http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNn7Hr5Xnlc

Journalist Harald Doornbos was in Libya during the Arab Spring. In this 2011 Ted Talk X in Amsterdam, he presents the souvenirs he brought back from a country in the middle of a revolution.

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Journalist Harald Doornbos Survived the Arab Spring appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuvlHyTKpsM

The legacy of Helen Gurley Brown, former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, is remembered after she passed away at the age of 90 on August 13, 2012. Gail Sheehy, a journalist who knew Brown very well, recalls the type of person she was–claiming that Brown turned her back on the conventional life of a women at a young age and decided to live by the motto that women can have it all. Sheehy describes Brown’s upbringing as coming from nothing and how Brown introduced the idea of the self-made woman to Americans. Sheehy also goes on to describe the relationship that Brown had with the feminist movement, claiming that there was some tension between Brown’s beliefs and the “card-carrying” feminists’ beliefs. Brown’s main message, according to Sheehy, was that all women can make their own choices without men or money in the picture. All that is necessary is hard work.

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Revolutionizing the Self-Made Woman appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3Y-4wng-hA

Joan Burnie, a columnist and associate editor at Cosmopolitan UK, describes what it was like to meet the former editor-in-chief of the magazine Helen Gurley Brown who passed away at the age of 90 on August 13, 2012. Burnie describes each of her visits to the office as “royal” and says that Brown did a lot to transform Cosmopolitan magazine. Journalist Penny Taylor also gives her opinion on the magazine editor and author, stating that even though Brown claimed to be a feminist, her stance on women and sex had outraged many in the feminist movement. Both Burnie and Taylor agree that Brown’s main outlook was that women could get everything they want out of life if they go about getting it the right way.

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Cosmopolitan’s Editor-in-Chief on Men, Money & Success appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E54ZvC5r8Dg

In 1992, a year after the Gulf War, Ted Koppel interviews U.S. Lieutenant Colonel John Feeley and ABC’s war correspondent at the time Tony Cortisman on the American and Canadian attacks on Iraqi forces from February 26 to 27 in 1991. On those evenings, as Iraqi military personnel and their vehicles tried to retreat on roads which would take them from Kuwait City back to Iraq, they were targeted by U.S. forces–and the resulting damage has lead one such road, Highway 80, to be known as the “highway of death.”

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Re-Examining the Death Count in ‘Highway of Death’ appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WehjMZcQqPA

Walter Cronkite, Richard O’Brien and John Laurence of the CBS News team cover the first ever Woodstock Music Festival as it finishes up on Monday August 18, 1969 on a dairy farm in White Lake, New York. O’Brien gives a live newscast directly from the scene of the festival as he talks about the large 300,000 person crowd, the rainstorm that turned the field into a mud farm, the casualties from a heroine overdose and a tractor, and the angry local business owners. The massive clean up job that was left over after the festival was also evident within the video. Lawrence, a CBS News correspondent, also chimes in on the lesson learned at Woodstock. He explains that the massive food shortages, extreme heat, intense rainfall and 20-mile long traffic jams proved that in any emergency, people of all kinds come together and help out. Lawrence talked about the police, nuns and local housewives that helped distribute food and take care of the young concert-goers.

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Lessons Learned from Woodstock appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B19k63B2kg

Iconic news reporter Walter Cronkite describes his involvement with NASA and the space program and discusses the emotional aspect of reporting major events, such as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Apollo 11 moon landing.

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The Famous News Anchor Speaks on Apollo 11 & JFK appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ant6tY-MOIk

Christopher Hitchens, author of “The Trial of Henry Kissinger,” a book which examines the alleged war crimes Kissinger committed while acting as U.S. National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. Hitchens shares his thoughts on the controversial figure and his personality. He answers the question: “What would you do if Henry Kissinger decided to call you and try to bury the hatchet after all these years?”

