The best part of this assignment was coming back safely. Johannesburg is an unbelievably dangerous place. If you're a stranger and you go downtown, you become a target, plain and simple, particularly if you are carrying a camera on your chest. People looked at me as if they didn't believe I was stupid enough to be there. In Jo'burg if somebody decides to rob you, they don't want any witnesses. They will usually just shoot and kill you.
You can't go anywhere alone, and even in the rich suburbs you need to be careful. In the city you have to be with somebody who carries a gun. This was the first time in my entire career that I worked with a bodyguard. I was almost attacked a few times, but thanks to my bodyguard, Jerry Marobyane, the best in Jo'burg, I avoided some very bad situations.
So a nice dinner and a glass of wine had a special value for me in Johannesburg. I was grateful for simply surviving the day. But I was just visiting. It must be quite dramatic, or difficult, or depressing to face that kind of situation 365 days a year.
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Outside Jo'burg at a gold mine named Tautona, which means "great lion" in Sotho, I went down to one of the deepest possible places on Earth for a human being. My guides at the mine decided that a National Geographic photographer had to go down to see how people work down there, 2.2 miles (3.5 kilometers) underground. I told them I was there for pictures and that I could photograph the same kind of situation 22 feet below the surface, but they insisted.
It took me nearly two hours to reach the bottom. I crawled about 500 yards (450 meters) to reach the place where miners were actually digging the gold. It's very hot, there's 100 percent humidity, and there's hardly any oxygen. I almost collapsed. I almost died down there.
I've never smiled like I did when I saw trees and the blue sky after I returned to the surface a couple of hours later. I would say that was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, but not a pleasant one.
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In a nightclub I photographed a man who was suspended in the air by 16 metal hooks through his skin. He was a paramedic, and although he had given plenty of shots to his patients, he had never been given a shot himself. So he decided to go one better and get strung up in the air by metal hooks and wires. He brought his girlfriend so she could see him prove his toughness.
South Africa was living in a kind of vacuum for decades, so now that the people are exposed to the outside world they try to adopt things from Western culture, and some are attracted to the bizarre side of it. The guy who set this up runs a piercing parlor, and he said that everyone who does it is trying to strengthen themselves by going through this experience. Just looking at this guy swinging in the air was an absolutely amazing experience.
What was really incredible was that there was a list of people waiting to be suspended, and they had to pay money to be lifted up.
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