For the first time I saw him in the roads of Kirtipur. He was photographing small children rallying and shouting slogans for Maoists. The children were carrying flags. Several photographers were photographing the scene. What made me notice this particular photographer was his passionate hurry. Everybody was patiently clicking, but he was differently hurrying. I surmised, all other lensmen clicked two or three snaps except this man who might have clicked more than fifteen snapshots.
And, his was the picture I saw on the pages of dailies with news that he won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography. And then I knew that he was Adrees Latif, a photo journalist for Reuters. Adrees Latif won for "his dramatic photograph of the Japanese videographer, sprawled on the pavement, fatally wounded during a street demonstration in Myanmar," the Pulitzer Prize board said.
While Prachanda was coughing his roadmap of New Nepal, I was looking at the panel of photographers and television camerapersons keenly performing their job. And, my attraction was mostly directed to this particular photographer. While this photographer followed the rallying children from beginning to the end, some Nepalese photographers were seen clicking the same rally sitting conveniently on their motorbikes. I thought the Nepalese paparazzi were either lazy or they were so familiar with those rallies, that, they found it futile to get off their vehicle just for a snapshot.
When I read the news that he won the Pulitzer Prize for photography, I was not flabbergasted. I had already seen this keen labor three days before the prize was announced. In the crowd of more than fifty camerapersons-national and international- he was the centre of my attraction.
There is a commonplace saying ‘A photograph speaks a thousand words’. I think the photograph which fetched Latif the prize speaks volumes of the passion that the photographer has in his job.
I have a respect for photographers. They show to us the beauty and ugliness of life. When they show us beautiful pictures, we praise those pictures. They give us pictures of disorder. They show us the realities of life. They change the way we think. They change us. They change the course of time.
Once, crazy Britney Spears a paparazzi with her umbrella. And he became the news. Lindsay Lohan drove her car over a lensman’s shoes. It became a grand issue. War photographers cover the war, and in the course become lunatics seeing the pathetic condition of people. Rebels hit them with bullets. Armies drive their rollers over their bodies. But nobody bothers for them. They do not become the headlines. They die unsung deaths. Kenji Nagai became the news one day. That fetched Latif the Pulitzer prize. He does not know when he will be the news himself. May be in the battlefield in Iraq or in Pakistan or in Afganistan,a reckless soldier may send a bullet through his body. He knows he may not get a chance to run next time. But he continues to see people’s lives through his lens. And he shows us the ugliness of life.
People will forget the Japanese videographer. But Latif will never forget his friend, the death of whom fetched him the prize.Pulitzer prize has become more of a painful memory than a matter of prestige. I do remember scores of photographers and journalists beaten up by security personnel during the historic april uprising.
In warzones, they find meaning of their life. They go for days without having a bath, they eat whatever the soldiers eat, they sleep three hours a night and wake up to the sound of a gunfire. They know that at any time someone may lob a grenade into the place where they are sitting, and that makes them live. They love every minute, every second. There’s just a great love for life.
07 April, 2008
Kathmandu
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