Death of a dream (part 1)

I always dreamed of being a journalist. I chased that dream for over twenty years. Now it’s time to admit the truth - there’s nothing left worth dreaming of.
---
My first photograph was published in a sports magazine when I was 23. It wasn’t particularly good, just a mediocre shot of two guys grappling on the mat, but the magazine needed a photograph from a judo competition, and I was there - a young judo coach and an amateur photographer, shooting pictures of the tournament. I was their only choice. I don’t remember being paid for the picture. It didn’t matter - having my name printed in the magazine was all I could care about. At that time an outrageous thought formed in my head for the first time: how sweet would it be to work for Vecernji List, a national daily newspaper with the circulation of around 250,000! It was more a dream than a goal. A dream worth dreaming.

Two years later, a friend from judo who was also a sports journalist, took me down a long corridor of Vjesnik high-rise, where most of Zagreb’s newspapers and magazines had their offices. We walked into the Vecernji List’s photo department’s office, a long, narrow space with windows along one side and drywall separating it from the open-concept newsroom at the other side of the corridor. There were two lines of desks with young men around my age sitting or standing around, chatting or reading newspapers, their camera bags and gear spread on their desks. As my friend introduced me to Karlo, the photo editor, the chatter died down and I felt everybody’s eyes on me. My hands were sweaty when I handed a stack of 4x6 black and white photographs to Karlo. They were shots from my roaming through the town: city, people, daily life and scenery, all developed in my darkroom in the bathroom. Some of them were already yellowing - my mother couldn’t wait any longer to use the bathroom, and I had to cut the fixing time short for the whole batch. Karlo shuffled through the pictures as through the stack of cards, then looked up at me.

“You have an eye for the detail,” he said. “Come in tomorrow morning and we’ll give you a try.”

Another two years later I stood in the same room, distributing cevapi, a local specialty, and drinks to my friends photographers. It was my farewell treat for them - I was moving to the Associated Press, the world’s biggest news agency. Renato, one of the photographers, pulled me aside.

“I remember when you first came in,” Renato said. “You looked so confused, I thought you won’t last a day.” He paused, looking at me, but seeing the younger, confused version of two years ago. “I would have never thought that such a talent could just walk in straight off the street.”

To this day I consider that the biggest compliment I ever got.

To be continued...

Note:
I originally started this post as just another blog post. Somewhere half the way through I realized how much there is that I want to say, and decided to break it into parts, to conform to the blog format. ~Zoran