They Photographed Mumbai

The New York Times has a fascinating feature story on two 50ish photographers who took pictures of the Mumbai massacre. The Mumbai Mirror’s Sebastian D’souza hid in train cars to take his now famous photo of Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, the only terrorist to be captured alive. (The Times says another, unpublished photo of Kasab makes him look like “a college student, with a slightly floppy haircut, cargo pants and what appears to be a sweatshirt.”) Photographer Vasant Prabhu, of The Indian Express, wound up photographing the grisly aftermath. He got into the Taj Hotel with police officers and found shots like “a Western couple clad in white…sprawled lifelessly near an ice bucket and some wineglasses.” Both men could easily have been killed themselves; Prabhu says he prayed to a Hindu god when he was forced to use a flash.