Dennis Dunleavy

Copyright Issues for Photographers

Lots of people seem to be a little fuzzy on what copyright means in this country.

Dave Johnson of the Washington Post provides a pretty clear description of the law and some of the issues facing photographers today. The article, "Your Photos, Your Rights, and the Law" is a good read if you want to get started clearing out those cobwebs in terms of what is legal.

Light comes through a frosted glass window with lace curtain in the foreground.

Is war photography and other visual violence necessary?

It’s been more than a decade since I last looked at Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s classic work “Flow” but finding it again on a bookshelf was an invitation to reflect on the role of photography in society. Although Csikszentmihalyi focuses on the psychology of optimal experience, I have always read his work through a photographic filter.

When thinking about happiness, or what makes people happy, Csikszentmihalyi reminds us “the universe was not designed with the comfort of human beings in mind.” Yet we spend our lifetimes in search of happiness against all odds, natural and human.

Photography came about in history partly as a way to compensate for the failings of human memory as well as a way to fix our imaginations in space and time.

We hold up mental pictures to remind ourselves of things. We hold up, in our mind’s eye, two pictures. One picture shows us as things once were and the other picture reveals all things hoped for. The mental pictures of our world we hold up for ourselves are not entirely real. These mental images are mediated by our hopes and fears – constructed for us by the media.

We are bombarded with visually mediated messages in society today that may attempt to construct feelings of order and stability for us.  We are comforted with the illusion that photographs may bring a sense of calm and control over the chaos that is all around us. The pictures, even the most troubling and violent ones, act to bring about a sense of knowing and being there.

Last week, Annie asked a provocative question that I continue to struggle with. The thesis of her reports postulates: “Is war photography and other visual violence necessary?”

Intuitively, I want to respond with an absolute yes. We need images to shock us into the present and to remind us of all past injustices and sufferings in the world.

Images of war are critical in building shaping public consciousness.

Images from past conflicts such as Joe Rosenthal’s Iwo Jima flag-raising contributed to the U.S. war effort in the Pacific during WWII. At the same time, decades later, Nick Ut’s picture of a young girl fleeing a napalm attack in Viet Nam and John Filo’s image at Kent State helped to turn the tide of public opinion against continued U.S. foreign intervention in the region.

Do images from our present war, especially the pictures of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, help to foment discontent as in past conflicts?

Yes. In fact, the U.S. military is now bracing itself for another scandal involving atrocities in Iraq – atrocities that have been caught on videotape by an Iraqi journalism student. According to USA Today, “Pentagon investigators believe Marines committed unprovoked murder in the deaths of about two dozen people at Haditha in November.”

Do we need visual proof to validate such claims? Yes, not only do we need pictures, but we need them to be from a reliable source.

Annie's question becomes even more important in society today.

The idea of asking the question of whether war photography is necessary speaks to a bigger issue – one suggesting that war images no longer function in the same ways as they have in the past.

Perhaps images of violence have become such a normal part of our visual diet that they no longer move us. Perhaps these images no longer feed our worst imaginable fears, because we have seen them all before – another war, another picture of death and violence.

If true, then, we as a society are moving insidiously closer away from an enlightened civilization and more toward a new Dark Age.

Pictures of war, even though they may longer have the same impact and those in the past, still need to be taken so that they will become part of our collective memory, history, and remain in our consciousness.

Moms with Camera Phones: Vandals Beware

The Manteca Bulletin is reporting that camera phones are helping police slow a rash of vandalism to an area playground. The citizen  shutterbugs, mothers mostly, are emailing images of vandals destroying park property to the police on the spot so that they may be identified.

The article states that "Mothers armed with camera phones are helping Manteca Police collar young vandals trying to trash Woodward Park."

Newspaper Responds to Touchy Subject

Over the past 150 years public acceptance and tolerance for the display of graphic and violent images in the coverage of news events has changed a great deal. Over time, pictures displaying pain, suffering, death, blood, and gore have become less frequently used in print and broadcast possibly  because editors  fear they may be alienating and offending some subscribers. Editors, in other words, have become extremely sensitive to the impact images may have on the community and often deliberate the consequences at great length before publishing. Ironically, this same attitude has never taken hold in the entertainment industry where pictures of bloodied bodies are the norm.

Some researchers point to how most of the images used to illustrate the World Trade Center attacks reflect the restraint and self-censorship applied to the harsh realities of the event. In fact, almost all of the coverage from 9-11 showed very few images of dead bodies strewn throughout the ruins. There were a few photos circulated of people leaping to their deaths, but never was the public allowed to see the impact that followed.

