Black and white photojournalism by award winning photographer David Lee Longstreath
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tales from the trail |
Mist rose from the Salween river as we crossed over from the safety of Thailand into Karen National Liberation Army territory in Myanmar. What was waiting at the top of a slight embankment were about a thousand KNLA soldiers, their families, and others gathered to celebrate their annual Independence Day holiday.
Assembled on a parade ground, KNLA soldiers were waiting to form up and march. The Karen are an ethnic minority that have been at war with whatever government was in power in the capital of Yangon since the end of World War 2. That makes them the longest-running insurgents in the world. As the soldiers formed up, clouds heavy with rain gathered in the surrounding mountains. For a photojournalist, the light, people, and mood was special. The moment could have been the opening scene in an action-packed Hollywood drama. Very few westerners then knew of Myanmar and even fewer of the ethnic Karen. The KNLA is backed by Christian groups and is equipped with semi-automatic assault weapons and western-style deer hunting rifles.
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My first trip into Afghanistan was in 1998. was a step across the border at the Khyber pass checkpoint and then a step back into Pakistan while both sides guards yelled loudly at me. This time was different. The Taliban exploded a car bomb on Sept. 5, 2002, in Kabul, killing 26 people and wounding 167 more. The following day I searched the outskirts of the city and noticed some men with pick axes clawing a grave from the rocky dirt on a barren hill. I soon saw more men carrying a young victim of the attack on a rope bed along a dusty road leading to the grave. It was a very emotional scene and I wasn't about to try and sneak photos of it. So, I decided to just ask, telling the father that I would show the world what the Taliban had done to his son. He agreed. She sat motionless on what once was the front door of her home in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan. The structure along with most of the city had been destroyed a few days earlier by a 7.6 magnitude earthquake. I don’t know if the woman lost any family in the earthquake but she looked lost and alone in a sea of broken concrete and steel reinforcement rods.
Most westerners have no sense of what a real tragedy is. The morning earthquake killed more than 80,000 people. That's as many people who attend a major college football game in the United States. I ventured into and out of a number of places destroyed by the Pakistani earthquake while shooting for The Associated Press. It was torture to travel anywhere by road and there were virtually no accommodations other than in the front seat of an Islamabad taxi. How could I transmit photos from the earthquake? I did it with digital cameras and a laptop computer. When I could get a hotel the first question asked was “are your phone lines working?” I spent two weeks in the earthquake zone before returning to Thailand and onto a beach and a bottle of Tequila to wash away the memories. As a traveling photojournalist I always valued my time in the early morning when the light would be good and it was cool. Such was a morning in Vang Vieng, Laos while crossing a footbridge I looked out and saw a man wading across the river. The mist and the surrounding area formed a painting like image. Vang Vieng today is a combination of backpackers hotels, bars and nightclubs.
It is no secret that I love black and white photography. While I made a living for more than 40 years using color my heart has always belong to black and white. As Philip Jones Griffiths used to tell me, "color complicates things."
Visit Tales from the Trail and see more B&W images in the future from my personal archives. His smile was what first caught my eye as I stood watching the people of Sittwe, Myanmar, on a warm December afternoon. He was a tricycle taxi driver waiting for customers from a bustling market half a block away. Often when I am photographing people on the street in a new place, I take a wait and watch position. That's because standing in one spot just watching the rhythm of the street gives me an idea of how to photograph the people. Sittwe was in a very remote part of Myanmar. When I arrived from Yangon, I was the only westerner on the flight. Guide books had suggested staying at one of three hotels in town, and their ratings were barely two stars. But this was not a tourist trip. As always, I had come to take photographs. I have always been in love with the black and white image. It has been more than 50 years of shooting; I have not stopped looking. For me, black and white photos strip away all of the unnecessary information. "Is it a moment?" I ask myself, or have I "just recorded a scene?" I could tell the taxi driver was getting shout outs from the others. They had noticed me and my cameras, but I waited just a few seconds longer. Putting my camera to my eye, the man turned and flashed an incredible smile. Not a big moment, I told myself. But not merely a scene either. This was the first thing I photographed in Sitwee. It was going to be a good trip. Fine art prints for sale at Fine Art America.com or www.pixels.com