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Author Christopher Hitchens Speaks on Kissinger appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1z_dzJoRGY

George Seldes, an American investigative journalist, describes in a thorough interview the significant moments in his career, including his interviews and chance encounters with figures such as Adolph Hitler and Vladimir Lenin.

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Meeting Lenin and Hitler: An Interview with George Seldes appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Winslow Townson

“If I had run aimlessly around the perimeter of the blast sites, I would have wasted my time and a chance to really contribute to the story…”

Patriots Day. This Massachusetts holiday celebrates the battles of Lexington and Concord, which were the first battles of the American Revolutionary War in 1775. The day always begins with battle re-enactments. Then the Red Sox play an 11AM game, and during and after the game there is the running of the Boston Marathon, a race that first ran in 1897.

There are always lots of photojournalists working in and around Boston on Patriots Day.  This year it fell on Monday April 15, 2013, and it also included celebrating Jackie Robinson Day at Fenway Park and ballparks across the country, with every player wearing number 42.  The Red Sox celebrated a bottom of the ninth walk-off win just eight blocks from the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The real story of the game was not so much the walk-off-win by the home team, but the celebration of the first African American man to play in the Major Leagues. Being assigned to the baseball game that day I knew that being sure to photograph multiple players in one frame wearing the number 42 became the most important picture of the game, and combining it with something patriotic to commemorate Patriots Day would be a bonus.  Well before I even got to the ballpark, I knew that was the picture I needed to make that day.  It was a sunny day, so I did all my cropping and toning underneath my GriffGear laptop screen shade- a quality, durable and compact screen shade made in Australia.

Boston Red Sox players wearing number 42 (2013). Source: Winslow Townson.

Forty-five minutes after the game ended, I was just finishing filing the last of 48 pictures from the game, which included 22 for the wire and 26 out takes which go directly into the archive.

Then, my phone rang.

The Boston Photo Editor told me that “people were maimed” at the finish line of the Marathon and I was directed to head there right away. He said nothing about a bomb, two bombs, or anything else, because initial information was sparse. That is all the information or direction I received from my editor all day. Cell phone’s didn’t work around the ballpark due to the shear volume of calling and texting about the bombings, and around the finish line all cell phone communication was cut for fear of them being used to trigger another bomb.

As I was leaving the ballpark, word on the street began spreading that bombs went off at the finish line. That information, combined with the never-ending sound of the sirens of emergency vehicles, started to paint the picture for me.

The five minutes it took for me to get from Fenway Park to the area of the finish line was enough time to formulate a plan in my mind before I got out of the car. So, just like the baseball game, I arrived near the bombing scene already knowing the kind of picture I needed to look for. Considering the technology of cameras we use today, knowing what the picture is can often be the bigger challenge than actually making the picture.

Without being able to communicate with any editors or photographers, this was the way I thought out what I needed to do: I knew my wire service had several people covering the finish line and I knew that, considering the scope of what had happened, that getting anywhere near the blast sites was not going to happen. But that did not frustrate me. I knew those extremely experienced photographers we had at the finish line were going to take the responsibility for the pictures in and around the blast sites (the scene, the injured, the rescuers, and the responders).

So, instead of running around wildly all over the area taking pictures, my plan was to locate the spot where runners who had finished or who were taken off the course before they finished were meeting up with their loved ones. Surviving the incident was now part of the story.

I left my car with two EOS 1D X’s, with a 400mm lens on one and a 20mm lens on the other (I also carried a flash and several other zoom lenses with me). I was either going to be able to get right amongst the runners or I was going to be kept a ways away, so I planned for both.

As I suspected, the block and a half away from the blast sites were completely off limits to everyone- and the cops were not screwing around. They were very concerned about more secondary explosions, which are a common terrorist tactic. Here was my first chance at a picture, the police directing people away from the blast sites.

One block further away on Boylston Street (which is the street the finish line is on), I found the busses that all the runners were to get on after they finished the race. This was the spot I was looking for. Here I found people holding signs with the names of runners they were looking for, runners being reunited with others they had run with, runners being reunited with family and friends and people basically walking around with that blank, lost look on their face. There were potential pictures everywhere.

