Interview with Don Bartletti

by Scott Bennett

Don Bartletti will speak Saturday, May 7 at 11:00 am PST

In-person festival registration is available at the door

Scott Bennett: Can you mention a person or experience that piqued your interest in photography and journalism? What gave you the spark to become a visual storyteller?

Don Bartletti: I was on the streets of San Francisco during the Summer of Love with a borrowed Yashica Mat camera and six rolls of film. While shyly roaming past one pot-smoking group to another in Golden Gate Park I struck up a conversation with a gentleman with three cameras around his neck. He said his name was John Szarkowski and that he was taking pictures for Look Magazine. Jeezus, I thought! I asked him how I could get a job taking pictures like him. He explained that the ticket to freelance magazine or newspaper jobs was “your book,” which in student talk means portfolio. So, over the next week I burned through all of my rolls of film. I got one nice image. After my tour of duty in Vietnam I put the hippy picture in my “book” of 11”x14” prints along with some scenic shots from ‘Nam and landed a spot at my hometown paper, The Vista Press. I loved it and built a portfolio frame by frame that eventually enabled me to roam the world with three cameras around my neck.

SB: You have over 40 years of experience covering immigration both at the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. What lessons have you learned about the U.S.-Mexico border during that time? What are you thoughts about common perceptions that people hold about the borderlands?

DB: There are two things my career has taught me about the border. First, migration for survival is as old as humanity, unstoppable as the wind, and often misunderstood. Second, I hate trying to sum up the raging debate about illegal immigration as either good or bad because I’ve seen the causes and consequences and they’re mind-bogglingly complex. In the sending pueblos, on the migratory trails, and in the receiving communities I witnessed stuff that could be spun any number of ways. No political stump speaker, pistol-toting hate monger, advocate, or jingoist has found the solution. So, I search for and publish the real-life, real-time stuff I observe. I offer my photographs as evidence for you to make up your own mind.

SB: Can you tell me about a specific event from your career that has stuck with you?

DB: On November 25, 2018 a caravan of more than 1,000 Central Americans who’d been cooped up for months in emergency shelters in Tijuana made a unified run for the borderline. Everyone was whooping and shouting and energized with the belief that they were about to enter the land of their dreams. But they were turned back with teargas and an impenetrable double fence. There were broken hearts all around me. Not one migrant made it into the U.S.

And then in April of 2021 I was in San Luis, Arizona where the Trump administration constructed a huge new fence on a levee 100 yards inside the U.S. I photographed hundreds of people from 10 countries who had walked across from Mexico. When the Border Patrol showed up, no one ran away. Everyone ran towards them! Every man, woman, and child surrendered and requested asylum.  I titled my Op-Ed photo essay in the Union-Tribune, Controlled Anarchy.

SB: While working on the photo essay for Enrique’s Journey, you were challenged in many different ways, logistically, mentally, and physically. How does this particular body of work stand out from other projects that you have done in the past?

DB: Enrique’s Journey was proposed to me by my editor Colin Crawford: “Don, we’d like you to do this assignment, because we don’t think it can be done.” And he was almost right. The venue was 3,200 miles long, from Honduras to North Carolina. Every day was fraught with anxiety about being robbed of my gear, not finding the children making the journey, and about their plights when I did find them, but the overwhelming editorial significance of the assignment gave purpose to every one of the 90 days I was out shooting. No American photojournalist had ridden the freight trains through Mexico or even attempted to portray the longest, most lethal migratory route on the continent. It was the most under-reported of all migration stories: children traveling alone on the trains through Mexico in a desperate attempt to find their mothers in the U.S. Success came only to the brave and lucky. 

SB: Bound to El Norte, Chiapas Racers, Agony, and Gift for a Northbound Migrant are all beautiful and poignant photographs of migrant reality. Could you tell the back story about one of these and why you are proud of that specific photo?

