The MOOD Podcast
In The MOOD Podcast, Matt Jacob, renowned cultural portrait photographer, dives deep into the world of photography and the visual arts, with guests from all around the creative industry, across all parts of the globe, sharing inspiring stories and experiences that will leave you wanting more. With years of experience and a passion for storytelling, Matt has become a master of capturing lesser-told human stories through his photography, and teams up with other special artists from around the world to showcase insights, experiences and opinions within the diverse and sometimes controversial photography world.
You can watch these podcasts on his Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mattyj_ay.
You can also follow Matt's work on his Instagram @mattyj_ay and his website: https://mattjacobphotography.com.
The MOOD Podcast
The Dark Truth of Documenting Humanity: Natalie Keyssar, EO82
When you witness war up close, do you still believe in humanity?
Natalie Keyssar is a Brooklyn-based documentary photographer whose work delves into the personal impact of political turmoil, conflict, and migration.
With a background in painting and illustration, her perspective has led her to cover some of the most pressing global issues, from Venezuela to Ukraine. Her award-winning photography has been published in The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, and TIME. The conversation focuses on the ethical responsibilities of photographers, the nuances of storytelling, and the balance between aesthetics and ethics.
In this conversation:
- Examination of empathy as a core principle in photography.
- Importance of ethical responsibilities in photojournalism.
- Why photojournalists aren't neutral observers and the importance of accountability.
- How mainstream media and capitalism shape what stories get told.
- Insight into her unique approach to capturing human experiences.
- The balance between aesthetics and ethics in storytelling.
- Her latest project with the UFC and the intersection of sport, politics, and masculinity.
- The transition from photography to filmmaking.
Find Natalie Keyssar's work on her channels:
Website: www.nataliekeyssar.com
Instagram: @nataliekeyssar
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Welcome to the Mood Podcast, uncovering the art of conversation one frame at a time. I'm your host, matt Jacob, and thanks a lot for joining me in today's conversation. Our guest this week is Natalie Keiser, a Brooklyn-based documentary photographer whose work really explores the personal effects of political turmoil, conflict and migration. With a background in painting and illustration, natalie's unique perspective has led her to cover some of the most pressing global issues of our time, from Venezuela to Ukraine and beyond. Her award-winning photography has been featured in prestigious outlets like the New York Time Magazine, National Geographic and Time. In my conversation with her, we really jump into her creative journey from her early influences but pivot more into photojournalism, to her profound focus on empathy, resilience and the human condition. We discuss the moral imperatives of photojournalism, navigating the complexities of identity and the role of nuance in storytelling. Today, natalie also shares insights into how she balances the emotional toll of her work with her passion for creating meaningful and impactful images. So now I bring you Natalie Kesar. Natalie kesa, welcome to the mood podcast.
Natalie Keyssar:Thank you so much for joining me from the other side of the world. Thank you for having me and for waking up early while I'm working. What is late for me? Because I'm a morning person, um how are? You. Yeah, these are as wild to me because you're like time traveling, like it's a really different headspace to be in the morning than at night, so it's always interesting to like mix those two different days.
Matt Jacob:yeah, natalie, um, I wanted to start with more of an esoteric question, and we'll kind of you know, there's so much to talk about, um, and we'll dive into everything, hopefully as as chronologically as possible. But I wanted to start with the word empathy, and I know empathy kind of is exuded through a lot of photographers' work, and I feel that so much with you, your work, how you speak, how you write. What does empathy mean to you, though, in photography?
Natalie Keyssar:Thank you. I appreciate that you feel that the work is showing empathy. That's, that's a good start. Um, I think the word empathy gets thrown. It's like I feel like almost all of the terminology in in photography ethics right now is getting thrown around a lot and it's important that we're valuing it.
Natalie Keyssar:Um, because a lot of the values traditionally in company photojournalism really need to change like desperately and quickly, and I think they are, uh, but you know, to me, empathy, you know it's really about the distinction between, like, empathy and sympathy. Right, it's a, that's a, it's an equalizing, it's a respect for the other person's experience. Um, it's. I think. You know I work in spaces where people are suffering very often and I'm hoping to respect that experience and try to understand that emotion, not to look down on it, not to have that natural impulse that all humans have when something happens to someone else, we are sorry that it's happening. But there's also that little tiny voice inside of you that's glad it's not you and it's it's, it's human right, like it's. It's, it's like a natural animal instinct. But I think it's like almost like learning to override that and actually really try to get as close as possible to what other people are feeling and let them teach you.
Natalie Keyssar:Um, and for me, that's honestly the thing that I care about the most in photography is that I learn. I'm not really that confident that I can teach anyone anything with my pictures. I think that that's would be sort of arrogant, honestly, to think that I can really change anyone else with my pictures. I wish I felt that way, I wanted to feel that way when I got into this, but I don't't. But what I do want is to be changed through the process of making them, and so for me, like learning and creating bonds with people that are close enough that I can really truly care and feel about what they're feeling, and hoping that's somehow reflected in the image is like the best I can do but that does spill over into the desire for change, awareness, the frustrations of why people may not have empathy, or maybe our drive to understand.
Matt Jacob:why should people care about, maybe, something that's happening the other side of the world, whereas you know a lot of people in your country, in my home country, in many parts of the world, just care about putting food on the table and surviving the next day? So I mean, a lot of photography for ourselves is a self-interest pursuit, right, but certainly in your genre of photojournalism conflict photography there must be this overspilling desire to you know, shout at the world, look at what's happening and I want to be able to help. You see, is that accurate perception?
Natalie Keyssar:It certainly felt that way when I wanted to be a photojournalist was fueled by a desire to like, show people things and see them myself, and this idea that if people see things it will affect change. Right, I think that my life and my experience has both proven and disproven that theory. I have photographed so many terrible things that it's within the power of the world, within the power of the leaders of my country, et cetera, to stop, and we don't are working consistently and think your photographers are going to like, concretely affect change on a regular basis or even like at all. You're not paying attention. I think you're fooling yourself and I think that I think that the problem with that structure of like okay, if I take photos and publish them, then I'm helping raise awareness and that's going to create change when we sort of see that in like our current like media saturated environment, with the political structures that we have, that's not really happening. If you just believe that, then I think that you're sort of tricking yourself into not analyzing your own role and what's happening and how to do it better. It's like it's because I don't really believe that just taking pictures and publishing them is enough.
Natalie Keyssar:I think that and I think that when you tell yourself, like okay, this is that photojournalism is like inherently a public service, even when we see that it often does no service, you're like giving yourself an out when actually it can be very extractive. It can reinforce stereotypes. It can reinforce the idea in wealthy, privileged countries like the U? S that bad things happen to bad people in bad places. It can make you feel more far away from people who are suffering rather than closer, whereas I think the my really what I've come to believe about my practice is that it I do it because I want to, I do it because I'm curious, I do it because I'm like get like obsessively desperate to see things that I want to commit to them and I I started to feel emotionally close to them, commit to them, and I started to feel emotionally close to them and hopefully, like through the process of making these images, that makes the people that I'm photographing and working with feel seen and I think that's a service.
Natalie Keyssar:I think that one-on-one interactions with people where I'm saying I, I care and I believe other people are going to care, like that's important to them and that's important to create a record, and if I learn something on a personal level, then hopefully I can communicate that and like start to create like small ripples and I believe really, like really intensely in the ability of individuals to change and like to that we change each other socially and within our communities. And then for me, like the work part, the publication part. I think good information is good to have out there and having a historic record of important events is important, but it's like almost secondary, if that makes sense yeah, absolutely.
Matt Jacob:Um, we talk about subjectivity and triaging the kind of the way photographs are distributed and shown, with narratives and biases and you know, all of that kind of nefarious narratives that go with images, which is, you know, the negative side of photography, I guess. But, as a you know, the way you're talking sounds almost like you're a journalist first, photographer second, and uh, you know I'm putting words in your mouth here, but it's kind of the feeling I'm getting. Is there a what is the responsibility that comes with that? There's the fiduciary's responsibility as a, as a photo journalist, to do what? Or is it just to literally drive your own curiosity and then see what comes after? Is a responsibility to almost like post project, post photography and and see how, what you can do with those images and how you can hopefully drive individual awareness and individual curiosity?
