By Leo Regan
MY FRIEND LANRE
Lanre Fehintola and I met over 30 years ago, two young idealistic photojournalists wanting to change the world, running around with our cameras, obsessed with the idea of immersive photography. There’s a famous saying from photographer Robert Capa, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” People dismissed this as simplistic and naive. We took it as gospel. Chasing the story was the passion that drove us. Lanre took it to another level.
Lanre applied the method approach to his journalistic research, for him it wasn’t authentic until it was authentic. Documenting the experience was never enough, Lanre wanted to live it. While working on a project about people experiencing homelessness he unwittingly ended up becoming homeless himself. When he turned his cameras to the world of crack cocaine and heroin, alarm bells started ringing.
It didn’t take long before Lanre started using heroin. He told me, “It’s the only way to understand what addiction is really like.” Lanre believed his photography would protect him, keep him focused and pull him through. Instead, it pulled him under. He became a character in his own story. And then he became the story. Which was the subject of our first film, Don’t Get High On Your Own Supply.
It was a brave and audacious move to expose himself publicly in this way. Typical of the man. His fearless dedication to documenting his decline was remarkable to witness, portraying an honesty, humour and integrity that was, and still is, powerful, devastating and inspiring.
We started working on our new film, My Friend Lanre a few years ago. Lanre was photographing a group of people living off-grid in a woodland near his home in Taunton. He’d spent five years working on the project and wasn’t sure what to do with it. Lanre had also been diagnosed with early-stage lung cancer. Our plan was to document Lanre’s cancer treatment and recovery while he finished his project. You know what they say about plans.
Lanre never made it back to the woodland. He finished his cancer treatment and was doing really well, until he wasn’t. His consultant told him she could do nothing more for him. We talked about whether we should continue filming.
For Lanre there was never any doubt. This was his ultimate challenge, facing his
