Donovan Wylie, born in Belfast in 1971, is the youngest photographer with Magnum, a co-operative photography agency comprising some of the most respected photographers in the world.
He recently published Losing Ground (Fourth Estate, £9.99 sterling), a book of photographs taken over several years of British "New Age travellers".
"I wanted to make a political protest with this book," he says. "I have always worked around social issues and I had been trying to find a social issue relevant to the Nineties when I came across the people in the book. I was their age and I could empathise with their situation. The subject of the photographs is as much me as them.
"Photography as a medium is exploitative, it is subjective and interpretive." He describes the process of framing and selecting photographs as "creating lies in order to reveal a truth". The truth in this case is "about the lives of people who choose to live outside society. It is a very difficult choice which involves living in extreme poverty, and being deeply mistrusted, in fact disliked, by many people."
Wylie documented the lives of a group of young people and their children from 1993 to 1997, initially living in caravans and camper vans in the countryside, later in similar circumstances in the city. Under the British Criminal Justice Act - regarded by many as a repressive law - the families were forced back to the city.
"Although the lifestyle ended up less structured then it began, they achieved their original objective in as far as they separated themselves from a society they didn't believe in - but at a price." Wylie shows the place of drink and drug-taking in their lives. "They weren't allowed do what they wanted to do, which had disastrous consequences. "The book is a protest against the Criminal Justice Act, which basically says if you can't conform, there's no safety net."
Theoretically, a photojournalist aspires to tell an objective truth. But there is a strong argument that much of what we see and read is an interpretation of events. Wylie believes he should concern himself with issues which are relevant to his own life, so that at least his interpretation will be based on empathy.
"I constantly question the authenticity of journalism. On the whole journalism is a pretty flimsy truth," he says. "Involvement with subjects is a key issue and your own subjectivity is the best way to be `objective'.
,"I feel that our whole sense of community has changed. In the past a journalist from London, for example, could represent quite accurately what was going on in Liverpool. But with the breakdown of community, journalists are addressing issues about lives not really relevant to their own. So how can you tell it as it is?
"I think in future my work will have even more of a personal motivation, I don't think I'll focus on highlighting the plight of others. I'd rather they had the means to do that for themselves."