Natalie Keyssar:oh man, all of it so obviously it's not that simple.
Matt Jacob:I'm diluting this. No, it's not a lot, it's much more nuanced.
Natalie Keyssar:But and that's and that's what I, that's what I think is interesting, that's what I think is important to talk about, because I think often, like people who are thinking about doing this work or trying to do it better are looking for some kind of simple rule that they can follow to make it good and the reality. You have to be constantly interrogating this and thinking about it on a case by case situation. But, like, honestly, I think of myself and this is very specific to when I'm doing documentary work, I do, you know, I shoot culture and fashion and portraiture and all this other stuff for my work and there I'm really into just being an artist and like thriving and making cool stuff and trying to make stuff that looks different and like that's great. But if I'm working on like a serious documentary project, if I'm documenting other people's lives and sensitive parts of other people's lives, then the hierarchy is human, journalist, artists, and I think that order is very important. Um, because none of my work matters more than respecting somebody else's space, representation, comfort level when you're dealing with someone else's you know with, with someone else's life, you know.
Natalie Keyssar:So much has been written about this and said about this. I loved your interview with lauren walsh because I thought she was just like I was like nodding along to the whole podcast, like she was so on point um, but like when you the responsibilities of documenting someone else's life, especially in a delicate moment or god forbid dangerous or tragic one, are humongous, and there you really. You know, my ethical standard in terms of thinking about that is like my mom is like my best friend and my hero and like would I be comfortable with my mom being treated this way by another photographer or journalist? Right Then, in terms of the journalistic obligation, we are telling a story and we may have quite a bit of power and privilege in terms of the audience we're going to have. So there, I think our obligation is to communicating the truth in the best way that we can see it, and I think that the truth is incredibly subjective and almost always there are multiple truths happening in any given moment. So that's really really tricky, because photo is a very limited medium.
Natalie Keyssar:But I think, as best as you can, you're trying to identify what matters here and what matters that I can communicate in an image, and sometimes that's a feeling. Sometimes you know that's not a fact, you know sometimes it's like this was a war crime. This is evidence of a war crime. Sometimes it's like I want you to feel your fucking heart breaking right now. Sometimes it's, I know you guys, you know, think that all these terrible, bad things happen to people that are so different from you. But look how beautiful this person is, Because sometimes beauty is a key to triggering the human response of, like that person is good, right, which of course is a bunch of bullshit, but like finding the beauty, is this visual recipe for again like hacking that empathy response?
Natalie Keyssar:Right? So there's, there's all different ways to do it. And then the art, I'm hoping, is in service of all of that. The art in those contexts becomes in service of trying to tell that story, trying to show that respect, trying to show that love, prioritizing the other things, like if you know, if you're going in to a war zone to make a portfolio picture. I kind of wanted to say two things Like, first of all, fuck you. Second of all, all of us do that to a certain extent, so you're kind of fighting with, you know, the two demons within you, right, like we, if we wanted, if I wanted to be useful, I would be a medic. I'm not, because I'm selfish and I want to make art, but so this is my. A medic I'm not, because I'm selfish and I want to make art, but so this is my way. I'm also and on the other side of that is like I'm probably not smart enough to be a medic, but this is the best I can do for the world and I like that's where I'm good at things.
Matt Jacob:So here we are it's almost a way to kind of reconcile any gaps or any kind of, I guess, shortcomings that you might feel you have in your soul or your personality, right, I feel exactly the same way. It's like I feel so selfish, wanting to do most things right, so it's almost like how can I kind of make up for that and compensate so I can still do those selfish things but not feel too bad about it? Obviously, nowhere near on the level that that you do tell me. Let's rewind a little bit. I want to hear about how this all came, how you became you and how you became the photographer that you are today, where it all started, your backgrounds and pick up a I don't know I was huh, I think I was like a really curious kid and a bad student and I really liked to make art.
Natalie Keyssar:So I was like good at that and so I was always attracted to like extremes and that used to sort of play out in, you know, being like curiosity driven but a little bit like wayward youth. And then I I ended up in New York going to art school studying painting, because that was like the thing I was good at and that's what I was able to to get here for for school. Um, and I was super, you know I was. I was always interested in activism I come from a, you know, like very activist family and was really interested in like anarchism and socialism, like as a teenager and a college student and like you know how, how can we change the world? Like what, how do we fight the power, whatever? And so I was like in art school and I was making these like crazy paintings and like going to protests and like reading, you know, the usual progressive stuff and the young idealist yeah, and like it wasn't like.
Natalie Keyssar:You know, I wanted to like I was making all these paintings and I liked it, but like I was in a studio all the time and I like had some talent, but like I don't think enough to like make it, and I was also kind of like, well, if I make it as an artist, I'm not sure that's the life I want. Like I want to see the world, I want to like go try to change things and I also just want to be in. Next, like I want to see things for myself. I'm curious and I'm also mistrustful. Like if you tell me how something went down on Monday, I need to see that for myself. I trust no one.
Natalie Keyssar:So like, actually, after I graduated college, I was like working in an art gallery and waiting tables and stuff, and I ended up getting an internship with some photojournalists because I was like I graduated school kind of with this obsession with photojournalism. I was looking at it and being like, wow, like you probably have to like have gone to like an Ivy League and study journalism to do that, but that's like I missed out. Like my life is over, I'm 23 and I studied the wrong thing and I should have been a photojournalist and at some point I just started like applying for like internships with photojournalists and kind of I got to assist Julie Plattner and Shalwa Schwartz, who are amazing journalists and photographers and now both are filmmakers, and I was kind of like, do I need to go to school for this? And they were like no, like you just need to do it, basically. And so I mean I basically just got really lucky.
Natalie Keyssar:My third-rate people in New York had a lot of mentors that taught me a whole lot, fell in with a lot of women, friends particularly, you know, like my girlfriends Katie Orlinsky's got to function, kind of adopted me when I was like a tiny baby freelancer running around New York and, you know, started inviting me to things and picture but we're sending you on assignments like really terrible rates, you know to get my foot in the door and work my way up, uh, to working for, you know, some of the local national papers here since then you've, you know, look at the client list that you've worked with and the projects, so many projects.
Matt Jacob:I mean I had a look at your uh link tree as well which is just, you know, there's, there's so much to piece um, piece together from that and and really kind of dive into which probably would take us days, um, which hopefully we can really do maybe another time. But what, what is it? That kind of, what type of, what kind of projects really drive you today? And and maybe we don't talk about clients so much, but more interested to you know, current today, natalie, what is it that you feel is most important for us to be maybe aware of, or at least viewing, in terms of your art and your work and your journalistic endeavors? And and, but more importantly, what, what is it that you're working on that's most important to you at the moment?
Natalie Keyssar:thank you. Um, well, it's funny, I I haven't like scrolled down that link train, like what's in there, um, so you know it's, it's been a real privilege. You know, one of the cool things about being a freelancer, which is what almost all documentary photographers are at this point there's very few people with jobs I've certainly never had one, so I have no idea what that's like do whatever I was passionate about for like the last decade, which has been amazing, and over time I've started to like. You know, really it was almost like I didn't know what motivated me and inspired me and made me tick, until I realized at some point that I was repeating myself and like gravitating towards the same shit over and over again, reflexively. And you know, at some point I look back at my portfolio and I'm like young people, culture, athleticism, dance in a very difficult, often very hostile environment Like it's like the. You know, it's like these are the, like that recipe. I beeline to it wherever I go.
