Your most recent assignment was in Nairobi. What were you looking for there?
I hadn't worked in Africa before and I jumped into Nairobi really not knowing what it was going to be like. I wanted to get a sense of the individuals in the city. I wanted to meet people. I'm a people person - you're not going to see any aerial landscape shots of mine. I usually shoot people from a couple of feet away. The whole trip though was a bit of an anomaly as Latin America is my main love.
How did you develop this link with Latin America?
When I began work I was like most Americans - I hadn't really left the country; I was isolated by American culture. My first two assignments were in Virginia, where I'm from. Then I went to the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico to do a shoot on Mayan culture.
I just hit the ground with no assistant and no Spanish. But it was amazing. I started picking up Spanish and fell in love with the culture. After a year photographing the modern Maya I went to Spain and spent a year there. Out of those travels came my book, Divided Soul.
You took pictures in the Nairobi slums and similar areas in South America - is it dangerous?
I'm used to being out of my element, working in City of God type environments. I tend to go into these tough areas with someone who knows them. I did lose a camera once, though. I was photographing the carnival in one of the toughest neighbourhoods in Bahia [in Brazil] with two big bodyguards. I put one Leica down and it was stolen while it was hanging around my neck. I completely freaked out and started shouting at the bodyguards. I didn't care about the camera, but all those photographs were gone. They both started crying! I felt bad and we all started hugging in the middle of the carnival.
A year later I went back and met the head guy of the neighbourhood. He asked me about my camera and 10 days later I got it back complete with the film.
How do you research a trip?
I like to get hold of a good novel. In Latin America I read Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. To get into the real spirit of Mexico I read DH Lawrence's The Plumed Serpent. Fiction for me has more truth than a journalistic account.
Do you try to keep your holidays and work trips separate?
No, I travel perhaps 50 percent of the time and work, travel and fun are all blurred together. This summer I took my girlfriend to a meeting in Paris and shot the hip-hop scene there. We rented a car and then drove down to the coast. Then I did a shoot in Italy and taught a workshop there - business and holiday in one. After a shoot I'm never back at the hotel lonely. I often take one of my sons.
· Photographs from David Alan Harvey's recent shoot in Nairobi appear in the September edition of National Geographic magazine
