World Press Photo – A Life in Death by Nancy Borowick
This reportage shows to the fullest how photojournalism is the best tool to tell stories when is well used. We find black and white colors and simple daily life images of the couple with a tragic but realistic background. That scenary guides us through the “pacific” but not winnable war against a disease, cancer, shared by the man and woman in different forms.
Just by staring at the images, we can feel in some way the emotions, we can empathize with the subjects. Probably, the pureness of the pictures comes from the fact that the photographer is the daughter of the two elders, Laurel and Howie, and she chose to depict the evil and fear in a fondly way. There’s tenderness everywhere, there’s even tenderness even in the image of the coffin. You don’t need to be an expertise in photography to see it, and that’s the greatness of this, photojournalism is universal.
I think that the perfection of this series resides in the equililbrium achieved between the horror of cancer and the power of their love. Yes, it’s a sort of tragedy because they both end dying, it’s just a reality that thousands of people suffer. But “A Life in Death” focuses on the way they face dead, and ends up producing envy to the spectator. We are all going to die, for sure, but dying the way they do, loving each other and accompanying each other to the grave, seems the happiest end for any human couple. The circumstances, cancer in this case, are just variables.
Eduardo Altarriba
Blog de l'assignatura Mitjans de Comunicació 