Natalie Keyssar:I'm very interested in uprising and political and the worst that we can be, and I think that that holds us fascination for all of us. But maybe I have a particularly sick fixation with it because it it doesn't like, it doesn't stop. Like it, you know we would think we would stop doing conflict. We have all this technology. We have all this technology. We have all this. You know knowledge. You can. You can ask a robot like how to cure cancer and it's like here you go, dummy. You know, like we're we're so advanced and all we're doing is like using our advancement to like drone strike babies all over the world. You know. So I think there's this part of me that, and I think it also has to deal with like has to do a lot with like you know, personal stuff and how and stuff from growing up. That it's, I think, is very common in people that pursue an understanding of violence as an adult, because there's this just like attraction to understanding the worst of us, because it's honestly so prevalent. I think there's part of me that like would rather have it where I can see it than like pretend it's not happening, like it's actually more disconcerting to me to like have the darkness of humanity like somewhere like amorphously behind my back, than to just like be looking right at it, and maybe, if I can understand it, I can like well, I want to say, fix it, but I don't really think I can fix it, but so you know, okay, so I was very um, conceptual in terms of, practically speaking, the way that's played out.
Natalie Keyssar:I worked a lot. You know, when I was first getting started, I was in New York, and New York is an incredible city with got like everything. But, you know, at first I was doing assignment work. You, you know, like murder scene politician at a podium, broken water, main, protest, whatever, and eventually I, you know, started traveling a little bit and I, in 2014, I was, you know, I kind of realized that, like the career I wanted was to work internationally and cover, like major global events that had particular interests for me, which is a lot about, like this question of like can the people change things? Like does does violence work? Does activism work? Like can power structures be broken? And I, so I went down to Venezuela in 2014 to cover a huge wave of uprisings against nicolas maduro, the success of hugo chavez, and I fell super, super, head over heels in love with venezuela and I spent, like the next eight years sort of bouncing between new york and caracas, like covering the subsequent failure of the venezuelan state and then reconsolidation to a horrific, murderous dictatorship, and also, meanwhile, kind of yo-yoing between there and documenting the catastrophic and decline of any semblance of democracy in my own country and reckonings for our racism and human rights violations. So you know that my process has been a lot about you know, because I was in Venezuela a lot.
Natalie Keyssar:I ended up working a lot in Latin America in general and I started this sort of process also on a sort of personal level of working in places that were in crisis and moments of extreme crisis and then trying to go beyond the news, trying to figure out like okay, I love to cover breaking news. I think often documentary photographers are sort of separated into like do you do like features and human interest or do you do like breaking news? And I'm like I, I want to shoot the breaking news. I, I love it, I'm fascinated by it. Like nothing gives me more energy and makes me think harder than than those types of moments, as much as they are horrible. But then I also want to like commit to the stories that that are, that are the causes and then the effects of a breaking news situation.
Natalie Keyssar:So, like in Venezuela, I went to cover the uprisings, but then I ended up spending years and years working on like different vignettes and stories of this like giant personal project, looking at the human effects, and particularly effects on women and young people, of the crisis there rising political polarization, violence and erosion of a functional state in my own country. Because there's this crazy thing that happens, I think, when you travel a lot, which you've probably experienced, which is that I feel like often when I'm moving around and from place to place, I'm kind of jumping a timeline, like you're seeing, like oh I this political stage, like I sort of recognize this from, like this other place, and if we're here now on that timeline, then I sort of know what happens next and it's going to be bad, you know. So that there's this way in which it was. It's just such a privilege to get to sort of move around and learn from these different moments in time and different geographies and cultures.
Natalie Keyssar:Obviously and my most recent work has been covering the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia I basically came back to New York and was here for like a year during the pandemic. Here for like a year during the pandemic, um, and then it had become increasingly difficult to cover Venezuela as a foreigner and also a lot of my best friends in Venezuela, like Adriana Loureiro, andrea Hernandez, lexi Parra, manali, quintero, oscar Castillo, like all of my best friends, are from Venezuela, are photographers who had it super well covered, and I was like you know what? It's too hard for me to do good work here and y'all are doing it better than I could. So, like, what's next for me, right? Um, and Russia invaded Ukraine and I had always wanted to go, partially because my great-grandparents are Ukrainian, and so I went there. Kind of a similar thing happened where I went and was horrified and heartbroken by what I saw, but I was also like, holy shit, I love this place.
Natalie Keyssar:And so the past three years I've been working on covering the conflict and, you know, doing a lot of news stories, but in between there I started working on a project, uh, called In this Day, which started off as a stills project looking at couples in love in the context of the war, which was sort of my pet project to keep myself sane, uh, collecting, because I was, you know, in my first full-scale conflict. It was horrible beyond words, obviously, and I kept like. I was like what am I going to? What can I say? That's not just about how awful this is, it's more about, like, what I love about this place and I kept seeing what people in love would do for each other in the context of this war and I started like, and you would see all these incredibly like cinematic romantic moments of, like you know, soldiers with their girlfriends walking hand in hand, elderly couples, and it would be this, like little bright light in a very emotionally dark landscape.
Natalie Keyssar:And so I started kind of early on in my downtime when I was in Ukraine, being like, can I take your picture? Can you tell me about your love story? Which Ukrainians are like what? Like you don't want to talk about, like what? The most traumatic thing I saw today was, you know, it became this really cool way to connect with people and I've been working on that for about three years and earlier this year I started working on turning that into a documentary film. I'm going to stop talking because, oh my God, I've been modeling for like I don't know.
Matt Jacob:Please keep keep on going. It's fascinating. And that documentary is what. What is the? It sounds like you're almost the inception stage. Still maybe, but what is the the plan? I mean, funding, still need funding. Uh, what is the kind of timeline for that? How are you kind of piecing, piecing it all together at the moment?
Natalie Keyssar:um bless you for asking um I, so we and I say we because I have amassed a really amazing team of Ukrainian and European and American producers and helpers who are helping me learn how to make a film. This is my first one, and so we've got. You know, I'm learning so much and it's also, you know, it's such a cool experience for me to start to learn a new communications medium because it's like I've been learning like my whole career I've been trying to communicate through stills, which I love. It's so specific and I feel kind of like I've got like the shackles off now because I'm like, can you sound and it moves, and so I'm having the experience of like shooting video in Ukraine, in Ukraine, and like I feel like you know, when you first started photographing and you would like take a picture of like a tree and you'd be like, look, I made this like poetic photo of a tree and like now your students or your mentees come to you with those and you're like, oh sweetie, that was a great tree and I'm like totally doing that with photo. You know, like I see like the wind move through the trees and I like film it and I'm like I did magic, you know. So I'm really enjoying being a beginner, um and and also I'm just this.
Natalie Keyssar:This project needed to become a film because the people I'm collaborating with, the couples that I'm working with, are the most fucking incredible people I've ever met and they inspire me so much. They become friends, they their, you know, their stories are just unbelievable, and so the basically the we we've made. I've I've shot some video and we're also working with a couple. So the concept for the film is going to mix a lot of first person footage with reportage footage, and we are, you know, the film is ready to go. We just need a fair bunch of money, which I'm told to my photo brand, it sounds really expensive to filmmakers. Apparently, my film is cheap. So if anybody wants to support a cheap, expensive documentary project in ukraine, please contact me um yeah, we'll leave.
Matt Jacob:Is there a? Do you, do you have a funding site? Or just uh, just email you, or how can you email me just?
Natalie Keyssar:email. Yeah, we're, you know, uh, we're. Yeah, no funding site, but if you want to help, if you want to um support our amazing team.
Matt Jacob:We'll put your phone number, profile picture and email. No, I'm joking.
Natalie Keyssar:We'll just link your website.
Matt Jacob:I'm really, really so happy for you that you're kind of going into this new format. I know what that feels like. It's both kind of challenging, daunting, but that's almost the exciting part of it, right Like a little kid at school learning a new skill. Where did the idea come from that it needed to now be a motion picture? Was it kind of an external influence and the team that you're working with kind of advising that? Or why turn from stills to to to motion for this specific project?
