ePub Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War by Deborah Copaken Kogan in Arts-Photography

Description

What if the protagonist in that age-old talemdash;boy goes to war; comes back a manmdash;were a female? Shutterbabe; Deborah Copaken Kogans remarkable debut; is just that: the story of a twenty-two-year-old girl from Potomac; Maryland; who goes off to photograph wars and comes back; four years and one too many adventures later; a woman.In 1988; fresh out of Harvard; Kogan moved to Paris with a small backpack; a couple of cameras; the hubris of a superhero; and a strong thirst for danger. She wanted to see what a war would look like when seen from up close; to immerse herself in a world where the gun is God. Naiuml;vely; she figured it would be easy to filter death through the prism of her wide-angle lens. She was dead wrong.Within weeks of arriving in Paris; after knocking on countless photo agency doors and begging to be sent where the action was; Kogan found herself on the back of a truck in Afghanistan; her tiny frame veiled from head to toe; the only woman mdash; and the only journalis mdash; in a convoy of rebel freedom fighters. Kogan had not actually planned on shooting the Afghan war alone. However; the beguiling French photographer shed entrusted with both her itinerary and her heart turned out to be as dangerously unpredictable as; well; a war. It is the saga of both her relationship with this French-man and her assignment in Afghanistan that fuels the first of Shutterbabes six page-turning chapters; each covering a different corner of the globe and each ultimately linked to the man Kogan was involved with at the time. From Zim-babwe to Romania; from Russia to Haiti; Kogan takes her readers on a heartbreaking yet surprisingly hilarious journey through a mine-strewn decade; her personal battles against sexism; battery; and even rape blending seamlessly with the historical struggles of war; revolution; and unfathomable abuse it was her job to record.In the end; what was once adventurous to the girl began to weigh heavily on the woman. Though her photographs were often splashed across the front pages of international newspapers and magazines; though she was finally accepted into photojournalisms macho fraternity; with each new assignment; with each new affair; Kogan began to feel there was something more she was after. Ultimately; what she discovered in herself was a person -- a woman mdash; for whom life; not death; is the one true adventure to be cherished above all.