Marcus Bleasdale:Using Passion and Talent to Change the World

"You must be the change you want to see in the world."  
~ Mahatma Gandhi

We are often asked "what do you want to be when you grow up?"  As children, we say what we think are glamorous things, what we think will bring us the most fortune or fame...the easy life.  But, it is when we truly begin to grow up that we grasp the depth and gravity of that question. We realize what the true meaning of life is and unfortunately for most, we realize it too late or too overwhelmed to do anything about it. 

 Here is what it means to me...If you made a million dollars a year, could you give it up, would you give it up to change the world?  Would you throw it all away just to know that one life was changed for the better because you existed?  How about 10 lives?  How about a hundred...thousands?  Millions?  Most of us would like to think that we could, but I doubt that would actually be the case.  Fourteen years ago, Marcus Bleasdale did just that. 

Doctor's Without Borders DRC
Marcus Bleasdale - VII

Marcus Bleasdale grew up in Lancashire, England in a modest home with a single mom and a paper route to help pay the electric bill.  His mother worked two jobs so he and his two siblings could have what they needed. He worked hard and managed his way through college and into his first job for Schroder's as a derivatives trader at the age of twenty-two.  Totally dedicated to his career, often putting in 14 hour days, he was making close to a half a million pounds per year by age twenty-four.  Life was grand for Marcus.  He was on the fast track to the top.  He paid off his mother's mortgage and his own, began purchasing fast cars and a second home.  He traveled the world between London, New York and Toronto, regularly went skydiving in South America, took lavish holidays, ate in the finest restaurants in Europe and skied the Alps on weekends.  Marcus appeared to have it all.

Stolen Children. Soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Army
Marcus Bleasdale - VII

All that changed one day in 1998.  Marcus says, 'I remember reading in the newspaper about the uncovering of a mass grave in the Balkans.  I got into work the next day and the person sitting next to me said, "Have you seen the newspaper headlines?" I said, "yes, horrific isn't it?" He said, "What do you think that's going to do to the price of the dollar/mark?" Marcus was mortified.  'I knew I didn't want to be a banker anymore, but to find the motivation to resign and do something else was difficult, so I always putting it off, but I just looked at this guy, and something inside my head clicked.  I walked into my boss's office and resigned. I didn't want to be part of something that could take a massacre and turn it into dollars.  It repulsed me.'

Marcus Bleasdale - VII

A few years prior, Marcus' girlfriend had wanted a camera, so he bought her one.  After the relationship ended, she moved out and left the camera behind.  He picked it up one day and began playing with it, shooting this and that.  'I took photographs of cobwebs in nice light,’ he says. 'I’d get up at six o’clock on the weekend and wander through nice sunlight taking pretty pictures of nature.’  He enjoyed it.  So during his spare time, he began taking night classes in photography at a local university.  He admits that he was not a very good photographer, "horrible" actually, but he enjoyed it, so he just kept doing it.  It was a passionate hobby at best. 

Marcus Bleasdale VII Photo Agency

The day Marcus quit his job, he walked away from a $1,000,000/year salary, he gave his designer suits to charity and put his houses on the market.  He picked up that camera and within twenty-four hours was on a plane to the Balkans. He had no idea what he was going to do there.  He recalls, 'I just felt I needed to be there and witness what was going on.’ He stayed for over a year, living off his savings and just taking pictures.   'Just waking up, jumping in a car to go and take pictures in a refugee camp – I loved the freedom, the energy, the rawness of it. It showed me a part of life that I’d been exposed to quite a lot when I was living with my mum, and trying to make life work, living on the edge and not having enough money for anything. But then, working in the bank, it rounded the edges off those experiences.’ The rawness and reality seemed to bring Marcus to a new realization in his life...a new perspective.

Displaced people bring back water to their camp in
 Goma after fleeing fighting in Karuba and Mushake.
Marcus Bleasdale - VII 

After returning to London, he enrolled himself in a photojournalism course and lived a modest student lifestyle.  He gave up his Christmas break to photograph the civil war in Sierra Leone which led to the Ian Parry Award for best young photojournalist.  With this accolade under his belt he began working for Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, National Geographic and the charity Human Rights Watch, for which Bleasdale spent eight years documenting the corrupt and violent gold mining industry in eastern Congo.  

Kasmir
Marcus Bleasdale - VII

 He has documented conflicts in Africa, Central America and the Balkans. He has photographed the bodies, and interviewed the survivors and those who have raped or tried to kill them. He has reported on child abductions in Uganda, air pollution in China, civil war in Somalia. He has escaped rocket grenades, rioters, checkpoint thugs and snipers. He has seen and documented horrific tragedies all over the world including the bodies of 16 children under the age of two who had been shot and killed.

