Photojournalists killed in LIbya

Two committed and accomplished photojournalists, Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, have been killed while working in Libya. You can find coverage of the story at The Guardian here and here and here, at The New York Times here and here and here, and at npr here.Needless to say, this is very sad.

Asked & Answered, Or What I Learned in History Class

Reading around on some photo-related blogs today, I realized that two apparently different questions prompt pretty much the same answer.

Q: What are unions good for (besides, weekends, vacations, minimum wage and working hours standards, of course)?
A: They help keep companies from killing employees (for the historically challenged - look here).

Q: What is photojournalism good for?
A: It helps keep companies from killing employees (same episode, slightly different lesson).

As I've pointed out here before, while critics like Sontag complain that photography has grown up hand-in-hand with war, it has grown up hand-in-hand with democracy too. Sometimes it is a good thing to remind ourselves of that.

The Assault on Lara Logan Should Not Be Marginal to Our Reflections on the Flowering of Democracy

Photojournalism is a dangerous occupation. But as is typically the case, the dangers are not evenly distributed. There are two forthright essays at The New York Times on the dangers that beset women journalists. You can find them here and here. The women who've written these essays - Kim Barker and Sarina Tavernise - were prompted to do so by the vicious attack on correspondent Lara Logan by a mob of men in Tahrir Square last week. It goes without saying, I hope, that Logan has proven courageous in making public her own experience. In case it doesn't, I recommend this thoughtful comment. It is good news that she apparently is recovering from the physical harm she suffered.

Yet another response to Logan's experience appears here at npr. In it, Jane Arraf rightly holds up a mirror to those here in the west who are condemning the sorts of cultures that allegedly sustain attacks like the one Logan endured. Arraf's remarks are not, as conservatives will surely insist, about blaming the West; they are an invitation to learn something about ourselves instead of merely posing as cheerleaders. There is nothing wrong with celebrating the spread of democratic values. But there is nothing wrong either with acknowledging how partially and precariously they exist here at home.

Lucas Dolega

In the Fall, renowned photographer João Silva stepped on a landmine and lost his legs. I noted that tragedy here and you can find an update on his situation here. Now another photojournalist Lucas Dolega has been killed while covering the political unrest in Tunisia. He was, it seems, murdered by security personnel. You can find a story here. There is a common tendency to romanticize photojournalists as intrepid heroes. I think it is important to resist that temptation. But it is important too, to understand how dangerous the job actually is and how many risks photographers take to cover important events.

From the Agencies

The Guardian - completely unnoticed by this crack observer of the photography world - has launched this new series (apparently starting in early October) called From the Agencies; the series aims at "Showcasing some of the world's best photojournalists" by publishing slide shows of their recent projects.

Elections in Exotic Places (4)

The Week in Pictures: Nov. 27 - Dec. 3, 2010 (Salon.com)

Police officers carry ballot boxes to a counting center at Mahalla
El Kubra, north of Cairo, Sunday. Opposition charges of ballot
stuffing, bullying and dirty tricks clouded the legislative election.
Photography © Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh.

A girl walks over electoral materials after angry voters trashed
a voting center in Port-au-Prince Sunday. Haiti's elections ended
in confusion as 12 of the 18 presidential candidates denounced
"massive fraud" and demanded the polls be annulled. Street
protests erupted over voting delays and problems.
Photograph © Reuters/Eduardo Munoz.

Local residents and opposition party supporters look through
a window into the local opposition party office where a deadly
overnight attack occurred in the Yopougon neighborhood of
Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Thursday, Dec. 2, 2010. Gunmen
attacked an office of presidential candidate Alassane Ouattara,
killing at least four people, authorities said. The unidentified
assailants used automatic weapons during the overnight
attack and were able to get to the site and escape despite
a curfew. Photograph © AP/Rebecca Blackwell.