The cultural pathology of newspaper picture editing indicates how much society has changed in terms of our tolerance for pictures of violence. The choices that are made in order to convey the realities of an event made not be a matter of right or wrong moral ethics and more a matter of sensibility and public taste.

Recently, a photo of an injured racehorse caused a stir from readers of the San Antonio Express-News. The picture shows the crippled horse, Miss Pretty Promises stumbling on the track after breaking her front legs. The horse was euthanized on the spot.

Today, when an editor makes a decision to use an image that may offend some viewers or readers there is no shortage of debate in the newsroom as to what the consequences may be.

Bob Richter, the paper's public editor, wrote about the reaction some reader had to the image of the injured horse.

"Among the terms used to describe the photo were "shocking," "horrendous," "pathetic" and "in poor taste.'"

Although the paper received dozen of emails and phone calls about the image, only one reader took issue with the actual written story. This clearly sends a message that images communicate far more immediately and directly than words.

Perhaps it is best to understand images of pain and suffering as symbols of things we fear most.

What the image may more clearly represent is, as writer John Tedesco observes, the "ugly side to a moribund industry struggling to fill empty seats."

According to Tedesco:

Miss Pretty Promises is one of hundreds of racehorses in Texas that lose a life-or-death gamble the public seldom sees.

    

At the state's five licensed tracks, Marsh and other veterinarians with the Texas Racing Commission have euthanized or documented the deaths of 300 horses in the past five years, usually after the animals broke ankles, legs or even spinal cords during races, according to the agency's database of horse injuries obtained by the San Antonio Express-News.

    

Vets who scratched injured horses from races and euthanized the grievously injured compiled the database, which never has been analyzed by outsiders.

    

While thousands of horses compete safely in Texas, the records reveal an ugly side to a moribund industry struggling to fill empty seats.

What this image and others signify is what journalism should be all about -- truthtelling. Despite the obvious discomfort that comes from showing graphic images in the daily newspaper, it is the responsibility of the press to reveal injustices in the world.

 

The Need For Truth and Compassion

Photo Credit: The Washington Post

Perhaps it is in our best interest to remain silent on matters of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

After all, this is old news now and we don’t need to be reminded of the violence of suffered by Iraqis in the custody U.S. troops. However, the release of yet more pictures, videos and testimonies of prisoner abuse makes turning away from this reality increasingly difficult.

Last week, the Washington Post obtained more images, specifically videos and testimonies from detainees and Abu Ghraib – an investigation that should propel this story back into the realm of public discourse.

Scott Higham and Joe Stephens report in, “New Details of Prison Abuse Emerge Abu Ghraib Detainees' Statements Describe Sexual Humiliation And Savage Beatings,” that the testimonies help to explain many of the already iconic images released more than two years ago to the American public.

“The statements provide the most detailed picture yet of what took place on the cellblock. Some of the detainees described being abused as punishment or discipline after they were caught fighting or with a prohibited item. Some said they were pressed to denounce Islam or were force-fed pork and liquor. Many provided graphic details of how they were sexually humiliated and assaulted, threatened with rape, and forced to masturbate in front of female soldiers.”

Even after learning about the extent of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, there seems to be only minimal coverage on the issue in the mainstream media. Other matters, such as immigration reform and the deployment of the National Guard along the U.S.-Mexican border appear to preoccupy much of the reportage. Interestingly, a Google search for news reportage under the heading of Abu Ghraib reveals more than 5, 000 posts between May 19  and April 22.

However, a Technorati search of the Blogosphere provides more than 88,000 hits, many of them just a few days old. What this suggests, something that is speculative at best is that bloggers are actively more passionate about generating and maintaining public discourse about the abuse scandal than the mainstream media is.

In January 2006, Bruce Jackson complains in the political newsletter “Counterpunch” how the reality of the war in Iraq has been squelched by mainstream media’s comfort level with sensitive and controversial images. “The daily press and evening news are so attuned to our sensitivity or sensibility they just don't want to offend us,” Jackson notes. 

In other words, much of the mainstream media fail to fulfill their role in society by arbitrating what can and cannot be seen. The press becomes censored not only by the government but also by itself because of the possibility that the images may be too much to bear for the average person.

Now, people are turning to alternative sources such as blogs and Web sites to see these graphic and disturbing images.

How can we find the truth in a world so bombarded with questionable information? If the mainstream media does not tell us what we need to know because they are afraid of offending us and bloggers and Web sites  tell us more than we want to know, where is the balance?

The Moral Complexities: A Criticism of Mainstream Media

Documentary photojournalist Roger LeMoyne expresses with great clarity the potential of photography in society. In an interview with Christopher Grabowski, LeMoyne criticizes the mainstream media for reducing stories about the human condition to black and white issues.

