Josh Jackson Author

A serious post about serious things. Sensitive readers may be triggered.

I used to be a photojournalist.

And sure, I’ve got a zillion stories. People always want to hear my stories from the twelve years I dedicated my life to the camera. Especially about the celebrities. Sure, I took Arnold Schwarzenegger’s photo on three separate occasions, Tim Robbins one, and three of Bob Marley’s sons once as well. Among others, such as then-California-Attorney-General Kamala Harris.

I didn’t get into it for celebrity, but rather to tell the truth, to tell stories using images. I considered it a calling, not a career.

Most assignments offered no prestige or celebrity. It was just day-to-day shooting, taking my assignments while always hunting for standalone photos. And living with the police scanner on 24/7. No exaggeration. People didn’t like hanging out at my place because I had to leave the scanner running.

It was obnoxious to people, but there was no way I would let myself miss something big, especially on a day off. Nor would my boss let me forget it if I did. I had to basically commit to being always on call, even after hours or on days off.

When the 2011 tsunami struck the west coast, I was on my Saturday. It quickly turned into a workday. House fires at three a.m. yanked me out of bed. One day I’d just finished dinner after an eight-hour shift when we got hit by a 6.3 quake, turning a mellow evening into a very, very long night. It wasn’t uncommon to end up pulling ten and twelve hour shifts unexpectedly, or be on the scene of something for so long you have to call people to bring you food and water, or relieve you so you can finally pee after holding it for five hours.

So yeah, there are hundreds of stories to tell.

But the reason I don’t like to tell them is the same reason I no longer do photography.

The short version? Too much trauma, and now PTSD rules the roost. I cannot take photos with even my phone without being triggered. So the Photo-J chapter of my life is firmly and fully closed.

Some people, however, have suggested I write a memoir. I’ve considered it myself many times. Even my dear mother has brought it up. I don’t think it could work, though. The PTSD, you see.

Memory is a funny thing. We all have memories come up as we go through our day, the random events we experience always being referenced by our brains against past experiences. Usually we’re not actively trying to recall these things, rather, our brains spit them out in response to stimulus. Hence things “pop into” our minds.

My memory, thanks to numerous traumas, tends to only pop into mind the bad things, the tragedy, the darkness. Those memories push themselves to the front, crowding out and blasting out the others. It can actually take a bit of mental effort to recall fun assignments or good times on the job.

The problem is that for years I have been pushing those memories away, trying to forget them.

The details get lost. But to tell the whole story you must include everything. So I may not really be able to properly regale readers with tales of photojournalism at a small city daily.

Because I can no longer remember the best parts or highlights of, say, any one graduation I covered. Those events go farther and farther into the past as every year elapses. Plus, there were eight or more ceremonies to cover annually, and a Photo Department with just three staffers (one of whom was mostly stuck on the night desk processing images for the next edition), an Editor and a few freelancers, all of us ended up covering several graduations a year. After four or five years they kind of blur together.

The local University held three ceremonies in on day, the Community College two. Inevitably each of us ended up on the rotation, having to shoot all three of those Uni ceremonies in a row. It was an endurance trial. Who wants to recall suffering through six or eight hours of graduations in one day? And then the hours of work later that day, under deadline, editing, captioning, processing, when all you wanted to do was collapse in bed.

I recall the generic details. Like the kids wearing goofy sunglasses, or the inevitable beach ball that would start making its bouncing random course around the group of grads. But which student stood out in academics, or overcame adversity to graduate? I don’t remember. Whose speech stood out? Can’t recall one word.

When I try, inevitably the bad shoves its way through the crowd of memories, shouting to be heard. Some people don’t believe me, that it was just so awful. “You didn’t even go to war, what are you whining about?” is the attitude. Fine, you want an example, have it your way. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Like that one time on a Sunday, I joined the on-duty reporter for a stroll down the street to chat with the firefighters and the Chief about budget stuff. A report of a drowning came through, full emergency, Code Three. I jumped in the fire engine while the reporter hopped into the Chief’s pickup and we raced to the waterfront. To add confusion, it was also possibly a missing child.

We screamed to the scene. I recall the firefighters in their jumpseats, shouting over the engine about tides. They looked more serious than usual, and didn’t seem to care that I called out the current tide reading, having looked it up on my phone. In no way was I important, and that’s fine, that’s normal, that’s how it should be. I’m not the story.

We arrived more or less together, and got a handle on the situation. A father was fishing with his kids on a local public dock, a small affair meant for small craft. His littlest boy was in a stroller, and dad turned his back for a few minutes. Then he was gone, no stroller, no kid.

