Spotlight on: Max Mason-Hubers
“I would hope that from those pictures, people would at least get a sense of how bad the fire was and how bad a fire can be.”
Winner of the 2019 Nikon-Walkley Prize for Community/Regional Photography
Max Mason-Hubers, Newcastle Herald and The Sydney Morning Herald, “A year of ups and downs in Newcastle”
The Nikon-Walkley judges praised the skill, storytelling and consistency of editing in Max Mason-Hubers’ series of five images. Demonstrating the intimacy and trust a regional photographer can build with his community, Mason-Hubers’ body of work shows a range of subjects portrayed in different ways. From a news action shot to a stunning portrait, these images represent highlights from Mason-Hubers’ past twelve months in Newcastle.
We interviewed Mason-Hubers about his winning works, how he became a photographer, and how he gets his subjects to open up.
Can you talk about the works you submitted, either on their own, or as a whole?
There were two different parts to it. The bushfire work, that came from one fire which was burning near Newcastle. That was a really ferocious fire, really strong winds and moving incredibly quickly and bearing down on this little community of Salt Ash. A big part of why I included those pictures in my entry was that it’s the story of Australia at the moment, fire and drought. In terms of the structure and the environment, and the threat to human life, fire is our big thing. We don’t have wars, we don’t have famines, we just have fire. It terrifies me but it also fascinates me.
How did you become involved with this story?
It just came up in the normal course of the day. I popped my hand up to go because I have a bit of an interest in covering fires. The thing is, you absolutely never know when you’re going to get something really good from an assignment, or when you’re going to create your best picture of the year.
What did it take to get this story up?
I had to run for my life several times during that one (the bushfire story) because it was a really unpredictable fire. There were unexpected direction changes. One of the issues you have covering a fire is the really thick smoke pretty well kills off wifi reception, meaning that actually transmitting pictures back to the office is often impossible sometimes. And in these kinds of instances, it’s a very rapidly moving developing story. The pressure is always on to send pictures back throughout the day as you go, to maintain those updates and to keep the website alive.
There’s a real challenge in getting involved and into the action as much as possible, and also getting back out. Knowing when to pull out, leaving the car and laptop somewhere that’s not too far away to safety.
What impact did these images have?
There’s a picture in there of a boy carrying buckets of water. And those guys were quite humble. We were there photographing them saving their house. One of the kids actually said he lost his house in a previous fire there as well. That’s why they were so frantically saving their property. They were important enough to make it into the Herald. They’re just as important as anyone else.
In terms of impact, it’s hard to really quantify the impact of a picture. I would hope that from those pictures, people would at least get a sense of how bad the fire was and how bad a fire can be. And that would at least make people stop and think about their own preparation and what they’re going to do and spice up their plan.
The portraits in your body of work are very striking. Can you talk a little about how you approach different subjects — eg a child, and a young woman from a refugee background — to put them at ease and make sure their story comes across visually?
I guess I try to humanise them as much as possible. Refugees can be quite a loaded topic, and coming into something like that, my goal is to really let you see what’s on the outside and see what’s on the inside, their lived experience. It’s a bit aspirational maybe, but the goal is to try to give a sense of the actual person. And that comes through when you spend time with someone talking to them and they relax and maybe drop the facade they might have, and become comfortable in front of the camera.
Can you tell us about the shoot with the refugee woman?
We were putting together a series of profiles of new Australians for an Australia Day issue. And this was in the Newcastle Herald weekend edition. When I saw that job come up, I put my hand up and said I want this one. And then she turned out to be this incredibly lovely person.
I could see her family’s circumstances, they were doing it reasonably hard. They had very little and what they did have was not in good condition. I did my best not to show that so much, and to give her as much dignity as I could, to show the beautiful person that she was. She was an incredibly young woman. She spent most of her young life living in camps in Africa before eventually coming to Australia on a program where they were eventually resettled into Newcastle. She was at that point about to become a citizen, and she was so excited about that prospect.
What made you want to be a photographer and photojournalist?
The genesis story is that we were visiting family in Holland and my auntie gave me a camera when I was thirteen. And then after that we spent three months in Nepal, and we went hiking through the mountains there. It was just so utterly mind blowing to my thirteen-year-old mind. I was just like, I have to capture this. That was where my interest in photography started.
Photojournalism itself probably came later, more in my late teens. I saw a documentary about Trent Parke, who’s also a former Newcastle Herald photographer, and his wife Narelle (Autio), and that just completely changed my entire idea of what pictures were and what pictures do. I started paying attention to conflict photography and National Geographic magazines. I think I decided about age fifteen I wanted to be a National Geographic photographer. This morning I was sitting here having a coffee with mum and speaking about it’s kind of mind boggling.
What are you most proud of about the stories you’ve told? Does anything stick out for you?
Not overly. I think generally, I’m quite satisfied I did the best that was possible in each of these instances in the winning pictures. It’s just being proud of the fact that given the circumstances, the uphill battle, that I still managed to produce something this good in the time that I had.
What’s your message to Australians about why quality journalism needs their support?
Without it, the little people get forgotten and there’s a lot of big people there who are doing their best to pull the wool over people’s eyes and take advantage of them or get away with things. Without that, we’re open to exploitation and atrocities being let slip by.
I think community journalism in particular is under such a threat at the moment. When journalism disappears from a small town, there’s a vacuum of information and all that’s left is Chinese whispers and speculations on Facebook, and there’s a lack of critical examination.
What was the best thing about receiving this award?
It’s a validation. The other thing is, there are photographers I have always tried to emulate in my work, I’ve tried to analyse what they do and how they work, and try to incorporate that into my practice. For me it validates all that. I suddenly became somebody to these people. It feels like I’ve finally graduated, finally got over the final hurdle for what I do. I finally feel like I’m not just a fraud. It’s very easy to be insecure about your pictures and about what you’re doing. With photography, it’s just as much art as it is journalism.
I know some absolutely brilliant photographers, colleagues of mine, and sometimes they can feel so insecure about themselves. I fall into that as well. It just reaffirms that ok, no, you’re actually doing good here. Don’t lose hope. Don’t lose heart. It’s all for a purpose. You’re putting yourself out there a lot. It comes from within you. And you’re putting it out there in front of tens of thousands of people, sometimes hundreds of millions and it’s if you think about that too much, it can be quite daunting.
Anything else you’d like to add?
I’d like to say this just validates all the people who backed me through my career. There were some times when there were redundancies and I could very easily have lost my job and people went in to bat for me, and through that, I still have a job. It’s really good that those people have been justified in their faith in me. The people who hired me as a total unknown, with no experience and a pretty awful portfolio. It just showed that they were right in what they saw in me, that they spotted and nurtured me until this point.
Interviewer: Caroline Tung, 2019 Jacoby-Walkley Scholarship winner.
Max Mason-Hubers is currently in his ninth year working as a staff photographer at Newcastle Herald. He landed a cadetship at the Herald in 2011, after spending the previous two years of a journalism degree “mostly taking pictures instead of studying and telling everyone that he was a photographer”. Mason Hubers’ photographic works have been selected for the National Photographic Portrait Prize, Australian Life, Moran Contemporary, and Head On’s Portrait Prize and Landscape Prize.
Read the announcement of all the 2019 Nikon-Walkley Press Photography finalists and prize-winners here.
See our post with all the finalists’ and prize-winners’ hero images here.
Find out when the Nikon-Walkley Press Photography Exhibition will tour near you here.
The 2019 Nikon-Walkley Press Photo of the Year Prize is supported by Nikon Australia.
