From the Publisher

By Elizabeth P. Valk

For a news photographer, it is a sort of Triple Crown, and TIME photographer Christopher Morris has become the first to win it. He has been named Magazine Photographer of the Year (1991) by the National Press Photographers Association and the University of Missouri school of journalism, and the International Center of Photography gave him its Infinity Award for Journalism. Last week he stopped briefly in New York City between overseas assignments, as he put it, "to rest and pay some bills" -- and also to pick up the most prestigious award of all: the Robert Capa Gold Medal, given by the Overseas Press Club for "best photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise."

Certainly he showed all that and more during five months of filming the devastating civil wars in Yugoslavia. Working overseas since 1983 as a photographer for the Black Star agency, and since January 1990 on full-time contract to TIME, Morris, 33, set out at first to cover political subjects but found himself quickly drawn to violent conflict. "I try to look on myself as a historian as well as a photographer," he explains, and "conflict seemed the most important" development wherever he roamed. Chris has by now filmed wars, revolutions and riots in every part of the world. Covering the gulf war a year ago, he and another TIME photographer, Anthony Suau, got out ahead of coalition forces and were captured and held prisoner for six days by the Iraqis.

But, says Chris, Yugoslavia was by far the most "taxing mentally, emotionally and physically" of all his assignments -- and the most dangerous as well. "There is no guidebook or rule book" on how to do it, he explains: because of the free-form nature of the fighting, "no one can stop you from going anywhere you want." It usually was possible to drive right into a battle -- and impossible to avoid shelling and sniper fire; some of his friends were in fact killed. To militiamen in a civil war, says Chris, "if you're a civilian you're down in a basement. If you're above ground you must be another combatant, and you're fair game." How can one take pictures under those conditions? "You don't," says Morris simply. "You spend most of the time hiding in ditches and basements." He adds, though, that "you develop an instinct" for knowing when it is, well, not exactly safe but feasible, to come out and start shooting pictures. As his awards testify, the photos Chris then took capture the human suffering caused by war with heart-wrenching impact.