Every once in a while...
Illustration
Every once in a while, in the world of photojournalism, there is an image that rises above
the tiny rectangles on a photographer's contact sheet -- that leaps right out of the
developing pan, as it were, and into history. Such an image is the raising of the American
flag on Iwo Jima; the picture of solemn young John F. Kennedy, Jr., saluting his father's
casket as the funeral procession trundles by; and the grimy face of an Oklahoma City
firefighter as he cradles, in the crook of one arm, the body of an infant he has pulled from
the rubble of the bombed-out federal building. Images like these tug at the heart-strings,
it's true; but they also convey a certain impression of nobility and strength.
There was a photograph very much like these, that arose out of the dreadful civil war in Bosnia. It appeared in all the major newspapers. Against a backdrop of blackened, bombed-out buildings, the photographer's inquisitive lens captured a man playing the cello. The man is dressed in black tie and tails, and in the photo he seems to concentrate on nothing but the making of music -- despite the obvious fact that all around him are strewn the rubble and ruins of civilization, as he knows it.
It is a picture of endurance.
There was a photograph very much like these, that arose out of the dreadful civil war in Bosnia. It appeared in all the major newspapers. Against a backdrop of blackened, bombed-out buildings, the photographer's inquisitive lens captured a man playing the cello. The man is dressed in black tie and tails, and in the photo he seems to concentrate on nothing but the making of music -- despite the obvious fact that all around him are strewn the rubble and ruins of civilization, as he knows it.
It is a picture of endurance.
