Meeting The Girl From My Candid
A Conversation Between an Artist and his Muse.
What happens when a photographer and the girl in his candid photo meet up at a coffee shop to talk politics? That’s exactly what Sarah Kadous was thinking when she reached out to John Peters, the photographer behind a photo of herself featured in Vice. Below, dive into their conversation as they explore exactly how Sarah came across the photo, their experiences within activism and protests (as photographer and protestor), and ultimately, how they believe we can mend American society.
BACKGROUND
JFP: I'm from the New York City area and I moved out here (San Diego) six year ago. In New York, I was working as a photo editor for a music magazine called Fader. I was doing that for about five years, and eventually I just got to a point where I was like – alright, I’m reading to move on and become a freelancer. Hurricane Sandy was one of the first stories I covered on my own, and one of the reasons I came out here, so since then I’ve kind of just been floating around Southern California.
On to the article itself… a woman from VICE just reached out to me and asked for an interview. I was a little apprehensive because, well – I remember Vice from when I was in my early 20s and I always thought they were a little crazy of a magazine, but I do respect the photography. And she turned out to be a super good writer and really good person, so I went ahead with it.
The images from the article are all from different points in time. I've covered March for Our Lives, a Trump rally in Phoenix, and then the airport protests, of course - the Muslim ban protests. I feel – as a photographer - I'm most interested in documentary photography and art, so I try to bring those two things together when trying to visualize what's happening in America today.
SKAD: So before we get into the specific picture of me - I’m curious to learn some basics about you. How do you feel about today's political climate and how does that influence your work? How does today’s administration affect you?
JFP: It's kind of enraging, honestly. I lived through the Bush years, you know, and I was living in New York for September 11. So, experiencing all that, and the Iraq war and stuff, firsthand, shaped me. To keep it simple, I think it's totally ridiculous that Donald Trump is president. I'm from New York, and I think a lot of people from there understand him, and know that he's just a con artist, a showman, and that's what he does. In a way, it almost makes sense that America had this monstrosity become their leader because our culture is so lost and obsessed with entertainment and celebrities. It’s so perverse at this point, and we’re completely unanchored to anything deeper.
SKAD: We are indeed a very extremist culture- we move from one side of the pendulum to the next because we are either right wing conservatives or left wing liberals and have virtually divided the nation into two groups: Republicans and Democrats. I think that's what Trump is a product of - a progressively worsening culture of severe partisanship.
ON THE NIGHT OF
SKAD: How do you feel about that picture you took of me at the airport? What was going through your mind when you took it?
JFP: Well, I was watching the news, and I was seeing the protests happening in New York, and then sort of all over the US, and I was like “woah, this is really intense, what is happening?”, and then I realised there must be one happening in San Diego. Sure enough, there was, so I had my girlfriend drop me off. The moment I got out of the car, it was just – amazing. I mean, just remember how many people there were. There was something so cool about how the police were just telling people to keep off the street, but not stopping them from staying and doing their thing. Back in New York, it wouldn’t be like that. I started moving along with what was happening and trying to photograph scenes, and then at some point we began moving with a group of people into the airport. We started heading inside the terminal by the baggage claim areas and somewhere between all that I took that photo of you.
A lot of times when you're in the moment like that, it's kind of a blur. So I'm trying different angles, trying to take interesting photographs, and I remember getting up close to you and some other people and that was when it was like… I mean, I try to remain level headed when I'm shooting in any scenario, but it was a very profound, impactful moment I inserted myself into. I didn’t know what type of photographs I had until after I went through them, but that photo really stuck out for me.
SKAD: Why?
JFP: Why? The passion. I mean - there's a few things. It’s the slice of the proestors sign that just says “no ban!”, your image with the passion you’re projecting, the TSA agent behind us, the lighting – the elements just came together to create an image that I think symbolises the moment perfectly. Not just in San Diego, but everywhere.
SKAD: Wow. Well I want to give some background from my side to the readers. It was a school night, I believe, and I was just doing homework and flipping through the news. My mom came home and I was like “listen, I need to go to this protest”. That’s just me - it could be 2am and if I get a call about some people rallying in Downtown for something I believe in I will be there. It really bugs me when I’m not. My mom was like, “Sarah, it's a school night, you have stuff to do, are you sure this is a good idea?” and I pretty much said, “I love you, and I'm going to go. I just need a ride.”
We got ready in about three minutes and hopped into the car. I just remember grabbing construction paper and a sharpie and writing a sign out in the car – that’s why it’s super messy in the photo. We got there, and the turn out was so huge that there was no parking, so Mum just dropped me off and drove around looking for a spot, and found me later on.
It was so interesting, because as a Muslim, I found so many members of my community there - people I didn't expect to show up. My violin teacher doesn’t identify as a practicing Muslim, but as an Iranian immigrant she couldn't have her parents come to her wedding. Really, they couldn’t come and it was awful. Personally, I care about so many different political topics, but this one really hit home because everyone around me was facing its real repercussions.
