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I was introduced to him by a Moldovan Zebra in Boston...
 John McConnico
Recently I’ve discovered the amazing Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog. Ater readingthis article please visit them — http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/ — you won’tregret. The World Animal Day collection attracted me in the rst place since I am abirdwatcher. From the 40 pictures shown there, the one with the zebra attracted memost. I can’t tell exactly why, but I’ve watched it a little bit, then went down to read-ing the caption and the zebra was rom Chişinău, capital o Moldova, where I actuallylive. First surprise.And the picture wasn’t taken by a Moldovan, o course, but by a guy called JohnMcConnico. Who’s this guy? Google answered. Pulitzer prize winner, worked mainlyor AP in 70+ countries, covered conficts in Haiti, Aghanistan, Kenia, Balkans... Whywould a guy like this take a picture o a Zebra in Chişinău?His home page — http://johnmcconnico.com/ — answered. Because he stays thereright now. There was a Moldovan phone number there, I called, introduced mysel and asked or an interview. “Sure“, said John, “I have two ree hours tomorrow, writedown the address.“ I did. Through the window I could see his house. It was 100 me-ters rom the place I’m staying the last 15 years.
Interview with
 
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Let’s say that someone hires you to make a portrait of John McConnico. Please describe
the nal picture.
- Well, I usually get uncomfortable when Ibecome a part of the situation. I’ll get to theportrait part later. I am the kind of photogra-pher that hopefully people don’t notice me orif they do notice me they forget after few mo-ments that I’m there. Because everything I dohas to do with what people would do naturally,not what I tell them to do. I have no interestin doing a picture that tells more about methan about them. It’s not truly an accurateway to portray reality if the photographer sayshere’s what you’ve got to do… There’s an is-sue in many countries, especially developingcountries without traditions in photojournalismthat the picture says more about the photogra-pher than about what is happening. I’m prettysteadfast against that.Regarding the portrait…I’m really uncom-fortable being photographed (blushes). As wellas photographing other people who know thatI’m there. That said, it would have to be some-thing as close to me being casual and normalas possible. I think that if I will be ever photo-graphed by Annie Leibowitz or other portraitphotographer it would probably be a much bet-ter picture than anything that I’d dream of.This is something I have to do all the time.If you have a good reputation, people knowwho you are and they assume that you can do
everything. (laughs) I think ve years ago if 
somebody asked I would say (proudly) “Yeah!Of course I can do portraits. I’m a professionalphotographer! I can do anything I want!” But
now I’m condent enough to tell that is not
what I do.And that all goes back to the reason why Ichose to do photography. I was so bad at inter-acting with people that this became a way tointeract with people without having to talk tothem. So, you can show peoples’ lives withouthaving to physically interact with them. And
you’ll nd that a lot of photojournalists spe
-
cically are quite shy, quite withdrawn, and
they’re in photography because the camerafeels like a shield. I feel pretty strongly thatthat’s why I started and why I continue to dophotography.
- Do you remember the rst picture you
took?
- I think that was when I went to School to
 
England… I was 18-19… And my mom gave meone of those little point-and-shoot cameras. Iwent to Oxford for half a year and I have neverleft the country before and it was such a re-markable place. And I remember exactly thatmy mom told me – I give you that to documentyour trip. She didn’t mean anything by it, I’msure, but that stuck in me. So the trip becamemore about documenting the place than aboutlearning Shakespeare and literature. And I hadnever taken any picture before that so thepictures weren’t technically very good, but I
came back with 100 rolls of lm.Then, in my rst three years in college I
tried Economics, English, Philosophy – every-thing. I was never good enough to excel inanything and eventually I took a photographyclass and that was one of few things that I wasgood at, pretty much right away. And I’ve got areal passion for it.
- You were still in Texas?
- Yes, University of Texas.
- Do you see yourself as a Texan?
- (laughs) Well, last years, until a few daysago, I didn’t feel like a Texan at all. Now thatwe have a new president I feel very comfort-able of being Texan and I am very proud to beAmerican again. Because Bush is from Texas…I mean he didn’t even have a passport until hebecame president. He’s really the antithesisof everything that I am and most people thatI know are. Being a Texan while he was presi-
dent was very, very… (can’t nd the word)
But I’m considering myself a Texan and thereis something about me that is very Texan andsomething about him that is not very Texan.Anyway it’s a lot easier being Texan now thatwe have Obama in the White House.
-
 Journalism and photojournalism becamemore dangerous the last few years, isn’t it?
- Yeah… I was friends with a few people thathave been killed. A lot of colleagues… LikeDanny Pearl, the guy killed by the Talibanin Pakistan during Afghanistan war, was kid-napped and beheaded. And this is weird, be-cause he wasn’t a crazy guy at all. He was justa cautious journalist caught off the road. Andthere are a lot of other journalists that arejust crazy...I’ve been in a lot of places and in very dan-gerous situations, but essentially I’m a coward.I try to stay – if the guns are going off – I stayin the hotel room and when things calm downagain it’s safer to go out.In the last few years, probably since Sep-tember 11, actually, it’s much more dangerousto be a journalist or an aid worker. Let’s saythe United Nations bombing in Baghdad… Plac-es that people would never dream of attackingare being targeted now. The targeting of jour-nalists and aid workers proves how much morechaotic the world is now than it used to be.Even during Vietnam war… There were timeswhen they were kidnapped, like Terry Ander-son in Beirut. But since the war in Afghanistan,all these journalists are just ambushed on theroad from Jalalabad to Kabul and killed, justlike that. And they knew that they’re journal-ists.
- You’ve mentioned earlier using the cameraas a shield. Do you feel like you have twodifferent personalities – one with a cameraand another one without it?
- Completely. It’s like an alter ego. I’m much,much more daring with the camera. I remem-ber a time when we had an interview in a me-drasa in Peshawar, Pakistan. Medrasa is a placewhere young Taliban were trained. This wasbefore the Saudis came I was based in Indiaand traveling along Pakistan and Afghanistan.It was the time when the Taliban was gettingmuch stronger.So we came out of a medrasa where theseguys were saying in front of the camera:
“Death to America! Death to all indels! Death
to anyone who’s not a Muslim!” But after theinterview they were telling us: “Don’t worry– it’s just talk. We say this for the paper be-cause, you know, it’s our position.”
- Public relations…
- Yeah… They were good hosts. The table wasfull of sweets and they had tea. Muslims areextremely generous, even when they’re theTaliban. They are really kind people all overAfghanistan, Pakistan, India…So we woke up from the table. And that wasa medrasa, a fundamentalist school of Talibanmovement. I mean that were people as bad asyou can get. And a guy opened the door andcame back and said: “No, no… Step back in!”
And all these guys were terried – there were
of 00

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