Renowned photographer Michael Amendolia recounts his journey in images he's captured with 'God of Sight' Dr Sanduk Ruit, who he fondly calls 'a maverick'
DORAMBA, APRIL 2
A picture is worth a thousand words' - and there is nothing more evident to prove this statement correct than the photographs on blindness prevention by Michael Amendolia. The distinguished Australian photographer, who likes to tell humanitarian stories through images, has captured some such powerful photographs related to eyes that have won him the World Press Photo Awards twice.
Amendolia managed to take some time out of his very busy photographing job for this interview at the Doramba Outreach Micro Surgical Eye Clinic, Ramechhap recently.
He shared, "I won both the awards for the photos related to Dr Ruit (Dr Sanduk Ruit) and the Tilganga."
His series of 12 black and white photographs depicting the 1998 eye camp in Tibet where Dr Ruit is seen doing cataract surgery of the locals along with before-and-after surgery moments of the patients made him the winner of first World Press Photo awards in the Science and Technology category in 1999.
He bagged the same award again in 2001, this time for featuring the corneal donation story - a series of 12 black and white photographs that depict how cornea was transplanted from the eyes of a dead person brought to Pashupati Aryaghat for cremation to the eyes of a girl at Tilganga, and the happiness seen in that girl's eyes at being able to see.
What's common in both the photo stories is that people have got their sight back and those moments have been captured in detail.
Nearly two decades later, Amendolia was doing the same thing at the Doramba eye camp organised by the Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology (TIO) - capturing the emotive and beautiful moments of these people who had been able to see again following the cataract surgery by Dr Ruit and his TIO team.
As honest and true Amendolia seemed to be towards his job, equally energetic and passionate was he at the age of 59 at Doramba as he was seen running around to capture the best moments with his camera hanging from his shoulder, his other gear around his waist.
The energy and passion for the work is all because "I am really motivated about not coming back with boring photographs. I am really motivated about not missing the good pictures and I am energised," said Amendolia as he added, "He (Dr Ruit) asked me to come for this camp, and I am offering my services to help Tej Kohli Foundation to achieve their goal."
Amendolia, who was first invited by Dr Ruit to take the photographs at the Mustang eye camp in 1992, has since then accompanied Dr Ruit to many such camps in the past 30 years.
Beginning as a photojournalist
Amendolia got into photography when in high school. As he loved sports, he thought: "It can't be a difficult job photographing tennis from the side of the tennis court," and started photographing the event.
However, he also figured that he had to choose something interesting as a job as he was going to have to work on it for most of his life. It was at this point that Amendolia, who was 18 then, wanted to be a newspaper photographer.
"It was like six months before finishing school," recalled Amendolia who then went to see the picture editor at Sydney Morning Herald and at News Limited - the two news organisations in Australia - to see how he could apply to be a cadet photographer.
He did not get the job immediately and as soon as he finished school, he started selling cameras at Georges. After six months of selling cameras, Amendolia got a job as copy boy at News Limited.
Recalling the time 40 years ago, he said, "I would be delivering newspapers and getting everyone's lunches."
But while working as a copy boy, he would go out and take photographs on weekends and process them in the dark room that "my father had made for me".
After 14 months as a copy boy, he got the cadetship in 1982 and had the job of sending and receiving of photos to other states, and other newspapers among others but didn't get to take any photograph.
"Three years later they let me take photographs," remembered Amendolia adding, "The point is I spent a lot of time to get to the point where I could do a good job. It took me a long time to get there."
He worked at the News Limited till the beginning of 1997.
Nonetheless, he started to do photography on his own time and would spend hours in the dark room, learning from other photographers by reading about them.
"There is no specific person who trained me other than my own reading," said Amendolia who was most inspired by American and European photographers then as "I read about them in what I could get from the library or we could buy at the time."
Into the humanitarian world
At the young age of 30 in 1992, and while still working at News Limited he was aspiring to do humanitarian type of photography. "But I was not pushy enough or progressive or knowledgeable enough to organise and do it."
He calls himself lucky enough that the newspaper's editor-in-chief suggested that "I might be good enough to go with ophthalmologist Fred Hollows to Vietnam where he was training eye surgeons on modern cataract surgery".
He recalled, "Dr Ruit had come along on this trip and was the main surgeon. Fred Hollows was more like communicating with the Vietnamese about the programme and the vision for the future on training these Vietnamese eye doctors to do this modern cataract surgery."
One of the first photos that he took then - a candid black and white photograph of Hollows and a young boy - has become the brand image of The Fred Hollows Foundation.
He met Dr Ruit for the first time on the trip who then told him 'I want you to come with me to this eye camp in Mustang'.
Amendolia recalled, "He just said it's a special place, so I looked up about Mustang and got to know that it had recently opened to limited trekkers, for Westerners."
Two weeks later, after getting approval from his "boss", he set out on a journey to Mustang as he recalled "we were the first medical delegation to go there and do the surgery".
Why follow Dr Ruit to a different country? "I was told by Fred Hollows 'Michael, you go on that trip with Ruit. You just bloody do it'," said Amendolia who was "a little bit intimidated" by Hollows then.
