War photographer: a dangerous idolatry

James Nachtwey, Afghanistan

Recently, I’ve been thinking about war photography, and the moral arguments that commonly support it. I’ve been seeing people use those arguments to advocate for certain practices in photography in general, and I think there are problems with that.

To me, war-phototography is not the same as non-violent-photography.

James Nachtwey, Bosnia

For example, in the movie War Photographer, by Christian Frei, photojournalist James Nachtwey describes his process like this: “In a war, the normal codes of civilized behavior are suspended. It would be unthinkable in so called normal life, to go into someone’s home, where the family is grieving over the death of a loved one, and spend long moments photographing them. It simply wouldn’t be done.

“Those pictures could not have been made unless I was accepted by the people I’m photographing. It’s simply impossible to photograph moments such as those without the complicity of the people I’m photographing; without the fact that they welcomed me, that they accepted me, that they wanted me to be there.”

James Nachtwey, Bosnia

The film shows Nachtwey building relationships, asking questions, and getting to know communities in a conscientious way, even as it also shows him taking pictures in the midst of explosions. But the film emphasizes the picture-taking, not the communication, which I think sends a false message.

I can see how, in a violent situation, neither the photographer nor the subject might be concerned with asking permission or communicating verbally. I can see how permission could be implicit. But I also know that it is easier not to ask permission. It is easier not to communicate. And it’s very easy to misunderstand.

So I’m wary of implicit permission, especially when it’s applied to non-violent situations. I often hear photographers say they are “giving a voice to the voiceless” or “bearing witness.” And when that is the aim, I think that some level of collaboration between photographer and subject—some kind of overt permission—is necessary for the image to have a positive impact.

In a fantastic essay for the online journal Soundscapes, Hans Durrer confronts this issue, saying, “In times when (some) photographers hold celebrity status, it is useful to be reminded that a good photograph does not solely depend on the photographer’s ability to choose the right subject, location and light, but also on the chemistry and the collaboration, between photographer and subject…Despite my deep sympathy for socially inclined photographers, when the people portrayed feel ashamed of their portraits, there clearly is something wrong with this kind of photography.”

That is just an electric statement: When the people portrayed feel ashamed of their portraits, there is something wrong with that kind of photography.

This doesn’t only happen in journalism. It also happens in collaborations between photographers and nonprofit organizations. I spoke to Benjamin Chesterton the other day, who runs the multimedia production company duckrabbit and the blog A Developing Story and he said, “It’s amazing to me that these NGOs’ awareness campaigns will say they’re giving a voice to the voiceless, but you never hear a single actual voice from the community that’s being represented.” This is happening right now with UNICEF’s new Put It Right campaign. Photo/audio slideshows that duckrabbit produces use voices in an incredibly powerful way, as in this one made for MSF (Doctors Without Borders).

Artist Fazal Sheikh photographs war and the issues that surround it, and is a photographer who takes permission seriously, and emphasizes it. Rather than seeing permission as a burden, Sheikh actually builds better projects and makes better pictures by asking permission. Which is intuitive, but not if you’ve just been watching War Photographer.

Fazal Sheikh, "Abduhl Rahman" from The Victor Weeps

In his introduction to the book A Camel for the Son, about Somali refugees living in Kenya, Sheikh writes, “I arrived at the camp at Liboi in February 1992 on a UNHCR flight from Nairobi along with news journalists, most of whom were staying for one or two days. The war was fresh and the competition for pictures and stories was fierce.

“I decided to stay on longer and asked one of the Somali leaders whether he would allow me to work in the camp. Some weeks earlier, on the Sudanese border, I had asked an elder the same question. ‘Why are you asking me?’ was his reply. ‘I am only a refugee.’ But his tone made it clear what a violation it was for the refugees to have strangers moving through their communities without their consent.”

Fazal Sheikh, "Alima Yusuf Abdi and her son Hassan" from A Camel for the Son

This is someone I can look up to. This is someone who has created a process that lines up with his stated goals. He also makes incredibly beautiful images, whose beauty has a lot to do with the energy, self-assertion, and self-possession that people display in front of his lens.

Fazal Sheikh, "Alima Hassan Abdullai and her brother Mahmoud" from A Camel for the Son

Seeing the strength, the individuality, and the self conscious composure of his subjects, I feel devastated and enraptured; humbled and uplifted. I feel sad. I feel educated. I feel inspired. And I feel proud to be the audience at the end of a photographic process I believe in. By making pictures that his subjects are not ashamed of, he allows me, as the audience, to shed my shame as well.

Fazal Sheikh, "Hadija and her father Badel Addan Gadel" from A Camel for the Son

The key? Intimacy.

Kathleen Hennessy is the Director of Photography at the San Francisco Chronicle and has just joined PhotoPhilanthropy as the Activist Award Director for 2010.

