He made up his mind while tending to his roses in his backyard in Paris. When French photographer Patrick Chauvel, 72, learned that Russian troops were gathering on the border of Ukraine, he declared, “I’m not going to be gardening while all of this is happening.” Chauvel had an assignment from Paris Match for a feature story in St. Petersburg. During a stopover in the Amsterdam airport, he called his editors to say he was heading for Ukraine instead and instructed a young writer to go fetch his flak jacket from his home.
Chauvel, married five times and a father of five, is a veteran of 34 conflicts and got his start as a war photographer in Vietnam at the age of 19. He is just one of a startling number of combat-seasoned photojournalists who are old enough to collect Social Security and have decided to put retirement on pause to cover the largest mobilization of forces Europe has seen since 1945. Theirs is a bittersweet reunion, and perhaps a valedictory tour of duty for men and women who have been documenting horrifying conflicts around the world for 50 years.
