Ami Vitale: evaluation

Transcript context

…You entered year nine. It must be very tough. Well, in year nine, no, I was broken. Honestly, I didn’t know what to do in year nine. I was very depressed and didn’t know whether I would carry on. Many times, I thought about quitting. In year nine, I had examples when I realized the power of what we do that stopped me from quitting. I realized it was in those moments when you want to quit that you never give up because what we do is actually very powerful. I had examples of seeing the fact that I always chose to go to tell stories that not a lot of journalists were covering. I realized that sometimes it was getting those images back into the international dialogue that was important, and that’s when I needed to stay. In year nine, you didn’t want to know me. I was really depressed and not in a good place. Then year 10, that’s when I really understood that I needed to take a break and step away from covering the horrors of the world because I was not able to think clearly. Actually, that is how so many of my colleagues end up getting killed, because you don’t know when to stop and take a break, because you need to be 100 percent present and clear about what’s happening in front of you. If you’re so broken, you can’t do that. So, in year 10, I took a break. In that break, a conservation organization approached me and asked me to do work on talking about forests and how important they are. That’s also when I began my story on the northern white rhinos. That was the moment I began to understand that connection to the natural world, and I needed to also tell the stories about the natural world and how connected they are to all of these conflicts. I believe you started your career photographing businesspeople. Was that fun?…

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