Emilio Morenatti (Zaragoza, 1969) does not stop. It is ubiquitous. The same appears in swimming as in athletics or cycling. Sports don’t give up and neither do stories. Your camera is your compass to find them and your curiosity, the engine to count them. For many colleagues it is ‘the one with the Pulitzer’, although it is difficult for him to recognize himself in that label. The Tokyo Paralympic Games are not only work, but also a personal journey. The Associated Press photojournalist lost his left leg when a bomb exploded in Afghanistan, during an outing with US troops that he should not have gone to, in 2009. His gaze and his reflections on disability leave a mark. The same as your snapshots. Between work and work, career and career, he met with AS to talk about the dimension of these athletes and their achievements, about their adaptation to any situation, about life.
—How was your experience at the Paralympic Games? Had you covered any before?
—I did London 2012, both Olympic and Paralympic and I thought it was a very good experience because several factors come together here. One, to do what they tell you and another, fundamental, the interest in seeing how everything moves within a competition like this. There is my own curiosity as a person with a disability and the need to make this world visible and its message of improvement. These two factors bring me, but in addition there is a long job that I proposed months ago to AP and they accepted me. This is the follow-up to a series of Americans wounded in combat, who were in the war in Afghanistan or Iraq and lost a member and whose lives have been changed by sport. Disability changed it, but sport has somehow made sense of it. I inquired about the remaining veterans and contacted them to visit their homes in the United States. A reporter has taken note of all that and the story comes out this Tuesday, September 7. There is a reflection on disability and sport. Behind each athlete there are tremendous stories that we discover as we meet them. Maybe someone reaches the goal that catches your attention, you inquire and there is a story behind it, but how many are there? We see only the tip of the iceberg. In addition to that I cover the competitions.
—Throughout the Games, photos of the athletes with their stories have been published on their networks, something that is having a lot of repercussion and a great diffusion.
—Look at the rumor mill in general, when they say why isn’t it more visible, when I’m doing it. There is a generalized protest, but of course it is coming. The only thing that happens is that we are not as many as the Olympians, nor are there specials in the media. Those brushstrokes are our work and, in my case, I do it to discover a personal experience. Covering the Paralympics happens a bit like when I cover stories in Gaza or in places where the mission of photojournalism is really fundamental and it is about reaching out with the greatest of sensitivities. When the circumstances arise, you feel very useful. Here you need to tell the stories with great sensitivity. There is one thing that fascinates me about the Paralympics. Sometimes you are in the pool and you see a swimmer come out with no arms or legs. You stand in front of the camera and hesitate before taking the photo, but he looks at you and asks you to send him the photo. It leaves you off balance because it is smiling at you and it is giving you tremendous empathy. A bond is created, a commitment … You realize that the limitation is in us, not in them. It has happened to me with many, who have tremendous disabilities and who pose for you as if they were cache models. The complexes are parked and a bubble of brotherhood is created in which people come to have a party, in quotation marks, of disability. It is celebrated until you arrive last. I have taken photos of the last one, when is that done? But the reaction of the arrival has been tremendous and such. That’s how fascinating and engaging. You come once and you want to come more. Among photographers we have the same conversation, we have covered Olympians and Paralympics and it is the latter who reach us the most.
—Of the stories of the athletes you have taken, which one has impressed you the most?
—There is a Brazilian swimmer, Gabriel Geraldo Santos Araujo, who has no arms or legs and I don’t even understand how he floats, but he always wins. Not being able to celebrate by raising his arms, what he does is he takes a jet of water with his mouth and throws it upwards. That celebration seemed spectacular to me. People are looking for a way. I was also impressed by the Italian triathlete Veronica Yoko Plebani, who has a severe illness and physically can be seen to have suffered a lot, has lost fingers and feet and has tremendous damage to her skin. It touched me quite a bit. He has found a way out in sports, like American cyclist Oksana Masters, who was affected by radiation from Chernobyl. They are cases that I did not know, nor was I looking for, but they win and you wonder who it is. I don’t know if people end up finding out about all this.
– What have you found in the coverage of a Paralympics that has not lived with the Olympics?