LeMoyne observes:

In general, the media loves stories that are black and white, they are not very happy dealing with moral complexities, it's hard to tell a good story about murky issues.

It is not hard to see the truth in what LeMoyne has to say. Almost all issues in today's news, from the war on Iraq to the debate over U.S. immigration, present moral complexities that cannot be broken down to simply one right or one wrong. Yet, this is the perception of the typical coverage of these issues in the mainstream issue. At the same time, let's not blame the superficiality of today's news coverage solely on the media. Let's also look at how U.S. culture establishes and maintains the dumbing down of media content. People appear quick to criticize the press on its coverage of major issues, yet fail to look at their own behaviors that often leaves little time for serious issues facing our nation. We are so busy taking care of ourselves that many issues outside of our own personal concerns capture our interest or attention. It is hard work to keep informed on issues involving moral complexities. Often once we become attached to one issue, in the sense of trying to understand it, we become distracted by other concerns. The media feeds our fragmented and discontinuous stream of knowing the world in substantive ways. But let's not blame the media entirely.

The commercial media in this country has been forced to compromise providing audiences with insight and depth on complex stories, such as Katrina or health care, because it finds itself constrained by space (in print) and by time (in broadcast).  Time and space in this country are commodities in which a profit must be turned.

Now, the Internet does make it possible to present morally complex stories in new ways, but it appears that our eyes and ears are already accustomed to and conditioned by a culture of sound bites, photo ops, and leads that bleed.

In its current configuration, mainstream media often unintentionally manages to denigrate and humiliate others when reporting on complex stories. Even our language, as photographers, reduces human beings to "subjects" and "things."

For photojournalists like LeMoyne trying to break through the firewall of black and white reportage is a full-time mission. LeMoyne engages photography as an empathic process -- one that attempts to fully respect the integrity and dignity of those who are willing to open their lives to the world for the causes of justice and reform. Many times issues become a sort of personal crusade not only in the reportage but also in convincing editors that their stories are worthy of publication.  As LeMoyne notes:

It is possible to denigrate and humiliate people with photography. Certainly a lot of people in developing countries are afraid to be humiliated by the media... Dignity is an essential part of being human, and somehow beautiful photographs are more likely to preserve people's dignity than ugly ones. I think there is a value to that.

I try to take the pictures that are resonant of truth of the situation, and that's what's ultimately important. It counts how truthful and how powerful the pictures are.

How the Digital Camera Improves Photographic Routines

Technological innovation plays a significant role in the history of photography.

Digital cameras, computers, image editing software and telephony all contribute to shaping photographic routines in photojournalism. As part of a much larger trend in society, the use of digital cameras and supporting technologies coincides with a relentless push toward faster, cheaper and greater quantities of information.

Since the 1980s, digital technologies have impinged upon the routines, rituals, traditions, and behaviors of photojournalists. These technologies include electronic digital manipulation, pagination processes, web-based elements, and digital capture and storage. In photojournalism, the digital camera’s capacity for reviewing, editing, deleting, and transmitting images on-the-scene changes the landscape of photographic routines guiding visual practice.

During the past five years, more than 95 percent of all daily newspaper operations have adopted digital cameras as the primary format for image capture, and more than 99 percent use a combination of film and digital cameras. Some studies now suggest that photojournalists are generally more satisfied using digital technology than they were using film (Roehl and Moreno, 2001; Halstead, 2003, Fahmy and Smith, 2003; Seelig, 2004). In fact, many photojournalists perceive the use of the digital camera as a positive influence on routines.

It may be assumed, then, that digital technologies in photojournalism are influencing routines in three ways -- productivity, empowerment and the social interaction between photojournalist and subject.

The digital camera intensifies photojournalism by increasing efficiency, encouraging creativity and experimentation, and redefining the boundaries of autonomy in the relationship between subject and photographer.

Further, technological innovation is bound to the landscape of photographic routines as it coincides with “an increasing capacity to encode a greater amount of information….” as well as a need for “reproducibility, and [yet] another is accessibility – both technical accessibility and economic accessibility” (Coleman, 1998, p. 79).

The shift in photographic routines away from film to digital in photojournalism is now nearly complete, but the transition has taken more than two decades to complete -- beginning with scanning film into computers to create digital files in the 1980s and quickly advancing to the use of the digital camera in the early to mid-1990s.

