In 1988, the photojournalist and editor -in -chief, Aline Manoukian, captured an image of a Palestinian militia holding a white kitten in the Burj Al Barajneh refugee camp in Lebanon. This photo was going to circulate for decades, recently appearing on social media platforms in tampered forms, including as A colorized poster.
When I made a research trip to Lebanon in 2017 for my new novel, The burning heart of the worldI met Manoukian for the first time. We both come from Armenian families and Mutual Armenian friends put us in contact; This is how things often work in our community of diasporical artists, writers and academics. We went out to dinner in Hamra, then moved to Abu Elie Bar To continue our conversation. Manoukian, who is a captivating storyteller with a fiercely independent spirit, thought about his experiences as a child, teenager, then a young photojournalist during the Lebanese civil war, which led his time to work like the Reuters Head of Lebanon and Syria. In a recent zoom conversation, Manoukian spoke with me of her home to Nicosia, Cyprus, formative influences of her early career, as well as the way she manages the trauma inherent in the documentation of conflicts 50 years after the start of the Lebanese civil war. This interview was condensed and published for more clarity.
Hyperalgic: What put you on the road to become a photographer?
Aline Manoukian: My biggest influence was my sister, the painter Seta Manoukian. Seta was my sister, mother and best friend. Everything I have done, I owe Seta because she is my female model of an independent woman. It was because of her that I went to photography. Seta had a lot of art and photography books that she brought back from England and Italy. I spent my childhood on a carpet in the dining room to study these books. It opened my eyes to visual art, with composition, in light.
H: What is your favorite photographer?
AM: Mario Giacomelli was the first who opened my eyes to the possibilities of photography. I came across his book for the first time at the library when I was a student at Pierce College in Los Angeles. There was a photograph of dancing monks in the snow. There was a series, but I was really struck. I knew I had to have this photo. I looked around to make sure no one saw me, and I torn off this page and I hung it on my wall. I committed this crime to tear a page from the book.
H: Do you feel guilty?
AM: I always feel guilty because I have deprived other people to see this image. It was selfish, but I had to have it. It changed my life.
H: What was the first camera you have?
AM: The first camera I used professionally was a Nikon FM2 that Seta bought me. Unfortunately, someone stole the goal. I had a call from AP This same week, attacking me to go south of Lebanon and I did not tell them that I had a camera without lens. I went anyway because I knew there would be other photographers there. I did not tell them that I was there in assignment without objective. I claimed that I normally worked and I would ask the photographers to lend them their goals if they did not use them. And that's how I finished my mission to AP.
H: When did you start working for Reuters?
AM: At the end of 1983, I started at Daily star. SO Upi hired me like a silt. In 1984, I found myself in Reuters. I finally became the leader of their photo team.
H: Were you 19 when you started?
AM: 19 at the Daily star20 to Reuters.
H: And were you graduated from Pierce College?
AM: I did not get my diploma. There was the Israeli invasion in Lebanon at that time, so my father could not send any funds to pay tuition fees. In addition, I was not too interested in studying. I started running in the punk scene. My sister and my brother who were believed that it was too dangerous. They decided to send me back to Beirut.
H: Was Lebanon less dangerous?
AM: For my own security, they sent me to a country at war. My sister introduced me to this Lebanese photographer who was supposed to show me how to work in the street. His first lesson in photojournalism was a story. He said: “There was a child seated in the middle of the ruins of a house that had just been bombed. I took a photo of the child in the ruins, but it was not a good photo. So, I started to shake him to make him cry and he would not do it. I shook him a little, then his mother came and said to me:” What do you do to my child? “I asked her,” Do you want your child to be in the newspaper? And she said: “Yes”. I said: “So make her cry. She slapped him and the child cried.
H: It's horrible.
AM: I thought it was bullshit. I went out alone and started taking pictures in the streets. One day, a friend of the school who was an ambulance driver of the Red Cross asked if I wanted to accompany them to deliver bread. I went to the ambulance at Ras Al Naba'a. I didn't think I was doing something exceptional, but it turned out that the area had been besieged by elite shooters, and no one could enter or go out except the Red Cross. In the end, I had made an exclusivity, and when I brought the photos to Daily starThey used them and they hired me. So I say that my career as a war photographer started by accident. I mean, I didn't know what I was doing. But even if a man tried to lead me in the wrong direction, there was another who believed in me since the first day. I owe my career to the late Claude Salhani to Upi who defended the independable. (I was) a very young photojournalist in the middle of the world of a man.
H: Do you have a favorite among your photos?
AM: The image of the militia with the cat. This is my emblematic photo.
H: Does being famous for this image bothers you?
AM: Absolutely not. This image has its own life. Whether I love it or not, it's my favorite because everyone likes it. The majority win.
H: Do you always consider yourself a practicing photographer?
AM: No, not today.
H: Did you stop at a certain point or was it progressive?
AM: It was progressive. I always take pictures, but I can't walk with a camera anymore.
H: What is the best part of being a photo editor?
AM: It is the responsibility to do it or break it for a photographer. If you change their photos with care and understanding, you can help them succeed. The images go through many steps before reaching the spectator. The publisher is a large part of the process. Because the photographer cannot take a step back to be able to judge his own photo, especially when it is a series. As an editor, you judge the images of how they are worthy of interest and the way in which aesthetically balanced. Later, you see that the photos you have changed have won prices. It's gratifying, but no one thinks of the publisher, not even of the photographer.
H: I recently read a Lebanese writer and painter Etel Adnan's test in 1995 on exile. Do you feel like an exile yourself?
AM: When I was born and I grew up in Lebanon, there was no doubt that I was Lebanese. Then I experienced so many things abroad. I lived three years in Los Angeles, 26 years old in France. Now I'm in Cyprus. I have been cut from Lebanon for a long time, and recently, I asked myself the question: “Am I still Lebanese?” My sister used to say, “You don't feel Lebanese if you don't have a village.” Because everyone in Lebanon has a village from which they come. Can you feel like you are belonging to the country if you don't have a village? And for me, I have been far from my village for so long that I wonder if going to Lebanon returns home. I don't know where I belong. The roots end up drying if they are not watered.
H: In a 2018 video interview with Fighters for PeaceYou said that during the civil war, you learned that people who were normal and kind could turn into violent monsters overnight.
AM: Mainly because of the circumstances.
H: You also said you never wanted to belong to a group.
AM: The groups fascinate me and I understand their necessity. But I would not like to belong to a group because I am in perpetual doubt. If I criticize a group in which I am, I will be called a traitor. I can never be called a traitor because I was never part of a group.
H: In another video interview with cinejamYou talked about the smell of war. You said that the problem with the photos is that you only see the images, not smells and sounds, as if they were in the body. Do you think these residues dissipate? Or are they permanent? And if they are perennial, how do you manage them?
AM: Denial. I am in a constant denial. I tend to sweep everything under the carpet.
H: Traumatic experiences integrate into the body, so when another cycle of violence begins, these injuries open again.
AM: This is what Gaza's photos do me. They have revived everything and you feel that when these things are relaunched, you feel something physical, as if your cells could rot. This is what I feel with the photos of Gaza. Sometimes I rush into tears. But then I come back in denial mode to survive. It is a survival mechanism. This is the only method I know.
