FORMER White Horse News reporter Sam Tarling was covering action in Libya last week. His photographs and eye-witness account appeared in The Telegraph on Saturday.
Sam, who works as a photojournalist for Executive magazine and is based in Beirut, was in the southern district of the capital, Tripoli. He was previously in Libya earlier this year, but experienced different scenes now as the rebels fight to take control and continue their search for Gaddafi.
In his interview with The Telegraph, Sam described seeing rebels making house-to-house searches for snipers and capturing mercenaries following heavy fighting.
The White Horse News spoke to Sam last Friday as he was preparing to leave Libya following his assignment. Sam said, “The city is eerily quiet, apart from the sporadic gunfire, shops are shuttered and streets are empty – many of them blocked by impromptu barricades made of everything from burned out cars to concrete blocks. There is widespread evidence of conflict, though it’s more like a ghost town than a warzone – unless there is fighting going on.
“I was with rebel fighters for two days as they fought through the neighbourhood of Abu Salim, a staunchly pro-Gaddafi neighbourhood near the presidential compound – a huge fortress in the centre of the city – that was taken over by the rebels the day before I arrived.
“I worked mainly with a French photographer, James de Caupenne-Keogh, who I met on the first day. We were debating whether to cross a square which was apparently being watched by snipers when we bumped into Jerome Sessini, a very well established French photographer. He seemed to think it was fine to move forward and ran off, we followed into a whole crazy world of getting right up with the fighters on the front.
“On the second day I took a ride toward the fighting with a bunch of journalists from the hotel, I just managed to catch the last seat in their van as they were leaving. After leaving them to ride further forward with the rebels (we’d heard they had Gaddafi surrounded so I was keen to get to the front) I bumped into Jerome again, with another French journalist he was with. Over the next few hours we moved forward street by street with the fighters as they came under heavy sustained sniper fire.
“It was reassuring to be with someone who had experience of such situations and also a bit of inspiration to take risks I might not have done otherwise, which led to getting some much better photos. I’d certainly never have taken such chances on my own.
“As if getting to where the interesting pictures were wasn’t hard enough, actually capturing the action and doing it justice was really difficult – it was certainly a strong learning curve for me. It’s such a fast paced situation you have to be completely on your toes but at the same time distance yourself enough from your own situation so that you can think creatively about how best to present what’s happening around you. It’s definitely something that takes a while to get used to!”
Sam admitted that he experienced one encounter where he felt in danger saying, “There was probably only a few minutes where I thought I might get hit – we were on a corner with little cover and it seemed like fire was coming from both directions. I squeezed next to an electricity box on the side of a building and hoped for the best, after a while it quietened down so we made a dash for it.”
During his assignment, Sam had been camping out on a sofa in a Moroccan restaurant on the top floor of hotel which was attacked by sniper fire just as he arrived. “There’s hundreds of journalists here and only a few hotels open,” he said. “It’s a good atmosphere in the hotel as everyone is busy working, and a great opportunity to network.”
Sam had travelled to Tripoli via Cairo, and as White Horse News caught up with him, he was preparing to leave through a different route. “I’m leaving today,” he explained. “I have all the pictures I need for the magazine and there’s a boat leaving shortly to Malta. It’s much easier to take the boat than try to organise a ride to Tunisia again – the ride in cost over $1,000 between four of us, so i’ve no idea how much it would cost to get back again.
“It’s a shame to leave so soon as there’s so many other angles of the story to cover but there’s only so much space in the magazine.”
You can follow Sam’s photographic work and experiences via samtphoto.blogspot.com
