Remembering Mo Amin'He was no media cowboy, no thrill seeker.... he was brave and committed, and his genius was being there when it happened.'
Mo was the great survivor, apparently indestructible; a character so much larger than life that, even though he plied his trade in the world's most dangerous killing grounds, even though he could be damaged, he would never be destroyed. I remember so
many occasions; driving along the sinister, dirt roads of the Luwero
triangle in Uganda's dark days, waiting for the Migs to attack on
the roof of the old Ghion hotel in Makele, I always felt, if I could stay close enough to him, I would be okay. Thinking about it now, that was probably the most dangerous place to be. He was no media cowboy, no thrill seeker, each risk was carefully calculated, but he was brave and committed, and his genius was being there when it happened. I confidently expected to grow old with Mo; to watch him grow richer and crankier, even slow down a bit, but always with some new project, or some old feud, to drive forward, with that amazing energy of his. It wasn't to be. His life ended dramatically, at the centre of a huge international news story (one, for a change, he had not sought out), dealing with the hi-jackers of that plane right up to the last minute; all over in a split-second. Fixed now in our memories, in his prime, as one of the most extraordinary and vivid men I - we - have ever met. Maybe it is better than all that vigour, drive, force of life, dribbling away in old age. But I miss him, and he has left a big hole in all our lives. Mo Amin was, probably, the most famous cameraman in the world. An amazing achievement for somebody born into a poor Asian family in colonial Africa, who had to teach himself how to take pictures, and who operated - throughout his life - thousands of miles from his peers, and from those who used his material. Not many cameramen are well known; few become famous; hardly any from the agencies, like Reuters, whose journalists, so admired within our industry, are normally unknown to the audiences they serve. There was nothing anonymous about Mo. He became a legend, and worked hard at it - not just because he was as much, if not more, of an egotist than the rest of us, but because Mo, the ultimate operator, knew how helpful it was to be famous. He had been unknown, an outsider, a supplicant for a long time; maybe that was what drove him so hard. He was a good cameraman, gifted, with a still photographer's eye for the telling close up. In the worst situations - when it was very dangerous, or when some huge tragedy threatened to drown emotion, feeling, judgement - he was a great cameraman, one of the very best. In the highlands of Ethiopia in 1984, in the midst of the great famine, he worked with a ruthless compassion - emotionally engaged, but professionally detached. We didn't speak much - I don't know what we could have said to each other that would have been adequate. We gathered pictures and information, each did our best to tell that story to hundreds of millions of people, rather than waste the intensity of our feelings on each other. He was a strange man. He looked, and sounded, tough. A bit of a swagger, lots of bravura. Brisk, brusque, sometimes downright rude. But he had a wonderful sense of humour, a boyish sense of mischief - he was such fun to be with, especially when the going got rough. There was a deep vein of compassion in him, some of which I knew about, but a lot I didn't. When Mo got involved, he didn't just lend his name, you got the full force of his personality. Things got fixed, things got done. It wasn't just the big projects, though. Since he died I've had dozens of letters from people who felt he was special because they were somehow special to him. Ordinary people he took time and trouble to help even though his life was so busy, so filled with projects, his working day often had to start at four in the morning and end at eleven at night. He was not a saint. It couldn't have been easy working for him, even if he drove others only half as hard as he drove himself. Having him work for you was probably even worse. Independent, intractable, a bureaucrat's nightmare, the antithesis of corporate man. But he was a star. He achieved what no other cameraman has ever done; not just the handful of video cassettes that once saved more than a million lives, but what he WAS, his life and what he made of it. Talent, determination, warmth, humanity. He packed several lives into one. I am lucky to have known him; so glad he was my friend. |
Michael Buerk is a leading BBC news anchor and presenter of 999 |
Michael Buerk recalls
Rory Peck Trust committee member and Reuters TV cameraman, Mo Amin,
who died last year on a hi-jacked plane which crashed.
getting ready to go out again onto the ruined streets of
Mogadishu with their packs of teenage murderers - on these, and
so many occasions, being desperately scared, but drawing strength
from Mo.