by Brian Tetley
Mohamed Amin agrees. ‘Filming is actually quite easy. With film, you can build a story around an event even when you miss something and still have a very good story. With stills, and particularly on a news story, you’ve got to get the right picture, and often, there is just that one right shot. And either you get it or you don’t.
‘A very simple example is somebody arriving, coming down the steps of an aeroplane, being welcomed, and they embrace each other or kiss or shake hands or whatever.
‘That’s your normal conventional photograph, which you have to have. If you don’t have that on a movie film, you can still cut it in such a way that it looks like a reasonable story. So I find that to do stills requires more talent than to do film.’
Clarke said the status of the photographer was changing. ‘Good photographers are among the last survivors of a more adventurous era of journalism. As the news has become more complicated, a good reporter does much of his best work at his desk, sifting through piles of research to understand, and make understandable to his readers, the likes of SALT and MIRV and the skirmishes of the Battle of the Budget.
‘A photographer, on the other hand, must be in the heat of the action, whether it is a war or a natural disaster—or a budget meeting. That kind of involvement requires a special temperament. Occasionally, photographers are a little crazy, and almost always obsessed. Often, too, they are pushy and, by some standards, obnoxious.’ He might have been writing a thumbnail sketch of Amin.
‘You don’t actually break the door to get into a conference,’ says Amin, ‘but take an OAU conference for example. It’s not an assignment I like because there’s a lot of mental strain. The actual story and getting it out is maybe five percent of all the effort you put in. Ninety-five percent is hassling people and talking your way into the conference centre. The majority of my colleagues are told “Wait and we’ll call you”—and they’ll wait.
‘Many will wait forever. They never call you; because that’s the way it works; because the guy who’s told you he’ll call you has gone off.
‘It’s less trouble for him not to call you. That way he doesn’t have to explain to anybody why you’re in the conference hall. If he stops you, he gets away with it because he hasn’t created any scene. But if he lets everybody in, there’s a possibility of a scuffle between the media and somebody’s going to get upset—and he’s going to get into trouble.
‘So if you just quietly sit there and don’t fight for what I’d say is your right—I mean you are doing a job, and have a right to be in the place, you lose.
‘When I’m talking to people and getting into those areas, I am doing what is right. One year, covering the OAU conference, we were the only crew covering the airport arrivals of Heads of State. There were about 50 crews but they weren’t allowed in. That’s ridiculous.’
Photographers, says Clarke, are frequently required to ‘display a special kind of old-fashioned bravery and daring that is rare nowadays. More than 30 cameramen died during the Vietnam war—history’s most photographed conflict.’
The shell which took cameraman Neil Davis’s life in 1985 did not stop his NBC camera. It kept running as it lay on the tarmac in Bangkok, showing his own body being dragged away. It was shocking, akin to the moving images of death which Amin recorded in Aden and Djibouti early in 1967.
He has always calculated what Clarke calls ‘the acceptable and the unacceptable risk’, nowhere more so than in Aden and Djibouti, when he used his burly frame, taking more than a few bruises in return, to stand at the elbow of marksmen searching out snipers, walk behind the tanks, or run with the rioters. It depended on where he could get the best picture.
Only in more recent years have quality newspapers and magazines paid proper attention to pictures, which is a predictable reaction to the relentless pressure of television news coverage. Clarke cites the example of the chief of the South Vietnam police, whose execution of a Viet Cong prisoner was shown on an NBC news film. It did not shock viewers as much as expected. He notes that Eddie Adams, then working for The Associated Press, had tagged along with the NBC crew and that it was Adams’s single picture, described by his desk colleagues in AP as ‘the greatest picture of the Vietnam War’, not the NBC movie, which shocked the world.
Much later, Clarke noted that Nakram Gadel Karim amassed something like US$50,000 from a single roll of colour transparencies recording the sequence of President Sadat’s murder. Sebastiao Salgado Jr. earned a fortune estimated at over US$150,000 for his sequence of the attempt on President Reagan’s life.
