Ace photographer Jeff Widener is certainly a man with a brave heart. Best known for his tank images captured during the Chinese unrest, Widener has risked his life several times to bring his images before the mass. The iconic image of the lone man in front of the tank, not only got him fame but also a nomination for the Pulitzer award. Determined and passionate about his work, Widener has done complete justice to photojournalism.

I understand you would sneak out your father’s camera to school and click pictures. What got you interested in photography at such an early age?
When I was a child, my teachers would always snatch away my drawings of German dive bombers or rockets to the moon. My father was a very good artist in his youth, so I guess I inherited some of his creativity. My family moved around a lot and I was always the best artist in my school. Later seeing the work of M.C. Escher and Leonardo Da Vinci, I realized I would never be a great painter. At the age of six, my father had a Life Magazine photographer friend come over to our house and take some family pictures. I never forgot the camera gear he pulled out of his case. Maybe it always stuck in my brain because after that, I wanted one. I used to sneak my father's Topcon Auto 100 camera to school every day. My parents always knew but never said anything. At the age of 14, during my graduation from Junior High School, my father gifted me the camera.

Were you always sure about getting into photojournalism or did you also consider other genres?
One of the hardest things for me to realize as a child was that I would never be an astronaut. Ever since my mother woke me early in the morning to watch John Glenn take off into space, I was memorized with the space program. But with lousy maths skills, I knew it was a lost cause. Years later, I changed schools in my senior year to attended Reseda High School in Southern California for their photography department, which was run by Warren King. The school had the reputation of having the finest photography programs in the country. In that class, I learned about newspaper Pulitzer Prize photographer Brian Lanker who became my mentor. That summer, I won the 1974 Kodak/Scholastic National Photography Scholarship out of 8000 students.

I travelled to Kenya, Tanzania and Europe as part of the African studies program. The trips changed my life and little did I know then, my future as a photojournalist was sealed. I wanted to spend the rest of my life travelling around the world. Years later, after covering assignments in over 100 countries in seven continents, including the South Pole, I can safely say I have achieved my childhood dream as an international photographer. The lesson here is to never give up.

I never got use to hostile situations and I have come close to being killed many times.

According to you, how has the field of photojournalism evolved over the past 20 years?
The quality of photojournalism is still there but with many publications wanting pictures for free, I believe the quality of investigative picture stories will decline dramatically.

Without the financial backing, many photojournalists cannot do the social issue stories that need to be told. Fortunately some companies are starting to offer grants to help photojournalists. Many photographers are resorting to other means of survival like weddings and corporate photography. I do not think all is lost though. With the Internet also comes access to millions of viewers and with the new digital notepads, I believe there are endless possibilities to be seen. Money will always be an issue though.

As a photojournalist, you have covered several wars, civil unrest and social issues? Which has been the toughest and why?
I find it almost ironic that a guy like me who is scared of spiders would end up being in Asia, which is one of the most dangerous places of the world. I am no hero and anything involving weapons makes me queasy. It's nothing like the movies. Each crackle of gunfire stirs a new lease on life. I recall vividly during the May 1992 military crackdown in Thailand there was a blood stained palm print on the wall below me from a Buddhist Monk killed the night before by the military.

I was up on an old fort looking down on pro-democracy supporters facing off with the Thai Army. As soon as the soldiers started firing their weapons, I dropped behind the wall with other demonstrators. My hands were shaking so badly from fear that I had to increase the shutter speed of my camera to 2000th of a second to photograph the terrorized crowd. Twice a sniper almost picked me off. I never got used to the hostile situations and I have come close to being killed many times; even from stupid things like helicopters running out of fuel.

Your image of the lone man standing in front of the tanks made waves across the globe and even got you nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer award. Can you share your memory of clicking this image?
At the time, I was very ill with the flu and had been hit in the head with a stray rock during a mob scene of June 3rd. The Nikon F3 Titanium camera absorbed the blow and spared my life. The following day I received a message from Associated Press in New York asking for someone to photograph the occupied Tienanmen Square. Nobody including myself wanted to go but in the end, it was me. After peddling a bicycle to the Beijing Hotel from the AP office, to get an overhead view of the occupied Square, an American college student named Kirk helped me up to his sixth floor room past security agents who had been zapping journalists with electric cattle prods.

I was spaced out by the concussion I received the night before, so I was pretty groggy when the row of tanks came down the street. At first I complained to Kirk that the guy in the white shirt would screw up my composition. I was not thinking clearly. The tanks were too far away even with my Nikon 400mm 5.6 ED IF lens. I gambled and ran to the bed where a tele-converter was lying. This doubled my focal length to 800mm. But after three frames clicked with my Nikon FE2 camera, I realized the shutter speed was at around 60th of a second. By the time I realized that my film was a lower ASA speed that Kirk had found from a tourist, the man was pulled away. I surely thought that I had blown the image. I normally used 800 ASA Fuji but I had run out of film. It was a miracle that one frame was sharp enough.

You have mentioned that if it weren’t for Kirk, the world probably wouldn’t have been able to view the iconic images of the Tienanmen uprising. How did you meet this American teenager in China and convince him to help you?
Kirk was standing in the lobby of the Beijing Hotel. He was wearing a dirty Rambo T-shirt, shorts and sandals. I needed to get past the hotel security so I went up to Kirk as if I knew him and whispered that I was with Associated Press. He picked up on it immediately and the security left me alone. He told me on the way up to his room that just minutes before I arrived, some hotel guests were shot right in front of the lobby and  were dragged in by hotel staff. Kirk had narrowly escaped with his life by hiding behind a taxi. Kirk later smuggled my film back to the American Embassy in his underwear where he then instructed the Marine guard to on-pass the film to the AP office at the diplomatic Compound.

