Michael Coyne - Reality Illusion

PROFILE
Revisiting Iran
Michael Coyne
Soldiers marching in Tehran, Iran.
Woman in a grave, Iran.
From naked Olympic Games administrators to the Ayatollah
Khomeini, documentary photographer Michael Coyne has
shot it all. He talks to Alison Stieven-Taylor about his assignments
in Iran and the changed world of photojournalism.
O
n the day of my interview I front up to a
house in the inner Melbourne suburb of
Clifton Hill and inform the young woman at
the door that I am here to interview the renowned documentary photographer Michael Coyne. I
extend the copy of the book WAR I have brought along
with me. “These are really cool,” she says looking at the
photographs. “But he doesn’t live here”.
Back in my car I telephone Michael who laughs
heartily when I tell him where I am. “Sorry, that’s my old
address,” he explains. I guess criss-crossing the world
for decades can do that to you.
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When we finally sit down to talk, I confess I don’t
know a great deal about his work outside of his conflict
photography and suggest he is probably best known
for his coverage of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. He
agrees this period was incredibly prolific, including
his remarkable feature story in the July 1985 issue of
National Geographic which provided a rare insight
into life in Iran after the Islamic revolution. Since then,
however, Michael has published over a dozen books,
documenting a wide range of subjects. And there is
also his commercial photography work because even
globetrotting photojournalists need to pay the bills.
PROFILE
Ayatollah Khomeini at home, Iran.
Prothesis for war victims, Iran.
“I looked down and
thought, this is
ridiculous, someone is
throwing stones at me.
But they were machine
gun bullets! The Iraqis
had seen me and were
shooting at me and the
bullets were bouncing
around my feet.”
His work in Iran is, of course, on the top of my list
of questions and Michael Coyne is happy to revisit a
subject that he left behind a long time ago, but one he
still finds fascinating. We start our discussion with the
photograph of the Ayatollah Khomeini that he took in
1989 shortly before the Iranian cleric’s death that year. I
ask him how he managed to get such amazing access
to the man. “I spent eight-and-a-half years going back
and forth to Iran and got myself so well known they
trusted me. That’s how I got the access; by continually going back and doing all the rubbish in the world
– taking pictures that meant nothing – but doing it
until I got that picture.”
“That picture” was one of the last taken by a
western photographer and delivered this multiple
award-winning photojournalist another international
magazine cover. Every time I went to Iran I asked if I
could photograph Khomeini. They never said no, but it
never happened. And then, one day, I got a ’phone call
and was told to come straight away to the Ministry for
Islamic Guidance”.
At the Ministry they revealed he would be going
to Khomeini’s house the next day. He was intrigued,
but had no idea what he would be witness to. As
instructed, he left his camera gear and film with the
Ministry and arrived at Khomeini’s house with only
a handkerchief in his pocket. After passing through
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PROFILE
“It’s very different now – a
totally different world and I am
privileged to have been part of
photojournalism at a time when
I was given the opportunity to
do what I did”.
numerous security checkpoints, including the obligatory body search, he was finally handed a box containing
his “gear” and ushered into Khomeini’s private mosque.
“So I was standing there and all of these people
were crowded around and it was very tight and hard
to manoeuvre. The light was terrible and you can’t use
flash, so I was pushing film as far as I could. I had two
cameras one on wide-angle and another with a long
lens. Suddenly the door opened on this platform above
me, and Khomeini’s son stepped out. All these guards
appeared and then Khomeini himself came through
the door, a very old man. I used the camera with the
wide-angle lens and just went bang, bang, bang; and
then he moved to a chair where I couldn’t quite see
him. I saw a ladder and pushed past the guard – which
is a really dangerous thing to do – and an Iranian
photographer and myself leapt up to the TV platform. I
shot a roll of film on a really slow shutter speed. I didn’t
know if I’d gotten anything worthwhile and within
minutes he had left. But the whole thing just worked,”
he recalls, still marveling at his luck.
Into Iran
Before Michael Coyne “discovered” Iran, he was in
the Philippines, photographing the Moro National
Liberation Front.
“I got to know these guys very well and they were
desperate to get publicity about what Marcos was
doing. I would travel with the leaders, the most wanted
men in the Philippines. How naïve am I? The commander used to joke, saying I should photograph his
classmates because they all went to military college
together and were all running revolutions somewhere
in the world at that time”.
Michael laughs heartily at the experience, but
there is an echo of relief that he survived to tell the
tale. He first went to Iran with the controversial filmmaker, Bob Plasto, who wanted to shoot a documentary and needed Michael because of his contacts in the
Islamic world. The pair arrived in Tehran at night, in the
middle of winter and without visas.
“They didn’t know what to do with us,” he
recalls brightly.
“No visas?” I interject aghast at the idea that
anyone would land in Iran without the right paperwork. He nods and laughs again. “Smile, that’s what
I did, I smiled a lot. And I wasn’t aggressive and was
always polite”.
He leans across the table in a conspiratorial fashion. “We didn’t get in by making accusations about
the blood-thirsty regime. We got in because we’d
read Iranian poetry and were talking about that with
the officials at the Iranian Embassy. The Iranians love
poetry. You know we forget that Iran was at the cradle
of civilisation.”
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In Tehran the
pair was confined
to their hotel
while the authorities figured out
what to do with
them. In the end
Michael stayed
for a month, after
which he says,
“I came back
home, did a deal
with National
Geographic and went back to shoot
that story”.
Olympic official.
