The Story
Photojournalist Paul Taggert Leaves an Impact on Students
The upstairs gallery of the Muscarelle Museum of Art was crowded with students, faculty and local citizens this past Thursday evening. All had come to hear renowned photojournalist Paul Taggart speak about his work and experiences in the Middle East and Africa from 2002-2008.
Taking a seat, I tried to pick out the speaker, whom I’d envisioned as middle-aged and sporting a khaki, pocketed vest. Thus, I was rather surprised when a thin, twenty-something guy in a baseball cap and glasses, (whom I’d assumed was a William and Mary student) was introduced as Paul Taggart.
In a small gallery on the first floor of the museum, Taggart’s photographs hung on strikingly bright red walls. They show scenes of destroyed homes and cities, devastated families and landscapes; African children with bellies bloated from starvation, an Iraqi boy with a scar running the length of his abdomen, another boy in a waiting room with bandages covering his amputated legs.
These photographs, Taggart explained, were taken from stories and series he has done over a period of a few years in Iraq, Lebanon, the Congo, Liberia, and Tanzania. The pictures are not much larger than a standard 8x10 print, but the scenes are certainly evocative; they accomplished their journalistic goal of making the viewer desperate to know the story behind each disturbing image.
Some of the pieces included in the Muscarelle exhibition, organized by AMP, can be viewed at http://www.paultaggart.com/index.html.
The best part of the evening however, was not the small collection of prints framed in the gallery, but the presentation Taggart gave of his work. In addition to showing many more photographs on a projector screen, Taggart described what his job entails and told the stories behind the most alarming and saddening shots.
A “normal day” for him, and for many citizens of the Middle East, involves blood, death, and the often hopeless effort of identifying the bodies of victims of suicide and car bombings. Many of Taggart’s photographs were scenes from morgues - or buildings which had been made to suffice as such - of weeping mothers, arguing men, and weary medical workers.
Taggart told the crowd that he had to approach such harrowing scenes with the mind-set that he was at work, that taking these photographs was his job and if he wasn’t going to be able to stomach it, he should “get the f**k out” because he would just be dangerously in the way.
Taggart’s biggest stories were on the battles of Fallujah and Najaf. In order to get the close up, insider shots he has captured on film, he and his team of driver, translator, and writers had to cross through the front lines. This feat taking days of planning to achieve.
Once they got past the snipers on the front line, the team could do pretty much whatever they wanted - the soldiers were so impressed that these Americans had made it through their defenses. The simultaneously beautiful and horrifying photographs in Taggart’s portfolio are the result of this fearlessness and determination. This life of terror, exhilaration and a strong sense of duty as a news photographer has always appealed to Taggart, who claims that, since age 14, “I really always knew what I wanted to do.”