I’m really confused. I’ve been practicing the profession of a photojournalist for less than years now, but it has already given me more wonderful, sad, frightening and unreal experiences I can remember (I have a bad memory though). For me, it all comes to two little questions with huge answers behind them: “why” and “how”. I didn’t have time to do many assignments before I noticed I’m spending a LOT of time thinking my own feelings towards what I do, how I do it and especially why. Why do I photograph people? What am I trying to find? Of course, many of the portrait photos are taken because the people in them want to have physical proof that they were there at the time, or to have something to support their memories. And I get paid. That’s it. But on the other hand, I find myself more and more often looking at photographs of people I don’t know, people who will probably never see the images (I’ll come to that later) and knowing I won’t get paid for them because they are not for sale. I’m not even trying to explain their connection to some story or reportage just to have them included in the set. No. I don’t know why, but I just had to take them to look back, to see how the people are looking back at me. The stares are stories of their own.

The headline for this post is “guilt”. It’s there because I’m sometimes feeling a bit guilty as I know some of these people will never see the photos I took of them. I was in their home, in their life and they gave me something that can’t be measured in money. They gave me their story. In the end that is the real reason I want to do this and why I think photojournalism is really the best job in the world. To hear and see stories, and to be able to tell them to others. I just want to be able to give something back, even if it was just the photo I took. It’s nothing compared to the story they shared with me, but it’s something.

Tomorrow I’ll stop being a lazy, ungrateful idiot and use my day by sending photographs to all those people that have been kind enough to share their lives with me :)

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The photo: Of all the photos I took during my last foreign assignment, this one of an old Maharashtran woman, Jana Bai Dada Berde, in her one-room house is the most important to me. She was a little scared of me and my camera, but wanted me to take some photos of her cookings. Bhokar, Maharashtra, India.

Posted by Tatu
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