer working in the journalistic field, he hopes his craft contributes to an understanding of various peoples, their living conditions, cultural evolutions and the connections that exist between societies around the world. He tries to approach his coverage with as few pre-conceptions as possible, letting the personal experience of seeing and photographing a situation guide his viewpoint. (From his website.)

I had the privilege of interviewing David over the phone last week. It was a pleasure learning about his creative vision and craft, as well as hearing stories about how his interests in China translate into fantastic photographs in the field.

The following is the transcription of the interview.

Can you please first tell a bit about yourself? How did you become interested in (1) photography (2) China and did these strands meet independently or together? Which first?

It began independently. I started taking pictures seriously in high school and I didn’t have a favorite subject matter at first. It took me a few years before I kind of meshed my interests in photography with my interest in current events. I started to follow the news more so than an average teenager so by the time I was a junior or senior, I thought newspaper photography was a really cool thing to do because you could go to places you wouldn’t normally go, see things first-hand, and take pictures. To me, this was a great combination.

So when did you become interested in China?

Well, the funny thing is that I became interested in my last year of college. I went with a friend who set up a trip to several Asian countries – he was older and was already a working photographer at the time – and this was 1986 Tibet had just become open the public. I didn’t really know anything about Tibet or the Dali Lama or Tibetan Buddhism, which I think was a big reason why he wanted to go but it was nevertheless fascinating to me and it was clearly – even today – some parts of Tibet were the most remote parts of the Earth. And I loved the experience; I stayed for around 10 days in Tibet. And on my way out of Tibet, I took a charter plane out from Chengdu and then another charter plane out to Hong Kong, which would eventually take me back to the States.

I see. So no direct flights, huh?

Haha, that’s right. Yes, no direct flights from Lhasa to Los Angeles. So, basically, with China for me, it was Tibet and Chengdu, that’s it– but it wasn’t until 1998 that I went back and that’s when I went to Xinjiang. There, it was sort of a fluke actually, because I was working for a magazine and the photo editor said “oh, we should send you to China,” and it was kind of a offhand comment and they never sent me to China (for a number of years, anyway) so I just went on my own. I started reading about the Uyghurs, there was something about it that subject really interested me and I decided to do a photo series about them.

Let’s talk a little about “The Western Land” series that was published in a part of the Aperture book called China: 50 Years. It says on your website that your “primary interests are social issues and the effects of public policy at local and international levels.” Particularly when most of the economic and political activity is so concentrated on the Eastern rim of China, what made you interested in the West?

That’s a good question. Actually, since I did the series on the Uyghurs, my focus in China HAS shifted to another topic. But with Xinjiang , I was interested in part because it was a place that was almost like a time warp, it had the look and feel of someplace in other time. This group of people was so isolated from much of the change and also isolated from much of Chinese culture in general – they were so different from the Han culture, in terms of religion, art, the social laws that they had, etc.

There seems to be a strong focus on social change in your work. Specifically for China, you seem to focus a lot on the change of China’s youth. I’m interested in this topic too. A lot of ink has been spilled recently about how the one-child policy, combined with an upbringing in a post-Tiananmen, economically-driven society, has left a lot of young people in China materially-focused and in sort of “in limbo” in terms of identity. What has your experience been like as a photographer exploring this issue?

Right, this is my most current work. The Uyghur project was great, but I really think that the China Youth Project touches on larger, broader issues of how people grow up, how people think of themselves and social changes not even limited to China. I kind of finished up Uyghur project in 98 and 99.

It took me a while to find a specific idea. Anyways, I went back to China in 99 to photograph the celebration associated with the country’s 50^th anniversary and then another time to photograph another story. At the time, I was interested in China as a whole, but wasn’t actually sure what in particular I wanted to focus on. I was looking through all the pictures that I took and I felt that the pictures of young people were the most interesting. I thought it was the best way to show all the changes going on in the country. I could talk for hours about this subject, so the more specific the questions, the better.

What would you say to the assertion that “youth are youth” (that is, youth are all materially-focused and in search of identity the world over) and China’s young people are no different than the young people, of say, the West?

