70 Years of LFI – the best covers – part 6

Issue 6/2004, commented by Dominic Nahr

“I love the raw emotions in the scene. You know that Jean is completely there: I can feel the waves crashing, I can taste the salt. He's not just carrying out an assignment: he's fully committed to the story, and is, in fact, one of the fishermen; only his tool isn’t a net but his camera. The cover image shouts about the conditions the fishermen are working in: it’s raw and it's real. This is what Leica cameras are made for. Raw reality close to the chest. You don't have the safety of a zoom lens. It’s just about being there. That’s the power of the rangefinder. I couldn’t imagine working any other way.

In 2004, the same year this cover came out, I was 21 years old and a newspaper photographer in Hong Kong, where I grew up. By 2006 I had started covering areas of civil unrest and war. The early 2000s were the beginning of my journey as a photographer, and Jean Gaumy’s work, like his book Pleine Mer, played an instrumental role in shaping my understanding of going beyond the imaginable, and connecting with people and with the world around me.

I met Jean at the Magnum office in Paris in 2010. He's a very kind and down to earth guy. Sometimes, when I was working at Magnum, I would sleep there secretly. He found out and took me over to his drawer. I wasn’t sure what he was going to show me: he pulled out a pillow and handed it to me.” (dar)