Reasons for the move away from analog photochemical processes toward full digitalization include, but may not be limited to, the speed in which images are monitored, edited and transmitted on-the-scene has increased; the cost of producing images is cheaper with digital technology when compared to previously experienced film processes; and the quality of digitally produced images continues to increase or surpass film quality. Moreover, environmental regulations played a role. As Bryan Murley observes:

In the mid-90s, there was an attempt by some cities to enforce tighter regulations regarding the disposal of photographic processing chemicals (especially used fixer). The school I was working for at the time went all digital instead messing with the new disposal regulations.

At the same time, use of the digital camera also signifies an increased liability in photojournalism – one that is inextricably bound to the routines of an occupational group concerned about public perceptions, such as credibility, veracity and objectivity.

Understanding the transformation of photojournalism from film to digital requires insight into the social, professional and personal routines contributing to particular behavior and conduct. As Peter Howe (2001) contends, “Technological developments rarely replace what precedes them, though they do force change” (p. 25).

What photojournalists are now learning from their experiences with digital cameras is that technology both constrains and enables certain types of human behavior. Although photojouranlists may feel productive in the quantity of images produced on deadline, they may also feel overwhelmed by demands made on their time. In addition, although photojournalists may feel empowered by the immediacy of reviewing images on the back of the camera, they may also feel constrained by the behavior.

Ultimately, a shift in photojournalistic routines has occurred with the immediacy of digital photography. For some photojournalists the ability to review, edit, delete and transmit images on-the-scene offers more control and autonomy over the creative process. In addition, digital technology is improving the performance of photojournalists in a variety of ways including helping to build better rapport with subjects.

A Tale of Two Pictures: Image Ethics and Abu Ghraib at Year Two

Two years have come and gone since the pictures of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq opened our eyes to what may be one of the most critical and defining moments of this conflict.

The graphic scenes of humiliation and torture that began to appear in April 2004 subvert any claims to a moral victory in Iraq by U.S. and coalition forces. More than 275 images and nearly two-dozen videos made by guards at the prison are now part of our national collective memory of the war.

Reduced to grainy snapshots depicting the horror and deprivation of prisoners of war, a simple truth reveals how capable we are of inflicting injustice on humanity.

The reality recorded here, of course, is not new in the history of so-called civilization, but it does provide “hard” evidence of our ability to do great harm in the name of all that is good about our country.

What these images signify for me may upset many people, but I feel compelled to speak my mind.

Naturally, the actions of a few do not represent the majority. Yet, pictures like those from Abu Ghraib send a strong message to the rest of the world -- a picture that paints a very sobering and despicable characterization of America as the so-called leader of the free world.

The Abu Ghraib images represent far more than the brutality depicted.

These pictures contradict the image we hold about ourselves as a fair-minded and good-hearted people. In a sense, we reject what these images tell the rest of the world about us as a people because we do not believe that we could ever commit such heinous acts.

The pictures signify a mockery of everything we are taught to believe in about our nation. For me, the reality of these images destroys any illusion I may have had about America as peaceful, tolerant, and just nation. These pictures shock me into a realization of how callous and inhumane we can be under the pretext of liberation, democracy and freedom. The shame of these images will haunt future generations of Americans and it is a legacy that I am not prepare to ever get comfortable with.

Has anything changed in the time since the release of the first set of prison abuse pictures?

Has justice been served? 

A few people are now in jail and forgotten in the eyes of the media. A few people have been demoted in rank and have returned to obscurity.

Through the lens, a central narrative in this conflict has been dutifully recorded for prosperity -- it’s not a pretty picture.

How can we look at these images of tortured prisoners and see human beings? 

One reading of these images is that they are not pictures of people at all. These are pictures of things.

Objects.

Once pictured, people are reduced to objects of possession and personal property. Those who dare to understand the implications of such images are singed with grief.

Something insidiously evil is at work in the world today and we’ve got pictures to prove it. 

These images – a naked truth revealing how human beings are strapped, bloodied, humiliated, and stripped of dignity – signify a larger tragedy in the cultural pathology of a society saturated with visual messages.  We may look at these pictures and remain unmoved. We may see them but still be blinded by apathy and what can only be called the propaganda of mass distraction.

Does the insistent bombardment of visually mediated messages depicting suffering and deprivation reduce our capacity to feel?

Sontag observed, “In a modern life – a life in which there is a superfluity of things to which we are invited to pay attention – it seems normal to turn away from images that simply make us feel bad.”

Among the pile of images that emerged from the cameras of prison guards at Abu Ghraib, a few have become emblematic of the human rights scandal.

I would like to discuss the power of one of these images as a social artifact of our times. More importantly, I would like to explore how picture editing plays a significant role in the construction of public perceptions of events.

When the New Yorker, and later CBS’ 60 minutes, brought the images to light in April 2004, a picture showing a prisoner standing on a box in a Christ-like pose, captivated the imagination of millions.

Wires had been attached to the hooded man’s hands, and he was told that if he moved he would be electrocuted. In the picture originally released by the mainstream media, there is an aesthetic balance to the frame. The prisoner is centered against a background of yellowed tile.

The hood, poncho, and outstretched arms of the man provide a sense of symmetry. This geometric composition contributes to the viewer’s reading by directing the eye to the dominant subject. The composition is compelling and appeals to our imagination and emotions.

Sarah Boxer of the New York Times contends, “Of all the photographs of American soldiers tormenting Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison, one alone [the hooded man] has become the icon of the abuse.”

Boxer’s analysis of the image suggests the power of photography to evoke deep emotions. Boxer writes:

“As a symbolic shape, the hood is almost as strong as a cross. The difference is that the hood has generally been the sign of the persecutor, not of the victim. It is the uniform of the executioner, the sheet of the Klansman, the mask of Death. Until now. In these images, you can see the hood's meaning begin to change and take root.”

Theorist Barry Brummett observes that audiences expect “the world to be mediated to them dramatically…. because the media do so by calling up standard, recurrent, culturally ingrained types of dramas.” 

It is not clear to me that the image of the “hooded man” was cropped intentionally to solicit more immediate reaction and pity from viewers. If the picture was cropped it was probably done more out of routine than overt censorship of other seemingly less important elements in the frame.

This is where the tale of the two images comes into conflict, because it is the extraneous elements cropped from the frame that reveal another reality – one that shows the amateurish competence as well as  the indifference of the photographers.

Within the past year, a second uncropped version of the “hooded man” image has surfaced.

In this frame, a guard is show to the far right of the image. The prisoner remains centered but the space on either side of him provides a context that is missing from the cropped version.

According to Salon, the Criminal Investigation Command (CID) caption on the picture states that it was “11:04 p.m. on Nov. 4, 2003 and placed in this position by Spc. Sabrina Harman and Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick II. Both took pictures as a joke. Instructed if moved would be electrocuted. Staff Sgt. Frederick is depicted with a Cyber Shot camera in his hands.”

This caption becomes important when compared to same image released by anti-war groups on the Internet, which suggest that Frederick is clipping his nails.

What are the ethics of cropping an image in a case like the hooded man?

It is important to note that I am assuming the two images come from the same source here. I am only guessing that the first tightly cropped frame is version of the second, more loosely composed image. Nevertheless, my speculation brings up an important issue for students of photojournalism.

Can a crop change the meaning of an image? If so, can the crop be considered to be unethical by contemporary standards and practices?

For Jason Fithian, a senior photojournalism student at San Jose State University, “I totally think cropping out the Sargent changed the whole perception of the image. While it is closely cropped, it gives a sense of isolation, as if nobody is around.

“I think cropping the image does change the integrity of the image and gives the viewer another story. Closely cropping the image can mislead readers and is clearly a violation of ethics.”

Fithian researched some of the National Press Photographers Association and Associated Press guidelines governing photographic manipulation to make a strong case for manipulation.

Fithian suggests that cropping may be considered a form of manipulation since it significantly changes the meaning of the image.

He writes:

Looking at ethical guidelines, NPPA's ethical policies, number six states, "Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images' content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects."


One of AP's guidelines state, "Minor adjustments in Photoshop are acceptable. These include cropping, dodging and burning, conversion into grayscale, and normal toning and color adjustments that should be limited to those minimally necessary for clear and accurate reproduction (analogous to the burning and dodging often used in darkroom processing of images) and that restore the authentic nature of the photograph."   Again, cropping out the Sargent takes away from the authenticity of the photograph and does not give the audience an accurate portrayal of what is actually occurring.

One could possibly believe wartime censorship is at hand for the elimination of the Sargent While these images are a few years old, it was at a time when there was more support for the war. As more and more people began to find out what is really going on overseas and how the US participates in torture and in violation of UN Human Rights, opinions change.

I believe the public does have a right to know what is going on overseas and to crop out the Sargent in the image is clearly not giving the citizens an accurate portrayal.

Mother's Day Walk

A SIGN FOR THE TIMES

Secular Pictures in a Sectarian War

Can anything come from the knowledge of the terrible suffering streaming into our consciousness from the War on Iraq? Increasingly, the pictures are more real and raw then what we have become used to seeing since the war began in March 2003.

For example, there is a picture made recently by Reuters photojournalist Mahmoud Raouf of a pickup truck carrying a load of battered and bloodied bodies through the streets of Eastern Baghdad.

The gate of the pickup truck is down, exposing the corpses to all who care to see. There are at least three bodies visibly stacked like cord wood tossed akimbo.