Anyway, we got there and at some point they lead us into the airport and I bet that's where you took the picture. And I think we're trying to go up the stairs at that moment to reach more levels of the airport, but we were being blocked by TSA. Initially, we first went inside the airport because we’d heard news that they were detaining a couple of Iranian people inside. We began shouting “TSA! SET THEM FREE!”. I don't know, it was super scary knowing that people were stuck in there but at some point we had to leave because, well, it's an airport.
Once we were outside, it got a little rowdy. There were almost acts of civil disobedience, I’d say, in the protest. People were standing in the middle of the street where the cars were driving, or challenging and getting up in their faces. Eventually, the protesting group kind of split because one half was – I don't want to use the word aggressive, but, more forceful than the other half. One of the girls was saying stuff about how we needed to challenge the authority, and preaching about giving them a hard time while repeatedly saying “the system has failed brown and black folks”, which got the crowd pretty fired up. On the other end, another girl was trying to calm the crowd down, saying things like “we can't carry this movement unless we do it with love and peace”. I kind of fluctuated between both sides, caught in the middle of it all. I do believe the system is unjust and change is necessary and sometimes toughening up gets the job done, but I’m also convinced that a movement must maintain its credibility to live on, and that we can only resort to civil disobedience when it’s absolutely necessary.
ON THE PHOTO
SKAD: How I discovered the picture is kind of strange. My dad and I exchange news articles nearly every day; he’ll send me a couple and I’ll send him a couple and then we sort of discuss them at the end of the day. So, one day he sent me a text that said “Check this out and look closely at the pictures”, or something like that, with the link to your Vice article. I looked through them and read through everything and I was thinking to myself “wow, these are so cool. This photo is brilliant. This is so raw,” and I came across one and kind of just did a double take. I scrolled back and was like “Oh, that’s my face”. It was crazy. And then a couple of days later, Snapchat had it on their Vice story and a tonne of people were sending it to me there. I had never seen myself from the outside in action and my initial reaction was, “I look scary!”.
JFP: Nah, you don’t look scary. You look powerful.
SKAD: Haha, perhaps. It was so surreal.
JFP: That's really interesting. I mean, I'd never had that happen before, someone I’d taken a picture of reaching out to me. I have a friend who always says that once you put your images out into the world, you never know what will happen. They’ll continue floating through cyberspace and you don’t know how they’ll affect people. For me, the main purpose of being a photographer is so you can create images that hopefully bridge the gap between different people. I don't think photographs have answers or solve problems, but they are a completely different dynamic that can get us to interact.
ON ACTIVISM
JFP: How did you get into activism?
SKAD: Ah, where do I start! So, I was born and raised here but my parents migrated from Egypt for college. The whole way I grew up was just very open with my parents, and we always discussed everything. No topics were ever off limits and we pretty much had some sort of political/social debate or conversation on a weekly basis. Being allowed to think so freely really shaped the way I think, but also made me super comfortable talking about my opinions in public. Actually getting into the political/social activism atmosphere is kind of just a build up of networks over time. It started off with me going to conferences here and there, attending leadership programs, and visiting the Capitol to talk to reps a couple times a year. Being active within my community meant sparking discussions, being at school meant hearing something, saying something. Then the 2016 presidential election was flung at the nation, and the idea that Trump could be in office was an extremely difficult thing for me to swallow, so I hopped onto a couple of local political campaigns and tried to start small with the changes I wanted to make. As you probably know, he won. From there, my weekends revolved around public speaking and community organizing and reading up about every political topic I could.
I got into writing really quickly, and I think that once I found that, everything came together. I write for a couple of different magazines (including Pure Nowhere!) and I’m also an opinions editor and a news editor so I have endless outlets to share what I need to say. At some point all these different opportunities were in front of me and I truly do not know how to say no when it comes to activism. I joined March for Our Lives San Diego and then through that I was given the opportunity to organize, advise and lead the March, and I guess like you were saying, once you open yourself up to one thing, everything opens up. That's kind of what happened with me.
JFP: So you’re in high school, right? How’s that going?
SKAD: Yup - Junior year. It’s definitely a busy time for me! I have a big course line up but I do a lot of stuff on the side, I guess. I throw myself into anything that I care about. I like feeling like I’ve covered all my bases and that I am making myself as much of a resource as possible - that means I spread myself really thin. But being around so many different kinds of people and thinkers really keeps me in check with my own life. How was school for you? When did you get into photography?
JFP: Well, I'm from two hours north of New York City; it's called the Hudson Valley and it's a really beautiful area. It's like the New York City suburbs. I grew up there and went to college there, and school for visual arts, and I actually studied design. What's interesting is, going into the design curriculum, in the first year you have to do this thing called “the foundation year”. You basically try all these different mediums like sculpture and what not, and so I had to take a photo class. That was the first time I got introduced to photography. In fact, last month marked 20 years since the first time I picked up a camera. Have you been to New York?
