The movie begins with a photographer taking a pictures of a smoldering village. The trees are burning and so are the buildings around.
Woman says that photographer is a mystery, a loner. “I think you have to be single minded, and he is.”
Setting: Kosovo, after war.
Man is posting pictures he just received via fax in an office. He looks middle eastern. The photographer is taking up close pictures of an older woman who is crying. She is walking around looking at a building of which it seems she used to live in that has been burned to ruins. She is bewildered. More pictures are shown of bodies laying in the back of a pickup truck, families at a grave, a man screaming in pain at an operating room.
The film is switching back between the photographer and men working in an office. it seems as though they are figuring out how to layout the photos for publication.
Now it goes back to kosovo and it shows the digging process of a grave. After which it shows three women sobbing in great agony and the photographer is no farther than two feet away from their face taking pictures of them.
The photographer said that he chose to become a photographer strictly for the purpose of being a war photographer. He says that he was very affected by the pictures of the Vietnam War, and that is why he chose to go into his profession. In the 1980’s he went to New York to get a job at a magazine to follow his goals of going overseas to take pictures in war zones. He describes his work as theater, instead of watching it he was on the stage with history.
The photographer is back out on the field taking the lady that spoke earlier, they take her to a spot where there bodies laying under tarps and she looks shocked. She got into being a war correspondent after doing journalism, thinking it would be cool. Then little boys come up an throw flowers on top of the tarp covered bodies.
The film is very quite, giving it more of a dramatic realism, showing how sad and tragic war is.
“Pictures would not have been made unless i was accepted with the people I’m photographing.”
He mentions that those who get their photos taken gives them a voice. he respects them and makes sure that those he photograph knows he does.
He began do photographs of poverty in indonesia. “These are not drug addicts or dropouts, they work. They are trying to raise their families.” He was impacted by a man he took photos of who lost an arm and leg after getting ran over by a train. This man lives in the gravel with his family between the railroad tracks. He spent a lot of time documenting this family.
The movie itself depicts the impact that war has on human lives and the voice war correspondents give to those who are suffering from death, destruction, disease, lack of nutrition.
swayzerj 