These are three images (and captions) from the Salon.com week in pictures feature. And, as is typically the case, we are get a view of exotic elections as not just exotic, but exclusively as events surrounded by incompetence, mayhem, violence and corruption. (See earlier posts in this series here.)

Elections in Exotic Places (3)

Conakry, Guinea: A Guinean woman holds her voting card as
she enters a polling station. Photograph Jerome Delay/AP.

I have been remiss in my effort to build a base of images from which to discuss the conventions that govern 'election photojournalism.' I made some desultory efforts early last summer [1] [2] [3]; consider this a renewed effort. For this installment I offer the image above, lifted from The Guardian.

I have been prompted to take up this task again by reports from Burma on the "elections" being orchestrated there today. You can find the reports here and here; notice that one of them is image-less. Granted, this particular casting and counting of votes hardly qualifies as an election. But does the absence of photographs mean it has not happened at all?

Carolyn Drake

A Home in the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan.
Photograph © Carolyn Drake.

Spring in the Suusamyr Valley in northwest Kyrgystan.
Photograph © Carolyn Drake.

Last week I noticed this post at the Lens blog at The New York Times. It presents the truly remarkable work of Carolyn Drake from her project Paradise Rivers focusing on the deography, politics and cultures of Central Asian republics.

Moises Saman

A cemetery worker wraps the body of a man killed during fighting in Sadr
City after washing his corpse following the Islamic tradition at the Wadi as
-Salaam cemetery in Najaf, Iraq.

Photograph © Moises Saman/New York Times.

Photograph © Moises Saman/ New York Times.

I came across this brief interview with photojournalist Moises Saman in the Columbia Journalism Review. The pictures I've lifted here are the ones he discusses in the interview. You can find more about Saman and his work here.

Joao Silva

Photojournalist Joao Silva stepped on a land mine while embedded with U.S. military in Afghanistan. You can read reports here and here.

Ruth Gruber

Holocaust survivors aboard the Runnymede Park, 1947.
Photograph © Ruth Gruber.

A couple of days ago The New York Times ran this story about the making of a documentary on photographer Ruth Gruber that will premiering this month. I lifted the image above from the accompanying slide show.

Aftermath Project ~ Call for Applications (2011)

The folks at the Aftermath Project fund photographers who undertake projects aimed at countering the too common propensity to sanitize war and its consequences. You can find them and download an application here.

Passings ~ Lee Lockwood (1932-2010)

Photojournalist Lee Lockwood has died. You can find the obituary from The New York Times here. Here again my lack of background is a disability. Lockwood seems to have slipped from the limelight leaving a considerable body of provocative work.

Changing Conventions in War Photography (2)

So, I thought perhaps I was being too hasty in talking about the emergence of a new convention in war photography, one that places a premium on the 'human interest' aspect of American troops. You know, shots of the military personnel being just guys. So I had a quick, admittedly unsystematic look. The top two images below made it into the pictures of the day at the Lens blog at The New York Times last week. The top one, though, I lifted from The Washington Post who had also published it. The rest were easy enough to find on-line. Note - three different agencies, a half dozen different photographers. And we end up with the soldier in tee shirt and shorts, again.

Life in a war zone can mean improvising, including for exercise,
as illustrated by a U.S. soldier from the 1st Squadron, 71st Cavalry
at a forward operating base in Kandahar Province in Afghanistan.
The number of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan is expected to
peak at 150,000 in coming weeks. July 19th, 2010
(Manpreet Romana/agence France-presse Via Getty Images).

A U.S. soldier watches an Afghan movie on TV while relaxing at
Combat Outpost Nolen, an outlying base for the 2nd Brigade of the
101st Airborne Division, in the volatile Arghandab Valley, in Kandahar,
Afghanistan, Wednesday, July 21, 2010. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd).

A United States Marine from Bravo Company of the 1st
Battalion of the 2nd Marines eats watermelon as he rests
following a gunbattle as part of an operation to clear the
area of insurgents near Musa Qaleh, in northern Helmand
Province, southern Afghanistan, Friday, July 23, 2010.
(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer).

