Photojournalist and Sony Artisan Eli Reed’s career in the photo industry has spanned over five decades, with his start as a freelancer in 1970. Reed was the first black photographer to join the legendary photo collective Magnum Photos in 1982 and was also a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. His long list of professional awards and achievements include an Overseas Press Club Award, World Press Photo Award and Mark Twain Associated Press Award. With a career of experience and accolades like Reed’s, one thing’s for certain – we can learn a lot from him. Filmmaker and fellow Sony Artisan Garrette Baird recognized the benefit of creators hearing Reed’s story, and he created this short film, “Getting Closer: A Walk With Photojournalist Eli Reed,” to tell it.
The film follows Reed as he goes through his day-to-day...a Zoom call with his students (he joined the University of Texas at Austin faculty as Clinical Professor of Photojournalism in 2005), breakfast with an old friend, a kitchen haircut. All the while Reed is sharing the story of his career, peppering in advice important for anyone, photojournalist or not, to hear.
“Judgments are made on a lack of information,” Reed explains in the film. “Without getting the details of what’s really going on, somebody can say all kinds of outrageous things and there will be a lot of people listening even though it’s far from the truth. How can you make an informed decision if you don’t know what the real truth is? Or the beauty of something going on? Something you can pass on not just to yourself, but to your community, your friends, family. To say that there are beautiful things in the world, things that are important to know, to appreciate, to be supportive at the right time. I’m not talking just politics, it’s about those life lessons. You can help capture those life lessons.”
“Powerful photography and powerful films can really inspire you,” says Reed. “Not just self-interest, you want to add whatever you can to humanity. It’s a natural thing...families take care of their families, or look out for things other than themselves. That’s the important thing, you have to look at the world without just trying to decide, ‘Oh, it’s this way now.’ Think beyond where you’re at. Think beyond the universe. If you can just open yourself up to new experiences and new ideas and ways of thinking, and things about different cultures. But you need a balance of truth so people can really understand what’s going on, what’s important here.”
“What’s a good photograph? A good photograph is something you can’t get out of your mind. I go through the images and I kill off the ones that are OK, but don’t come up to that standard. Too often people will choose pictures because it fits with the way the story is supposed to be perhaps, maybe not, there’s different ways of looking at it. The kind of images I’m looking for are the images I haven’t seen before. But that means you have to work hard. You have to work hard to get an image that sticks in your head.”
“The whole picture process is about making an image capture in an intelligent way. But at any rate, it takes an attention to detail, attention to what’s going on around you, attention to how people are reacting. And that’s basically how I go about things in some ways. You get close or near a situation, and listen to what’s going on. Even if you don’t speak the language you can get a sense of things. It’s just looking around you and appreciating where you’re at.”
“It’s a very important element of creativity – being alert and not fighting what you are. If you can do that, you’re going to do much better.”
