In just eight years since Misan Harriman took up photography, his photos have become some of the most iconic images of global protest movements from Black Lives Matter to climate change, LGBTQ+ and pro-Palestine rallies. In August 2020, he made history as the first Black male photographer to shoot a cover for British Vogue.
And in this second episode of ‘Sangita Meets…’, Misan speaks to Sangita Myska about what drove him to pick up the camera. “Watching somebody that looks like me, George Floyd, lying in his own piss, asking for his mama, while still calling the men who had [a knee] on his neck, sir, as he left his mortal coil … The choice was already made for me,” he says.
In this intimate and in-depth interview, Sangita also asks Misan, former chair of London’s Southbank Centre, about press culpability in the tragic death of British academic Jason Arday, who died by suicide this summer after what critics call a relentless, and often racist, media frenzy over his academic record. “Had it not been for the poison pen of many people you and I both know personally”, Misan says, “this human being, this man, this son, this father would still be alive.”
Misan also opens up on:
The vicious online campaign against him over his support for Gaza and criticisms of Israel (“The forensic scraping of any story posts, any collabs, any shares … It means that they would have seen my advocacy with multiple Jewish groups.”)
Why he continues to defend Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (“These are people that I consider as family.”)
How he responds to criticisms that he’s part of the British elite
What it feels like to have someone else tell his own story, in the documentary about his life, ‘Shoot the People’.
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