SHUTTERBUGS ON THE FRONT LINE
Photographers often place themselves in danger to capture images that will forever be part of Thai history, writes
What does it take to be a news photographer? A love of photography? Dedication? Patience? Street smartness? An insight into human nature? The simple answer from the experience of two former Bangkok Post photo editors is that it takes all of the above.
Jarin Trakullerdsathien, who worked for the paper for 34 years from 1964 to 1998, has loved taking pictures ever since he was in primary school. In his early years, he saved his allowance and rented a box camera with which to follow his passion. At 17, he got the chance to work at a photo shop where he learned how to develop films and make prints. Eventually he became a photographer at the
Naew Na daily and was what Thai newspapers called a “patrol photographer” – roaming around looking for good pictures.
The young Jarin taught himself until he became so good that he won the Best News Picture award for a photo of students stabbing each other during an inter-school brawl. The prize was given by the Newspaper Foundation at Thammasat University’s journalism faculty. It was Thailand’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.
On July 1, 1964, Jarin joined the Bangkok Post and was paid the grand salary of 1,000 baht a month. So he had to ask Trevor Latchford, editor at the time, to buy him a 2,000-baht Rolleiflex twin-lens camera. He paid the editor back in instalments.
Jarin, 22 at the time, was first assigned to the darkroom to develop films and print pictures. There were only nine photographers in those days. But Theh Chongkhadikij, the news editor who was later to become Bangkok Post editor, found him hidden in the room and sent him out with his camera.
“Jarin is a Pulitzer Prize photographer — how can you keep him working in the darkroom?” he recalled Theh asking.
And that proved to be a wise decision. Only four months after joining the Post, Jarin was to win his second Pulitzer.
On Oct 26, 1964, while patrolling the city, he saw a large crowd watching a young woman threatening to jump from the ledge of the fourth floor of a building on Bamrung Muang Road. Police tried to talk her out of it but she jumped. Jarin captured the moments when she jumped and hit the ground. He was the only photographer there and the pictures won him another accolade.
“A camera at the time could only take 12 pictures. You had to think a lot every time. Getting a good picture is about speed and control of the camera. It takes skill and that includes the darkroom process with which you have to be careful at every step,” Jarin said.
Jarin always came in and developed his films himself every day and this became the practice for other photographers at the Post. All had to learn what to do in the darkroom before they were allowed to go into the field.
All news photographers run into dicey situations and Jarin faced some tumultuous times.
“During the October 14 (1973) student uprising, I was held by a group of students who confiscated my camera. They claimed I was on the government side. I tried to explain I was a press photographer. They didn’t care and were about to give me a beating when another group of students came and negotiated with them to release me and give me back my camera,” he recalled.
He went through many more hairy situations including the Oct 6, 1976, right wing backlash against the students and Black May 1992 when the government of Gen Suchinda Kraprayoon launched a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.
“A photographer cannot be afraid of a frightening situation or he would not get a good picture,” Jarin said. “They must also have principles, be diligent, honest, save money and develop themselves all the time.”
Sayant Pornnantharat was another photo editor who played a key role in shaping the photo section and its team of photographers.
He also came from humble beginnings and started to work for the Post at 14. It wasn’t until he was 16 that he became an official employee of the paper where he would spend 46 years from 1966 to 2012.
Sayant started out as a messenger and copy boy but Kamthorn Sermkasemsin, the first photo editor, put him in the darkroom and taught him how to take pictures.
He became an accomplished photographer, winning the Outstanding News Picture of the Year award from the Reporters Association of Thailand for his shot of a riot that started at Phlapphla Chai police station on July 3, 1974.
The police had arrested a taxi driver for illegal parking but he started yelling that they were beating him up. People who came out of a nearby cinema rushed to help him and things snowballed quickly. A crowd of about 500 people moved threateningly towards the police station, and police, fearing their station would be burned down, opened fire.
The riot raged for several days until an emergency was declared by the Sanya Dharmasak government on July 9. Twenty-five people were killed and 120 people injured after police used force to quell the riot.
One of the injured included Paisal Sricharatchanya, the Post’s news editor at the time and later its eighth editor, who had gone to see for himself what was happening. Police mistook him for a protester and kicked and punched him.
In the late 1970s and 1980s, war was raging in Cambodia between the three resistance factions and the Hun Sen government installed by Vietnam, which had invaded and occupied the country. Thailand sided with the rebels and many of the battles between the Cambodians were fought along the border, sometimes spilling onto Thai territory.
Sayant covered many of those dangerous battles and had to use his wits and contacts to get through to the battleground, which was off limits to everyone. Being a friendly sort of chap, he made friends with Border Patrol Police officers in the area and was able to ride in their vehicles past the many roadblocks into the war zone.
Sayant’s years as a press photographer also took him through a lot of technological changes. Photographers covering events in the provinces used to send their film back with tour buses or planes and messengers would pick them up at bus stations or the airport. But then the Bangkok
Post bought its first radio photo machine from Associated Press and things changed.
For important assignments in the provinces, photographers would take equipment for a mini-darkroom to be set up in hotel bathrooms. They took everything: enlarger, film developing tanks, chemicals, photo papers, black paper to block windows, and the safety red light bulb. They would shoot the assignment, rush back to the hotel and print the pictures. Then they would use the radio photo machine and scan the pictures back to the paper in Bangkok. But it took an hour to scan just one picture.
