Goran Tomašević (1969, Belgrade) has been recording wars, revolutions, conflicts and human destinies around the world with a camera for almost 30 years - from the former Yugoslavia to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, Libya, Syria, South Sudan, Uganda, the Central African Republic , Congo, Nigeria, Honduras...
He also photographed the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000 and the World Cup in Germany in 2006, but his images from crisis areas around the world won practically all the most important photography awards: he was named the best photographer of the Reuters agency four times, twice his photo was the photo of the year in Reuters, in 2013 the "Guardian" newspaper named him the best newspaper photographer in the world... As a member of the agency's photo team Reuters, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for 2019, is the first time since the prize has been awarded that a photojournalist from Serbia is among the winners (he was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2014).
He currently lives in Istanbul and is the chief photographer of the Reuters agency.
for an enlarged image, right click and »view image«A SOLDIER'S ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH: Afghanistan, 2008
"WEATHER": When did you become interested in photography??
GORAN TOMASEVIC: I bought a motorbike in eighty-two, but dad didn't know. He slapped me, sold me a motorbike and bought me a camera. One of my sister Goca's best friends was Mićo Smiljanić, my colleague with whom I worked for a long time at "Politica". He was a little older than me, he taught me how to develop film, he also attended some courses with Tom Peternek and was quite technically educated.
With him, I learned gray scale, to expose black and white, what is contrast, how to manually measure light in difficult weather, lighting conditions for a photographer, how to correct spot lights, how to measure black and white background, what is aperture, exposure , what is depth of field... I think I knew all that well by the age of 13-14, in fact, I did constant tests. I repeated everything that he told me on film and later on paper.
My first camera was a fed-5V, a copy of the like with a yellow spot, and it's a great camera, I still have it. I also had some old upa-9 to enlarge so I could take a photo. It was all kind of available, there were a couple of stores in town where I could go and buy film, developers, everything I needed.
When I was in '91. started working for Politika, that was a big deal for me because I had unlimited films and papers so I could practice, that was great. In "Politica" I developed film every day, which I took pictures and made copies of, and learned to crop pictures. Not like today in photoshop, but I cropped by raising the magnifier, then I put a part. I learned how far to go and what films to use, how to get the grain, that's a big thing. I worked after different techniques and experimented with lenses and colors through my work, but this is something that stayed with me, which helped me a lot and still helps me to this day.
I think the big problem of new photographers coming in is that they have never shot on film and they don't know how light passes through the lens, how it is reflected, and they don't know that magic of waiting for the first contours to appear in the developer on black and white paper.
Very soon after I started working for Politika, I also started collaborating with Reuters. I remember that I took a picture of some food distribution in front of my building, the war and this misery of ours had already started. I took pictures in black and white, and someone from "Politics" said that I should offer it to agencies. First I took it to the EPU with Misha Bambus, but they needed color, then I went to Reuters, they released a couple of pictures and those pictures were shared a lot. After that, I never went anywhere except Reuters. Then I started a more serious collaboration with Petar Kujundžić, Emil Vaš and the late Ivan Milutinović.
I am an agency photographer, I have to take pictures of what is happening around me. I send those pictures, if someone doesn't want to look at them because they are uncomfortable, difficult, okay, but I can't close my eyes to the events. It's not fair to the people where it happens if I don't show that it is the way it is. If someone wants to see pictures from the war zone, then he has to expect it.
This and that happened here, I sent it, and I stand behind the photo I sent, and what I wrote about what happened there. Photos can't lie, my photos don't lie. Whether someone likes it or not is up to them, but there is no lie. That's it.
When did you realize you were going to be a war photo reporter, when your first trips to the battlefields began?
Back in '91. and '92. I asked "Politika" to go to Bosnia and Krajina. I managed that, I had some free adventures of my own, and I also went to work for Reuters. When everything stopped, I was doing social stories in Belgrade. All the time, I also worked for the "Belgrade Chronicle".
Then in '97, when Kosovo started, I started painting there. The reason is that my parents are from Drenica, my father was born in Kosovo. My greatest success is that I stayed in Kosovo in '99, when there was a bombing. When journalists were ordered to leave the territory of Kosovo, all colleagues left, especially foreign journalists. At that time, I was still working for Politika and Reuters, which I didn't hide, everyone knew it. I went to Miki Mihailović, who was the editor of the Media Center in Pristina, and asked me to stay, he said he could.
After that, I stopped working for Politika, because Reuters offered me a more serious contract and job. I was already very tired of the story in the Balkans, I worked a little more in Macedonia, in 2000 in North Mitrovica, but it all became too difficult for me. Then Reuters offered to send me to the Middle East. I first went to Israel, Palestine, then I worked in Iraq, then I went to Jerusalem, I stayed there until 2006.
