AT A GLANCE
- Known for
- Pictures of a sinking Haitian migrant boat, his Caracas book Capitolio, and the family trilogy Son, Pia and Marion
- Works in
- Mostly color; black and white in some earlier work, such as Caracas
- Camera
- Digital cameras; image files from Magnum show a Canon EOS 5D (2007) and a Sony RX1R II (2016)
- Also
- Magnum Photos member from 2005 to 2023; Photographer in Residence at New York Magazine, 2011 to 2014; also works as a filmmaker
- Start with
- Son (Kehrer, 2013)
- Links
Christopher Anderson (born 1970) is a photographer and filmmaker, born in Kelowna, Canada, and raised in West Texas. He first became known for his work in conflict zones and for his pictures of Haitian migrants on a boat that sank at sea. Since the birth of his son in 2008, his main subject has been his own family, in the books Son, Pia and Marion.
The story
Early in his career, Christopher Anderson was on assignment for The New York Times Magazine. He was on a hand-made wooden boat called the Believe in God, with 44 Haitian migrants trying to sail to America. In the middle of the Caribbean, the boat began to sink. “We were literally saying goodbye to each other,” he remembered. “And I made photographs. Reflexively, I made photographs.”
A coast guard patrol found the boat and saved the passengers. The pictures won the Robert Capa Gold Medal. But a question stayed with him. Why make photographs that he thought no one would ever see? His answer was simple. “I was trying to explain the world to myself.”
For the next years he kept working in war zones. After 9/11 he covered Afghanistan. In 2003 he followed the first company of American soldiers into Baghdad. He photographed in Gaza, Lebanon and Venezuela, and in 2005 he joined Magnum Photos.
Then, in 2008, his son Atlas was born. The family lived in a loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, full of sunlight and full of artists. That year he made his last trip to a war zone. At the same time, his father was diagnosed with lung cancer. Anderson had always kept family pictures apart from his “work”. Now he began to photograph his son, the way any new parent would. About two years in, he understood what these pictures were. “Everything I had been doing up until this point I had been doing to prepare me to make these pictures now,” he said.
The pictures became three books: Son, about Atlas, Pia, about his daughter, and Marion, about his wife. They are full of small daily moments, like sleeping, swimming or brushing teeth. In Barcelona in 2016, he photographed Pia playing with a red balloon. “For me, spontaneity is the central fuel in these images,” he says.
On the sinking boat, he made pictures only to understand what was happening to him. Years later, he saw that this had always been the point. Only the subject had to come closer. “I was coming to understand that the only thing I really had something to say about was my own life and what was immediately around me.”
The work
- 1970Born in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada; grows up in West Texas
- 2000Wins the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his pictures of the Haitian boat journey
- 2003Follows the first American soldiers into Baghdad; joins the VII agency
- 2005Joins Magnum Photos
- 2008His son Atlas is born; makes his last trip to a war zone
- 2009Publishes Capitolio, about Caracas
- 2011Becomes Photographer in Residence at New York Magazine
- 2013Publishes Son
- 2026Publishes Index, eleven volumes from across his career
Lessons
Look close to home. His family pictures were not his “work” at first. Then he saw that they were the core of it.
Photograph a feeling. He stopped trying to tell a story or report facts. He says he was “literally communicating how I felt.”
Know yourself. His own tip: until you know yourself, you are trying to photograph like someone else.
Try this: for one week, keep a camera ready at home. Photograph only small daily rituals, like breakfast, sleep or getting ready. At the end, keep the frames that show how you felt, not the ones that look impressive.
Gear
Anderson rarely talks about his equipment in the interviews we found. What we know comes from the data in image files published by Magnum Photos.
Digital SLR camera: the Magnum file of Boys playing in a slum overlooking Caracas (2007) was made with a Canon EOS 5D.
Compact full-frame camera: the Magnum file of a 2016 picture of his wife Marion in Brooklyn was made with a Sony RX1R II, a small camera with a fixed 35mm lens.
Books
Son (Kehrer, 2013). His first book about family, made after the birth of his son Atlas in 2008, mostly in the family loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It is a hardcover of 96 pages with 44 color pictures. At the same time as his son’s birth, his father was diagnosed with lung cancer, so the book is about new life and the passing of life. Anderson calls the pictures “a record of love and a reflection on the seasonal nature of life.” It won the German Photo Book Award in 2014. The first edition is out of print, but Stanley/Barker later published a new edition with a second chapter of 80 pages and 40 pictures never seen before. Start here.
Capitolio (RM, 2009). A 132-page hardcover about Caracas, Venezuela, in the years of Hugo Chávez. Anderson began photographing there in 2004. He treats the whole city as a capitol building: the decaying modernist towers are its walls, and the violent streets are its corridors. Magnum compares it to William Klein’s New York and Robert Frank’s The Americans. It was named one of the best photobooks of 2010 at the Kassel festival, and in 2011 it became an app for iPhone and iPad. For readers who like dark, cinematic city books.
Approximate Joy (Stanley/Barker, 2018). Pictures of people in contemporary China, made very close to their faces, lit by the artificial light of the city. All context is cut away. The book has 120 pages and 68 pictures, with design by Eike König and Colophon Foundry, and the first edition was followed by a second in the same year. Anderson says it may look like a book about “the other”, but it is really about his own experience of a place. For readers interested in close, intense color portraits.
Marion (Stanley/Barker, 2022). The last book of his family trilogy, after Son and Pia, about his wife Marion over the years of their life together. It is a 160-page cloth-bound book. The idea goes back to his friend, the photographer Tim Hetherington, who saw one of his pictures of Marion and said it was about the passing of time. “The photographs are expressions of love…a record of that expression,” Anderson says. For anyone who photographs the people they love.
Christopher Anderson's Pia is a wonderful example of transforming and evolving the photos of your loved ones into something more than the generic family portraits. It is a gem I have recently discovered, and it has continued to inspire me ever since.