Article against the use of photojournalism
This article is written by a man called Jim Lewis he has based all of the article on first hand experience being in Iraq and by his own personal opinions on what he deems acceptable for the public eye.
I have my own personal opinion and although sometimes the images photojournalists take can be questionable in the sense of it being graphic i think it is still important to report whats going on to the rest of the world and an article is all well and good but, it doesn't hit you properly and sink in unless you physically see it, and sometimes it takes getting shocked for people to get into action.
One of the most memorable images i can think of that was taken in my lifetime was the picture of the falling man, the iconic image that gave the jumpers of 9/11 a voice. This image although it is very hard to see as the events of that day affected everyone around the world through seeing it all unfold on the TV, i for one remember that day i remember seeing it on the news and it is something i will never forget even though i was so young at the time. Despite it being such a sensitive topic this image is the truth the reason this image was so hard for people to see is because they just did not want to believe these people were jumping from the building This image is one that no one could ignore, this very public attack on America showcased some even more public deaths for millions to see.
I have inserted a recent article that contains the image i have just described.
The day after the 9/11 attacks newspapers all over the world were getting ready to post the September 12th issue, and there was only one thing that anyone could report. And with this there was a decision as to what photo's could be shown. Many were too gruesome, containing blood, body parts and people jumping to their deaths. Never the less there was a photographer who captured, the falling man. His name is Richard Drew.
I saw a documentary on the falling man that was on the channel 4 website. Most if not every year channel 4 have a program on in remembrance of what happened on the day of 9/11, and one year this was one of the documentaries, It follows a man wanting to find out the identity of the falling man, they interview the newspaper who originally published the falling man alongside their 9/11 article, and they also interviewed Richard.
Once this image of the falling man went out in the newspaper people were outraged, they thought it was insensitive and inhumane of the newspaper to use this image. The events were still so raw to many people that this was too much. Which is something i agree on. The day after is way to soon to see something like this but it is reporting the news as we see it and as shocking as it is, this image is still hands down an iconic piece.
Going back on what i said previously about how photographers deal with traumatic events that are in front of them, Richard said that his natural reaction when the twin towers got hit was to lift his camera to his face and start taking photographs of everything, he said the lens acted as a filter to reality, to what was actually going on in front of him. When he took the image of the falling man he did not just take one image he took numerous in a sequence, one after the other.
This iconic image that supposedly captures the pain and sadness felt on that day is said to be depicted as peaceful because of the way he looks so angelic and accepting of his appending doom. Once you see the rest of the images that go alongside this one you suddenly realise that this man wasn't just falling to his death peacefully he was struggling, panicking and most defiantly not calm and accepting.
The image of the falling man was one of the most peaceful of the whole event, there is too many images to count of blood, guts and death out there from this event to count but this one is by far the easiest to look at all things considered. In some ways i think the American public and the rest of the world would have much preferred to see a women covered in blood running away that the last moments of a mans life, despite how gruesome that image would be.
Above i have included the documentary on the falling man.
I think there is a limit on how gruesome an image can be. Newspapers for obvious reasons do not show mass graves and images of dead bodies rotting away that would be in no way right but there are still a lot of photojournalists who take those photo's for other reasons and also a lot of documentaries depict gruesome video and photo evidence an example being the killing fields documentary and also the no fire zone documentary on again the channel 4 website. It shows graphic images and videos of people dying in the most horrific ways but this is something i think people need to see to instill change.
Below i have included links to both:
No comments:
Post a Comment