Bleasdale commits himself to documenting and publicizing issues and events that are ignored by today's media and uses his work to influence policy makers around the globe.  His work on Human Rights and Conflict has been shown at the US Senate, The Untied Nations, The Houses of Parliament in the UK and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in France.  His efforts have earned him the acclaim as one of the foremost documentary photographers of today.

The Rape of a Nation by Marcus Bleasdale

Marcus Bleasdale has published two books "One Hundred Years of Darkness" 2002 and "The Rape of a Nation" 2009 and has received numerous awards. He no longer lives the lavish lifestyle of his twenties, but instead spends months away from home in refugee camps and parts of the world most do not think of and many would not dare to venture.  There are no fine cars, in fact he doesn't even own one.  He makes barely $100,000/year and spends a large portion financing an orphanage in the eastern Congo that houses 97 children and 5 homes for children with Polio with the help and efforts of a few other photojournalists.

When asked if he thinks he has changed, he merely says this...'I think I appreciate life a lot more. I think I’m more sensitive. I think I’m a nicer guy.’  Marcus Bleasdale, son of a single mother, struggling student, successful business man, millionaire, humanitarian, champion of millions, changer of lives, thoughts and world policy, HUMBLE HERO!  

An artist lives a solitary life, not out of choice, but out of silent necessity.  The stillness, quietness and uniqueness is purposefully mandatory,  Without it they cannot create, they cannot inspire, they cannot invoke change.  It is not a sad life, but a life filled with the most beautifully vibrant colors of reality and understanding and growth...colors of peace, love, understanding, hope and evolution.  Not evolution in themselves, but evolution in those who SEE them, who are inspired by them..those who love and hear their message...and pass it on, forever changed.  The artist is a planter of seeds, a gardener of wisdom, ideas and beliefs.  It is only their hope that the one, the two, the few, if they are lucky, will catch those seeds, love, nurture and plant them... and pass them on...this is what it means to change the world. This is what it means to live forever! Marcus Bleasdale has done that...Marcus Bleasdale is a hero to the silent many of today and the millions of tomorrow!

He is the change we should all wish to see in this world!

Marcus Bleasdale in the DRC

Please visit:

www.marcusbleasdale.com

Sons dig their mother's grave ~ Marcus Bleasdale - VII

Awards

The UNICEF Photographer of the Year Award (2004)

The Olivier Rebbot Award for Best Foreign Reporting (2005)

Magazine Photographer of the Year award POYi (2005)

The Alexia Foundation Award for World Peace (2005)

The World Press Awards (2006)

The Freedom of Expression Foundation Norway (2007)

The Anthropographia Award for Photography and Human Rights (2010)

The Hansel Meith Award (2010) 

Photo Book of the Year Award POYi (2010).

My Fascination with Sally Mann

The moment I saw my first Sally Mann photograph, which was sadly only yesterday, I was immediately drawn into the world portrayed on my classroom's white board.  Eagerly, I ran home and fired up the computer wanting and needing to see more.  As the images appeared before me on the computer screen, I was overwhelmed with what I saw.  Each one more intriguing than the last, images of times long past and a simpler, slower way of life, reminding me of home. Each one drawing me into it's world, invoking thought and emotion. 

Sally Mann Candy Cigarette 1989

The more I looked at her work, the more intrigued I was with her.  What is in her head, what is she like, who is she and how does she do it?  I was surprised to learn that none of the images I was falling in love with were from the time I envisioned.  While I was busy growing up, going to college, being immersed in Biology and Chemistry, being a mom, a wife and a friend, Sally Mann was creating.  Not a single of her hauntingly beautiful images were created before my birth.  How did I miss one of the most controversial and talented photographers of today? I made up for lost time, I read and watched all I could find about her for the next twenty-four hours, totally immersed and fascinated by this woman and her work, breathing it all in, allowing it to shape and change me forever.

Sally Mann, like myself, is a Southern girl to her very core. This is truly evident in her work. Her father gave her an old 5x7 antique view camera and many of the antique view cameras she uses today.  All of which are near or more than a hundred years old.  She uses a wet-plate or collodian  technique that dates back to 1851.  Glass plates are covered with collodian, inserted into the camera and exposed while still wet.  This is the same process used by Civil War era photographers to capture the images we see in our history books today. By her own admission, she is not an expert at this technique and credits her imperfections for the perfection of her work.

