When they booked in on Friday I had little idea of the interesting talks that were to follow over breakfast. Certainly there was an element of déjá vu for me in recalling the Shell Photo Gallery, the Shell Press Pix competition, meeting the World Press Photo team in Amsterdam and bringing the 1984 exhibition South Africa the next year.
A South African at heart - it was here that Brent gained a degree in journalism and sharpened his teeth photographing apartheid issues - he lives in New York with partner, Byba Septikova from Yugoslavia, and travels extensively to the core of conflict to capture on film the crux of the crisis, be it health-related issues or perhaps even the plight of the rhino - something he will be working on while here on a short assignment.
Both are employed by National Geographic, Byba on the technological side where she sifts through thousands of visuals of both Brent's and fellow-photojournalists to match them to whatever theme has been decreed for that month's magazine.
His more recent awards include a gold award from China International photographic awards, as well as from the National Press Photographers Association, Graphis and American Photography. He also received the 2009 ASME magazine publishers award for photojournalism for his work in the Democratic Republic of Congo published in National Geographic magazine.
With these accolades tucked into his camera bag I was particularly chuffed when he agreed to take a pic of me in my new kitchen (see previous Blog). (I wonder whether instead of his using my simple fixed-lens digital camera a Leica would have made a big difference to how I looked?)
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