The guard in the ill-fitting uniform wagged his finger to and fro while muttering something in French. I don’t speak French, but I clearly understood. He was another in a long line of guards, officials, fixers and drivers telling me that photography was prohibited here, there and everywhere.
I have photographed stories on six continents, and Congo is by far the most difficult country I have ever worked in. Getting official permission from the seemingly endless ministries to make photographs is a descent into the depths of frustration. The byzantine bureaucracy and steady dose of state paranoia reduce your photographs to fleeting glimpses into the rich parade of daily life. It was agonizing to watch beautiful images unfold before me, while I stood there with my teeth in my mouth. I weighed the option of just feigning ignorance, but being detained, or worse, jailed in Congo, is a horrible prospect. Moreover, I was there with Washington Post reporter Todd Frankel working on a story exposing the high human cost of mining cobalt for use in mobile phones and electric car batteries. It was an important story, and the last thing we needed was me blowing the story for a photograph of a marketplace.
Desperate, I resorted to making photographs through the window of our hired vehicle with an iPhone as we drove the streets of Lubumbashi. Those streets were alive. I had to show that, even if we were passing through at 45 mph. I am happy with a few of the photographs but less so with my method of making them.
