'A Holiday in Cambodia' or how tried to kick start my career - Part 2

Lying in my hotel bed, I started to imagine what it would be like to go home beaten, broke and having to face my colleagues and telling them I had gambled and lost was one of the darkest nights of the soul I have ever faced.

To lose a love is hard, but to lose one's dreams is difficult to recover from.

What to do?

All sorts of crazy options ran through my head and I drifted off into a somewhat troubled sleep.

It was the middle of the night.

The phone rang.

I picked it up, somewhat dazed.

It was difficult to believe but it was the picture desk of 'The Sunday Correspondent' newspaper.

'Oh hi Drew, we have a journalist over there who is trying to get into Cambodia, would you like to meet up with her?'

I really could not grasp it but needless to say I said 'yes'

Morning came and after a memorable tuk-tuk ride I met journalist Amanda Mitcheson on the other side of the city.

Amanda was a talented, clever, very experienced and tolerant journalist, the tolerant part was particularly important as she had to cope with possibly the greenest photographer in the history of journalism.

She and I had to come up with a game plan to get into Cambodia.

Simple, right?

Wrong.

Firstly, we needed a journalists visa from the Cambodian embassy and there was no embassy in Bangkok, as Cambodia was not formally recognised by the West and Western aligned countries, the nearest embassy was in Laos, so we had to get a tourist visa for Laos, to cross the Mekong river as tourists and apply for a Cambodian tourist visa in Vientienne (as they did not issue journalists visas) and on arrival in Phnom Penh the plan was to throw ourselves on the mercy of immigration in Cambodia and declare ourselves as journalists, we knew this was possible but it was rather a hit and miss affair by all accounts. (Don't try this at home folks, I tried this in Mozambique and was deported straight away....)

It was a real education for me in so many ways, the labyrinthine task of getting visas took many days and as I'm always saying in my blog just goes to show that the photography is the easiest part in many ways.

So after a somewhat epic journey to Laos to pick up our tourist visas we set off for Cambodia, not knowing what awaited us on arrival.

We were met by smiling officials, it was almost like they knew we were coming but perhaps that was just my paranoia, I do recall that another couple of people on our flight were not so lucky and were turned straight back.

We were taken straight to the ministry of the interior who gave us a minder who was never very far from us at all.

Cambodia may have been liberated from the brutal Khmer Rouge regime but it was a country that had a long way to go, with very few cars and sporadic electricity.

But to say a civil war was raging, with the remnants of the Khmer Rouge being supported by the West (difficult to believe but true) the people were open and remarkably friendly.

On the first day we were shown the train which was frequently attacked with mines and RPG's by the KPNLF and Khmer Rouge insurgents.

I took this shot from the roof of the train as it pulled out of town.

Shot with a Canon F1N with a 20mm F2.8 on Ilford HP5 (I think)

I had a huge bundle of Cambodian money (Riels) stolen from me while I was on the train, it nearly filled the camera bag, really it did. I was gutted until I realised it was worth less than $50 dollars....hyper inflation has its bonuses.

The minder actually was pretty good at taking us around to all sorts of things that you would think would be out of bounds, such as army training camps and various areas which you would think would be considered as sensitive.

At the end of the day though I suppose it was about conveying their message to the outside world.

I shot this rather interesting portrait of an Army conscript during his lunch break who really started to fool around for the camera, to the great amusement of his mates.

The impact of the war on the rural communities was hard stuff.

Lots of injuries from land mines and gunshot wounds from exchanges between the sides.

Seeing the impact of war on innocent bystanders for the first time left a lasting impression on me.

Th government took us on a flight to the besieged town of Battambang, to prove that they were firmly in control. The Russian pilots had to make a very interesting approach over the mountains so we avoided ground fire. That banished any fear of flying, forever.

One thing to remember, it was well and truly the days of film, so 36 exposures on a roll and what on earth to do with all those shot rolls? Leave them in the hotel? Put them in a camera bag that could get stolen? I would keep them in the pockets of my combat trousers, looking like a circus clown.

During the two weeks on the ground in Cambodia I could see the spectre of my day job looming on the horizon, and I wondered how on earth I  was going to fit back in shooting Golden Weddings and kids parties.

As I left Cambodia for Bangkok I vowed to return, never having seen some of the great sights of the country like Ankor Wat but so far have not, it would be great to see the country now, though I hear progress has swept away much of what I saw.

On our return to the safety of Thailand,we had a chance to view the refugee camps on the Thai side of the border where the KPNLF were operating from. But it would mean missing my flight home to life on the local paper, needless to say I came up with some half baked excuse which the paper did not buy and headed off to the refugee camps where I shot this pic of Cambodian kids kick boxing, while their dads were over the border fighting the very people whom I had befriended in Cambodia.

That is the thing with photojournalism, it enables you to live many lives which are not actually yours.

All too soon my time was up and I had to return and face the music, I had returned to my day job a whole week late.

I brought back a ton of fake Rolex watches for my workmates who had done their very best to cover for me and my unauthorised one week extra holiday.

