French, tall, straight-backed, graceful, striking; she never conducted herself with anything less than poise and style. Brave and funny, her legendary moods could be capricious and mercurial, but her sense of purpose was unwavering: “take picture” was her heavily-accented war cry, and take pictures she did: brilliantly. She was only one person. But with her death in October, aged only 45, the gang suddenly seems very small indeed, reduced far more than ever imaginable by a single loss.

Despite the fame that followed the recognition of her work she was curiously unaffected by the hubris of vanity suffered by so many of her peers. “Hoohoohoo,” she laughed to me, at herself, one afternoon in Kosovo on hearing the news of an award she had been given for one particular frame. “I don’t do much, me, but what I do, I do well.”

Photography was part of her genetic make-up. Her father Pierre Boulat was a star Life photographer in the fifties and sixties. Her mother Annie set up the French photo agency Cosmos. Alex lived and breathed photography. It was part of her essence, an ingrained part of her soul. She was totally unremmitting in her drive to capture images, and tough on herself in dedication of that pursuit. However she regarded herself fundamentally as an artisan practising a skill, and remained uncorrupted by her many accolades and awards.

Born in 1962, as a young woman Alex was initially persuaded against a career in photography by her father and instead studied fine art at the Beaux-Arts in Paris before working as an artist. Always attracted by extremes, part of her heart forever the rebel, she was drawn into the sub-culture art scene before one day, with typical unpredictability and vehemence, ridding her studio of her canvasses and starting work as a photographer.

She won her spurs as a war photographer covering the Balkan conflicts of 1991-1999. Through Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo she became one of the tight-knit gang of journalists who were so severely defined and bonded by the experience in a way not seen since their Vietnam-era predecessors.

Though her work became ever more refined as her talent developed, she never became cynical or hardened by her exposure to so much violence. She could shed tears, even sob, in the aftermath of witnessing the suffering of others, and her essential empathy with her subjects was one of the hallmarks of her work. Indeed, after the Balkan wars had finished she began to move away from high-impact, quick selling war images, and explore in detail the lives of war’s victims, especially women. Nor was Alex foolish enough to be limited by the restrictive label of ‘war-photographer’. Her curiousity was far too hungry, and was responsible for the number of features she later shot for National Geographic. In 2001, two days before the attacks on the World Trade Centre, Alex founded VII, a co-operative photo agency, with six colleagues. VII emerged quickly as the Magnum of the digital age, specialising in covering cultural and political conflict as well as war. Her dexterity was proven again, as if it needed to be, a year later when she won the World Press Photo award for her photographs of Yves St Laurent’s last show. Forty years earlier her father had shot the fashion designer’s first show.

Utterly  and  delightfully  eccentric, whether in war or peace, the jungle or an office, her travails were accompanied by the clink of the I-Ching coins she used as an aid to her decision process; clouds of cigarette smoke, and the frequent expostulation of “putain” – ‘whore’. Her laughter rolled up from her belly to her teeth; her tears were many and uncontrived. She was a great woman, and enriched the world of her friends with her presence.

We all  heaved a quiet sigh of relief, however, when she met Issa Freij.
Her turbulence and drama had often been reflected in her choice of relationships with men. Now though, with Issa, she seemed suddenly calmer, contented by deep happiness. This spring, photographing my daughter and sharing in the delight of my own fortunes of family, she told me that she had found in Issa the love of her life. It was deserved.

In Ramallah in June this year, where she was working while living with Issa, Alexandra suffered an aneurism. Moved to a hospital in Paris, she never regained consciousness and died on the 5th October.

Goodbye Alexandra. You leave much behind. To the world you bequeathe an iconic body of images: unfinished symphony and befitting will of a pre-eminent woman photojournalist at the top of your profession. To your friends and family, your mother, your sisters and Issa, you leave admiration and a terrible missing. Mostly though, you leave love. I hope you find some barricades in heaven.

Never again, that joyous smile, the heavy French accent,
Her laughing dismissal of my struggling with her tongue,
The enquiries of when and who and where.
What’s safe?  Shall we go there?  Did you know that….?
How long ago is Croatia?  In Sarajevo, incarcerated through the winter of ’93.
Huddled together in the dining room, we seemed to eat gruel, yet so much
Better off than the people, the subjects of
Her reportage, always the people.  When we cameramen
Were ducking as the sniper fired, trying to get that shot of the smoke puff,
She was shooting the kids sheltering behind the dumpster, the woman
With mud on her face fresh from her husband’s grave,
The old couple in the graveyard of wooden markers.

