Errol Morris of the NY Times follows up with part 2 of his interview with AP’s Ben Curtis about Lebanon war photography. This particular comment makes me wonder a little about how photographers think. Curtis describes the neighborhood where he photographed the Mickey Mouse doll:
ERROL MORRIS: And this is, again, the same area as the Mickey Mouse?
BEN CURTIS: Yes. I couldn’t say it’s the same street, but it’s the same area. We’d been in a building where we had come across some weapons and, what do you call them, those green khaki pouches that you’d wear around your waist that soldiers would wear? We’d come across some of those piled up next to a door with nobody around. And we took a couple of pictures of them, but it wasn’t particularly exciting visually. We were going street to street around this whole area in between the apartment blocks and the flattened apartment buildings, looking to see what we could find. We left this one building, and then we walked down a street in between two apartment blocks, and I came across this Mickey Mouse lying on the ground. I spent a minute, only about a minute or 45 seconds photographing it. I did about, I don’t know, 10 or so exposures of it, and then carried on, touring the area . . . .
Information about Hezbollah weapons stashed in a dark and dusty corner of a residential apartment building where kids play with Mickey Mouse dolls should've been a great scoop, even if the image itself wasn't sexy enough or Curtis.
I wonder if he gave this tidbit of info to any reporters or editors he worked with.
See also Part 1.
