Because the frequency of my posting here is gathering some momentum, I think I’d like to inject some regularity into the blog. I’m consistent with regard to photojournalism in that I’m often stirred more by a wonderful photograph than I am by a wonderful story. That’s not to say I am not a fan of the written word – quite the contrary. But I think that photos are non-discriminatory in that they surpass the boundaries of literacy and language and thus pack a more wordly punch than the most beautifully constructed journalism. Hell, I just personally love looking at the work of photojournalists trotting the globe, dodging bullets, slipping in and out of people’s lives. So every month, I aim to feature and discuss a photojournalist past or present.
And so I come to Dominic Nahr, a young man with such an unbridled passion and talent for being behind the lens that to know his photography is to love his photography. I know of Dominic’s body of work because he was a working photographer at the South China Morning Post at the same time I was a reporter there. Like me, he’s a Hong Kong kid and he did stand out because (apart from the photo editors) for a while he was the only gweilo on the desk.
After his stint at the SCMP, he went to East Timor for Agence France-Presse. It was here that he shot his searing photo essay East Timor: A Nation Divided.
This was followed by a job in Gaza for the New York Photo Agency, Polaris Images. It was through this experience that Gaza Strip: When Brothers Fight was conceived.
In these two remarkably beautiful yet tragic photo essays, the pictures have been well-taken, edited – that’s obvious. Through the frenzy and the fray of his images of conflict, in particular, there are some photographs that centre on an almost alien stillness – the glance of a child through a brawling crowd, a lone soldier hoisting his weapon into the air under the swell of an ominously looming sky.
What is brilliant about them, however, is Dominic’s ability (like many great photojournalists) to be in a place without the viewer getting the impression that his presence in making the picture would have been intrusive for the people involved. The subject matter is sensitive; the people he photographs, old and young, are already wracked with the toil of daily life. Dominic seems to have frozen this essence in time while remaining true to the surroundings he is documenting. Everything happens as it should – and you find yourself asking, when looking at images, for instance, of the weathered hands of family pressing down on the body of a fallen loved one: ‘how on earth did he manage to to make this photograph?’ The fact that these people let Dominic ‘in’ to the circle, in to the grieving, allowing their lash wounds to be photographed…surely that is a testament to the person behind the lens. Being a good photographer requires more than knowing how to make good photographs.
Two more essays are in the works. Canada: What We Left Behind is a work in progress, a hybrid of the life of a Burmese émigré and the family that linger in his motherland.
America: Milk and Honey is as yet unaccessible, but Dominic’s homepage features one of the images, entitled Dead At 22, as its banner.
I would like to think in future that the term ‘young talent’ is reserved for people like Dominic, whose knack for gaining people’s trust and getting the story is as yet unparalleled for someone of his age in the world of photojournalism. I may yet be proven wrong – but I can’t see that happening.
