This is not an easy Field Notes for me to do. In fact, it’s the hardest one yet. But I feel I have no choice but to state what I know and give my perspective as a photojournalist.
I’m dedicating this to the journalists still in Gaza who are attempting to show the world what is happening in the Israeli war in Gaza and its people and in the more than over 200 journalists that died documenting the reality they were witnessing. Journalists in Gaza are being targeted and killed as are some of their family members who have been killed also, murdered intentionally, assassinated to intimidate other journalists from reporting. These are war crimes.
But the journalists carry on in the danger hoping to document the truth of what’s happening to the people there. And most journalists hope that this work can help stop the atrocities and what the United Nations, the International Court of Justice and others claim is genocide. This is not only a war on Gaza it’s a war on journalism and freedom of the press and it’s a war on the truth. To further the censorship, foreign journalists are not allowed into Gaza. The Israeli government is doing its best to stop any documentation that would alter their narrative.
But the media is not being silent. The International Federation of Journalists and Reporters Without Borders declared September the first as a media blackout day to protest the killing of journalists in Gaza. The IFJ states that over 250 global media outlets in 50 countries will go dark in an international blackout to protest the killings and demand open press access into Gaza.
And now the back story. Usually in Field Notes I do a back story after I explain the featured photo. This time the back story is the featured photo itself. This is of Cornell Capa, the founder of the International Center of Photography. It was taken in the fall of 1977 in Manhattan. This was shot for Camera 35 and later the New York Times picked it up. Cornell Capa was my most influential mentor. For most of my life I’ve been a conflict photographer not a combat photographer. But I’ve covered massive anti-war protests, the anti-globalization fight against neo-liberal free trade, mass actions against the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, WTO, Indigenous Peoples struggles, climate change protests and much more.
I’ve been lucky compared to the journalists that were killed in Gaza. But I’ve had some moments. I’ve been arrested, jailed, detained, interrogated by authorities. I’ve had a submachine gun shoved in my stomach behind military lines. I’ve experienced bricks, rubber bullets, toxic spray from water cannons, tear gas canisters flying over my head, and I even had my shoulder separated and elbow shattered.
Early on my travels took me to Europe. I lived in Paris, France in parts of 1975 and 76, trying to find my way as a photographer. One day I went to Shakespeare and Company Bookshop, located on the banks of the Seine in Paris. I was browsing the photography books when I came across the work of Robert Capa. Robert Capa is one of the most famous war photographers in history. He covered the Spanish Civil War and when it was one of the first to hit the beaches during the Normandy invasion of 1944.
Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson and others were some of the founders of the prestigious Magnum Photo Agency. Robert Capa died in Indochina in 1954, when he stepped on a landmine.
The book I was reading at Shakespeare’s was printed by the International Center of Photography in Manhattan and edited by Robert’s brother, Cornell Capa. I vowed I would go to ICP. In a year I was there as an intern and my mentor was Cornell Capa. Cornell coined the term “Concerned Photography.”
“The Concerned Photographer finds much in the present unacceptable, which he tries to alter. Our goal is simply to let the world know why it is unacceptable.”
And that’s why I’m a photographer. In my career I photographed in six continents for over five decades.