Two thoughts crossed my mind at this point: One was that, with pictures everywhere, it kind of reminded me in a weird way of the moment a team wins a championship. In that case there are pictures with different emotions all over the court, field or rink. The problem now was where to find that one storytelling picture that we all look for at the end of any emotional or championship event. My second thought was that this was an obvious place for a secondary explosion, and I needed to be aware of the surroundings. A long row of porta-johns caught my attention as an area to avoid, and I made myself aware of the locations of mailboxes and trashcans. It seemed sad that in this country, I was in a place where I had to be concerned about these things. And it’s just my own belief, but I’ve always felt that no picture is worth dying for.

It was at this point that I was now basically using two lenses; a 20mm and a 70-200mm zoom. I have stopped using a wide-angle zoom because of trouble with edges of the frame or even sides of the frame not being sharp when other parts of the frame were sharp.

Trying to be respectful of the situation and not just shoving my camera in everybody’s face, I spent a large amount of time just looking and listening for a picture. That’s when I heard it–a faint crying, a kind of quiet whimpering. A young, female runner all by herself, walking towards me wrapped up in a foil blanket and crying as she wrapped her arms around to comfort herself. Instead of walking towards her, I let her just walk past me. I shot about 10 frames (and with the EOS 1D X that doesn’t take long) with a 20mm lens as she passed right by me.

Sometimes you don’t know how a picture will feel until you bring it up on your laptop. So, working for a wire service and knowing that a deadline is passing every second, I headed back to my car to transmit with a wireless card.  The picture of the female runner crying on this page just worked, and I’m not ashamed to say that some luck was involved. It worked for me because other runners are walking around in different directions.  An ambulance is leaving the scene, and the man in the red coat is holding flowers that are obviously for a loved one when the marathon was finished.

Woman crying after the Boston bombing (2013). Source: Winslow Townson.

This picture was just one moment in a day of thousands of moments in Boston, but it appeared on over 75 front pages of newspapers around the world the next day, and it was a double truck in “Leading Off” in Sports Illustrated.

As I said before, there was some luck involved when the different features within the picture all lined up at the same .005 of a second. But I also believe that my thought process on approaching this tragedy got me pictures on this day, just as much as my eye or the camera did. Whether you have a whole day or just a few minutes to come up with a plan, it is a necessity to think clearly, assess the situation, and approach a scene at the place where you best fit into the big picture. If I had run aimlessly around the perimeter of the blast sites, I would have wasted my time and a chance to really contribute to the story.

With over 25 years of experience as a photojournalist, this approach has become second nature.

Winslow can be reached for questions or comments at wwtownson@aol.com; Visit his web site here. 

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[Text] Photojournalist on Capturing Mass Tragedy in a Moment’s Notice appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Victor Englebert

“‘Say your payers for you’re going to die,’ and with that he dropped the stick, pulled a revolver from his belt, and came around the jeep to put it to my head…”

Map Detailing the Eritrean War of Independence. Source: Berkaysnklf of Wikimedia.

In 1967, Ras (Prince) Mengesha, son-in-law of Ethiopia’s emperor Haile Selassie, wrote to National Geographic that a French-Italian geological expedition would soon arrive in Ethiopia to study continental drift in his country’s Danakil Depression—how Africa and Arabia are slipping apart there, giving birth to a new ocean. He begged them to send someone to cover the expedition.

National Geographic, at the time a non-profit organization, did not think twice about throwing money at something that might not work in the end. And they offered me the assignment. I had already lived some African adventures for them, and they knew few other people would be as keen as I to go spend a season in Hell.

Indeed, the Danakil Depression is a fantastic land of active volcanoes, boundless black lava fields, boiling sulfurous sources, merciless desert, rocks, and dried salt lakes. At more than 200 feet below the Red Sea level, it is the world’s hottest region, one which, in 1928, the explorer L.M. Nesbitt famously called the “Hellhole of Creation”-—as in the birth of a planet. Still, to the photographer that I am, it’s hauntingly beautiful.

