“What interested me working on a reporting for Médecins Sans Frontières? To confront VR with field reportage, and convey the results to an audience unaware of the technical aspects of the medium,” explains photographer Mickael Therer, who is drawn to broad, global themes in his work.A self-described panographer “living somewhere in Belgium”, Mickael Therer, 43, works for an international events and communications company and often captures his family and friends in their daily lives in Avennes and family vacations in Britain, featuring them on his VR blog, 360 Days.
"Mickael Therer, self-potrait."Interested in photography from a young age, Therer credits his three children and ageing as bringing back the ‘photography demon’. “I think it was Jook Leung who once said that if it wasn't for VR, his career as a photographer would have been a boring one. I have the same feeling and I didn't even make a career in photography … VR has given me the opportunity to reconnect with my early passions, and do some work that may be more useful”.
360 Days is selective and thoughtful and, given the feedback from viewers, seems to have found an appreciative, and necessarily patient, audience. Therer’s recent hiatus from his blog reflects his search for new subjects. “xxxx visitors/day is not the end that I want to achieve, and I've been filling the gaps too much already with stuff I'm not always happy with,” he says.
Perhaps blogging just isn’t his style. Therer seems most passionate about broad, global themes, such as his WW2 Panorama project - in which he amassed a collection of 179 panoramas of WWII sites from 36 photographers in 22 countries - and his work with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), in Africa. “Well, I do like to have a purpose in my work, but the WW2 Panorama project was really a pretext to an anniversary; it turned into an historical website by opportunity only. What I try to convey is an emotion and to achieve that I think you need a subject more than just a setting.”
Click here to view more of Mickael Therer's panoramas
Therer spent his childhood in Belgium amidst a flow of refugees who gathered at his family home to take French lessons from his teacher mother. “These people arrived here from around the world having lost everything and often being persecuted,” he recalls. “As far as I can remember, a couple of rooms and the living room were permanently squatted by people who had fled their countries, every major world crisis or coup d'état brought a new culture to the house: Nigeria, Palestine, Greece, Argentina, Chile, Iran, Vietnam, Cambodia...”
No doubt this early experience instilled a compassion and sensitivity that later prompted Therer to contact Médecins Sans Frontières, leading to a promising collaboration with the NGO that has already produced a thought-provoking series of VRs from his trips to Mali and Mozambique.
"Mother with twins. MSF nutritional center Goudam-Mali ,October 2005"
"MSF nutritional center Goudam-Mali, October 2005"Therer describes his trip to Mali in 2005 as a trial for both himself and MSF. After the VRs from the trip were published, the response from within the organization was so positive (the nutritional care sequence was published on six MSF websites for several weeks and the malaria panoramas were used across different sites for World Malaria Day communication) that they decided to take it a step further. “We had initially planned to go to Darfur, but it turned out to be too dangerous at the time, so we went to peaceful Mozambique instead,” he says.
Family portrait. Angonia province of Tete Mozambique, April 2006.Therer spent two weeks in Mozambique, a country that is slowly recovering from its 17-year civil war. The group started the trip in Maputo in the south, then moved north, first to Tete on the Zambese River and then on to the very rural Angonia, on the border with Malawi. “It was a very difficult commission,” he says, comparing the trip to Mali, where at least proper nutrition can save lives. “There is no emergency in the sense that there is no crisis right now (food, flood, etc.). But AIDS is killing thousands; the pandemic runs across all of sub-Saharan Africa and MSF have their biggest AIDS mission [in Mozambique].”
Field visit to a patient following a tuberculosis treatment. Angonia province of Tete Mozambique, April 2006.Before leaving for Africa Therer sets up his itinerary with MSF. Once in the field, he discusses it with the local team and gathers more information. “For instance, the trip to north Mali was unplanned and improvised on the spot while we were in the south and learned that an exploration mission was at work around Tombouctou.” Once he starts shooting, MSF makes recommendations but don’t interfere. “It is very interactive and often I'm asked to shoot something I would never think of shooting,” a situation he finds challenging. “I'm also free to propose a subject, as I did with Dona Laura's orphans, whose story I had read a few days before.” Unfortunately, time does not permit him to explore his subjects further, or interact more fully with the interesting characters he meets on the trip. “Probably the most frustrating part for me in these trips is the very little time I have to immerse myself in the subject, I wish I could spend a few days with some of the characters I meet along the trip.”
Esther's grandmother asked me to take her portrait. Angonia province of Tete Mozambique, April 2006.
Esther (age 9) on ARV (antiretroviral) treatment. Angonia province of Tete Mozambique, April 2006
Jorge and his wife, both on ARV (antiretroviral) treatment. Tete Mozambique April 2006.I asked Therer for his take on shooting VRs on his MSF trips versus traditional photography, wondering if he considered his panos photojournalism. “Photography has grown to be considered as a record of truth and strict conventions dictate how you should frame and keep pictures uncropped, untouched, etc. … but panoramas are very different,” he responds. “Stitched panoramas are not a moment in time but a collection of moments brought together, they result in illustrations more than photographs, they are best shot at very close range with a very wide angle. I believe VR photography applied to photojournalism provokes our perception of reality and photography in general: we need to stand very close to our subject for a long time and we interact much more with it as often we stand right in their 'bubble' there is no way of hiding or disappearing behind the camera anymore. On the viewer side the online presentation brings a whole new experience".
Even now, Therer finds himself struggling with how the MSF should be presented. "Online interactive FSQTVR is asking a lot of motivation from the viewer and it is hardly a standard in mass media: we face a huge challenge here that only quality and differentiation in the use of photography can overcome and sometimes I fear that when the magic fades the hurdle may just be too high to leap over, we have steadily built an audience, what we need now are further endorsements by major news organizations, who follow the lead of WashingtonPost.com, which regularly uses VR. To make that happen we need a continuous flow of unique and newsworthy content and a single truly universal player.”
(Therer has also experimented with podcasting a VR to iTunes, posting a simple recipe on 360Days that works quite well. “If only Apple would give us a better support for VRpodcast, if not for the iPod at least fullscreen in iTunes, it would be great. There are great opportunities pushing our media through this channel to a different audience.”)
What interested him working on a project for MSF? “To confront VR with field reportage, and the results to an audience unaware of the technical aspects of the medium. Some of the feedback can be read on 360days, I did get one negative message stating that ‘too close and all around’ was just too much, and I partly agree with it. VR applied to photojournalism could turn out obscene if you're not careful. I try to be, but the more I delve the more I sense the dangerous ground, as much as the potential.”
When prodded to drudge up his greatest lesson learned from eight years working in VR, Therer, again, reveals an urge to scourge, or at least distance, himself from technique: “To trust my instinct more than my camera histograms!” He declines to cite any panographers that have influenced him, “they are all too young to name,” he jokes. “But there is talent out there, some of whom are already free from technique, which I regard to be my greatest faux fuyant" [excuse]. What about photographers who had an impact while he was growing up? “There are really too many to name them all and it is hard to stay away from their influence, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Edouard Boubat, Raoul Hausmann, Raymond Depardon, Martin Parr, … all have fascinated me for years.”
It will be interesting to see where Therer’s mission takes him next as we’re sure it will be a compelling journey.
Related Articles:
- AIDS ORPHANS IN MOZAMBIQUE
- MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES (DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS) IN MALI