By comparison, the money that Mohamed Amin earned in Aden, through tireless exploitation of every medium, was petty. He sold his own prints to local sources. The rest were fed round the world through UPI.
5. Black Jack and the Congo
Good cameramen, Tom Hopkinson believes, are like good racehorses. ‘It’s essential to know their individual capacities and disabilities. One man will persevere against every obstacle, but has no talent for an emotional subject or situation. Another will be excellent on a story that involves women and children, or the countryside, say, but useless on rough and tumble stories involving riot and bloodshed.’
By general consensus, Mohamed Amin is an exception to this rule. He is one man who can handle any assignment. Intelsat’s Peter Marshall, who used to be general manager of Visnews, can think of only half a dozen cameramen with all the qualities the job demands at its highest level. Three worked for Visnews—the late Neil Davis, Austrian-born Sepp Riff, now based in Vienna running his own business, and Mohamed Amin.
‘Like these two, Mohamed Amin possesses a wide range of skills and qualities which single him out. These are skills and qualities which are known only to his colleagues and which go beyond the better-known and well-publicised exploits; they are sustained day in and day out, year upon year, on what would often seem to be the more routine assignments that make up a working cameraman’s year.
‘First among these is an indomitable determination to seek out the real story in any situation, with journalistic perception of a high order. Secondly, the cameraman’s readiness to go anywhere, at any time, and to ask questions later. Thirdly, the technical and creative skills to shoot the pictures and record the sound to the highest technical quality, even when under stress or in personal danger. And fourthly, the logistical skills and ingenuity necessary not only to get to the story, but also to maintain contact with base and get the coverage back.
‘In addition to these qualities, I should also add his personal charm and sincerity which provide an additional passport in themselves; and a sense of compassion, which is often the dimension which makes a good, professional job into something memorable and moving.
‘Those who know and have worked with Mo Amin will recognise this range of qualities, and will probably think of others not mentioned. But for me, they are the important ones.’
Not long after his return from Aden, Amin himself made a little bit of history by using his ingenuity. But it was not a positive contribution. In 1967, at Formosa Bay, near Malindi, on Kenya’s north coast, the Italian Government built the San Marco rocket pad. The first launch was set for the first half of the year and CBS assigned Amin to cover it. He took Jitty Singh, a Nairobi technician, as his soundman.
The launch was a joint Italian, American, and Kenyan project. The US space agency NASA seconded their information chief to take care of media arrangements. He and the photographer clashed immediately. The American told him:
‘You can’t go on the control rig. You’ll have to film from the shore.’
Five miles lay between the beach and the rig. Amin was incensed.
‘That’s no good.’
‘Well, you can’t go on the rig. The noise will blow your ears off. But you can get film from us if you need it.’
‘Where will you be?’
‘On the rig, of course.’
‘Are your ears made of steel or something?’
‘No. I’m just used to noise.’
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‘So are we,’ Amin seethed. Nobody was going to thwart him on his home ground.
He told Jitty to be ready to get up early.
‘I figured the American wouldn’t get up too early to go to the rig, so as soon as it was sunup, Jitty and I went out to the rig in a dugout canoe. The rig people sent down a basket affair, which we climbed into and they hoisted us up.
‘We found a spot on top of the control tower next to the public address system. The countdown was played over the loudspeaker, so as to give people their cues for the various phases of the run-up to the launch.
‘But Jitty was having trouble. The sound quality was not good and the countdown was not clear. So I told him to wire straight into the public address system, which he did—disconnecting the speakers.
‘It was very close to liftoff. The countdown was at about eighteen, rocket up and all systems go. The controller had no option but to put the launch on hold.
‘Jitty and I cottoned on very quickly what was wrong and he quickly changed the wiring back the way it was. But too late. By the time the launch control were satisfied everything was working as it should, they’d missed the launch “window”. It was several days before there was another.’
There was more drama on the way home. Amin, always reckless on four wheels, had a head-on collision in a brand-new hire car—ironically with the San Marco Land Rover.
