Montreal native Barbara Davidson’s remarkable photos are often taken amid very real dangers, including gunfire and shelling.

by Max Wallace
photos by Barbara Davidson, courtesy Dallas Morning News

It was the first time I ever received an e-mail from a war zone, and it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. The date was March 18, 2004, and CNN was broadcasting the news that a Baghdad hotel housing foreign journalists had just been car bombed, killing a number of occupants. I knew that my old Link colleague Barbara Davidson, BFA 90, had recently arrived in Iraq on assignment for her newspaper, and I was worried. So I called her editor, inquiring about her whereabouts, and left a message when nobody answered. A few hours later, I received an e-mail from Barbara assuring me she was fine. She had been staying at another hotel a few blocks away. But she appeared to have more pressing concerns than insurgent attacks. “It’s hot as hell here,” she complained. “What’s it like in Montreal?”

Final Farewell: In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, Akia Huddleston, Barbara Shepard and Genoveva Tart embrace at the funeral of Genoveva’s husband, Sam, and two-year-old son, Mattie, in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Two years later, that calm demeanour in the face of danger has earned her a reputation as one of the world’s most respected photojournalists, and the laurels to go with it. In March, she was named Newspaper Photographer of the Year at the 63rd Annual Pictures of the Year International (POYi) Competition, from a field of 1,700 photographers from 45 countries — an award that was overshadowed a month later when she and seven colleagues received the highest honour in American journalism, the Pulitzer Prize, for her photos of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. It is quite an achievement for somebody once rejected as a Concordia photography major.

A captured holy warrior in Afghanistan’s notorious Sheberghan prisoner-of-war camp, 2002.

“I still remember my interview when I was applying for the program,” recalls Davidson, who instead minored in photography and film studies. “I was told, ‘We don’t teach our students to be photojournalists, we teach them to be poets.’ ” In retrospect, however, she is grateful for the Concordia program’s emphasis on the conceptual side of photography. “It gave me a very open mind visually, instead of just looking at the clichéd news angle.”

After graduating from Concordia, Davidson landed her first professional job, as a staff photographer for the Kitchener Waterloo Record, where she learned the trade and honed her skills. But she was itching for a little more action than a small-town daily could offer, so in 1995 she decided to use her vacation time to travel with the Red Cross to the Balkans, where the Bosnian war was winding down. Midway through the trip, Davidson experienced
a little more adventure than she was hoping for when her Croatian driver accidentally drove through the wrong checkpoint.

They were kidnapped and held at gunpoint for more than 36 hours by a Serb paramilitary group before the Red Cross negotiated their release.

A Palestinian boy amid burning tires in Ramallah, West Bank, 2004, after the announcement of the death of Yasser Arafat.

“Of course I was terrified by that experience,” she remembers. “It was a long time before I could even consider traveling to another danger zone. But it taught me to be more cautious, which was a lesson that served me well later on.”

Washington time

Before long, Davidson’s matchless combination of photojournalism and visual artistry was beginning to attract widespread attention, and job offers. The one she finally accepted, from the Sun Myung Moon-owned Washington Times, wasn’t as prestigious as some she turned down — including from the Toronto Star — but it was a chance to be where the news was happening. It didn’t take long for the gamble to pay off, especially after she was assigned to cover the White House. “I couldn’t believe it,” she recalls. “There I was working shoulder to shoulder with all of my heroes, including [three-time Pulitzer winner] Carol Guzy of the Washington Post. I learned so much just watching those people work.”

By sheer coincidence, only a few days after getting the White House beat, Davidson found herself occupying a front seat to history — literally. It was January 1998 and the Monica Lewinsky scandal had just broken. Davidson was one of just seven photographers present when President Clinton appeared before the White House press corps, shook his finger and declared, “I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” It is a day she will never forget. “At the moment he’s saying it,” she says, “I realize the historical significance, and I had a really hard time keeping my camera still long enough to get the shot. My hands were just shaking.” A few months later, Davidson encountered Clinton again under different circumstances when he presented her an award, inside the Oval Office, for Photograph of the Year from the White House News Photographer Association.

The Ninth Ward, New Orleans: A football trophy on a deserted road after Hurricane Katrina.

Soon, her work at the Times landed her a job offer with the Dallas Morning News, one of the largest newspapers in the country, with an international reputation for photojournalism and a wall full of Pulitzers. She jumped at the chance. But the transition wasn’t easy. At her Washington paper, Davidson had been a big fish in a little sea; suddenly, she was surrounded by some of the top photographers in the country and was forced to climb from the bottom again. It didn’t take long.

 

H.K. Pushpa with her son after the 2004 tsunami hit the Galle area of Sri Lanka. She lost her husband and her home.

Danger Zones

Her remarkable eye and ability to stay cool under pressure convinced her editors that she had
what it takes to handle foreign assignments. In the late ’80s, Davidson had been a familiar
figure in the Hall Building, racing from story to story on assignment for The Link, her camera slung over her shoulder. Now, she could regularly be spotted darting through the streets of Kabul, Baghdad or the West Bank — this time with bombs exploding nearby. Her assignments have included a week holed up in Yasser Arafat’s compound, and multiple trips to Iraq, Afghanistan and other international hot spots, including two tense weeks traveling with rebel forces in the Congo.

A Nigerian faith healer speaking in tongues.

It all sounds glamorous and exciting, but Davidson has memorized the grim statistics that keep her career in perspective. The war in Iraq, for example, has been the deadliest for journalists since the Second World War, with 86 correspondents killed and 36 kidnapped since 2003. “There’s nothing glamorous about covering that war,” she says in a telephone interview from Gaza, where she is capturing the aftermath of the Israeli and Palestinian elections this spring. She remembers her second trip to Iraq, when she was embedded for more than a month with a U.S. military unit. During the five weeks she was there, her Sadr City base was shelled more than 70 times. “It was like something out of a Francis Ford Coppola movie,” she says. “Helicopters taking off, shells exploding, soldiers lying bleeding, and there I was, expected to get the shot instead of hiding under the bed. It was gruesome.”

So why does she continue to volunteer for dangerous foreign assignments? “Well, I’m not a bang-bang photographer, the kind that gets off on photos of the shooting and explosions. I’m more concerned with capturing the human impact, getting the shots of the civilians and children who are affected, and conveying the tragedy of war or the human side of a particular story,” she says.
“That’s why I do it.”

That same sense of humanity-driven purpose is evident throughout her portfolio: In the tragic face of the Asian-American woman who is dying because she can’t afford medical treatment; in her shots of the despair of the victims of Katrina that won her the Pulitzer; even in the faces of the Taliban prisoners who are begging for a glass of water through the bars of their cell.

During the course of our interview, Davidson learns that a suicide bomber has just killed nine civilians in Tel Aviv. “Uh oh,” she says from her hotel room. “Now they’ll be bombing Gaza in retaliation.” She sounds a little worried, but it’s hard to tell whether or not her next words are said in jest: “Maybe I should have just stayed at my first job — taking Santa photos at Simpson’s.”

Daniel, Darrell, and Kassie Fuller on the floor of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City.

Max Wallace, BA (journ.) 90, is a Gemini-nominated documentary filmmaker and the author of the New York Times bestseller Love and Death (Simon & Schuster, 2005).

If you have any comments about this article, contact Howard Bokser, (514) 848-2424 ext. 3826, Howard.Bokser@concordia.ca