Original subtitles

[seagulls cawing]

-That's incredible.

My life has been a quest

to sort of relive boyhood experiences.

So what, have we been on the road like five and a half hours

or something like that?

-Oh, nearly seven with stops. -Seven hours with stops.

Yeah, right.

Photography has just been this search for magic,

this search for wonder.

And there's a masterpiece everywhere.

Do you see it?

-I think I do, just up there.

-Yeah, coming around the corner.

And...

-Hey! -Oh my God!

Oh my gosh.

It's gorgeous.

Yeah.

It's been a search for 40 years for me.

[camera shutter]

[camera shutter]

[Jody Quon] I would describe Dan Winters

as a kind of Renaissance Man.

[interviewee #1] There is no one niche.

He's had success in so many different fields.

[reporter] Dan Winters is widely recognized for

his unusual portraiture, his scientific photography,

illustrations, drawings, and photojournalistic stories.

[Dan Winters] Head over this way, stop. Very good.

Hold. Very good. Hold.

[bystander] Dan Winters is somebody who puts care

and love and attention to detail into every single image

that he creates.

[Todd James] He kind of has a way of adding his sort of

Dan drama to everything.

You can always spot Dan's pictures.

And yet, there's something surprising about them.

[interviewee #2] He takes things that interest him and he doesn't

just photograph them, but he creates art with them.

[Kath Winters] I don't know anybody who sees

the way Dan sees.

[♪ theme music plays]

[foghorn]

[Kath Winters] Do you want to walk down on the beach?

[Dan Winters] Sure.

[Kath Winters] Come look for shark's teeth.

Those are cool.

[Dan Winters] That's worthy of the front porch.

[Kath Winters] Possibly, hold on to it.

[Dan Winters] I'll hold on to it.

In 1970, I was eight years old

and my dad drove us to the beach in Oxnard.

I remember getting out of the car and there was

a massive ocean liner literally on its side, on the beach,

La Janelle.

I remember being afraid,

like it was this beached whale

that couldn't get back into the water and that's where

it was gonna die, and...

[bleep], man. I don't know why I can't talk about it.

[Kath Winters] That's okay.

[Dan Winters] 10 years ago or so I saw an article

in Cabinet Magazine

at Chittagong Shipyards.

It kind of took my breath away,

and that memory instantly came to me.

And all I thought about was, "I want to shoot there."

One of my goals is to make peace with that childhood experience.

[Kath Winters] So you want a producer, a translator, fixer.

-[Dan Winters] Mm-hmm. -[Kath Winters] Okay.

[Dan Winters] Here we go.

[bystander] Explosions and falling chunks of metal,

all made working in the yards especially deadly.

-Holy cow.

[bystander] Surprisingly, it also became a lot harder

for outsiders to gain access.

Alright, guys. So, we got turned away by

a couple more shipyards.

So we're going to a bridge now that sticks...

[Dan Winters] See that just gave me a lot of anxiety.

Well, I mean the idea of traveling all that way

and we don't get any access, you know,

would be the worst situation ever, so.

[Kath Winters] Right. We're just at the beginning of it,

so I can understand why you're saying it feels...

[Dan Winters] Well the other thing is I've been wanting to do this

for years, and now like I'm having to wrestle

with reality which, you know,

I don't like really wrestling with...

-Reality? -Yeah.

-He's been talking about this for

at least 15 years.

Gonna be okay, promise.

[Dan Winters] Mm-hmm.

-And once he gets attached, visually,

and he starts the wheels turning about what he thinks

he's gonna see, it's hard to get him off of it.

Okay, well we're gonna start reaching out about fixers

and access to Bangladesh after the launch.

[Dan Winters] Yeah.

[Todd James] There's a certain kind of obsessive curiosity

in his creative mind.

And the same thing that compels him to explore

whatever he's interested in deeply.

You know, we've all had our childlike obsessions,

and you know, he's, he's like living his.

[Dan Winters] I always had a fascination with ships

and different kinds of vessels.

I loved science fiction.

Star Trek was massive for me.

As a kid, I started building spaceships.

And then Star Wars came out,

the miniatures, they were so good,

and it really changed my life with regards to like,

what the possibilities are.

And I wanted to create worlds, you know,

I wanted to make places that people would

wonder where they were.

So initially photography for me was a tool

to take pictures of my models.

Growing up, we lived in a very, very small town

in Ventura County.

