Samuel Aranda: "And he asked: Can't you see that we need enemies to use the arms we manufacture?”

How’s the world?

For the poor, pretty awful. But those who trade in arms or oil are doing great. They make money from tragedies. Stuff happens but it slips under our radar. Such as the crisis in Spain. A crisis used to be something caused by plague or war. But did anything like that happen this time? Someone decided that we were living beyond our needs and that we had a recession. And who came out the winner? Young people lower our heads and get a job abroad. And we’re increasingly more afraid. Fear is one of their big victories: fear of Muslims, fear of losing our jobs, fear of banks, fear of everything. And that’s how they’ve got to us.

Could you name names?

I was in Egypt. They had a revolution. The young paid a high price in blood. Then there was an election and the Muslim Brotherhood won. The army staged a coup, killed 800 protesters and now the president-elect has been sentenced to die. Young people who believed in political change are joining armed groups. And, for some reason, we find this surprising: “these Egyptians are Arabs and they’ll plant a bomb on a plane”. No, sir. They’ve just been denied all political representation.

Well, Tunisia is a success story.

That’s because it bears no geopolitical interest to us. They barely have any oil and gas, so we just let them be. I was there taking photos and it was very moving, because the islamists won but decided to govern with the communists. They taught us a lesson.

So problems arise wherever there are natural resources.

In Libya, before the war was over and we could travel to Tripoli, Repsol was already shifting truckloads of oil. Look, one day I had an epiphany. When you work for the New York Times, you have access to people with some diplomatic standing. We were invited to attend a party at the American embassy in Yemen. We’d just come back from an unsafe area. The US and their Saudi allies were bombing some terrorist positions. They claimed they had killed 50 militants, but when we got there, it turned out that they were actually 2 militants and 48 civilians. We were there, having a cold one and stuff, when a man who must have been with the intelligence service and spoke aggressively, began to ask us what we’d seen. We mentioned that the UAVs were getting a lot of civilians killed. Eventually the man lost his temper and said: “can’t you see that we need enemies? We manufacture lots of weapons and need a place to use them and keep our industry going!”

This photo (01) shows Syrian refugees pouring into a square where tourists are sat at a table. In Lesbos.

This family was freezing cold after a very hazardous journey and nobody offered them not even a drink of water. How can you just be sitting there with your mates, having dinner and drinking? It hurts to see how they come to Europe but get no help from us. Or, rather, those who help are volunteers, like the Badalona life guards. C’mon, this is Europe!

You have been following the journey of the refugees from Jordan to Central Europe. What have you got out of it?

It is one of the most absurd stories I have ever covered. The families that have fled Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are well-off; they are middle-class people who have sold off their business. They could hop on a plane to Berlin or Barcelona. They could be our grandparents on their way to France via Portbou, as they fled the Spanish civil war. The journey from Turkey to Europe costs about 30 to 40,000 euros per family. That’s enough to get over here and set up a small business or rent a flat and try to make a living. It is absurd. Why do we force them to go on such a dangerous boat journey? The dosh goes to organised crime connected with the Turkish army and we have no control over the people coming in. It would be much easier if they could arrive with a temporary, two-year visa, while the war is ongoing. And then they’d be able to go back home and that would be the end of that. Nobody wants to leave home if they are happy there. Besides, in Europe we lock them up in refugee camps and they cannot get a job. This will cause problems, eventually.

Your Ebola photograph made the front page of the New York Times (02).

Yes, it was in Sierra Leone. We covered the whole Ebola crisis right by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who did an amazing job. We got a tip to go to this hospital that wasn’t getting any UN aid. The infected were locked up in wards and the only way they had to bring their temperature down was to hose them down with cold water, they didn’t have ibuprofen or anything: zero resources. When we got there, we were met by a horrendous scene. The girl must have had Ebola because she was bleeding through her mouth and eyes, and was writhing on the floor. She stared at me, surrounded by dead bodies. It’s always the same thing in Africa: African deaths are treated as second class. There was another child at the back and another room full of dead bodies to the right. They’d lock them up in there to die. It made the front page of the NYT and within two days the American embassy had sent a bunch of trucks with aid. The nurses phoned us crying with joy. Times like these are a reminder of why you picked this job.

What’s the price tag of a picture like that?

