Can news photographers become war paparrazi?
http://www.dvafoto.com/2008/09/a-pack-of-war-paparrazi/comment-page-1/
http://stateoftheart.popphoto.com/blog/2008/09/perpignan-satur.html
During the xenophobic violence in Johannesburg, South Africa that took place in 2008, an extraordinary situation occured that still has me considering the approach of photographers in conflict situations.
Running battles between the police and protesters left a man lying wounded by a rubber bullet and as he lay in pain waiting to be tended to by paramedics, scores of photographers and cameramen formed a half circle around him.
As we framed and made our images, we tried to make a clean background for the image of the injured man.
On occasion a journalist would walk past the scene and get shouted and sworn at by photographers for ‘getting in the picture’.
After shooting the ‘clean’ image, I also walked past the scene and made an image of the media scrum from the other side and transmitted the image to EPA Photos head office in Frankfurt, Germany.
What followed later that year was a heated debate at the Visa Pour l’Image festival in Perpignan, France, with the discussion centring around the very nature of photographers on assignment, as well as the merit of the images which were put on the EPA wire service to its global clients.
The debated included photographer, Kim Ludbrook, EPA editor Maria Mann, Visa pour l’Image founder Jean-Francois Leroy, and AP photographer Jerôme Delay.
My feeling on the day was that there where many photographers trying to make ‘World Press images’; in other words fighting to make the money picture at all costs, even if it meant shouting at fellow journalists for walking in the background and clambering over each other to get the picture of a wounded man.
While being a Devil’s Advocate here, I am also part of the pack and know the feeling of pushing the boundaries of morality to get images partly because of the pressures involved in the industry and in my case, because of the highly competitive nature of news agency photography.
The second and more heated part of the debate is the question of whether or not the image should ever have been shot, never mind transmitted to Frankfurt and then put on the wire.
My view is that the image is simply another view of the reality that happened in that moment in time.
I can understand how many in the industry would have reservations about the usage of the image showing us looking like war paparazzi, but the sad fact is on that day we were acting just as the image shows.
Part of the issue also stems from the fact that once we are behind the viewfinder, we tend to become far braver, more interested in the IMAGE than what is happening around us and I am sure that many photographers and TV cameramen on that day did not act intentionally like war paparazzi.
Instinct took over.