SKAD: Yes, I have.
JFP: Well, yeah, in New York you can just walk outside and find stuff to photograph. So one day I was wandering around the city and I ended up in downtown on Broadway and I guess I ended up walking into this huge protest for affordable housing. All of a sudden I became a part of the protest, and I could document the moments happening around me. It was a totally new experience. I just really enjoy pulling up to marches and protests and different types of political things - I've even gone to neo-nazi marches and stuff.
SKAD: Yeah, and I wanted to ask you about that. So, just from talking to you, I get a feeling that your political views kind of lean one way more than the other. So with that, how do you feel about going to protest that stands for something you don't necessarily align with?
JFP: I always have this one motto that says that there's more good people in the world than bad people, and that's always keeps me grounded. When I go to a protest like that, where it’s not neccesarily something I agree with, I just act professional and think about why they believe in what they’re doing, the same way I would in any situation. I'm always looking to make images that are about what's going on, but are also multi dimensional. Art should kind of allow the viewer to explore different dimensions of what's going on. Like, I’ve got this one shot of this woman - she's just lying down on the floor and meditating, because it was cold and the weather in Phoenix was so hot outside. I believe she was waiting for a Trump rally, and it was totally the opposite of what Trump rallies normally look like. Obviously, I also got images that made them look like terrible groups of people. So, I don't know. I'm always trying to make it more dynamic. In those places I can blend in as a white male, and use that privilege for the picture. When I'm in that position and I'm talking to people, I try always to just listen and ask question. There's such a gap between mentalities or ideologies of different groups of people - but if people just had more conversations, a lot of people would be surprised.
I went to a Trump protest once, and I ended up talking to these guys that were pretty hardcore Trump fans. I was telling them about all the places I’d been to in the world, and I mentioned Pakistan, and one of the guys was like, “You went there? Oh my God. You're crazy, man”. The guy was in a band, so I shared with them that one of the things I covered in Pakistan was a little music school in Lahore that had a Pakistani girl that played an electric guitar. If you were judging a book by its cover and you saw this girl you wouldn’t think that she - well she was literally playing heavy metal. I think that’s the kind of stuff that I think can make people realise the world’s so much more dynamic than we think.
SKAD: I really respect that about you as a photographer – you’re definitely a “non-partisan” photographer. It sounds like you take pictures of anything and everything. I was looking through your website yesterday and I found some photos of a gun shop, too. I feel like because you're like that, everyone can be attracted to your photos regardless of their political views, and because of that they discover photos they might never have come across otherwise.
JFP: Yeah, I think that’s really cool. So what about you? Where do you want to go as you move forward and when you’re out of high school?
SKAD: School - school right now, junior year, is a tough one. I’m just trying to get through that and maintain my grades but also make sure I don't lose my passion for everything else, because writing is my outlet and activism is my purpose. After high school, though, I want to go to college. I want to probably study public policy and journalism and I plan on getting a law degree later on. I just feel like a lot of the stuff I'm doing right now - if I could just magnify it and get paid for it - that's what I want to do for the rest of my life.
JFP: Do you want to stay in San Diego?
SKAD: Absolutely not. Not because it’s not beautiful - it is. And it’s very inclusive, and a pretty chill place to live in. But I really feel like I would grow as a writer and as a political thinker if I branched out a little bit. California in general leans a certain way, politically – we’re very liberal and progressive, which is great because I identify with that, but I always wonder how different a thinker I would be if I grew up in a totally different place. Atmospheres really do impact you and I want to gift myself with a more multilateral opinion on everything.
JFP: Yeah. I think New York is a great place to be for a while. You know how it is - it’s super intense. You - you feel like you are on the forefront of what's happening in the world. You kind of have to be, in New York. When you live in a place like New York, you just feel what's happening in the world.
ON COMMUNITY
JFP: I was actually gonna ask you: Do you think there's a group of people like yourself in San Diego?
SKAD: Yeah, I think so. The people I surround myself with make me feel like that community is there.
JFP: Do you feel so you feel like San Diego has been a good place for you?
SKAD: For the most part, yeah. I've never felt openly discriminated against. I mean, I feel it on the bad days, but not super often. I don’t usually feel outcasted or anything and I think that’s been a really big privilege for me, because I am so opinionated and outspoken that had I lived in a different place, it might have been a lot more difficult for me. I'd like to think that I would be just as politically active, but I might have not been.
ON BRIDGE-BUILDING
SKAD: Have you ever been assaulted in any way at a rally because of something you said?
