Looking for light: A veteran photographer on the ‘Monitor lens’

Episode transcript

Melanie Stetson Freeman:  I admire my colleagues who have to shoot the negative side of this and the sadness, but that’s not what we do. We’re gonna show you who’s problem solving. I try to capture their essence and show them in their best light.

[MUSIC]

Clay Collins: That’s Melanie Stetson Freeman. Mel’s been a photographer at The Christian Science Monitor for 38 years. She’s captured images in more than 80 countries and from every continent. This episode of “Why We Wrote This” is more of a “why we shot this photo.” We’re about to hear lots more from a real pro who is quite literally looking at the news through a Monitor lens.

This is “Why We Wrote This.” I’m Clay Collins. Welcome to the studio, Mel.

Stetson Freeman: Thank you. Nice to be here.

Collins: Presenting news stories in any media format requires sensitivity and fairness. In photo depictions, you’re presenting the world and people in ways that can immediately confer meaning. That’s a huge responsibility, and we’ll get into that.

But first, you’ve been shooting for almost four decades, starting of course with black-and-white film. Can you talk a little about the formats and technologies you’ve seen, and how you’ve adapted to them?

Stetson Freeman: There have been a lot of changes. As you said, when I first started, it was all black-and-white.

You know, we’re shooting film, so there’s pretty much leeway in your exposures. And after I’d been here about three years, we overnight switched to full color and slides, which are not as forgiving. And I remember walking into the newsroom the day after we went color, and I got all teared up ‘cause I love black and white so much – still do. 

I finally got to where I like color, too, luckily, ‘cause we’ve been doing it ever since. But you know, I kind of miss the darkroom and the magic of the image showing up on the piece of paper. So after slides, we switched to digital, and in the beginning the cameras were not so good. The file sizes were quite small, so the images were kind of blurry.

But the first camera I had cost, I think, about $10,000. And that was in about 2000. So, I had an assignment overseas in Indonesia, and here I have this very expensive camera. I’m photographing students who are protesting at the government headquarters, and after a while the government stepped down and they were all celebrating and I had to decide: Am I gonna step into this huge reflecting pool of water with this $10,000 camera to get my photo? Or am I gonna stay safe here with my camera? Well, I did step into the pool. Luckily, I did not fall down and I got my photo.

Collins: That’s amazing. When you came back from Namibia just recently, you said at a staff meeting that you were surprised by some of what you saw; I think it was kids carrying heavy loads. You’ve been around a long time. You’ve seen a lot. How often do you still get surprised on assignment?

Stetson Freeman: I probably get surprised fairly often, especially when I’m traveling overseas. In Namibia, we were asked to help some children get back to school, and it was about 40 kilometers away. There were four of them, and they started piling all their belongings into the back of our big pickup truck.

They were super heavy suitcases and backpacks, and I couldn’t believe they were gonna walk. So that was surprising. We were also there to do a story for a climate activist project we’re working on, and we’d been with this young man for quite some time. He was super impressive, and he said, “I’d like you to see where I live.”

So we went to his home, and it turned out he lived in a one-room basement apartment with his mom. He slept on the floor. He had just a sheet he could pull down to give himself some privacy. But it was such a shock to see how people live. Sometimes you have no idea.

Collins: You used the words “we” and “us” in that answer, and I know you’re talking about the writer that you’re traveling with. You’re working with writers to jointly find the heart of a story. How do you do your work effectively when both you and the writer are essentially competing for the same time and access?

Stetson Freeman: Yeah, that can be a problem sometimes, especially if something is happening only once and I have to get it right then. The writer maybe can call back later and ask questions and fill in the blanks. So sometimes, I have to nicely yell at the writer, “get outta the way!” And it’s kind of funny to watch – some of them will dive out of the way or hide in a doorway or something.

We do discuss the story ahead of time. Often it’s the writer who’s the lead. So I’m trying to visually tell their story. So sometimes I’ll take photos while the writer is doing an interview because someone’s telling a story. They can get very emotional rather than just standing in front of me with my camera, so that sometimes can get some very nice portraits. 

But then I sometimes have to ask for more time at the end ‘cause I’ll want a different background, and it’s a balancing act, because we sometimes don’t need the same things, but a lot of the writers that I work with understand that it’ll add to their story.

Collins: Besides your interfacing with the writer you’re working with, you’re obviously interfacing with people – civilians, if you will. Your work means being conscious of the specific context in which you’re depicting someone because that can color perceptions and you need to know when not to shoot, and about how to handle shots of identifiable children, and that sort of thing.

Stetson Freeman: Right. It’s really important to know when not to shoot. It’s especially difficult for a writer or a photographer to walk up to somebody cold on the street who doesn’t know you’re gonna be asking them a question for a journalistic reason.

I often just let the writer start and ask their questions, and sometimes I can kind of get a feel if somebody’s gonna be OK having their photo taken. So I’ll slowly lift the camera, and if they duck or put their hands in front of their eyes, I know, OK, they don’t want their photo taken. But I don’t wanna scare people off before the writer gets what they need. 

The most extreme example of that: I was in Rwanda with one of our correspondents, and we were doing a story on reconciliation. It was after the massacre where the Hutus had killed millions of Tutsis. [Editors’ note: The estimated death toll of the Rwanda genocide was 800,000 to 1 million, a figure that included moderate Hutus.] We were following a Tutsi woman named Janine, and her whole family had died. But she inherited all their coffee plantations. Plantation is a highfalutin word; really they were just some small fields. But the people who worked her fields were the Hutus that had killed her family.