Okay, that’s the perfect question. The difference, I think, is that, China is changing so fast and that it’s an incredibly diverse country – particularly the way how people live. You have people living in tiny villages; their family is farmers; they might sleep in a building that doesn’t even have glass windows. Then, you have kids who grew up in Beijing or Shanghai, who have never even had grass underneath their feet, who have grown up in a pretty comfortable life. So, there’s this tremendous diversity and I think the key point for me in this work is that, because the country is changing so fast, it’s almost impossible for any 20 year old to imagine what their life will be like in 20 years by looking at the life of a 40-year old today.. Do you know what I mean? When I got out of college, I could kind of look at someone who was older and think “that’s pretty good; that’s the kind of lifestyle that I want to lead, that’s the kind of job I want to have.” Young people can’t really do that because new possibilities that are emerging so fast; what was available to the generation of current 40 year olds when they were young is completely different than what opportunities young people have now.

Right, we have a generation of youth who are unprecedented in nature, at least in China’s history.

Yeah, exactly. I would maybe even go as far as to say “world history.” If you look at China’s history in the last 100 years, there’s been such an evolution of how society is structured and the value systems: they’ve been turned up side down a few times. And it’s being turned upside down right now. And when this happens, it’s very hard to predict what people are going to find important.

Also, I just wanted to add one more point an aspect of the subject matter that appeals to me: the fact that about 70% of the kids in China are only-children [plural form of 'only-child']. I’m an only child myself and I identify with that personally. And another thing: it’s an interesting paradox in this group that you have all these children and they’re suddenly becoming all self-aware and society is actually encouraging them to follow their own dreams and ambitions. But it’s happening in a place where, traditionally, the group is more important.

Right, as the country is opening up, there seems to be this push of self-identity, ambition and the focus on the self (and in some cases selfishness) mingling with the old, communal identity – the focus on the group, the nation and the larger whole – in the minds of the young people that I’ve met.

Right, I find that a really interesting idea.

In an environment where you’re looking at quite complex identity issues, how much do you research and talk to people, as opposed to merely shoot? How do you balance spontaneity with planning and pre-visualization?

Right, the planning aspect is actually quite simple in the fact that I just go to places that might have some good activity and just take pictures. I might hear about a particular event somewhere and just go.

Now, I can’t speak Mandarin so I can’t interact too much. So, if I’m with a friend who speaks Mandarin, he or she can talk to the people that I’m interested in photographing and tell them what I’m up to. But a lot of the time, I’m just working alone and someone who speaks English will come up to me and ask me what I’m doing. But I don’t really mind, also, not talking to people also. I sometimes just talk to people out of courtesy and ideally, actually, I can just mesh into the background. That’s the idea: I can just show up and kind of let things unfold in front of the camera. The less self-conscious people are, the less aware of my presence people are, the better. Whatever it takes to minimize the impact of my presence on the environment, that’s what I try to do.

How do obtain access to intimate environments, such as those found in your photo essay called “China Youth?” A lot of the pictures seem to be in people’s rooms and homes, so it doesn’t seem like a place where you can exactly wander into. Quite simply, how do you find these young people and how do you build the rapport that’s necessary to go into these environments?

Yes, getting into houses is actually quite difficult, more difficult than back in the States. I’ll ask friends of friends to go into the houses, and actually, most of the time they’ll say no.

It [an oppurtunity for photography] might have been something that we planned to do for photography, but a lot of the times, it’s just me taking pictures of them while just hanging out – it’s true then. That’s sometimes the only way I can get them on camera.

How long did this photo series take? I imagine that building the rapport and friendships of your subjects takes a long time.

Yeah, I was lucky to have a friend who lived in Shanghai and I kind of followed him around. I met him in Indonesia – we were both covering the Tsunami. So, I happened to go to Shanghai a couple of months later and met up with this guy and it was through him that I met a lot of other people. Through the course of two or three trips, I became really good friends with these people. So it was through this way – that is, a friendship with a group of people that I often got pictures because I had my camera with me when we were hanging out.

For instance, one of my favorite shots from this series is a shot of two women hugging each other on New Years eve. You can’t actually see their faces and it’s kind of mysterious. Those are actually just two friends of mine. They were just doing that naturally. We were hanging out and it was then that I photographed them.

Again, on the topic of access, you did another photojournalistic essay called “Earthquake in China” on aftermath of the 8.0 magnitude earthquake that devastated China’s Sichuan province. How long did it take for you to hear about the earthquake and decide whether or not you wanted to go? Can you tell us a bit about how you got to witness the events you did? (How you got in, how you organized your work while you got there, etc.?)

Well, I left the next day. It happened around 2pm in the afternoon and I left the next day. probably should have left the day of. I first flew to Chongqing and it was quite far from Chengdu. I couldn’t get into Chengdu until early in the next morning after I left, which was two days after the earthquake.

