Before she leaves for work, Heidi Levine goes through the ritual of washing the floors to make sure that if she doesn’t return, no one would “have to see a messy house”.
She is being realistic, for her day job will take her straight to the front line in places like Egypt, Libya, Syria and the Gaza Strip. For the past three decades, working as a photojournalist in war zones, her life has always been in the balance.
“So far, I’ve been lucky I’ve only been hit by shrapnel but you do get emotionally wounded,” says Ms Levine, who works for the French news agency Sipa.
Her scariest moment in her long career was in Libya.
“My colleagues and I thought that’s it,” she recalls, pointing out that bomber planes were flying overhead and dropping their deadly payload in the area they were working in.
“Luckily, they kept missing us,” she adds, quipping she keeps her guardian angel busy.
Journalists in conflict zones are not immune to fear: “Of course, I was scared... it’s absolutely frightening.”
I’ve been lucky I’ve only been hit by shrapnel but you do get emotionally wounded
She has had friends and colleagues who were killed in Libya, abducted in Syria and seriously wounded in Afghanistan: “For a long time, I felt that it couldn’t happen to me but I see that, honestly, I’ve been really, really lucky.”
Every time she goes home, she cries a lot then phones her mother for support. “She understands me so much. I am lucky to have her.”
She also worries because her job affects her three children, aged 24, 25, and 27, and if she had to be seriously wounded, that would affect her family.
When she left for Syria last year, her daughter told her: “I’ll kill you if you get killed and you don’t come to my wedding.”
Her son gave her a deadline: “You have two weeks and then you have to get out of there.”
You can tell from the way her eyes well up when she talks about the balance between love of her job and that of her family that it is a conflict that tears her apart.
Originally from the US, she set off for Israel, aged 21, after she broke up with her then boyfriend. She thought it would be a good idea to work in a Jewish traditional community, a kibbutz, for some weeks. But six weeks turned into a lifetime when she got a job with the Associated Press news agency as a photojournalist.
When she got married, she set up base in Israel so she could cover a story on the Gaza Strip and still get home in time to cook dinner.
“Instead of getting on a plane, it was easier to balance being a mother and a photographer at the same time,” she says.
Living two parallel lives is not easy. “You are there dealing with people in horrific conditions. And then I’d get this call in the middle of a gun battle from my kids, asking me how to make spaghett, and you try to take the moment and continue with the conversation...”
Her emotional involvement with her subject motivates her to move on. It’s not about winning awards – she has won scores of prestigious prizes – but the response from readers when her photos are published in magazines such as Paris Match, Newsweek, Time, The New York Times Magazine and The Sunday Times Magazine.
“If I can manage to get one person off the chair and search me out and call me to offer help, then that is why I do it,” she says, recalling how a reader of Amnesty International magazine was so affected by her cover photo of an Iraqi refugee that he called to see what he could do to help. She says it is very difficult to see an end to world conflict.
“Every time I witness a peace agreement or a ceasefire, soon after I find myself in the same place covering conflict. It is a vicious circle of violence that keeps repeating itself,” she says.
“We haven’t learnt anything from history and that is very sad.”
Heidi Levine is attending a convention organised by the Malta Institute of Professional Photography and will hold photojournalism workshops at Le Meridien hotel, St Julian’s, tomorrow and Sunday. For details go to www.mipp-malta.com or call Kevin Casha on 9947 0106.