The Photographer

I am a respectable woman. I have cats. I go to the theatre. I look good in a dress. And when people ask me why I decided to be a war-photographer, I answer dutifully: ‘To make other people aware of the terrible things that go on in this world.’ I lie.

Yesterday I visited the site of an attack, only hours after it happened. It was a complete and utter chaos, but as I looked through my lens, this chaos disappeared. All sound was blocked, the crying and the wailing of the survivors and the moaning of the barely living. What was left were the different colors - the red shoes of a little girl, the black irises of the wide-open eyes of a woman, the blue jeans of a young man -, the composition – how the pile of bodies when seen from one side resembled ‘The Tower of Babel’ by Brueghel, how I needed that crying woman to be visible in the background - and of course the touching details, like a mother embracing her children, a dead child holding the hand of another dead child.

However, when I came upon the little boy, I knew that all the other shots were nothing, nothing compared to this. He did not cry. In fact, he did not show any emotion at all. His face was the absence of any feeling, except for his eyes. His eyes were wide-open, and mostly black. He was bleeding.

It was art given life and I had to capture it. So I went up to him, kneeled down right in front of him and pointed my camera to him. I shot a few photos, but there was something missing. It was not the composition, which was perfect, nor the colors. And suddenly I knew what I needed.

I lowered the camera and showed him my face. He stared at it, blankly. Then I smiled, and talked to him. At first he did not respond, but eventually he stretched out one hand, his right hand, to me.
That was it. That was what I needed. I put the camera back and took the picture. It was perfect.

There was no need for the camera anymore after that, so I lowered it again. However, by now the kid had dropped his arm. He had been looking at me, but now his gaze was only directed inwards. I took him to a hospital, of course. I am not a bad person. The picture will be published. People will feel for the boy. They might even cry.

I did not feel. I saw. And what I saw was not death and destruction and pain. What I saw was beauty. Perfect and utter beauty.

 This is a short story that I wrote in response to the challenge of the Geek & Sundry vlog 'Wordplay'. The genre was Noir fiction, and the themes were 'the photographer' or 'the other view'. It was actually the first time that I wrote a story of less than 500 words. My minimum was 2000 until now. So I was quite proud of myself :). If you have any comments, I'd love to hear them.