U.S Army First Lieutenant Sean Snook from Concord,
Massachusetts, and Alpha Company, 4th Brigade combat
team,1-508, 82nd parachute infantry regiment tees off
at FOB Bullard in Zabul province, southern Afghanistan,
February 12, 2010. (REUTERS/Baz Ratner ).

A U.S. Marine throws a football at Delaram base in
Nimroz province, southern Afghanistan January 24,
2010. (REUTERS/Marko Djurica) January 24, 2010

Spc. James Lollis, right, who was on his way to the gym, and an unidentified
soldier from the 2nd Battalion 12th Infantry take cover as incoming fire
hits inside Command Outpost Michigan at the Pech River Valley
in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, Saturday, Dec. 19, 2009.
(AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills).

There are, of course, many, many pictures of American troops, mostly in full combat gear, on patrol - sometimes they are engaged in firefights, sometimes they are menacing Afghans of various descriptions, sometimes they are talking to groups of kids or even kicking a soccer ball with them. These images are familiar enough. So the sorts of images I've lifted here are not exactly crowding out those more 'standard' images. However, with the exception of the occasional photograph of marines mourning the death of a colleague, images of death and destruction - the actual consequences of war for Afghans and the U.S. military - are exceedingly rare. In fact, other than the image of Joshua Bernard that generated so much controversy last fall, I don't recall seeing any. That may not be intended by the photographers who are covering the war, but it surely is politically convenient.

More on Euphemisms and Photographers Embedded With NGOs

Attack plan, Chad-Sudan Border, 2008. Photograph © Stanley Greene.

Yesterday, the Lens blog at The New York Times ran this interview with photojournalist Stanley Greene. Here is an excerpt in which Greene confirms my own sense that a photographer working for this or that humanitarian outfit means she is "embedded" in just the same sense - producing the same sorts of predicaments - as if she were embedded with the military or some corporation.

Q. But do you think that somebody, a young person, could look at your book — there are a lot of beautiful women and a lot of death in your book — and get the wrong idea? Or feel like this is some romantic view of what my life will be like if I follow Stanley Greene?

A. No, I try to deflate that image. When you realize that you have been with these women and you have left them and broken their hearts — and look, let’s be real here. I don’t own an apartment. I don’t own a house. I don’t own a car. I don’t have any stocks and bonds. All I own are my cameras. That’s it. And some cowboy boots.

If you want to be a success financially, please don’t follow this path.

A lot of the stories I did, I financed. I am not a good business person. I didn’t know how to negotiate with a magazine. I just simply said, “Please give me this story, and give me the go-ahead to go do it.” Or in some cases, “If I do it, and I get the pictures and I send it to you, send me money.” And that is the generation I come out of.

I live from hand to mouth. I am one of the founders of Noor. There are three agencies today: there is Magnum, there is Noor and there is VII. I have a lot of respect for VII, but I really think we are the second agency, and we did it in three years. When you say you are a founder and owner of Noor, people expect you to be rich, but we’re not. Because we are really committed to doing what we are doing and we have made sacrifices to make that happen.

And we are going to continue to make sacrifices to allow that to happen. In the end, it isn’t about money. You want to have enough money so that you can go and eat a nice meal, and you can take your family on a fairly reasonable vacation. But then you have another level, where you don’t even think about that — where you just think about the next story. How do we get the money to go do the next story?

Q. Right. But partially because of this, photographers are doing workshops and are doing N.G.O. work. They are finding different ways. They are not out trying to do fresh photo essays that they can sell to magazines. They are putting their energies into other things to make money.

A. I’m glad you brought up N.G.O.’s, because that has become a real game. Like we work for these N.G.O.’s, right? It’s advertising, so that they can raise money and they can continue to do the good that they do. We get all upset if a photographer shoots for Shell or BP. But when we think in terms of photographing for certain nonprofit organizations who have a lot of money, and we become their spokesperson, we start to lose our objectivity.

