Joseph Rodriguez, the Brooklyn-based photographer perhaps best known for his photos of street gangs in East L.A., traveled to Pakistan about two months after 9-11 with hopes of answering a single question: what would drive anyone to fly airplanes into buildings and kill thousands of people? There he met a man in his twenties who offered an answer.

In the middle of Peshawar, the streets filled with people screaming and yelling and burning flags, this young man told Rodriguez that America had become too caught up in its own indulgences to recognize the world beyond its own borders. “You do not know what the world is,” Rodriguez remembers the young man saying. “So we brought the world to you.”

Rodriguez has spent his career seeking out the world that exists in the shadows of where we feel comfortable. His books—including East Side Stories: Gang Life in East LA, Juvenile Justice and Flesh Life: Sex in Mexico City—are honest portraits of people on the edge. While he has spent considerable time documenting fringe places around the globe, he is intent, for the time being, on chronicling life in America. This fall he will release Still Here: Stories After Katrina.

Tell me about when you first picked up a camera and started shooting. You’re Brooklyn-born and it was a different city at that point.

It was a different city but it’s always been a city of neighborhoods. It’s always been a city of community. And so I was inspired at a very young age. But the visual narrative became of interest to me just by going to see movies as a kid. I didn’t find photography until I was about 20 years old. I used to read Popular Photography back then and they had this correspondence school and so I paid for some of that. I would get my assignments—they would mail them to me. I learned to develop my own film at home and I created my own lab so it was exciting from an amateur’s standpoint. I only photographed buildings and trees and bridges. I was afraid of [points to his face.]

I’m curious about that because photography seems to become more striking once you start seeing the faces and a lot of people in their early days don’t do the faces because it’s sort of like you’re intruding in a way. How long did it take before you started getting people?

Well I remember going to the Brooklyn Museum and I saw an exhibition by Lewis Hine and another one by Roman Vishniac and they were very old-school photographers. Lewis Hine happened to do more social work with the camera because during his time they had child labor problems here, and there were no bathrooms in some people’s apartments and so he used the camera as a tool to rally around the issues. So that whole school of social documentary photography became something of interest to me because I grew up in my teenage years during the ‘60s and around the Vietnam War and we were demonstrating in the streets. I grew up hearing Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. and so these people in my generation became a foundation for me to start thinking about what I could do as a citizen, as a person, as a humanist. That’s how I got interested in photographing people, but I had to crawl a long time before I could actually build up the courage and expertise to do that.

And when did you start seriously photographing?

Not until after I graduated from the International Center of Photography back in ’85. I was in the advertising business before I switched over so there were a couple of different lives before we get to seriously taking on photography. But when I was a student at school I started photographing myself as a taxi driver because that’s the job I had. That’s when I began to learn about people and personality. I was very afraid to photograph people as a taxi driver but I pushed myself to do it. And then when I left school I started working up in Spanish Harlem continuing a project I had when I was in school that got turned into a huge National Geographic cover story called “Growing Up in East Harlem” in 1990.

Have you always been cognizant of the economic disparities that exist in the city?

Yeah, absolutely. Being born into a working-class family we had our poor moments. We had to go on welfare for a while, I fell into crime, I fell into addictions. So photography was actually a revelation for me because it opened my mind up in a way that helped me create a voice, helped me be able to communicate better and also reach many other people as well. Growing up here in New York, this is a town of great writers, of great artists and great people that come through here. And Brooklyn was one of those places. But New York does that to people. If you grew up here or if you live here long enough it kicks your butt because there are so many of us and you want to be seen, you want to make your mark. But New York is my foundation. I have been able to go to many other places in the world because of the foundation I’ve gotten here.

Do you think that energy still exists in New York?

I do, but I think you have to fight for it though. I think right now the generation today, or even all generations, are seduced by the glitz, the glamour and the fame of it all. I teach at many different schools and a lot of people want to get there like that [snaps finger]. New York’s the kind of place where you can be lucky and get there really fast, but for most of us it’s usually a lot of hard work before you can get there. I think sometimes there’s a disconnect with what it really truly takes to become something on another level.