Natalie Keyssar:it's a great question. So I think part of it was that I, like you, know the process for the stills project, which has been you know it's published in the washington post and it went on the word from aperture and you know I'm very proud of it. Um, particularly, you know, which I think is all 1000% due to the people, and the photographs are so beautiful and so cool and their stories will just make your eyes pop open. You know, um, and I was, you know I would, for years in Ukraine. Now I would, whenever I had an opportunity, whether sometimes I pitched like chapters of its publications or got a little bit of grant money, or even just between covering, you know, just terrible parts of the war itself.
Natalie Keyssar:I was meeting with couples, photographing their lives, doing long interviews, making portraits of them, and I, you know, and it would sort of be like okay, like I would keep in touch with them and find out what was going on with their stories that I was just like this is not enough, like I want you to hear Anastasia's voice, like I want you to like see the way Ruslana and Ivan touch each other, not still, I want you to see the motion. I want y'all to, I want y'all to hear the bombs and I want you to know that they're coming for these people. They're gonna ruin these lives. It's not theoretical, it's not abstract, it's not a shiny explosion that you can cover in a still and be like well, that's a really cool shade of red. You know, this is these beautiful young people that you know it's about to be three years of.
Natalie Keyssar:Their country is just under relentless invasion from russia, and speaking of things that should stop yesterday, three years ago, if people would just do what they needed to do, you know, this is one of those cases, and so I think, in a certain way, I felt like like I was. It was just I could keep collecting these stories and it would fulfill me because I can photograph Ukrainian couples in love and talk to them forever. But like it wasn't, you know, I felt limited by the medium to tell the depth of these stories. Um, and the other thing that happened on a business level was that I got contacted by several like movie hollywood people, some of them that talked a lot like used car salesmen, being like can you sign us over the rights to this thing you're doing? We're making a documentary, a documentary, and I was like I've seen this movie before and I think you should fuck off.
Matt Jacob:Yeah.
Natalie Keyssar:But actually that's a good idea, you know. And so then I started talking to like filmmaker homie. It's like okay, so what is a documentary? How do I do this?
Matt Jacob:Can't wait to see it.
Natalie Keyssar:To me too.
Matt Jacob:Thank you, documentary. It's like, how do I do this? Can't wait to see it to me too. Thank you, um, but this, this, uh, just going to hover over this a little bit more. This is not breaking news, right? So you know, you, you're, you're, you love covering breaking news stories. What made you kind of see in between those moments and see the smaller but just as visceral stories, such as ukrainians in love during during conflict?
Natalie Keyssar:well, I think, like you know, for me it's like because it is a breaking news story, like it, that's the thing it's like. I feel like if you, if you go to a breaking news story with the goal being to get the most dramatic images that you possibly can and leave and then go on to the next one, then your experience is going to be super surface level. But my interest in breaking news is, first of all, I am interested in these massive historical events, you know, which are usually catastrophes, you know which are usually catastrophes. But but what I'm really? But what I'm interested? Because I want to know, like I want to understand all of the factors and all of the human experience that has to align to create something so big that it gets the world's attention. And then I want to understand what happens afterwards. So it's, like you know, to me, like you know, starting to photograph people in love and film people in love, for me it was a way of working out both something that felt like more complex and nuanced and human to me in terms of how to talk about the experience of conflict beyond. Just like this goes boom, it's very bad, and then, like you know, but the news is breaking all around these people all the time. You know, I'm still there, they're still there.
Natalie Keyssar:Like it's it, it is still a breaking news story, even though it's not breaking anymore. It's a three-year-old conflict that needs to stop. Um, but like yeah, so I guess it's like for me. For me it's not a separation, like I am like attracted to that fame, but I don't want to just chase that. You know, because we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording media. Because of the way that we are distributing our journalism and the way that capitalism is affecting that particularly, we sort of have this like tiny attention span where, like eye of the world is on one thing at a time for like three days and then it moves on, but every single one of those things is affecting lives, thousands, millions of them, for decades after. So, like that's, you know it's like it's. It's still the same story there.
Matt Jacob:To me there's not so much distinction between breaking news and what happens before and after yeah, fascinating, I mean, and also, um, you know, censorship plays a role in all of this, wherever you might live, right, depending on what gets in front of what eyes, under what narrative, partisan or non-partisan, and if there is such a thing as non-partisan journalism, right, I think it's very difficult to discern between these lines and, of course, it's extremely complex. All of this is so complex and the way that you might tell a story in this case, uh, what you're doing in ukraine it arguably can have a bigger impact for you and and for those people seeing it, because it's it's, it's almost more intimate, it's almost more, um, more of a human, more of a real and close human, uh, aspect that people can relate to quite directly, whereas maybe and I'm not saying this is true, but maybe breaking news with shocking images all the time, people may become a little bit desensitized to that, maybe not on a visual level, but maybe on a psychological level, and there isn't necessarily that relatable aspect, but I'm definitely not one to comment on that. Where do you see the role of journalism and photojournalism today? And I know that's such a. You know we can't answer that really directly, but I I'm interested to hear why you think certain stories reach the public's eyes and certain stories don't.
Matt Jacob:Why, maybe, the ukrainian conflict? We don't really hear much about it anymore, apart from trickles of information here and there. Why the venezuelan, you know history of was still ongoing, doesn't really get talked about anymore? Why issues in Africa or Myanmar that are always ongoing and under the surface and bubbling away behind maybe closed doors, don't get to see the light of day? What is it with this information ecosystem that we're failing at? And where does the role of photojournalism, where should the role of photojournalism be placed within that?
Natalie Keyssar:Oh boy, matt, oh boy, okay, talk to me about truth.
Matt Jacob:That's really what I'm getting at here.
Natalie Keyssar:So okay, the industry. That's really what I'm getting at here. So okay, the industry. This is there's. There's like so many things I can say about this, but, like I you know, my like short answer is like it's the capitalism.
Natalie Keyssar:Stupid, not yeah, but you know um hey, I'm with you, yeah um, you know, I think that that treating documentation of world events and distributing information as a business has been absolutely cancerous to our field. You know, journalists are still taught to think of what we do as a public service, but the companies that employ us are run at a top-down level as a business, and the fact that the businesses are counting fucking clicks and engagement and all of these idiotic internet metrics, absolutely destroys the structure of mission of communicating what's important to the world based on what's important, which I'm not saying was done well pre-internet, but I think it's what we would be doing well if, if we weren't worried about clicks and if, like the generation of journalists that I'm proud to be a member of, was in charge and is starting to be in charge, you know. So like, first of all, I think that that's like a really, really incredibly corrosive influence on the structures within we're working right. I love editorial clients that I work for and I work with such smart, supportive, conscientious people, you know, and I also am part of communities and communities of activists and you know, and I'm also a teacher and a mentor and I work with a lot of people that are like furious at the. I mean, not, that's that part's not in quotes that are furious at the mainstream media the mainstream media is in quotes. They're really, really angry at a lot of the of my clients who I work with on a regular basis, um, because they feel like they're not being properly represented.
Natalie Keyssar:Like you know, these narratives are getting, you know, whitewashed and you know and, and a lot of that is happening. But then I think we really have to sort of examine what that actually means. Right, people talk about the mainstream media as a sort of blanket term when we don't know if they're talking about like Fox News or the New Yorker, or Harper's, or like their local newspaper. You know, it's all very different things.
Natalie Keyssar:But what is happening in all of those structures is that editorial priorities are not being determined by what people need to know, based on what you know, based, you know they're being. They're being determined by engagement, and we all know that internet engagement is essentially a metric of how well the thing is working as an incredibly addictive drug and like what wins is like stupid memes and like cat pictures and like horrific images of violence. So like I feel like the communication between people who, between journalists and the audience, is totally broken. And then what that means is that we have no resources to invest in doing this work properly and ethically. If you're trying to do something on a budget that's as hard as documentary work, what ends up getting shaved down is commitment time with people doing things ethically and properly, and it gets all very fucked up.
Matt Jacob:Yeah. There's a yeah, go on.
Natalie Keyssar:No, go ahead.
