John Moore’s best photograph: a grieving woman
speaking into a gravestone at Arlington Cemetery
‘Her fiance had been killed by a bomb.
She was speaking into the marble gravestone – as if there was so much left to
say’
I’ve worked in Iraq and Afghanistan since the beginning of the US wars there, and have seen
many soldiers killed in combat. So when I was back in the US in spring 2007, I
decided to visit Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day. I suppose I felt I owed the place some
time.
This part of the cemetery is called
Section 60, and it is where soldiers and service members who have died in
recent conflicts are buried. There were hundreds of gravestones, many with
fresh soil. It was very sadly a work in progress.
I walked through the cemetery, which is
positioned on beautiful rolling hills overlooking Washington, DC, with my
two-year-old daughter. It was a warm spring afternoon, and you could feel the
grief hanging heavy in the air. We came across a woman called Mary McHugh
sitting next to a grave, and I waited to speak with her. She was having a
private moment. Eventually, she started talking to another visitor, and I
introduced myself, telling her I had worked in some of the places these
soldiers had been killed in. Then she told me her story.
Her fiance, James Regan, had been on
multiple deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Early in 2007, when they had been
planning to get married, he stepped on a roadside bomb and was killed. I told
her how sorry I was to see her in this place next to a grave. In an awkward
moment, for me at least, my daughter pulled on my hand and said: “Daddy, can we
go now?” Mary and I exchanged email addresses and I said I would send her a
couple of photographs. I thought she might like to have them as a memory of her
visit.
US-based Moore wins $25,000 Iris d’Or,
professional photographer of year prize, at 2015 Sony World Photography awards
for ‘intimate and respectful images’
Read more
We continued our walk through the
graves and, about a half hour later, we passed back and saw Mary lying on the
grass and speaking into the marble, as if there was so much left to say. I
didn’t expect to see her again but, as we had already spoken at some length, I
felt comfortable taking a few pictures, while trying not to disturb her.
I take a camera everywhere, and I
thought I might take a few pictures, but my real objective that day was to pay
my respects. The geography of the cemetery lends itself to photography, and the
compositions are easy – it’s everything else that’s hard. Many Americans spend
Memorial weekend at the beach or having a barbecue, but here it means something
else.
The photograph was widely published at the time. l tried to get in touch with Mary, but she
didn’t answer, and I respected that. She was still in mourning. I don’t know
what has become of her. I hope she has had a good life. I’ve always been
haunted by that scene.
I’ve been in many conflict situations,
including quite a bit in combat zones in different parts of the world, but
sometimes it’s not the action photo from the frontline that is the most moving.
Sometimes it’s the quiet moments taken from the periphery, from the home front,
that touch people’s hearts.
(Excerpt from "The Guardian")
- John Moore is a senior staff
photographer and special correspondent for Getty Images and won the Iris
d’Or prize at the 2015 Sony World Photography
awards.
No comments:
Post a Comment