A Photojournalist’s Field Guide: In the trenches with combat photographer Stacy Pearsall

Making Difficult Choices

There is one event in particular that haunts me over and over. I’d been working with a small group of American soldiers who trained the Iraqi Army and shadowed them during combat operations. I’d worked with them before and became friends with one of their team members, Captain Donnie Belser, Jr. (Figure 7.3). To be honest, he was the only person receptive to me accompanying them on a mission. The rest of the team was leery about having anyone with a camera near, because they believed that a previous journalist had behaved unprofessionally during a very sensitive situation. One of their soldiers had been severely wounded during a past operation, and this photojournalist took pictures of him as he struggled to stay alive. ...