It seems that Marco Vernaschi asked the parents of a murdered girl in Uganda,  Babirye Margret (10) to exhume her body so he could  photograph her as part of a story on child sacrifice he was working on with the backing of the Pulitzer centre and aided by Ugandan NGO, RANCHO.

The debate surrounding the exhumation has taken Lightstalkers by storm with various angles on the story being brought in ranging from the ethical aspect; the legal aspect and the fact that this may not have happened in a Western country.

http://marco-vernaschi.photoshelter.com/gallery/CHILD-SACRIFICE-Uganda/G0000×1HawSRNvQo/?bqH=eJzL9A0PdfYrTY8PSg4rMHULNSo2NS6vLEhyMC1MjO0MjQwsLJyj_d0sXU3AIIKQ4_E8uAgv7LAfLUAkKiau2e8u6OPj2tQJDZFAEfQHDs-&_bqO=58

http://www.lightstalkers.org/posts/illegal-exhumation-a-debate-about-marco-vernaschis-methods

http://pulitzercenter.org/projects/africa/child-sacrifice-uganda

Firstly I must point out that I do not know Marco Vernaschi personally and have only done research for this blog from the internet so I have not first hand information regarding the events that toke place in Uganda.

Having said that it seems obvious that the illegal exhumation has raised some serious points with regard to our profession and points that need debating.

Secondly my personal view is that from a professional point of view I condemn the exhumation.

It seems outrageous, even with the aim of telling the world about child sacrifice, that a photographer would alter reality by digging up a DEAD girl of ten years old.

From a personal point of view I have daughters and I ask Mr Vernaschi to think of what went through the minds of the parents when they where asked to dig up their daughter.

If this had happened to me and involved either or both of my 7 year old daughters I would have found the request totally unacceptable.

Thirdly from the point of view of being an African and having worked in Africa for most of career I wander if this would have happened in a rural village in Kent, England or a small town outside Roma?

There seems to be a perception by many non African’s that Africa has a different set of standards with regard to human rights and that as journalists, SOME, feel that they are thus able to take advantage of this percieved difference in thinking and approach to life and thus step over the boundaries that hold together non Africa societies.

That said Africa does not do itself any favor being continuously producing bloody civil conflict, dictators, strange traditions and violence at any opportunity.

Finally with the advent of the social media and the proliferation of ‘photographers’ with digital cameras, the world of photojournalism can ill afford this type of unethical behavior lest the profession wakes up one day to find that the general public does not believe the ‘truth’ we are trying to carry in the photo essays and stories that aim to inform those out there would cannot see for themselves.

A woman lies amongst the rubble of a broken building, looking up at the photographer, Haitian Daniel Morel.

The former Associated Press staffer realized the importance of distributing his pictures as quickly as possible. What happened next, and decisions yet to be made in a Manhattan courtroom, may come to redefine how photographers and big media interact with the freewheeling world of social media.

1: Daniel opened a Twitter account and uploaded 13 images to an associated account at Twitpic tweeting that he had exclusive images of the earth quake. ( http://twitter.com/photomorel )

2: Shortly afterwards  Lisandro Suaero, located in the neighboring Dominican Republic and previously unknown as a professional photographer, stole the 13 images, uploaded them to his own TwitPic account, and tweeted that he too had exclusive earthquake pictures.

3: At about 9:45pm AFP copied the images from Suero’s account, and subsequently began offering them for licensing to their international clients.

Effectively what happened was that his images seem to have been stolen from the internet and used by AFP and  Getty Images for sale with no permission or said agreement.

Both parties are now fighting it out in a Manhattan court room but the implications are possibly very damaging to photojournalism.

Some would say that Morel was not wise to have posted images on a social network site that can be seen by anyone with an internet connection and it thus left the door open for parties to ’steal’ the images.

However the fact that AFP distributed the images without his consent has far reaching implications.

For further reading follow these links:

A: http://www.jeremynicholl.com/blog/2010/05/03/afp-steal-photos-then-sue-photographer-2/

B: http://www.1854.eu/2010/04/agence_france_presses_slap_to.html

C: http://www.100eyes.org/2010/04/daniel-morel/



Right wing AWB leader Eugene Terre’Blanche was murdered by two of his farm workers in his bed on his farm a few kilometers from the Platteland town of Ventersdorp. The murder took place amidst a racial controversy in South Africa involving ANC Youth League leader, Julius Malema, who openly sings a struggle song that includes the lyrics “Shoot the Boer”.

With this as background, there was a rise in racial tension the week after the murder, both at the opening day of the court case and at the tense, but quiet funeral of this “boer leader”. Social networking sites and newspaper websites around South Africa were also inundated with people’s viewpoints from both sides.

Covering the court case and the funeral became a difficult and sad week for me as the two parties to the story, the white AWB members and the black farm workers and unemployed from the nearby township, faced off outside the court house while the two suspects inside awaited their future. To stand between the two sides and photograph people shouting racial slurs filled with such sadness.

