|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
Epilogue I've been a silent partner in this collaboration for some time. Photography took some unexpected turns in the last year and I thought I knew where I was going. As usual, things weren't quite what I expected them to be so I thought I'd go back to the place where I regained my footing. It was World AIDS Day and I had been feeling isolated and a little ambivalent with all the meet and greets that were required in my daily duties. But by the end of the day, eleven year old Andrew Jackson Okurut of Uganda had helped me to see what was missing in my daily assignments. I had spent most of the day covering programs and receptions that were scheduled to raise awareness of the issue of AIDS in the world community. The list of invitees read like a list of who's who: Queen Noor of Jordan, Hillary Clinton, singer Isaac Hayes, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Magic Johnson, as well as three children who had been orphaned by AIDS. My job as a UN photographer was to photograph all of the speakers in the panel discussions, and during the luncheon reception. At the end of the day when the official activities were over, I had an opportunity to speak to young Andrew, an exquisitely handsome kid, dressed in a black tuxedo and bow tie, who had lost both his parents to AIDS and whose eloquent speech earlier in the day had left many in tears. He had with him, a memory book, which he proudly showed to anyone who would take the time to look at it. Filled with photographs and handwritten stories about the day he was born, his first day at school, and other memories and recollections of his childhood, it was written by his mother, who had died only a month earlier. Andrew showed me every page and spoke tenderly of her. I was impressed by this young man who had suffered enormous losses in his young life and yet, had the presence to address an international forum, bringing attention to AIDS and the impact on families like his own. As a mother, this story was very close to home; as a cancer survivor, mortality has always been an issue with my family; as a photographer, I realized what I had been missing most in my assignments at the UN was this human interaction, this human dynamic that for the most part, was not part of my daily routine. Seeing how the peace brokers of the international community operated behind the scenes was a rewarding experience for its historical value, if not for its visual impact. But, for all of the prime ministers and presidents who were no more than 5 feet away when I photographed them, they might as well have been 500. In our search for imagery, we are observers, not participants. But in my experience, being a photojournalist involves more than simply taking pictures. It means being able to relate to the people we photograph, to listen to the stories they have to tell, and to take a little black box and capture something of that person in a fraction of a second that conveys to the world some moment of truth through our eyes. The search for visual objectivity in front of the lens yields only a half-truth; the other half lies behind the viewfinder in a culmination of life experiences that we bring to the table of photographic endeavor. We make a choice at the moment of pressing the shutter. That choice often determines not simply what we've observed, but what we have chosen as an image to represent that situation. And so, as my contract ended, I decided to take a sort of "time out" to let the experience of having worked in a place imbued with so much history sink in, before I decided what to do next. But 3 days later, when an editor from The New York Times called and asked me if my UN contract was over, and if I wanted to work, my brain said: "Run, don't walk, to the nearest newsroom." Some of my most memorable experiences have been newspaper stories that I have recounted in this forum: Steven Gee, a local merchant whose burglarized store brought me back into his life after having photographed his developmentally disabled son three years earlier; firefighter John Usai, whom I photographed a week before he died, both stories for the local community newspaper The Riverdale Press. The stories that have touched me the most are the ones in which certain corners of my heart ached---or triumphed in the telling: stories like the one that brought me last year into the home of Allen Martin, a retiree with kidney disease, in his struggle for medical coverage when his HMO refused to pay for life saving dialysis treatments; the Rev. Dan Egan, the "Junkie Priest" who ministers to terminally ill AIDS patients; Neisha Butler, the jubilant high school graduate...or more recently into the lives of Harlem residents about to be evicted from their homes. One of the most gratifying moments came a few weeks ago when, perhaps owing to the luck of the freelance draw, but perhaps not, I was assigned to work on a national story on preemies, and the disabilities they often face growing up. The assignment sheet read: "sensitive photographer required ." Not all of my assignments are so compelling. I recently completed a week-long project shooting restaurants and golf courses for a special section, requiring a reshoot on one of the assignments, and lots of mileage. But in the course of 7 days, I listened to stories that might possibly make newsprint one day, and I met people along the way who made the experience memorable. While I can't claim to have made a difference in the lives of people I've photographed, their stories have certainly changed mine. They have made me aware of the uniqueness of our connections to each other in the world, connections that lend truth to the saying "six degrees of separation..." or less. These stories are not headline material in the international pages of newspapers around the world, but their stories are compelling and important, nonetheless. As community journalists, we give a voice, and a face to the world of the everyday. For this photographer, this is what life, if not photojournalism, is all about. Susan B. Markisz May 31, 2000 Captions for photos:
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Susan
Markisz
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Contributor
since 1998
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Behind
the Viewfinder - A Year in the Life of Photojournalism |
