‘I couldn’t understand why they would bomb a hospital.’
The story behind Andrew Quilty’s Walkley-winning photograph
This might surprise you about Andrew Quilty, who has been a freelance war photographer in Kabul since 2013:
“I don’t consider myself a risk taker,” he said,
At Storyology, Quilty told the story behind the photograph that won Photo of the Year at the Walkleys last year, and was part of his Gold Walkley-winning entry.
The photo shows a man buried in rubble on an operating table. He was killed when US forces bombed the Medecins Sans Frontiers hospital in 2015.
“It was a weeklong process to get to the hospital after it had been bombed,” Quilty said. He was the first journalist on scene.
Anger fueled his photographic mission.
“I couldn’t understand why they would bomb a hospital.”
At the hospital, drenched in sweat, he faced a stressful environment. People were still engaged in warfare a block away.
He moved forensically through the hospital: When he is amongst scenes of war, it’s almost like “collecting evidence, rather than being a journalistic photographer.”
Lingering would be risky, so he had to work fast. He reached the last wing and was faced with a decision — as many war photographers are — of whether to put himself in even more danger to get the image he sought.
The rooms had caved in and his eyes struggled to adjust to the light. As he made sense of his surroundings, he reached for his camera — which he said could ‘see’ better than he could.
Lying in front of him was a 43- year-old Afghan civilian, who would be identified four weeks later as Baynazar Mohammad Nazar.
At the time, he did not know what impact one click would have. The photograph, published in Foreign Policy, became emblematic of the troubled war.
Asked about the obligation of photographers to help the people they photograph, Quilty says “No one can tell you what they would do, unless they were confronted with the situation.”
