Karma chameleons: Sensitivity and the photographer

It is a question I am often asked: “Do photographers have an emotional side that brims over when they cover events that claims the lives of people?” In fact, it was only last week that this was asked of me again. The answer is that photographers are more emotional than your average Joe, who runs the rat race on a routine track, mimicking a well-oiled machine.
The question, however, did transport my mind back to two events that shook me and those around me. One was the plane crash on February 14, 1990 which claimed more than 90 lives, and the second took place at Charkhi Dadri — a mid-air collision between Saudi Arabian Flight 763 and an Air Kazakhstan Flight 1907, which left no survivors, killing 349. On both occasions, I was ‘un’fortunate enough to reach the epicentre of the carnage before other photographers. Also, one can’t help but remember the nightmarish scenarios thrown up by communalism; a pot far too often stirred by those political machinations that claim to prevent the broth boiling over.The only answer I had, to the query, was, “We [photographers] have a very big heart and that is why we keep doing what we do.” The questioner nodded, but looked at me rather quizzically. I explained to him that a photographer covers a human tragedy, or attempts to, without sympathy or bias, unlike the writer who has the option of detaching himself from the scene, far too often geographically. The photographer has to be ‘kissing distance’ away from the dead and maimed, but yet be stoic in his documentation of the scene.

The photographer has to be ‘kissing distance’ away from the dead and maimed, but yet be stoic in his documentation of the scene.

During the 1990 crash, I photographed rescue workers removing the remains of a young girl, charred beyond recognition. At the time, the image before me had not impact on my psyche. It was much later, as I was making the prints that the gorgons in the image emerged and emblazoned themselves in my mind. It is something I will take with me to the grave.
This is every photographer’s Dharma in this Karma, and if given another chance, in another Karma, to perform the same Dharma, for most photographers, the answer will be a vociferous ‘no’.