Reuters Photographers

There is no doubt that some of our best conflict photojournalists are locals who have had the story thrust upon them. They are often highly sophisticated individuals who in happier times would be pursuing careers in business, teaching, law or whatever. They have the language, local knowledge and contacts, experience and street smarts to enable them to operate and survive. Anybody coming in from outside has to be able to at least match this with an equivalent contribution. In a conflict zone or a disaster area anyone who is not effectively reporting the story is in the way, an unnecessary drain on scarce resources and a potential threat to themselves and their colleagues.

No picture is worth a human life. The challenge is judging just how far to push the limits and still be able to go back and do it again the next day and the next. Even those operating in “embeds” should undertake basic hazardous environment and first aid training. Languages too are very, very useful. Even so too many clever, well prepared photojournalists without a reckless bone in their bodies have already died just doing their jobs.

Physical location is also important. Unless you have a local story which can provide you with a living there is no point in kidding yourself that you can live in the Scottish Highlands and commute to London for work. If the story and the market are in Tokyo, go to Tokyo.

In practical terms experience generally wins out over qualifications. Photographic qualifications may equip the wannabe with a structure on which to build a career but  equipment alone does not make a top flight professional news photographer. Qualifications are a guide but they are by no means a guarantee and it is the pictures that count.

The maintenance of high professional standards does not mean you have to sacrifice yourself on the altar of technology. Adapt. Embrace new technology, master it, exploit it. If you get bored, reinvent yourself and the rules by which you operate. Don’t be a one trick pony. If you have a style develop it and when there is nowhere else to go with it do something else, don’t stand still. Experiment, take risks with your pictures.
 
Don’t be a victim, be a consumer - consumers have rights, if you see media which use pictures badly then complain, threaten to withdraw your readership, better still offer to do better.

“Citizen journalism” isn’t a threat to professional news photography, it is just another potential source of images in an ever more image hungry world. I have no doubt that the business will continue to rationalise as stills from video becomes the norm for routine press conferences and the like but video does not tend to produce the same kind of interpretive images that still photographers do and as long as we have something unique to offer there will be a market for it.

Despite the doom and gloom this is a real and thriving business. Come on in, the water’s lovely!

A hundred questions raced through my mind as I sat in a taxi zigzagging through traffic towards what first reports described as a major disaster area, a rush-hour plane crash in downtown Sao Paulo.

Will my taxi be able to get close enough to the crash? Will I have to hike the city’s dangerous streets with my camera gear? Will my cell phone connect to the Internet as thousands of people call their relatives? Are other photographers already at the site? What scenes of disaster and grieving will I encounter? Will my longest lens be long enough?

Amid all these thoughts, despite the screaming sirens and my urgency to arrive, my mind flashed back 15 years in time to a memory far from the present – a bus ride in Bolivia. That bus ride, along an Andean mountain track that is popularly known as the world’s most dangerous road, was the last time in memory that I traveled anywhere without carrying anxiety as part of my emotional baggage.

Then, I rode in a window seat of a rusty, 45-passenger bus with my head out the window observing the breathtaking scenery. I couldn’t help noticing how curious it was to watch the bus’ rear tire skirting the edge of the cliff and pushing stones over into the green abyss as it rounded every tight curve of the winding road, a road not always wide enough for the bus I was in.

I sensed only curiosity. No fear. No thoughts of the consequences of a simple driver error, a loose boulder falling onto the roadbed or even brake failure.

One day soon after that ride I was called out, just as I was called to this tragedy in Sao Paulo, to photograph the crash of a bus identical to the one I had traveled in. It had slipped off the edge of that same mountain road and broken into pieces as it tumbled into the rocky jungle below.

The bodies and belongings of the 45 occupants were strewn all down the cliff face. Some hung from trees. Relatives arrived at the site in despair. Rescue workers brought the remains up from the gorge in a scene that I would soon learn was all too common along that perilous route.

That was the first accident story of my news career, and traveling has never felt the same since.
After that crash I returned many times to visit that spectacular part of Bolivia, but never again in a bus too wide for the road.

A few years later I covered my first plane crash in Uruguay. Again, I lost my serenity forever. Since then I have never flown without feeling a certain anxiety about what I had seen can happen to airplanes.

Today, several bus and plane crashes later, a disaster like this one in Sao Paulo is to me another grim reminder of what can happen to a relatively few, very unfortunate travelers.