And how long did you spend away from New York?

I spent four years in Stockholm and two years in L.A. So about six years I was away, which was good for me. It was good to leave from school and get out of here right away. What was important was to learn how to travel, to learn the world, to see other places. Not just see places but to see how other people live and how other people think. Because New York thinks sometimes that we are the end-all to the world. You know, we’re the capital of the world, everyone comes here and you don’t have to leave here. If you like food you can spend the rest of your life here. If you like culture you can spend the rest of your life here because everyone comes here, so to speak. But I think it was great for my photography to actually live in Scandinavia and be around Europe. It opened my eyes and I got to see other photographers and other people, not just the American school of thought.

So when did you end up going out to L.A.?

In ’92, after the riots actually. I felt like I wanted to be there for that whole scene. I was visiting [New York] with my children and my wife around that time. It was around Easter vacation and I was watching it on TV. So I took the kids home and I applied for a grant in May ’92 and a month later I’m on my way to L.A. But what brought me to L.A. was not necessarily the riots, it was more hip-hop. At that time it was what was being said by artists like Kid Frost, N.W.A and Public Enemy; I thought hip-hop was more like the newspapers of the street. The real stories were being told, unlike today in which it is very much about sex and bling. So the way I did my research, believe it or not, was just by buying music. I didn’t know anybody, I didn’t know anything, I just had one article from US News & World Report and I went out and made this whole story from there.

You went to look at the hip-hop scene out there?

Well, originally I wanted to do my kind of West Side Story: Let me go find the gangs and see what’s up and it will be cool to hang out with the teenagers. When I got there I got this reality check that it was all about serious guns on the street and people dying. As I got closer and closer to the story the families were saying, “Look if you are going to do this story you really have to represent it in a right way.” So it becomes a very serious photojournalistic essay on gang life in Los Angeles.

How did you first start getting in touch with the gangs out there?

Well, I just went to a community youth gang services center. I remember being there a whole week and nobody would talk to me because they were used to having Time and Newsweek and all these big-shot photographers and news people who had a lot of money they could lay on the table—so they would hire a fixer, one of the kids who would show them around. I had nobody. I was working for a Socialist newspaper in Stockholm. But I started reading the papers every day, looking at the news every day and figuring out what the stories were. So I spent a month there, went back to Stockholm, reassessed everything and I moved to L.A. that September.

You moved there strictly for this project?

Yeah, and I stayed for two years.

And how did you really start to earn their trust?

Well, it’s just about time. It’s about time and it’s about listening. What I was told by quite a number of gang members is that they’re used to having photographers and journalists come in but they kind of shoot in and they don’t stay. They come in for the day, they throw down a few bucks, they ask some kids to pull some guns out and then they’re out of there. I started knocking on doors and talking to people, very sincere, about this project. It was very, very difficult because every day people thought I was a cop. Even though I was a photojournalist, even though I had books and magazines and all this stuff, still it was difficult.

Was there anything that surprised you about these gang members?

Just that they’re like every other American kid. I mean the gangs are like the Boy Scouts. The big disconnect is economics and education. Those are the two big killers. And then the third is the guns. Because if you don’t have the guns on the streets, the worst thing is somebody stabs you but you have more of a chance of living if someone stabs you than if someone shoots you. That actually became the driving force for me because the picture that really got me was Thomas Regalado III [A two-and-a-half-year-old victim of gang violence whom Rodriguez photographed in an open casket-Ed.] After that I realized this is another war. I lost about nine kids in that book, they’re all dead. I had an assignment to go to Bosnia for Black Star and I said, “Why am I going to go to Bosnia? We’ve got a Bosnia right here.” So I stayed. And by me staying I started looking at the families.

How often did you find yourself in a situation where you knew it was pretty shady? I mean, were you scared a lot?

