O’Hanlon on photography

Redmond O’Hanlon is a travel writer who specialises in going to dangerous and remote places and almost getting killed — and then writing about it entertainingly. He’s full of surprises — for example this lovely piece about photography in yesterday’s Guardian Review. Sample:

“Why are great photographs so powerful? Is it simply that they stop time (as all religions want to do)? Or that they’re one in the eye for death (as all religions would like to be)? Yes, but perhaps it’s also simply that they deal in images, the language of our dreams. Anyway, those photographs, from this magical machine, a camera, a piece of multiple scientific thought that cheats death in reality, produces images that are as immortal as you can get. Make a journey by yourself where you always carry a camera and you’ll find you’re never truly alone: your camera gives you psychological strength because you’ll find that your friends, the people who love you, are with you: if you survive, they can share this alien world of yours.

Now, at 57, I think I can remember every interviewer and photographer that I’ve met . . . particularly the photographers.”