A photographer's notebook by Robert Spangle
Words: Robert Spangle
Photography: Robert Spangle
I am first and foremost an American, and at any opportunity an American abroad. I joined the Marine Corps in 2007 and I left in 2011. Between those years I travelled for the first time in my life: Afghanistan, bits of South America, North Africa, the Middle East and Europe. To the friends I lost in combat I felt, and feel, a great debt of living, and figuring out the living part became my focus. In the years since, I’ve spent most of my life travelling — 20, even 35 weeks a year. Culture, style, and above all curiosity keep me on the road. Living like this is learning all the time and feels like being alive. I left the Marines with questions, and I didn’t start to find answers until I started to photograph conflicts: bull-fighters first, then motorcycle racers, calcio fighters, then wars and the young (and not so young) men fighting them. Some of my work follows the long shadows of American foreign policy (Afghanistan, Iraq, arguably Ukraine); other work follows the American myth and its modern keepers. While for my mother country I find distance makes the heart grow fonder, I also always find myself first and foremost an American.
Getting to photograph Robert Rabensteiner, one of the great minds of fashion, on Belmond’s Royal Scotsman train, was an incredible experience. Robert has been the embodiment of what I’ve learned about style: style is substance.
Matadors waiitng to enter the arena in Seville. When I first started photographing conflicts, as well as blood sports, I was focused on the action. I didn't learn anything until I began to focus on the men's eyes. The action is in the arena, but it all plays out in the eyes beforehand.
Photographing Iraqi and Nato forces pushing ISIS out of Mosul in 2017 was my first experience working as a photojournalist. I was very hesitant to go back to war. However, the stories of the men I met there captivated me to a higher degree than fashion work ever had.
I'd deployed to Afghanistan twice as a Marine. Returning was in part coming full circle to unresolved questions of my youth, and also a natural progression. I'd covered fashion weeks ad nauseum, and Afghanistan was the farthest you could get from that and still find people.
I followed teams of Florence's calcio storico, a historical bare-knuckle blood sport. These men train year round, often from age six, for a few bloody weekends in June, and win nothing more than honour. I learned here that conflict and competition have a spiritual component.
I met the Biscioni Torino auto club in 2021. They have petrol in their veins and cigarettes perpetually in their hands, tearing up picturesque Turin in their collection of 70s Italian cars. Style is something these guys live, and not just on the weekend.
This was one of the first images I took on the frontlines of Mosul. Later, a journalist pointed out this solitary man's missing thumb and forefinger were the likely marks of a bomb maker – possibly why he was fleeing without a family accompanying him.
An early morning, about 10,000 or 11,000 feet above sea level, in one of the most remote regions of India, Nubra. Seeing the rich intersection of cultures on the border of India and Pakistan provoked me to look for fashion further afield than the fashion weeks.
Blood sports or dangerous competition seem to be a glaringly unneccessary part of modern life. Yet, while calcio storico might look like hooliganism or tribalism, these men had forged a fierce sense of belonging and purpose, something the modern world struggles with.
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