Mathieu Asselin interview on his Monsanto photography project: transcript

Key points

• The Monsanto project is a timeline of the most important events in the company's history, over 115 years.
• He photographs landscapes and people that look fine but are highly contaminated and affected by health and economic problems.
• Showing this story through pictures alone was a challenge, so he added documents, archival material and a collection of memorabilia he bought.
• He mixes studio photographs, portraits, landscapes and company publicity so readers can see where everything comes from.
• In Vietnam he photographs second and third generation people affected by Agent Orange.
• He says no photographer is truly self-made, and that breaking barriers to find your own way is the hardest and most interesting part.

Chapters

1. 0:00The Monsanto project as a timeline
2. 1:01Adding documents, archives and memorabilia
3. 2:12Photographing Agent Orange's effects in Vietnam

Full transcript

0:00My project, Monsanto, a photographic investigation, is a timeline that underlines the most important events of Monsanto history. So, in hundred and fifteen years, Monsanto did, and things happened that were very important for the company, but it was with big consequences for many people and communities. So, what I'm trying to show is that, is that timeline. Monsanto is a very interesting story because besides the Agent Orange chapter, it's very hard to see what is happening because I photograph landscapes that look pristine and I photograph people that may look like everything is fine, but if you take this first layer you realize that these landscapes are highly contaminated and these people are highly affected by health

1:01problems but also economical problems how you put this history together I think it I base a lot of my work on that that became something interesting and challenging for me how I can show this story with these pictures there are you know it's nothing very exciting going on so that become a challenge At one point, I realized that I need to include other things in this work, not only my photograph, but I need to include documents.

1:36I need to include archival material. Also, I needed to include, for example, memorabilia, a full collection of memorabilia that I bought, that I have. For this book to be something interesting and to tell this story in an interesting and effective way, I needed to have multilayers with, you know, publicity from Monsanto, pictures from documents and also different ways of photographing, you know, like from studio photographs to, you know, people outside and portraits and landscape.

2:12So you see where everything comes from, kind of. And I photograph in Vietnam. I photograph, you know, second, third generation of people affected by Agent Orange. These keep going, generation, first generation. I like photography because of, you know, the simplicity of what you need to do photography. And this is the first reason why I started doing photography, you know. I like that, you, your camera, and that's it, you don't need anything else. The idea of a self-made photographer doesn't exist.

2:45Every photographer has... His hero, everybody gets inspired by somebody. The important thing is knowing that and after that is how you find your own way and when you start breaking all these barriers also you realize that, wow, photography becomes so interesting. And that is the hardest part. That is the challenge, you know, that is when you say, okay, I need to get rid of all these barriers and I need to jump to the next level.

3:16That is when things become difficult and interesting. Thank you.

Source and licence

Recording: File:Mathieu Asselin Lensculture interview 2016.ogv by Mathieuasselin (2016-10-01), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. The transcript, summary and chapters on this page are shared under the same licence (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.