There was a suggestion that the boy may have gone into the water, so the Coast Guard was deployed, while the Police Department scoured the city desperately looking in case it was a kidnapping, and a crowd formed and then grew at the waterfront.

Even the Coast Guard’s orange Dolphin helicopter was involved, expertly hovering and scanning the waters of the marina and bay, the rotors thundering. A small boat of theirs patrolled near the dock, a diver jumping in to look below.

There were multiple fire trucks, multiple police cars, the boat, the chopper, and maybe 150 people rubbernecking. The police kept close to the dad, while I stood by and snapped pics. The reporter was beside me. The scanner jabbered constantly, huge amounts of radio traffic.

Then something started happening. Over on the dock, an officer I knew caught my eye and (stupidly) gave the neck-cutting gesture, one he often used with me to indicate he didn’t want photos. I knew what that meant, and a great deal of the nearly two hundred people on the scene saw it and understood as well. A commotion rose.

I looked over at the rescue boat, floating near the dock, and saw the diver surface beside. I started shooting. The diver raised his arm up, lifting the handle of a stroller, which the boat crew grabbed. A second boat maneuvered in to block the view as they pulled the drowned little boy out of the dark, cold bay water.

At that very moment the dad looked over an saw his dead son.

He lost it. Fully. Screaming, thrashing, wailing, bawling. Police and firefighters had to physically restrain him briefly.

There is nothing in a normal person ready to cope with such horror. My usual approach is to use humor, but times like that are not right for even gallows humor. I could not simply take all of this in and internalize it. Some had to be rejected.

“Why do I always get corpse duty?” I muttered to the reporter. His response indicated he wasn’t exactly thrilled with me. He let me know that this incident was in no way about me, and that I should be thinking of others at that moment.

After years of facing death, looking right at it, unflinching, and taking the photo, I’d become a bit cynical. Working in the news in general will do that to you.

As a reporter (with or without camera) you are the filter for the readers. You have to take all the garbage, poison, crap, toxins, and filth, and pass on only the good stuff to the reader. What you do with the garbage you filtered out?

Well, not even close friends want to hear the truth about what really goes down behind the scenes of government or business or society. There’s basically no one to talk to about this stuff other than your colleagues. Who likely are trying to forget it and don’t want to think about it.

Inevitably it was the photographers who’d make it to the bar first, followed by the reporters. I opted to drink at home, but I rarely made it home without having to stop the car to avoid vomiting on the floorboard. My best photo editor usually vomited before his shift. And we all drank heavily.

The reporter on that horrifying scene went on to better things, and I ended up having to walk away from a promising career.

And no one got it worse than that father. It turned out he’d simply forgotten to lock the stroller wheels. He’d even heard a splash behind him but chalked it up to a seal or a fish.

There are many, many more. Buckle up.

A quadruple fatal, three 17-year-olds and an 18-year-old, me photographing them being cut out of a destroyed Mustang after they died in a rainy highway crash on Spring Break. Their eyes were still open, rain falling on the orbs. Or the triple-fatal, three dead under-18’s on a remote, dark highway. Blood from destroyed bodies running down the rocker panel, on the road. Screaming kids, trapped in an overturned SUV when dad chose to street-race a sports car. Their blood dripped as I watched, crying, pleading to be extricated. A firefighter lying on his belly in the blood and glass, the SUV at risk of rolling over on him, doing his best to console the girls as his fellow smokeaters stabilized the vehicle and rolled out the jaws of life. House fires, seeing people sitting on the curb bawling as their life burns to ash right in front of them, and I had to step up and take pictures of their grief. Christmas Eve fatal crashes, Christmas Day fatal house fires. Pets trapped in burning structures. Riots, police standoffs, tear gas. Homicides, suicides, police shootings. Funerals. Memorials. Death around every corner.

So much pain, so much hurt, so much loss. I bore witness.

I have nightmares and even daymares. Ones where I see that little boy sinking to the bottom, still strapped in and unable to free himself, watching the bottom of the dock rise up as the darkness enveloped him, the chilly water rushing in when he tried to scream. Just feet above, his dad running around in a panic. Even if he’d looked into the water, it was dark, murky. You couldn’t see a neon-pink Corvette eight feet down, let alone a small child.

I weep and weep.

So when people say, “hey, write a memoir” I kind of have to tell a story like the drowning. Then they understand quickly that trying to recall good parts of those twelve years is pointless. A quarter of my life is one big can of worms that I can’t really ever dare pry open. It pops open enough on its own. Bursting at its seams with horror.

No, there will be no memoir. I’d rather simply not remember.

I hope that’s okay with everyone.