When you are at the front row seat to history:

Photojournalists’ experiences of covering human suffering in war and conflict

Presenter(s)

James Zhang , Michael Martínez

Abstract or Description

Among different types of news representations, news pictures have a special power and capacity to draw the public’s attention to a particular time, place, or a given event and issue, especially during times of misfortune (Zelizer, 2011). The press image of human misfortune is an important resource for the public to stay informed about different occasions of human suffering (N.K. Miller, 2004; Perlmutter, 1998). From an historical viewpoint, using photography to document human suffering can be traced back to as early as the 1880s, when journalists, missionaries, and reformers used photos in different forms of print media such as illustrated newspapers, books, and magazines to show different examples of human misery in the world (Fehrenbach & Rodogno, 2015). From then, a variety of humanitarian imagery rendered the meaning of human suffering and made it comprehensible for European and American audiences. In contemporary modern days, inspired by the ideal of embracing humanism (Cookman, 2009), journalists so often turn to visuals to document different instances of human suffering in times of crisis, dramatic events, and violence (Griffin, 2010; Zelizer, 2002). As a technology capable of collapsing distance between the viewer and the subject of suffering, photography tells a better story of suffering than words (Twomey, 2012). The creation and circulation of visual images of suffering, atrocity, and abuse so often raise the public’s awareness of distinct humanitarian issues.

Within academia, numerous visual communication research studies have been done to examine how the media had used photographs to frame certain international events, such as war (Fahmy, 2007; Griffin, 2004) and natural disaster (Fahmy, et al., 2007). However, as important source for such photographs—press photographers who risked their lives to go to the scene and take photographs about dire humanitarian situations, were barely studied in the field.

A survey of academic literature has shown that from photojournalism practice point of view, scholars have focused on photojournalists’ adaptation to digital news environment (Stefanikova & Lab, 2018), the practice of slow journalism (Mendelson & Creech, 2016), and changing work practices and professionalism of photojournalists in the digital age (Klein-Avraham, & Reich, 2016; Maenpaa, 2014). A few of them have examined the practice of photojournalism in the context of covering human suffering in war and conflict.

In order to fill this gap, using semi-structured interviews with experienced press photographers who have been to war and conflict, this research study aims to understand the photojournalism practice in war and conflict scenarios. The overall research question in this study asks the following: How do press photographers communicate human suffering in war and conflict through their camera lens? Specifically, this research seeks to study the press photographers’ experience of covering war and conflict, their perceptions of photojournalism objectivity, and journalism principles that guide their work.

The researchers aim to conduct in-depth semi-structured interviews with press photographers who have significant experiences of covering war and conflict, especially with a focus on humanitarian issues in those scenarios. The interview will be conducted fully online. All interviews will be transcribed for qualitative analysis.

Reference

Fahmy, S. (2007). “They took it down”: Exploring determinants of visual reporting in the toppling of the Saddam statue in national and international newspapers. Mass Communication & Society, 10(2), 143-170.

Fehrenbach, H., & Rodogno, D. (2015). Introduction—The morality of sight: Humanitarian photography in history. In Humanitarian Photography: A History, 1-21. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107587694.001

Fahmy, S., Kelly, J. D., & Kim, Y. S. (2007). What Katrina revealed: A visual analysis of the hurricane coverage by news wires and U.S. newspapers. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 84(3), 546-561.

Griffin, M. (2004). Picturing America’s ‘War on Terrorism’ in Afghanistan and Iraq. Journalism, 5(4), 381-402. doi: 10.1177/1464884904044201

Griffin, M. (2010). Media images of war. Media, War & Conflict, 3(1), 7-41. doi: 10.1177/1750635210356813

Klein-Avraham, I., & Reich, Z. (2016). Out of the frame: A longitudinal perspective on digitization and professional photojournalism. New Media & Society, 18(3), 429-446. doi: 10.1177/1461444814545289

Maenpaa, J. (2014). Rethinking photojournalism: The changing work practices and professionalism of photojournalists in the digital age. Nordicom Reviews, 35(2), 91-104.

Mendelson, A.L., & Creech, B. (2016). “Make every frame count”: The practice of slow photojournalism and the work of David Burnett. Digital Journalism, 4(4), 515-529. doi: 10.1080/21670811.2015.1124727

Miller, N. K. (2004). The girl in the photograph: The Vietnam War and the making of national memory. JAC, 24(2), 261-290.

Perlmutter, D. D. (1998). Photojournalism and foreign policy: Icons of outrage in International crisis. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Stefanikova, S. & Lab, F. (2018). Transformation of photojournalism practice in the Czech Republic in the age of digital technology. Journalism, 19(2), 234-251. doi: 10.1177/146464884916663622

Twomey, C. (2012). Framing atrocity: Photography and humanitarianism. History of Photography, 36(3), 255-264. doi: 10.1080/03087298.2012.669933

Zelizer B (2002). Photography, journalism, and trauma. In B. Zelizer & S. Allan (Eds.), Journalism after September 11 (pp. 46-68). London: Routledge.

Zelizer, B. (2011). Photography, journalism, and trauma. In B. Zelizer & S. Allan (Eds.), Journalism after September 11 (pp. 55-75). New York: Routledge.