Tara Mitchell meets Bangkok based photographer Jonathan Taylor whose gritty images of social realism have appeared in The New York Times, Britain’s Sunday Times and twice as front cover shots for Time Magazine.

Jonathan Taylor’s eyes dart towards the Dictaphone lying on the desk, as if the recording device is a spy.  A British photojournalist famous for his unflinching portrayals of Bangkok drug addicts, women and children sold into sexual slavery, victims of Agent Orange, homicides and hit-men,
Jonathan is used to being on the other side of the lens, and he’s clearly not comfortable about having it turned on him.

“There are certain things I don’t want to talk about,” he says, his sharp blue eyes warning me not to try and elicit more than he’s prepared to give. Taylor is in­tense, and there’s a sense of un­bridled energy about him, even as he leans back in his swivel chair in front of the 24-inch monitor of his Mac computer. We are in his office in the Amarin Building on Chitlom Road, from where he runs his photography school.  He adds, “I don’t want to upset anyone.”

Taylor once took a drive in the countryside with Mr 100 Corpses, Thailand’s most notorious assassin. The black and white picture Taylor took shows the hit-man sitting in the driver’s seat of his car, dressed in a remarkably plain plaid shirt, large rings adorning the ring fingers of each hand, cradling a formidable gun in his lap. Taken from the passenger’s seat of that car, the picture does not show Mr 100 Corpses’ face, but nonetheless speaks volumes about Jonathan’s talent for getting up close and personal with the people he photographs, however in­timidating they are.

“There are certain things you have to do when taking someone’s picture if you want to get their souls,” he says. “It’s a way of dealing with people. It doesn’t matter who they are, there are aspects about them that you can re­late to and you try to get beyond the mask and open them up a little bit.”

His ability to capture images of subjects accustomed to living in the shadows is a hallmark of his work – a woman smoking Yaa-baa in the slums of Klong Toey, a prostitute and her client in the privacy of a brothel room, an order of Carmelite nuns cut off from Thai so­ciety – twice a Time cover story, and featured in numer­ous international publications, such as London’s Sunday Times Magazine, Marie Claire, the Guardian Magazine, Stern and the New York Times Magazine.

“You have an effect on the thing you are trying to pho­tograph,” he says. “Just the act of looking at it changes it. You have to find a way around that. You have to make yourself there but not there.” He pauses, strug­gling to explain. “You go up [to your subject] like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Often, they don’t even give you a smile. They give you a look of who they are. I try to teach this, but…” His voice drifts off and he looks to the ceiling, as though the explanation is hang­ing in the air somewhere.

It’s hard to put into words what comes naturally. Jour­nalism is in Taylor’s blood. His grandfather was a print journalist, and his parents met in a newspaper office in London, where he grew up. He used to visit his father at work on Fleet Street and spent his weekends por­ing through the Sunday Times and the Guardian. His hero was Don McCullin, a British war journalist whose “international stories with grit,” as Taylor puts it, con­vinced him by the age of thirteen that he wanted to be a photojournalist.

“As a kid I wanted to be a photographer because I’m a left of centre guy and I have issues I believe in. I wanted to go out there and make a difference with a camera,” he says.

After studying at the London College of Print­ing, Taylor travelled through India and South­east Asia and wound up in Bangkok in the early nineties, working for a magazine called Manager. He’s been based mostly in Bangkok ever since, covering stories throughout South­east Asia. Working at Manager, Taylor learned the art of immersing himself in whatever story he was covering, thus gaining the trust of his subjects. He became a fisherman in a remote fishing village, lived with a hill-tribe commu­nity, participated in a rice harvest, and fol­lowed a Malaria doctor on his rounds for two weeks through the jungle of Northern Thai­land, where some of the villages had infection rates as high as 60%.

The greatest lessons in courage and detach­ment, essential for his future work covering the underbelly of Thai society, came when he did a story on a private fire service in the out­skirts of Bangkok on Pekesem Road, owned a by wealthy local man. On one occasion, Tay­lor kitted up and joined the firemen in a burn­ing building that collapsed seconds after they vacated it. Then there was the road accident when they cut a corpse out of the car.

“I was a bit shaken,” says Taylor, explaining how a fireman saw his distress and gave him the following advice: “Don’t think about the eyes of the person you’ve just helped,” or in Taylor’s case, just photographed, “otherwise they will follow you into your dreams.”

Taylor kept the fireman’s words in mind when he started covering crime scenes in Bangkok, taking photographs of victims of the War on Drugs, homicides, and morgues full of bod­ies. With the homicides Taylor was able to keep himself detached, remembering his pro­fession’s creed that a photographer is an ob­server. Once, however, when accompanying Bangkok’s Body Collectors, who work with the police collecting bodies and delivering them to the morgue, they were called to a scene where four teenage boys had been killed in a collision with a truck. He admits that those young boys
– innocents involved in a tragic accident – were “the ones that followed me into my dreams.”