—The Olympic Games are very complicated because there is a great demand for everything, we are treated like sheep because there are many people. The Paralympics give you more mobility, there is less media pressure. That freedom is what leads me to do a more personal journalism, without having to be limited to what a long telephoto lens gives you, which gives you a very short vision. I define the type of coverage by the type of lens I use. Here we use very long lenses because we cannot get where things are happening, but when I am in conflict I go with my 50mm. and I approach the site. This is very metaphorical about the field of action of the lenses. I like to step on the ground, wear my 50 and decide what distance I put, not being imposed on me. Here it is imposed, although in the Olympics much more. They even suggest the type of lens you should wear. Besides, there is a whole industry behind, those of the photography brands that compete with each other.
How has receiving a Pulitzer Prize affected you?
“I still haven’t been able to process it and I’m not saying it as a joke.” The other day a colleague from Jakarta was telling me: ‘Damn, you’re the one with the solo Pulitzer.’ And I was like, ‘me?’ It’s such a good thing that you hardly ever get it. I don’t know if I will. Probably not. It seems too powerful news to me to assume. Now when I go to a competition they tell me. Hey, well look, good. It is a good thing, but it gives me qualms.
—The Pulitzer won for a series of photos of the pandemic and precisely during this one there was talk of the absence of raw and stark photos to show the virulence of the situation …
“I do that exercise every day.” I always take a step back and think about it, but in the end I throw myself back. You have to take the images as they are. I’m doing an exercise on social networks, which give us a thermometer of what society is like for better or for worse, sending certain photos to see if they get caught. You have to read the caption (caption) and understand the image. There are those who understand it and it is very rewarding. You try to raise awareness as much as possible and you have a very positive response that the media does not have. The networks beat us there. I am interested in using respect for the person who is photographed. A person with no arms, being photographed with all their scars, is something we tend to hide. And I go with my leg in the air, but here, in Barcelona and everywhere. Disability must be normalized, starting with oneself. Everyone knows about a physical disability, but it is very difficult to discover the mental disability of many people, who hide it or want to transform themselves into a person they are not. Normalizing this is essential. I try to do it not only through my photographs but also my own personality, saying I am missing a leg and this is what it is. You may like it more or less, you can be sewn to looks, but you have to return a smile. The same one that some of the athletes I photograph give back to me. The other day I was taking a picture of a couple of Turkish swimmers, Beytullah Eroglu and Sevilay Ozturk, who were pee of laughter, in their world and they didn’t give a damn about everything. They asked me for the photo and they were very proud to have arrived where they had arrived.
– Is there a long way to go in the task of normalizing or naturalizing disability?
—It stays all the way because we live in an aesthetic society, where the weird (someone without a leg, an arm …) produces rejection. We’re going to get worse at that. We live in a consumer society where aesthetics add or subtract points, it subtracts them if you are old, have a disability … We all defend the issue of disability, but we are not willing to show our nudity. And by nudity I don’t mean showing your genitals but your flaws. Society is doomed to take extreme care of aesthetics and condemn the other. We are not doing well there. All of this is also promoted by brands.
– On a personal level, how do you experience disability?
—It’s one thing if you are born with a disability and don’t know what you would be like without the disability. And another, that with 40 years you lose a leg. I have always been a very agile person, very active, who used to climb trees to take photos and now I find them. My disability will always accompany me, they are eternal wounds, but I do exercise (and I almost succeed) to begin to recognize myself as I am. Now I am like this, play like this and that’s it. If I get a little tired and have to sit down, I tell the rest to pull and then I take a taxi. I have achieved the Pulitzer thanks to an electric scooter because I know that walking is torture for me. I look for the formula to get ahead. It is my case and that of all people with disabilities, to recognize you as the person you are becoming. The same happens with age. If you deny it, you have two problems: that you are old and that you want to deny it. I’m in that job. It’s hard for me. Sometimes I get pissed off and say: ‘With what I was’. With that we are not going anywhere. It’s about what I am and what I can achieve. The disability is not in your leg or your arm, the disability is in your head. That’s the limitation really.
