- Matilde Correia Da Silva & Echo Caise
Interview with: ADAM DOBBY
By Matilde Correia Da Silva & Echo Caise
We interview former SAS soldier turned photojournalist Adam Dobby, who put down his rifle and picked up a camera to capture the real human stories and aftermath in conflict zones.
One man, one shift of profession, over 90 shifts of operating countries. From soldier to war journalist, Adam Dobby develops a striking exhibit of storytelling - a provocation to the eye as well as to our trivial ways. A room of photographs Dobby captured with a distinctiveness he attributes to his “bizarre background”...
His service in the Special Air Force, part of the British Special Forces, gives him a deep understanding of the tragedies of war that not many possess. Due to this, Dobby didn’t originally think to release the photographs he took. Not until many people stressed the importance of sharing his powerful photos did Adam decide to exhibit his work.
This Sixteenth gallery exhibit- “Война и мир, War and Peace”- is titled in Ukrainian after an homage to the country Dobby spent the last few months articulating his passion for visual and word-written storytelling, the latter of which resulted in a collection of stories available in Soulkind´s Stories from Ukraine issue. Despite that head-on tribute to the Ukrainian people, three other nations are also represented in this insight into humanity at its worst (as Adam terms it): Iraq, Syria, and Sri Lanka.
Dobby elucidated that having witnessed such settings has given him a “People who talk too much are probably talking shit” kind of mentality- something that was vividly tangible in his descriptions of the scenes he has shot.
Forthright with his speech, he connected the photographs in the gallery through enticing accounts. When asked about the possibility of losing all he has been working on to misfortune or perhaps a dangerous situation, Adam seemed unmoved by the prospect: “I go to these places not to take photographs. That's not my work. My work is to go to these places to get stories about people. [I] can't lose that because it's in my head- unless I die”.
“I go to these places not to take photographs. That's not my work. My work is to go to these places to get stories about people. [I] can't lose that because it's in my head- unless I die”.
There was no room for euphemisms, Adam walked us through these images and told their scenarios as they were: a funeral for a child whose twin brother was to be killed six days thereafter; Dobby would return to this family's story showing us a second photograph in which a girl, their sister, stands alone looking at the boys' graves, buried in the place which was meant for their parents.
Another shows a boy collecting bullets in Ukraine. Dobby then showed us to another portrait of this seeming ataraxy. From Ukraine as well: a scene of an old lady “not taking too much of a rush” to get to the shelter as the missiles were landing in Odessa.
There are also meaningful captures of the Middle East: two orphaned babies in Abu Ghraib, both muted by trauma, whose single way of communication was through their eyes; a group of ISIS on their way to be processed as refugees, an image Dobby attained without their knowing. Ultimately the journalist took us to see the picture displayed outside the gallery, as sort of the “exhibit’s face”: “My boy from Aleppo, orphaned- didn't have anybody.”, were the words he uttered. These are only a few of the literal rooms-full of settings and narratives Adam has collected.
After gifting us with this overview of his work, Adam sat down for a couple of questions.
Here are a couple of answers that really stuck with us.
Q: Is there any common threat in human behavior from all the settings you have seen?
A: Yeah: men cut hair; women bake bread. (…) That's the first thing they do, you get to any warzone, and everybody's dying or everyone's blown up(...) It is bizarre, and it sounds very simplistic but…
Those were the journalist’s synthesized remarks upon this sort of instinctive conduct he has gathered from experiences such as covering the 2010 Haitian earthquake.
We resumed for one final question- addressing the beauty Adam aims to take account of even in the whirl of these war zones:
Q: What does capture your lenses nowadays?
A: Kids. (…) And why do I say kids...? Because human adults tend to be stupid; they don’t read History books, they don’t learn from History. We just keep repeating ourselves, we just keep causing unnecessary devastation (…) But kids are innocent, so wherever I go, I try to connect with kids because if you can connect with a child, especially in this kind of conditions (…), give them some kind of memory of a random guy with a camera who took a photograph, made them smile, took them away from what they, unfortunately, were born into- just for a split second… You hope that they will remember that there is hope.
Adam continues to take photographs and strives to share all these accounts and their faces.