Q. Right, but what should our role be as photojournalists working for them?

A. We have to be objective; we have to accept that. For example, when I worked for Human Rights Watch, they would take my pictures and sell them to raise money. What I always admired about Corinne Dufka is that she was a great photographer. And she quit and has literally become an investigator for Human Rights Watch. I think we have to be investigators.

Q. So you’re saying that when we are working for N.G.O.’s, we may try and please the people we are working for instead of acting as true journalists?

A. A magazine editor who hires me better understand that I am going to try and show you the truth. Some of my photos were just too hard to look at. But the truth of the matter was the picture of dead Americans in Falluja was going to run against an advertisement and the advertising people said: “No, no, no. Dead American bodies? Uh oh. No, no, no. Burnt lines? No, not like that.” And in the end, Time magazine ran it in Pictures of the Year, you know? It was made for Newsweek, but it ran in Time.

Q. Because it was causing a problem with the editors? Or advertisers?

A. Yeah, but I shot the picture. I certainly didn’t say: “Would the advertisers be upset if I show dead Americans — burnt, being beaten and tossed down the street? And then hung under a bridge and cut down?”

Q. Do we need to see images like that as Americans? There have been almost no images of dead Americans published.

A. We need to see it because it’s reality. We go to the movies, and we look at violence splashed across the screen like spaghetti sauce. If we can’t stomach watching our men and women being killed in these situations, then we shouldn’t send them there to be killed in such gruesome ways. We can’t have it both ways.

You want to sit there comfortably with your newspaper and blueberry muffin, and you don’t want to see pictures that are going to upset your morning. That is the job of a journalist, to upset your morning. The problem with newspapers and magazines folding is that the investigative journalism is going to disappear. And these criminals doing these nasty and dirty things in the world are going to get away with it.

It seems, as well, that Greene grasps quite clearly the usefulness of photography in efforts to help make visible events and things that many would prefer remain out of sight and to hold perpetrators to account. Some might find much of his work stereotypical 'war photography' and consider him an anachronism of sorts. If the alternative is euphemism I know where my sympathies lie.

Elections in Exotic Places (2)

There were national elections this past week in both Burundi and Equatorial Guinea. Here are the requisite images of the current, slightly ominous, leaders of the respective countries, each accompanied by a retinue of security personnel, casting their ballots.

Burundian president Pierre Nkurunziza (R) casts his
vote at a polling station in his hometown of Mumba,
in northern Burundi's Ngozi province (28 June 2010).
Photograph: AP.

General Konate, the transition president, votes on
Sunday in the capital, Conakry (27 June 2010).
Photograph: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.

Elections in Exotic Places (1)

A while ago I promised a set of posts on the conventions that govern images in the Western press of elections in 'faraway places.' Here is the first installment. This week there have been elections in Burundi.

A voter goes to a voting booth to make her mark at a polling station in
Bujumbura, Burundi, as people prepare to vote in the presidential election
Monday, June 28, 2010. After all the opposition parties pulled out of the
race, the voters have only the choice between the ruling CNDD-FDD party
or declaring their votes invalid. Photograph © Marc Hofer/AP.

A voter at the Burundian presidential elections shows his inked finger to prove
he has cast his ballot, after voting at a polling station in the Burundian
capital of Bujumbura, Monday, June 28, 2010. After all the opposition
parties pulled out of the race, the voters have only the choice between the
ruling CNDD-FDD party or declaring their votes invalid. Despite many fears
that the voting will be disturbed by violence, the polling stations remain calm,
and attendance is not brisk. Photograph © Marc Hofer/AP.

The folks at the Lens blog over at The New York Times included the top image among the "Pictures of the Day" (28 June 2010).

