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Behind the Scenes: How Conflict Photographs Come To Be
First time accepted submitter benro03 writes "Airing photojournalism's dirty secret, Italian photographer Ruben Salvadori demonstrates how conflict photography is often staged by the photographers themselves. He spent a significant amount of time in East Jerusalem studying the role that photojournalists play in what the world sees. Ruben is about to graduate with dual majors for a BA in International Relations and Anthropology/Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel." Some commenters on the linked story defend much of what's shown as ordinary aesthetic and editorial decisions; doubtless a parallel documentary could have been shot from a few hundred yards away with an opposite slant.
All photography is staged unless the image has been captured unintentionally or accidentally.
Sometimes this kind of humour just gives people Ideas I guess..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ2bvR3BT_g
Pallywood anyone?
Life is not for the lazy.
I used to frequent Medellin, Colombia in the 90's after my mother moved there to teach English. This was during the period of time where there was a large amount of violence due to Pablo Escobar and company. Lot's of bombings etc. (Side note... Bombs happen on the quarters of the Hour, thunder any other time)... We we're driving by a recently bombed, mafia owned, apt. building from night before, and noticed some of the CNN crew from our hotel in the parking lot of the building closely surrounded by about 12 people. The camera guy was on his knees. The rest of the lot was pretty much empty. A cleanup crew here or there. The reporter was on the outside of the circle directing folks around. Later that night, we happen to see the footage produced.... it was a riot... No seriously... CNN portrayed the 12 people as a massive riot of frightened locals in complete panic. They weren't even from the building.... Mafia families who pay $1,000,000 for an apt. in that building don't tend to stick around, much less dress like laborers. Nothing like being a rural mid-western teenager spending his summers in a third world country.
The Journalist observes and then writes words that try to communicate his/her understanding of the situation.
The Photojournalist observes and then takes pictures that try to capture the essence of the situation as he/she understands it.
If you don't want someone else interpreting and summarizing for you, then go there yourself.
We read and view the work of journalists because we want to understand but we don't want to do all the raw data collection and reduction ourselves. To the degree that journalists exhibit biases of one sort or another, we try to chose sources that exhibit similar biases to our own such that their interpretation and analysis will likely be the same (or at least similar) to our own. When the bias is for sensationalism, that's simply not journalism.
G.
Cameras lie. Photography is an artform and its basically impossible to create an objective photograph.
What do you want? Do you want to feel like you're there, experiencing the action? If that's the case, then the photographer is pretty much going to have to stage everything, because real conflicts generally don't yield photogenic angles, or give the photographer a way of capturing both sides in a way that makes the conflict "real" from the perspective of someone looking at the pictures. Real war footage is boring as hell, it doesn't remotely capture the experience of being there, and the only way you can stand it or make any sense of it is with aggressive editing and narration, which has the potential to recontextualize everything.
Do you want the truth? All the photographer can tell you is what he saw, and if he only gives you the photos he took. Reporting is epistolary: somebody saw something, they are now telling you about it, you're relying on their account. Photographs are part of their account, they are not separate, "real" things that are somehow more reliable than someone's testimony.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
If you want a more comprehensive view supporting this guy's work, check out Pallywood. You'll see it's all staged.
Back in 2006 a number of scandals surfaced during the Israeli-Lebanese conflict. The initial incident was later nicknamed "Reutersgate" because one very obviously photoshopped picture distributed through Reuters that landed on front pages all over the world led to an investigation by Reuters that revealed almost a thousand similar pictures from a number of "well-reputed" freelance photographers, and they were subsequently 'fired' by Reuters and their contributions removed from the archives.
Then the scandal spread. Additional pictures from Reuters were brought into question, as well as pictures from other agencies, especially Associated Post. Not only were these pictures fairly obviously staged; they were staged Hollywood-style, complete with fake blood, staged ruins, actors and so on. Characters like "The World's Unluckiest Mom", "The Dead Son", "The Omnipresent Victim" and most legendary of all: "Green Helmet Guy" filled pictures reputedly from various places all over Lebanon (but in reality shot in more or less the same place). We saw the same grieving mother with or near a dead-looking child (also often the same) again and again, the same wounded civilians, the same burned-out cars, and always the same rescue party prominently featuring the legendary Green Helmet Guy. Then a series of pictures, obviously not meant for public distribution surfaced, showing the characters having a lunch break in the shade of a building. We see the 'dead child' play and later drink a soda.We see Green Helmet Guy in conversation with The Omnipresent Victim (obviously unharmed of course) and so on. Assuming all pictures featuring these characters are faked/staged, this fauxtography scandal involved thousands of pictures. Later extremely well-reputed photographers from BBC also appears to have engaged in this fakery.
Googling pictures with these tags will yield you hundreds of samples of these staged pictures, all with the obvious intent of showing how cruel and evil Israel were. As Hizbollah in Lebanon (thought to be behind this little troupe of actors) found a need for this, it is obvious that reality didn't offer anything similar so it had to be staged for the proper effect on the world audience.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --