A Conversation with Photographer Bruce Haley

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UR: I would imagine not.

BH: For a number of reasons. One: it’s difficult. Two: The magazines aren’t that interested. So it becomes a labor of love. You spend a lot of time and effort in these places to try to get the story out. Burma was that for me.

UR: Just in the case of Burma, how many times over the years did you actually feel vindicated by the publication of your photographs? You're seen so much I can't imagine your work would ever be broadcast in a way that is commensurate to whatever it is you were feeling as you made the photographs.

BH: It's always been frustrating. Burma especially, because I spent four years doing nothing but that. There would be little blips where something would happen and the media would pay a little bit of attention to it and then it'd be buried again. The story is one of great breadth and depth and complexity.

Almost every magazine has gone more towards lifestyle and entertainment and less and less to in-depth coverage of little places around the world that everyone would just as soon forget.

UR: I'm actually amazed that there isn't more of that, at least online.

BH: There isn't, but there are a ton of people out there doing really good work and really pushing hard and doing it all on their own dime. And certainly the web has made that accessible, but these people aren't getting their money back on the web. While it’s not a matter of making money, it helps, if for no other reason just to be able to continue your work—to push it further. And when you don't have many major magazine venues, then it becomes harder to continue following or covering a place. Then we get into the whole aftermath thing—how we focus on wars in the media: once it's over, the place just falls off the edge of the world. You never hear about what people have to go through trying to put things back together, put their lives back together and their countries.

UR: Your piece is as much narrative as it is practical advice. Is this the stuff you share with young photographers?

BH: Sometimes at my lecture, I jokingly say: If you learn one thing from this—get one of those little plastic leftover containers and put some of those moist baby diaper wipes in that thing where they’ll stay moist and stick it in your camera bag. Always keep it full.

That’s one of the most practical pieces of advice I can give anybody. It fits right in your camera bag and you can wipe your ass anywhere with something that you know is palatable—not palatable, that’s not what I… [laughter]

UR: Wrong orifice!

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