Humans of Red Bull Illume: Ben Moon, photographer, filmer, writer
I’ve been shooting for 16 years, but what has impacted me most is a very personal story. It’s a simple story, a friendship of a dog, Denali. He saw me from my mid-20 on to my 40s. I started to take photos because of him and he saw me growing into a man, into an adult. Before he departed, I made a 8 minutes film of my life with him. What I thought would only be for my friends, touched millions of people. I got thousand of emails and I realized that we’ve all been in this immediate gratification period of social media, algorithms which engage us in keeping online, but that there is, in reality, something so much more important than these moments of catching athletic performances, something so far beyond we can never imagine. Something inspirational, something we need in order to connect on a real human level. Together with my friend Ben Knight, we’ve tried to tell the story 3-4 times. We had thought about an edit that would really work, but we had failures, until I found out for myself, that the only way I can tell this story properly is by being open and vulnerable. Abstract didn’t work at all! And now that I am writing a memoire, I realized that I must dive even deeper. And even if it is only one person who gets something out of it, it was worth it. While working on Denali, Ben and I felt something universal. Something people could rely on, it was friendship! This is also why my book talks about friendship. It is going to do the same with people! I give insights about my cancer story and I really hope that it will affect the readers somehow. I first started with photography, went then into filming, and now I’m writing a book. We’ll see what’s the next chapter is going to bring. And yes, just recently, I found Nori! The younger version of Denali. It’s unbelievable how much the two of them are alike!
