Welcome back, and I'm so so looking forward to this next interview because not only is my guest a dear friend, he's also I think, in my opinion, the most talented photographer in South Africa. He has I think around forty thousand followers on Instagram, including some very high profile people, and he tells the most incredible stories using his pictures as a medium. So if you don't follow the human's narrative on Instagram, do yourself a favor, look it up
and follow him today. His name is Armand Haw and he is here in studio with me with his beautiful wife Laura, and it's a great pleasure to say good morning and welcome to weekend breakfast a mount good grief.
Amy.
Also, this is hectic listening through listening to my voice through the head voice. This is the first time live on radio. Yeah, I think I did have a live on Instagram once but I accidentally press that button.
Thank you very much for the reduction. Is it was? It was fantastic.
Mind.
You're currently working as a as a photographer with Independent Media. You also post a lot on your own social media and relay some of the stories and experiences that you have out in the field, which I think is what draws so many people to you, is that you we almost feel like we know you and get to share some of your experiences. What inspired you to enter this path?
I always loved the medium of photography for four years growing up, and I was one of those kids that never had any idea what to do with my life. I didn't want to go and sit in the office. And I also I found school very difficult. I didn't I wasn't a fantastic performer in school, so so slowly but surely I gravitated towards the creative industries. I did not know what exactly, but something maybe acting or something like that, and photography came natural to me.
But I think the struggle was.
Cameras, which is very expensive, and I saw that as a as a mental block of how am I able to produce pictures without any cameras? And slowly but surely I found little ways and saved up for cameras and so forth.
And I think my.
First, my first official job as a junior photographer was in the Middle East and the first day I arrived, these guys gave me a duffel bag with two cameras, and three lenses, and that was when it all kind of like became realistic to me, like, okay, cool, there is other ways to do this, and if you're shooting for an agency or a company, then they should provide the cameras, basically, and I think that's when things started becoming a little bit more possible, and from then on
it was just full steam ahead.
To tell our listeners a little bit about the experience of being a photographer in the Middle.
East, it was interesting. The majority was was commercial jobs, fashion photography, advertisement photography, and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed being behind the cameras, but there was something that really still wanted me to do, realistic images, like storytelling images. Photojournalism was always the end, the endpoint for me where I wanted to end up. But photojournalism is an extremely difficult genre of photography to get into, and it's also
the one that pays the least unfortunately. But if you know, if you want to do something, then there's nothing can stop you to do that. So so I gravitate to gravitated towards photojournalism quite a lot. And in the country that I was in the Kingdom of Bahrain, we've felt that the waves of violence and the waves of protest from the Arab spring that started in two thousand and ten, I believe Egypt, Syria, Libya, and when it came to the country where I was in Bahrain, it was wild.
There was masses and masses of people passed away by the government forces and so forth. And I was in a position, I don't want to say luckily, but I was in a position with cameras and I started covering this conflict and I found it interesting. I found it sad, I found it, I felt alive doing it. And that's when something clicked in my brain of like, this is the Gendre photography that I need to stick with because this is a storytelling situation.
But what's it like to witness suffering and violence and and still be having to perform your job and take pictures.
I mean, I was very lucky that I was guided by a photographer, my mentor at that stage, Australian photographer called full Weymouth, and he saw that I was pretty young. I was about twenty five at that stage, and he saw that. He told me that this is I'm way too young to do this, and he's experienced some conflict photography and war photography in his life, and he told
me that it's going to mess you up. So if you want to do this, then there's a few things that you need to remember, and one is that you are not the victim. You are doing a job and you are portraying and telling the story of the victims.
And if you.
Lose a I'm can I say if you can't do your job, then you have no right to be there. If you can't handle it and you sit in the corner and cry, then you're helping absolutely nobody. And there's people that's actually relying on you to tell their story at that stage, So suck it up and do your job. So it was a harsh lesson, but very very important. And what you said that you're not the victim, you're
telling the victim's story made so much sense. So that's the kind of like narrative that you need to tell yourself if you're covering violent stories or the stories of people passing away and stories of trauma, is that it's not you that's going through this. Is it is the people that's going through this, and you are just there shining a light on them, telling their story. So that's it almost becomes easier to to to go through that process.
Weren't you scared?
Yes?
Absolutely, I mean like being scared is an emotion that saves you. That saved my life many at times, because that's when everything in your body tells you that you are in a dangerous situation and you need to pull back.
Then you need to.
Duck and cover, go behind the police lines, like we'll run away from the police sometimes in situations.
My guest is Amant Haw. He's known as the Humans Narrative on Instagram. The phenomenal photojournalist. Would encourage you to all follow him and if you want to ask him any questions about his experience, you're welcome to send them to us now one seven two five six seven one five six seven. So from from the Middle East where to next?
I covered the conflict for about a year, year and a half, almost two years in Bahrain, and I worked with CNN at that stage Sky News. But as most conflicts in the world, and as most situations, it fizzles down, and I was I felt pretty much stuck there at that stage, and then I had the opportuit unity of one of the people at Sky News contacted me and said, listener, what's your plan because you're not you're not really well.
They weren't buying any pictures of that stage, so so he was a little bit worried about, like what what's the situation going like? And and and he said to me, would you like to go and study in your field of photojournalism? And I jumped to the opportunity and said yes. So through a lot of contacts and emails and so forth, I had the opportunity to go and study for a master's degree in photojournalism at the best university in the
world that gives photojournalism courses in in in London. And it was an absolutely phenomenal year of just soaking up the great photojournalists books and lessons and courses and it was it was great.
And the people that that's that heed with me as well.
