Currently with the NOOR photo-collective, Philip Blenkinsop started his professional career at the age of 21 working for The Australian, a national broadsheet in Sydney. Realizing that being a newspaper photographer was not for him, and finding that the work shallow and repetitive, he bought a Leica with a few lenses and a one-way airline ticket to Bangkok.
His name is now synonymous with forgotten conflicts, and his photographs are the product of weeks in the mountains of East Timor with Falintil guerrillas, of tribal war and cannibalism in Borneo, to the tragic plight of Hmong Veterans and their families lost deep in the heart of Laos’ forbidden zone.
He says: "I am just a photographer. Photojournalism can be stylistic and puerile. It's not the photographer's fault, but they know what editors like, so they mold the product for the magazine. It's like being an advertising photographer, shooting a style because they know how it will appear on paper."