I nearly pulled it off too, but one person ratted on me and the game was up.

I was called into see the Editor who was understandably not quite so keen on my approach.

He threatened to fire me, but before he could I handed in my notice and quit.

There and then.

You see on my return to London I was called in by 'The Sunday Correspondent' Picture Editor Michael Cranmer who told me that my pictures were so well received they were running a whole page on them, and more besides.

He then broke the news to me that the safe pair of hands who he had previously chosen for the job had quit, and he asked me if I would like to fill his shoes.

I have no need to tell you what the answer was.

And that is how I got into the world of British broadsheet national newspapers which made me much of who I am today.

As a footnote I was at a party a few weeks after my return and another photographer said 'I was just lucky' he had been to Cambodia and the papers did not run with his stuff.

It was luck, yes.

But you make your own luck.

As my good friend Andy Morgan who became a colleague on the 'Sunday Correspondent' would often say 'Fortune favours the brave'.


Part 3 to follow in the future.....

'A Holiday in Cambodia' or how tried to kick start my career - Part 1

I had worked on the local papers since 1979, officially employed at the age of 16 as junior photographer on the Spalding Guardian, though I had worked there for a year before in the summer holidays and at weekends, getting around on my bicycle with a Rollieflex, before going back to the studio to shoot flat copies on a Speedgraphic.

Me in my 20's 

God it makes me sound old.

The weekly newspaper was a great place to learn but I yearned for bigger and better things, so when I was 25 (I think?) I landed a job with the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph in Kettering.

Not exactly the big city but it suited me at the time.

The local papers were a fantastic place to learn about photography news but more than anything it taught me about people.

I made every kind of mistake you can make in a job without getting fired, god knows how I didn't.

My photography was variable to say the least and my people skills were.....well lets just say I was young and the editors phone rang a coupe of times with helpful and illuminating comments from members of the public after I had paid them a visit......

A great experience that I would not trade for anything.

Just don't ask me to go back.

The excitement of working in a town of 60,000 at the Northants ET began to wane after a while and I decided I wanted more.

I was lucky enough to work alongside some very talented photographers, John Robertson was notable amongst these in that we would 'compete' with one another to see who could get a photograph in the National Newspapers first.( Our contract with the local allowed us to do this, not because they welcomed the idea but because I don't think they thought any of us would actually do it..)

I seem to recall that John was the first of us to score a hit, he got a picture in 'The Guardian'

Not to be beaten I managed to get a photo or two in 'The Independent'

Here is one I have managed to dig out from 1988, where I went out with the British divers who were rescuing seal afflicted by a canine virus.

I shot this with a Canon F1N with 200mm F2.8 on Ilford HP5 (I think??)

But my moment of 'glory' came when I went to the Isle of Harris where my friend Steve McComb was working as a postman and I photographed him walking to deliver the post to the last village in the UK without a road during the Mail strike, I suppose you could call him a strike breaker but the only picket line was some black face sheep which didn't seem too bothered about pay, conditions or pensions.

The photo made 6 columns on the front page of 'The Independent'

I had arrived (or thought I had)

I now had the taste for travel, (to Scotland), and I was starting to live the dream.

Nothing was going to stop me now.

I heard that a new Sunday broadsheet quality newspaper 'The Sunday Correspondent' was going to opening, and I figured that it would benefit from my considerable local newspaper experience and that they should employ me...

So I waited until they had appointed a Picture Editor, in the shape of respected former Sunday Times picture editor Michael Cranmer.

I then subjected him to a bombardment of letters and phone calls until he gave me an interview.

Remarkably my sheer enthusiasm won him over and I was shortlisted for one of the contracts on the paper.

But like a minor team's magical FA cup run, the dream had to end and so it was that sanity prevailed and he gave the job to a much more established and respected name.

It was a blow but the last thing to do was to face up to defeat and reality.

So I decided I needed to photograph a war.

Whilst having a day job on the local newspaper.

I had a fascination with Cambodia ever since reading John Pilger's account of the killing fields, and how the world stood by.

The Khmer Rouge had been ousted by the Vietnamese, leaving a rather interesting situation of the bad guys (in the West's eyes at least) putting an end to mass genocide whilst they stood idly by.

I wanted to experience something amazing and tell the world about it.

So, I booked a three week holiday.

Got on a 23 hour Aeroflot flight to Bangkok, where in the process my fear of flying was replaced by an aversion of truly awful airline food.

Upon landing I checked into a hotel and I phoned the 'Sunday Correspondent' spoke to the picture desk and told them I was in South East Asia and I was available for work (I had told them I was going and they made encouraging noises but I don't think they thought I would actually go through with it)

'Erm Great......(Very long embarrassed pause) we will let you know if anything comes up'.

It was then I faced the true gravity of the situation.

I had sold my car to finance the trip, I was totally out of my depth, I had no plan, I was alone a long, long way from home and at this rate the money would run out in a few days.

What on earth was I going to do?

Find out in Part 2.