There are ropes binding the bodies, twisted limbs, no faces are to be seen – yet, there are hints of horror. The day appears warm and the landscape is soaked in sunshine. The driver of the pickup has his window rolled down; a brown-skinned elbow sticks out -- casually. The truck is following other official vehicles in a convoy. To the right, a procession of older-model cars moving in the opposite lane of traffic appears to have stopped or is moving very slowly. 

Michael Shaw on his BagNewsNotes blog writes:

“Lately, corresponding with the escalation in horror, mainstream media has grown more liberal about depicting corpses. So, what exactly is so distinctive about this picture? It's how profoundly mundane it happens to be.”

Shaw then poses a question:

“What does it take for a police force to transport bodies around in an open flat bed without blankets or even a tarp, the way someone might cart pieces of lumber or plumbing supplies?”

In response, he postulates:

“It involves three things: an unremitting state of shock; a numbing level of depersonalization (probably why the photographer reveals no face -- living or dead); and almost unendurable subjection to the routine.”

What Shaw is getting at here is part of the pathology of war – complete with the sorts of visuals that come with the course of a protracted conflict. We have seen other wars visualized in much the same way. First there is restraint not to offend – we see pictures of troops preparing for combat, lines of refugees, and are inundated with images of the latest technologies of modern warfare. Our minds become primed for the inevitability that death is soon to follow. And we wait.

This is the pathology of war and pathology of a culture that has normalized violence through repeated representations of  pain and suffering.

We have seen the Abu Ghraib prison pictures and beheading of Westerners by Islamic militants, we know what violence looks like in Iraq.

We know that it will take a lot at this point to shock us further. Hauling mutilated human beings around in the back of a pickup in broad daylight serves to confirm the conviction that this is no longer on the surface simply a U.S. – Iraqi war – this is a sectarian conflict in a visually secular world.   

Ashamedly, I feel little emotion in the image of this convoy of death and despair. I feel that the picture was actually meant to be somehow innocuous or harmless in its effect.  As Sontag contends in her book “Regarding the Pain of Others”, “Violence turns anybody subjected to it into a thing.”

For Sontag, “The familiarity of certain photographs builds our sense of the present and immediate past. Photographs lay down routes of reference, and serve as totems of causes….photographs help construct – and revise – our sense of a more distant past...”

There is another, very different type of image to hold up against Raouf’s convoy of death picture. The picture I have in mind is by the preeminent photojournalist, David Burnett, who made an image in Chile during the roundup of students who were taken to a soccer stadium by soldiers following the coup against Salvador Allende in 1973. The picture shows young man looking blankly into Burnett lens. He is framed by the rifle barrels of the soldiers guarding him. Fear is written in the student’s eyes. The man is talking to the camera – “God help us” – his eyes plead. The image is stunningly compassionate. But, as Sontag reminds us, “compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.”

For three decades Burnett’s picture has haunted me, and I am drawn to ask what became of this young man on that dreadful day?

Why am I stirred by Burnett’s image and feel only callousness for Rauof’s?  We must dig deeper into how we are socially and culturally conditioned to view images of violence. Sontag argues, “Photographs of the victims of war are themselves a species of rhetoric. They reiterate. They simplify. They agitate. They create the illusion of consensus.”

Is there a consensus today concluding that the continued violence in Iraq will only lead to more violence?

Can we expect to see more truckloads of battered bodies from Iraq?

Why are images of the dead so unreal and images of the living so real for me?

Perhaps John Berger explains it best when he suggests that picturing humans as victims of injustice and brutality is  “"discontinuous with all other moments.” Our inability to grasp the full extent of the suffering of others in any context inhibits our capacity for pity and compassion.

Susie Linfied, in an essay called, “Memuna, Almost Smiling: Looking at a Photograph of Suffering” summarizes the concerns of both Berger and Sontag when she writes:

“Because photographs lack narratives, they lack meaning-especially political and moral meaning, which is contingent on causation. Therefore, these critics claim, photographs of suffering-by freezing a moment of time, by extracting experience from context, by separating the event from its history-actually depoliticize, desensitize, and perhaps even dehumanize us, though their makers surely strive for the opposite.”

When “Violence turns anybody subjected to it into a thing”, as Sontag claims, why is it that I am not moved to tears by the images of the dead and the dying coming from Iraq these days? I am alone in feeling desensitized to images of violence and destruction on our culture?   

Perhaps, because in Raouf’s image, along with many others made during the Iraqi conflict, I do not get the sense the compassion of the photographer behind the lens. Often at great risk, these photographers make pictures in attempt to edify and explain, but in return only serve to distance us further from the harsh realities of war.

