Quizzically Yours

"I arrived in Bogota from New York about two days after the volcanic eruption. The area I needed to get to was very remote. It involved a five-hour drive and then about two and a half hours walking. I reached the town of Ameroyo at dawn about three days after the explosion. There was a lot of confusion - people were in shock and in desperate need of help. Many were trapped by debris. I met a farmer who told me of this young girl who needed help. He took me to her, she was almost on her own at the time, just a few people around and some rescuers helping someone else a bit further away.

She was in a large puddle, trapped from the waist down by concrete and other debris from the collapsed houses. She had been there for almost three days. Dawn was just breaking and the poor girl was in pain and very confused. The rescuers kept coming back to her, local farmers and some eople who had some medical aid. They tried to comfort her.

When I took the pictures I felt totally powerless in front of this little girl, who was facing death with courage and dignity. She could sense that her life was going.

At the time, I didn't realise how powerful the photograph was - the way in which the little girl's eye connect with the camera. I felt that the only thing I could do was to report properly on the courage and the suffering and the dignity of the little girl and hope that it would mobilise people to help the ones that had been rescued and had been saved. By this stage, X was drifting in and out of consciousness. She even asked me if I could take her to school because she was worried that she would be late.

I gave my film to some photographers who were going back to the airport and had them shipped back to my agent in Paris. X died about three hours after I got there. ”

-----as said by Frank Fournier, photographer.

Funda?

Sparky gets it correct...

X is Omayra Sanchez. More here.