To be on the Front Page
Jérôme Delay
The Associated Press
For all the advances in technology, the essence of news photography not changed since Mathew Brady lugged his heavy wooden gear across battlefields of the American Civil War. Nor, in an age of real-time video and words by the gigabyte, has its impact.
The underlying emotion of a crucial human event can be captured in a single frame. Whether it is a stick-limbed Biafran baby dying in a puddle of filth, or a Vietnamese girl in desperate flight from napalm pluming behind her, one picture can stop a war. Unlike words that might be misread, or film that rolls on, a news photo stands on its own in permanent, polyglot testimony.
Most often, that single dramatic picture is part of something larger, like the opening paragraph of well-written dispatch. Beyond the front page, other photos of deceiving simplicity add depth and breadth of layered complexity. They are all a part of telling the story.
Preview
News photography is a particular craft that cannot be learned. It requires a set of natural gifts: the humanity to recognize defining moments; the skill to capture those moments artfully in any circumstance; the courage and ingenuity to be there when those moments happen.
Experience can hone these gifts, but age is hardly a factor. At 40, Jerome Delay is an acknowledged master of the craft. Over a decade, he has given a shape to upheaval from the Balkans to Afghanistan, Africa and the Middle East.
His Associated Press colleagues, and his rivals in other agencies-though friends, regard him as one of the best there is. To the other requisites, he adds a rare sense of composition, a wizardry with light. Through his lens, a mundane street scene is suddenly a Bruegel on canvas, charged with subtle shades and nuances.
By circumstance, Delay is often war photographer. But he pictures what war does as much as what it is, for war is about people, not guns, about human reality, about the psychic and physical damage left behind.
But when asked what keeps him going, Delay replies: "I hope when my daughters will be in college, they'll recall images from their history books, and say:" I remember that; Dad was there.That's why he wasn't home."
Mort Rosenblum