Beyond the subjectivity of reading representations of violence in the media there is also a deeper and more troubling aspect of the visual at war that must be attended to. In every U.S. foreign conflict for the past half century, the camera has played a significant role in shaping public opinion for or against the war. As this current war has unfolded we have seen mostly what the government has wanted us to see, with the exception of the prisoner abuse photos and the pictures of flag-draped coffins.

Wendy Kozol, in her 2004 article “Domesticating NATO’s War in Kosovo/a” suggest that “When critically examining news coverage of war, we need to confront the often compelling arguments made about the political imperative of visibility.”

Is there some sort of political imperative lurking behind images showing the alarming number of civilian deaths in Iraq since last year’s elections?

How could pictures of sectarian reprisal killings and other acts of violence signify a shift in the way the media has covered this war?

Our Media: It's Real and It's Public

Click here or on the image to link to the slideshow.

This is an example of a mixed-media project using audio from an interview with Terry Longshore, the director of Southern Oregon University's Marimba Ensemble. After resizing and editing my images I used an easy-to-work-with software call "Live Show" to make a Quicktime movie with the still. I then attached an audio file to my Live Show presentation that I mixed in Audacity, a sound editing program that is available for free on the Internet.

I have been trying to understand if the differences between personal media and public journalism. Much of what is produced as public journalism seems to be a form of personal media.

Using the resources of Our Media, a  collective of independent creative types, I believe that in this age of digital media, the lines between personal and public are being completely redrawn.

Our Media is an open-source project run by volunteer that hosts grassroots video, audio, music, photos, text and public domain works for free. In other words, Our Media is a community where people can come together to share and discuss personal media.

I view Our Media as a space for archiving various forms of media such as podcasts and movies I make so that I can share them on my blog and elsewhere.

Visual storytelling is enriched tremendously with the addition of audio. I find that the two format  coexist beautifully on the Internet.

The potential of mixing format -- still, text, audio, and moving images is extremely powerful. The best part of this sort of storytelling is that it is relatively easy to accomplish.

Steady Climbing

Watched a bit of the Spring Thaw Mountain Bike Race Saturday. It is interesting to think about how many different ways people find to keep themselves busy. Climbing up mountains on a bike is one way.

Marimba Podcast

Here's a link to a podcast I recently finished on Southern Oregon University's Marimba ensemble. I have been exploring more effective ways to produce and stream audio interviews. My hope is that I can train photojournalism how to make richer visual and audio presentations.

The Armchair Photojournalist: The Future of Photojournalism

Nearly two years ago, photographer and critic, Pedro Meyer, wrote  about some of the trends affecting professional photojournalism today. Meyer expresses concerns over the future of photojournalism in an age of increasingly immediacy, sensationalism, and amateurism. In writing about the images of prisoner abuse coming out of Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Meyers observes:

    If the most emblematic images from this war were photographed by amateurs, if agencies are able to send out people to take photographs who have never taken pictures, but have access to certain places, and if we are into a tidal wave of imagery coming in from all the digital cameras that are flooding the world; I am sure that  traditional photojournalism as is being taught today in schools all over the world,  better have a second look at reality and be prepared to tell their students that things  are no longer how they used to be and therefore need to adjust their expectations. 

Meyers continues:

    The same thing might also prove to be of interest to all those active photojournalists today, who are seeing their bread and butter documentary images being displaced by  pictures of celebrities and movie stars.

The convergence of several trends makes Meyers' take on the future of photojournalism extremely relevant.

I would summarize some of the trends influencing professional photojournalism today as not only the increase in the availability of amateur images made by shutterbugs, as well as the all-consuming and insatiable appetite of our culture for sensationalistic imagery, but also the insidious decline in the Fourth Estate's interest in and access to making images that have any value beyond the commercial, ideological, and political interests of the powerful in society via government and corporate stakeholders.

But don't go blaming photojournalists for the increasing public distrust in mainstream media or the acquiescence of the longstanding journalistic tradition of social responsibility. There are still extraordinary examples of photojournalism as a tool for social change being done today thanks to the Internet.

However, professional photojournalism as a part of a larger journalistic enterprise faces serious challenges in the future. Media consolidation, corporate downsizing, a continuing trend toward "softer" news, and increased competition from serious amateurs is shaking the foundations of what I believe has always been a pretty noble profession.


To understand the symbiotic relationship between the media, corporate America and the government in relation to photojournalism, it is imperative to step back and look at how the field came into being. Photojournalism, from this perspective, is an extension of an institutionally regulated enterprise – mass media.

Photojournalistic ethics and conventions evolved over time and continue to be constrained by personal, organizational, institutional, and moral rationales.