I asked her everything that came rushing into my head. What is your editing process like? And how do you think photography creates social change? And what advice do you have for people submitting photo essays to PhotoPhilanthropy?

Here’s what she said:

Some of the essays I looked at from last year’s submissions were not as strong as they could be because they don’t really have a focus. What I’m seeing is that people are photographing things that are happening around them, but I don’t know what the story is. I don’t know what they’re trying to say.

If you were going to document a pediatric surgical team, for example, it would be really great to have some theme that you follow—maybe a doctor, or a patient—so that you connect with somebody.

I think it’s really important to establish that connection with another individual. Because if you don’t, if the viewer doesn’t get to connect with any person in a deeper way, then everybody becomes sort of anonymous. And that’s a problem. I think you get a much more emotional reaction when you really feel like you got to know someone and their story. And then that one story illustrates the larger organization and the larger issue.

When I was working with Deanne Fitzmaurice on the Pulitzer prize winning story, she got very close to the subject.

It was as story about an Iraqi boy named Saleh, who picked up a bomb he thought was ball. It exploded, killing his brother and severely injuring him. He was eventually brought to Oakland, California for treatment. She worked on that story for about a year and got close to the family. It was impossible not to.

And even though she didn’t want to, she had to show the moments where he was acting up or getting frustrated because that was the whole story. She had to stay somewhat detached. Because the goal of photojournalism is to have the credibility that you are telling the truth.

An artist, on the other hand, is seeking their own truth, in my opinion.

So when you are doing this kind of collaborative work with an organization, you really have to believe in what that organization is doing. If you go in there and you think, “Wow, what are they doing?” then maybe you shouldn’t do it.

It’s also important to really do your homework. You should talk to people who run the organization, who are in the field, and ask them what they see every day. And sometimes you have to be a filter, because they may tell you what they think is a great story, and it may not be. For example, it may not be visual. It has to be a visual story. And it has to prompt an emotional reaction that connects the viewer to the subject

The best thing to do is observe. Spend some time before you ever pick up the camera, observing what they do. You need to think about what it is that attracted you to the story. What is the story that you want to tell?

And take notes. I always say to photographers—who are not necessarily writers—take notes. Jot down words that represent what you are feeling, and then think about how to capture that feeling.

You asked about creating social change as an editor. Well, we were having a staff meeting, and talking about ideas. I wanted to do some stories related to the economy, because that is one of the big issues of the year.

So Brant Ward, one of our staff photographers at the Chronicle, said, “I really want to do something in Chinatown. It’s very difficult to get access to stories there, and there is a lot going on.”

He’s been at the Chronicle for 25 years. He found his own contact and she connected him with the Mo family, who live in a one room flat.  The room has no private bathroom or kitchen so they share with the other families living in the building, which is called an SRO: single room occupancy.

He worked through a community activist who spoke the language and was trusted by the community. I think that’s a very important connection, so that when you are introduced to the community, you are also trusted.

The father, Zhihua, a carpenter and plumber, was out of work. The mom, Lifen, was making minimum wage handing out restaurant coupons to tourists. The grandfather, who lived a block away in another SRO, had a nurse taking care of him but when Zhihua lost his job they could no longer afford the nurse and Zhihua starting taken care of his dad daily.

The grandfather couldn’t walk, and his son told Brant, “When I take him to the doctor, I have to put him on my back and carry him up two flights of stairs.” And so Brant knew that was the picture he needed to get. And so he kept waiting and waiting for that day to come, and it finally did.

When the story was published, it was on the front page with two inside pages full of photographs. There was a real out-pouring of support. Brant received many emails from people who wanted to help, both monetarily and with job offers. Zihua is now working again.

So you hope that you have an impact, and it can be something small like one person getting a job. Or it could be a larger impact, like with Deanne’s story. After her story was published, Saleh’s family received thousands and thousands of dollars in donations and his mother and sisters were granted asylum in the U.S.

And that’s the beauty of documentary photography: hopefully your goal is to have some sort of impact.

Brant told the story of Chinatown through one family. Which gets back to what I was saying in the beginning. You’re more connected through one family than if it was a series of pictures of multiple families who lived in single rooms. I feel more connected to that issue because I know what this one family’s life is like.

If you stay with one story, if you stay with one focus, there’s more intimacy there. And to me that is the key to a successful story or a successful photo essay, intimacy.

And a lot of times you may see a collection of photographs, and they may be beautiful, but I’m left wondering what are they trying to say. Other than, here’s a nonprofit, or here’s a lot of suffering people.

I loved Dmitry Markov‘s story, which won the amateur award, because it was so focused. One group of kids, one place—I really got a sense of what their lives were like. Beautiful intimacy with the shaving of the head, wonderful use of light. I felt a sense of connection with the community there because I could see how the boys reacted to each other. I thought that was really successful.