My dad was a welder, my mom was a school bus driver.

Most of my pursuits were outside of their understanding.

[Kath Winters] He would tell me he felt like he was

a round peg always trying to fit in a square hole.

[Mission Control] Astronauts report it feels good, T-25 seconds.

[Dan Winters] We subscribed to picture magazines,

and I would just pour over these things.

And I had followed the space program through Life Magazine.

[Mission Control] Launch control we've passed the 46-minute mark

in our content.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin in the middle seat...

[Dan Winters] In 1969 Apollo 11 launched,

we huddled around the TV set.

[Mission Control] Liftoff, we have a liftoff.

[Kath Winters] It offered so much promise, and of looking

far outside yourself, like getting out of your small town,

or your small-mindedness.

[Dan Winters] I remember my dad going in with our little

Brownie camera and firing off two frames with a flash,

and it washed out the screen so we got the pictures back

and all we had is two photographs of our TV set.

I can't tell you, I was so disappointed.

I realized that I wanted to be the person there actually

witnessing this thing, rather than the person that's

looking at it in the pages of a magazine.

So we'll set a 50R here.

And then one of the Canons over there,

I think it was an 85 on that camera.

[Kath Winters] I manage a lot of things for him.

Right now, he's on a six-year project

covering the NASA Artemis program.

And he's deeply involved in photographing

every aspect of that.

It's so fascinating to watch him sketch out

the trajectory of the shuttle.

[Dan Winters] Because I think it's important to kinda show

the scope of this project, and show the scope of the rocket.

Detailed shots are amazing and we're going to set a couple more.

[Kath Winters] What's going to happen and when the remote

cameras are going off, where it's going to be when?

And you can match those sketches up to the actual

photographs that he took.

I mean, I don't know how someone even figures that out.

And those are all things that he's done

since he was really young.

[Dan Winters] Kath, my wife, says, "You know, you basically

do the exact same thing you did when you were 12,"

which is totally true.

Get that other lens.

I think it'll probably need a longer lens, yeah.

I repeat experiences in my life, with the hope

that I can catch a glimmer of the magic that it once was.

And photographing is the residue of those experiences

I'm here today at Kennedy Space Center in Florida

for National Geographic.

We're about three miles away from the Artemis rocket

which is scheduled to take off tonight.

I feel like all of these vessels are in some way, living.

[Jody Quon] He finds beauty in how things are put together

and brings them to life.

[Todd James] He makes connections,

he makes associations.

You know, Dan has a neurodiversity that not all of us have.

[Dan Winters] There's a part of me that assigns

a human quality to machines and always has.

Beautiful.

[Kath Winters] And I don't wanna say that I think

he feels closer to inanimate objects than he does humans,

but in some way I think he does.

-More? -Yeah, a little more.

[Kath Winters] He is in another reality, kind of.

[Dan Winters] Whatcha doing?

[Kath Winters] Being with him, it's like you start to realize

things about the world that you would definitely

not be paying attention to.

[Dan Winters] How's it going, guys?

[Travis] Shooting the time-lapse.

-Cool. -Yeah, I'm excited.

[Kath Winters] Shuttle launches, they are a lot of

hurry up and wait.

[Travis] They began fueling like, a little while ago.

[Dan Winters] Okay good. Well, that's good.

[Kath Winters] I mean, there's so much at stake,

and there's so much pressure to capture it because

it's only going to happen that time.

How many cameras do you have over here, three?

How many over there by the clock?

-Three total over here.

That's the time-lapse that Eric's got going there.

I'd been drawing most of my life and it was

the primary way that I expressed my passion.

But it wasn't until I took Photo 1A in college

that I saw the potential of photography.

[Henri Cartier-Bresson] I started by painting.

And for me photography was a means of drawing

and that's all.

[Dan Winters] On day one, the instructor showed

Cartier-Bresson's Decisive Moment presentation.

[Henri Cartier-Bresson] It's seldom you make a...

great picture.

And you can't correct it.

If you have to correct it it's the next picture.

-And I just couldn't

believe how beautiful it was.

[Henri Cartier-Bresson] Life is very fluid, well um...

sometimes the pictures disappear and there's nothing you can do...

[Dan Winters] It changed my life.

I was in, that was it for me.

[Henri Cartier-Bresson] You can't tell the person,

"Oh, please smile again, do that gesture again."

Life is once.

Forever.