Matt Jacob:No, I was just going to throw in there. There's an inherent mistrust of institutions these days to kind of deliver people the truth and facts. It's almost impossible to know where you can go to get a fact. And even if you find a fact, maybe you don't trust that it's a fact and you have to do a number of fact-checking exercises to really believe that it's a fact and you have to do you know a number of fact checking exercises to really believe that it's a fact.
Matt Jacob:I don't know where that mistrust really or that trust really broke down over the years and I can empathize with those journalists that get frustrated with the legacy media and these larger media institutions who might not deliver what should be delivered for various reasons. And we find ourselves in this place, like you described, where we have to capture people's attention within two seconds, whether that's on CNN or whether it's on Instagram or whether it's on X or whatever platforms we get our information from, and add little echo chambers. How we penetrate that. I mean it's almost too little, too late. Now I don't really know where we go from here in terms of, you know, getting back to a more organized, trustworthy information landscape.
Natalie Keyssar:I mean, I think there's another side of it, which is that I think that, like the structure you know, part of the idea of trust in media, I think, is like like what's anachronism is that the word? Like it's something that's yeah it doesn't.
Natalie Keyssar:It didn't make sense like it, you know it. I think that historically, the idea of like the neutral journalist who was the author of right and wrong was also total bullshit, because you know what we're talking about were like rich white men going all over the world, telling the world what their experience was and then flying home and it's all controlled by humans and human psychology and human thoughts and narrative right yeah, and, like you know, and like misconceptions and some idea of like the journalists as the arbiter of truth, which I don't believe we are.
Natalie Keyssar:I think we're just the arbiter of what we see. So I think that I hope, my hope is that in a certain way, like some of this, is the system being broken down because it needed to break down, because it was, it was like structurally flawed in the sense that, like we need so much more representation, and part of the reason there's distrust is that now it's not like publication is run only by like super elites, in the sense that, like everybody can communicate across the internet and you know there's first person on the ground sourcing available for almost anything. But that also means that there's this like a cacophony of voices, which is what you're referring to. So, like you sort of pick and choose your truth depending on what you're comfortable with, and I think that sort of points us to like an important factor which is, like I really do think that like many, many overlapping, contradictory truths are happening in any given moment, and that's much more true than saying that there was one. And so I think, in terms of duty as a photographer, I'm definitely not going to fix capitalism or the media industry Definitely way above my pay grade, media industry definitely way above my pay grade. I still am going to be really grateful to work with great minds that I get to work with and have an opportunity to publish widely and like work with people I trust and hope that like.
Natalie Keyssar:But I feel like all I can do is try to be trustworthy myself, and that means making myself first of all something that's not, I think, been historically practiced enough at all in journalism and that I think people are talking about more and that I really believe in, is making yourself as an individual journalist and photographer accountable to the communities that you photograph. That's the first way that we can build back trust right, rather than going and taking your picture and winning your Pulitzer and, oops, that picture got published and got somebody executed and I didn't even know because they couldn't reach me or the people in the photograph didn't want you there and they're crying because they hate you and you're photographing them anyways and misrepresenting their experience, like when we you know. I feel like thanks in huge part to like technology. You know I'm totally accessible. If I publish something that people don't like, they are going to see it, they're going to send me a message, they're going to let me know.
Natalie Keyssar:It also means I, as a journalist, a year after going to a place across the country or across the world, I can like ping somebody and be like, hey, is this still accurate? Do you feel comfortable with this? Would this put you in danger? And so having that ongoing relationship so that you're not this removed journalist on a hill that's not accountable to the communities, but you're actually like initiating that accountability and that deep, long-term relationship and making sure that people do feel accurately and safely represented with our work. You know, then, rather than the experience which we encounter all the time, which is you go somewhere and they say I don't want to talk to you, don't take my picture, because the last journalist was an asshole. He published photos and the Russians bombed us the next day because it was a target right. You know, hopefully, I would really like to be the journalist that they, that they say that girl kept her word, she kept in touch, she published what I said to her, she respected the rules that we gave her in terms of what was safe and what wasn't, and what felt like important and what wasn't, and some people would argue that that's not being objective.
Natalie Keyssar:But I think that's would argue that that's not being objective but I think that's stupid.
Matt Jacob:I think that's again being like human first and unrealistic.
Matt Jacob:But I think I'm glad you kind of brought this up as we dive into more of the ethics behind photography in general.
Matt Jacob:What is, um, I think I can speak for all of photography, when, when I say we've got to be very careful and we have a responsibility to not necessarily just take all the time, not to have that almost and I was speaking on a local aspect here not to have that kind of influencer philosophy where we just go, take, leave, and the same could be said across many depths of that philosophy, across many genres.
Matt Jacob:Photojournalism is probably the most apparent and the most nuanced in that respect, because I imagine and I want you to educate me here, because I'm really interested in learning the details behind what you just talked about in terms of how you even go about that process, of finding out what potentially the impact might be, not just in the closed community but in the wider community, and the potential actions that might, you know, have a butterfly effect from that who controls that and how do you even you know, how do you even you know maintain that integrity through what I'm sure takes a lot of time to do.
Matt Jacob:If you go to somewhere like Ukraine and you hadn't been there before, maybe you've got to really spend weeks just finding your fucking feet right, learning about the place, getting over the initial shock of everything and then trying to understand. Okay, how do I go about doing this? And I know this is multiple questions in one, but I guess just tell me and educate me about the photojournalist process of dealing with ethics on both a high level and a more of a specific one, if you can.
Natalie Keyssar:So I mean, I think it is a lot of questions and, first of all, it's like there's no one size fits all right.
Natalie Keyssar:It's like, if your goal is like, first, you want to identify your goal, do's like there's no one size fits all right. It's like if your goal is like, first, you want to identify your goal, do no harm, actually try to collaborate with people and, you know, do something good that everybody feels good about. How they get there is going to change every time, right, and it may even change like the same place, same community on a different day. So it's a moving target and you have to be aware that it's a really hard process and it's one of those things that's like a practice, not like a goal achieved. It's like, okay, I understand that photojournalism is not, and this is what I was talking about, where I was saying that if we think that what we're doing is just inherently good by doing it, then we're already blowing it ethically, because you want to go into every new situation Every every time you're photographing someone else's life, you want to go in with, I think, total humility, right, that's the first thing. It's like you want to go in.
Natalie Keyssar:I always tell my students you want to be a permanent student, you want your mentality to be I'm arriving, I am not coming in with that, I'm the journalist, I'm here to take a photo of X because this is the story, then you already failed. If you already know what you're doing, what the story is, what the picture is, then what you're not, you're not learning, you're not documenting real life. You're looking for, like, an illustration of a preconceived notion. An illustration of a preconceived notion, so you really do have to go in every time aware of your own ignorance. And then you, and then you really want to ask the people that you're photographing to be your teachers right, you, you know and to and to find people that are willing to do that work with you, that want to, to collaborate. You want that process again. It's like there's these old tropes of the you know, sort of like you're the photographer and you're asking the questions and you're taking the pictures and then you go. But I'm really looking to create a relationship where we're we're like, you know, we're asking each other questions, we're learning a lot, and so it also means you know so.
Natalie Keyssar:So I am looking for people that actively want to collaborate with me and that means that I'm sort of, you know, when I'm looking to do a story about a certain theme, you know I'm asking, you know, okay, like, have you had this experience? Am I, is my thesis here even right? Like, can you educate me a little bit about it, about it? Would you? Do you want to like spend some time together? What are your concerns for safety? What are your concerns for your emotional safety? What are your ground rules? You know, what can we show, what can we not show?