Collins: Oh my gosh.

Stetson Freeman: So she introduced us to one man in particular that was still there, and she knew he was one of the killers. He was in a little hut. She introduced us. She said: “These people would like to ask you some questions. Don’t be afraid.” We sat down, and we had a young man from the college as our translator. He was sitting on one end of the bench, and then the writer, and then me, and across from us was this man.

So I did not wanna scare this guy. Of course, this was a huge part of the writer’s story. After some time passed, I asked the writer, “what do you think? Can I take a photo?” So he asked the translator, he said, “not yet.”

Collins: Hmm.

Stetson Freeman: So I waited a little longer. And then I asked again, “what do you think now?” And the translator’s like, “yes, now.”

So I slowly lifted the camera. I took some photos and the guy just kinda laughed ‘cause I had taken a few and it was all fine, but he looked so ashamed about what he’d done. It came through in the photo. But again, I’m just so glad I knew how to wait for my moment to take the photo.

Collins: Mel, what, to you, is a Monitor photo? Is it just one that really humanizes a story or an individual, as in that example you just cited, or is there something more?

Stetson Freeman: Well, I think Monitor photos have light, and I mean that literally and figuratively. Of course, you need light in order to take a photograph, but we’re always looking for the good.

And there’s good, even in the worst situations, there’s always good to shine through. I mean, I admire my colleagues who have to shoot the negative side of this and the sadness, but that’s not what we do. We’re gonna show you who’s problem-solving.

Collins: Everyone in the newsroom probably has a favorite Mel shot. There’s one conference room where there’s a photo of two men in a rice field in Madagascar. On the Clearway Street side of the newsroom there’s that train station image from Mumbai in 2010. And when I was Weekly editor, I asked to hang in my workspace a Belfast shot of yours – there are two little Northern Irish kids interacting with a British soldier. I’m not gonna ask you to pick a favorite because I know that’s an impossibility, but was there an assignment on which you took a shot that you knew at once was really special?

Stetson Freeman: I can think of one fairly recently. We were doing a story on this black bear expert, Dr. Lynn Rogers. He’s up in Minnesota, and he’s been studying black bears his whole career. He’s in his eighties now, and he was giving a class to people teaching them about black bears and a lot of these folks come back year after year.

He can hand feed these wild black bears. I was able to do that, too. It’s one of the thrills of my career. 

But I had photographed the class and going out in the wilderness and people feeding these bears, but I didn’t have my cover shot of him, and I knew I wanted him with a bear.

So this bear named Gus was nearby. So he grabbed some hazelnuts, and he sat on the ground and Gus came ambling over and I just got him in the corner of the shot and Dr. Rogers looked straight at me with just the most loving expression, completely calm with this huge black bear right beside him.

And I knew. I knew right then I had that shot. You don’t always know, but I knew that time.

Collins: The hazelnuts, wow. Gus is a bear of refined taste, I’ll have to say.

Stetson Freeman: [Laughs.] Yes.

Collins: Can a spectacular photograph come out of a fairly mundane assignment?

Stetson Freeman: Photographers walk into a space they’ve never seen before and have to make an image that’s worth showing to our readers.

Usually, we’ve never been there before. Sometimes it’s a conference room and you have to make something happen — that’s your job. And that’s, to me, what separates the pros from the amateurs. So I was in a conference room in Namibia recently with this beautiful young woman and I’m thinking, okay, well I’m gonna have to take her somewhere else after. But then I noticed the sunlight was coming in the window and it was bouncing off the table and just creating this beautiful light on her face. So as I said, sometimes I shoot during an interview and I did that that time, and it turns out that’s one of my favorite photos. 

Collins: [Was there] ever a shoot that you just wanted to do over?

Stetson Freeman: There was one in particular that’s so embarrassing.

I was sent out to photograph the new Archbishop of the Boston Diocese of the Catholic Church, and there was this huge procession and they had their outfits on with the robes and the hats and everything.

And I asked one of the photographers next to me, “which one is the main guy?” And he pointed to somebody, and I thought I had the right guy. I took all these pictures of him and I got back to the newsroom. It was the wrong guy.

So my photo editor at the time was very nice. He didn’t tell anybody this, and I guess they used a wire service photo ‘cause they were there, too.

Collins: I have to ask you one more thing — something anyone who’s worked with you would want to let you talk about. Animals as subjects, whether it’s Gus or a lion on the Maasai Mara, you really see a special nobility there, don’t you?

Stetson Freeman: I do. I’m just a huge animal lover, wild and domestic. I’ll report as many animal stories as I can on a trip. As many as the editors will let me. And my photo editor often says, “not another animal story!” 

But you know, I’ll bide my time and then I’ll give them another one. So, um, as I said, one of my favorites was feeding the black bears with Doc Rogers. Um, but I’ve also seen the mountain gorillas in Rwanda and I’ve been to chimp sanctuaries in the United States and in Uganda. I’ve met the cheetah lady in South Africa, and hopefully there will be many, many more.

Collins: Mm-hmm. Mel, we could easily serialize this conversation. You’ve got so many stories to go along with a remarkable body of work. Thanks for coming on the show, for all of the assignments you’ve taken, and for the many shoots yet to come.

Stetson Freeman: Thank you.

Collins: Thanks for listening. Find our show notes with links to stories featuring Mel’s work at CSMonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. This episode was hosted by me, Clay Collins, and produced by Mackenzie Farkus and Jingnan Peng. Our sound engineer was Alyssa Britton. Original music is by Noel Flatt. Produced by the Christian Science Monitor. Copyright 2023.