[Dan Winters] So after college, I got hired at

the Thousand OaksNews Chronicle.

It was the best job I ever had.

62 Volkswagen Bug, photojournalist vest,

two cameras hanging around my neck, $400 every two weeks.

It was just terri, but it was incredible.

It was so incredible.

But, I had aspirations of shooting for magazines.

After a couple years someone says,

"Okay, here's what you need to do,

you need to quit your job and move to New York."

And literally I said, "Okay."

And it was just that simple.

I had this really small room in Tribeca.

The dark room was a really sacred place for me,

and the only place for me to build a dark room

at the Loft was in my bedroom.

I remember distinctly waking up in the morning,

opening my eyes and I'm looking at

like developer, fixer, potassium feracyanide, reducer.

And, uh, my hair started to fall out then.

Living in this toxic sort of like conditions.

But I was in, you know, I was committed.

It was like not an option for me.

It was everything.

I'd been just shooting constantly.

Then I started going to magazines

and dropping my book off.

And I got two assignments from Metropolis

within the period of like an hour.

And I just remember how free I felt at that time.

But then half the time I was on the verge of like falling apart.

I hadn't done my taxes in years.

I had boxes and boxes of receipts.

I was really flying by the seat of my pants.

And then I met Kath.

[laughter]

I think of her definitely as like my most honest critic,

and my closest collaborator.

All right, here we go.

[Kath Winters] Here goes the clock.

[Dan Winters] Alright.

[Kath Winters] It's going. 10...

[cheering]

[Kath Winters] 8, 7, 6, 5, 4...

[Dan Winters] Here, engine start.

[Kath Winters] 3, 2, it's going, it's going.

[cheering]

Working with Dan,

even in the chaos of like a gigantic shoot

and pressure, pressure, pressure on him,

deep in there, there's this calm that he's keeping.

He's actually even more calm in those situations.

[Dan Winters] I don't think I send anything out the door

without her seeing it first.

I like this one.

[Kath Winters] Yes, that's beautiful.

[Dan Winters] And I'm excited to show her.

Boom, boom, boom, boom.

That's it right there.

Thanks for sharing that with me.

[Kath Winters] Always a pleasure.

[Dan Winters] I met her in 1990 in Hollywood.

[Kath Winters] I was working on a film in post-production,

and there was a photo shoot for the actors.

[Dan Winters] We started talking on the phone.

My version of it is like more romantic I think than hers,

we sort of established that neither of us

had significant others.

-He shows up at my house.

I'm sweeping the garage,

I can tell he is sort of very focused on me.

-Yeah, she was put together way too perfectly

to like be sweeping the garage.

So there was a little bit of, anyway.

We for six days were totally inseparable.

We hung out the whole time.

-And eight weeks later I let him move into

my house in California and my friends thought I was insane.

[Dan Winters] My entire move from New York to LA,

my entire world was six boxes.

It was, it was a mess.

[Kath Winters] He was 17 invoices behind.

He didn't have any money. I had to buy him a car.

He had no structure to what he did.

[Dan Winters] Her ship wasn't sinking at all.

It was very powerfully afloat, you know.

[Kath Winters] We are definitely yin-yang,

and it was kind of a perfect match.

And that's when I started helping him with photoshoots.

Things were fast and loose then, his work was coming like crazy,

he was full bore, full on, super exciting to be

around him at all times, a million things going on.

[chatter]

[flash bangs]

[Dan Winters] We had kind of a freewheeling relationship.

She would travel with me on shoots.

[Kath Winters] We took a trip to Thailand and Burma,

and he was like,

"Will you marry me, will you marry me?!"

and I was like, "I've known you for four months!

Oh my God!"

We decided that we would elope.

We went to Catalina Island.

We got married in a jail cell, and he did the photos.

And we've been together ever since.

32 years.

Hey Dan, we have to get on the call

with the fixer in Bangladesh.

[phone line ringing]

-[Riton Quiah] Hello? -[Dan Winters] Hi, Riton?

[Riton Quiah] Yes?

[Dan Winters] Yes. Hi, so, I can jump right in, um...

The project we're working on is on ship breaking

and I've read a lot about Chittagong Shipyard.

[Riton Quiah] Ok.

[Dan Winters] I'm primarily a portrait photographer,

so I'd like to do portraits of the workers

in the context of the yard with the ships in the shot.

Do you think it's, uh,

realistic that they would allow that?