Taylor is drawn to innocent children in tragic circumstances, having done stories on child prostitution in Northern Thailand, children born with terrible deformities in Vietnam as a result of the enduring legacy of Agent Orange, as well as children sold into bondage who are forced into begging on the streets of Bangkok. It isn’t always easy.

“Having a camera puts a barrier up and you feel as though you are an observer,” he says. “If you get too emotional you can’t do your job. But there are certain times when you come across something that pulls at your own sense of right and wrong and you put your camera down and think what else can I do?”

Take the story about child prostitution in Mae Sai. Taylor and a fellow journalist were so upset by the circumstances of two young Burmese girls they encountered; they paid the Mamasan to free them from bondage and took them to one of the girls aunt, who lived in a town on the Thai-Burmese border. This divided the group of journalists Taylor was working with; some felt he’d crossed a journalistic line. Even Taylor was aware of the potential futility of his actions those girls could easily be sold back into slavery. There was, however, a vindication of the power of journalism to bring about change: the brothels in Mai Sai where children worked were shut down after the feature appeared in Time magazine.

You try not to take your morals with you, he says. You re just there to illustrate. But sometimes I get indignant. Like when he sees young street children he suspects of being doped. Taylor will lean down and try to wake them up, accusing whoever is holding them usually not the parent of keeping them on drugs to keep them compliant. Its crossing the line. I shouldn’t get involved. I should take photos. And so he did a series which he gave to a Singapore magazine to publish for free. There’s a whole issue of trying to take photos with empathy and trying to raise awareness. I m a social documentary photographer who tries to give a voice to the underdog. He seems oddly reluctant to admit this.  Its a cliché, but its true,” he adds and glances at the Dictaphone regretfully.

Taylor doesn’t always cover the dark side of life, but his skill in capturing moments carries over into his more light­hearted work. He has a collection of portraits of famous people Australian director Christopher Doyle literally pull ing his hair out, Jules Holland sprawled, day-dreaming, on a sofa in the Oriental Hotel, economist Paul Kruger looking nervous and distracted minutes before addressing a large crowd.

The pictures like that,” he says, and his grin is mischievous, “are the pictures I took after I took the pictures.

In terms of revealing moments, is doesn’t get more intimate than photographing a woman giving birth, which is what Taylor did when covering a story about an emergency police unit which helps woman stuck in Bangkok’s notorious traffic jams give birth safely in cars. The Royal Thai Traffic Police has trained dozens of its officers in basic midwifery. In addition to their regular equipment, these officers carry bundles of gauze, umbilical-cord clamps, and aspirators to clear babies noses. After only two hours into his assignment, the mobile birthing unit was called out and Taylor captured a birth on film.

“I love this picture,” he says, without hesitation, and within a few clicks of the mouse the computer screen is dominated with

These days, Taylor is focused on teaching photography. He runs a school which offers tailor-made programs for individuals and groups. His clien­tele is diverse – Bangkok ex-pats and Thais who take evening and weekend classes; students from America and Europe who fly over to take his courses. He organizes trips to countries in the region for those interested and takes his students on walking tours through Thonburi, the Bangkok neighbour­hood he lives in and loves, because you can walk around for two hours with­out coming to a major road. Some of his students are amateur enthusiasts baffled by the manuals for their digital cameras, and looking to get more out of their photographs. Others are just starting out in their careers, seeking training and guidance.

“I have a set of workshops and a set of textbooks that I work from but I also use my knowledge of the region. Each course is tailor-made according to the client. The main thing is working out their needs as a photographer and facilitating those needs,” he says. “For private students who want to travel, it’s very casual. It’s not a tour – it’s the photography that is important. If we arrive in Luang Prabang and hear of a festival, we can just shoot off to the festival.”

One of his students wound up perched on the front of a boat in Laos, pro­pelled down the Mekong by fifty rowers, photographs which later featured in an exhibition of her work. Another student – a Thai – is now studying at the London College of Communication and a third has gone on to become a professional photojournalist. Taylor also believes in sharing photography skills for free. A few months ago at Rain Dogs, a bar and exhibition space in central Bangkok, he facilitated a photography discussion group, giving photographers the opportunity to get feedback from others in the field.

And what feedback would he give about his own work?

“I love this picture,” he says, without hesitation, and within a few clicks of the mouse the computer screen is dominated with the image of two po­lice officers cradling a baby still attached to an umbilical cord, which slips away between its mother’s legs on the backseat of a taxi cab. He stares at the photograph with a kind of wonder, and as if he has finally forgotten the Dictaphone on the table he says, “I don’t want to be pigeon-holed as just a gritty photographer.”

For more information regarding Jonathan Taylor’s photography school as well as his work, see – www.jonathantaylor.net