The crash site I finally arrived at in Sao Paulo was one of devastation and disbelief. It was still too early for grief, but the following days were dominated by it.

I pity the distraught relatives of the 187 unsuspecting occupants of the TAM Airbus that ended in tragedy. As I return to the job of covering more routine news, they will relive that day relentlessly for years to come.

After photographing the accident that has since been labeled as Brazil’s worst-ever plane crash, I expect to feel maybe a little more anxiety the next time I step into a plane.

But whenever that happens the memory I will most likely recall, for better or for worse, is that of a serene bus ride along the world’s most dangerous road.

(credits from top: Rickey Rogers - photos 1, 2, 3, 5, 6; Paulo Whitaker - photo 4)

Some people say that radio has the best pictures, because the listener creates the visuals in his/her head. A still image leaves nothing to the imagination - or does it?
Of course there are many factors that create a compelling photograph, but there is a type of picture that can only be described as minimalist, because it gives just enough visual information for the viewer to create the rest of the scene in the imagination.  Basically, the photographer shows a detail that gives an impression of the whole. The picture entices us not with what we can see, but with what has been left out.

This might seem easy. For example, I could shoot a leaf lying on the floor with the aim of triggering an image of a tree in the viewer’s mind. But it doesn’t quite work like that. For a start, a leaf lying by itself wouldn’t trigger the image of a tree; there would need to be an extra factor. In addition these pictures rarely work unless there is a human element, however tenuous, to bring the picture to life.  Finally, the leaf picture would be very dull. The successful minimalist photograph needs to be a compelling photograph in its own right, through the elements contained within it or the composition.

Like many areas of photography there is no formula, because every situation is different. Success will rely on the photographers’ power of observation to spot  detail in a context that creates exactly the right links, giving the viewer a spark to fire the imagination.

Close up pictures of hands are often used to give an impression of the whole person or a situation, but wouldn’t work with any old pair of hands. David Gray’s photograph, above, demonstrates this very well. A Chinese worker with his hands behind his back pauses while working on a railway link for next year’s Olympics. The gloves are so tattered, and his fingers so grimy, that they tell us how hard the man works and because he seems to be overdue a new pair of gloves we are given a clue about his working conditions.

This type of image doesn’t necessarily need a human body part to actually be in the picture. In Lee Celano’s picture above, showing the shadow of democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama at a public meeting, we can’t see the man himself, but because he is holding a microphone  it is immediatley clear that he is addressing an audience .  The atmosphere is increased by the distorting effect on his hand by the curtain, as it appears to creep tantalisingly towards the hand of the secret service agent, which itself is a detail to further fire the imagination.

Shadows tend to be a recurring theme in this type of photograph. Brian Snyder’s photograph shows a youngster using dance to develop self-esteem, creative expression and imagination. The image is reinforced by the leg dropping in from the top of the picture, and the two elements work together to help us create our own picture of the part of the scene that falls outside the frame of the photograph.

Damir Sagolj’s photograph of a US soldier patrolling in Baghdad doesn’t need additional information as the shadow is so detailed. The seemingly deserted street works with the shadow and effectively conveys a sinister atmosphere. This gives us an impression of the fear felt on those streets, whether it is felt by the soldier or the local people. This impression is much more powerful for being left to our imagination. Also note the composition, and the way the eye is drawn from the right of the picture to the left by the direction of the weapon and the white barriers.

Sometimes the familiarity of the person in the picture is essential for us to make sense of it, such as this photograph by Jessica Rinaldi, showing a silhouette of a figure we instantly recognize as Tiger Woods. But the story is told by the body language, which suggest that Woods is not having a good day. The shaft of the club adds the finishing touch to the image.

The image above by Yannis Behrakis, of Israeli security forces taking cover behind their shields during clashes in the West Bank city of Hebron, would have been a meaningless still life picture of shields if it wasn’t for the hand, introducing the human element into the picture and bringing it to life. But the hand makes the picture appear forlorn, and we are left to draw our own conclusions about what is happening out of sight below the transparent part of the shield.

This photograph by Pascal Lauener, of a beach volleyball game between the US and South Africa, is nothing more than three hands and a ball. But because of the positioning of the hands and fingers, and the straining muscles, we know that the players are competing ferociously and it’s easy to imagine the action taking place beneath the hands.