[Riton Quiah] No.

[Dan Winters] Okay.

[laughter]

[Riton Quiah] I would like to share another thing.

There is a shipyard here in Dhaka,

that is a ship repairing yard.

[Dan Winters] Okay, so Dhaka probably has, what, dry docks,

and stuff like that?

[Riton Quiah] Yes, not like Chittagong.

But I know many workers who are there,

living very close to the shipyard.

[Dan Winters] Okay, Let's get a scout

as soon as humanly possible.

[Riton Quiah] Mhmm.

[Dan Winters] Alright, well listen, thank you so much.

I really appreciate it Riton.

[Riton Quiah] No no. You are most welcome.

[Dan Winters] Alright. Bye-bye.

[Riton Quiah] Bye.

-So okay so Chittagong is

-off the table completely. -[Kath Winters] Yeah.

[Dan Winters] He could not have shut that down quicker,

I don't think.

-I don't even think you finished your sentence.

[Dan Winters] No.

[Kath Winters] So the key is scouting photos.

-Mm-hmm. -Okay.

[Kath Winters] Is that all of them?

[Dan Winters] Mm-hmm.

Hey Dyl!

[Dylan Winters] Dad.

[Kath Winters] Hey Dyl, come over and look at these

pictures with us.

[Dylan Winters] Growing up, I associated this studio space

with the stress of work.

But, I think I appreciate it more now.

It's like a Museum of Self, where he can

just let his aesthetic run wild.

It's totally a reflection of him and his interests.

We will sometimes do shop projects together or do

father-son stuff here.

[Dan Winters] This is a ship going through the Panama Canal,

which is super awesome. It's a battleship.

I think it's a destroyer actually.

Look at that.

-Wow. -Isn't that rad?

[Dylan Winters] Great overhead shot.

So cool.

[Kath Winters] Oh wow, I love that you have these.

And then there's this.

[Dan Winters] La Jenelle, Oh my gosh, look at that.

[Kath Winters] Have you told Dylan that story?

[Dan Winters] My dad took us to Silver Strand beach in Oxnard.

And there was a 497-foot-long ocean liner

sitting on its side in the water, right at the beach.

I went for many years

thinking La Jenelle was like a ghost memory,

and then I read a book about the Santa Barbara Channel

and there was a chapter about it,

and then I found one photo.

[Dylan Winters] Wow.

When are you going to Bangladesh, is that still happening?

[Dan Winters] Yeah, right now we're waiting on scout photos.

[Dylan Winters] Oh I got you.

[Dan Winters] This is a good picture of us.

[Kath Winters] Look at this.

This like epitomizes Dad.

[Dylan Winters] Yeah that's insane.

[laughs] [Dan Winters] Yeah it's great.

So, I've realized how unphotographed my childhood was.

[Dylan Winters] I've realized how over-photographed mine was.

[Dan Winters] Yours is totally over-photographed.

Mine is super under-photographed.

-Dan has photographed Dylan obviously

from the minute he was born.

[Dan Winters] I asked the OBGYN if I could put some

strobes in the room so I could photograph.

And she said, "Yeah, sure you can."

So I kind of like lit the room.

-The doctor had to squeeze her way in there

to deliver the baby.

And so, you know, all I remember was seeing

the lights and the sticks and the camera set up.

But he took the most incredible photo of Dylan.

Right as they bundled him up.

So, you know, I guess that's what we have.

[laughter]

[Dan Winters] Back then, I was working so much.

So, we traveled the world with him.

[camera shutter]

Photographing was a way for us to spend time together.

[camera shutter]

He became my muse.

This is like a tour of your life.

Do you remember many of these?

[Dylan Winters] This, I remember. Really well.

[Dan Winters] Yeah, that's Tybee.

[Dylan Winters] Yeah, I was probably like 12.

[Dan Winters] Now I'm making a book of Dylan.

I've been shooting those photographs for 29 years.

This is the day that you started charging me.

[Dylan Winters] Yeah.

-$20 a roll. -20 bucks.

[Dan Winters] Which was very funny.

[Dylan Winters] This is awesome. [laughs]

[Dan Winters] Do you remember this? One of my favorites.

[Dylan Winters] With the Justin Bieber haircut.

[Dan Winters] The Justin Bieber, the swish.

I remember this one for me was like this really pivotal,

like Dylan's turning into a man photo.

What do you think of this like chronicle of your life?