Just how can humans hate each other SO much because of the difference in skin colour and cultural differences?

Although there are clearly racial divides on South Africa it was very depressing to witness this level of openly displayed negative emotion. Although, for those who lived through the horrid 1980’s, photographing the struggle of our democracy, this may very well have been a commonplace event or show of hate.

The other interesting aspect of the week’s coverage of the murder story was the local and international media coverage of the story. Most of the world’s major news networks, newspapers, agencies and local outlets covered the court case and funeral, and although there were very few media outlets that reported a biased story, it was stunning to see how fast and effectively the average South African was polarized by the event. This is obviously from media reports as the vast majority of the 49 million South African’s were not in Ventersdorp to witness the events.

This brought my thoughts to the question: just how much of a role does the media play in fanning the flames of discontent and racial strife, and to what extent can the media be held responsible for the widespread hate? Is this murder and the coverage thereof simply a starter motor or ignition for feelings which people already have – and are they simply waiting for an event like this to start to air their hate and racist feelings?

Would this hate boil over if we lived in a society WITHOUT media? Or is the media coverage which, like it or not, remains a polarizing tool, a major factor in the thought processes of the public?

Dare I say it? As a member of the international media, I alas feel the media had a huge effect this week in driving a wedge between South Africans, and were also probably responsible for reinforcing the opinion of international readers that South Africa is unsafe and not worth traveling to.

Let us hope and pray that one day our society can live in some form of harmony and that we will honour the constitution that so many fought for so long to institute.

Ultimately the middle of the road South African has been held ransom between the two extremist sides of the political spectrum, the AWB and Julius Malema.

AWB supporters and mourners gather as the coffin is brought into the church during the funeral of slain Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) leader, Eugene Terre'Blanche, Ventersdorp, South Africa, 9 April 2010. Terre'Blanche was murdered in his sleep Saturday by two of his farm workers.

Over the past two weeks I have been editing Winter Olympic images as part of
the EPA Photos and DPA teams based at the main media centre in Vancouver,
Canada.

One of the first thoughts that crossed my mind was just how the images were
getting from the photographers cameras high in the mountains surrounding the
city to the end user – the newspapers and websites. Another thought was how
long it takes and what IT resources are needed to make this happen.

What I found out is that an enormous amount preparation is vital for this
type of assignment, and planning from the agency in conjunction with the IOC
is also very important.

The IT department started their work two weeks before any photographers
arrived and they effectively cabled entire mountainsides with LAN cables,
and from there to the designated EPA photo positions that were agreed on
during earlier meetings with the photo manager of the IOC and EPA sports
editor, Gernot Hensel, as well as with IT manager, Ole Bratz.

A total of 4 kilometres of LAN cabling was laid, including 40 LAN stitches
and mountains of other IT hardware. EPA had to also supply its own servers,
desk top computers, power sockets and other office hardware.

According to Martin Leo, from EPA Photos IT department, the worst venue to
cable was the Ice Hockey stadium. He spent the best part of a day crawling
under spectators’ seats to cable the venue and had to share the stadium
floor with dead rats and mouse traps.

The main reason to cable the Ice Hockey venue was to access images from the
remote cameras that were preinstalled in the roof of the stadium directly
above the nets of the ‘field’. These remote cameras are fired by the two
photographers covering the hockey from pitch side and edited in real time by
EPA editors in the main media centre, with images moving from the camera to
the media centre via LAN cables.

Some of the events, on the other hand, allow photographers to edit their own
work and transmit the edited and captioned images to the desk via LAN
cables. Most photographers are using Photo Mechanic with code replacement to
add captions, before moving the images to the desk.

The 9 editors working shifts from 1oam to 12pm use FotoStation software to
edit, caption and transmit images to the EPA Photos head offices in
Frankfurt, Germany, where the images make the final part of their journey to
clients around the world via a satellite feed.

The process of shooting an image, moving it to editors, sending it to
Frankfurt and then moving it onto clients takes less than 2 minutes.

After the first week of the games, 10 000 images were moved to the clients,
with 16 000 images having been edited by the desk.

This makes me think how different the workflow would have been decades ago,
before high speed internet, before cameras that are now effectively powerful
computers, and before smaller and faster laptops.
The one thing that I can guarantee is that photographers would have shot
less images and would probably have focused on the winners of the events,
and not been forced to shoot images of most of the athletes, transmitting an
endless stream of images.

As editors, the modern high speed imaging work flow forces us to look at
more images than before, as clients expect their feed from major sporting
events to be all-encompassing, to be counted by the ‘weight’ of images, not
only important moments.

Thus, as an agency you are expected to produce not only the winning moments,
winners, podiums and stunning features from EVERY event, but MORE images
than from previous Games.

The more images, the better, and so the circle of needing to move more
images to clients faster than before is unending, and I am sure the workflow
will get faster and