Photographer profile: John Isaac
By Steven J. Barry
When John Isaac immigrated to the United States from India in 1965, he had just 75 cents to his name. He was toting little more than a 12-string guitar and he had one goal: Though he held a degree in biology, he had come to New York City to become a folk singer.
That would never come to fruition. However, his folk singing ambition led to a photography career spanning more than 30 years during which he has visited the most strife-ridden places on the planet, photographed tigers in the jungle, won major accolades and ascended to the top photography post at the United Nations.
His career began when Isaac was busking–playing for change on the street–and a woman walked by and stopped to compliment him on his voice.
“I work at the United Nations,” she told him. “We’re looking for a baritone for our choir. You should come audition.”
Isaac had been staying with friends and was flat broke. He asked her whether it might be possible to land him a job. She told him that if he auditioned and made it, she would find him one.
“And that’s what happened,” Isaac said. “I auditioned and got the part, and she got me a job.”
Isaac started out in the mail room and continued to pursue folk singing. At one point, he landed a brief spot on “The Original Amateur Hour,” a long-running program that could be vaguely described as the American Idol of its day.
A girl walks through a blue-walled village in Morocco. (Photo copyright John Isaac)
He also decided to pick up photography as a hobby. He got a basic camera setup and started shooting when he could.
It didn’t take long for it to begin to pay off. In 1972, Isaac won a photography competition that won him a Leica M5 and a two-day seminar with Ansel Adams. After learning of this success, his supervisors at the U.N. moved him to their film development section, where he washed and hung prints all day. He said he wasn’t even allowed inside the darkroom at first.
He sold the Leica and with that money was able to buy a smattering of Minolta gear. He continued to shoot, and eventually made his way inside the darkroom.
Then, in 1978, Isaac won the Photokina gold medal for best photograph for a shot he had taken while traveling. He flew to Cologne, Germany to receive his prize.
When he returned, he was told he wouldn’t be working in the darkroom any more–he had been promoted to photographer. Shortly thereafter, he was sent to the Middle East to cover the war between Israel and Lebanon.
Below: An Ethiopian man feeds a boy dying of starvation (Photo copyright John Isaac)
War and Famine
“Right from the beginning, I was a war photographer,” Isaac said.
And right from the beginning, he began to see unspeakable atrocities. Isaac said he is still haunted by even his earliest memories of the horrors he witnessed.
While on his second assignment in Cambodia–during which he covered the slayings of millions in Pol Pot’s “Killing Fields”–he came across a 13-year-old girl lying helpless on a riverbank after having been raped by pirates.
“All I wanted to do is find a home for her,” he said. He recalled telling several nuns about her situation to see if they could help.
After returning to the U.S., he told his editors about that experience and his desire to help the small girl. Isaac said they laughed at him and told him he’d never make it as a photojournalist–his job was to take pictures, not to intervene.
While covering the famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s, he was traveling in a small press bus when he came across a starving woman who, unable to make it to a medical facility, had given birth by the side of the road. She lay there naked and helpless, the umbilical cord still attached to her newborn child.
Compelled to help, Isaac rushed out and covered her with a blanket. He returned to the bus as others came to her aid. A television videographer confronted him.
“He said, ‘Why did you ruin my shot?’” Isaac said. “He wanted to punch me.”
Isaac said he without question would have done the same thing over again.
“For me, human dignity is more important than Pulitzer Prize winning.”
Also in Ethiopia, he saw something that served as a poignant reminder of the drastically different lifestyles found throughout the world. He was driving to Addis Ababa and noticed a small girl running in the woods alongside their jeep. Every once in a while she would stop and set something down on the ground, and then pick it up and continue to run.
Isaac would later write about the incident: “We stopped the jeep and I went to see what she was carrying. She had live, lit coal covered in dried cow dung that she was carrying back to her village, since they had run out of fire and had no means to light one.”
An American tank amid the burning oil fields of Kuwait. (Photo copyright John Isaac)
Isaac was also assigned to photograph the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91. He was sent to Kuwait, where Saddam Hussein had ordered the torching of hundreds of oil wells before withdrawing his troops after the U.S.-led invasion. At one point, he rode with several U.S. soldiers and was dropped off in the desert.
“We’ll be back in about an hour,” he remembers one of the soldiers telling him. “Meet us here.”
Isaac was left alone in the haunting scene–blackened skies everywhere and pillars of fire in the near distance. An hour passed. After two, he began to grow concerned.
“Apparently they forgot about the little Indian photographer,” he said.
Isaac walked alone through the sand of the war zone for six hours before he was picked up again.
He was assigned to cover the war in Bosnia from 1992 to 1994. While on the front lines, he remembers hearing a Serb shouting–in what sounded like a friendly fashioin–across to the opposing forces.
“I’m going to kill you first!” he would shout, and then would come the reply, “No, I’m going to kill you first!”
It turned out that the two were longtime friends from school.
Below: A young refugee of the genocide in Rwanda. (Photo copyright John Isaac)
In 1994, he was sent to Rwanda to cover the genocide. The Hutu tribe there had been engaged in an organized campaign to wipe out the Tutsi tribe. Between 800,000 and 1 million people were killed. Most were hacked to death with machetes.
Isaac traveled first to a refugee camp in Zaire. An orphaned child ran up and hugged him. He told Isaac he had hidden behind a mud pot while watching his parents killed with machetes.
“He told me, ‘You look like my father,’” Isaac said. “He kept telling me that and he wanted me to come back and visit him because he said I looked like his father.”
