HOW’D YOU GET THAT SHOT?

“How’d you get that shot?”

It’s the question I always get asked whenever I give a lecture to students or share my photos from the pre-digital era, when I was 22 and just out of college and working as a photojournalist. During those four years, 1988–92, I covered wars, skirmishes, coups, demonstrations, insurrections, an earthquake, drug addiction, U.S. race relations, and many other social issues, most of which I ended up writing about in a memoir. But today, whenever I give a lecture on that memoir, everyone always wants to know about process: the carrying of dozens of rolls of film on your body, in both a fanny pack and in the pockets of your photo vest; hiding them in your shoes or underwear when necessary; physically shipping those rolls out of the country via a passenger pigeon as quickly as possible. This involved first leaving the site of the conflict you were covering and finding the nearest airport, whether by car, bus, bicycle, donkey (yes, donkey), or on foot. Then you had to find a passenger willing to carry your film for you on the plane. (This was pre-9/11: it was easier back then to get people to lie about having accepted a package from a stranger.) Then — and this was often the hardest part, especially in Iron Curtain or third world countries — you had to find a payphone, call your agency in Paris, and tell them to send a motard — a messenger on a motorcycle — to greet the passenger…