There was a lot of work there, so I couldn't travel, it was the Second Intifada, Prime Minister Sharon ordered the army to enter all the cities of the West Bank and occupy them. It was a constant big story, there were a lot of suicide attacks on the Palestinian side at the time, somehow she couldn't get her head around it. Besides taking pictures, I edited pictures for other colleagues who worked there.
Then came the story of the withdrawal of Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip, which lasted for a very long time. Only once I managed to get an assignment outside of those limits, and that story became too difficult for me, because it was very intense, it became difficult for me to paint, so I went to Pakistan, to do the aftermath of the earthquake in Kashmir. It was somehow refreshing, as hard as it was, there were different faces, different landscapes, and I liked that. Then I came back, and after that I moved to Cairo.
When that kind of fatigue occurs, as it was in the Balkans, in Israel and Palestine, how do you feel that you need other people, landscapes, challenges?
There is something I learned a long time ago from Peđa Kujundžić, when colleagues came to cover the protests in Belgrade, and that is that when photos appear that are constantly in front of our eyes, we stop seeing them because everything becomes normal, but it is not. Working for a long time on one story sometimes becomes tiring. In this search for something new, we simply do not see what is happening in front of us.
That's why I think it's good to change the story from time to time, because when you're doing one story, at some point you start working from experience and some details are not seen properly, at least I couldn't see them. And when you jump into a new setting, a new environment, everything starts from the beginning, the whole magic.
What was your first fear in business??
My biggest fear was always not to miss something. It's really like that, not to show someone that I'm brave, for some reason I wasn't afraid of war or unpleasant situations. I was always focused on going somewhere, bringing something I need and not missing important moments, because in photography there is no repetition, no playback. Something happens and passes, if you are not focused, then those moments go into oblivion.
for an enlarged image, right click and »view image«FRONT LINE: Libya in 2011
Is it necessary for a man to, to do this kind of work, in addition to knowledge, he is also addicted to adrenaline?
I don't think I'm an adrenaline junkie. I think now, even when I go to war, that adrenaline doesn't work anymore. I can't explain how I took all those photos, why it happened, but it happened that way.
More behind all those photos is a lot of work, before the task and during the task. Preparation, in order to study the story well, one must know what is happening there and who are the actors of that story, war or any event. Then local contacts are made on the ground to be covered. Someone, generally, has to let you do something, be at least somewhat friendly. I've said it many times, if you're covering two sides in a war and one won't cover you, it's very difficult to do, almost impossible. You need to have contacts, adequate equipment, in addition to cameras, you also need to know where you are going, which means everything else, from the system for sending pictures, batteries, clothes...
Sometimes I worry when younger colleagues look at my pictures and call to ask me something, I don't know what to tell them. I wouldn't encourage them to do that too much, because I'm afraid something bad might happen to them. I kind of try to make it their decision, but it's hard.
I once entered Sudan from Uganda. A couple of years before that, I photographed their deputy prime minister, the president accused him of trying to stage a coup d'état, and he fled into the forest and accused the president of wanting to kill him. I found him after a couple of months, somewhere near the Ethiopian border, it was a very tiring task. When I came again, I found his fighters attacking a city. Out of respect, they let me go and take a picture.
There appeared a younger American colleague, 25-26 years old, who had been waiting for a battle for a month, and then they let him go too. They attacked the city, we entered the city, that's where the beating started. I explained what was going to happen, that they would run out of ammunition, that the rebels were young, healthy, more fit than me and that they would run back. I was with my colleague Siegfried, he was still working for Reuters at the time, he was shooting a video there, and I told him that we should get out earlier. Another colleague, a young American, left with another rebel team. And that was after 11 hours of marching. We got out on the hill, the rebels later started to arrive after they were pushed back by the Ugandan and government forces, and they told me that he was killed.
Those are the scenes, I can't tell anyone to do something, I can't... I didn't let him go with me, he was doing some of his own things. I wouldn't stop anyone from doing their job, but I can't encourage them either. I would advise them not to, because it's a fine line, bad things can happen when covering such events. I wouldn't want to cause someone to do something stupid.
I mostly work alone, I'm one of those who mostly work without the Reuters team. This does not mean that I will not work with the team if there is no other option. Today is the time of multimedia, there are photographers, videographers, songwriters, I do it when I have to, like when there was a fight between the Islamic State and Kurdish fighters, but I prefer to go alone, if I can.
You have lived and worked in many countries, how important it is to know the local culture, interacting with the local population and approaching their way of life?
In the cities and countries where I lived, I was always curious and looked to capture how these people live, what their habits are and how they behave, I generally socialized more with local colleagues and people around me than with those who came from the side, like me. First, it was interesting to me and I wanted to learn more about them for their own sake and for my own interests, and it probably helped me professionally. Wherever I go back now, in the places I've covered and lived in, I have a lot of friends.
