Deanne Fitzmaurice: Beneath the surface
Deanne Fitzmaurice, a staff photographer at the San Francisco Chronicle, talks to John McDermott about two of her most famous stories: one revealed the softer side of one of America’s most controversial sportsmen, and the other captured the hearts of readers all over the world and won her a Pulitzer Prize in 2005.
From the day in the early Eighties when as a rookie she grabbed her camera on the way back from a holiday in Mexico to capture the image of thousands of tomatoes spilt by a toppled truck on the 101 freeway in Los Angeles (a picture that ran over four columns in the next day’s LA Times), Deanne Fitzmaurice has stood out as one of America’s leading press and sports photographers. Inspired by Annie Leibovitz, and the likes of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eugene Richards and Elliott Erwitt, she has documented life in and around her adopted city of San Francisco winning many awards along the way.
Barry Bonds hits his 600th home run in August 2002.
Her Pulitzer Prize-winning story about the Iraqi boy Saleh Khalaf might be the crowning glory of her career, but it was three years earlier, while covering the pre-season training of the San Francisco Giants baseball team, that she reinforced her reputation as a sensitive observer. In 2002, Barry Bonds, the controversial Giants’ outfielder, was about to break the 600 home runs mark (he went on break the all-time record of 755 in August 2007) and Deanne approach him with an idea to do something different. Bonds is famously stand-offish, and has been dogged by persistent rumours of steroid use because of his association with the notorious Balco Laboratory. “I had always just covered the events up till then,” Deanne says of her sports work, “and I wanted to do something more intimate and behind-the-scenes. I wanted to show who these people are when they’re off the field.” Deanne knew Bonds’s reputation but approached him anyway on the first day of pre-season training.
Barry Bonds cooking at home.
“I had taken a few frames of him lounging on the ground while everyone else was warming up,” she recalls, “and he looked at me like he wanted to kill me. I wasn’t prepared to go through the whole season like that and wanted to defuse the situation right away. I just went straight up to him, introduced myself and asked him if he had a problem with my photographing him. “He hesitated. I think he was surprised that he hadn’t intimidated me, and then said, no, he didn’t have a problem. That was my opening. I had broken through the wall he puts up and from there we developed a good rapport. And when I finally proposed the story idea, he agreed. I think he just respected that I had been very direct with him and honest about what I wanted to do and why.” The private images of Bonds at home, cooking breakfast for his family, playing with his kids, taking his daughter to school, visiting old friends and working out at the gym showed a side of the man the public had never seen.
Barry Bonds plays his final game as a San Francisco Giant in the game against San Diego Padres in September 2007.
Deanne’s patience and sensitivity as a photographer and storyteller again came shining through when, in October 2003, what she thought was a fairly routine news assignment turned into the most profound experience of her professional life, and one that shot her to international fame.
The first time she and Chronicle writer Meredith May saw Saleh Khalaf they weren’t sure the nine-year-old Iraqi was going to survive. He had arrived at the Children’s Hospital in Oakland, California, after a long journey that began earlier that month in the village of Bada’a, in southern Iraq. A cluster bomb, mistaken for a toy, had exploded killing Saleh’s older brother and leaving Saleh fighting for his life. “It was unbelievable,” recalls Deanne. “He looked so frail, so helpless. There were tubes everywhere, connecting him to all these machines. We honestly didn’t know how he was going to make it.”
The blast that killed Saleh’s brother had left the boy with one eye, shrapnel in his brain, most of one arm missing, only a thumb and one finger on the other hand and his abdomen ripped wide open. He was only alive because his father, Raheem, took the advice of an Iraqi doctor and fought to get him to an American military medical facility. A US Air Force surgeon helped to stabilise his condition and made it clear that his only chance for long-term survival was to have further treatment in the United States at a specialised facility such as the Oakland Children’s Hospital. A medical evacuation flight out of Iraq was arranged. The surgeon, Dr Jay Johannigman, moved by Saleh’s bravery, also gave him a nickname: Lion Heart. This inspired the Chronicle to call its five-part series on Saleh’s journey, Operation Lion Heart.
“It started out as an ordinary daily assignment,” says Deanne. “We went to the hospital and Raheem was there, looking so desperate. He had lost his other son and he didn’t want to lose Saleh too. He just wanted someone to help. Of course, there was a huge language barrier, but we just tried to convey with our eyes and our body language that we understood, that we appreciated being allowed to tell the story and that we wanted to help. He put his hand to his heart and it seemed he understood us. I took a few pictures of Saleh and we left the room.” Deanne’s eyes well with tears as she remembers the visit: “When Meredith and I got outside in the hall we couldn’t even speak. It just got us.” They realised right away that this was an important story that needed to be followed long term. They met with their editors and it was agreed they would stay on the story until Saleh went back to Iraq.
