Pro Talk Books: Mindful Photography
Paul Sanders
In his frank and moving book, Paul Sanders tells, in a devastatingly honest way, how his world fell apart during the period he was working as Picture Editor on The Times newspaper. He talks movingly about the intense pressures of a job at the heart of a busy national daily, and the demands made on he and his team as they dealt with the intense rivalry and ongoing pressure that comes with being first with the news.
For Paul a pivotal moment arrived in July 2008 when one of his photographers, Richard Mills, took his own life while on assignment for him in Zimbabwe. While knowing that he hadn’t been responsible for Richard’s death, one of his senior editors at the time told him ‘You’ve killed him,’ and that struck a chord and was the start of a chain of events, including having to hand out redundancies and a marriage break up. Leaving The Times towards the end of 2011, Paul eventually had a breakdown, and the mental anguish that followed included self-harm.
Eventually Paul made the agonising decision to kill himself, which included contemplating setting up a fatal cycling ‘accident’ to preserve his life insurance pay out, which was thwarted by chance when his mother called to beg him not to do anything stupid. A second attempt saw him head to Beachy Head where he was on the verge of jumping when he was approached by someone asking if he was ok. Breaking down in tears he stepped back, and from then on he started to receive the specialist help he needed.
Photography was part of the therapy that helped with his recovery, in the form of long exposure landscape images where the natural movement of water and clouds created an ethereal and soft-focus end result, and the photography of flowers, which helped him to open discussions about the state of his emotions and how he felt about who he was.
From that point on Paul developed a more mindful approach to his photography, slowing things down and removing pressure from his life. Now having made a new career as a successful fine art photographer he finds himself in the perfect position to offer support and advice to others who might have likewise experienced traumatic events in their lives, and Still is a book that is not just full of beautiful photography, but it’s also an exploration of the ways that those under stress can step back and learn to cope with the pressure that daily life can inflict.