The rationale professional photojournalists use to justify photographing sensitive topics such as showing dead bodies on 1A of the daily newspaper or on the nightly news, are mitigated by popular tastes as well as profits.

The pathos of entertainment has always been deeply embedded in human behavior. In this age of paparazzi, we are compelled to be entertained first by media, and, if there is time, maybe enlightened a distant second.

People understand the power of the image -- image is everything. Put a camera in front of anyone and his or her behavior will change.

Thinking of photojournalism as some sort of "ideal form" that attempts an objective realism or aspires to capture a moment of truth in today's visual culture is a silly and futile notion.

Yet, there are some that hold on to the nostalgia of photojournalism's golden age -- a time when it was possible to believe what we were seeing. I still cling to this hope, but skepticism and observation is a sobering force.

Predicting what photojournalism, as an occupational group, will look like in fifty years is difficult.

But there are a few things we may portend here. First and foremost, the days of photojournalism as we have known them from the golden years of LIFE magazine are gone.

Although, the still image remains a pervasive force in society today, sound, text and movement increasingly augment it.

There is no question in my mind that photojournalism and other journalistic endeavors are being subsumed by an age of "personal media".

Our mass media world is fragmenting into a world of niche (entertainment and information) archipelagoes. I use the analogy of the archipelago because in a sea of information, camera phones, mini-digital video, videoblogs, photoblogs, mobile journalism, blogging, and other form of instant personal media represent tiny islands of content that may be overlooked one day, and then, discovered in the mainstream another day.

The handwriting is on the wall. Personal media will impact the shape of mass media in the future, but it will also be a part of it.

For Karen Becker, journalism has always been a form of institutionally regulated communication.

Becker notes journalism, "As a product" has "a structured hierarchy for conceiving, collecting, constructing, placing, positioning, and presenting information."  In the age of the BLOG, this structured hierarchy is cracking.

Extending Becker's observation to photojournalism, what happens when the profession fails to recognize the decentralizing impact of personal media on the processes of mass media content creation and consumption?

As products of culture, photojournalism helps to determine the extent of an informational and representational system that reinforces a society’s norms, values, and cultural belief systems. The introduction of personal media into a highly structured mass media hierarchy signifies an important shift or turn in our information age.

What we see and what we know are inextricably bound not only by context, but also by our systems of dominant beliefs, values, and norms.

The values and norms that have exerted power of our daily lives, perceived and real are constantly in a state of flux. New technologies are making it possible for more voices to be heard, more faces to be seen through personal media.

Already socially conditioned to a deluge of photojournalistic images, the future of the field is now being dramatically redefined by the potential of personal media and the Web -- for the better or worse.

Finally, getting back to Meyers' concerns about preparing "to tell ... students that things  are no longer how they used to be and therefore need to adjust their expectations."

What I know is this:

Educating the next generation media professionals demands an integration of knowledge beyond the specifics of specialized skills training.   

Although we may well prepare students for future careers with the appropriate technical knowledge, many students still remain challenged by understanding the social, economic and cultural aspects of what they do.

Over the past decade, in the field of photojournalism, students are finding the entry-level market for their newly acquired skills increasingly difficult to negotiate. 

Although venues for display in media seem to expand with the advent of electronic communication, traditional sources of employment such as newspapers appear to be providing fewer opportunities appear available for newcomers. Media mergers, corporate downsizing, and new technologies that help create content cheaper, faster and more efficiently combine to make the job market more a less predictable and more perilous place.

 

Ethics in the Blogosphere

Maintaining an acceptable standard of ethical practice in journalism in an age of instant self-publishing maybe difficult to achieve. Blogging, despite all of its democratizing potential, seems to invite a host of problems, such as maintaining any hope of accuracy and balance.

For example, Information Week reporter Tom Smith notes the recent indiscretions of a Los Angeles Times journalist who posted comments on his and other blogs using pseudonyms. (For an earlier story on this incident please link here).

Smith observes:

"One less positive development when it comes to online news and journalism has been the ever-more-fuzzy distinction between blogs--with their lack of fact checking, their flame-oriented reader comments, and other shortcomings--and the journalistic work that drives daily newspapers."

More interestingly, Smith wonders how younger readers will come to learn how to differentiate between faster and far looser styles of blogging and the more traditionally vetted forms of journalistic writing.

There is little question these days that the speed and quantity of information available on the Web today represents a serious challenge to those of us  concerned about journalistic integrity and ethical practices. Have readers ever been 100 percent confident  of the veracity of what is being reported?  Of course not, but the digital age has ramped up the speed in which people feel informed or misinformed. And therein, to borrow from the bard, lies the rub.