“Overcoming the language barrier was a big problem at first with Raheem, and then with Saleh, who, fortunately, was getting healthier and more alert as the weeks went by,” says Deanne. “We were this constant presence in his life. Whenever he would wake up we were there. It’s important for me to connect with my subjects and it was so frustrating. So I’d try to make him laugh or smile in different ways.” One thing that seemed to work was showing Saleh pictures on her camera’s LCD screen. “I’d take a picture of something like a stuffed animal and show it to him and we would just laugh together. As he got stronger and more mobile he started wanting to play with the camera himself and shoot pictures of his favourite nurses. So I hung it around his neck and somehow he managed to press the shutter release with his stump. It was really fun for him and it really helped me to make that connection.”
As Saleh’s health improved, Deanne and Meredith assumed that after six or eight weeks he and Raheem would return Iraq. But it soon became clear that wasn’t going to be an option. Word was coming through about death threats against Raheem, and his house had been ransacked.
It had been assumed that since Saleh was getting treatment in America, Raheem must have been an American spy. It was no longer safe for them to go home. Plans had to be made to get Raheem’s wife and two daughters out of Iraq and into the United States. Thanks in great part to the publicity the story had already generated, Raheem and his family were quickly granted amnesty to stay in the United States. When plans were in place to get the family to Amman, Jordan, so they could fly to San Francisco, the Chronicle decided that Deanne and Meredith should be there to document this next dramatic twist in the story.
Saleh’s mother on the Iraqi-Jordanian border on her way to America.
They flew to Jordan to meet them at as they crossed the border from Iraq into the no-man’s-land between the Iraqi and Jordanian checkpoints. “It was really nerve-wracking,” recalls Deanne. “We had a local fixer, Ali, who was helping us and we were waiting in his office for the call from them that they were about to cross over. It was night-time, cold and there was a lot of chaos with people coming and going across the border. When we got the call Ali opened his desk drawer, pulled out a gun and stuck it in his waistband. We split up into two cars and I told Meredith, ‘I’m going with the guy with the gun!’. A short while later they made it across and we were on our way home.”
Deanne and Meredith had worked on the story for 11 months to produce a sensitive but unflinching account of every significant step of Saleh’s recovery and his family’s transition to a new life in California. In September 2004, nearly a year after their first meeting with Saleh, the special series Operation Lion Heart was finally published. Public reaction was overwhelming and offers of help for the family came pouring in. Deanne continues to stay in touch with Saleh and his family and says that, after some 35 surgical procedures, he is doing well, loves school and playing soccer, and his health continues to improve.
Saleh is re-united with his mother and sisters.
Professional recognition was also to come in the spring of 2005 in the form of the highest award in American journalism, the Pulitzer Prize, for Deanne’s “sensitive photo essay” on Saleh’s journey. The Chronicle’s managing editor Phil Bronstein said: “It really required a unique combination of sensitivity and courage for Deanne and Meredith to capture so beautifully and evocatively the story of Saleh.”
“I am very proud of this work and honoured that the paper and the committee thought it was worthy of consideration,” says Deanne. “It’s the best work I’ve ever done, but I honestly thought a Pulitzer was way out of my league. I was shocked to be a finalist. But also thrilled. When the word came in that I had won I couldn’t believe it.”
Saleh’s story also led to an invitation to show it at Visa pour l’Image International Festival of Photojournalism in Perpignan, France. “I went to Perpignan in 2004 and again in 2005, when my Saleh story was projected,” she says. “Visa is an inspiring and unforgettable experience. It was great to gather with photographers from around the world at outdoor cafés into the early morning hours to talk about this great passion we all share. After seeing the photojournalism that is exhibited there, I came away filled with inspiration and respect for the photographers who are out there telling these important stories.”
- Technical
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Deanne Fitzmaurice’s equipment:
Cameras:
2x EOS-1D Mark III
Lenses:
EF16-35mm f/2.8L USM
EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM
EF100mm f/2 USM
EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM
EF300mm f/2.8L IS USM
Extender EF1.4x
Accessories:
Pocket Wizard MultiMAX transceiver set
Canon Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2
Canon Speedlite 580EX II
2x Jack Rabbit battery packs
Think Tank Pro Modulus belt system
Think Tank Airport Security roller case
