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- <text id=93TT0894>
- <title>
- Jan. 11, 1993: From The Publisher
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- Jan. 11, 1993 Megacities
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 4
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> For about six weeks last year, the world became one giant
- megalopolis for photographer Anthony Suau. Assigned to shoot the
- pictures for this week's cover story on the many problems and
- opportunities to be found in megacities around the globe, Suau
- began in Kinshasa, Zaire, and wound up in New York City's South
- Bronx, by way of Mexico City; Sao Paulo and Curitiba, Brazil;
- and Tokyo. "I was shotgunning from one city to the next,"
- recalls the 36-year-old native of Peoria, Illinois. "One street
- in Tokyo just blended into the next one in New York City."
- </p>
- <p> And yet Suau was able to capture something unique in each
- setting he visited. Viewed through the lens of his camera, the
- largest cities of the world reveal striking as well as subtle
- differences. Suau's photos also bear witness to the most
- persistent, if rather ironic, question of human existence: Will
- our own refuse overtake us?
- </p>
- <p> Danger is frequently part of the urban equation, and this
- assignment was no exception. To do his job, Suau had to bring
- thousands of dollars' worth of camera equipment into the most
- destitute sections of the cities he visited. "Sometimes you
- almost needed your own gang for protection," he says. In Zaire
- mourners in a funeral procession threw stones at the car in
- which Suau and his guide were riding. On one of the major
- drug-sale corners in the South Bronx, people in the buildings
- above heaved eggs and rotten food at Suau and the cortege of
- Guardian Angels who were escorting him through the neighborhood.
- </p>
- <p> Not that Suau, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for his
- photos of mass starvation in Ethiopia, is unaccustomed to
- danger. He has covered the wars in Eritrea and Afghanistan and
- was part of a group of journalists detained and then released
- by the Iraqi military in the aftermath of the Gulf War. In
- addition, he was among the first journalists to enter Romania
- after dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's fall and execution. His first
- book, a joint project with TIME senior writer Lance Morrow, to
- be published later this year, is eyewitness to the democratic
- upheavals in the Philippines, South Korea, Pakistan, eastern
- Germany and elsewhere.
- </p>
- <p> Currently a resident of Paris, Suau has achieved what most
- of us can only hope for. "Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to
- travel the world as a photojournalist," he says. Now he has his
- dream. And fortunately for Suau, it's a dream that seems
- fulfilled only until the next challenging assignment comes
- along.
- </p>
- <p> Elizabeth P. Valk
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-