Finally, as an exception to the human element rule, this well observed and well shot photograph by Darren Staples,  of the helmets belonging to members of the Indian cricket team sitting on the field during the fourth day of the second test match against England,  gives very little away, and leaves so much to our imagination.  Are the players having a break? Why did they place their helmets in a line?

I recently took up a position as Senior Photographer based in Beijing, China after 12 years in Sydney, Australia. Here are some of my first impressions.

The first thing is the sky isn’t quite so blue. In fact, it’s not even near a shade of blue. The smog on the first five days I was here was amazing. The closest thing I have experienced similar to these conditions was in 2001 when Sydney had its last extreme bush fire season, and the whole city was covered in a thick, smoky haze. But that was when there were over 100 fires burning in and around Sydney, this was a normal Beijing day. Though I must say so far, most likely due to the fresh, Aussie lungs that I possess, I have no breathing problems to report.

Secondly, there a just a few more photographers competing for the best angle. For example, the first thing I covered was the spectacular one-year countdown celebrations in Tiananmen Square. There would have been nearly 200 photographers and television crews trying to cover this, in an area that normally I would have seen reserved for about 60 people. With the humid, high temperatures, being so closely packed does tend to make it a little uncomfortable, especially after 5 hours.

And thirdly, the Chinese authorities love accreditation forms. Almost every event, and when I say almost I mean 99.9 percent of all events that are press related, requires an accreditation pass. This means that forward planning is essential, and turning up on the day without any groundwork will mean a nice, uniformed man will put his hand to your camera and say something very loudly.

Having said all this, however, it has been extremely interesting and eye-opening. Impressions formed of a country looking in from the outside can be vastly different from the actual reality of what occurs. I have encountered a fantastic sense of humor that I hope to understand better when I can speak a little more Mandarin, as my favorite thing to do when visiting a country is to strike up a conversation with taxi drivers. You always find out what’s going on through these very often extremely interesting people (the last taxi driver I spoke to was a 4th-year medical student from Uganda who was making some extra cash driving a taxi on the weekends).

So, I must quickly get back to filling in my press card form, temporary resident form, air freight cargo form, Olympic test events accreditation forms, car license form, real estate application form, mobile phone application form, medical examination form, office security card form, etc etc etc……………

(Editors note: Blog post updated to rerun correct photograph.)

Good soccer pictures are relatively easy to shoot with modern technology, but getting a great picture of the moment of a match is crucial and very difficult. To make it even more challenging, the important moment often changes during a match; in the end it is worthless having the first goal of one team if the other team wins 3-1. The crucial moment could be a decision made by a referee, a substituted player, an injury, an important save, but most of the time it’s the winning goal. Often the goal picture is not a fantastic image but photographers must have it, especially if it’s the winning goal of a final.

I was assigned as an editor to lead the Reuters News Pictures team covering the 2007 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Finals . The tournament took place in July in four countries: Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. My current job is running the global pictures desk so I was very happy to “return to the field” for a couple of weeks.

Lots of hard work and traveling was involved to meet our simple goal of getting as many Reuters pictures published in newspapers and on Web sites around the world. Our target is to constantly produce eye catching images, providing all important news moments of a game and doing it faster than the competition.

We were lucky to have excellent local staff and stringers wherever we went: Kham in Hanoi, Zainal Halim and Bazuki Muhammad in Kuala Lumpur, the “Queen of Indonesia” Enny Nuraheni in Jakarta and Adrees Latif in Thailand.

July 29, the final match at Gelora Bung Karno Stadium in Jakarta. “Lions of the Two Rivers” (Iraq) were playing their first Asian Cup final against three times winner “The Falcons” (Saudi Arabia). We had a meeting in the early afternoon with all photographers, editors and processors – a full team. It was an interesting mixture of those with a lot of sport experience and those who were participating in their first big final.

Precise planning by Chief Photographer Asia Russell Boyce made sure everybody understood their job and our back up plan in case anything went wrong, and another plan in case that all went wrong too.

A couple of hours later the match started. The photographers were in place and stringer Dadang Tri managed to bypass heavy security around the Iraq fans by “borrowing” a uniform from a soft drink salesman to take pictures of fans in the stands. My heart, like that of the rest of the 60,000 strong audience, was with Iraq; at last something to celebrate.

