Translator: Natalia Ost
Reviewer: Denise RQ I have a challenge for us today, a challenge for a world
where 250 million people are searching for a new home
through mass migration. A challenge for a time
when 1,8 billion images are posted to social media
on a daily basis. A challenge for a society
where we need to educate our young for a very uncertain future. I have a challenge about identity. What drives our identities? Are they given or are they created? So, today, together, I would like
to explore the idea of identity as a creative process. Who are we? And what can we become? So, who am I? I'm a photographic artist.
I was born here, in Exeter. I self-identify as a 100% British. And I was named after
a famous Roman philosopher emperor. But wait a minute. Today is the first day I've been in Exeter
since I was born here 50 years ago. My ancestral DNA tells me actually I'm much more French
and Scandinavian than British. And the truth of the matter is I was
named after my great uncle Richard's fabulously foul-mouthed
African Grey parrot Marcus Aurelius, who he saved from the Southern Sudan
in the late 1930s. Now, if you really want
to know what drives me, where my energy is from, you only need to know one thing. And that's the loss
of my brother Andrew when I was six. That loss and the subsequent journey
of self-realization that continues today has given me an amazing energy for life, a passion for the here and now, and a sense of responsibility
for living a life that Andrew didn't get. But isn't that a choice, an act? Have I not just made that up?
It's a piece of creation. That creation's been supported
throughout my life by photography and the camera. I was given my first camera
when I was 10 years old, and I've rarely been without one since. Now, the camera has many uses, but it's its ability to hold time,
to stop for a fragile second the journey towards death
that seems most powerful here. In many ways, it's been
transformational in my life, helping me take a life out of balance
and find a voice, my voice. It's also been the red carpet to everywhere and anyone
I wanted to know or meet. For 40 years, I've made images
from the ghetto to the palace, from the fashion shoot
to the social issue reportage, giving voice to the known and the unknown. In many ways, it's been a key to the most transformational
relationships in my life. It's given me access
to some of the most intimate inner places, other realities, and other lives. Dare I tell you, I actually photographed
my wife before we ever spoke or even knew each other's names. So the camera has helped me
explore ideas of identity, my own and others'. And today, I would like to give you
an insight into my most recent project "Somos Brasil", "We are Brazil". It's an exploration
of modern Brazilian identity through the lens of a series of DNA
and sound-enabled portraits. So, for 30 years I've traveled
across the Americas, and I've remained amazed
at how differently those from the North
and the South self-identify. Many from the US seem resolutely
attached to the idea of motherland. Brazilians seem undaunted
by simply being Brazilian. So when I met, fell in love with, married a Brazilian, and we made two very beautiful
Brazenglish children, and they turn to me and say, "Daddy, nós somos brasileiros," "We are Brazilians," I knew I had a deeper search
on my hands to understand the identity of my family. So my team and I traveled
22,000 kilometers across Brazil taking the photographs, the soundscapes,
and the DNA samples of a cohort of remarkable Brazilians, all who'd been nominated as agents
of change within their communities, in many ways, the best of Brazil. Now we've taken the sound,
and we've turned it into a sound app, it's an image-activated app,
you swipe your device over their faces, and they tell you their stories. They talk about their communities, their childhood memories, their dreams
and aspirations for the future. In many ways,
this is actually a disruptive act, the reality is, as an audience, we mostly make our own judgments
about images, we make our own choices. But here, we've managed
to give a voice to the voiceless. The DNA in many ways
is also a different lens in which we can look at identity. Most interestingly for me,
it's less the science and the fact of the matter
that matters here. It's actually how we weave this
new fabulous science and the information it gives us
into our own personal histories. My wife, blond, blue eyes, Brazilian. And yet when she took her DNA test,
she found out that she carried both African, Sephardic Jewish,
and Latin American tribal blood. She was able to see her life,
her community, and her role within her family
in a completely different way. So, this project that brings
art and science together, I think, puts a mirror up to a society
that has a very all-encompassing culture, but it also allows us to define a space
where we can explore identity. So, today I would like to share with you
four of the stories that I had the great honor
to bear witness to. So, Anna-Claudia,
she told us of her childhood memories. Some idyllic; playing
in the fields of Sao Paolo with her sisters and her cousins, but some horrific - witnessing
the pain and the suffering of her grandmother Maria-Paula, who had a terrible arterial condition which meant she had
to have a double leg amputation. Young Anna's life
was permeated with that pain, and in response, she cut
all the legs of her dolls and turned her bedroom into an infirmary. She vowed that no one would suffer
like her grandmother would, she trained to be a doctor, she qualified the day
her grandmother died. She's now renowned across Brazil for being an exceptional
palliative care doctor, preaching a gospel of love
for people at the end of their lives. Bekwynhka -- we met
in the Botanical Gardens of Belém; the son of a tribal leader, he reminisced to us about
the Kayapó tribe, a warrior tribe, and his grandfather who died
protecting his lands and traditions from the invading colonists. When Cabral traveled to Brazil
from Portugal in 1500, he found a wondrous land
of three to five million tribal peoples across its vast forest and seaboard. Today, from colonization, slavery,
environmental destruction, and disease, we're looking at a number
of more like 300,000. So Bekwynhka has reinvented his role
in his society as a warrior counselor. He talks to his people about modern Brazil
and gives them an opportunity to protect their culture,
their traditions, and their land. Leila took our breath away. Elegant and energetic, she was born the daughter of a migrant worker
from the North East. Alongside her doorman father living a block from Ipanema Beach,
in Rio de Janeiro, she witnessed the poverty
and wealth of Brazil at first hand. Determined to make a difference,
she set up a company "Beleza Natural", a cosmetics firm that today
employs 2,300 people, 90% of whom are single mothers
from the favelas. She is testament to vision and hard work and talks to her young staff
and tells them, "Not even the sky is the limit." Now, I was delighted to meet Eliane. She was telling us and marveling at the fact that her father
at 85 still made an annual pilgrimage to the grave of his first teacher, Luisa, the daughter of a slave and a merchant. Luisa had taught him and cured him
of his blindness to words, thus allowing him
to nurture his illiterate family, to give Eliane the chance
to be a significant wordsmith; and today an award-winning journalist. I was amazed
by how Eliane self-identified. She saw her whole life as boundless. She saw herself as the sum
of all the stories she'd ever heard. And in the vastness of the Universe
she saw all life as a singularity, but her own as a multitude. So, as an artist, in my studio,
we often talk about reinvention, the need, dare I say, the necessity, to see multiple possibilities
of our futures, to embrace change, to see
the opportunity in the unknown. So, I hope, through the lens
of these Brazilian lives you can see that identity
can be a journey. We can write fictions of our lives. So, the next time you sit and ponder
on the "Who am I?" question, consider that we truly grow our identities when we are guiding lights
to not only to ourselves but to others. Thank you. (Applause)