Natalie Keyssar:You know, and if you're sort of continue, you know it was interesting because you were talking about Warren Walsh, about, like, the ethics of, like photographing. When you're embedded, right, and this is, you know, when you're working with the military, they have very, very strict rules to protect their interests and you either follow them or you lose your access. Right, it's the same when you're working with somebody who's powerful or somebody who's rich, right, they're going to have a PR team and they're going to say you can ask this, not that you can go here, not there, you can shoot their left side, not their right side, right, but as soon as you get into people that have been, you know, the victims of violence or are, you know, not so privileged in some way or being marginalized, then they don't have a PR team and they don't have those rules. So your responsibility is to is to create them collaboratively with them, to protect their interests, and I don't think that's like surrendering our agency as a photographer. I think that's creating trust. And then if we as individuals create that trust and that accountability, and you, you know, one thing that's just really basic and really important is everybody gets my phone number, everybody gets my Instagram.
Natalie Keyssar:If you want to reach out to me, you know, and I tell them like this is what I think is going to happen with the photograph. This is what I don't know. Maybe I'm shooting this for personal projects and I hope to publish it in the future. I'll let you know when that happens. Maybe it's going to go in rolling stone, but okay, actually damn, they want to translate it to German. That's a different, you know, whatever thing.
Natalie Keyssar:So, like you want the, the communication lines to be open, and the way to the way to make it safe, both physically and emotionally, is ask, you know, and sometimes you have to like. I use this example a lot when you know, I think, because I am a spanish speaker and I have a lot of experience in latin america. I work a lot with stories about immigration in the us and I work a lot with people who are undocumented and there's this huge power dynamic at play there where, like you know, I'm an American white journalist representing a big media and so often you know people are scared and they just don't want to say no to you because they're afraid they're going to get in trouble and they're afraid that trouble might mean like detention or deportation or lack of resources for their kids or whatever. So it's not just is it okay? Can I take your picture? And somebody says like, yeah, it's like hold on, hold on, hold on hold on. This is going to go in the New York times, it's going to be published on the internet in English and Spanish. It's going to be your face. Can we talk about the, the consequences? You don't have to do this. I'm at this shelter, but you're, I have nothing to do with the shelter, you know. It's really explaining your positionality and really being curious about everybody else's.
Natalie Keyssar:I think there's a. It's a very competitive industry and people that get into journalism and photography tend to be pretty like assertive or aggressive, and that's great if you're doing if you're using that in service of your own ethics. But sometimes there's a lot of pressure, you know, from from bosses or from competition, to like get your yes and get your picture, and we have to just turn that off because what you want is like a well, you know it's. It's a little. You want is like a well, you know it's a little bit like I always say this, but it's like. You know, continuous affirmative consent. It's like the sex standards.
Matt Jacob:Oh yeah, now it's the same idea, you know I love that you you've you really talked about earlier, almost knowing thyself, like knowing your own ignorance.
Matt Jacob:I think it's just so important in any genre of photography or art, just in life, but especially when you're dealing with such sensitive subject matters, right, especially in photojournalism the other side of the world, in maybe a country that speaks a foreign language, it's just so important to kind of push that aside with the ego and be that listener and be able to try and understand that culture and that individual as much as possible, to allow them to at least try and understand you and what you're doing with these photos and what you're trying to do, not just take from them but also maybe help them in some way or at least give them an experience they are not going to be, like you said, scared of.
Matt Jacob:I've experienced that with just normal portrait photography, not in conflict areas, right. So I think that's extremely important. But that takes time, time on the ground. And if you are on assignment and if you have bosses, and how much does funding come into this, right, how much pressure do you receive as a photographer when money is on the line, deadlines are on the line, you know, attention spans are on the line, I know you said just switch it off, but it can't be easy.
Natalie Keyssar:I know you said just switch it off, but it can't be easy. Well, I think that's where also you start. I think there's this little bit of a trope in media of this idea that the bad bosses are on the other end of the line.
Matt Jacob:Yeah.
Natalie Keyssar:You know, I picture, I don't care who dies and then we're on the You're like, oh, please.
Matt Jacob:It's TV for you, I guess.
Natalie Keyssar:It's honest, it's almost. You know I'm maybe I'm extraordinarily lucky, but you know, working in the print media it's almost never my experience, but what I did have to learn how to do is to feel you know, cause, what you were talking about before I think is so important about the ego. Right, most of the bad behavior, most of the stuff we don't want to see in photographers in the field, it's usually coming from fear. Right, it's your ego. You have imposter syndrome. You don't want to admit how ignorant you feel. You don't want the other photographers to see that you're scared, that you don't know what's going on.
Natalie Keyssar:And one of the things that I really have the privilege to witness a lot as a photographer working in the field with, like, great writers and great other photographers especially because breaking news situations there actually tends to be a lot of us around for better and worse is that the greats are asking dumb questions rapid fire all day. Because when I was really like young and starting out, you know I would see one of my like absolute heroes and it would just be like you know, like what's this, what's that, who's this, who's that? And I'm like and I would be sitting there like damn even I know that. But eventually I realized that, like the really brilliant artists and journalists, their their ego. They've learned to take their ego out of it Right, and so they're not operating from that sense of fear that I don't want to ask dumb questions because people are going to think I'm dumb. They just want to do a good job and so, like for you know, for me it was really helpful to think from this ethical framework of like okay, definitely, I'm about to like I'm going to embrace my identity of a dumbass foreigner and I am going to commit to staying for a long time to learn how to do this well. And you're exactly right that the investment of time is huge and that's very tricky, you know to like embrace my own ignorance and just give myself as much time to to learn what I need to do in order to produce like it's like, however big the story is, I need to commit that much time and that long-term relationships in order to get there to do it Well. I use assignments to my advantage in that way, because what I try to do in order to get that time is pitch little stories, smaller, not you know no, or little. You know all other people's experience, but I'll pitch like shorter, more bite-sized, easier to manage, things that I think I can do right in the same place over and over. Try to commit and not, you know, just covering breaking news. This is what kind of actually like one of the ways that I've made it work. You know, just covering breaking news. This is what kind of actually like one of the ways that I've made it work.
Natalie Keyssar:You know, in a breaking news situation, let's say, the first several months of a war, it's a ton of work to go around. Now, like, for example, when I first got to Ukraine, I was, I had no knowledge, I was a total ignorant. But because it was like, my job was just kind of like it was simple. It was just document what's happening, document the human toll of this, document the refugees, document, the strike zones, document the mass graves, and it was. I mean not to say that stuff is straightforward, but I wasn't trying to like offer some complex narrative on top of that. I was just doing my job and it felt really straightforward narrative on top of that. I was just doing my job and it felt really straightforward and that also gave me time to learn enough to start thinking about like, okay, what would I like to say about this? You know, so it's like actually using the existing systems, which are shorter, to piece together the knowledge that I need.
Natalie Keyssar:Um, and, of course, very often that does mean you have this dynamic of being sent into a very delicate situation and needing to work quickly and getting that pressure. But I find that even when you don't have a lot of time, if you're very open with people about like okay, like I am, hi, this is the worst day of your life. It's a funeral for your son, who is a soldier, right. Worst day of your life. It's a funeral for your son who is a soldier, right, but like, actually, okay, let me find I'm not going to try to talk to his mom today. That's wildly inappropriate. But there's an uncle who seems like he's, you know, in the family, but he's got his shit relatively together, and that's the person.
Natalie Keyssar:I'm going to ask permission Because actually I think it's likely that this family would like their son's loss to be honored. You know, I'm going to unobtrusively ask permission and I am going to be very willing to. If the answer is no, I'm going to walk outside this church, I'm going to call my editor and say the family doesn't want us there. And and if, if, I'm fired forever for respecting that boundary, so be it. But I've never in history has an edit.
Natalie Keyssar:You know it's like our job is also to communicate what's going on to the bosses, and most of the people that are commissioning me really appreciate that I will call them and be like shit. I actually think that the undocumented family that you sent me to shoot I think we're going to get them deported if we do this story. They're not going to say, like, natalie, you, jerk, get me my picture. They're going to say thank you, I'm glad we didn't ruin somebody's life today. Let's find a different, you know, and then you know, and if the answer is yes, then you just move as gently as possible. You do your job as well as possible. So I think there's a lot of even in a short space of time.
