He studied photography at the fine arts school of La Cambre in 1968 and began working as a freelance journalist three years later. He joined Agence Vu’ in Paris in 1986 and won the Eugene Smith Award that year for his work ‘Water in the Sahel’, an extensive body of reportage on the management of water in the Sahel.
Cambodia –
Based out of Cambodia for the past 13 years, Belgium born photojournalist John Vink, member of the prestigious Magnum Photos is known for his long-term photographic ventures. His works, conducted in different corners of the world, are instrumental in giving an insight into the daily struggles of humankind for shelter, water or simply, survival. Unlike many, Vink has taken the digital space in his stride and his works are available as photography apps and e-books. Vink talks to Emaho about his photographic journey through the years, documentation of the land struggles of refugees, Khmer Rouge trial and his views on minimalistic roles of a photographer in storytelling.
What made you develop an interest in photography? And what role did works of Jean-Marie Perier play in it?
Jean-Marie Perier was just a two-week fad. The road started long before that. My father was an amateur photographer and fervent Leicaist, and he introduced me to the bug by giving me a Kodak Brownie for my 10th anniversary in 1958. I remember taking pictures of the Brussels Universal Exhibition (the negatives are lost). I was processing films on my own a few years later. This was also the time when I was leafing through my parents’ collection of ‘National Geographic’, and ‘Life’ magazine with David Douglas Duncan’s photographs of the Korean War, stacked in a small room in the cellar. There was also a pile of amateur photography magazines with nude studies, which were rather suggestive for a 12-year old. So basically I was confronted with, and aware of, the evocational power of photography since a very young age.
The Jean-Marie Perier ‘influence’, a starlet and pop singer photographer for a teenager’s magazine, came at a time when I was 16, didn’t know better, was bored with college, wanting to quit it all and become a photographer. He was a very short-lived role model though. I realised very quickly that photographing show business stars was not my cup of tea at all. My parents, probably wisely, forced me to finish college before allowing me to go to ‘La Cambre’, a fine arts school based on the pluridisciplinary Bauhaus principles where I learned a lot about fine arts but not that much about photography.
‘My artistic stimulations are varied and relate to music, painting, photography, literature and certainly comic books with the one and only Hergé, creator of Tintin.’ Could you tell us how these art forms influence your artistic vision especially Tintin?
‘La Cambre’ fine art school was instrumental. Because the teaching in photography was not that good, I spent a lot of time at the etching, stage design, industrial design sections etc..As for Hergé, my parents had offered me a subscription to ‘Tintin’ magazine when I was a kid. Tintin is a comic figure created by Hergé in the 40’s. Hergé is the master of ‘la ligne claire’ (the clear line); he was the origin of what became a whole generation of Belgian comic book storytellers. The ‘clear line’ means everything in the frame is in focus. There is no blurred or out-of-focus element in any of Hergé’s frames. To this day I mostly try to get as much depth-of-field in my photography. That, combined with a gift for storytelling and the adventurous, righteous and eternally young Tintin as reporter, must have left some traces in the way I frame what I see around me.
