The Power of an Image — and the Mind behind It | Misan Harriman | TED

There are so many strong opinions about how bad the internet has become.

How it has weaponized mediocrity.

Normalized mis- and disinformation.

But for me,

the information superhighway has always been my savior.

As a little boy,

I was sent from Nigeria to boarding school in the English countryside.

It was like "Harry Potter" without the magic.

(Laughter)

It was a confusing and troubling time

for an already sensitive little boy who was far from home.

I was more like

an exotic animal in a petting zoo rather than a student.

And to top it off, I'm dyslexic

and today what would be described as neurodiverse,

which for me meant that the classroom was impossibly slow

and my brain was not capable of assimilating how they were teaching me.

So for a big part of my life,

I was ashamed of my own mind.

And if I'm being honest, I was ashamed of myself.

Luckily, the internet had other ideas.

Every time I consumed something online, my brain felt alive.

It was an awakening of sorts.

And luckily for me,

I am the right age to have discovered the internet in that very, very moment.

So what did I start doing?

I started realizing how my mind worked.

How I could assimilate audiovisual experiences intensely.

How I could name a song within the first second or the first note.

Or talk about scenes in films like I lived them.

And how overwhelmingly powerful artistic experiences were for me.

This became my savior.

And I wanted to share it with my friends.

So pop ballads like "More Than Words" by Extreme.

Street poetry like “Brenda’s Got a Baby” by Tupac.

Films like "The Last of the Mohicans,"

"Love Jones,"

and of course, "Cinema Paradiso."

These experiences were way more than entertainment for me.

I was being raised by these experiences,

and I needed to share it with as many people as possible.

So my friends would come with their hard drives,

and I would download and share pictures and poetry and film for them.

For me, the internet had become an endless library of the extraordinary.

And I didn't just have the keys to this library.

I lived there.

We would talk about Fela Kuti, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young.

These were my heroes.

These were the souls that have found the blueprint

of how to do and win in this thing called life.

It also saved my mental health.

The dancing of Misha Baryshnikov

was for me, like watching a perfect sunset.

The voice of Sarah Vaughan was my North Star.

And of course, the words of Pablo Neruda?

Well, that will always be medicine for my soul.

So,

how did I get to be this great observer of content

and become an artist?

It was just sharing images.

And one of the images I shared all the time was this image

of Coretta Scott King.

This image was taken by Moneta Sleet Jr.,

the first Black man to win a Pulitzer for photography.

This image almost didn't happen because unbelievably,

no Black media was invited

to photograph the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King.

When Coretta Scott realized, she said,

"No one's coming into this church if Moneta Sleet is not allowed."

And thank the heavens that he was,

because it was his lens that captured the grace

and somehow, on an unimaginable day,

the strength of Coretta Scott King

on the funeral of her husband with her baby girl, Bernice, in her lap.

It was this image that taught me

that photography can be way more than wedding pics and birthday snaps.

It was this image that let me know that at its best,

photography can let us know the work that we need to do.

(Applause)

So how did I become an actual photographer?

Well, the answer of that is love.

My wife.

My wife.

We fell in love together

by feeling each other’s invisible scars like braille.

She fell in love with all the parts of myself

that I was ashamed of.

She looked beyond my anxiety, my imposter syndrome,

and she saw a man that maybe had a point of view himself.

So she bought me a camera for my 40th birthday.

Just five years ago.

So I have a camera now,

I don't know what to do with it.

And once again, I go online,

and I teach myself about ISO and aperture on YouTube.

I teach myself about editing with Adobe Lightroom on YouTube.

And there's a great beauty for someone like me

to be able to fail and fail in my little office, online,

watching free tutorials.

This is a gift of the internet.

Everything changed when my daughter was born.

You see, the thing about not loving yourself

is that when something truly great,

something celestial, like a child, comes into your life,

you tell yourself you don't deserve it.

My daughter was premature,

and I was terrified to be the custodian

of something so beautifully precious.

So I hid behind my camera.

And as I kept taking pictures of this little soul and as she got stronger,

the camera and my daughter taught me how to receive love

and taught me to accept

the immense grace and privilege of being a father.

This was the most important moment in my photographic journey.

Two years later, in 2020, George Floyd was killed.

And all of us saw that because of the power of social media.

And this time we refused to look away.

I looked to my wife and I said, “I have run out of tears.”

And she said, "Look to your camera."

And I took my camera to the streets of London,

not knowing if I would photograph five people or 5,000.

And I was able to observe

one of the greatest civil rights movements in our lifetime.

The global protests after the death of George Floyd

is something none of us would have expected.

And my lens was there.

One morning I woke up and I couldn’t open my phone

because I had so many notifications.

The son of Coretta Scott King,

Martin Luther King III,

had somehow come across one of my images and posted it on his Twitter.

And then the world discovered me.

(Applause)

Millions of people saw these images and now, unbelievably,

British “Vogue” came calling,

and they commissioned a then-unknown photographer

to shoot the September issue of British "Vogue" 2020.

And in doing so, I became the first Black man

to shoot any cover for British "Vogue."

(Applause)

It took 104 years to get to my cover.

Since then, I've had this extraordinary career

photographing amazing humans, amazing moments.

But beyond all the glitz and all the glamour,

it is really important for me

to recognize the intentionality

and the empathy of where my lens must look.

The world is burning right now

and we cannot pass each other by like ships in the night.

So my lens has to look to where voices need to be lifted.

I recently have become an ambassador for Save the Children.

And I went to Somaliland to cover the famine,

the hunger crisis that is in the Horn of Africa.

These brave people are suffering because of climate change,

something that they add very little to.

Many of the children are born into a hellscape

that is not of their making.

1.6 million children are on the verge of acute malnutrition.

And I want my images to let you know

that you cannot say you did not know.

So I ask you to use whatever levers of power that you have,

at dinner parties, on your social media,

speak to those that can do something about it

if you cannot yourself.

I will finish by saying this.

Do not be afraid to take the road less traveled.

Wear your vulnerability with pride.

It is what makes us human.

This age of perceived perfection,

it's over.

Very few of us are OK, and that's OK.

And to the parents and teachers

that are looking after children with different minds,

please let them know about the power

and possibility of their minds.

Because they may have the answers

that will allow all of us to look toward the horizon together.

Thank you.

(Applause)