All language subtitles for 2. 1972–1993

So I got into photography when I was very young,

the age of six, I was apparently telling my parents

that I wanted to be a photographer.

I remember a distant uncle who I only met once in my life

came to our house and he had like,

he had this massive Polaroid camera

that had sort of some extra flash you could put on it.

I've never seen such a flash Polaroid camera in my life.

And I remember just being in love

with these pictures that would come out

and seeing the pictures appeared for your eyes.

He also had some big SLR camera, again, big flash, big lens.

And he had these cameras all around his torso

and I just thought it was the coolest thing.

So it was a mixture of the magic

of seeing the images and the kit.

I was also, we grew up reasonably poor.

So there was something in this sort of aspiration

of this equipment that I absolutely loved.

Anyway, he left, he went back to Canada where he lives

and a few weeks later, he sends me this really crappy

old Instamatic camera that was already quite beaten up

and had little bits missing from it.

But it worked, with a note saying, you know, have a go.

He's just a really encouraging, sweet man basically.

So I took this camera and as you know

often as we could afford film for it, I shot pictures.

And so that interest stuck with me.

I was dyslexic as a kid, and at this age

I didn't know it, but as a result,

I wasn't really very good at anything at school

because I was terrible at reading and terrible at writing,

which sort of puts you at a disadvantage

of all sorts of other things obviously.

And I wasn't the sportiest kid either.

So photography for me was something

that I had a bit of, people said I did quite well

and I sort of really hooked onto that.

And my parents really hooked onto that for me

and really encouraged me.

I got my first good camera when I was about nine

or 10 years old.

My grandfather had bought me

14 premium bonds when I was born.

And my numbers came in, and I won 100 quid

and I spent 100 quid on a new Olympus OM-2N camera

with a 50 mil lens.

So I had a camera.

So we used to go to Switzerland

with my dad on summer holidays.

He worked for a charity and would produce plays

every year for this charity.

And there was a old boy there called a Arthur Strong,

who in his past life had been a photographer

with Associated Press,

and he'd photographed Hitler meeting Mussolini

in World War II.

So he was one of these proper old school

sort of photo journalists.

And he did a very wonderful, kind thing for me.

So he basically said, do you want to come

and work with me on covering the conference?

And I was sort of very excited and said yes.

And he gave me the keys to the film cabinet

and said, right, you can shoot

as much film here as you want.

He taught me how to develop film, how to print.

And every day he'd give me an assignment.

So I would go off and photograph this conference

or photograph rehearsals for this play or whatever it was.

But there was a real work ethic, you would do the shoot.

You'd come back, you'd develop your film.

You'd make your contact sheets.

You'd do your edit, you'd print them out.

So that every morning the people attending

the conference would walk through this hallway

and yesterday's photos would all be printed out

under these sort of glass sheets on these tables.

And so I sort of got this sort of firsthand experience

which is absolutely invaluable

and definitely learnt things

that I carry with me today, I am dyslexic.

And as a kid always believed I was stupid

because I was always in the sort of,

at the bottom of the bottom class of my school.

And I really enjoyed school,

but I just felt myself to be incredibly unacademic.

And as a result, had quite low esteem,

believed that I wasn't very intelligent.

And photography was this one thing

that I was sort of able to shine at.

And I always think when someone's good at everything,

they don't really know what to completely focus on.

I had no other choice in my life.

You know, I literally age six,

I knew I wanted to be a photographer.

And by the age of 12, I already realized

that I wasn't gonna be much else.

So I was able to put all my energy

into being a photographer.

So anyway, I sort of go through school.

I eventually get kicked out of school because I literally,

all I was doing was taking pictures

and I wasn't studying photography, so it was a bit tricky.

My brother, who's an artist,

one half of the art duo Ollie and Susie.

Ollie and Susie were at St. Martin's College.

And I was like 16, 17, had been kicked outta school

and I moved up to town to live with my brother

and my brother did a deal with the head

of photography at St. Martin's,

which was that I would get some student pass

that meant I could get access to the college.

So it was like, it was a pass to use their darkrooms.

And this teacher would just let me sit in

on whatever class he was giving.

So one day I'd be with a post-graduate,

one day I'd be with the foundation course.

One day I'd be a degree course.

And I was able to sit in, I was able to sit in on shoots.

I was able to learn more stuff in the darkroom.

So I went to college day without really being on a course.

I then did a foundation course

at the London College of Printing

but I didn't really have the qualifications to do a degree.

And eventually I was sort of offered a degree

but was told it wouldn't be the right thing for me,

'cause I was very clear, I wanted to be a photo journalist.

I read a very important book for me.

I read Don McCullin's book, "Unreasonable Behavior"

and decided that I wanted to be a war photographer.

I had this mad experience where I went with my brother

to see Don McCullin talk at the ICA in London.

And at the end of the talk

I went up to him and said, hi, I'm Greg Williams.

I wanted to talk to you 'cause I'm going to Burma

to photograph the war and I wanted your advice.

And he literally said, don't go, you will die.

And then he talked to my brother and he said,

you're his brother, right?

Yeah, handcuff him to a radio.

You don't let him go, he's gonna die.

What you know about war, you're gonna die

which was pretty grim, considering I genuinely

decided I was gonna go.

And of course, Don McCullin was completely right.

And that is the exact advice I would give

to any young photographer

asking me whether they should go to war.

Absolutely you shouldn't.

I nearly died on many occasions

and definitely had my head messed up by it

for a number of years when I got back.

And I do not recommend that,

I did go, I went with a friend

we flew to Thailand and got smuggled into Burma

and we spent a week living with gorillas,

photographing the war there.

I came back from there and went off to Southern Africa

to document the drought that was going on there.

And I worked for a number of different charities.

Worked for CAFOD, worked for Christian Aid,

worked for Oxfam,

and worked for a magazine called Der Spiegel,

and shot a bunch of different stuff and came home.

And one of the pictures won me

the Ilford Young Photographer of the Year,

and this was 1992.

So I now had an agent and I was sort of starting

to semi-regularly work for magazines,

earning an absolute pittance

and certainly all of the foreign new stuff I ever did,

I doubt I ever made a profit on it.

I probably broke even or lost money

the whole way through it.

I was a brilliant borrower,

I was amazing at borrowing money.