{"id":5434,"date":"2023-02-13T11:55:51","date_gmt":"2023-02-13T11:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/?p=5434"},"modified":"2023-02-13T12:06:26","modified_gmt":"2023-02-13T12:06:26","slug":"my-eyes-were-full-of-tears-shooting-the-defining-image-of-the-turkey-earthquake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/my-eyes-were-full-of-tears-shooting-the-defining-image-of-the-turkey-earthquake\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018My eyes were full of tears\u2019: shooting the defining image of the Turkey earthquake"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Deniz Bar\u0131\u015f Narl\u0131\u00a0in Adana and\u00a0<\/em>Sam Jones

Adem Altan can\u2019t compare the picture he took on a cold morning this week with any of the tens of thousands he has shot in his 41 years as a photojournalist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after driving from Ankara to the southern Turkish town of Kahramanmara\u015f on Tuesday, and picking his way through the aftermath of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake, he came across a collapsed apartment complex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Families were digging through the rubble in search of their buried loved ones, but it was a man in an orange coat who sat quietly amid the debris who caught Altan\u2019s eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I looked closer, I saw that he was holding a hand,\u201d says the photographer, \u201cso I began to take photographs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The man was called Mesut Han\u00e7er and the hand he was holding was that of his 15-year-old daughter, Irmak, who had been killed in her bed when the quake brought the building down. Han\u00e7er spotted Altan. And then he asked him to carry on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Adem
The world has seen Adem Altan\u2019s image, \u2018but I can\u2019t say I\u2019m happy\u2019, he said. Photograph: Volkan Nakiboglu\/AFP\/Getty Images
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2018Take a photo of my child,\u2019 he called out. Then he let go of the hand he was holding and showed me his child. I saw a person\u2019s head under the rubble. I asked his name. \u2018Mesut Han\u00e7er,\u2019 he said. Then I asked his child\u2019s name. He was a little far away, and I had trouble understanding. He said his daughter\u2019s name was Irmak.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The photographer did as he had been asked and carried on taking pictures as Han\u00e7er took his daughter\u2019s hand again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat unbearable pain, I thought to myself,\u201d says Altan. \u201cMy eyes were full of tears and I had a hard time not crying as I took the pictures. I waited for a bit after taking the pictures, expecting someone to come and take the girl away. Unfortunately, no one did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Altan had to leave Han\u00e7er and Irmak to carry on documenting the destruction for Agence France-Presse, where he has worked for the past 15 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut I was curious about what had happened to them and so the next morning, I went back to the ruins where the father and daughter had been. I don\u2019t know what happened to the father. He wasn\u2019t there when I arrived the next day and neither was his daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The photojournalist knew he had taken an extraordinarily poignant picture of the pain the earthquake had caused, but he didn\u2019t expect it to become perhaps the definitive image of the disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt got a lot of attention both in Turkey and around the world<\/a>\u201d he says. \u201cHundreds of people shared it on social media and I got hundreds of messages saying things like \u2018A very powerful photograph showing the pain of the earthquake\u2019 and \u2018A photograph we will never forget until we die.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Altan, the picture has done its job: it shows the physical and emotional destruction of the earthquake; it documents a father\u2019s undimmable love for his daughter, and it asks: \u201cIs there any greater pain than this?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can\u2019t compare it with any photograph I\u2019ve taken before,\u201d he says. \u201cThe photo attracted a lot of attention, yes. But I can\u2019t say I\u2019m happy. This is a catastrophe.\u201d

(Source: The Guardian)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deniz Bar\u0131\u015f Narl\u0131\u00a0in Adana and\u00a0Sam JonesAdem Altan can\u2019t compare the picture he took on a cold morning this week with any of the tens of thousands he has shot in his 41 years as a photojournalist. Shortly after driving from Ankara to the southern Turkish town of Kahramanmara\u015f on Tuesday, and picking his way through …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":5435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172,184,218],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-172","category-international-issues","category-reports-and-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5434"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5439,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5434\/revisions\/5439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}