A family of cameramen witnesses life’s joys and sorrows through the lens

Witnessing both the joys and sorrows of life through the lens, the cameramen have much to say about what takes place on the other side of it.

Berber currently works for Bloomberg TV, while the members of his family are employed by a variety of agencies -- all as cameramen: Adem Gümüş works for Habertürk TV, Mehmet Alan for TRT Haber, Cemalettin Alan for Samanyolu TV, Uğur Demirci for KANAL A, Yasin Alan for the Cihan news agency and Yusuf Alan for a production company. Berber, who has 26 years in the profession under his belt, has even taught the trade to relatives whose birth he remembers.

“My dream was to become a military officer, but I left that behind in secondary school; when I failed in music lessons, I was not able to qualify to attend military school,” he said.

He said when he was discouraged about his future career prospects, he met late director Bülent Arımlı, who taught him how to operate a camera. In 1985 he used a camera for the first time and has been carrying one on his shoulders ever since.

Since there was only one TV channel in Turkey in those times, state-run TRT, Berber started his career by carrying a tripod, which is considered as the first step to becoming a cameraman. By the 1990s, after the number of TV channels increased and with the establishment of private TV channels, Berber found more opportunities to work as a cameraman. In due time, he began working for foreign news agencies such as the BBC, CNN and AP in addition to Turkish TV channels and agencies.

‘I saw 15 governments, 5 presidents through the lens’

Throughout his profession, Berber said, he has filmed 15 governments and five presidents with his camera.

“When I began the job on Dec. 1, 1985, the 45th government, the [then-Prime Minister Turgut] Özal government was in power. Since then, I have filmed 15 governments and five presidents. God willing, I hope to see the sixth president,” Berber said. The veteran cameraman said he has no regrets about being a cameraman and that his only complaint about his job is having to be far from his family for long periods, such as when he goes to a foreign country or another province to follow an event or story.

Berber said his profession gives him the opportunity to laugh and cry on the same day, as well as be in completely opposite settings.

“I was sometimes moved to tears by what I witnessed through the lens -- such as at the funeral of a martyr or the funerals of teachers killed by terrorists. Although we are used to the idea that this is part of our job, we are human beings at the end of the day and we cannot always hold back tears,” he said.

On one occasion, Berber said he filmed a president receiving a dignitary at the presidential palace on the same day he went down into a sewer for a live broadcast of a bank robbery in Ankara’s Balgat district.

He also said being a cameraman gave him the opportunities he would otherwise not have to go and see all the provinces in Turkey as well as many countries in the world.

“I am the son of a day laborer. I would never have though that I would be able to see so many places in my life,” he said.

Berber began encouraging his relatives and friends to consider the profession of a cameraman, and his cousin Adem Gümüş, who was 14 at the time, started working as one. Gümüş is followed by Berber’s childhood friends and other relatives and eventually the number of people who started their working life as cameramen thanks to Berber’s efforts exceeded 40.

Gümüş says that although there are many challenging aspects of his job, he does not want to quit. “When I was only married for three mounts, I went to the mountains in the country’s Southeast to film the peshmerga, and incidents of terrorism were very common in the region back then,” he said.

Mehmet Alan, a cameraman from TRT Haber, is so fond of his camera that he once slept with it, fearing that it might be stolen. “We were in Italy to follow the capture of [outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah] Öcalan in 1999. We waited at the airport for 20 hours. Fearing that my camera might be stolen, I tied my camera to my body with a chain and slept with it,” he said.