HUMAN INTEREST

All images © Doug Menuez

There are 7.8 billion people living on Planet Earth, so when American photographer Doug Menuez outlines his area of interest as “humanity”, he’s not short of subject matter. In his 40 years as a photojournalist, documentary photographer and director, Menuez has captured a diverse cross-section of humanity, from leaders and luminaries, including President Clinton, Mother Teresa, and Jane Goodall, A-list actors such as Robert Redford, Cate Blanchett and Christopher Walken, through to scientists, astronauts, drug dealers and environmental activists.

From the mid-1980s, he spent 15 years getting to know Steve Jobs and other Silicon Valley innovators, many of his images collected together in his book Fearless Genius. Menuez’s photos have appeared in Time, LIFE, Newsweek, The Washington Post and many more publications. Assignments to capture stories, including the AIDS crisis, presidential campaigns, Super Bowls, the Ethiopian famine and the Oakland drug wars, have taken him around the world, from the North Pole to the Sahara and Vietnam to Mexico.

His work has helped raise money for orphans in Uganda and victims of the San Francisco earthquake. He has worked on ad campaigns and commercial projects for global brands, such as Nikon, Coca Cola and Microsoft.

It’s a far cry from the life that might have been: Menuez was a blues musician