Natalie Keyssar:You know if I'm when I was shooting the uprisings after the murder of George Floyd here in New York. You know shooting process, especially, you know, around here, is getting more and more delicate as the situation changes and people are really pissed off in media and the government for good reason. But it's still important to document these things. I would stand up on like a park bench in front of a huge crowd and be like hi, I'm Natalie, I'm shooting for the New York times today.
Natalie Keyssar:If you hate that, I'm just letting you know where the pictures are going so that I'm not like photographing you without your knowledge and people would kind of be like ah, she's crazy, you know, and. But then people would kind of give me a gesture of like you know, and. But then people would kind of give me a gesture like no, stay away from me. You're like okay, thanks for you know. It's like there's always a way that you can try to get consent, even in chaotic situations, and you just do your best. And it's not perfect, but I do think the editors also just really appreciate when you're taking the time as the person who's on the ground to ask the questions and to let them know, like okay, I actually think that, like the plan we had for today, coming in here, now that I'm seeing it, I don't think it's safe, but I think I can make a really cool anonymized portion of this person.
Natalie Keyssar:That would be really emotive or like yeah this woman is undocumented and I don't think it's safe for her to be on the record, but there's another woman here with a really similar situation who I don't think is at risk of deportation. So it's fun to be thinking on your feet in that way too.
Matt Jacob:Yeah, maybe we do the bosses and the higher echelons of media and magazines and all different types. Maybe we do them a little bit of disservice. Um, certainly ignorance. Like me, who don't really do that kind of work, it's you. You get this, um, quite, quite rightly, probably, uh, this trope of these big old, mean, white fat bosses who just want to make the next paycheck as fast as possible. So, yeah, thanks for enlightening us on that.
Natalie Keyssar:I feel like most people want to do a good job and most people especially nobody's in journalism got rich.
Natalie Keyssar:You know like most people really want to support you. So like if you can explain what your thinking is and if you also commit to learning the background and the context or the language and regional and cultural considerations, so that you can help explain it to people how we can do a better job, and they'll appreciate you and hire you more. And it's also good for business. Like it's nobody's like. I've almost never encountered that, like that bad guy. That's not really how it works. I think it's much more insidious pressure and a lot of people being afraid to ask questions all the way up the chain.
Matt Jacob:Well, and public narrative and public perception fueled by social media.
Matt Jacob:I don't want to say it, but most people in life are good people, whether they're bosses of big companies or the little people wherever you might find them, in conflict areas or not. I know it's very difficult to kind of say that with so much going on in the world these days, but most people you work with, most people you come across on a daily basis, are people that want to be good, people that might be misdirected, it might be miscommunicated and we might be polarized across many different areas of life. But you know, you get up each day and we're usually surrounded mostly by good people who want to try and do good. So, and I think it's easy to kind of go down that route of well what you know, mistrusting everything and thinking that everyone's out there to get you right, whether you're working with a boss or working independently. Tell me about another type of conflict on a much more superficial level, and I saw this, maybe one of your latest projects.
Matt Jacob:You did a project on the UFC for Rolling Stone. I'm a huge UFC fan, so I want to hear all about it.
Natalie Keyssar:I totally agree that most people are good people. I really believe that. I think that even most I I've, in my work, I have met people that are like stone cold killers, that I just don't think about. You know that everybody's kind of doing their best, which is it's anyways, um, but yes, and moving on to the ufc, which is of all kinds of people, All kinds of people. Yeah, that literally just published in Rolling Stone yesterday.
Matt Jacob:That's awesome.
Natalie Keyssar:Shout out to Sasha Leko, one of my absolute favorite editors to work with, for kicking me the dream assignment.
Matt Jacob:My dream assignment.
Natalie Keyssar:It was. I mean, I grew up spending like a fair amount of time as like a teenager, like sitting in, like you know, weed clouds, while the guys I was hanging out with were watching ufc.
Natalie Keyssar:So I got really okay I didn't do it like that much but I never. And you know, I, when I got the assignment, I was like cool, like you know, I have a friend in venez in Venezuela who's an MMA fighter, who's amazing, but like I didn't, like I didn't know much about it. But my friend, jack Cosby, who does train MMA, is the writer and his article is fantastic. It will be in my link tree later, if you're reminding me, I need to add that. So everybody should go read his great article and check out the phone to your link tree um, but it was fascinating.
Natalie Keyssar:It was, you know. So this story is about how ufc, particularly, has become a sort of maga bastion because of dana white, the president of ufc's relationship with donald trump, um, but what was cool about working on this, like you know and it goes back to so much of the stuff that we're talking about is that it's really complicated.
Natalie Keyssar:You know, I was really fascinated with. So much of my work has focused on femininity, which is, you know, just, I think, by virtue of like who, who I become friends with. So much of my work I end up making friends and my friends become a huge influence on what I document and like what worlds I'm sort of brought into. And you know, like, as a woman, I tend to like vibe with other women and then I end up making these sort of like odes to my women, friends and their communities, and like resilient women in difficult spaces. So this was this cool thing where, like, an assignment brought me into this hyper masculine world and and also it was really fun to be super ignorant, like it's this super, you know, it's obviously it's super dynamic.
Natalie Keyssar:The athleticism is incredible, the way people are sort of playing chess with their bodies, as well as and you know, it was also just such a cool learning experience, again thinking of yourself as a student, because I'm going into these amateur and semi-professional and professional matches and I had Jack who, like, is such an MMA nerd and he's like explaining, like I'm watching these fights, and he would be like yeah, no, and then he did this move and that was a point of disqualification. And so this other thing and oh, there's a backstory. So I had this amazing teacher to like help me understand what was going on, cause I would be looking at these fights. And at first I was like just not, you know, jack would be like, did you see that? And I was like see what? Like I don't understand what just happened. But it was really cool to be completely fresh on something yeah um, and that's.
Natalie Keyssar:I think that's a really exciting way to be photographing and, of course, it's like the lights and the costumes and the music and the crowd.
Natalie Keyssar:It's so dynamic and full of energy, which is matt's kind of my favorite type of vibe to shoot.
Natalie Keyssar:And then I loved, I loved the complexities of the hyper machismo in this space, because I actually, you know, I think one of the things I always try to do when I'm photographing is to because I tend to photograph really extreme things and things that can almost be a caricature to photograph really extreme things and things that can almost be a caricature, like MMA, right, it's just like, well, these two big, strong guys are kicking the shit out of each other, but so there's that level of it.
Natalie Keyssar:And then I was like, well, wow, there's actually this like real, like intimacy and tenderness and almost vulnerability under there, and like there was, you know, on the political side. You know, we we photographed this big match at madison square garden, where trump rolled in with like kid rock on the left and elon musk on the right under like a spotlight, like you know, like you know it's, and then they were screaming like usa and I was a charles olivera fight, I think, yeah, and, but it was so interesting, right, because it's not, it's not a, it was a Charles Oliveira fight, I think, also just fascinating.
Natalie Keyssar:You know, I was kind of obsessed with, like I was. You know, I had this amazing, such a cool part of my job, right. I'm suddenly ringside at this fight. I'm 10 feet away from trump and elon, kid roscoe, wicked rock and and I'm and I was literally across the ring from them, so I was able to sit there and stare at their faces, responding to the spectacle, and that was kind of fascinating, right, because elon's response to witnessing violence, like what was going on in his eyes, frankly, was pretty freaky yeah donald looked really bored, honestly he goes to a lot of fights and my fee my wife is sat, it's out here next to me kind of chuckling with me.
Matt Jacob:Charles, charles Olivera, is like our favorite fighter. We remember watching that fight and, yeah, he's such a good man, a credible fighter, but he does so much for the community and came from, you know, came from such so many dark places, as do many of these fighters do. And that's one of the romance, romantic things that we like about the UFC, these stories. And you mentioned vulnerability. There's so much vulnerability with these fighters, as much as skill, heart, courage, and the outsider just looks at these two guys or women, right, some of these women fighters are just unbelievable. I have so much inspiration and respect for them. But, like you said, it's extremely complex. And, yeah, donald Trump is often at many of the big UFC fights. There's another one tomorrow as we're recording this, I guess he might be there, but he's probably too busy with his first term. But second term, we'll see. Yeah, we'll see.
