Behind the Scenes: How Conflict Photographs Come To Be 178
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.
Simple rule of thumb (Score:5, Informative)
All photography is staged unless the image has been captured unintentionally or accidentally.
Pictures are not that much different than words... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Should be obvious (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Been going on for years... (Score:1, Informative)
This sort of thing has been going on since the invention of the photograph.
During the US civil war they would clean up the bodies (they start to smell after a day or two and attract bugs...). But the photographers would show up 1-2 weeks after. No bodies. You cant print/sell that... So they would go to the local town or local army barracks (either side) and hire bodies. They would lay out on the field of the recent battle and 'look dead'. Most civil war photos with bodies in them were like this.
Sometimes it is more than just a picture (Score:2, Informative)
Sometimes there's a full blown Hollywood style production done for journalists.
Google the term "Pallywood"
I'll give you an example: http://youtu.be/t_B1H-1opys?t=4m15s
Not news (Score:4, Informative)
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.