At first, it looked as if I wouldn't make it to Varanasi, India, for my 65th birthday. I completely messed up my Indian on-arrival visa and the airline at the Bangkok airport took one look at my application and turned me away. "Not today. Go back and redo the visa application," the ticket agent told me. The next day, after finishing my application online and getting it printed at my hotel, I made the flight and then sailed through the "e" visa on arrival in Deli. However, Varanasi would have to wait until the morning. So, off to the Holiday Inn for one night and what was to be my last good meal for awhile. By midday, after an uneventful flight, I arrived in Varanasi, the ancient city on the Ganges River. I was so excited I was ready to be shooting and not traveling. I had booked into a guest house called the "Shiva Inn" because it was walking distance to the Gnats, or holy places, on the Ganges. Bob Bozart, a friend from my days in Oklahoma, was waiting on me, and soon we were out making images. It isn't hard to shoot in Varanasi, especially if you like photographing people. During the next week there were many daily adventures. Bob and I walked the banks of the Ganges and toured the city as well. Varanasi isn't for the average tourist. If you like noise, confusion, cattle wandering in the streets and alleys, and all manner of religious pilgrims, then you're in the right place. I would love to return, with an assistant, a set of portable lights, and the chance to shoot a portfolio of the holy men there known as Sadhus. Would you like to know how this image frame would look in living room or office? Visit Fine Art America on line, search my name and check out prices
On the morning of April 19, 1995, while ironing a shirt for work, my wife called me. "David, something bad has happened downtown." I immediately turned on a portable radio scanner that I regularly carried and heard an uninterrupted stream of police and fire dispatchers calling for help at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. Fire dispatchers were saying there had been an explosion while police were calling for all units to respond to the scene to help the injured and control traffic. I buried the speed odometer at 90 mph and flew along Interstate 35 towards the scene. As I approached the I-40 junction for east- and westbound traffic, I could see a massive plume of black smoke rising over the area near the Murrah building. It didn't take long to exit I-35 and find my way to a parking spot behind the old Daily Oklahoman Building, where the former office for the Associated Press had been. Running across the street towards the Murrah building, I kept seeing bloodied people in every direction. One man who I photographed had numerous chunks of glass still stuck in his face and head. Chaos can't even begin to describe the scene. It looked like something you might see in Beirut or Baghdad. One-third of the Murrah Building was gone. Wiring and piping of all sorts, office furniture, and mangled desktop computers were everywhere in the rubble. Vast sections of concrete had collapsed into a war-zone sized hole in the front of the building. I immediately began to shoot. I took one establishing shot that showed the overall scene. Then, I went to work, picking apart the various elements. People all around me were in shock. Parents of the children in the building's first-floor daycare center began arriving. Shrieks of pain and agony were everywhere. A part of me wanted to reach out and help, but another kept whispering, "don't stop, keep shooting, don't stop." Two months earlier, the AP had given me one of the first-ever digital cameras. It was a clunky looking thing, a Nikon N90 body married to a digital card reader. It was all I had with me at the scene that morning. I later transmitted over 20 digital images from the bombing to newspapers and magazines around the world. I also purchased two film images from a bank clerk that showed the iconic Oklahoma City firefighter cradling infant Baylee Almond. AP photographers were not equipped with mobile phones in 1995. The pager I wore never stopped buzzing. At one point, I managed to find a working pay phone and called the buro. I was soon on my way to begin sending those first digital images. Later that morning, while filing photos and answering nonstop calls, Amateur photographer Charles Porter, a mild-mannered young man, came to me wanting to sell photographs of the bombing. My first reaction was to brush him off and continue working, but something he said caused me to pause. "Dan Perry said to bring these photos only to you," he said, looking out over the top of his glasses. Dan was a friend of mine who taught photojournalism at nearby Central State University. I took the stack of 4 x 6 color prints and began looking quickly at each. At this point, the AP's Oklahoma City bureau chief, Lindel Hutson, came over to help. I was nearing the final shots of the first pack when Hutson drew my attention to two images. One was of a firefighter holding what looked like a dead baby. "We are going to want this," I said to him. Porter left my office that day with a check for the first time ever. He would later go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his shot of the firefighter and baby. In the days ahead, I also photographed a closely guarded Timothy McVeigh being led in handcuffs from the Perry, Okla., jail. I and fellow AP photographer John Gapps III were able to file digital images of McVeigh's "perp walk" hours before any rival news organizations. Associated Press Photos by David Longstreath
On Jul. 18 of1984 James Huberty fatally shot 21 people and wounded 19 others in a mass shooting at a McDonald's restaurant in San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego, California, before being killed by a police sniper. I was working at the Democratic Convention in San Francisco and was shipped out the following day to help AP staffer Lenny Ignelzi.
