GETTY SEES BHUTTO GO DOWN!

GETTY SEES BHUTTO GO DOWN! - Getty Images senior staff photographer, John Moore (a member of the 2005 AP team that won a Pulitzer for Iraq), was photographing Benazir Bhutto moments before the attack that left her dead. He has taken what is probably the last press photograph to show her alive. More importantly, he was a witness to the disputed circumstances of her death. John Moore was standing in front of Benazir Bhutto's vehicle, photographing her as she stood in the sun roof, waving to the crowd. He heard what he describes as a number of shots and saw Benazir Bhutto go down into the vehicle, which accelerated. He pressed his shutter button and began to capture the event. He shot a rapid succession of images on motordrive. This series, taken after Bhutto went down, shows the eruption of a fireball, marking the explosion that went off behind her. She was already down before the blast occurred. Moore was largely unhurt by the bomb that killed a score of other people and horribly injured many more. He believes he may have been shielded by Bhutto's vehicle, and sadly by the crowd between him and the source of the explosion. His shirt and his face were spattered with the blood of other people. John Moore has said his final photograph of the former Pakistani Prime Minister was taken from some distance out. The image as it has tended to be used in the press has been a close crop on her vehicle, simulating a point-of-view situated in the jostling crowd immediately in front of her. This enlargement makes the image appear more blurred than it was. You could speculate that, were it not for the historical significance of the shot, it might have been discarded.