Fast action images from all photographers in the first minutes of the game and we were done with the action (unless of course we got a real stunner). It was the winning goal and cup picture that mattered now. A few panicked minutes wrestling technical difficulties into submission, everything started to run smoothly and the pictures were dropping into our edit suite. The processors fingers tapping efficiently on the keyboards, sending fast, accurately captioned, well shot and well edited pictures to our worldwide clients. In the back of my mind I was praying “please God no, not a penalty shoot out”!

The highly motivated “Tigers” outplayed the “Falcons”, giving the fans a fantastic match with a hard fought battle for possession of the ball. Suddenly, in the 71^st minute, a header by Iraq captain Younis Mahmoud and Iraq scored their winning goal. Wild celebrations throughout the stadium and wilder celebrations in the media center. I took a quick look on the TV to make sure which player scored, expecting the first picture to land shortly.

After a few tense seconds we received the first picture of the goal. Within four minutes, the picture was sitting, processed and captioned, on clients’ picture desks. A couple of seconds later we received a picture of the same goal from a different angle, and then another and then another … It was amazing, every Reuters photographer had pictures of the winning goal shot from their position together with striking images of emotional celebrations. Rarely is a goal picture captured at the same moment by every photographer working at the game.

It was just fantastic. A great job done by all.

It was day two of the bridge collapse story in Minnesota. Our photographers Scott Cohen and Joshua Lott were on-site and filing pictures. Reinforcement was on the way. Through You Witness News, a contributor-based site within Reuters.com, the Global Pictures Desk in Singapore received pictures from Tony Webster of the search-and-rescue work around the collapsed Interstate 35W bridge.

They were strong and compelling images that had all the news elements: submerged cars in the muddy Mississippi River, smashed chunks of concrete, mangled steel cables, emergency rescue personnel and divers searching for victims. We just had to use them! Tony’s images would nicely complement the Reuters picture file. With pictures from other news from the day streaming in (U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s trip to the Middle East, the Korean hostage situation in Afghanistan, the South Asian floods that have killed scores of people), sub-editor Charles Pertwee was tasked to select, caption and file Tony’s pictures to our clients. Through Charles’ edit, Tony’s pictures scored the front page of the International Herald Tribune (IHT) and appeared on msnbc.com.

Here are Charles’ thoughts behind his edit:

“The photo that was picked up by msnbc.com and the IHT was pretty much the first one that I picked and edited that evening from Tony’s website. The initial edit is usually done while looking at the images as thumbnails. If an image looks good as a thumbnail, if it’s easy on the eye, it will probably work at any size. In this instance, the image jumped out as it had some strong lines running through it, and it felt well composed and balanced.

When working on a story like this, you are instinctively looking for all the elements. In this case, the wreckage of the bridge, some cars, the river, and people to give some human scale to the destruction. It was an overcast day, which was quite fitting and added to the sombre mood as the rescue workers went about their business. In fact, Tony’s editing was pretty tight and most of the images on his site were usable. He gave us verticals and horizontals to work with, which is important as we need to give our clients the choice of either format. He also gave us access to the completely untouched full resolution files so we had plenty of room to crop if necessary, although quite a few did not need cropping. I noticed that during the second edit, our U.S.-based editors were pulling out some great crops that I had not even seen because they were only a small proportion of the original image. And the quality was holding up!”

If you witness a newsworthy event and have your camera with you, the key to emulating Tony Webster’s success is to send your pictures quickly to our You Witness News editors at pics@reuters.com.

As a sub-editor on the Reuters picture desk, I am in the last line of defense for ensuring the integrity and accuracy of our pictures and their captions before they get sent to clients. We are usually desk-bound as such but I had the rare opportunity to venture out into the field where our photographers are at the front line shooting pictures. I was sent to Vietnam to help process the 2007 AFC Asian Cup soccer tournament. The tournament was held in various locales in four different countries and four sub-editors from the desk were sent into the field in total.

I learned a lot from this trip: about the working conditions out on the field; the intense competition we face; the mentality of the photographers as they focus on winning the play; and most valuable of all, the interactions with my colleagues out in the field. Nothing beats learning from your more experienced colleagues out in field conditions.