While the shooting was over the pain and suffering of friends and family members was beginning. I photographed the funeral of a young mother and child, buried together side by side, in a white silk-lined casket. It was very moving. Fast forward two years later, and I was standing outside the Edmond, Oklahoma Post office the morning of Aug. 21, 1986. News reporters have huddled around then Oklahoma City district attorney Bob Macy. He seemed winded as if struggling for a breath when he looked up from a note pad and said: "seven dead so far, but there may be more." It was then that I turned and began photographing postal workers weeping and clinging to one another. When the day had finished, Patrick Wayne Sherrill had murdered 14 co-workers before killing himself. He used 45 Calibur handguns smuggled out of a National Guard Armory. Described as a loner by co-workers Sherrill it was believed was about to be fired. I photographed the funerals of most of the victims. Five years later, I found myself standing outside a crime scene in Killeen, Texas. George Hennard drove his pickup truck through the front window of a Luby's Cafeteria. He left his vehicle and then shot and killed 23 people and wounded 27 others. Like many, he then killed himself. As of 2018, the Lubby's massacre ranked as the sixth-deadliest shooting in the U.S. by a single shooter. The single thread that runs through all of these shootings is the question of "Why?' Why would someone do something like this? What could be so wrong with the mind of an individual that he would pick up a handgun or rifle and kill people? In 1983 I photographed a man being shot to death outside a 7-11 in South Oklahoma City by a police SWAT team. He had attempted to rob the convenience store just as police arrived for a coffee break. He seemed to want to die. As he left the 7-11 he raised his shotgun, an antique and the swat team pumped his full of rifle rounds. He died later at an Oklahoma City hospital. Death and funerals were a recurring part of my job as a photojournalist. Traveling on Cambodian Highway 67, on the way back from an assignment in Anglong Veng, myself and an accompanying reporter took a needed bathroom break from the bone-jarring ride we were enduring in a beat-up local taxi. The highway we stopped on, really just a dirt road, had recently been hacked out from a thick layer of jungle. It was 70 miles of poorly graded dirt bordered by a triple growth canopy forest. Cambodia is one of the poorest nations in the world, and free land was the lure the government used to get settlers into the area. The only problem was that Pol Pot, and the Khmer Rouge had heavily mined the land. It was clear why the Khmer Rouge had retreated to the area after being thrown out of Phnom Penh by the Vietnamese in 1979. It was a jungle hiding place filled with mosquitos and snakes. As I got out of the taxi to stretch, I noticed a dirty Cambodian boy, 6 or 7 years old. He was holding a scruffy looking puppy and was sporting a shaved head style haircut. Neither looked like they had seen a bath in quite a while. There was no thinking about this image. When I see what I call "zero opportunities" in the eyes of a child, it is hard for me to turn away. It was a simple portrait I felt needed to be taken. I looked around and there was no family or others to be seen. There was only a green wall in every direction. I reached down, lifted my camera with a telephoto zoom from the backseat of the taxi, framed the shot, and click the shutter several times. Seconds later, the young boy panicked. The sight of a Westerner holding something that looked like a rifle made him run back into the jungle. I lowered my camera and looked for a moment. Still, no one else was to be seen. My companions were making their way back to the taxi and soon we were on our way. We had traveled to Anglong Veng, the former stronghold of the Khmer Rouge, to do a story about Christian missionaries finding converts among former Khmer Rouge soldiers. I had heard from friends that Highway 67 was open to the border with Thailand, but that it was a just a dusty dirt road. In the 15 years, I was based in Bangkok, I did many assignments in Cambodia, including two elections, the coronation of a new king and the cremation of an old one. The Cambodia people were always warm and friendly to me. I loved working there. But Cambodia is a basket case. Less than 30 percent of the population has a high school education. Sanitation and a lack of clean drinking water are constant problems. I have always thought that hiding in the jungle that day we stopped on the highway was a relative who had urged the young boy out to greet me with that puppy. If he had come to ask for money, the sight of my camera scared him off. The boy and his scraggly puppy may have disappeared back into the jungle but they come out again every time I look at their photo. |
Tales from the Trail
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David Lee Longstreath is a retired wire service photographer with more than 40 years experience on assignments around the world. He currently lives in upcountry Thailand. |
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