In Rwanda, the dead were everywhere. He saw a long line of bodies and said many of them were being tossed haphazardly onto a truck. The last one he saw thrown in–a strong, partially clothed man–has become engrained in his mind.
Isaac heard a news crew talking about a “fantastic” shot they had and ran over to look. They had set their camera at a low angle, he said, with one dead body framed prominently in the foreground and the others fading into the background.
He stepped away. Though Isaac had already seen plenty of death, he sensed as he took it all in that somehow this was different. He felt he may have reached his limit.
“I said, ‘What the heck am I doing?’” Isaac said. “I was disillusioned. Every time I thought something good was going to happen, I would go back and see another tragedy.”
Once back in his office at the U.N., he couldn’t get it all out of his head. He said he began to cry uncontrollably.
“I had a massive nervous breakdown,” he said. “I was thinking about killing myself.”
He was given a three-month leave of absence to deal with it all. He said he packed up his photography gear and vowed never to touch it again. He was in therapy and taking medication, but he couldn’t shake the overriding sense of despair that had consumed him.
Turning toward beauty
One day during this period, he stood on his back porch and saw a tall sunflower in his neighbor’s backyard. A large swallowtail butterfly landed on it.
He had visited more than 100 countries, including some of the most biodiverse sections of tropical rainforest in the world. He had certainly seen butterflies before.
But this time, the simple beauty of that scene was especially impactful. He was overwhelmed. He sprinted inside and unpacked his camera and a 300mm lens, and went back out. The butterfly was still there, and it stayed as he shot 36 frames–an entire roll of film.
“It was like a miracle,” he said. “It was like somebody up there healed me this way.”
And thus began the second phase of his career. Isaac returned to work the next day, and continued to work hard to overcome his depression.
He retired from the U.N. in 1998, having achieved the organization’s top photography post.
Children study together in Pakistan. (Photo copyright John Isaac)
He decided he would head back around the world, this time photographing all of its beauty. At that point, Isaac switched from film to the Olympus digital system–though he hadn’t even owned a computer until 1997.
Isaac said he had always been fascinated by wildlife, particularly tigers. Since his retirement he has traveled frequently to his native India to photograph them, and has led expeditions for other photographers.
He spent a significant amount of time in Kashmir–the disputed border region between India and Pakistan. Though the people there are frequently among the first parties blamed for attacks in the region, Isaac insists the people there live a peaceful, simple and isolated lifestyle. He recently released a book about the region called, “The Vale of Kashmir.”
Isaac is now at peace and is thankful for his life. He talks about those many times his travels didn’t involve horrific tragedies.
Once, he received a call from a man with a meek, high-pitched voice who said, “Hi John, this is Michael.”
“Michael who?”
“Michael Jackson.”
He hung up, taking it for a prank call. The phone rang again immediately. It was, in fact, the King of Pop. He wanted to hire Isaac as his photographer for an upcoming concert tour benefiting UNICEF (the United Nations Childrens Fund), an assignment he readily accepted.
A puffin in Maine enjoys a meal (Photo copyright John Isaac)
Isaac also recalls covering the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1980. One morning, he was shaken awake before dawn and told he would be allowed to take pictures of Iran’s president, but that he had to leave immediately in order to do so. He threw on the clothes he had worn the day before and, in a grog, ran out the door.
He was in a vehicle filled with ambassadors and security personnel when he began to notice a foreign object of some kind midway down his pants.
They arrived at a checkpoint and stepped out to find themselves surrounded by Iranian soldiers. Isaac said they were told they’d have about an hour before Iran’s president arrived. He figured it an opportune time to see what was in his pant leg.
Two heavily armed soldiers escorted him to a restroom and were watching as he faced the toilet. Isaac tried to keep from dropping scads of camera gear as he reached down to investigate. He quickly discovered what had been bothering him: A pair of underwear. He had put the previous day’s clothing on so hurriedly that he hadn’t noticed them still in the leg of his pants. He pulled them out and showed one of his guards, saying, “Tah dah!”
The Iranian soldier paused, confused. He then raised his weapon, leaned forward and shouted, “How did you do that?”
A man on a riverboat in Kashmir (Photo copyright John Isaac)
Isaac vividly recalls another particularly happy moment.
During a trip to Southeast Asia in 1993, he saw the now grown girl who had been raped by pirates near the riverbank. The nuns Isaac had referred her to had taken her to Malaysia, likely saving her life. She still recognized him and ran up to hug him.
He remembers her saying, “It’s because of people like you that I’m here today.”
At 65, Isaac does not consider himself “a washed up photographer.” He still treks through places like India and Iceland on photography expeditions, and travels frequently to speak about his experiences.
He tries to share his mistakes with those he teaches, he said, rather than attempting to come across as an untouchable. He quotes a Sufi poet who said, “May all your criticisms polish my mirror brightly.”
“I’m very grateful to God that I’ve found something,” Isaac said. “That’s what I want everyone to find. I’ll run just to get a shot–I never get tired of it.”
Horsemen in Morocco. (Photo copyright John Isaac)
John Isaac is the retired Chief of Photography for the United Nations and is among the world’s best known documentary photographers. He is an Olympus Visionary photographer and frequently travels to speak about his experiences.
Throughout his career, Isaac received numerous national and international awards for his work, including the Picture of the Year from Missouri School of Journalism, the First prize in the Photokina International Photo Contest, the Best Outdoor Photograph of the year and the Professional Photographer of the Year by the PhotoImaging Manufacturers and Distributors Association. Learn more about his work at www.johnisaac.com.
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