My plan is to simply start posting sets of images; once I get a 'critical mass' up, I will write something. For the moment, the images are food for thought.

The Problem With Conventions

Election observers taking notes at a polling station. Voting in
Sudan’s elections has been extended by two days to ensure
technical problems do not prevent voter participation.
Photographer © Pete Muller/AP (The Guardian, 13 April 2010).

David Campbell has written this typically smart post on the photography of famine generally and famine in Africa more particularly. His concluding comments, referring to the image I've lifted above, are especially on point:

"One of my refrains for how we should understand photographs in these situations is that the problem lies with the absence of alternatives as much as it does with the presence of the stereotypes. Which means I should conclude with a double-page spread published by The Guardian this morning on the Sudanese elections. Clearly any place that is home to both food insecurity and a practicing democracy cannot be simply represented."

David is concerned with the conventions of documentary photography and photojournalism that inform depictions of large-scale human suffering in forms such as famine, epidemic, war, and other sorts of mayhem. He is especially concerned that such depictions dominate the ways that African countries appear in the Western media. David has put his finger on two distinct problems:

(1) How can one depict famine and so on in ways that do not assume stereotypical form (familiar images of starving babies, lines outside of distribution centers, the crush of people with outstretched hands as aid workers distribute provisions, etc.)?

(2) How can one depict the diversity of social and political experience in African countries in ways that, while not ignoring the difficulties that people face across the continent, nonetheless do not perpetuate what some refer to as 'Afro-pessimism'. (I've posted on this matter here a number of times.)?

These are daunting questions and David is correct both to raise them and to suggest that on both dimensions we are captive to conventions. The problem, in other words, is not necessarily one of bad intentions on the part of photographers or the NGOs who host them. Moralism, after all, is a none-to-attractive convention too.

My suspicion, though, is that very similar conventions inform photographic depictions of democracy, especially in African countries and in other 'exotic' places that have yet to embrace our own faith in that political form. It is not so much that I want to question the faith (although it is important to keep an eye on how it actually manifests itself) but that I think we need to keep an eye on how we serve up democracy as antidote. This is a theme I plan to take up over the course of the summer. Thanks David.

What Does the Still Photo Still Do Best?

I read this piece in The New York Times today and wondered why they printed it. Yes, there are lots of really good photojournalists out there. And, yes, there are lots of people with cell phone cameras too. And lots of web sites also. And ..... Well the folks at The Times seem to have had column inches to spare today. That is the only explanation for running this vacuous essay.

Disaster, Photojournalism, and Group-think

I have been pondering the relationships between photography and disaster lately. The problem is not, I think, that photographers somehow exploit the stricken, although the squeamishness of those safely reading reading the paper at a distance (and especially their too readily expressed resentment at being confronted with disturbing images) is pretty telling. What is troubling is how little the images actually show us. There are conventions and stereotypes galore. This comes out very nicely in this post over at The New York Times photo blog. We are shown eight variations on the same image (including one by photo-deity James Nachtwey). And I am certain the post's author could've done the same with other images (say of desperate earthquake victims, arms outstretched amide the crush of others, reaching for food or water at an aid distribution center). If the photographers are not traveling in packs, their editors back home surely are thinking in packs. This is not a problem just with photographers and photo-editors (follow the first link above to Rebecca Solnit's reflections on how, in the wake of disaster*, news reports invoke the spectre of "looting" in knee-jerk ways). But it is a problem for them - or at least the visual coverage of the Haitian earthquake and its aftermath suggests it is.
__________
* I want to call Chris Anderson on the notion that disasters like an earthquake or Tsunami are 'natural' and so call forth the need for inquiry. He cannot be that naive. He claims (in The Times post) that in such cases: "There is no need for explanation or contemplation." There are no 'natural' disasters. In each case the extent and impact of the damage and resulting misery is closely tied to political-economic factors. On that point follow the links in the first post above to this post by economist Ed Glaeser.