Vancouver photojournalist Wendell Phillips is the Vancouver speaker for the month of March.

Wendell has three decades of experience in editorial and human development photography and is the recipient of 30 Picture-of-the-Year awards from North American news organizations and of two National Magazine Awards for his work on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. He was voted Canada’s News Photographer of the Year in 1988 and nominated for Canadian Photojournalist of the Year in 2007 and 2009. The Photographic Society of America honoured Wendell with the International Understanding through Photography Award recognizing his socially engaged documentaries and public lectures with a humanitarian perspective. Phillips has documented the diversity of the human condition on 5 continents. A few of those stories include include Palestinian Territories, Afghanistan, Haiti, Greenland Narwhal hunters, refugee camps on the Syrian/Iraq border, World Cup Surfing to the Olympic Games.

His work has been exhibited at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, California and the United Nations in New York City. His images have been featured with the New York Times, Washington Post, National Geographic, BBC World News, South China Morning Post, and The Atlantic.

How do you define creativity and apply it in your career?
Photographing humanitarian narratives requires creativity but aestheticizing tragedy has raised questions of intention, subject’s dignity and the public value of social documentaries. As a self-described “conscientious” photojournalist, it’s my objective to make authentic images in ethical ways while paying close attention to visualization of space and articulation of light.

Where do you find your best creative inspiration?
Studying genres of art that express social narratives and influences

What’s the one creative advice or tip you wish you’d known as a young person?
Don’t surrender individuality by imitating.

Who would you like to hear speak at CreativeMornings?
Wade Davis: anthropologist, ethnobotanist , writer.
Rumana Monzur: former assistant professor of Dhaka University, Fulbright scholar now pursing Law degree at University of British Columbia

What are you reading these days?
The Race for What’s Left: The global scramble for the world’s last resources by Michael T. Klare
Half the Sky: Turing oppression into opportunity for women worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett

What has been one of your biggest Aha! moments in life?
Not sure this qualifies but facing the question of obligation and responsibility to vulnerable and marginalized people in the world while working my first overseas assignment in Peru (1982)