Among the journalists, television crews, lawyers and other professionals who often have to travel at short notice one of the longest-standing users of the Fleet Street Clinic’s same-day vaccination and travel-health service is the celebrated war photographer Goran Tomasevic.
Softly spoken, calm and courteous, the 6 ft 4 56-year-old Serbian has been ducking bullets and reporting from the world’s battle zones for almost 35 years. Carrying the same equipment wherever he goes – three Canon cameras and three spare lenses, so if one gets damaged he can still continue working – he has spent most of that time working for the global news agency Reuters. His Reuters’ assignments have seen him cover conflict in warzones from Afghanistan, Colombia and Iraq to Libya, Somalia and South Sudan. Voted Reuter’s Photographer of the Year a record-breaking four times, in 2016 he achieved the unique feat of having 100 newspapers around the world put his extraordinary photograph of a fireball in an anti-Gaddafi attack in Libya on their front cover. In 2023 one reviewer of the 444-page book of his pictures, published by Edition, called him ‘ a Caravaggio of photography’. “I want to show exactly how it was … if there’s enough light, I will stay until the end,” he says.
Now working for the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, he will only answer with a cryptic “Asia” when asked about his next assignment. But he is happy to add that wherever precisely that might be – Taiwan, we wonder; perhaps Myanmar? – he will detour via Fleet Street to get any necessary vaccinations and to collect a locale-and-calamity appropriate travel kit. As usual, that will have been made up for him by Fleet Street Clinic’s founder – and now his friend – Dr Richard Dawood.
Q) How did you come across the Fleet Street Clinic?
A) I grew up in Belgrade, and I started working with the Politika news agency during the Bosnian war, in 1991. After all our trouble finished, in 1996 I joined Reuters, and they started sending me to the Middle East and Africa. Their offices were in Fleet Street (they’re in Canary Wharf now) and as they had a contract with Fleet Street Clinic they sent me to the clinic to get jabs and the medical kit, trauma kit, travel kit. From the beginning Dr Richard, he say to me: “Call me any time you’re in trouble!”.
Q) So have you ever had to make that kind of call?
A) Ha ha, many times! The last time, I get a bad reaction for the dengue fever jab. I was about to cross the border between Dominican Republic and Haiti but they sent me back. I had a fever. I was feeling very bad. But after calling Dr Richard I knew where I was standing. He said, don’t worry, it’s not common, but stay in bed and after three days you’ll be ok. Absolutely brilliant! And with an iPhone of course I can send a picture of a rash or a wound and say, Dr Richard, what’s your opinion?
Q) What’s inside your travel kit?
A) It depends where I’m going – tropical area, somewhere very remote, whatever. Not every medication for every possibility, but for a lot of possibilities. In Africa, sometimes you need to walk five to 10 days to find any medical facilities. It’s the nature of the job that often I’m following rebels in a very remote area so you can quickly go through all the kit. In Central African Republic I got some infection and needed to test if I had malaria again. I was in Bambari with Seleka Islamist rebels and there’s nothing there, really. No medical facilities. So the medical kit’s sterile syringes, tests, antibiotics, everything, it’s very useful.
Q) You once said ‘the eye of the sniper is everywhere’. Has it ever caught you?
A) I was shot in my right leg in Egypt. It was a bad experience because the Egyptians told me “It’s just a small pellet, not very deep. It’ll get infected and just jump out.” So I took the antibiotics in the kit but after 10 days I see the infection again and Dr Richard said, “That’s not good, you know.” I saw another Egyptian doctor; he said the same thing: “It’ll jump out!” So I went back to Serbia and I found a military doctor who said, “They’re mad! Look at your leg! If you didn’t come now, you might need amputation.” I always like soldiers, they know what they are doing. He had been in the war in Bosnia. He told me, “I took a lot of metal out of humans. I’ll fix you, boy.” He took out a 8.2mm pellet, gave me more antibiotics, and I was ok.
Q) You’ve also said you love to go into a conflict zone – so where have you been recently?
A) Last year I did Lebanon, spent lots of time in south Lebanon. What else? I can’t remember but I was three times in Port au Prince in Haiti. That was tough. It’s like an outlaw country. Eighty per cent controlled by different gangs. Raiding, burning, taking everything. The last time, I was focussed on child soldiers, kid gangsters. Kids nine, ten, 11, with 9mm guns. Shooting without hesitation, quick reactions, handling guns well. I’ve been in the army but was in total shock, seeing that.
