一位百歲老人見證的美國歷史

John Morris — so old his father was born just after the American civil war — has seen plenty of US history. Yet this American abroad feels that last month, aged 99, watching TV all night in Paris, he witnessed the worst political event of his lifetime. “I was with my granddaughter, she was in tears,” he says. “It was not as hard for me. I’ve been through other tragedies, usually somebody’s death. But I think Trump’s election makes it easier for me to contemplate an early death. In my case, you can’t exactly call it early but, at any rate, I’m glad I’m going to be through!”

約翰•莫里斯(John Morris)活了一大把年紀了——他的父親出生在美國內(nèi)戰(zhàn)剛結(jié)束的時候——也見證了大段的美國歷史。然而這位身在異鄉(xiāng)的美國人覺得，今年11月他算是目睹了他畢生所見的最糟糕的政治事件，當時99歲的他在巴黎觀看了整晚的電視。“我的孫女和我在一起，她淚流滿面，”他說，“我不像她那么難過。我經(jīng)歷過其他悲劇，通常是有人離世。但是我想特朗普當選讓我更容易去思考早點死這件事。在我身上說早不太準確，但無論如何，我很慶幸我快走了!”

The number of American centenarians — a cohort that had an outsize role in shaping modern history — has burgeoned in recent years to more than 70,000 and counting. Morris will join their ranks on December 7, though you’d never guess it from his spookily unlined face and thick white hair. He is possibly the photo-editor who did most to depict the 20th century: he started with the Spanish civil war, published his friend Robert Capa’s 11 D-Day pictures in Life magazine and, in 1972, put the Vietnamese “Napalm Girl” photo on The New York Times’ front page. He still beavers away. We meet in his home office, where there are piles of newspapers — “A Startling New Political Reality”, says a US headline — and neat inboxes marked “Urgent” and “Thank You”. Yet post-Trump, Morris is left wondering whether his twin life-long endeavours — political activism and photojournalism — achieved anything.

近年來，美國百歲老人——該群體在現(xiàn)代歷史的發(fā)展進程中發(fā)揮了重要作用——的數(shù)量增加到了7萬人以上，并且還在增加之中。莫里斯于12月7日跨入了百歲老人之列，但從他臉上異常平滑的皮膚和濃密的白發(fā)上你絲毫猜不出他的年紀。他可能是在記錄20世紀的歷史方面貢獻最大的圖片編輯：他從西班牙內(nèi)戰(zhàn)時開始投身這行，在《生活》(Life)雜志上刊登了他的朋友羅伯特•卡帕(Robert Capa)拍攝的、諾曼底登陸日(D-Day)的11張照片，1972年他在《紐約時報》(The New York Times)頭版刊登了越南“燒夷彈的女孩”(Napalm Girl)照片。他現(xiàn)在仍然堅持工作。他在家里有辦公室，我們就在那里見面，屋里擺著成堆的報紙——一張美國報紙的頭條標題寫著《令人震驚的新政治現(xiàn)實》(A Startling New Political Reality)——和整齊碼放、標著“緊急”和“謝謝”的文件籃。不過在特朗普勝選后，莫里斯不由得開始琢磨他畢生奮斗的兩項事業(yè)——政治行動主義和新聞攝影——是否有任何意義。

His life changed on his 25th birthday, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Life magazine sent him on a Norwegian freighter to wartime London, where he witnessed “the first drones”, Hitler’s pilotless V1 missiles. “We wasted a lot of time trying to photograph the drones. The story was in the faces of the people looking up.”

他的人生在25歲生日時出現(xiàn)了轉(zhuǎn)折，當時日本轟炸了珍珠港(Pearl Harbor)?！渡睢冯s志派他搭乘一艘挪威貨船前往戰(zhàn)時的倫敦，他在那里親眼見到了“最早的無人機”——希特勒的V1飛彈。“我們浪費了很多時間想要拍攝無人機，其實故事都寫在人們抬頭看天的臉上。”

In 1944, after D-Day, Morris followed the Allied armies into France. He hung out with Capa and Ernest Hemingway, took spellbinding photographs — his favourite is of a captured young German soldier, almost a child, glaring into the lens — and reached Paris days after the Liberation. Shown around by a local photographer named Henri Cartier-Bresson, he fell for the place. “Someday we must live in Paris,” he wrote to his wife in the US. He finally moved here long after her death, in 1983.

1944年，在諾曼底登陸事件后，莫里斯跟隨盟軍進入法國。他和卡帕、歐內(nèi)斯特•海明威(Ernest Hemingway)一起，拍攝了許多精彩照片——他最喜愛的一張是一個被俘虜?shù)哪贻p德國士兵的照片，那個看起來還是孩子模樣的士兵盯著鏡頭。解放巴黎幾天后，他來到了這座城市。一位名為亨利•卡蒂埃-布列松(Henri Cartier-Bresson)的當?shù)財z影記者帶他四處參觀，他愛上了巴黎。“有朝一日，我們一定要在巴黎住，”他給當時身在美國的妻子寫信說道。1983年，在他妻子去世后很久，他終于遷居巴黎。

He plans to die in Paris but there is so much to do first. He still hosts campaign events for Democrats Abroad, and feels sick that Bernie Sanders didn’t win the party’s nomination. “He was cheated by the money people who have the Democratic Party as their instrument of power. My attempt now will be to try to reform the party.”

