The world is our client
My dearest Nicky is in Sichuan, China right now and i can't begin to express how excited i am for him. It's his biggest passion to want to shoot and this opportunity, as tragic as the circumstances are, is his biggest break. Forget the Taiwan elections, this is the perfect scenario to showcase his stuff. I told him straight up when i found out he was in China, "Go win a Pulitzer!" - and i meant every word of it. Tragedies like these are hard to come by, not that we who are in the photo business wish that something of this magnitude happens every other day. But honestly, these are the kind of situations that allow the poignance within pictures to be amplified. Pain, suffering, destruction - as much as the world could do without them, we the grand spectators of a media age, are thoroughly addicted to it.
Nicky took this great picture of a mother mourning over her dead twin daughters. Considering he was using a 16-35mm lens, it would've required him to get within 2 metres of the crying lady. There she was, crying for the loss of her beloved daughters and there Nicky was, snapping away in front of her. I asked him how it felt and he said it was quite a sickening feeling sometimes. I can't imagine how i would begin to take a picture like that but i guess the reality of the situation is that you as a photojournalist must do your job. Yes, people are wrenching as the reality consumes them, but it the photog's duty to report this, to show the world that life sometimes really screws you over.
The most powerful thing i believe is time. Nothing can stem the eternal flow of sand and this flow eventually erodes the most tragic and painful of realities. Myanmar, the victim of a junta's nonsensical rule, is still picking up its pieces. But the news of their plight has slowly been eroding away in terms of value. Yes, people are still incensed about the government but there's no denying that in the recent few days, the news of the earthquake have begin to overshadow the plight of the millions in Myanmar.
Come three, maybe four months, everything will be simply a figment of everyone's memory. News agencies will cease the extensive coverage of the cyclone and earthquake victims and something like the Olympics will inevitably take the front pages. Life goes on, regardless of whether the victims in these Asian countries have found some sort of solace. The riots in Tibet and Myanmar were top news months ago but hardly anything else comes in these days. Followup stories slowly trickle in once a few weeks as the world audience demands for more current and exciting news. Our dearest MSK of the JI, who escaped months ago, is now nothing more than a conversation topic.
News can be a cruel organisation. As much as its purpose is to be a watchdog and a tool of information dissemination to the masses, every news agency panders to what the world, the consumers, want to see and hear.
Nicky took this great picture of a mother mourning over her dead twin daughters. Considering he was using a 16-35mm lens, it would've required him to get within 2 metres of the crying lady. There she was, crying for the loss of her beloved daughters and there Nicky was, snapping away in front of her. I asked him how it felt and he said it was quite a sickening feeling sometimes. I can't imagine how i would begin to take a picture like that but i guess the reality of the situation is that you as a photojournalist must do your job. Yes, people are wrenching as the reality consumes them, but it the photog's duty to report this, to show the world that life sometimes really screws you over.
The most powerful thing i believe is time. Nothing can stem the eternal flow of sand and this flow eventually erodes the most tragic and painful of realities. Myanmar, the victim of a junta's nonsensical rule, is still picking up its pieces. But the news of their plight has slowly been eroding away in terms of value. Yes, people are still incensed about the government but there's no denying that in the recent few days, the news of the earthquake have begin to overshadow the plight of the millions in Myanmar.
Come three, maybe four months, everything will be simply a figment of everyone's memory. News agencies will cease the extensive coverage of the cyclone and earthquake victims and something like the Olympics will inevitably take the front pages. Life goes on, regardless of whether the victims in these Asian countries have found some sort of solace. The riots in Tibet and Myanmar were top news months ago but hardly anything else comes in these days. Followup stories slowly trickle in once a few weeks as the world audience demands for more current and exciting news. Our dearest MSK of the JI, who escaped months ago, is now nothing more than a conversation topic.
News can be a cruel organisation. As much as its purpose is to be a watchdog and a tool of information dissemination to the masses, every news agency panders to what the world, the consumers, want to see and hear.