I have a hard time saying that this is a favourite photo, or that I even really like it. In fact, if anything, I’m a bit ashamed by it.
The story behind this photo is fairly straight forward. One of the riders on the 2007 Tour D’Afrique – I worked as the bike mechanic on the trip – was descending a hill in Ethiopia, and moving at a good clip. Somehow, a young girl stepped in front of him. Maybe she didn’t see him, or underestimated his speed, but the two connected in a most unpleasant way.
Meanwhile, I was sitting at the lunch truck. The rider came around the corner on foot, carrying the girl, and another staff member tended to her injuries. Thankfully none were major – a swollen lip and one eye swollen nearly shut.
She must have been terrified.
She didn’t speak english, and she didn’t even speak the same dialect as our Ethiopian guide, so we had to find another local who would help us talk with her to track down her family and make sure she got home alright.
And in the midst of the mayhem, I got out my camera. I think I had some vision that if I shot difficult circumstances, I would somehow be a better photographer, or somehow be more worldly. I asked if I could take photos, but of course, the girl had no way to let me know how she felt. The rider said he thought it would be ok, and so as the two of them sat there, waiting for her family to show up, I took a few photos.
It’s a striking photo, but in a way, I wish I hadn’t taken it.
His grief at the accident, and her strength, sitting quietly, not crying, just waiting are what compel me in this image. There are so many intrusions in someone’s life, but I can’t imagine how that girl must have felt about everything that happened to her that day.
It’s a beautiful photo. Raw emotion is hard to watch, but that’s what makes it compelling. And there’s some calling we have to answer, I think, about bearing witness to suffering. It has to be balanced by acting, acting to alleviate suffering… but sometimes bearing witness is all we have.
Really liked this post, and the photo.
I understand what you mean about feeling like you are intruding. For photojournalists, though, the goal is to take intimate photos like this, and there has to be some way to deal with that feeling if it comes up.
I think that what can be redeeming is acknowledging there is a story behind the photograph, there is a story behind the subjects in the photograph, and then taking the time to document that story in words. The worst thing you can do is snap a photo and run without ever interacting with your subject. You didn’t do that – and afterwards you wrote an explanation of the photo, telling what happened and showing that you had a relationship with the subjects. I think that shows your respect for the subjects and your understanding of what a photo can mean.
As more and more tourists show up in Paris this summer (where I live) I’ve been seeing a lot of photography gaffs. In the past week I’ve seen two different tourists in two different parts of the city kneel down, snap pictures of homeless people sleeping on the street, then jump up and jog away to meet up with their group again as they look at the photo they just took.
It’s almost as if they treat the things around them like they are there for amusement – in the case of taking a picture of a sleeping homeless person and deliberately doing it so that the person doesn’t realize they’ve been photographed…that’s not ok.
In any case, thanks for the post!