MAE.

Girl in a large puddle, trapped from the waist down by concrete and other debris from the collapsed houses for three days facing death during a Mud Slide in Columbia in 1985. Why does death look like this? Their eyes always turn black. I’ve seen a similar photo before in a photography book where a girl in water or something during a war was reaching for the camera man and her eyes were all black. I can’t find it now.

This kind of photography intrigues me because it raises awareness about world issues but I could never do it. I could never see this without throwing my camera down and attempting to rescue her & forgetting about the shot. I could never take a photo of a starving little GIRL ← -clickbable-(everyone who posts this pic on tumblr seems to think it’s a boy) surrounded by vultures without attempting to feed her. I guess that’s why the photographer killed himself 2 months after winning a Pulitzer Prize for it. He was one of the few photographers seemed affected by some of the violent events he photographed and he also said he was haunted by vivid memories of killings, corpses, anger, pain, starving or wounded children, and trigger-happy madmen. A friend said he would often return from upsetting assignments with bouts of crying, drinking, or using drugs. I’m haunted my suffering kids without even having to see them so I can’t imagine being the one THERE, to take the photo. I could not do this job without getting involved. But I am very grateful for photojournalists who risks their lives just to show us what’s going on in the world that we may be turning a blind eye to. Thank you for raising awareness. I wish more people aspired to be like you instead of fashion photographers. But we all want the glory.