Me and John McAfee
On Wednesday, John McAfee, the founder of the security software company that bears his name, died in a Spanish jail while awaiting extradition to the United States for tax evasion. One of the most enigmatic figures to have emerged from Silicon Valley at the start of the personal computer revolution, he’d long since fallen out of the industry and into a series of legally dubious situations of his own creation.
In 2012, Wired magazine ran a legendary profile of McAfee that captured a man in crisis and on the run from the law. The writer, Joshua Davis, had spent several months cultivating a relationship with his subject. Brian Finke, on the other hand, who was hired to shoot the story, had never heard of McAfee. On November 5, two days later he got the assignment, Finke disembarked a water taxi in Belize, and, accompanied by armed bodyguards, was brought to meet the man who would become, as Finke told Esquire, “the best subject I’ve ever had.”
I was shooting my book on U.S. Marshals book when I got the call from Wired’s photo director at the time, Carrie Levy. She told me that McAfee had been living in Belize for ten years, and that he’d been accused of manufacturing drugs and creating a small police force in his village.
I got on a plane and headed to his compound, on the coast outside Belize City. Upon exiting the motorboat taxi, I was met by armed guards, who led me inside. It was night at this point, but McAfee wanted to meet me before the next day’s shoot—to size me up, I’m pretty sure. I guess I passed the test, because he told me then that I was king for the next day—that whatever I wanted to shoot, he was there to make it happen.
He brought his whole crew over that day. Girlfriends, guns, hanging out poolside. Everyone came and went. My impression was that he was a smart guy with an enormous ego, who loved the attention. To me, this group of images presents this perception of himself that he wanted to share with the world.
11:10 a.m.
I was staying at a hotel in a nearby village. I took a water taxi over in the morning. I'd been told McAfee played Russian roulette for Joshua Davis, the writer. That image had stuck in my head, and I knew it was something I potentially wanted to try for a portrait. McAfee agreed we should start with that shot. He got his handgun, and we headed to his backyard. It was still early. As the morning light came through the trees, he raised the gun to his head and stared into the camera. His ego was huge, and I was feeding it. I could see tattoos peeking through the edge of his shirt, so I suggested he take the shirt off—and he did. That portrait became the opener for the story. He left his shirt off the rest of the day.
11:29 a.m.
Other than the first portrait and the group portrait at the end, these were all captured moments. I let him lead the way. That said, he was very aware that the camera was present. With him being so aware of the situation, and with what he wanted to put forward, it would be naive for me to be like, "I purely captured things as they were happening." It's an important context when looking at these. To me, it was important to capture the conditions of where he was living, and his interactions with the people around him.
This was back in his living room with one of his girlfriends. They were just hanging out, waiting for the day to begin. Her kind of passiveness, smoking a cigarette, as he caresses her thigh—it captures my impression of his relationships with all the women there, and even the bodyguards. It felt like every person had a role.
11:36 a.m.
I don’t know how many girlfriends he had at the time, but three women came by that day. This woman felt to me like his main girlfriend.
The accusation that he killed his neighbor, it was allegedly a dispute over McAfee’s dogs that escalated. They made too much noise, apparently. A few days after I left Belize, these dogs were dead. Poisoned, as Joshua Davis wrote in the Wired story.
1:03 p.m.
It's so weird to me, the bag of the Skittles while they're getting intimate.
1:42 p.m.
I was given a heads up beforehand that there most likely would be guns. When I arrived the night before, there were bodyguards walking around outside. But McAfee holding a gun during the daytime—that was him bringing out, you know, the guns, the girls, the skin, the beach. I don't know whether the gun was loaded.
This was on the pier in front of the house. What’s striking about the image is the women’s eyes. Their connectedness is so intense. Then he’s wearing sunglasses, like a barrier.
2:14 p.m.
This was in the kitchen. They were making out, and I was just...there.
This assignment was not just about showing McAfee as this badass dude with a gun to his head, as he wanted to be perceived. It was also about making photos like this, where he’s holding a giant Arizona iced tea. There's nothing flattering or badass about that.
2:57 p.m.
They’d just returned from riding around on the boat, and McAfee was walking to the house with his bodyguard. He had at least three bodyguards, maybe more. I don’t know whom he was talking to, or what they were discussing. He carried on like that all day, doing whatever he felt like doing. Just doing his thing.
3:13 p.m.
She was another girlfriend. I guess she’d gone through a tough situation and he was trying to console her, so he gave her this big Teddy bear. She was a grown woman. It just felt bizarre to me.
3:30 p.m.
These guys worked for him.
It's a Wrap
This one’s pretty self-explanatory. It’s all the people who were hanging out that day.
I never did hear from McAfee about what he thought of my portraits. But I think he was loving the whole experience as it happened.
Within a few days of me taking this photograph, McAfee’s neighbor was dead. By the time I returned home to Brooklyn, McAfee was on the run.
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