Dodging A Bullet
But Michael Coyne hasn’t always been
received with open arms in Iran. On his
first assignment for LIFE magazine he
was thrown out of the country just a day
after arriving.
“One of my dreams was to shoot for
LIFE and I couldn’t believe they wanted
me to fly to Iran, but I got kicked out and
didn’t get to shoot the assignment. When
I told the magazine what had happened,
they laughed and ended up using a photo
that I’d managed to take in the 24 hours I
was there. It wasn’t the story I went in for,
but it was a photo of a boy soldier with
horrific injuries”.
Michael says that often photo editors would “…ask for the impossible – the
equivalent to asking an Iranian photographer to go to the White House and get a
photo of the President”.
On another visit to Iran he flew by military plane
to the war front, “…which is about the most dangerous
thing you could do. They took us out in boats across
the marshes where you couldn’t see anything, but you
could hear the war going on around you. After weaving our way through the mines that were in the water,
we were set down on an Iraqi island. I was standing on
a low wall so I could get a better angle to shoot the
fallen soldiers and I looked down and thought, this is
ridiculous, someone is throwing stones at me. But they
were machine gun bullets! The Iraqis had seen me and
were shooting at me and the bullets were bouncing
around my feet, literally. I looked over the wall and
the rest of my party was lying down huddled amongst
the dead bodies because there was this big attack
going on”.
Michael remembers that the shooting started after
the film crews who were travelling with the flotilla
Aboriginal administrator, Sydney Olympic Games.
asked a soldier if he’d fire a rocket because there wasn’t
much going on. And then he fired another.
“So the Iraqis retaliated. I’m lying there thinking, Oh
my God, I’m going to die. What am I doing here?”
As he recounts this story, his eyes tear-up with
laughter, but he assures that it wasn’t funny at the
time. “I was absolutely terrified. And, you know, I’ve had
these discussions with people about what do you think
about when you think you are going to die and, for
me, it’s my mum. I don’t know if that’s sick or what,” he
laughs again.
A Different World
In photojournalism’s heyday Michael Coyne shot for all
the major international news magazines, commanding
big fees, but those days are long gone he says.
PROFILE
FAR LEFT:
Protester, Sydney
Olympic Games.
LEFT: Show
dancer, Sydney
Olympic Games.
BELOW LEFT:
Physical trainer
and her assistant,
Sydney Olympic
Games.
BELOW CENTRE:
Physical trainer,
Sydney Olympic
Games.
“When I was in full flight, my contract was to fly
around the world. For example, when I was travelling
with Arafat I had a deal with a magazine where they’d
pay to get first look at my photos, pay all my expenses.
It’s very different now – a totally different world and I
am privileged to have been part of photojournalism
at a time when I was given the opportunity to do
what I did”.
It is so easy talking with Michael, I realise I could
spend hours and pages on the Iran years alone, but I’m
also keen to discuss the project he shot for Kodak on
the 2000 Sydney Olympics called Five Ringed Circus and
which is demonstrative of his diversity as a documentary photographer.
Michael says it was a challenge to come up with
an idea on how to tackle the Olympics because he isn’t
a sports photographer and likes “…to shoot people up
close. What was interesting to me was that everyone
wanted to be involved in the Sydney Olympics, they
had plenty of volunteers and it became known as the
‘friendly games’.
So I decided to photograph the officials and the
people behind the scenes – the people that no one
ever sees, because they were the ones that actually
made it happen”.
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He shot a series of portraits designed to capture
the personalities of the officials in a setting of their
choice. The result is an eclectic and engaging mix of
images, including the Aboriginal administrator who in
another life had got his gear off in the musical Hair in
Europe and wanted to be photographed in his birthday suit; the witch who had cast a spell on Sydney to
ensure beautiful weather; the topless physical trainer
keen to show her form; the heavily tattooed protester
and the showgirl with a backdrop of the Opera House.
Michael admits, with a wry smile, “Kodak was probably
thinking, ‘What the hell is going on here?’ but it has
been very popular”. The collection is still on the
exhibition circuit.
For this series he chose to use a small white screen
as background to define the subject, a style he says
is very Avedon-esque. But he also wanted to show
the surrounds to add context to the image á la Diane
Arbus, he explains. The images are intimate, but accessible and it is clear those pictured are comfortable and
that the photographer had as much fun as his subjects.
On Edge
Our conversation actually finds its way back to the
years of covering conflict and human suffering. I ask
what it was like returning home to normality after
witnessing such horrors. It’s a sobering moment as
he replies, “You never get to let those images go, you
internalise. I saw so much carnage, people with no
faces or no legs, missiles fired around you constantly,
on edge all the time.
“If you don’t throw up afterwards or feel distressed
then you are not human and you shouldn’t be doing
this job anyway, but while you are shooting you
stay focused”.
Not wanting to leave the interview on such a
serious note, I ask Michael if he can remember any
incident in Iran with levity. He points to the photograph of the woman lying in her son’s grave at a
funeral. Without wanting to take away from the gravity
of the scene, he reveals that he was shooting between
the legs of mourners and one of the men standing
above him broke wind. “Let’s just say he didn’t have
a very good diet!”
Alison Stieven-Taylor is an author and photographer
based in Melbourne. For more information visit
www.realityillusion.com Her book Rock Chicks profiles
the leading female rock stars from the 1960s.
All photographs by Michael Coyne, copyright 2011.
BELOW:
Communication
specialist, Sydney
Olympic Games.