Last year, Justin Mott took a photo that garnered lots of praise, but also stirred up suspicious questions in some quarters. It shows a young woman swimming underwater, her diaphanous white top billowing around her torso. In the background is a mahout sitting on an elephant which is standing thigh-deep in what may, or may not, be the same body of water.
Photographer Justin Mott at the press conference of Photo Face-Off in Bangkok.
That image earned Mott the top prize in the "One Shot" category at the Travel Photographer of the Year awards (billed as a photo contest "run by photographers for photographers"). The surreal dynamics of the photo also whipped up something of a furore on social-media forums with many people wondering whether Mott had used Photoshop technology to juxtapose two separate images taken at different times and maybe even in different places.
"I like that you think it's fake," Mott said with a disarming smile when we met recently in Bangkok. "If I did something and you don't know how I did it ... that's rare in photography!"
Mott was here two weeks ago to publicise a new TV programme that combines elements of a photography contest and a gritty reality show. Photo Face Off, which premiered last week on History Channel Asia, is set in Bangkok and four other large cities in Southeast Asia. The format is to pit an amateur photographer, who is a native of the metropolis in question, against a professional lensman: Justin Mott. The two photographers go face-to-face in a series of challenges — programme segments entitled "Speed", "Theme" and "Extreme" — designed to test their technical skills as well as their courage, patience and physical endurance. For the sixth and final episode of Photo Face Off, the five amateur contestants are gathered together on the same battlefield for a final showdown.
Mott is an American photographer based in Hanoi. He worked for The New York Times for seven years as a freelance photojournalist on the Southeast Asia beat. He later branched out on his own, setting up a business called Mottvisuals which specialises in luxury-destination weddings and commercial photography, capturing images with an approach he describes as "photography equals story-telling".
"I love weddings," Mott enthused. "They're beautiful. It's the best day in someone's life!
"I've done a lot of depressing stories. There's a balance in doing sad stories and then pictures of someone's happiest day."
Mott's decision to follow a career based around images rather than words dates back to the day in photography class at San Francisco State University when he and the other students were told by their lecturer to leave the classroom and go out and explore the city. He remembers being intoxicated by the feeling of freedom, by the endless possibilities that taking photos can impart, and says it was this that made him change his major from journalism to photojournalism. After gaining more experience and building up a body of work he began submitting images he'd taken to various photo competitions. One of his more memorable achievements from this period was being named College Photographer of the Year for San Francisco and the Bay Area. He was also chuffed to have been accepted for a place in the Eddie Adams Workshop, an intense, four-day tutorial held in upstate New York in which experienced photojournalists mentor emerging talents.
A year before he was due to graduate, the death of his father prompted in him a strong urge to travel, to get away from the US for a while, and he ended up in Southeast Asia. About the same time he realised he was falling in love with Vietnam, he received a job offer from The New York Times which would entail basing himself in that country for a while. So he decided to stay put and postpone his return to California to finish college.
"When someone hires me, they don't care about my degree; they care about my portfolio," he reasoned. "If I can tell the story, they'll hire me."
Living in Vietnam has changed him in a lot of ways, he said. Not only has it taught him to respect other cultures, it has also taught him how to use non-verbal means to communicate since he has often had to use sign language to ask people for permission to take pictures of them.
"A lot of times, if I don't have a translator with me or if we do not speak the same language, I'm going [to get my message across] with body language. This sort of teaches me to feel [out] the situation."
The most meaningful period that Mott has had so far in his career was the chance to work on a story about a Vietnamese girl whose health was severely compromised by exposure to Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant dropped in large quantities by the US air force during the Vietnam War.
After spending a significant amount of time working on the story, Mott found that he had become emotionally involved with the girl's suffering and this loss of journalistic objectivity initially made him consider calling a halt to the project.
But he decided to carry on and ultimately glad that he had because one of the photos he took caused a sensational reaction that stirred many people into action and prompted a surge of offers of help for the girl and other Agent Orange victims.
"Anytime when I make a picture that can make someone feel something and want to do something [in response], it is very special," he said. "Sometimes you don't have to worry about the message; you just need beautiful people to see the picture."
Mott believes that being there for "the moment" is the biggest part of doing photography. Therefore while he's taking pictures at a certain location he knows the importance of having enough patience to wait for the right moment to arrive, the exact time when various factors coincide to create the conditions for the very best image. He is also convinced that practice always makes for better photography.
"Most photographers are going to tell you that you have to have 'the eye' to be a photographer," he observed. "I think that's sort of self-indulgent. They say that because they want to feel special."
In an era when a mobile phone equipped with a good-quality camera has become an indispensable tool for many, people are prone to snap anything and everything they come across and then begin believing in their own prowess as a photographer. But Mott thinks it is rather preposterous to predict that the proliferation of smart phones nowadays is bound to eventually make stand-alone cameras obsolete. Those who really love and appreciate the nuances of photography, he pointed out, will always opt for a proper dedicated camera.
"Unlike tourists, who capture a particular moment with their phone, photographers stop, see it [the potential for a good photo] and work around it," he noted. "They look for the best light and a good scene [background, setting]. Whatever their style is, they start to 'build' that picture [which they have already visualised in their minds]."