他計劃在巴黎終老，但在這之前還有太多未了之事。他仍然主持著民主黨海外部(Democrats Abroad)的競選活動，并且對于伯尼•桑德斯(Bernie Sanders)沒能獲得黨內(nèi)提名耿耿于懷。“他被那些把民主黨當成權(quán)力工具的有錢人坑了。我現(xiàn)在的目標是試著改革民主黨。”

And so Morris gives political speeches, when he isn’t staging exhibitions or working on new books. We leaf through the dummy of his photobook My Century: beautiful people smoking, flirting, having fun, almost all of them now dead. Even his Republican sister finally went, aged 103.

因此，如今莫里斯只要不是在布展或?qū)懶聲?，就是忙著發(fā)表政治演講。我們翻閱了他的攝影集《我的世紀》(My Century)：一張張抽煙、調(diào)情或取樂的漂亮面孔，差不多所有人都已經(jīng)離世了。就連他那共和黨籍的姐姐也終于離世了，享年103歲。

In the early 1970s, The New York Times prepared Morris’s obituary, thinking he was about to die, but he’s a survivor. “I’ve lost two children. I had four. The first girl died as an infant, and the second one at age 72. I’ve been a widower three times. I have times when I think, ‘God, if I could just get finished with this.’ On the other hand, I have happy moments. I have a wonderful lady. She can be a pain in the neck sometimes. She gets thinking about things which seem unimportant to me, like what shirt I’m wearing. But love gives me the courage to continue.”

上世紀70年代初，《紐約時報》準備了莫里斯的訃告，以為他不久人世了，但他至今健在。“我有兩個子女過世了。我有4個子女。第一個女孩在襁褓中夭折，第二個活到了72歲。我三次失去了伴侶。有時我會想，‘上帝啊，讓我就這樣了此一生吧。’不過我也有快樂的時光。我太太老好了。她有時很讓人頭疼。她總想一些對我來說不太重要的事情，比如我穿了什么襯衣。但是愛給了我繼續(xù)下去的勇氣。”

He sees hard years ahead. Looking ahead to President Trump, he recalls the president who bombed Hiroshima. “Harry Truman was a fine man, he was honest, but he was far from the most qualified man to have become president. The first thing he did was drop not one but two atom bombs. It was just absolutely unnecessary. I keep thinking back to Truman, which was a political disaster although it was not recognised as such at the time.”

他預(yù)感未來日子不太平。展望未來的特朗普總統(tǒng)，他回想起了那位下令轟炸廣島的總統(tǒng)。“哈里•杜魯門(Harry Truman)是個好人，誠實，但他絕不是最適合當總統(tǒng)的那個人。他做的第一件事是扔原子彈，不是一顆、而是兩顆。這完全沒必要。我常想起杜魯門，那是一場政治災(zāi)難，盡管當時沒人意識到這點。”

. . . ……

Other disasters followed: Morris considers America’s wars from Korea onwards unnecessary. “I hold that against my own country,” he says. So he doesn’t consider himself part of “the greatest generation”? “I feel that my generation failed. I think we should have been the greatest generation, but we were a very fortunate generation as long as we kept within our own shores.”

其他災(zāi)難接踵而至：莫里斯認為，美國從越戰(zhàn)起經(jīng)歷的所有戰(zhàn)爭都沒有必要。“這一點我對我的祖國有看法。”這么說他不認為自己屬于“最偉大的一代”?“我覺得我們這一代人失敗了。我想我們本該成為最偉大的一代，但如果我們待在自己的國土，我們是非常幸運的一代。”

Morris’s credo was always that photography could improve the world by showing it. Now he’s no longer so sure. “I worry about the overuse of pictures. Trump is flamboyant, and if he could not have been photographed continuously I don’t think he’d be president. I’m afraid photojournalism helped him achieve the presidency.”

以前莫里斯一直抱著這樣的信念：通過展示世界，攝影可以讓世界變得更好。如今他不那么確定了。“我擔心照片被濫用了。特朗普是個惹眼的人，如果他不是老被拍照，我不認為他能當總統(tǒng)。我擔心新聞攝影幫他當上了總統(tǒng)。”

Looking back, did all Morris’s work make any difference? “OK, that’s my point. This is what I keep asking myself. If we really get into another cold war, I’ve got to say, ‘What the hell am I doing around?’ I was opposed to the first cold war. The most important thing to me has been war and peace. I don’t think we’ve made enough difference.” But he will keep trying.

回首往事，莫里斯的作品是否起到了什么作用?“好吧，這就是我的癥結(jié)。我一直在問自己這個問題。如果我們真的再一次陷入冷戰(zhàn)，我會說，‘我到底做了什么?’我反對第一次冷戰(zhàn)。對我來說，最重要的事就是戰(zhàn)爭與和平。我不認為我們帶來了足夠大的改變。”但是他會繼續(xù)努力。