By Guillaume Bonnet
Covering a conflict like the one that has just ravaged the Gaza Strip for eight days confronts a journalist with the terrible spectacle of dozens of corpses, of both adults and children, which are frequently displayed by their families in a hellish atmosphere fraught with tension and emotion. The Palestinians revere their fallen as martyrs, whom they call “shahid”. The corpses are always visible during funerals, held aloft by crowds as they are paraded through the streets.
AFP PHOTO/Mahmud Hams
During my assignment in Gaza, I was spared from seeing more than a few dead children’s bodies. But I nonetheless witnessed a number of very gruesome scenes. On Tuesday (November 20), two journalists from the Hamas TV station were killed by an Israeli bombardment. After filming their car, which had been totally incinerated, I rushed to the morgue at the hospital with AFP photographer Marco Longari to see if I could photograph the bodies that had been pulled from the vehicle.
There was a terrible crush of people at the hospital, which was widely perceived as a safe haven from attacks. Many international TV channels had set up cameras for live reports. Going into the hospital, we stumbled immediately upon two corpses in a pool of blood. They were two Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel who had been killed and dragged through the streets of Gaza. It was a horrible sight. I chose not to film it, but my colleague Marco took this image.
AFP PHOTO/Marco Longari
I always ask myself whether or not I should film corpses. In the Gaza morgue, the bodies were laid out on metal tables. Everyone seemed to find it perfectly normal that the media were present, with journalists free to film or photograph the bodies, sometimes from just a few centimetres away. It wasn’t my first assignment in Gaza. I’d come several times before, about a decade ago. It was the same then.
AFP PHOTO/Marco Longari
In the heat of the moment, one is caught up in the action. Behind the camera, it’s as though there’s a screen between the journalist and death, both literally and figuratively. The camera acts as a shield against feeling.
It’s only later, when I think back to what I saw, that the images really hit me. A father or mother cradling a child’s body after pulling it from a pile of rubble – that’s the hardest.
1 reactions
1 From Craig - 28/11/2012, 23:35
Yes you should be filming that. With AP and Reuters pinned down by the corporate Western media, the world needs more media like AFP to tell/show us unfiltered facts on the ground. Keep up the good work Roland and AFP.
Regards
Craig (New Zealand)