From the PBS series "Art in the 21st Century" 2003

  "Mistakes I make anyway, turn out to be good things in the end...I'm so worried that I'm going to perfect this technique one day... It's unfortunate how many of my pictures do depend on some technical error. It's not something I do to the negatives, but on the other hand it's not a negative I toss in the trash bin either.  I've taken some pictures in the past that were miraculously transformed by some hand other than my own and made a better image and I really welcome those interventions. Some photographers pray for the angel of certainty in their work. I'm sort of praying for the angel of uncertainty to visit my plate."  Sally Mann "What Remains: The Life and Work of Sally Mann" 2005
     
Sally Mann finds beauty in the things she encounters in her day to day life.  She admires the photographer who travels the world to create art and capture moments, but admits it never crossed her mind to leave home to do so.  The majority of her work has been created on her farm in Lexington, Virginia with later works created in Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee. "It's always been my philosophy to try and make art out of the everyday and ordinary.  The things that are close to you are the things that you can photograph the best and unless you photograph what you love, you are not gonna make good art."

Sally Mann 1998 featured in Deep South 2005

Sally Mann Gorjus 1989 featured in Immediate Family 1992

Sally has a vast collection of work including nine current books in print and is the subject of two films entitled "Blood Ties" (1995) and "What Remains" (2005).  She first gained national notoriety in the early nineties with her third collection entitled "Immediate Family" when she gained the unwanted attention of the right-winged Moral Majority and the outrage of people across the country. Mann considered the collection “natural through the eyes of a mother, since I have seen my children in every state: happy, sad, playful, sick, bloodied, angry and even naked.” This body of work has been widely scrutinized by many, but critics agreed with Mann.  Chris Hagen said in a New York Times article dated June 5, 1992 that her “vision in large measure [is] accurate, and a welcome corrective to familiar notions of youth as a time of unalloyed sweetness and innocence,” and in November, 2000 Lyle Rexer also wrote in his New York Times article that her book "created a place that looked like Eden, then cast upon it the subdued and shifting light of nostalgia, sexuality and death.".  In 2001, Time Magazine named Sally Mann "America's Best Photographer" and said of her work "Mann recorded a combination of spontaneous and carefully arranged moments of childhood repose and revealingly — sometimes unnervingly — imaginative play. What the outraged critics of her child nudes failed to grant was the patent devotion involved throughout the project and the delighted complicity of her son and daughters in so many of the solemn or playful events. No other collection of family photographs is remotely like it, in both its naked candor and the fervor of its maternal curiosity and care."

Sally Mann What Remains 2003

On December 8, 2000 an escaped fugitive was injured by police and then committed suicide on the Mann family farm in Lexington, Virginia.  Mann said " When it was all done there was all this yellow tape around the trees. So, I walked up there and I looked around and there was this little pool of blood and it was strangely dark, almost like chocolate...it actually sank down into the earth in an incremental way.  It was very surprising and I sort of pulled back and watched the earth take a little sip of his blood.  For awhile I kept the area cleared where he died and I took some pictures of it and it opened up a whole new project for me.  The convict's death had a radical impact on the way I thought about the land.  I began asking myself the question of what happens to a landscape when there are massive numbers of deaths that occur there?"  After this event Mann began photographing Civil War battlefields, mainly Antietam, but she also photographed others.  Her farm is within 2 hours of one third of the battlefields from the Civil War. Her 2003 book entitled "What Remains" chronicles this work along with the remains of her beloved greyhound, Eva and her work at the Forensic Anthropology Center (the Body Farm) at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The book ends with a close-up study of her children's faces to convey a feeling of hope and love.

Sally Mann What Remains 2003

Sally Mann 2001 featured in What Remains 2003

"The earth doesn't care where death occurs, it's job is to efface and renew itself.  It's the artist who by coming in and writing about it or painting it or taking a photograph of it makes that earth powerful and creates death's memory because the land isn't going to remember itself, but the artist will." Sally Mann

In my opinion, Sally Mann is by far one of the most important photographers of today. She incorporates her uniqueness and individuality in all of her photographs, successfully finding beauty in the everyday, the ordinary and even the things most find disturbing. The three books highlighted here are only a small sliver of the entirety of her photography.  To me, they most exemplify the shaping of who she is as a photographer and the intent of her work.  In addition to these, there are also amazingly profound and beautiful images in all of her collections including but not limited to "At Twelve" (1988), "Still Time" (1994), "Proud Flesh" (2009) a 6 year chronicle of the effects of Muscular Dystrophy on her husband Larry and "The Flesh and The Spirit" (2010).  Currently, she is working on a collection about the legacy of slavery in Virginia and "Marital Trust" which is a collection of images chronicling her life with her husband  Larry Mann and spans a period of more than thirty years.  

Sally Mann 1998 featured in Deep South 2005

Sally Mann is featured in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, Japan, the  National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, the Taubman Museum of Arts, Cleveland Museum of Art, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden and the Whitney Museum in New York City.

Related Links:
sallymann.com
Art in the 21st Century
Giving Up the Ghost
The Photographer: Sally Mann