-I think it's, it's pretty significant

in terms of like having this to look back on.

It's really powerful.

But also you think of bad memories too,

and so it's, I think there's like so many mixed emotions looking at it.

[Dan Winters] Mm-hmm.

[♪ slow, emotional music]

What's the matter?

-I don't know, it's just like...

Sometimes this sort of felt like...

Priority was like

I was an art project more than a kid.

[Dan Winters] Mm-hmm.

-It's just hard.

But it's cool to have images.

And also like,

makes me sad that I'm not smiling in any of them.

[Dan Winters] I definitely feel what you're saying about,

you know, you felt more like an art project

than a kid sometimes.

But kind of the only way I know how to express

my passion is photography,

so for me it was a way to spend time with you

and connect with you and stuff.

-Yeah.

I think the main thing is it'll just be cool to have this

to show my kids because it feels like my life milestones,

not just images.

[Dan Winters] Sorry it made you feel sad, Dyl.

[Dylan Winters] Thanks.

[Dan Winters] Hey Dylan! Dylan!

Where's the light?

-I think Dylan's childhood was very difficult

for a lot of reasons.

I mean a lot of it was just that, for Dan, it was the height

of his career and he was not there.

All he did was work.

And then, when Dylan was young,

Dan had a terrible bike accident.

It changed everything.

He broke his neck.

He was so close to being paralyzed.

They put him in ICU,

he got put in a Halo.

He came out and I just felt like something was different.

He would explode,

and I couldn't really understand why.

He ended up being put inpatient.

[Dan Winters] It was very One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,

you know, we stand in line and get your little cup of pills,

drink your water, show me inside your mouth.

Couldn't go off the property.

[Kath Winters] Dan was diagnosed Bipolar One.

I mean, there's the propensity for bipolar which runs

in families, and he definitely has that.

But it is usually some sort of trauma

that triggers an episode.

And so they said we wanna take a deeper look at what's

going on here, and they asked me if they could do a CAT scan.

And they did note some brain damage from the bike accident.

Traumatic brain injury.

So between that and the bipolar, they explained to us

how important it was that he not

spin out into full-blown manic episodes.

And I, it really scared me.

So, pretty much we decided I'm not gonna go to Bangladesh.

[Dan Winters] Yeah.

I mean, I'm a little bit dead in the water without you typically,

but I'm confident that, you know, I'll be fine.

[Kath Winters] He's not had a major episode in almost

eight years now, and we're in a much better place with it

than we've ever been.

-As long as I have my pills

sorted out beforehand.

[Kath Winters] And make sure Grant has pills

in multiple places.

-[Dan Winters] Sure, yeah. -[Kath Winters] And you feel like

-you'll be okay? -[Dan Winters] I'll be fine.

[Kath Winters] The diagnosis helped us to deal with it,

helped Dylan deal with it.

And we have much more of an understanding about

what he needs to do to make sure that

he just doesn't go off the deep end.

-I can ramp up into mania pretty quickly.

It looks like extreme OCD.

I'll start to fixate on numbers, and I kind of put value

and meaning into things that are ostensibly meaningless.

The funny thing about mania is that it actually

feels really good.

See things very vividly,

things start to become heightened,

almost to the point of like hallucinogenic.

It's incredible for a visual person.

[Kath Winters] He's on top of the world.

He's prolifically productive, he doesn't need to sleep,

he's firing on all cylinders.

He told me that it feels like if you can imagine a sphere,

that has a bunch of plugs and that's filled with water,

and then you pull all the plugs out at the same time,

and then there's just fluid rushing out of every plug,

like there's just nothing to contain you.

[cannon fire]

But he's also, you know, driving 100 miles an hour,

and when it's over he doesn't remember anything.

So then you're left with the experiences.

I think it's scarier for the people around

than the person it's happening to.

[Dan Winters] These are what Riton sent me,

the scout photos.

[Kath Winters] What is this?

[Dan Winters] Bipolar disorder,

it's kind of a lovable beast to a degree.

Yeah this looks good. I think he did a great scout.

[Kath Winters] So good. Did you notice one thing?

[Dan Winters] There's a part of it that I romanticize,

you know this idea of being this like, crazy artist.

But also it's really destructive to people around you.

[Kath Winters] Alright, I'm walking away.

[Dan Winters] Without her, I mean I shudder to think

what my life would be.

[Kath Winters] Alright.