Q) How do you relax when you’ve finished work for the day?
A) Cigarettes. In Haiti I found a hotel at the edge of the front line, the Hotel Plaza.
No one else was staying. Only me with a fixer and two motorbike drivers to move us around. All night you could hear bang, bang and stuff. But the staff were really nice. The food was wonderful. The biggest trouble was, I’m sitting on the balcony, it’s really humid, I’m sweating, and I’m looking at the beautiful blue swimming pool and it’s tempting to jump in it. But Dr Richard told me a long time ago, if a pool isn’t treated with chlorine there’s a high possibility of getting giardia. No guests – hmm, I knew the manager he wouldn’t be spending money on chlorine. My fixer jumped in and he was unwell for two days.
Q) Do you often have to just bed down on the ground while working?
A) Often. One picture I took which became quite famous, that was in Afghanistan, a US Marine Sergeant Bee being shot at. It was very early morning; we had been camping and I had just wake up. When Taliban suddenly started shooting I was still in my just boots and underpants. It was so quick, I didn’t even know if I had the picture.
Q) When did you first pick up a camera?
A) When I am 14, 15, my parents had a bit of desperation to take me off the streets, playing football, fighting, messing around, so my father gave me a camera. And I loved it! It was amazing. It’s a beautiful toy. It was a Russian copy of a German Leica with no light meter. A friend of my sister, Mico Smiljanic, a photographer, helped me a lot. I learned to understand light, what is reflecting light, what is coming in at an angle, how it’s behaving. Everything in photography is about the situation of the light.
Q) How you start working as a photographer?
A) In Belgrade, 1987, when I was 18, I did one year of national service. I was still not behaving well, so my father – he was a chemical technician in a factory – wanted to put me in order. I loved it. It was just before the Bosnian war, so my father did me a great favour. Discipline, waking up early, exercising, all good. Then the Bosnian war started. Serbia was bombed by NATO. I had my camera, I knew how to look after myself, and that’s how I started.
Q) What kind of conflict produces the best pictures?
A) When you’re with soldiers on foot, although now with drones it’s more difficult, drones have really changed the dynamic. When governments and armies create restrictions, then you don’t have good pictures. I don’t want to do only what I’m allowed and what the new security advisors show me. But us who have field experience, we understand we have no idea how we’re going to get the picture. You look, and you see opportunities. You need to be very patient. Sometimes I wait weeks, months. I don’t have any vision of the pictures I want to get. Zero. But when I see an opportunity, I’m going to push for it. I want to see the fear, I want to see the faces, I want to tell the story properly.
Q) Are you usually sympathetic to the cause or side you’re photographing?
A) I’m a journalist: I’m not supporting any side. You have good guys, you have bad guys, and the truth is somewhere in between. I try to cover untold stories important to people.
Q) Do you feel traumatised by what you’ve witnessed – the maiming, desperation, death?
A) You need to be stable in your head, doing this. A couple of years ago in Canada, Anthony Feinstein, a psychologist, wrote a book, Shooting War, about how war affects journalists, especially photographers. They brought a bunch of us with this kind of experience to talk.
A lot of my colleagues have PTSD, mental troubles, as a result of what they’ve seen. I don’t think I have PTSD. But crazy people don’t believe they’re crazy, so maybe I have.
Q) You’ve said you love to go into a conflict zone. Is that still true?
A) When I go to say Syria, I know exactly what I’m doing, where I’m going. I’m not going to Nice or Cannes, the red carpet. I started this work very young, and when you work, if you’re emotional, you are not for this job. You have to work hard, be disciplined. I always joke when the correspondents start running, I’m starting to work. As a journalist, you can write your story about Syria from London. I need to see everything and I need to come close, close, closer.
Q) Your life must be hard on your family
A) Ha ha, I am the perfect husband, away all the time! I’ve been married three times although not now. My daughter, she’s 29. I live now in a village outside Belgrade; when I’m home, I dig my garden, I use the gym, I use the punchbag under my walnut tree. When I say to my daughter, “Do you want to come over, to stay this evening?”, she says, “Dad, I know that just means you want to go to the bar and have me get you home!” But what else am I going to do, be a bus driver? I’m just a yob from Belgrade! A peasant! But I work hard. My mother said once, “I’m just glad you’re not in prison!”
Q) Any regrets?
A) I’m sorry I missed the Battle of Stalingrad. That was the mother of all battles. But 1942, 1943. I was born too late!
