Thats howMisan Harrimandescribes his first time at the Academy Awards earlier this year.
Then there he was, surrounded by the global industrys most overachieving, himself an Oscar-nominated director.
Born in Nigeria in 1977, Harriman was the only Black kid at his British boarding school.
A Black Lives Matter protestor in London.Misan Harriman
With my kind of neurodiversity, Im not supposed to be good at anything, he says.
I failed every exam I took, dropped out of school, university, all that.
I became a cinephile without even really realizing it.
I found the answers in film.
Self-doubt and self-love are bedfellows, he says.
She was the one who said, That boy needs to express his point of view.
I needed someone to love me a little bit to lead me to this journey.
Theres always a middle-aged man or woman in their garage explaining to you how things work, Harriman says.
You feel you could fail without fear of judgment.
The top guys [on YouTube] make you feel insecure.
Theyre like jumping out of helicopters in Antarctica.
And so, he went out and started shooting.
Fail, fail, fail, fail, and then fail again.
I just kept tweaking my failures with help from my YouTube friends.
Harrimans work to this day is as focused on capturing everyday life as it was at the beginning.
He would hit the streets of London and observe.
Find slices of life in every frame he took.
The photos were sh*t, he laughs.
The watershed moment for him came when Covid happened.
99% of his images, he estimates, he has taken since 2020.
Its crazy, because it really wasnt that long ago when you think about it.
Martin Luther King III came across them and reposted, leading to more reposts from a slew of celebrities.
I dont think any of them knew theyd been taken in London, Harriman says.
He found stories he could tell within single frames because heunderstoodthose stories.
Thats how flipping, utterly crazy is my life, Harriman says.
Its been a wild journey since then.
But, for Harriman, it is his work on activism that resonates strongest.
Im a big zombie guy, he says, out of leftfield.
But with all great zombie films, the monsters are never the zombies.
Its like a character story of my life, he says.
He shot some footage at the Oscars.
Theres some really interesting clips of the epitome of celebrity culture.
Whats the opposite of that kind of echo chamber of privilege that we live in?
I was there speaking to migrants, the people crossing the sea on little boats.
It feels like a very important piece of witness-bearing.
The only remembrance of them is a little tiny plastic boat.
It was a real reminder of the inequality of this existence we have.
Thats why I do the work.
Im an honorary fellow from SOAS University of London, I have an honorary doctorate from Ravensbourne University.
And I was described by a leading newspaper as Meghan Markles Snapper Pal.
Thats very much by design.
He is determined that whatever success he achieves will be paid forward to marginalized voices.
Not because its my job to, but I always will.
As you climb, you lift.
I could fail miserably, he adds, echoing the humble early days of his move into photography.
But I am definitely going to try.