It was pretty nerve-racking. There were a couple of times (in particular): One was a drive-by-shooting and you can see the picture, the guy is bleeding on the ground and there’s all this chaos. And the other is when Scooby from the Evergreen Boys [One of the gangs documented by Rodriguez-Ed.] had a gun pointed right at me. And if you see the photo very clearly, the only thing that’s in focus is the barrel. Everything’s very blurry because I’m really nervous. So after that they thought I was kind of crazy.

When you got to the end of the project how did you feel? Were you pretty wiped out?

Yeah, I mean I suffered from PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). It was just a lot to deal with. It was a lot of stories, a lot of drama. We were in and out of hospitals, families falling apart and people dying. It took me about a year to really get myself back to somewhat normalcy. Because I really got involved in the culture, I was really into it. I wasn’t doing gang member things but being there every day, every day, every day…I mean I would take breaks. In between that I was shooting in Romania. I spent six years photographing Romania. I love that country.

What drew you to Romania?

Well, it was back when I was living in Stockholm and it was the fall of Ceausescu in 1989 and the country was completely closed. But I was always inspired by a Czech photographer named Josef Koudelka. I really loved his Gypsies work so I really wanted to just investigate but I wasn’t looking for Gypsies. So I started out by photographing the children in all the orphanages that were opening up because no one had seen them before. It was horrible stuff. That was the beginning of it and I said: There’s something more here. So I went to Transylvania and started looking at families and villages.

And what did you like about Romania?

The people. Just the sense of timelessness. Things were a lot slower, but now it’s speeding up because now they’re a part of the (European Union) so things are moving faster than they did before. But it was just for the most part this kind of raw culture. And to be quite honest, it was the whole Dracula thing from when I was a kid [Laughs]. I was like, “I better go look for this Dracula’s castle!” But it’s this small little thing! It doesn’t even look like the movies.

What was the first international story that you photographed?

Well, being in Europe and around Scandinavia was very good because these countries are small and they’re always interested in the world unlike us. We tend to go in only when there’s a conflict. The first thing I did when I moved was to buy a short-wave radio. It’s different now because you can just buy a computer to see what’s going on. But the BBC was a journalist’s best friend because no matter what country you’re in the BBC is going to come through unless they’re blocking it. That’s how I learned about the world and so I was so connected to the world that I felt: OK wow it makes sense, let’s go to Kurdistan, let’s go for the first Gulf War and see what happens and see what’s going on with the Kurds.

When you make Europe your home base it must be much easier to move around.

It’s absolutely easier. You can get on a plane and go to A, B, C…

Wherever the hell you want to go to.

Yeah, absolutely. I remember in 2001 I covered 9-11 here—I worked on that for months. And then I decided I wanted to go to Pakistan and Afghanistan, on my own with no assignment or anything. I just wanted to go and I wanted to find out for myself personally why people would send planes into buildings and kill all these other people. I’m not naive. I know that we lost 3,000 or 4,000 people, which is really miniscule compared to what’s going on in the rest of world where people are dying in the millions, right?

Right.

So I wasn’t expecting people to be so sensitive to the fact that I’m an American coming over. But I learned a lot. It was very, very interesting for me to go. It was dangerous, probably one of the most dangerous places I could be.

Both Pakistan and Afghanistan?

Yeah. We lost five journalists in Afghanistan, between the convoy and being in Kabul. It was very nerve-racking getting out of there.

How long were you there for?

About three weeks.

How soon after 9-11 did you go?

I went in November.

You mentioned that you didn’t have an assignment or anything, but you just went out there. So what do you do, how do you just show up there?

Well, you never go to a war country without connections or some kind of contacts. So I knew there were a couple of photographers who were already on the ground over there so I connected with them and I said, “Listen, let’s share the expenses.” Because you know these days, in order for any photographer to be able to cover any war it’s going to cost you a fortune. You have to hire fixers—unless you speak the language, unless you know where you’re going, or you end up like Mr. (Danny) Pearl.

