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"Emerging Faces of the Third World" interview by Brandie Erisman of Camera Arts Magazine, USA.
M any people know Australian photographer Donna Murty Todd as a studio photographer. Her photographs of clients’ children hang on living room walls and proud grandparents have her casually-posed, fine-art images of their grandchildren adorning coffee tables. Other people know Todd as a world traveler and a chronicler of emerging nations. Her photos taken in Asia, India, South Africa, and Nepal hang on the walls of art museums, such as the Mongolian Museum of Fine Art, and tour around the world in collections held by organizations like the United Nations and the World Health Authority. She has won 64 major international, national, and state-level awards for her photography, including a first prize at the International Humanitarian Photographer of the Year Awards (2003). Recently, she was also awarded first prize from the Santa Fe Center for Photography in their Singular Image competition. Although many of Todd’s images capture the harshness of disability and third-world struggle, they still fall easily into the arena of fine art.
Early On Todd began her career as a photographer more than 20 years ago when, after only one year of a four-year photography program, she was granted an internship at a Melbourne newspaper. She tried to continue her degree but found that it clashed with work demands. Instead, according to Todd, she honed her craft under the tutelage of some of the best photographers in Australia at the time: “They would patiently help me to print images from my terribly lit negatives, and saved my butt on numerous occasions,” said Todd. “I was the only female on the newspapers in Melbourne at the time and there was a lot of healthy competition, which inspired each and every one of us I think.”
Following15 years as a staff photographer, it was the switch from film to digital that ironically made Todd, who now loves her Nikon D100, leave the newspaper, as photographers no longer had creative control of their images; digital departments got the photographers; raw pictures and did with them what they wanted,” she said.
After leaving the paper, Todd began a quest to do photojournalism and fine art portraiture on her own terms.
To pay the bills, she began the portrait studio, and for six years thus far, it has given her the financial freedom to realize her dream.
Emerging as a Photographer .....The burning need to photograph real people in extremely difficult situations, to try and tell their story drove Todd.
Searching for such an opportunity, she wrote every aid organization she could think of.
Finally, one wrote back. After seeing her portfolio, they asked her to photograph their volunteers and the people they were assisting in 20 different countries.
Todd now spends about six months each year traveling and photographing in emerging nations.
"Meeting the people in these developing nations really has changed me. It opened my eyes to the world,” said Todd. “
These people have assisted my development as an artist, personally, because I am more open minded, compassionate, and realize that we are really all the same everywhere; we just live in different circumstances. “
Even though people who live in developing nations are poor, I keep seeing that in some ways they are much richer than any of us here in the West realize.
They exhibit the best and worst of humanity:
the worst being the physical hardships that they suffer through their desperate poverty, the best being their wonderful spirits.
They are joyful, compassionate and share everything that they have. “
I hope we can help them become more wealthy but I hope, more than anything, we don’t take away their wonderful richness of spirit, their capacity to share, and their spirituality.”
On Volunteering “The experience I have had with volunteer organizations around the world has been very positive,” Todd said. “
The organizations and the volunteers that go to developing nations are really making a difference at the grass roots level.”
Todd, however, wouldn’t suggest that photographers volunteer for purely photographic reasons.
The organizations require their volunteers to offer their genuine assistance and help with tasks rather than to just be there photographing. “
It would be a wonderful experience for a photographer to volunteer for a few months somewhere and then have the luxury of photographing the very people he has helped,”
Todd said. “It would be rewarding and would offer many heart-warming and photographically amazing situations that would never be available to other photographers not prepared to spend the time and effort.”
Shamans Todd’s most recent project has been photographing the shamans of Mongolia.
The project began four years ago and she has plans to continue photographing them around the world. “
I find the shaman religion, and indeed all animist religions fascinating,” said Todd. “
They seem to be so pure and devoid of politics.
Animist religion is based on respecting nature.
They believe that all things in our world are alive and have their own spirits and that they can call on these spirits to help them cure people.”
Some of the shamans Todd photographed live among the Tsaatan, or Reindeer People, a tribe whose existence is intertwined with their domestic reindeer herds.
This ancient group has been raising reindeer for almost 4000 years, a fact confirmed by the discovery of ancient hieroglyphs showing the Tsaatan with the animals.
On Her Art Todd said when she was a younger photographer, still working on newspapers; she wanted to shoot hard news. “I was keen to shoot a war,” Todd said, “but I never got the opportunity. I loved the constant adrenalin rush of being under pressure to capture hard news. The competition to get my images onto the front page always made me try really hard.
Now, I think I am a lot more relaxed. I shoot from a more subconscious place.
It feels like the photography happens by itself and all I have to do is be in a certain place and time.”
For Todd, emotion is the most important aspect of her images.
In order to highlight the emotion of a moment, she takes artistic license and does whatever she thinks will bring it forward. “
On newspapers we were never allowed to change the content of the image much. All of us, however, would manipulate the image in the darkroom. We’d burn and dodge like there was no tomorrow. I really don’t see what I do now, with digital, as being so different.
It’s just that Photoshop gives me more tools so I can really get the image looking exactly the way my imagination wants it to,” Todd said. “I want my pictures to still depict reality, but sometimes, especially in a few of my shaman pictures, I really play with an image and then it can no longer be called photojournalistic. It becomes more esoteric and fine art.
In Her Bag Todd mostly shoots with Nikon D100s. She carries two. Plus, she has two Nikon F100s as back up. In her kit there are several Nikon lenses: 105mm macro, 2.8, 17-35mm 2.8, and a 80-200mm 2.8. She takes about 10 batteries for the D100s, four one-gig Digi cards, and seven 500mb cards. She also has a small flash but says she never uses it.
Her Next Project Todd is planning to spend three months in South America to explore its shaman culture.
In the meantime, she is traveling to Tibet to research animist cultures. “
One thing is for sure,” said Todd about the upcoming shoot, “my mind is open and I’m ready for anything.” CA
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Exhibition held at Mongolian Museum of Fine Arts |
Shaman's in Mongolia 2004 |
Sadhu's's in Nepal |
Reindeer people of Mongolia. |
International award winning photo's |
Award picture's continued |
Volunteers around the world. |
About Donna |
Stories from the field |
travel insights you may relate to. |
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