‘My right leg was broken in two. I was taken to the only hospital. The doctor was a German. I was bleeding very badly and he was holding half my leg in his hand. It was fastened to the rest of my leg only by a shred of flesh. But he insisted that I pay before he operated.
‘I pleaded with him, promising that I would pay his bill as soon as I recovered. But he insisted on money up front. I had just come from Aden and all I had was about two hundred dollars, so I gave him that and he agreed I could pay the balance later.
‘He then stuck a pad of cotton wool full of chloroform on my face and I passed out. In fact, he did a very good job. The next day, I was flown back to Nairobi and admitted to the Aga Khan Hospital, where Dr Yusuf Kodwavwala took over and treated me from then on.’
He was immobile for months. Inactivity irks him. Even on holidays, he works. ‘I spend three days in Maasai Mara. Sure, terrific holiday, but you know, I come in with 60 rolls of film. Every one of those pictures I can actually sell. That’s not the motivation that gets me there. I go because my family wants a holiday. I say, “Fine! I’ll come along with you, but I can’t go without my cameras,” because that would just bore me to death. I enjoy the trip probably more than them because, you know, they’ve seen a lion—they don’t want to see another lion; but I do, because I just enjoy the animals.
‘At the same time, I photograph them. But I don’t photograph them thinking that I’m going to make some money out of this. I photograph them because I enjoy doing that, like a lot of tourists. They take pictures. They don’t get any revenue from them, but nevertheless they enjoy doing that. But I can also put those pictures to a bloody good use because I have the infrastructure and the resources to actually make something out of them.’
Thus, during his convalescence, he occupied himself filming and photographing the peoples, animals, and landscapes of East Africa, the region he believes the most beautiful place on earth. As his leg healed, he also began to learn to fly at Africair, the light plane charter company run in Nairobi by the father of his instructor, Alex Boskovic. He mastered all the principles of powered flight except one.
‘He may have a private pilot’s licence, but he has yet to master the most basic rules of navigation,’ says Roy Lipscombe. ‘For instance,’ recalls Ronald Robson, ‘while he was still qualifying for his full licence, he got lost on a cross-country solo flight to Naivasha from Wilson airport in Nairobi.’
His instructor saw him off on his first cross-country solo flight—to Naivasha and back—involving only about 25 minutes of flying.
‘He instructed me to turn back as soon as the airstrip at Naivasha came in sight, but as it was a nice clear day, I decided to land. Feeling very pleased with myself, I parked the aircraft, switched off, got out, and walked around the aircraft. Then I got back in and took off.
‘After gaining height, just as I was lining up to head towards Nairobi, the clouds broke and the heavens opened. The rain was so torrential, I could see nothing.
‘As it was all visual flying, I had no idea what to do. Where I went wrong was in deciding, without looking at the map, to head towards Lake Naivasha and then turn and leave the mountains—Longonot and Susua—on my port [left] side and then turn to port and head for Nairobi.
‘But when I turned to port, I made the mistake of staying on the course that I had initially plotted from Naivasha—not taking into account the extra distance that I had covered to avoid the mountains.
‘When I had been flying for about an hour, I realised that I was lost. I came down low to see if I could spot a familiar landmark—a road sign or anything else—and I flew for some distance only fifty feet off the ground, but there was nothing that I could recognise.’
It was just a few huts and a lot of bush, which was no help at all. When he gained height, he called up the Eastair regional air traffic control centre in Nairobi.
‘I had not wanted to do that, in case it went down on my record and created problems when I went to get my pilot’s licence. They were unable to help, so they called Nairobi approach at the airport, who were also unable to trace my plane.
‘Eastair gave me a frequency for Nairobi radar, who told me I was too low to be seen on their screens. Would I please gain altitude so they could identify the plane and my position?
‘When I became visible on their monitors, they told me I was over Magadi and heading for west Tanzania. They guided me back to Wilson, where I landed with just a small margin of fuel left. Immediately, my instructor refuelled the plane, climbed in and said, “Let’s go back to Naivasha and you can tell me what went wrong.” So we did another flight to Naivasha while I pointed out what I had done.’
