Michael Buerk: Mo Was a Great Survivor

"Mo was the great survivor, apparently indestructible, a character so much larger than life that even though he plied his trade in the world’s killing grounds, even though he could be damaged, he would never be destroyed."

"I remember being so desperately scared driving along the sinister dirt roads of the Luwero triangle in Uganda’s dark days, waiting for the MiGs to attack the roof of the old Ghion Hotel in Mekelle, then getting ready to go out again to the ruined streets of Mogadishu with their packs of teenage murderers. On all these occasions and many others, I drew strength from Mo."

"I always felt that if I could stay close enough to him, I would be OK. Thinking about it now, that was probably the most dangerous place to be. He was no media cowboy, no thrillseeker; each risk was carefully calculated, but he was always brave and committed. And his genius was in being there when it happened."

"I expected to grow old with Mo, to catch up with him every couple of months, and watch him grow richer and crankier. I would even see him slow down a bit, but always with some new project or some old feud to drive forward with his amazing energy."

"He is now fixed in my memory, in his prime, as one of the most extraordinary and vivid men I have ever met."

"Maybe it is better than all that vigour, drive and force of life dribbling away in old age. But I miss him and he has left a big hole in all our lives."

"Mo was probably the most famous cameraman in the world - an amazing achievement for somebody born into a poor Asian family in colonial Africa, who had to teach himself how to take pictures, and who operated throughout his life thousands of miles from his peers and from those who used his material."

"Not many cameramen are well-known and very few become famous. Hardly any come from great agencies, like Reuters, on whom everybody else depends, whose journalists are so admired within our industry, but who are normally unknown to the audiences they serve."

"There was nothing anonymous about Mo. He became a legend and worked hard at it not just because he was as much, if not more, of an egotist than the rest of us in this business, but also because he knew how helpful it was to be famous. He had been unknown, an outsider, and a supplicant for a long time. Maybe that was what drove him so hard."

"Mo was a good cameraman, gifted, with a stills photographer’s eye for the telling close-up. In the worst situations - when it was very dangerous, or when some huge tragedy threatened to drown emotion, feeling, and judgment - he was one of the very best."

"In the highlands of Ethiopia in 1984, during the great famine, he worked with ruthless compassion - emotionally engaged but professionally detached. We did not speak much. I do not know what we could have said to each other that could have been adequate. We gathered pictures and information and each did our best to tell stories to hundreds of millions of people, rather than waste the intensity of our feelings on each other."

"He was a strange man. He looked and sounded tough. A bit of swagger, and lots of bravura. Brisk, brusque, sometimes downright rude. But he had a wonderful sense of humour and boyish mischief. He was such fun to be with, especially when the going got rough."

"There was a deep vein of compassion in him. When Mo got involved, he did not just lend his name, he gave the full force of his personality. Things got fixed. Things got done."

"It was not just the big projects, though. Since he died, I have received dozens of letters from people who felt he was special because they were somehow special to him. Ordinary people that he took time and trouble to help even though his life was so busy, filled with projects, that his working day often began at four in the morning and end at 11pm."

"He was not a saint. It was not easy working for him, even if he drove others only half as hard as he drove himself. Having him work for you was probably even worse. Independent, intractable, a bureaucrat’s nightmare, he was the antithesis of a corporate man."

"But he was a star. He achieved what no other cameraman has; not just in the handful of video cassettes that once saved more than a million lives, but in what he was, his life, and what he made of it."

"Talent, determination, warmth, and humanity - he packed several lives into one. I am lucky to have known him and so glad he was my friend."