I was to meet the geologists in Makalé, in the Tigré highlands. But they had not arrived. Their vehicles and heavy equipment were blocked in the Suez Canal by the Six-Day War, a pre-emptive war by Israel against Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, which Israel suspected were preparing to attack it.

Rather than wait at the hotel, an ancient castle managed by a remarkable Indian lady, I embarked on a salt caravan. Traveling with it down the escarpment to Karum salt lake, it would give me a first look at the Danakil Depression, which I could not wait to start photographing.

When, on my return to Makalé, I still found no geologists, I decided to go photograph the Danakil nomads. They were fierce warriors about whom I had read dreadful things. To guarantee the survival of a family in such an inhumane region, a Danakil man who wanted a wife had to kill and emasculate another man and offer this trophy to his future wife. I was uneasy about going and not looking for trouble but could not see how I could avoid it. Waiting for the geologists at the hotel was not an option. I ended up getting my pictures of the nomads, but not before nearly losing my life, one dark night, at the hands of a nasty young gang.

Finally, the geologists arrived and I spent a few equally eventful weeks photographing them working. This time we were under the protection of a few Ethiopian soldiers. Ras Mengesha, a wonderful man, shared our experience the whole time, roughing it up, sharing our laughs, and going as far as giving a geologist a haircut.

After the geologists’ departure back to Europe, I found myself alone again. My work was done. But National Geographic paid me generously, besides giving me the chance to live the life of my choice. That was well worth an additional effort.

And I felt sad to leave this stunning inferno.

The Red Sea coast and its Danakil shark fishermen intrigued me. They caught sharks for their fins, oriental delicacies that found their way to China via Aden, in South Yemen.

In Asmara, today the capital of Eritrea, but then part of Ethiopia, I rented a jeep with a driver, a young Eritrean named Abdallah. My plan was to travel down the Ethiopian escarpment to Massawa, then down the coast to Assab, and back up the escarpment to Addis Ababa, from where I would fly home to New York.

From the day I landed in Ethiopia I had been told incessantly to stay away from Eritrean shiftas, or bandits. They were not actually bandits but rebels who fought for their country’s independence (they would achieve it only in 1991).

British missionaries in Thio, a village where I spent a day at sea photographing Danakil fishing sharks, were the last to strongly recommend that I turn back. But since I was not part of the conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and knew of no white men involved in it, I did not see what reasons the rebels would have to treat me as an enemy.

Shortly after leaving Thio, our narrow dirt road petered out into the bush and we lost our way. But we went on, zigzagging around thorn trees and hoping to somehow reach the coast eventually. Oppressed by the inhuman heat we lapsed into a stupor.

When Abdallah suddenly put the brakes on, my first thought was that he had fallen asleep and hit a tree. But almost as soon after, I heard him whisper, “Shiftas.”

Running from tree to low thorn tree with rifles and machine guns aimed at the jeep, they looked insistently behind us as if fearing the arrival of more vehicles.

I stepped out smiling, ready for presentations. But I was brutally thrown down to the ground and ordered by signs to put my hands on my head. A madman who had pulled Abdallah from his seat savagely beat him with a stick on the face and head. “Donkey!” he insulted him in English so I might understand him. “Donkey!”

“Stop this,” I shouted. “This man is an Eritrean like you.”

“Of course he is. Which is why I won’t kill him. But you, you f***ing Israeli spy, say your payers for you’re going to die,” and with that he dropped the stick, pulled a revolver from his belt, and came around the jeep to put it to my head.

I wanted to speak, but for a few seconds, unable to make sense of what was happening, I could not get the words out. I had closed my eyes and waited for the bullet that would end my wonderful life. And then the words came out at last.

“Wait, I’m Belgian. Let me show you my passport.”

“I know Belgium,” he screamed, “Any idiot can get a Belgian passport.”