Does it have anything to do with non-alignment?, the habits of Yugoslavs "third" worlds?
I don't know how related it is, I haven't thought about it that way, but I've found people in amazing places who speak and understand our language. In Libya I found a general who graduated from the military school here. I think that Tito and the non-aligned were a long time ago, these new generations don't know that.
Maybe some of the ideas of those people are close to us. I still think that the Middle East and the people who live there are similar to us in many ways. Although they have different religions, in terms of behavior, customs and characteristics they are closer to me than, say, many people from Western Europe.
for an enlarged image, right click and »view image«DEMOLITION OF SADAM HUSSEIN STATUE: Iraq in 2003
How much is your Serbian passport?, which you still have, helped or hindered in work?
He helped me a lot in certain places and moments. At the time of Saddam Hussein, in 2002, I could enter Iraq without a visa and work there, and many could not. When I once came to the border of Iraq and Jordan, I was going by car from Amman to Baghdad, the Iraqis asked me where my visa was. I said that I am from Yugoslavia and that we do not need a visa. They turned the phone over, checked and said: "Welcome." Then they called me for coffee and we smoked shisha, hookah, it was very pleasant. And they were surprised that a European was coming who didn't need a visa.
On the other hand, it was very difficult, especially in the late nineties and for a while after 2000. I remember unpleasant situations, in Jordan they once threw my passport out the window and said that I was not welcome in that country. I threw it back and said I didn't care what they thought, an awkward scene ensued, but in the end they let me in. When I once landed in Portugal, I was going on vacation, the police officer called all his colleagues when he saw my passport, asked me if I was Serbian, they laughed awkwardly and looked at me as if a scarecrow had come. It was a difficult time because visas were needed everywhere, that waiting in front of embassies was never pleasant. It's all much easier now, and I'm glad I didn't change my passport.
for an enlarged image, right click and »view image«WAR IN LIBYA: 2011
What are your favorite and most important photos in your career??
I love all the photos that I published, especially those that were in print editions, in newspapers and magazines. I have two unofficial records for the number of photos published in one day, the explosion in Libya and the fall of the statue of Saddam, I once had 150 front pages. I joke that since print editions are dying out, hardly anyone will be able to repeat it because there aren't that many newspapers anymore.
I also published a lot from Kosovo. Somehow, every photo that is printed and that I can physically see, to smell that newspaper, I'm glad. And the photos from Afghanistan and Syria are dear and important to me because it was technically difficult to make, and they left a lot of impact on public opinion, for example, the photo of the American sergeant.
I've been looking for it for a long time, a soldier's encounter with death and those events, how to record it. At some points I was able to do that. I'm glad that the man survived, in the end it turned out that he wasn't even seriously injured, but I had only seen those moments before on film, I hadn't seen such photos. It's when you go to war, and you think about how best to show the world what's going on there. Those were some amazing, surreal scenes that I was able to capture.
for an enlarged image, right click and »view image«REBELS INTERROGATE A YOUNG MAN: Libya, 2011.
In which of the countries where you stayed and worked did you feel the best, despite everything that happened in them?
I am very sorry for what happened in Syria and what is still happening. I have a lot of respect for that country. I recorded that civil war. That was hard for me. The photos remained memorable, but somehow I feel that people are close to us and I often connect what happened to us with what is happening to them, that's why that country is close to my heart.
for an enlarged image, right click and »view image«REBEL FIGHTERS: South Sudan in 2014
Where was it most difficult for you to work because of the conditions?, People?
It was hard for me everywhere, all those war situations... Again, in all those situations you have hard and good moments, no matter how hard it is. Physically, it was perhaps the most difficult for me in South Sudan, where I hiked for 20 hours. In Afghanistan, I also hiked for a long time a couple of times, on the verge of endurance.
One of the most difficult countries is perhaps the Central African Republic, where there were threats of kidnapping, somehow everything hung in the balance, it was walking on a thin line where it was easy to fall left or right.
And the most difficult moment?
When I was kidnapped in the Central African Republic by some kind of Christian militia, and there were three Muslims in the car with me that I eventually managed to get out, they almost killed us there. I lost my gear, my money, but that's all over. We managed to get to the UN checkpoint, where there were Burundian soldiers who later transferred us to their base, and then transported us to the capital. It was difficult, being without money in Africa, with only a passport, finding that point, a long escape through the jungle. It was not easy to find him, I knew roughly which direction to go, but I managed to get those three boys who were with me out, and thank God they are alive and well today.
