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I've photographed the Azarian brothers many times. My wife and I hired the Azarians to do cement work at our home in 1994. When she heard that Tony had been killed, she said that they were one of the few contractors we have hired who were honest with us. There are many wonderful things about photojournalism. Our cameras are a golden key or a magic passport that open many doors to us. Those of us who shoot pictures for The Journal Times are the eyes of the readers. We take you places you can't go. We show you people and parts of the community you never dreamt exist. We are in the front row when history is made. We're paid to kneel on the sidelines of Packers games. We're paid to fly in airplanes to give you a bird's eye view of the community. We're paid to bring you countless delightful moments of life in Racine County. We see our pictures hanging on your refrigerators with magnets, and we seem them on bulletin boards in your children's schools. That's the good part. The bad part is that we are also paid to be in the front row when tragedy strikes. We have to be there when people's lives and emotions are ripped apart, as much as we have to be there to celebrate life's great moments. That's why Jim Slosiarek had to be in the 5700 block of Douglas Avenue Saturday evening. We try to use our cameras as a shield from reality when we are photographing tragedy. It's a defense mechanism to keep our emotions in check. Jim says he is "glad the great moments outweigh the bad, but it is unfortunate most people only remember our actions during those bad occasions."
We don't always use the pictures we take at the scene of a tragedy, but we have to have the pictures in hand when we decide how to play the story. We can't go back to shoot pictures after the fact. We often have long, passionate discussions about how to play the stories and photos that will bring tears to readers' eyes at the breakfast table the next morning. Sometimes the people who criticize our coverage are at the scene, too, for no apparent reason other than to gape. I once had to cover a fatal automobile accident at about 6 p.m., and listened to a bystander criticize me for taking pictures of the scene. I told him I was there because it was part of my job, and that I wondered why he was there at dinner time, instead of being home, with his family. In 1993 I suggested that we do a story about the five Azarian brothers who had stepped in to carry on the work of their legendary late father, Sam. I'm glad the story idea was accepted, and that we ran it with Paul Roberts' light-hearted photo of the five brothers in the bucket of an end-loader.
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Mark
Hertzberg
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Contributor
since 1998
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Behind
the Viewfinder - A Year in the Life of Photojournalism |
