War Photographer Explains How a 70-200mm Lens May Have Saved His Life
War photographer Joao Silva has revealed that a low-hung Canon 5D with a 70-200mm lens attached may have saved his life when he stepped on a mine while covering the Afghanistan War in 2010.
Silva, who is the last working member of the legendary Bang-Bang Club, donated his destroyed 70-200mm and camera body to the Museum at The Times, the official history museum for The New York Times.
Silva was on commission for The Times on October 23, 2010, while investigating a former Taliban checkpoint in Deh-e Kuchay, Kandahar Province. As he followed two American soldiers, one of whom had a dog trained to sniff out explosives, Silva stepped on a mine and suffered severe injuries, losing both of his legs.
At the time, Silva was carrying two cameras. One of them, the 5D with the 70-200, was attached to an extra-long strap so that it could be swung over his bulletproof vest. Silva believes that the low-hanging camera deflected a chunk of the blast away from his face, limiting the damage made by the blast.
Silva told retired Times reporter David W. Dunlap that the 70-200mm is “quite honestly, a pain in the butt and I use it very seldomly… But when the time came, it possibly saved my face — definitely my face — and perhaps even my life.”
Catharsis
Recently, Silva went back to Afghanistan to visit the exact spot where he was blown up. While in Deh-e Kuchay, which is once again under Taliban control, Silva met a man who handed him flowers and said, “In the past, we were planting IEDs for you… Now we give you flowers.”
After the mine exploded, Silva kept hold of his camera and tried to take photos of his “shredded legs” and managed to snap a few frames of the nearby soldiers who were relatively unharmed.
Silva’s bravery and attitude are in keeping with the Bang-Bang Club — a group of four photographers who documented the South African Apartheid in the early 1990s — which he was part of.
Silva, who was born in Portugal but moved to South Africa when he was a young boy, began covering conflict in the townships such as Soweto. He met Ken Oosterbrook, Greg Marinovich, and Kevin Carter, who together became known as The Bang Bang Club as immortalized in the book Silva co-authored with Marinovich, The Bang-Bang Club: Snapshots From a Hidden War.
The remains of Silva’s Canon 5D and 70-200mm is on display at the Museum at The Times.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