I lost contact with Kirk for 20 years and searched for him many times to thank him for his brave deeds but never found him, until one night in 2009. I was sitting at my office desk when I got the familiar "You have mail" on America on Line. The message read "Hi Jeff, I don't know if you remember me but I smuggled your film out in my underwear". I was shocked.  Kirk had found me through a New York Times article. It was a great moment for both of us and we keep in touch to this day.

I can safely say I have achieved my childhood dream as an international photographer.

While capturing the unrest in China, did the thought of your personal safety ever worry you?
Without a doubt, this was the scariest situation I had ever found myself in. I thought I was going to die multiple times. Imagine getting attacked at night near a burning armoured car by a rock-throwing crazed mob. The worst part was, having to go back outside in the streets every day after the crackdown. I never knew where the sporadic gunfire was coming from. I am quite proud of myself for what I accomplished during those dark days but I missed so many incredible images on the night of the massacre. I made a very difficult decision to stay inside the AP office. At the time I felt like a coward. The rock and the flu had just taken everything out of me. However, if not for being injured, I might have gone back to the Tienanmen Square and been killed. We just never know in life. Frankly, I am lucky to be alive to tell the story.

You were in fact attacked by a mob while capturing the turmoil that left you injured and with a broken camera. How difficult was it to gather yourself after the incident and get back to work?
That event almost killed me. Once the mob started attacking me, I raised my passport in the air and screamed “American, American". I figured it would either get me killed or saved. In that event I had few options. Fortunately a leader of the pack came to my rescue and told the mob to allow me to photograph a dead soldier near a burning armoured car.

The problem was that my batteries were almost exhausted, so the recycling time was one picture every 60 seconds. Imagine how I felt in one of the biggest stories of the century when I could only make one image a minute. However, this nightmarish situation actually saved my life because the second I raised the camera to my eye, a powerful blow hit my head. I looked down in a daze to see the top of my Nikon F3 Titanium camera missing. Blood was all over me. The flash was ripped off and the stone had shattered the camera's mirror and bent the shutter curtain. The concussion was massive but the camera had saved my life. I then had to weave my way around burning buses and mobs of protesters. Large calibre gunfire was arching over the Great Hall of The People. It seemed to take an eternity to ride down the Chang Ahn Boulevard that night. The AP night editor told me not to go out because the military was killing civilians. He had to pry my film out of the camera with pliers.

As a photojournalist, planning your shots is not always possible. How do you work towards getting the perfect shot?
Great shots don't grow on trees. It takes a lot of waiting and patience. I have developed a keen sense of what people do before they do it and that has helped me make some nice images through the years. For me, a great shot is not always a perfect composition or sharpness but whether it evokes an emotional response in the viewer: perhaps, a reminder of a past lover or a song from another time. This is really hard to do.

I don’t necessarily shoot but rather feel an image. All through life we see things that produce an emotional response. Sometimes we are lucky enough to have a camera to record the event. These are the little gold nuggets in the stream.

Do you believe in the power of photography to bring out social change?
Definitely! One story I did on a children's hospital in Bangladesh following a cyclone, prompted a reader to donate $25,000 and that made me feel pretty good. The Lone Man who stopped the tanks has had a profound effect on many people. I was very lucky and just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time.

How particular are you about the quality of your prints?
I am very stringent about print quality. Most of the photographers that I know including myself are using Epson printers for digital printing. That is not a plug, just a fact. They make a very good product. Most of my black and white prints are wet process in the darkroom.

Photos by Jeff Widener | Fotosocial

	Quick8: Your Favourite Camera: Leica M7. Your Favourite Printer: Any of the Epson printers because they are very reliable. I have had the Stylus 2200 in my office and it has worked flawlessly for years. The color tonality is excellent. My photographer friends make very large prints with the Epson and really like the archival inks. Your Favourite Shoot: I have never been a "band guy" but a two-week all access concert tour with the band UB40 in Australia and Uganda tops the list for pure fun. I met the group by chance in Tahiti years earlier and became friends. They are a bunch of great guys and during a Japanese dinner in Melbourne, they managed to entice me with some green tea ice cream that actually was wasabi. As my mouth burned, the band almost fell on the floor laughing so hard. The trip produced my first record album cover Twentyfourseven. Your Preferred Location: Burma had quite an effect on me and so did Sri Lanka. Favourite Photographer: Josef Koudelka. Most memorable story: There are far too many to recall but being a huge space buff since childhood, I was delighted to have a private breakfast with the second man to land on the moon Buzz Aldrin. I asked him what it was like standing in the lunar module during liftoff from the moon because of the acceleration on his knees. Then I thought how incredible to even ask someone that question? You can't get much closer to the moon than shaking hands with the guy who touched it. I recall wanting to impress him with a signed post card of my tank man picture, which the Honolulu Academy of Arts had printed for my 15th anniversary Tienanmen lecture. Aldrin looked at me and said "wow--you shot that? Well I have something for you”. Then he reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a post card of himself standing on the moon and autographed it for me. Talk about being topped. Current photographers you like: Josef Koudelka is amazing and so is Elliott Erwitt who I was fortunate enough to meet recently at his New York studio. Both men have had a big influence on my work. Sebastiao Salgado and James Nachtwey come to mind as well and so does Anthony Suua. Toughest day at work: The morning of June 4th, 1989 during the Tienanmen uprising.