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Image, memory and eternity

Everyone loves a good photograph and it was born on this day, writes P. V. SIVAKUMAR

PHOTO: AP

NOT ALWAYS BEHIND CAMERA An elderly Lebanese resident is carried by photojournalist Chris Anderson as she flees her home during a lull in the shelling in the village of Aitaroun, southern Lebanon

At dawn of June 8, 1972, about 5 a.m., photographer Nick Ut met fellow photographers who like him frequently ran the dangerous roads to find battles: There was David Burnett, from Time Magazine, Ut's Vietnamese photographer friend Hoang Van Danh, a freelancer who would work for both United Press International and AP (he now lives in Switzerland) and television teams from the BBC, ITN, NBC and other news organisations.

The rest is photographic history: The two Skyraider aircraft of the Viet Nam Air Force bombed the edge of the village, near the Cai Dai pagoda, in a familiar pattern - first explosive bombs, then incendiary bombs - large containers with a mix of explosives, white phosphorus and the black oily napalm - and ending up with heavy machinegun fire during closing strafing runs. And then the terrified, burned and wounded villagers came running from the village, towards the line of soldiers and reporters standing across the road. Nick Ut recalled in a 1999 interview: "When we moved closer to the village we saw the first people running. I thought `Oh my God' when I suddenly saw a woman with her left leg badly burned by napalm. Then came a woman carrying a baby, who died, then another woman carrying a small child with it's skin coming off. When I took a picture of them I heard a child screaming and saw that young girl who had pulled off all her burning clothes. She yelled to her brother on her left. Just before the napalm was dropped soldiers (of the South Vietnamese Army) had yelled to the children to run but there wasn't enough time."

Nick Ut used two cameras to photograph the scenes in front of him - his Leica and a Nikon with a telephoto.

Nick Ut's moment of truth could not have been more aptly put, as the `World Photography Day' is celebrated on August 19. Those images of Kim Phuc that shook the world would remain etched in the minds of generations. The stalwarts Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ansal Adams, Kishore Parekh, Raghu Rai (to name a few) who strode the monochrome world like colossus drew the world of photojournalism closer to our morning cuppa with their stunning images of events, making photography an integral part of our daily lives.To enthusiasts, it would be interesting that photography came to the world from the French and was introduced on August 19, 1839, before the members of the Academie des Sciences and Academie des Beaux Arts, the technique which was described in detail by Arago, describing Daguerre's process, discussing its evolution, predicting its brilliant future. Today, every moment, we live photography. From research work to entertainment, from documentation to creating stunning pictorial works of art, photography is everywhere.

"Mummy! I have taken your picture, driving the car, with the cell," screams seven-year-old Anusha at the Lotus Pond in Banjara Hills, jumping from the car.

The last few years have seen rapid strides in digital photography, driving black & white, colourand polaroids nearly into extinction, as photography watcher Ian Sherwood says: "Outdoor photographers are sprouting up like roadside wildflowers, many of them taking high-quality pictures comparable to those of the pros -- in large part, thanks to digital photography."

Devoid of film reloading, consumer sentiment has swung towards the new technology and that's why so many outdoors people, in particular, are choosing digital cameras that have a liquid crystal display screen on the back so images can be reviewed immediately. Many new digital cameras, including the less expensive point-and-shoots, can take five shots or more per second for upwards of 60 images. Buy a few memory cards and that will do, but as Hyderabad's noted pictorialist B. Rajan Babu says:

"My monochrome pictures of tribal girls at a shanty in Araku (Vizag) were shot `only as my mind's eye viewed it' and that sums up that everything in photography has not been conquered as yet -- the visualisation, is still unique and unconquered!

So close

A man, lying down, is punched before being killed, while another man walks to execute a second man, seen on his knees on the right, on Baghdad's Haifa Street, December 19, 2004. The photos made front pages around the world and one of them was part of the package of AP's coverage of Iraq that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography.

How did the photographer come to be in one of the most dangerous parts of one of the most dangerous streets in Baghdad at that particular time? Santiago Lyon, Director of Photography, The Associated Press says, "He had been tipped off by another journalist that `something happened on Haifa Street.' Immediately he headed out the door for a car trip to Haifa Street. He found a burning car and photographed it about 300 meters from what would later turn out to be the execution scene.

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