MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Falklands War photos
The only professional photographer visiting the Falkland Islands at the time of the 1982 invasion, Rafael Wollman, has re-visited Stanley and taken photographs of people he photographed 20 years ago.
Some of them have been published in the Mail on Sunday in London with the headline: "The Falklands War Babies". The newspaper says "the photographer who captured the Falklands invasion on film goes back to find the people in his pictures that stunned the world".
Among them are Annette and Jimmy Curtis, then small children watching Argentine tanks in Stanley. Now, photographed at the same spot, they are adults with seven offspring between them. He quotes Annette Curtis, now 25 and a receptionist at the Leisure Centre, as saying: "The Argentine soldiers threw sweets in the streets. Jimmy and I took lots of them but my father got angry and told us not to do it. I did not understand why he was arrested". Jimmy Curtis is captain of Stanley Football Team.
Also shown are Shirley Hirtle and her daughter Michelle whom he photographed going shopping the day after the invasion. He says both are grateful to remain on the islands, and Michelle has two children of her own.
Also pictured is Kevin Kilmartin with a sheep on his farm in 1982, and as a legal consultant now, in the same red-check shirt he wore 20 years ago..
Rafael Wollman says he was sent by a French picture agency in 1982 "to portray the innocuous lifestyle of the Falklands people - farmers out in the fields shearing sheep, locals shopping and children at school". Then, many parts of the islands remained inaccessible with only four miles of roads. Now there are 175 miles, and the islands are linked to the outside world by hundreds of phone lines and the internet. What a difference twenty years makes!
"Growing up in Argentina through economic crises and dictatorships" Rafael Wollman writes, "I could see why the Falklanders were so grateful Britain intervened to save them. Twenty years on, I now understand why these emotions are still so strong".
Harold Briley, (MP) London See Rafael Wollmann's pictures on his website: http://www.rwphoto.com.ar E-mail: rw@rwphoto.com.ar
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