Matt Jacob:So, yeah, I loved that story. As soon as I saw it, I was like, oh, fantastic, what a you know there's so so many kind of layers to it, not just with the fighters right, but with the, the cultures surrounding it. So fantastic job. Um, super jealous. How long did that take, was it? Was it a few, a few months that you, you kind of spent engrossed with it?
Natalie Keyssar:yeah, we were. We were in a fights and trainings, um, for for a couple months and it was, I mean, and and I, I mean I got really into it. Like I like I ended up, you know, shooting like don't get any ideas, but like I was, I was shooting extra because I was just fascinated. I was, how can we go to another fight? And you know, jack ended up taking me to like one of his gyms to like start taking kickboxing classes, so, so that was a dude. It's super cool. And I love that Olivera is your favorite fighter because, like, for, I don't know anything about this world, but he was my favorite, like I was like that's like amazing and I feel validated that I had a good history.
Matt Jacob:Yeah, fantastic. How do you balance the I mean you're you're, by the way, I don't know if I said of your images from from that product were were fantastic, and I love the way you balanced almost the some more journalistic or doc documentary action shots with some more intimate and a couple of abstract um shots in there. The one that you got of Trump was just fantastic. It's just it just really inspired curiosity into what was kind of going through his brain at that time, but from more of an abstract perspective that we could all kind of have an objective curiosity surrounding it. So, yeah, I really loved it. How do you balance the aesthetics with your images? I mean, I think that documentary photography, photojournalism can often portray that aesthetics doesn't really matter and obviously ethics balancing with aesthetics is what you have to get right. What is your approach with the aesthetic side Coming from a painting background and doing other genres and wanting art to be in that formula as well? What is your approach to, you know, generally to aesthetics when taking images?
Natalie Keyssar:And thanks, ben, the Trump thing was so hard because you were stuck across the cage and you were so close but I wasn't allowed. I kept trying to like run around and, like the you know, the secret service and the UFC guards were like get the you know, and I was like, oh, like I could like squirrel over and like pretend that I didn't know, that I was not supposed to leave my little spot and it was not working. And so it was one of those situations where the it because I've had to shoot through all of these lights and all these cages I was like all right, embrace the difficulty, like I can't erase this thing, so I have to make it work in the thing. So it was. I mean, it means a lot that you liked it, because I was struggle. I was like what am I gonna do? I'm not going to have a picture of Trump at Envita Wave. Rep. I think you know I love what you said, that like the sort of balance of aesthetics and ethics is basically what we do, because I think that's the whole thing Right. And just like we've been talking about all night morning, like every situation you enter has a different calculus. So, like, like you know I love to shoot with a flash, I love to play with lights, I like to really, you know, aesthetically, I think, the painter, without a like a documentary journalism background, like, like you know what I, what I'm inspired by, is, you know, all different like painting forms and like fashion photography and music videos and film and places where, like, the aesthetics are more prioritized, like that's where I'm like really drawing a lot of my, my visual inspiration and what I get excited to see. And so, like, if I'm in a you know so, if I'm in a situation that is not so ethically or emotionally delicate, then, like, I, that's where I want to go nuts, right, and I really want to play aesthetically. If I'm in a very delicate situation, then I'm not going to pop a flash in people's face because it's disrespectful and it's disgusting, and I'm not going to, like prioritize my aesthetics over your comfort or attracting attention to myself if what I really need to be is quiet and unobtrusive. So, like you know, then it's like, okay, well, how do I make something?
Natalie Keyssar:I am very interested in trying to enter every situation and make an image that's not, that's different in some way. Sometimes that means making it abstract or, you know, focusing on like a sort of easily forgotten detail, thinking about photographing a feeling as opposed to like. I'm much more interested in the feeling that you're going to get than than the literal documentation part. I think that you know that's just where I'm at. Like, I also love work that does just beautiful visual documentation. That's a little bit more straightforward. It's just not where my brain goes to.
Natalie Keyssar:I'd rather things be sort of really evocative and a little rough than like really clean and like literal narrative. For me partly and I'm given that privilege partly because there's so many people that are doing the other thing fantastically, um, so like, but I think it's like a lot of. It is just sort of like almost like muscle memory and instinct and you know, and then and then keeping in the front of your like part of that is just what you're attracted to in the moment. And I think, as any photographer, it's really important to lean into what you personally are attracted to, so that you're really sort of giving space for your own voice and tastes to take over, so that you have your own style right.
Natalie Keyssar:And then the added layer is thinking like, how do I use aesthetics to to communicate what I'd like to communicate about this.
Natalie Keyssar:So, like I love shooting a spectacle like the MMA or like the Democratic National Dimension or, uh, you know, the Kamala on election night which I just did for the New Yorker this year, because these are situations that are highly produced. It's like a sort of like visual smorgasbord where actually I feel like then what I get to do is engage the part of my brain that's just like I'm looking at something that really wants to be presented in a certain way. How can I photograph this and like get underneath of it, like how can I capture the vibe? How can I show you the more than meets the eye of what's going on here, using what I'm interested in aesthetically and like zooming in on what really attracts me, or, you know, pulling back to odd moments, or like really using light and color, almost as like a sort of like synesthesia technique to make you feel some hear something, and so that you know I love getting to do that, but it's very, it's very situational, depending on what what you're working with and how delicate it is yeah, fantastic, look we're.
Matt Jacob:We're coming to the end of our conversation, um, before I kind of thank you again for for spending your evening with me, what? Um? There's so many other things that you do that we haven't really talked about in terms of your, your different art, your mentoring, speaking engagements. Is there anything else that you, you feel like we, we haven't covered, that I think would, that you think would be important to address? Now, is there anything you want to kind of share with the audience?
Natalie Keyssar:Oh my God, I've yapped so much tonight. I don't even know.
Matt Jacob:It's been fantastic.
Natalie Keyssar:No, thank you for the great questions and having me on. I think we If I forgot to say anything at this point, that's on me. I think we if I forgot to say anything at this point.
Matt Jacob:That's on me. What's next? Obviously, you're working on the documentary. What else are you doing in and around that that we can watch out for?
Natalie Keyssar:Yeah, I mean I'm working. We're getting back to Ukraine to continue the projects, that's front of mind. Um doing some uh workshop teaching with, uh my co-conspirator, daniela zaltzman. Um, we've been running a workshop series called the nba, so if you are interested in uh hearing me, yap some more, along with my dear friend daniela, who taught me everything I know uh I'd love to have her on.
Matt Jacob:Where is that workshop?
Natalie Keyssar:uh, that's in new orleans every year and then we're also we also frequently we've both been really crazy busy recently, so like it's been a little less frequently, but we do occasional zoom workshops like weekend intensives, which are cool, and you should absolutely have daniella on, because she's the greatest and also really really funny, which I thought people don't know about her. She's the funniest person I know. So, yeah, um, and you know I'm also like working on a couple commercial projects around new york, which I also really like doing, and it's sort of a nice break. I'm gearing up to try to shoot some fashion week stuff, for you know, I feel like people always think that like I only want to shoot bad news and I also really like shooting like pretty shiny stuff and like parties and stuff like that.
Matt Jacob:Yeah, I can only, yeah, I can only apologize to you and the audience for, I guess, drilling down a little bit more on the bigger topics, but we'll save that for part two, I guess. But, yeah, next time I'm in the city I'll send you a message and hopefully you're there, we can grab a coffee. In the meantime, we will link everything that we've referred to or talked about, especially your website, your website and and your email, um, for people who might want to support the documentary. I wish you the best of luck. Um, extremely inspiring Love your work. Keep going, um, keep up the good fight and, uh, until next time. Thank you so much.
Natalie Keyssar:Thank you so much for having me and really thank you for the great questions. It was awesome talking to you.
Matt Jacob:Appreciate it.