It's still lifelong friends that scattered through about thirty countries in the world, and we all keep in contact about like not just birthdays, but like, yeah, you know, there's there's two of my friends in Kenya at the moment. There's there's there's people in Palestine at the moment.
There's people everywhere.
I mean, like America at the moment is crazy, and I've got three friends over there covering the protests and the riots and stuff, so so we all keep in contact and share information.
And then after studying and doing that course, did you then come back to South Africa?
I came back to South Africa after studies and felt a little bit lost over here. I started dating this beautiful girl at that stage, and then she ghosted me for quite a long time.
Luckily we're married now.
But but yeah, I started. I think I did a few months at Media twenty four at the Burger as a freelancer, and then I moved towards the Cape Times. And I think the first story that I that that I think that made an impact in my career in South Africa here was.
There was.
The opening of the IDZ at the Industrial Development Zone in Saltdana, where Jacob Zuma was still the president at that stage and the Premier Helen Ziller was going to open officially this situation. And when we arrived in Saldana, all you know, it was just like A and C flags everywhere and it was very much like, okay, well
this is a political thing, not a provincial thing. And I went into this tent and was there was like thousands of people there and premiere Helen Zilla was saying some words on the stage and then she got.
Booed off stage basically by the.
Crowd, and then President Jacob Zuma stood up and they had this finger pointing match on stage and almost like the photos looks like they are actually going head to head. And I think I was luckily enough to be prepared at that stage and I took those photos of them both with their fingers in each other's face and stuff, and that the next day that was on each front page of independent media from like The Star, the Victorian News,
the Cape Times, the Cape August. So that was when I realized, like, okay, cool, I'm in the South African media industry and I'm here to stay.
And what keeps you here? Because as you said, I mean you're some of your peers from studying are all over the world. What keeps you in capes on this?
I felt in the Middle East when I was covering the conflict over there, I felt a little bit of a disconnect, which emotionally actually saved me a few times, because that was it's not my people. And in South Africa now this is these are my people. This is my neighbors, my brothers, my sisters. I feel so African that this is where I would love to stay. And I think this is the most impact that I can make in life is here, not just in Cape On,
but in South Africa, in Africa. So definitely, the people.
Keep me here.
And I think that connection really is evident in your page and in your following. I mean, I've been out with you when people have complete strangers have come up and said, oh my gosh, you're the human's narrative, and your wife Laura says, gosh, that happens all the time. So I think people do pick up on that connection that you have with them. And I think people are very grateful to you for bringing us these stories because you get inside of places that most of us can't go.
What are some of the most extraordinary experiences you've had, Well.
The latest one, I've been working with a journalist, Vivian Warby, and she is getting fantastic stories and she is amazing journalist behind the computer, just like making connections and making sure that we can go together to go into extraordinary places. So we just went into the Ritz Hotel, which was abandoned for.
Many years.
I think the last time something happened, we actually found menus like the invitations for the opening night upstairs in the Revolving restaurant, and it was twenty eight I think, and it was like welcome to the Revolving Restaurant and stuff, and it's all just like dead birds and bird poop, and.
Your photos from there are extraordinary.
Thank you, thank you. It was an extraordinary experience. And I think that's what drives me to do these things. I want these experiences, and I go through these experiences just with a camera in my hand, and I try to portray it the best way so that other people can see it as well.
Do you ever get completely lost in your experience and lose track of where you're supposed to be and what you're supposed to be doing. I know that in terms of your personal life, Law is definitely the bus and manager of your calendar.
She is.
I am completely slapped with attention deficit disorder, and I love it absolutely. It makes me hyper focus sometimes on photos where I can literally sit for twenty to forty minutes and just wait for that specific momentait way longer than I should to be honest, i'man like I need to be somewhere. I'm just waiting until that person with the dog looks this way and the reflection is like that, and I'm waiting for a bird to fly past them.
That's the picture.
So yeah, no, definitely, And I mean that's why you're always on the front page. How many front pages of your head? Do you know? If you kept count?
I started collect collecting the physical front pages, and I ran out of space, and I do not know what to do with these the physical front pages. I've got a stack of them in a cupboard that there's no place for shoes anymore. But I would love to one day just make a collage of this on a wall somewhere.
Wallpaper a whole room with them. It would be amazing, absolutely wow.
But further on, yeah, I keep the PDFs of all the front pages.
I mean, as you said, like the photoge you said in the start of this interview. Photojournalism is one of the most difficult forms of photography to break into, and yet it is probably the worst paid one, So you have to find ways to sustain yourself. I'm sure. Do you give talks, do you train young photographers? What do you do.
I I tried to do it as much as possible, I think I I did some empty jobs. A few years ago. I started with the Bridal Fair was the Winelands Bridle Fair. A friend of mine manages that and she asked me to to to m c that. So I did that and it was interesting but also nerve racking.
And then I m seed a few friends' weddings and recently I I was on Dan Carter's podcast podcast that he just started in Cape Town at the gin Barre in Cape Town, which is fantastic and it's it's it's such an interesting concept because he also Dan also said like this is what he actually wanted, is a podcast of interesting people that x birds in their field and everybody just you know, share information and stuff.
So that was fantastic.
Also, I did the the opening of a few exhibitions for Shoot for Purpose, an absolutely fantastic program run by Karnate and Navavi. They use street photography two to coach victims of trauma, specifically female victims of trauma. They sponsor cameras. They have photo walks through the streets of Cape Town through specific scenarios and stuff, and it is it is a platform for them to express themselves where they feel that their voices might have been.
Subdued for years.
And the photos that comes out of this program and the people, the people whose lives get changed, is a fantastic thing to witness.
I wish, I wish I could have another hour talking to you, but it is nine o'clock in time for that Witness News Amanda Haw the Human's Narrative.
Thank you so much. Amen,