photojournalist Farid Khayrulin :: Baku photo, Azerbaijan photo, foto, photogallery, oil photo

The 20th of January is recent history for the young generation and a never healing wound for the older one. For the rest of the world, the 20th of January is the historical photographs taken by Farid Khayrulin, a photojournalist, a winner of the Khumaj and G. Zardabi awards.

– I heard that the Soviet troops had entered Baku at 2 AM. In the morning, I took a drive to the center of the city. The first thing I saw near the Azizbekov metro station was a KamAZ, whose cab was riddled with bullets. The inside of the cab was covered in blood. I was terrified. I don’t know how, but I managed to take a few photographs.

I was told that the most horrifying things had happened on the Tbilisi Avenue, at the lower gates of the Salyan barracks. I drove there. At an intersection I saw a barricade, broken trucks and buses standing nearby. When I approached the intersection I saw a picture that stunned me. The asphalt was all covered in engine oil and blood. Fragments of human bodies were scattered all around.

Despite a cacophony of shots, I walked without crouching, thinking that no one would possibly want to shoot at me – I forgot that “a bullet doesn’t pick its target”. I had only four cameras. Photographs had to be taken in color, on a slide film…

It was there that I took the famous photographs of an ambulance car. Doctor Makhrevka had died in it.

We sent the photographs to Moscow, to the central office of the TASS agency. Our works were rejected; they called us on the phone from Moscow shouting «What are you sending us, this is all a hoax!». We exchanged angry words and suspended our partnership for a while. The deputy director of the Moscow agency was Gevorkov.

We stopped working for Moscow and started sending the films to the branch offices of foreign agencies: «France-Press», «Associated Press», «Reuters» and others. Merely two days after the tragic events my photographs spread around the world.

Many years have passed since those days. A new generation has come of age. Every year, on the 20th of January, hundreds of thousands of people visit the Alley of Martyrs to honor the memory of the dead. Like in the previous years, I will be going with them. To honor the memory of our martyrs and to take photographs…