[waves splashing]

[Dan Winters] We were waiting for visas for Bangladesh,

and in the meantime, I got an assignment

to do a shoot in Iceland.

And I did some research and found one specific ship

that's beached five hours from Reykjavik.

Kath will give me a day or two so I can go

make some pictures of it.

[Kath Winters] Hey, so let's just go over

real quick this week.

So you guys will leave Saturday morning.

You're going to go a few days early to Iceland,

find the shipwreck.

[Dan Winters] Yeah.

Do we know anything about the Bangladeshi visas?

Or do you have any idea what's going on with that?

[Kath Winters] So I know that they just have not

come through yet.

So you go to Iceland, do the two shoots,

by the time you come back,

I bet we'll have an answer.

[Dan Winters] Iceland adventure.

[Kath Winters] Yeah, I think it's gonna be a good one.

Okay.

[♪ slow, dramatic music]

[Dan Winters] Did I ever show you those photos

that I've done of Dylan over the years when he was growing up?

[Grant Flanagan] Yeah.

[Dan Winters] You know, I think when he was really young,

I was kind of embracing maybe a childhood

I wished I had to a degree.

[Grant Flanagan] Would you say that's your longest running individual project?

-Documenting your son? -[Dan Winters] Yeah. Yeah for sure.

The odd thing is I thought it would like, become a really

connected thing, but I realize now that it was kind of

a selfish thing on my part.

It's painful for him a little bit.

And I hope my love for Dylan really shows in those images.

[Grant Flanagan] Yeah.

[Dan Winters] You see it?

[Grant Flanagan] I think I do. Just up there.

[Dan Winters] Come on.

-Hey. -Oh my God.

Oh my gosh.

Hey Grant.

[Grant Flanagan] Yes sir.

[Dan Winters] I'm gonna need that zoom.

[camera shutter]

[Kath Winters] Dan does whatever he can to stay

in a place of awe and wonder.

[Grant Flanagan] Did you just come all this way

to stay down there?

[Dan Winters] Oh God.

[Kath Winters] It's a constant effort

to keep that child-like portal open.

[Dan Winters] We should go like 5.6, 1600, 30 seconds.

[Grant Flanagan] Okay. I'll, I'll start here and work my way around.

[Dan Winters] Ready?

[Grant Flanagan] Yep.

[Dan Winters] Okay, here we go. Open.

Yep, yep, good.

Uh, seven seconds left.

Stay off the bridge.

Let's see what we've got here.

Oh, wow. It's gorgeous.

Wow.

[Grant Flanagan] I could do like a pale green.

-Let's try it. -Cool.

-Ready? -Yep.

[Dan Winters] Okay, here we go. Open.

Yeah, it's gonna be better for sure.

Nice, that's enough.

This is pretty magical.

I'm really happy with how it turned out.

[phone ringing]

-Hey. -[Kath Winters] How is it?

[Dan Winters] We're in the middle of nowhere.

Like I haven't been in a long, long time.

[Kath Winters] Wow.

[Dan Winters] I texted you a picture of it, but I just was

thinking about you 'cause it's a pretty magical place.

[Kath Winters] Oh, thank you.

Wow, I can't wait to see what you sent me.

[Dan Winters] Yeah, it's pretty cool.

All right. Well, I love you very much.

I wish you were here.

[Kath Winters] I love you, sweetie.

-[Dan Winters] Okay. Bye, bye. -[Kath Winters] Ok, love you. Bye.

[Dan Winters] Love you. Bye.

[Kath Winters] When you work with someone like Dan,

when you spend time with someone like Dan,

when you're married to someone like Dan like I am,

what he is doing is so all-encompassing.

But because of that, I think now I am

present in a different way.

One time, Dan was swimming in this part of Switzerland.

And I was like looking at him, and I just could not believe

what I was seeing.

You know, his head was really low in the water.

The landscape behind him was just insane.

And so I started taking pictures of him.

And the picture was incredible that, accidentally,

that I ended up taking.

And uh, I can tell you that I wouldn't have--

I wouldn't even have seen in the way

that I saw it if I wasn't with him.

But, you know, it's not, it's not like it's easy.

Honey. We gotta go.

Dan, I'm sure if you asked him what medications is he on,

he could definitely not give you a complete list.

-You're the best. -Thank you.

So I fill the prescriptions, and we've had some mishaps.