Meanwhile, the other men had gone through my luggage and found no weapons other than a big knife, which they confiscated. The madman relaxed and lowered his revolver. “Show me your passport,” he now said. He found two Algerian visa entries in it.

“They saved your life,” he declared. “As an Israeli you would not have been allowed into Algeria, an Arab country. But get back inside your vehicle, and don’t get out or you’ll be shot.”

By three o’clock the heat in the stranded jeep was almost unbearable, and poor Abdallah, his face swollen and bloody, moaned heartbreakingly.

“Do you realize,” he asked, “that this is Sunday, and I could be dancing in Asmara?” I agreed it was stupid of me to have brought this situation upon us. I apologized, but he protested.

“You, presumptuous Christian, don’t you understand that you had nothing to do with this? That this was the will of Allah?” We spent a difficult night together.

What no one had explained to me, and what I would learn much later, was that Israel supported the Ethiopians while Egypt stood behind Eritrea. And as I was spending eight months of the year in jungles, deserts, and high mountains, thousands of miles from the nearest newspaper kiosk, I had not read the news.

At dawn, the guerrillas hoisted a flag on a rifle, presented arms, and went to sit in the ragged shade of a thorn tree 100 meters away, leaving us in the jeep in dreadful suspense. And the sun rose and with it the infernal heat. By ten, we had started roasting  chickens. I called out to the guerrillas for permission to get out, but they did not respond. Struggling against Abdallah, who would not let me open the jeep’s door, I got out in the sun and, hands up, started walking slowly toward our tormentors, calling them out as I did. At last, the leader got up and came to meet me. He handed me my knife.

“You may go,” he said. “But tell the Belgians that we are not shiftas. Haile Selassie is the shifta. He robbed our country.”

He showed us the way to the coast and, an hour later, at a fishing village, an armed guerrilla stopped us again and led us to a large tent. Inside, four men sat behind a long table. Abdallah told them their colleagues had let us through, and they waved us on.

Our next destination was Ed, a big fishing village. As our jeep arrived in plain view of the village, though still quite far away, some 25 soldiers of the Ethiopian army came rushing out of their barracks to throw themselves on their bellies and aim their weapons at us.

“Jump!” Abdallah cried as he hit the brakes. But I was already out in the sun, hands up. “Don’t move!” a voice shouted. And a soldier came running towards us to check us for weapons and to take us to an English-speaking captain. He was stunned to see us, but greeted us warmly.

“You jumped in the nick of time,” he declared gravely. “A second later and we would have made a sieve out of your jeep. We haven’t seen a vehicle in more than three years. No wonder you couldn’t find a road. Nature reclaimed it. But what will you do next? From here to Assab is much longer than from where you came. And the mountains you will have to cross will swarm with shiftas. Your only alternative is to wait for a dhow, an Arab sailboat. But you will have to abandon the jeep.”

In spite of his terror of being forcibly enrolled into the Eritrean guerrilla, Abdallah seemed even more frightened to face his Italian boss in Asmara without the Jeep. He said he had to bring it back, and so he would continue. Naturally, his fate was not in his hands but in those of Allah. Being responsible for this mess, I could not decently let him go on alone, and so I put my own fate into Allah’s hands and stuck with him.

The way to Assab was heart-stopping. Every now and then Abdallah’s feverish imagination saw shiftas hiding behind rocks and in anguish suddenly hit the brakes. However, Allah was compassionate and raised no more real troubles.

Curiously, perhaps through our Ethiopian captain, the story of our adventures preceded us in Addis Ababa, where lunch invitations awaited me at the Belgian and American embassies with people who wanted to hear my story. National Geographic published the story I wrote on my adventure in its January 1970 issue.

Victor Englebert is a photojournalist exploring world cultures. He has appeared in magazines including National Geographic and Smithsonian Magazine. Learn more about his work on his blog and website.

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Facing Guerillas, Soldiers & Death During the Eritrean War appeared first on Witnify.