Trying to take news pictures for the very first time was exciting and humbling. Kim Kyung-hoon, who is based in Tokyo and was assigned to Vietnam to follow the Japanese team, was kind enough to allow me a taste of shooting. I helped to cover a training session of the Japanese team and it was so difficult to keep track of all the key players AND the ball at the same time. Especially when the players are so far away you can barely make out their faces. The fact that they are not wearing their own numbers during training doesn’t help either. I was simply reeling from having to keep track of so many things at once. And it is amazing what a great job our colleagues out there are doing so consistently. We see so many great pictures on our desk back in Singapore everyday that sometimes we take for granted what these pictures require: extremely good situational awareness to know who is where and what is going on all the time; good acumen and guts to predict the flow of the play so that you can be in the right place at the right time; and fast reflexes in order to capture the frame at all.

Just before the quarter-final match between Japan and Australia, Asia chief photographer Russell Boyce had an in-depth discussion with his team on how to best capture the crucial moments our clients are relying on us for. Even just from listening on the sidelines, I could feel the magic and excitement. Our photographers are really hungry for the win and they will meticulously go through each and every possible scenario and how to best position themselves to capture the perfect picture.

And it is not just shooting pictures either. The logistics are just as important. With the games so late and Asian clients facing very tight deadlines, we have to deliver the goods to them before their papers go into print. And here is where Reuters technology shines. Using our new propriety software, the photographers were able to easily send pictures as they are shooting, to an editor who will select the most compelling frames. The processor, me, will next fill in all the required caption information detailing the play and identities of players in the picture and then send them to the Singapore desk for final checks before the clients receive the pictures.

I really enjoyed the assignment and making friends with the photographers. Where before they were only names on instant messaging as they filed pictures to Singapore, now I am honored to call, at least some of them, my friends.

We are not alone! It is very good to know that out there somewhere are sentient beings looking to become photojournalists.

Photojournalism is a truly broad spectrum job description. It encompasses those who are almost all photographer with just a smigeon of journalist, those who are almost all journalist with just a hint of photographer and all stops in between. At the risk of stating the glaringly obvious being a professional photojournalist entails earning a living by shooting news pictures that people are prepared to pay for, with great enough frequency to make existence financially viable. There are many ways to achieve it, some easier than others all equally valid.

If the letter disclosing that your greatest wish is to become a photojournalist with an international news agency begins, “Dear Sir or Madam”, save yourself the cost of postage and the effort of walking to the mail box. Let’s face it if you can’t find out the name of the person who runs the operation you’ve set your sights on joining then maybe journalism really isn’t your thing at all.

More than once I have heard, “my passion is to become a photographer but I am just waiting for the opportunity to cover a big story somewhere exciting”. Again, don’t kid yourself, unless you are someone like Scarlett Johannson no assigning editor in their right mind is going to take a punt on sending a wannabe into a high value, high cost, competitive situation. Of course some of us have no choice because we live where the big stories are happening, but more of that later.

If you want to work in the news business it really does help to be an avid consumer of news media.

There is invariably a photographer credit on pictures, contact them and ask them how they did it or why. If they are sensible they won’t believe their own publicity but we are suckers for anyone who demonstrates a genuine interest in what we do.

If you are not already shooting pictures of everything that moves do so. Learn how to use your gear, learn about depth of field, backgrounds, how to light your pictures and practice until it becomes second nature. Try to make pictures like the best of those you see in print or online, then try to make yours better. Practice on local sports and news events, try and get your pictures published. Learn how to edit your own material honestly, learn from your mistakes and most importantly learn how to come back from them and still deliver the goods .

Most of the photojournalists I know started as freelancers operating in orbit around  assigning pictures desks at local newspapers or local agencies, doing things that other people couldn’t or wouldn’t do and doing that more often, more successfully and more cheerfully than anyone else day or night. Never work for nothing, never come back without a picture and if you are Scarlett Johannson we could offer you a few Premier League soccer shifts towards the end of the year…….

There are many subject matters that grab our attention or draw us into a photograph, and by far the strongest is the human face. It is because a facial expression betrays what the subject is experiencing, and triggers empathy within ourselves. The more extreme or unguarded the expression, the more compelling the image becomes.

Although we feel sad when we see a photograph of somebody suffering, it is sometimes possible to experience a certain joy from looking at the expressions of others. In my view this is because, regardless of the size of the human population and beyond all expectation, each face and expression is unique.

Below is a small selection of photographs of the human face taken from the Reuters wire service of the past few days, which concisely shows a variety of human emotions that are betrayed by expressions. Taking a global snapshot like this brings home the fact that regardless of nationality or race, we are all part of the human family.