Very important shoots where Dan takes the night pills

in the morning and then is trying to jam his finger

down his throat to throw up,

and then he's asleep in the back of the car.

Lots of coffee, walking him around.

That's the place in Bangladesh.

[Dan Winters] Mm-hmm.

-Our son always says, "Mom, you can't,

nothing can happen to you

because I can't take care of Dad."

[Dan Winters] I think my relationship with Kath has

grown through

mutual respect for one another,

but also through like trauma that I've put her through.

[Kath Winters] There have definitely been multiple times

when I was like, I don't want to do this anymore.

I thought, you, no one's making you stay here.

You're making a choice to be here.

And I swear once I really understood that,

it just changed my life, you know.

He's just being who he is.

So I just accept him the way he is.

So we got the visas,

and we have a window between two other jobs.

-Alright, love you. -I love you.

So now Dan is gonna go to Bangladesh.

Bye.

[honking]

[Dan Winters] The idea initially was to photograph

shipbuilding and ship repair,

but a lot of time there's an expectation of one story,

and when you leave with a totally different story.

-So today we are going to Old Dhaka.

[Dan Winters] Riton, the fixer that we were speaking to about

Bangladesh brought up Dhaka shipyards to us.

Honestly it's about the workers,

that's all I ever wanted to shoot.

[Riton Quiah] Yes.

[Dan Winters] You know I mean, obviously in Chittagong,

I would have shot, like, the giant ships being dismantled,

etcetera, but, um, I was really interested more

in the human part.

-Yes. -You know.

So I'm very happy we're, we're going here.

-Yeah. -Very happy.

So are these guys... This is their shop?

[Riton Quiah] Yes.

[Dan Winters] How do you say hello?

[Riton Quiah] Oh! In Bali, you can say hello or as-salamu alaykum.

[Dan Winters] As-salamu alaykum.

[Riton Quiah] Yes.

[Dan Winters] Look at this compass, very cool.

Oh my God. Look at that!

[Riton Quiah] The, the defend shops there.

-Look at the anchors. -Yes. Yes.

[Dan Winters] Wow.

[Riton Quiah] I'll show you, there are big, big anchors.

[buzzing]

[sparking]

[grinding]

[Dan Winters] More anchors. Amazing.

This has got to be stuff from Chittagong.

[Riton Quiah] Yes definitely.

[grinding]

-Yeah I mean it's an amazing place.

Totally amazing.

All of those little shops, like doing portraits of people

in the shops.

Amazing.

There are so many people that converge on one ship.

In a 24-hour period,

they are almost ready to put back in the water.

Okay cool.

Okay, now we need to clear everything.

So sorry. Sorry.

[Riton Quiah] Sir, you have to move away.

Sorry I am giving you trouble.

Thank you. Thank you.

[Dan Winters] Real quiet face. No smile. Just real quiet face.

[Riton Quiah] Oh. Stay quiet. Don't laugh.

[Dan Winters] Beautiful here we go.

Beautiful. Good.

-I think I've got it. -Copy that.

[Riton Quiah] He took your picture.

Here, give me the bamboo. You're with that bamboo the whole day.

[laughter].

[Riton Quiah] Go look at your picture.

[worker] Oh bro!

I'm looking at myself.

[chatter]

[Dan Winters] Thank you, thank you.

[chatter]

[Dan Winters] Over the course of my career workers have been

the focus for me many times.

[Riton Quiah] He cannot give a long time.

[Dan Winters] Okay, how about three minutes?

[Riton Quiah] Okay.

[Riton Quiah] Three minutes.

[Dan Winters] Just like that. Yeah. Perfect.

Okay, ready?

One of the reasons I'm interested in laborers is

because my dad was a laborer, he was a welder.

My grandfather was a millwright, and later on,

he built bridges.

[camera shutter]

Oh he's amazing.

Can he, can he get up on that chain and squat down?

[Riton Quiah] This... This... Can you stand on this chain?

[Dan Winters] There are a lot of trades that aren't visible.

Get it from the other side.

I do have a lot of respect for those people that, you know,

are kind of not heralded in our society at all.

[camera shutter]

[camera shutter]

[camera shutter]

[Grant Flanagan] There's also that one there.

[Dan Winters] Oh my God!

I didn't even see that.

[camera shutter]

[Kath Winters] So often, he gets asked to photograph

people who are like, they're at the top of their game

whoever they are, you know,

politicians and athletes and actors.