And was it chaotic when you got there? I feel as if I would feel like a chicken with its head cut off if I were there when you went.

It was really chaotic, primarily because of my non-existent language skills. And I actually didn’t have anyone to help me out in terms of transportation, and that was the biggest issue of it all, that is of transportation: getting to the earthquake zone to the places I wanted to go. And I did that by a variety of ways, but it was hard to figure out where to go to – information was still getting out at that point.

One of the first places I went to was Duyjinyan, that was pretty badly hit and relatively easy to cover. A day or two later, I was in Beichuan, and among all the places, that was the worst. So once I got there, it was pretty easy for me to figure out what to do. I had covered a few other disasters before so I had some experience. So, it was really the transportation issue [that was the hardest.] From a logistical standpoint, it wasn’t really that difficult once I was on the scene.

So once you were on the scene, what were your priorities? Where were the places to go and where did you stay yourself?

I took a sleeping bag with me and a backpack and I brought some food and made sure I had some water when I went into troubled areas. So, yeah, I carried enough water to last me at least a day and was pretty self –contained. My priority was to go to places where things were still happening. Even several days after the earthquake, people were still being rescued. Afterwards, you start to scoping out pictures of just the damage, the aftermath, and how the survivors are coping with the situation. There weren’t too many survivors left by the time I got there and there was really no place for them to stay in Beichuan. They all left the town and moved up the hill out of the valley by the time I got there. I did see one really dramatic rescue, but for the most part, going in there was really about photographing the ruins. The soldiers were there collecting the bodies and some of the people started to come back to look at the places where their relatives were lost and they started burning money for them – those are the type of things I was photographing.

There has been a lot of talk about how, despite the earthquake being a devastating and tragic event, it was really an event that united the country, the compassionate acts of NGOs, soldiers and individual volunteers themselves awakening a new sort of nationalism for a lot of the Chinese. While on the ground, was this your experience as well? What kind of volunteerism did you see while you were there and which groups of people were helping?

Right, I really noticed all of that. Actually, the experience really changed my fundamental perception of the Chinese people. Because so much of my exposure prior to the earthquake was surrounding glitzy night-club scenes and stuff like that – very materialistic and self-focused places – this was a real different place for me. And I saw just a ton of volunteerism, in every capacity. I mean, I saw the dedication of the military, the soldiers (of course, they weren’t volunteers), but they worked really hard. The rescue workers were really dedicated; there were a lot of people who came from other cities and provinces just to help out. For instance, the guy who gave me a couple of long rides to and from Beichuan: he was just a volunteer from somewhere really far away like Guangzhou. He had a truck or van and he just drove all the way there just to help out. So it was a really fantastic experience for me.

Actually, in the final day before I left Chengdu there was this huge rally in the center of the city. There was so much camaraderie and spirit there. They were all shouting “Chung Hua Jiao! Chung Hua Jiao!!”. I think, because the Olympics were that year, there was this incredible sense of national pride. And because the rescue work was so well planned and executed, it was sort of a point of pride for most of the Chinese there.

I can’t stress the fact enough that so many people helped out. (You can read about it in the essay here). I just got help while I was there in so many different ways. There was this incredible sense of unity, compassion and empathy.

Wow, that sounds great.

Yeah, it was great. You know, there’s that cliché about good things coming out of tragedy, but I could really see it tangibly.

I’m not sure if this is applicable, because I’m sure the subject matter is quite different, but I’ve talked to a few photographers who photograph sensitive issues (riots, etc.) in China. They’ll often be approached with at best a little bit of distrust and at worst, some pretty bad antagonism. Was this the case with photographing the earthquake? Were there any circumstances where you weren’t allowed to photograph?

Very rarely. There was just one time in Dugjianyan, outside of a hospital and it was sort of a chaotic scene. The security guards kept me from taking pictures. And there was another time outside of a funeral and a few soldiers told me stop. They weren’t antagonistic; they just told I couldn’t take pictures. But in general: no, people were very accommodating and knew exactly why I was there. There was so much press coverage from inside the country alone. And the press coverage outside was even generally pretty positive; it showed that the government reacted pretty well and quickly. So, both emotionally and officially, I think the government was prepared for all the press coverage and attention because of the Olympics.

One last question: do you see any interesting and potential projects in China for yourself in the near future?

Not at the moment. There are a lot of things to do there and it’s still very fascinating to me, but for the moment, I’m looking forward to working more in the US. I think there’s a lot going on here. I’m sort of putting China on the shelf for a little bit, but I’m sure I’ll go back.