JFP: No, no. I’ve had a lot of instances where I’ll be walking around neighbourhoods taking pictures of random landscapes, and gus will come up to me and say “hey, what are you doing?”. That's always the most annoying, because there's a lot of fear in this culture in America. That's another aspect that divides us - everyone's afraid of everyone next to them. But, I mean, New York’s one of those places where you can’t be afraid, and that’s what I loved and will always love about that place. You can't be afraid of the person next to you because they're gonna be right next to you, and you’re going to have to interact with them no matter what. But here in San Diego, and in other places in America, you can kind of keep your distance and you have to make an effort to cross that divide.
I was an assignment in Texas recently, and I had the police called on me because I was doing a landscape with a courthouse in a small town and obviously they probably don't get people out there doing that a lot. It's a hyper paranoia. I'm just a photographer taking pictures. I don’t have a gun in my bag. But there's this hysteria where people are hyper aware and scared of anything that's out of the ordinary. To be an artist is to try to break through that. I'm not going to stop taking pictures because people are uncomfortable with someone walking down their block.
SKAD: How do you feel about the political environment you grew up in during your teenage years and how it parallels or doesn't with the political environment today? What’s different about the level of activism in your generation and mine?
JFP: Well I think what's happening now is much more extreme and terrifying. My biggest problem with what's happening now, in regards to what Trump and the Republicans have done, is that they try to use groups of people as symbols of fear and for me that's really bad. I just think that's very, very dangerous. Like, when I was in Texas, this guy brought up to me that we shouldn’t be treating Muslims nicely because they’re trying to kill us. How do I explain to this guy how wrong that is?
SKAD: It's a deeply sewn in ideology; I reach a point where I'm not even mad at people for these thoughts because I genuinely feel bad for them. I can’t help but think “what on earth did you grow up around to make you think so awfully?”.
JFP: Yeah, and it's crazy because this guy actually grew up in a part of Texas with a huge Mexican population and spoke Spanish nearly fluently, this white guy, but at the same time supports this hateful belief. That's the kind of collective social mental disorder that we have; I just think that somebody has to be angry and there always has to be an ‘other’.
Do you have ideas about how you could reach out to the other side? Do you ever think about that?
SKAD: I do - a lot. It's actually something that really bothers me, because the groups I work with tend to be very partisan towards one way, so I never feel like I can fully identify with my communities of activism. But I think in the end, it's really a matter of putting my own biases aside just like I would want someone to do for me. When I find out someone is an open Trump supporter or something along those lines, I'm initially scared; it's a very subconscious feeling. My mind just wonders, “What do they think about me? How do they feel about me as a female or a Muslim or a child of immigrants?”.
I just have to suck all that in and cool down. I force myself to engage in conversations with people I disagree with, and basically test my limits to see how far I can go without, you know, wanting to rip someone's head off.
JFP: Well, remember always that propaganda has influenced people in regards to your identity.
SKAD: Yeah, absolutely. When I talk to people, after just a couple sentences come out of their mouth I begin to totally understand why they think the way they do. Obviously I strongly disagree and continue to oppose these ideologies, but the level of mental manipulation explains a lot of this. I always thought that we all shared one common sense; that regardless of our political views, we could align on the basics - the value of life, good versus evil, etc. - through just a natural instinct. But I really don't think that's true anymore. Our common sense is completely a product of the way we are brought up, and what we define as our norms. If someone's basic, common sense, is fundamentally different from mine, I can totally understand why I couldn't align with them on anything, you know? Mindsets are built completely differently and require interaction to build bridges of understanding.
JFP: Right, right. Well, personally, what I think needs to happen - though I’m not the right person to ever organize it - is to start these group meetings for people to come together for discussion, and to just talk it out. Something that would actually bring people together, people that are Trump supporters and people that aren’t, a well rounded small group that could just talk - no fear, just words. I think, most people that like, support Trump, have never genuinely interacted with a Muslim or Jew or a person of color. You just want them to come to this meeting and realize that this is not T.V. This is not entertainment or anything, this is just real people.
SKAD: I actually love that idea. It's so simple.
JFP: I mean, even talking with those few guys at that Trump rally, I just remember the look on the guys face when I told him about all the places I’ve traveled to and the people I’ve met there. He was so confused and shocked, but now in his brain he knows that that all exists. So I think that could be an interesting dynamic, bringing together small groups of people to have conversations that are from different sides. I just think - how else can we move forward?
FINAL THOUGHTS
SKAD: All right - do you have any final thoughts? Anything you want to add or conclude or say about yourself?
JFP: No, not really. I'm just really grateful, again, that you found that photograph - that's a pretty magical thing. It makes me happy, because I believe photography is a magical medium. You know, I absolutely love it. I love doing it. And things like this just remind me how profound photography can be and its power to connect people. Hopefully that photograph has been seen by people of all different backgrounds and mindsets, and they can also absorb the passion of the moment.
(this interview was edited for clarity)