PhotoPhilanthropy in the field: observations from Haiti

This week, PhotoPhilanthropy founder Nancy Farese is in Haiti, documenting the work of NGO’s as they provide disaster relief. She sent us this bulletin:

I am here shooting on behalf of the IRC (International Rescue Committee).  Their primary expertise in emergency response is water and sanitation, though they are quickly laying the groundwork for partnering with Haitian agencies to provide Gender Based Violence prevention programs in the settlements, child-friendly playing areas, and family identification databases to help people find their loved ones.

In Piste Camp a man collects rebar to straighten out and reuse.

There are approximately 500 spontaneous settlement camps in Port au Prince; people gathered out of the desperation of having lost everything in the crumbles of their house, or the simple fear of sleeping under concrete structures identical to those in ruins around them.  There was a 4.5 aftershock on Monday night, followed Tuesday by a 4.7 earthquake from a new source, that had us all running from our beds.

Spontaneous Settlement camp in Port au Prince

Spontaneous Settlement in Villambetta

The settlements are crowded and desperate; erected on every piece of available open land in the city  from parks to golf courses, out of any material at hand. Giant bladders indicate that the French Red Cross and UNHCR are supplying water, and  a cluster of people waiting in lines near a settlement indicates a distribution of tents or food vouchers.  The IRC and UNICEF are quickly building latrines with the help of campers where space is available, but they readily admit that the urban disaster constraints of this many people displaced in such tight confines is unique and challenging. Everyone fears the outbreak of disease if the latrines are not built quickly and used effectively, and everyone knows that each additional day spent in a camp means more resistance to a transfer to a safer, more physically intact location as communities develop and nearby jobs are secured. Everyone fears the onset of rain.

So what is going right?  The compassion and resilience of these remarkable Haitian people.  You can’t help but admire their strength. By far the most positive thing that we see is an openness, warmth, and a desire to connect. People want to talk with me, to tell their story, to hold my hand, to have a few words. There is much appreciation by locals for the help from people around the world.

Spontaneous Settlement in Villambetta

And children are playing in the camps; making kites out of plastic sheeting, toy trucks out of trash, playing soccer barefoot amidst the rocks and debris of an abandoned field.

In Piste Camp a man sells phone charging time, powered off of a generator.

Spontaneous Settlement in Villambetta, a girl takes a quiet moment to read. The schools are all closed, some physically collapsed in the quake killing hundreds of children.

An interview with Ian MacLellan, winner of the PhotoPhilanthropy Student Activist Award

Ian MacLellan is a 19-year-old sophomore at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts. He’s studying biology and geology. With a strong interest in international development, those subjects translate into water systems and strategies for public health.

“I had worked for nonprofits locally in my town and in Massachusetts, and I love to travel,” says MacLellan. “I found this group called International Bridges to Justice through Idealist.org. They had hosted a competition for justice makers and needed journalists to go out and document the projects they were funding.”

“IBJ was really, really supportive in linking journalists with appropriate projects,” says MacLellan. In fact, Jeff Kennel’s photo essay on PhotoPhilanthropy came about through a connection made by IBJ as well.

Jeff Kennel

MacLellan was also impressed by the way that IBJ clearly laid out their goals, in contract form, and delineated who would have what rights to the photographs, who had liability, and other basic parameters for the partnership.

When he arrived in Kisumu, MacLellan’s began thinking about how to tell a compelling story about this nonprofit. It’s hard to do. “Most of the work of any nonprofit is office work,” says MacLellan, “So you have to come up with your own creative projects to help tell the story.” That takes a while to figure out. But in some ways, it’s time well spent.

“It’s really great to not take pictures a lot of the time. You need time to learn, to find out people’s stories. Because the stories are what tell something about the nonprofit. They tell the spirit, the value, the meaning behind everything—in my opinion.

“I think semi-positive stories can be a great vehicle for social change, like the story of the newspaper—the Kakuma News Reflector. I think that it’s important to show something unique and not just show suffering. I don’t think people pay attention to stuff like that anymore. I think 30 years ago they might have, but not now.

“I’m not against the James Nachtwey’s and Zoriah’s of the world—don’t worry! They show both sides.

James Nachtwey

“I think a lot of people starting out think the James Nachtwey style is THE only way to tell stories. But I think after they get exposed to more work, they sort of see the other side of storytelling and image making.”

And what’s next, for Mr. MacLellan? He’s continuing to apply for grants—the next project he’s proposed is about energy issues in Scotland. And he’s participating in a group at Tufts called Exposure where “we try to have mature conversations about the state of journalism.”

“For students,” he says, “It’d be great if there were more small grants for domestic work. More small grants could be a great tool to promote journalism because newspapers can’t pay for those [small-scale, local] stories anymore. So that’s a void the nonprofits could fill.”