Some weeks later, he had his pilot’s licence.
He reckoned that the ability to fly would make him more mobile and he would save on air charter. For instance, in October, the television news spotlight fell on Rwanda, where about 100 European and 2,500 Katangese mercenaries, who had mutinied from Mobutu’s Zaire army under the command of the legendary ‘Black Jack’, Jacques Schramme, had fled across the border near Lake Kivu. They were being held in a makeshift, but heavily guarded, camp.
With Rashid Diwan as soundman, he and Robson flew by light charter plane to Kigali, the Rwanda capital. But security was tough. The mercenaries’ arrival had created a crisis in Central Africa and newsmen were not allowed near them. Amin returned to Nairobi on November 8, travelling back to Kigali next day without Robson.
He hired a Land Cruiser and decked it out in the insignia of the Red Cross, who were running the camp, providing food and care for the mercenaries. At the camp gate, the ploy worked, but a little further on, he was pulled up at gun point by a senior officer. Asked to identify himself, he said he was from the Red Cross Press. The bluff almost worked but in the end, he was ordered to turn around and drive out before he got any film. Next day, the team were back in Nairobi. Three days later, on November 13, they returned to Rwanda to film the arrival of the OAU delegates and the talks held in the president’s office to end the crisis.
Finally, it was agreed that the European mercenaries would be released, but only if they signed a pledge never to return to Africa. Amin knew he had to get film of Black Jack and his men, and as the talks ended, he heard that the OAU Secretary-General, Diallo Telli, and the Rwandan Foreign Minister were to fly to the camp in a Rwandan army helicopter. He pleaded with Diallo Telli to let him fly in the helicopter, even offering to sit on the floor. But the pilot was adamant. He had enough power to carry only himself and his two passengers.
Arguing that if the world saw the conclusion of the deal, Amin said it would be an
excellent public relations exercise for the OAU, but without him and his cameras, it could not happen. He also pointed out that while there was no chance he would be allowed into the camp except by helicopter, the foreign minister would certainly be able to get in by road. As usual, he was convincing. Apologetically, the secretary-general turned to the foreign minister, shrugging his shoulders. The minister withdrew.
Minutes later, the cameraman was filming the motley group listening to Telli outlining the terms of the agreement on top of a hill overlooking Lake Kivu only ten miles from the East Congo border, while dozens of top European cameramen and photographers waited in Kigali.
Taking close-ups of the legendary Schramme, then thirty-eight, who said he would retire to his home town of Bruges, Belgium, he also shot still pictures on the brace of Nikon cameras carried around his neck. These made magazine and newspaper spreads in many countries. And, once again, he won the Visnews Film of the Month award.
‘He went in with the OAU delegation and his 600-feet film with COMMAG sound was a remarkable atmosphere piece. It showed how the defeated, disarmed, and dejected mercenaries still retained enough independent spirit to jeer at their armed guards and argue with the OAU officials. We serviced a four-minute cut story from this coverage.’
It was on this assignment that he observed to Rashid Diwan—in his native Punjabi, which he thought was gibberish to Robson—what he actually thought about the BBC veteran. In line with many of his remarks, it was not altogether flattering. He was shattered to hear Robson respond in fluent Punjabi. Until then, he didn’t know that Robson was an ex-Indian Army officer.
Yet, despite his success, he was still haunted by the 1966 Tanzanian deportation order. On December 12, he drove to the Uganda capital to cover a regional Heads of State summit in Kampala.
‘While I was waiting for President Nyerere to arrive, I met Tanzania’s minister for home affairs. He greeted me very warmly and asked where I had been as he hadn’t seen me for months. Clearly, he didn’t know about my deportation 14 months before, and as he was in a very good mood and so pleased to see me, I seized the opportunity to seek his help. But as soon as I told him about the deportation, he got up and walked away. I immediately knew I was in trouble.’ Within minutes, he was back in his car, accompanied to the Kenya border by Ugandan security men, where he was told never to return. Uganda was simply complying with the East African Community charter: deportation from one country was endorsed in the other two.