So he thought "it would be an adventure" and decided to fly to Kathmandu.
Upon his arrival in Kathmandu, his first-ever visit to Nepal, he realised "driving through the back streets of Kathmandu felt like going back in time" but added, "Little did I realise then that when I went to Mustang that was going to be another level of almost medieval life, seemingly."
From suffering from pounding headache to riding on a horse which he had done never before, and staying in tents along with having dinner inside cave-like places, Amendolia had unique moments in Mustang.
Yet he did a wonderful job there as a photojournalist. The photos of the Mustang camp were published first in an Australian newspaper and he wrote a story for that too.
It was published in The Daily Telegraph too.
Meanwhile, the pictures were also used like in advertising.
"Fred Hollows used it, and Dr Ruit also used it and it helped them get more supporters in Nepal and in Australia."
Upon finishing the Mustang eye camp, Amendolia returned and did a slide presentation at Hollows' house. "There he had brought all of his followers and he was very proud because Dr Ruit was like somebody he encouraged and they were contemporaries, they were like-minded soul mates almost, especially in the ophthalmic scene."
Hollows did not attend the Mustang camp as he was dying of cancer and too sick to come for the trip, as per Amendolia who shared that he died six months after setting up The Fred Hollows Foundation.
"So, I was there right at the beginning of this organisation, and this September it will be 30 years of The Fred Hollows Foundation. Dr Ruit's work started before the start of the Foundation. And that organisation was called Nepal Eye Programme," he shared as he traced some of the major developments in the world's ophthalmic scene.
Highlights of trips with Dr Ruit
Since his Mustang trip, Amendolia has been to different parts of the world with Dr Ruit in his eye camps. But he recalled Mustang trip as a really hard trip. "I would say for Dr Ruit it was probably the most challenging one physically. We went to Tibet on horse. I think he wanted to prove this can be done in the most harshest and remote circumstances. It is just a matter of your will to do it."
He also remembered the eye camp in North Korea as "the most challenging and again an example of Dr Ruit being a maverick - maybe not in a Nepali sense, but in a Western sense".
He elaborated, "Everyone is saying that the North Koreans should be sanctioned against.
But blind people are blind people whether they are in North Korea or anywhere else.
He (Dr Ruit) was going there and he wanted me to photograph and so, I agreed," shared Amendolia adding that "I had a lot of faith in him".
"I actually had no idea what's going to happen as a Westerner going to North Korea. But I felt that I was in good hands with Dr Ruit, and as it turns out we left behind a good legacy," he recalled of the 2005 eye camp.
He was asked by the North Korean officials to process all his films but that did not happen as they were leaving from Pyongyang to Beijing the next day. Otherwise, no photographer comes to North Korea and takes their film home without having them processed, he said. Nonetheless, the surgical camp there was effective, he stated.
Meanwhile, the trip that he probably enjoyed more was going to Tibet "because I have an affinity with the philosophy of Buddhism. Part of my personal growth while going on these trips with Dr Ruit to these places was being introduced to Buddhist philosophies as well as Hindu mythologies and philosophies", as per Amendolia.
His very memorable trip meanwhile was to Indonesia.
"There Dr Ruit did cataract surgeries on twin girls who were only about 14. They could never afford to have these eye surgeries if not Dr Ruit's eye camp. I remember when the patches were coming off from one of those twins' eyes, tears were rolling down her eyes and she could see something in front of her. I thought to myself, her future was really dependent on this lucky circumstance."
Along with such memories, he remembers the difficulties that they faced with power supply - in Mustang, Tibet and North Korea.
"The power would just drop off in each of those three places and then they had to fire up generator so that the operating microscope would work. The Tilganga team was put to the test, to fix the things under the most difficult circumstances. This was learning the hard way - by going to the most difficult places. But of course, if we could do it there, you could do it anywhere."
Being a photographer
Being a photographer and going to such challenging places was not an easy job then. "It's a lot easier now. The system runs like clockwork now. In the early days it was not necessarily that. There was a lot of tension, professional stress in getting everything happening correctly. So, a lot of the time I didn't know what was going on. Now those situations are put into place for all of us to benefit from. In the past I just had to hang around and make it work myself," he remembered.
And in a lot of places where the surgeries were done he would not get beautiful light. "It was a dark, dingy space and sometimes a school was converted into a hospital," he said as he added the challenge for him was to make it a compelling story visually.
"It has taken 30 years for me to know exactly what to do exactly and when. When things fall apart, I know what to do to make it work," shared Amendolia, who has observed the God of Sight Dr Ruit very closely during these 30 years.
And he identifies Dr Ruit as a man with a real purpose in life.
"He is an absolute maverick in his profession, maverick being a guy who is willing to find any solution to meet the needs that would normally be considered too difficult," said Amendolia who was inspired by Dr Ruit's humility. "He didn't have this grandiose. I think he gets a great buzz personally after achieving major life transformation.
So, it seems to others this might be like inconvenience to one's life or you are being so nice to devote your time to the underprivileged.
But I think he does it as he actually likes to do it."
And Amendolia feels the same way "as I feel am contributing to something positive as I come to take these photos".
A version of this article appears in the print on April 3, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