The received wisdom in our neck of the woods is that we’re in a downturn. But then you get newspapers who send three or four staff to cover the World Cup or funnel massive resources to producing a supplement on accessorising. The best thing about working for the NYT is that Americans are obsessed with quality. When I first started with the Ebola story I was asked if I could go on a fifteen-day trip which, eventually, extended to eight months. You set off on a one-way ticket and never know when you’ll be coming back. You get given all the cash you need for assistants or vehicles. We actually got a private plane to get to the jungle where the first Ebola outbreak was recorded. But don’t you dare come back without a strong story. You cannot deliver 40 per cent. 150 is what’s expected.

I wonder how this trip changed you: were you any wiser, sadder or more cynical upon returning?

I came back hating the UN’s guts. It’s the worst I’ve seen in my whole life. I’ll refrain from calling them names, but they did absolutely nothing. They would spend all day in their five-star hotel, with live music, free booze and underage prostitutes for the leaders of the groups. We ran some stories exposing them and we had direct confrontations with them, particularly with the WHO. MSF were the complete opposite. When ACNUR gets to a refugee camp, they build a structure, like a massive elephant. Sometimes they get it wrong, but I’ve never seen anything like what the WHO did with the Ebola crisis.

Is Ebola still present there?

I’ve just returned from a six-week trip to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, interviewing people that we met during the epidemic and it was virtually over.

This is the 2011 World Press Photo (03). They called it the “Arab Pietà”.

They’re Fatima and Said and it’s one of the best things to have ever happened to me in this job. I was in Yemen one day, when they started firing on demonstrators. We found shelter in a mosque that had been converted into a hospital. There was chaos, death and people screaming. Fatima was the only collected person, clutching her son. I took a picture of them and that’s it. I did get the feeling that the composition was good, but at no point did I think that it might get this sort of recognition. In fact, the photo was only discussed after getting the award. It had gone unnoticed until then.

This is a picture of someone going through the contents of a waste container (04), from your report on Spain, hunger and austerity.

They had me spend ten months driving around Spain because when I’d send in my material, they’d claim it lacked the more rural side, greater intimacy with the families, what had happened to women, and I needed to tack on an extra two or three weeks.

Your work made the Spanish government uncomfortable.

Sure, the Foreign Minister said that the pictures had been taken in Greece, that media wanted Spain to look bad for some vested interest which I wouldn’t know about.

The funniest thing was that we ran the pictures shortly after King Juan Carlos met with the NYT’s editorial board to sing the praises of Spain.

Yes, but that was pot luck. We’d been working on the story for quite some time. Following the King’s visit, they did decide to look into the Spanish royal family. I can’t speak for the NYT, but I reckon they recall very few instances when a government told them what stories they were to run.

What makes for a good photograph?

When you see one and feel something inside, when no caption is needed. Photojournalists aren’t the first ones to seek emotion in a picture. Picasso with The Gernika and Goya with The Second of May came before us. Unfortunately, war is visually appealing.

Is taking other people’s picture a form of cultural power?

Well, rather than power, it endows you with a responsibility. And as time passes, you learn to harness that responsibility.

Do photographs aim to uncover realities or confirm commonplaces?

It depends on the story. It is true that, especially in the Arab world, the story of a bearded guy brandishing a kalashnikov works better than a more personal account.

Are you married?

Nope. No kids, no girlfriend. Nothing at all, for now.

I can’t say I am surprised …

It’s hard. I like what I do. It’s highly addictive. It’s scary when you lose friends as the years go by, they keep dying and you see how the people you started with end up.

Do you go to therapy?

I don’t. In fact, a lot of the time the hardest thing about my job is the coming back, because that’s when you begin to realise that you might be crossing a line. You’re here now, but on the next flight … But I choose to get personally involved in what I photograph, it is not a professional relationship.

Background: Samuel Aranda was born in Santa Coloma de Gramanet (Catalonia) in 1979. His home is in the village of Crespià (Pla de l’Estany, Catalonia), where he claims to be happy. Saying that he lives there would be inaccurate, as the photographer —who received the 2011 World Press Photo award— travels non-stop. In fact, he belongs to the segment of professionals who spend the first five seconds after waking up in a hotel room wondering which city they’re in.

Aranda is one of the greatest photojournalists of our time and works with all the media and all the pressure in the world. His glance is that of the down-to-earth lad from Santa Coloma, the graffiti artist who got kicked out of school and tried out Fine Arts, who had never taken a picture in his life but was mesmerised by a camera in Palestine at age 19. And, all the while, all the horrors he has witnessed begin to accumulate in his eyes, which is toughening up his courtesy, up until the day —which he doesn’t know whether to fear or look forward to— when he will say enough is enough.