Alicia Contador, sister of Discovery Channel team rider Alberto Contador of Spain, cries as she celebrates his victory in the 94th Tour de France in his hometown of Pinto, outside Madrid, July 29, 2007. REUTERS/Susana Vera

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bites his lip during a live television appearance at his Liberal Democratic Party headquarters in Tokyo July 29, 2007, after an upper house election in which his conservative ruling camp suffered a devastating defeat. REUTERS/Issei Kato

Fans cheer at the premiere of “Rush Hour 3″ at the Mann’s Chinese theatre in Hollywood, California July 30, 2007. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

Chief Khmer Rouge inquisitor Kaing Kek Ieu, better known as Duch, is seen in Phnom Penh in this handout picture released on July 30, 2007. Duch appeared before Cambodia’s “Killing Fields” tribunal on July 31, 2007, the first of Pol Pot’s henchmen to be questioned over the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people. Duch has confessed to committing multiple atrocities during this time as head of Phnom Penh’s notorious Tuol Sleng, or S-21, interrogation centre.

Purnima Poddar, an HIV affected girl, takes part in a protest march against negligence in the field of Thalassaemia and HIV/AIDS treatment and management in the government sectors, in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, July 30, 2007. REUTERS/Parth Sanyal

A resident with the colours of an Iraqi flag painted on his face celebrates in Basra, 550 km (340 miles) south of Baghdad, after the Iraqi team won the final game of the 2007 AFC Asian Cup soccer tournament against Saudi Arabia in Jakarta, July 29, 2007. REUTERS/Atef Hassan

When I was first handed the task of co-ordinating user-generated images for Reuters, I was inundated with pictures of people and their pets and newborn babies. They weren’t exactly the pictures we were striving for when we launched You Witness News.

Now, I am pleased to say, I am seeing some high-quality images from major news events and global sports stories.

What I wasn’t expecting was an insight into a secret society such as North Korea. Images by aspiring photographer Nora Stribrna raised the bar on user-generated content.

Nora, a Czech native and air stewardess on a private jet of a member of the Saudi royal family, tells the story behind the pictures:

North Korea opens its border twice a year to showcase its Arirang Mass Games, where it celebrates its military might and communist ideology. My ex-boyfriend is a photographer and he alerted me to this opportunity to visit the isolated nation. After applying for visas for us both at the North Korean embassy in Prague, he attended the mandatory “How to behave in North Korea” lessons that the embassy held for upcoming visitors. As I was not in the country, I missed hearing first hand all the useful tips, like what to wear (long sleeves and no shorts) and how not to be extravagant.

So we flew to China and were off: 23 foreigners on a 26-hour train ride into North Korea. The train was poor, devastated and dirty but we all expected it. When we reached the Chinese-Korean border, we all became scared. Nothing was allowed to be brought in, so we all left our mobile phones and computers in China, all books and “weird items” as well. Every person was searched properly, bag by bag, person by person, and many questions were asked by immigration officers. After being searched and questioned for six hours, we had some time to kill.

My first shock: everybody in green, gray and black uniforms, nobody spoke, heads down, silence, few bicycles, dark atmosphere, everywhere guards and police, barking dogs, fear. But there was revolutionary music playing, trying to make people happy.

We traveled with three official escorts, who were there to observe, control, listen to and ask us a lot of questions. One of them even spoke Czech to be sure they could understand what we said to each other.

Pyongyang, the capital, is made for the world to see how rich North Korea is. There are some buildings, airports and a few hotels. There are no shops or supermarkets. People are given vouchers for food, and are given few clothes a year. All uniforms. There are no other clothes.

We traveled to the north and south and saw indescribable poverty, peasants taking care of rice, guarded by police and military, just to make sure nobody would escape. Everything is black, gray, brown. People never put their head up.

One of our guides quizzed me on the members of our group: asking what is their occupation, their purpose for coming to North Korea and what the journalists in our group were planning to publish. I was asked to tell them to publish only good things about the regime.

After five full days, our initial laughter had passed. All except one of us had lived in communist states and we all remembered those similar days. Nobody really spoke on the plane back to Beijing. I only remember, we all got very drunk that night back to China. And we were very grateful for water and electricity. Very. We could speak! And we could say whatever we wanted.

You can see more of Nora’s pictures from North Korea here