And they have access to anything and everything

they need and want in the world.

[chatter]

[Kath Winters] So when he does photograph the people who have

a lot less acknowledgment or respect or regard,

[camera shutter]

he wants to make portraits, I think, of them

that have as much dignity and iconic beauty to them

as when he photographs people on the other side of it.

[Dan Winters] Yeah pull that stuff in the back,

so I don't see it, so I just see rope.

There we go. Okay, here we go.

[Riton Quiah] Come here a little.

[Dan Winters] This is so beautiful I can't even tell you.

[Grant Flanagan] Looks great. The cords...

well above his head.

[Dan Winters] Yeah.

[camera shutter]

[camera shutter]

Thank you, thank you very much.

I think the story with the shipyards is kind of

a photo essay of the people that occupy this place.

Good to see you,

can you just tell him I'm very grateful for his help.

[Riton Quiah] So you helped us...

We're very grateful. Thank you.

[bystander] You have come from a long way.

You have come from one country to another. This is our duty.

[Riton Quiah] So it was my duty because you have come

from another country.

So it was kind of my duty to help you

with something in that way.

[Dan Winters] Thank you. Tell him thank you.

[Dan Winters] Thank you.

[Dan Winters] It's a different experience for me to see

someone through a camera then it is just fluidly

existing with them.

The one place I actually feel like I belong

and I feel like I know what I'm doing is when I'm shooting.

Like I struggle with other aspects of life,

but when I'm shooting, I'm in my element.

Oh wow, I didn't even recognize him.

That's what I love about photographing portraits.

[Dan Winters] Thank you.

But you know its ability to conjure fragments

from your own story.

[bystander] Thank you.

-He's beautiful, I love him.

While I focused mainly on the people that worked in the yards,

I think the Bangladesh trip

was tied to some kind of closure on La Janelle.

This place is amazing.

I don't think I'd want to be anywhere else now.

You know, the idea of these big ships sitting on the shore

with only earth under them, you know, out of the water.

I like the idea that the ships were kind of on their last leg,

and they're being brought here to give them a new life.

If I think about the time I was eight, like, looking at

La Jenelle on the beach at Oxnard.

You know, I walked up to it and I stood there

and stared at it as though I were the camera.

It really ignited a desire in me to make imagery,

and the path has far exceeded what I ever

could have imagined my life to be.

But also, there were times I really put so much into it,

that I kind of ignored other parts of my life.

Especially in Dylan's life certainly.

I had this one really interesting experience with Dylan.

When he was a kid, we went to the hardware store.

And typically when he and I would be in public,

we'd hold hands.

And we started walking and I kind of drifted my hand out

and then I just heard,

"I don't want to hold hands anymore."

And I sat with it for a minute and I said,

"Can we just hold hands one more time?"

And he said, "Okay."

And we walked across the parking lot

and that was the last time.

It was really powerful for me because I realized like,

"Oh, I have a young son, and I'm missing the bus."

[Dylan Winters] It's so cool.

[Dan Winters] To some degree I feel like I'm making up

for lost time with him.

[Dylan Winters] The scale of this place is just insane.

[Dan Winters] It's just unbelievable.

I'm proud to say that I'm 60 years old

and I have a 29-year-old son that I talk to three times a day.

So glad you came, Dyl. You happy,

-glad you came? -[Dylan Winters] Check this out.

-Hm? -Check this out.

[laughs]

I think it's just dark.

[Dan Winters] What's your exposure right now?

[camera shutter]

[Kath Winters] Now, they're very close.

It took a long time.

And I would say that,

our son knows that we are both there for him.

[Dan Winters] I think that should do.

-It's cool, huh? -It's really cool.

[Dan Winters] The real important activity in my opinion

is not the razzle-dazzle adventure.

-You comin' Dyl? -Yeah.

[Dan Winters] It's life.

[Kath Winters] Dan's shone his light for many, many, many

years on his work.

[fireworks popping]

And he still does.

[fireworks popping]

He just has a deeper sense of what really matters

[fireworks popping]

and a much more graceful way of dealing with all of it now.

[fireworks popping]

And now I feel like he shines his light on us.

[fireworks whistling]

[fireworks popping]

[laughter]

[fireworks popping]

[Dan Winters] Hey Dylan! Where's the light?

[fireworks popping]

[♪ music plays through credits]

Captioned by Cotter Media Group.