DB: Bound to El Norte is one of those “moments” that took 10 weeks to find, was totally unexpected, and has everlasting story-telling value. I’d been riding all night on The Beast—the name stowaways gave the freight trains—as it snaked its way through a dozen smoke-filled mountain tunnels and up onto Mexico’s 7000-foot central plateau. The 14-hour trip was achingly cold for the boys who jumped on in tropical Veracruz with just a T-shirt or pullover.

At the crack of dawn, I climbed into the damp, icy wind and looked across the top of the train. Three cars ahead was a tiny lone figure silhouetted against an approaching fog bank. I sprinted along the top of the speeding train, leaped high over the couplers, stopped behind a little boy in a dirty sweatshirt and tennies, and shot four frames before we were swallowed up by the thickest fog I’d ever seen. I slipped my little black Nikon journal out of my camera side pack and stepped near the edge of the hopper car to face the boy and ask some questions. Then I froze.

The child of 14—maybe 15—was shivering and sniffling uncontrollably. When I was 20, someone “ambushed” me when I was in a phone booth having a private cry. 54 years later that shame and embarrassment overwhelmed me. I was profoundly afraid I might do to him what was done to me, so I turned around and walked away. With my back to the wind, I glanced back a couple of times trying to get myself to go back and ask for his name and a few quotes. He never took his gaze off the unclear horizon that held his destination and his uncertain fate.

SB: The 2019 documentary The Roads Most Traveled: Photojournalist Don Bartletti is a wonderful overview of your life and work. What was the experience like to have a documentary made about your story? What did you enjoy most about that process and were there any specific challenges that came about from working on that?

DB: I’m really happy Bill Wisneski and his crew did this as it’s yet another forum to show a little more about this hot-button cultural and political subject. When we walked around on the Tijuana River levee where I’d spent so much time over the years, I saw the ghosts of photos past. But this time, I was the main subject. They did every scenario in pretty much one take, all the way through. There were a lot of one-takes, but I was happy they didn’t try to fake it or reconstruct shit that would overly dramatize stuff. I had faith in the crew. I think they edited a million video clips and interview sound bites really well. They stitched together an ending that slowly built to an emotion that very much matches how I’ve felt about the subject my whole career.

SB: While you have won numerous awards and accolades for your photojournalism work, I would love to hear your perspectives about what winning the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography in 2003 means to you.

DB: I received word about winning the Pulitzer from Los Angeles Times editor John Carol. My Thoria satellite phone woke me at 3 AM while I was asleep in the dirt near Basra, Iraq. When Mr. Carol asked how things were going, I replied, “It was like the apocalypse here today.” There were bodies floating in the marshes, looters, vandals, fires, and craziness everywhere. As was his nature, he calmly said, “Well Don, we got all your pictures.” Then after one of those five-second pauses it took for our voices to bounce off a satellite and back to Earth, he said, “I want to be the first to tell you—you’ve won the Pulitzer Prize.” I sat bolt upright in my sleeping bag like one of those inflatable punching dolls. “Holy shit, are you kidding me?”, I yelled. But as my wife Diana told a lot of TV and newspaper people who asked for her reaction while I was still in the war zone, “It’s not about the Prize, it’s about the work. Don is my hero because he lets the people he photographs show and tell him their story. He never takes it from them”.

SB: Now that you have retired from photojournalism, what aspect of your life now brings you the most joy and fulfillment? Do you have any specific projects planned for the future?

DB: I loved being on the road but coming home was always the reward; a sanctuary where I could decompress and recharge my batteries. I have two adult children, four grandsons, and a massive negative and digital portfolio of their lives over the years. Instead of cleaning out the garage, I tend my one-acre manicured gardens. When the light is right, I photograph the landscaped perspectives I carefully planted over 61 years. When I get sick of that I fire up my vintage, 44-year-old air-cooled BMW motorcycle for long-distance rides around the West with my Vista High School biker gang. I’m busy all the time, though occasionally I wonder if it ain’t time to retire from retirement. Stupid joke, but true.