On the L’Armee de l’Air, already taxiing, its tail ramp closing on Bukavu
Only to inexplicably stop. The ramp winding down. And there she was,
Alex running up, bundling her kit in the back, a momentary.
Pause for that one last persistent passenger.
Clambering over stuff lashed to the floor, she slammed down
Beside me, grabbed my face, kissing me enthusiastically.
An effusive greeting, a celebration we were both still alive
Because the last time I’d seen her was in the horrible
Carnage of Kigali as the massacres wound down;
She shooting the child beside It’s dead mother, the young husband
Carrying his wife’s body away to bury between the banana trees.

It’s breakfast.
In the Mandarin, Jakharta, a five star hotel in the middle of a crisis
I’m filling my plate with smoked fish when
Two hands blind fold my eyes.
“It’s me!”, “Alex!!!” I explode, the fish forgotten.
I Hug her. She’s so proud. Her first National
Geographic assignment – women in Indonesia.
I’m about to fly back into Timor’s hell.

The second Intifada.
Jenin.
Jerome and Alex in the AFP landrover behind me.
We manage to sneak through their iron grip.
She clucks, puckering her lips in that oh, so French way
“So bad these Israelis”.  She’s shooting the small boy lying
In the hospital with half a head, a big bandage over his eyes.
From the hospital we’re running. Clambering over rubble
Newly made in Palestine, by Israel.
Hiding in houses, running between blocks, over
A ridiculously high wall to drop 15 feet the other side
Then Alex is talking to a granny.  They’ve no food.  Their boy’s
Been gone these past 10 days. Granny cries into her blue scarf.
Alex’s eye to the viewfinder. A grim set of her narrow lips
She touches granny’s shoulder as we run on.

in the AFP rabbit hutch in Baghdad’s Information
Ministry. Between packing crate partitions, smoke curls up from
Ashtrayed cigarettes, a tangle of cables,
Computers overheating as they send material out to a
Waiting world. Small groups talking, wondering, asking,
Heads together, anxious, but determined to stay.

She comes to me a couple of evenings before the war,
The American nets have bolted.  Other people are leaving,
“Tim…. what do you think? I think we stay, huh?!” she cocks her head
In that way she had, her cigarette between two fingers.
“Bien sur.  We’ll be OK. Stick with Jerome.  We’ll all be in the
Palestine together…”
“Yes, I’m sure…”
But her eyes were nervous. The strain showing. The toll on everyone,
Ripping relationships apart, confirming some
And cementing others for always.

So memory stretches and contracts across seventeen years
Of meetings and partings.  Members of an exclusive, small
Ever changing community of the damned…. damned by our
Own choice to see the very worst of humanity. And yet
Alex always made sure that, where as we went for the
Bang, bang – she put the human face on the page. She cared
For the desperate she framed. She was as transient as any of us
Moving from theatre to theatre, making pictures that mattered.

Until the last time I saw her. I could have bunked it. Too late,
Too far, too much effort in the daily rush of things, I’d rather go home
To sleep, but there was something else; that it was her work, which so many
Times I’d witnessed in the making, being celebrated,
That I’d see Alex again, far from the desperation for once.
I was drawn because I’m off the road – so who knew when I’d see her again?
Our connection wasn’t normal or regular like that.

It took a week for me to find out she’d died.
Five months to even know that she was ill – and by then it was too late.
But that night at the Front Line Club – she’d thought she’d be the foreigner,
An outsider to the the anglophone circle of newsmongers and practitioners, But was overwhelmed by the response of an audience she didn’t know
Cared or even recognised her work.  The place was full.
She was thrilled, almost to the point of being unable to speak.
I’m so pleased I made the effort – we dined together afterwards
She insisting I sat beside her, the queen for the night. I was honoured.

Now, I’m at a loss. Although I didn’t speak or write to her frequently,
When we met in some terrible place, some place before it became
Terrible because it would, there would be a moment of deep joy
And then we’d remember or think of each other now and again
Through the weeks and months between, till our next unscheduled meeting.
But now there will be no more meetings.
Alex… I am bereft that I’ll never see you across a bullet riddled street,
In the lobby of a dreadful hotel,  in some shitty place.
A bientot….