The Refax machine came on the scene later, allowing users to scan film and send a picture within minutes. Today, of course, everything is digital and photographers can send their pictures to the paper within seconds.
Sayant’s recipe for success? “You have to love and enjoy the job. You have to be ready for work even on your days off. You have to notice characters of the subjects. The Pope often kisses people who come to welcome him and Prince Sihanouk likes to hug other leaders. You then look around for where would be the best angle to take those pictures,” he said with a smile.
The Bangkok Post did not have a single photographer when it opened its doors 70 years ago. It used to buy all its pictures, but in 1962 the photographic section was born.
For 54 years, talented photographers have captured beautiful images that lifted the spirits of readers and delivered powerful photographs that froze key moments in Thai history. They won numerous domestic and international awards but, more importantly, gave the Post its heart and soul.
The newspaper has had five photo editors. Here is the story of two of them, Jarin Trakullerdsathien and Sayant Pornnantharat, as told to incumbent chief shutterbug Sarot Meksophawannakul. All three have played a key role in developing the team of 16 dedicated photographers now working at the newspaper.
Sarot Meksophawannakul, the current photo editor who first came to the Bangkok Post in 1994 as a trainee in his first year at college, recalls the perseverance it took for him to become a staff photographer four years later.
There he was right in front of me, the photo editor of the Bangkok Post, giving a talk about news photography to students of the communications faculty at the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce on one fine day in 1994. This was my opportunity. But I was just a first-year journalism student, so why would he bother with me? Nevertheless I gathered my courage and asked Sayant Pornnantharat to take me in as a trainee. To my surprise, he agreed.
I learned a lot over the next year about the skills that would be needed to become a press photographer. It prepared me for the pictures I got published in the Bangkok Post for the first time as a student trainee.
The Bangkok-Kantang train I was on with my mother was derailed in a collision with a 10-wheel truck, killing 17 people in Prachuap Khiri Khan on April 2, 1995.
Luckily, neither I nor my mother were injured. After I put my mother in a car for the nearby Klongwan station where I would meet her later, my training kicked in. I remembered the first rule of being a photographer — always have your camera with you. I did, so I went to take pictures of the crash, which would become big news.
After finishing a few rolls of film and feeling sure I got all the good pictures, I took a motorcycle to meet my mother and to call the Bangkok Post photo section from a public phone booth. After discussing things with the editors, my mother and I decided to go back to Bangkok with the films.
It was a good decision. My picture and an interview with me appeared on the front page of the
Bangkok Post the following day. And on an inside page they ran a series of my pictures from the train accident. They paid me for the work and gave me some more films.
When I graduated in 1997, I again asked to be a trainee at the Post. They didn’t have a position for me at the time and I worked as an unpaid trainee for 10 months. I existed on the kindness of the older photographers who took me under their wings. They paid for my meals until I was employed as a photographer in March 1998.
One of my most memorable assignments was the 2004 tsunami that killed 5,400 people in Thailand, most of them foreign tourists, and injured another 8,000. Scores also went missing. I had to take pictures of such vast destruction and human loss that my tears would drop without me being conscious of them.
While taking pictures of such disasters, I always try to convey the tragedy and difficulties that victims have to face. I want the public to see and acknowledge their plight by getting up to help fellow human beings during crises. I spent five months taking pictures of the tsunami disaster zone, rescue operation and subsequent recovery.
Most people have the good sense to run away from danger but photographers have to run towards it. This is part of the job and many situations are so dangerous that photographers know we are risking our lives, but we go to cover them anyway.
Thailand has had a fair share of these situations, most resulting from political conflicts starting with the coup against the Thaksin Shinawatra government in 2006 and including the bloody yellow-shirt protests against the Samak Sundaravej and Somchai Wongsawat governments a few years later, and the violent red-shirt protests against the Abhisit Vejjajiva government in 2010.
I was assigned to photograph many of the protest areas where war weapons had been used during clashes between protesters and authorities. There were many hairy situations on such assignments because bullets and explosives don’t exempt photographers. A number of foreign and local photographers had been killed or injured in some of these events. As a photographer, you just have to figure out how to take the best pictures you can while minding your safety. But the rest is up to faith and you hope it’s not yet your time.
At the Bangkok Post, the older photographers teach the younger ones about everything. I started out when we were still using black and white films before moving to colour films. They taught me all aspects of those two mediums. Furthermore, they gave me the opportunity to further my knowledge about photography through other international organisations such as the World Press Photo Foundation, Asian Photo Editor Workshop and the Asia-Europe Photographers Forum.
In the early 2000s, we went through a major change and entered the new age with digital cameras and computer processing. No more darkrooms! I was part of the effort to lay out this new system for the photo section and became responsible for it as photo editor in 2013.
I have always viewed every assignment as an opportunity to create work that communicates something that will hopefully lead to a change for the better in our society. Winning prizes and recognition for your work is something to be happy about, but the ones I am most proud of were those I got from the Bangkok Post for outstanding employee in 2010 and for outstanding team in 2011. I am happy to be part of the team that gave the
Bangkok Post pictorial content that is among the best in Thailand.