NPR Photographer David Gilkey First Non-Military U.S. Journalist Killed in Afghanistan

“Look at his photos and in each face you can see a story,” NPR’s Ari Shaprio said of the work of his colleague David Gilkey.

A native of Portland, Oregon, Gilkey was killed Sunday in Afghanistan while on assignment. He and his translator, Zabihullah Tamanna, were traveling with an Afghan army convoy when they were ambushed. Gilkey is the first American journalist outside the military killed there since the conflict started 15 years ago.

“I was with him in India a couple of weeks ago,” said Shapiro, also from Portland. “It was 115 degrees and he was tireless. He knew he would be going back to Afghanistan in a couple of weeks. ‘At least we’re not wearing flak jackets and helmets,’" he said Gilkey told him.

Shapiro says Gilkey had been going to Afghanistan since before September 11th.

“The first time he went was on a Taliban passport because they were the ones in charge,” says Shapiro. “He knew the country better, had a deeper understanding, than any reporter in any medium - print, radio, television, any medium - that I’ve ever met.

“He had a compassion, a calmness, the ability to make people comfortable. That’s the most important quality a reporter, especially a photographer, can have.”

Shapiro said that while Gilkey could be physically imposing, "he was as sweet and gentle, and thoughtful as a person could be. He was the kind of person who could be in an area like we were in India where men and women were not often together and be with a mother and daughter and make them feel at home.”

Gilkey, who was 50, grew up in Oregon, going to Wilson High School and then Oregon State University.

He recently got an apartment in Washington, D.C., and was preparing to move.

Gilkey’s career included 11 years at the Detroit Free Press. He won the George Polk Award and a national Emmy award. He was the first multimedia journalist to win an Edward R. Murrow award. In 2011, the White House News Photographers Association named him Still Photographer of the Year.

Shapiro said Gilkey's work was made memorable and powerful by “his ability to bring a story home to people. For so many people, war is something far away geographically, emotionally. It was not something they could relate to.

“His photographs, his work, made it easier for people to understand, to relate. He would go to places no one else wanted to - war zones in South Sudan, Afghanistan - to Sierra Leona to cover Ebola - and produce work that showed people why they should care.

“He was able to show people that it didn’t matter where people are, they are worth caring about," Shapiro continued. "A person caught in a war zone, a person caught in a hurricane. It didn’t matter where they were or who they were. David made sure that people understood they were worth caring about.”

Shapiro said that was true of Gilkey's work whether it was in Toledo, Ohio, where the two covered the resettling of Syrian refugees, or at a Doctors without Borders camp in South Sudan.

“Look at the galleries of his pictures from South Sudan,” says Shaprio. “There is one grid of portraits. All kinds of people. White, black, doctors, refugees. All sorts of people. And in each face, there is a story. “

Shapiro says he saw the magic Gilkey could weave just a few weeks ago when they were together in India.

“He filmed a series of short videos that would go with the stories,” Shapiro says. “They were about 30 seconds, he called them video postcards.

“There was one. We were at a dock and there was a man standing at the tip of the boat. And David never said a word to the man but the man seemed to understand that David just wanted him to stand still. And he remained perfectly still. And the boat slowly moved away from the dock and the man slowly turned the boat into the wide open expanse of water. In 30 seconds of video, David captured the story of the journey that I would need much longer to tell.

“He did it simply, with such beauty.”

Photo courtesy: Ari Shapiro