October 31, 2015 - Anna University, Chennai
I had the privilege of meeting John Isaac, a renowned photojournalist at a seminar. He was born in Trichy and completed his education at Madras Christian College, and New College in Chennai.
He traveled with one-way ticket to New York for pursuing a career in music. He began by busking on sidewalks and later started singing in clubs. When he was singing at Bohemian Greenwich, he got noticed and was approached by a United Nations (UN) executive. He was asked to audition for UN chorus, and later he was also offered a job as a messenger in UN, which he immediately accepted.
In couple of years, he became a dark room technician where he got a good exposure in photography. Winning a photography competition promoted him to become an apprentice at UN's photography department. Major part of his life, he worked with UN. He has more than four decades of experience in photography. He has covered Israel-Lebanon conflict, crisis in Ethiopia, Bosnia, Rwanda and others.
His profession gave him numerous opportunities to work with, and get to know great personalities. He happened to closely work with Audrey Hepburn, Mother Teresa and many other philanthropists. Michael Jackson requested him to be his personal photographer, and accompany him on the "History" tour.
His work assignments enabled him to travel to 100+ countries.
Post his service at UN, he shifted his gear towards wildlife and other genres of photography. He is currently in the pursuit of doing a book on the tribes of India. His seminar, "Art of Seeing" was truly inspiring to me and other budding photographers present at the seminar. Thanks to Photographic Society of Madras (PSM) for organizing such a beautiful and mesmerizing event.
When I told my Chennai-Pondicherry friends about this seminar, I was surprised. Because one of the group of friends who I look upto, Anna told me that she is aware of John Isaac. It turned out that she and her family are good friends with John Isaac's brother.
Conversing with Anna, an interesting fact came up: In 1972 John Isaac's brother presented a Pentax camera to him. John started to learn and practice the art of photography with that Pentax camera. The rest is a picturesque history.
A brother's gift paved a beautiful path for John Isaac's great-photographic-journey :)
Source and additional reading:
i) The camera as conscience, an article by Deepa Alexander in The Hindu dated November 02, 2015
iii) Shutterbug
