مسيرة:رمزي حيدر ramzi haidar.مؤسس“جمعية مهرجان الصور -الذاكرة”وبإتحاد المصورين العرب

I took a picture … then I got shot'

​Lebanese photographer Ramzi Haidar has spent decades searching for the piano-playing militiaman who saved his life.(ABC News: Tom Hancock)
The image is rich with contrasts: the serene fighter with stylish hair and denim outfit at the piano in a warzone.

He is pushing the pedals with his decidedly un-combat shoes, one Kalashnikov over his shoulder and another resting on the imported French piano, surrounded by the extravagant furniture of an opulent home that is already scarred by war.

Haidar was aged 24 when he took the image — about the same age as the Piano Man himself.

With the image safely in his camera, Haidar walked out of the house and was shot in the head.

"I took a picture … what happened next is I got shot. It felt like a sudden shock. It was a bit like in movies when a man gets hit by a bullet. I saw, like in a film, my whole life running past," he said.

As Haidar lay injured, he imagined his mother's grief if he died.

"The most painful part was to see my mother in our village in the south, Jouwaya, that was occupied back then by Israel, she was mourning my death and all the people I knew from the village were surrounding her," he said.

The Christian fighters from the mansion scrambled to save Haidar.

"The man in the photograph is one of the persons who took me to the hospital. I have been searching for him ever since."
Haidar never learned Piano Man's name, but he has not given up the search.

"I've asked the former militiamen he was fighting with but they've lost track of him. He has travelled abroad. I know that he's still alive," he said.

"If ever I find him, I don't know what I will tell him. It's confusing."
Photographers urge people not to forget horrors of war



Haidar's Piano Man photograph is one of 30 images of Lebanon's civil war being exhibited at Beirut's Dar al Mussawir gallery.

It is an important exhibition, according to photographer Marwan Naamani, who also has an image on display.

"We are surrounded by countries who have deadly wars now — Syria, Iraq, everywhere. We are living in a place where a personal fistfight might lead to a huge civil war again," he said.

The photographers hope their exhibition will remind people of the horrors of the civil conflict, which claimed 120,000 lives.