You get killed.

So what happened (to Pearl), happened. And he was connected. He was working for the Wall Street Journal and he had the money. You know, things happen. I knew a Swedish film team that just answered the door and they shot them in Kabul. So you really have to be very, very, very super careful. It’s not like the old days, now it costs a lot more money to be able to make these stories happen. So if you’re a freelancer you have to group in with people so you can share a place to stay or share the food and all that kind of stuff.

So what did you find when you got out there, two months after 9-11?

Well, you talk about going to Peshawar, which is one of the hotbeds. It’s the closest border crossing to Kabul and it’s same the road that comes all the way out from China and the same road that goes all the way to Iraq. And when I got to Peshawar I was really overwhelmed because, for one, there are loads of people all over the place. And two, (there are) bin Laden t-shirts everywhere, bin Laden posters everywhere; he’s the god. I couldn’t photograph him. We tried to, but we couldn’t. So we photographed (bin Laden) as a poster next to Madonna and Schwarzenegger in the market place.

Wow.

And everybody is really out on the streets. They’re burning the flags, they’re burning (pictures of) Bush.

Have you ever experienced that kind of anger? I mean you’ve spent so much time around gangs.

No, not like that. Not like that. I had some harrowing experiences in Pakistan, coming back.

Like what?

After we got back in from Kabul I had some time and I wanted to do some more work in the border region there because a lot of Afghan refugees were living in refugee camps. The government puts you through this process of paying all this money and getting all these permissions and you go and it’s a bunch of crap because they don’t allow you to get in. So we get all the way to the border and they give you a guard and they promise me I can photograph and now about 50 Pakistanis from the border town come up to my minivan and they want to turn it over. Oh, it got very crazy. I was just praying to God I was going to get through this thing. Americans don’t understand how madrassas build up and where they come from. You look at the region and it’s rock and more rock and desert and more rock. I didn’t see any green! I’m looking for the green, I’m looking for the trees because that kind of stuff does things to people. It calms you down. In Afghanistan you see kids playing on the old Russian tanks because there’s nothing for them to do.

That’s crazy.

So now you have a mullah that comes up and says, “OK we’re going to teach you the Koran” but in his version, or slightly distracted version from other versions in more peaceful countries. And there it is.

OK, when you get out there maybe it was worse than you thought. But you had to have gone out there knowing there was a chance you were going to die. How do you get past that?

You don’t think about it. You think about the work. If you think about that, you’ll be crippled. You won’t go anywhere. Yes, there is a chance you take.

There have been a lot of complaints about the American media not giving us the real story from over there. I find it interesting because I saw a documentary about (famed war photographer) James Nachtwey and one of the things he mentioned is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get serious work published. Do you also find it difficult to get this stuff published?

Oh, it’s very difficult. The heyday for photojournalism I think is past. The only thing that is somewhat keeping it alive is the web and books. It’s very difficult to get photojournalism published, absolutely. And I think it’s one of the most important ways to record how we are.

We started talking about the L.A. gangs and we talked about you going over to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Do you find yourself drawn to these violent lives, these people at conflict?

Not always. My photography for me has always been about, how do I exist? How do I let people know that I’m alive? And the second most important aspect of my photographing is us, because we all need to be seen and I believe photography is something fantastic. It is a tool that we can use to mirror ourselves, to document history. To be quite honest, as a photographer I am very much interested in our country right now. I mean I’m very interested in the world. I still would love to go back. There are other stories I’d like to do out there that I think are important. But I was out there working, you know, all around the world in these different countries and for me personally it was kind of like, what does this mean to me besides being a photojournalist? You know, photography is my life. It’s not just about photojournalism; it’s about how I eat, sleep and think and what’s important to me. I’m a storyteller and I’m interested in what’s happening here.

All images © 2008 Joseph Rodriguez.

Copyright 2008 Last Exit