| "Sometimes people
have asked me why I devoted so
much of my life to to covering
these terrible scenes, these disasters, these wars. And there is an important
reason. When I began as a photojournalist I was interested in the history
that was developing around me, whether it was the hundreds and hundreds
of people I photographed who were the homeless wandering along the roads
during the days of the Farm Security Administration, or other pretty heart-rending
scenes that I saw in those days.
Why did I pursue those
scenes ? Because they were evidence of one of the most important developments
of my time, and I have been attracted all my life to important historical
developments Some were good, lots of them were not. And I had and still
have a compulsion to record history. Remember, after LIFE was born, we
went through years of war. Now it is true that I could have done what some
photojournalists did and in some way avoided war. But I have never avoided
covering a development of our time because it threatened me. I do not think
of myself as being tough. Determined is a much better description. It has
never been too hot or too cold or too hard or too tiring for me to keep
on going on a story worth telling. And war is one of those stories.
I want to make it clear
it is not because I liked war. They were awful periods. I have often been
in places where it was so terrible, where I was so frightened, where I
could criticize myself for being there by saying what are you doing, why
are you here? The answer always has been that what I am doing is important,
and that's why I am here. I am making a record of historic times."
(Carl Mydans) |