Chile, Santiago, hotel in the city center, ten minutes walk to the square where they fight every day, sometimes the driver takes you. No one was unpleasant to me, the police sometimes caught me, standard, some oyster. Everything starts around five in the afternoon, from five to eight they take pictures, there they fight, water cannons come, kids fight like lions, tear gas... Running for work lasts three hours every day, the biggest problem was the water cannon, at one point after 15 days it hit me so I lost one camera, but I had two more.
Then I break into how the police work with them. They go in cordons, but they have two or three runners who go with clubs. They start chasing the protestors and trip them, they run from the cordon, chase them away, arrest them and bye.
Afterwards, I stood, waiting for those guys to start chasing the protestors, when they started to run, I saw that they were falling somewhere after a hundred meters. They were falling and fighting all over my camera, I just stop and take pictures. No one was seriously injured, a little blue, burned. The only problem was when they were arrested, the protestors returned the oysters to the police and bombed me there, but it was nothing terrible.
There I took a picture of a man in a suit calmly drinking a coke while behind him they were going wild and fighting, and after that picture he was interviewed countless times and became a celebrity in Chile, and he is still famous today. Once I'm back in Santiago, I'll call him to tell him I celebrated him.
You have seen wars here., and in many other places on the globe. What are the similarities between what we have seen here and what is happening elsewhere?
There are a lot of similarities. For me, this here, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, was the hardest because everything was connected with our people. I felt better when I went over. It doesn't mean that I didn't feel sorry for the people who struggled, suffered, were injured, died, but somehow it hurt here the most, I guess because it was mine.
But when I pick up the camera and start taking pictures, I function differently. There is no time for big emotions then, they come later, when everything is over, and that is the most difficult.
for an enlarged image, right click and »view image«2019 PULITSER PRIZE: Honduras
You have won countless awards., among others, the Pulitzer. How much does a person think about when he starts doing this job, how important rewards are as an incentive?
They are important, especially for colleagues who are at the beginning of their careers. I love all those awards, but they are not the most important to me, probably because I received the biggest world awards, both American, European, and Asian, but they don't mean that much to me anymore. That's my view, now that I've already received them, but if I hadn't, they might mean something to me. That's how I feel now, I still send a few pictures here and there to a competition, but less and less.
And for the Pulitzer Prize, it's important to me that I got it, it's one of the biggest, but even now, after everything, the biggest prize for me is a published picture and a job well done, so that people can see exactly what's happening in a place that I painted.
for an enlarged image, right click and »view image«THE HELL OF MOSUL: Iraq, 2017
Is the old Robert Capa still valid?: "If your photo is not good enough, means you weren't close enough"?
Absolutely. I talked to many colleagues, especially from Magnum, and some from other agencies, who were amazed when they saw that I photographed everything with a wide lens, which means that I was a meter or two away from the objects I was photographing. For me, that's it. Those pictures that are close have a different atmosphere for me, they speak more.
They say all kinds of things, there are fads in this business, so they say: "Ah, you long lens photographers, with telephoto lenses, that's not good. which I had right in front of me.
That's hard to do. The biggest problem is concentration, one must constantly concentrate on what is happening. You can be in a good position, but you're sitting under a tree playing games, which means you can miss some moments that matter. From preparation to shooting, to your on-task behavior, it's not enough to just be somewhere. The most important thing is to get somewhere where something is happening, but how you do it afterwards is also very important, how you behave there... It is also important that you do not influence the events with your behavior, that is manipulation, etc. It's a complex job.
I have seen many colleagues who relax too much when they get to a place. Sensors have to work all the time, you have to watch and be careful, things happen unpredictably. I took many good photos when my colleagues left, because they said nothing was happening. My rule of thumb is to show up at first light and go rest, send pictures, or knock something when the light goes, depending on how safe it is to retreat.
Many times I stayed on the ground, for example, in Mosul. Reuters let me go and I joined the special operations combat units, I spent two weeks with them and they were the best photos. I slept for two weeks in some houses, under the car, it was very uncomfortable, but I was there the whole time, I didn't waste time going to the hotel, the check point.
for an enlarged image, right click and »view image«PHOTO-REPORTER ON TASK: Goran Tomašević
Is there anything else in the works?, career, what you didn't achieve, and you would like to do?
There's always a challenge, there's always a story I'd like to do. I sometimes joke that my biggest regret is that I didn't photograph the battle for Stalingrad, it was the battle of battles. If such a battle comes up, I'll do my best to photograph it.
Your job involves constant travel. How and where do you rest??
Once a year I go fishing, on the coast of Kenya. My good friend Siegfried Modola, who used to be my photographer, grew up there, so he knows the coast well, the language. We take his uncle's boat and then we drive left and right. I like to come to Serbia, my good friends and comrades are there.
Do you ever want to leave war and conflicts behind and paint nature, fishing?
I wish, but pundravci always work.
