A whole life for others

One image is more impressive than the other, but the image that will stick with you is the only thing the author is not the author of: his portrait. He is 19 years old. And wearing a conscription uniform. Because in most of the world it still doesn't take anything to end up in another life. Being able to be in front of a camera instead of behind it.

And under the ground instead of on it.

I don't photo biographyone of the Iranian photographer Manoocher Deghati (born 1954), who fled the Ayatollah's new regime, settled in France and is mainly known for his position in the AFP's Cairo bureau chief during the challenging years of the Arab Spring, there are many, indeed many, pictures of twenty-year-olds. Like at sunset, after a day of fighting, or where they gather around a campfire with guitar and drums to dance. They party with the same music as the privates on the other side of the front line. They never wanted the war, it was warone who wanted them. War and fate. They are in war only because they were born in war. Sometimes they are not even in their twenties. They are not children, they are children. “Come on. Come, brother,” they say to him. "Come and be a martyr with us."

Pierced by bullet holes

Half a century later, in the streets of Tehran, where this book begins, exactly the same pictures could be taken. For after all, who is most astray, who is furthest from the right path: those who drink grape blood, or those who thirst for human blood? On one wall, a silhouette of Khomeini, pierced by bullet holes, almost disappears, while anyone who dares to oppose the government is hanged, or tortured to death in prison, and all that remains of the women are cutouts of faces in a sea of ​​black chadors . Half a century later, even the name of one of the most brutal battles is the same, over forty thousand dead – yesterday in Iraq, today in Gaza: the battle for Jerusalem.
Haven't you seen the picture where a bulldozer shovels away corpses?
Was it Khorramshahr? Or maybe it was Jenin, or Rafah? Or Butsja? Was it Ukraine?

And finally, there is only one dead soldier left, seen from behind, out of focus on a barren hill. Like a shadow among shadows. Now it is part of the landscape.

Never released the Nikon camera

In 1979, Manoocher Deghati had just finished his education in film science. But he had other plans. With the revolution, he realized that the authorities were more afraid of pictures, journalists and witnesses than for guns and enemies, and since then he has never let go The Nikon camera.

The authorities were more afraid of pictures, journalists and witnesses than of weapons and enemies.

Always on the side of the poor. For the amputees. The orphans. The refugees queuing to get water. For the miners who have to put their baby to sleep in a dusty wheelbarrow. For the workers in the world's slums, searching for iron that can be recycled among sewage and toxic scrap. For those who have everything to lose in war, even in the event of victory.

I Kabul he covers the fall of the Taliban after September 11, 2001, and the years of freedom and hope. Here are the Afghans who lift their burqas a little to smile at the camera in a long time that is so backward that there are still daguerreotypes while all other immortalizations are going digital, but those are short years. They are just an illusion. Like the years with the Oslo agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. After a while, there is always an American helicopter that crashes into the ground.

And then it all starts again.

"Raise the words, not the voice," he writes. It is Manoocher Deghati. A lifetime for others: a lifetime of news that speaks for itself. The picture you don't get to see here is the picture that many journalists would have had as their cover photo: when he was almost killed , mallah. A picture of him lying in a pool of blood next to his camera.
Another picture that is still taken in every war.

Translated from English by the editor.