…….and six other shots that shook the world

From The Guardian

While stories of people drowning at sea as they flee to Europe has been a staple of news reporting this summer, it is this heartbreaking picture that has shocked the country into action. Charities have seen donations soar, petitions have been signed and marches planned since it was published – while, in the face of mounting pressure, David Cameron has finally agreed to taking more Syrian refugees. But this is not the first time a photograph has changed the course of world events.

much of what follows is difficult to look at

Phan Thi Kim Phúc

If the horrors of war can be distilled into one image, it might be the 1972 picture of nine-year-old Kim Phúc, screaming as she flees the napalm explosion that has burnt the clothes from her body. Nick Ut’s black-and-white photograph swayed US public opinion against the war, and helped to bring it to an end within six months of publication. After taking the shot, Ut threw a raincoat over Phúc and drove her to hospital, saving her life.

Vulture stalking child

Kevin Carter’s 1993 photograph of a starving Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture caused mass uproar. The macabre picture highlighted the despair and severity of the famine, but criticism centred on Carter. He was vilified for not going to the child’s aid – despite the fact that journalists were told not to touch famine victims for fear of spreading disease. Carter won a Pulitzer prize for the image, but killed himself just months later.

Little Rock

Elizabeth Eckford was 15 and painfully shy when she became one of nine black schoolchildren in Arkansas to be enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957 following a ruling that ended the segregation of schools in the US. On the first day of school, Eckford arrived to find the doors barred to her by soldiers of the National Guard, and a mob of classmates and parents screaming at her. The teenagers were eventually accompanied inside the school by the soldiers, but not before they had endured physical attacks and even death threats. This was the image that made sure desegregation went ahead.

Tank Man

No one knows what happened to the solitary man who stood before the tanks of Tiananmen Square, but his image, taken by Jeff Widener, broadcasted the brutal massacre by the Chinese army. Around a million protesters were said to have joined the call for economic and political reform in China in 1989, with student demonstrators occupying Beijing’s famous square. But on 3 June, the military opened fire on those who had gathered, rolling over others with their tanks. The government branded the demonstrators rioters and banned this image. But outside China, it has endured, ensuring that the courage of the unarmed protestors will not be forgotten.

Abu Ghraib

Unlike other world-changing pictures, these are not beautifully composed, arresting photographs taken by professionals, but grainy spur-of-the-moment snaps. Capturing the degrading torture and humiliation of Iraqis by the American soldiers who took the pictures as “trophies”, their publication severely damaged the credibility of US troops. The abuse uncovered after they were published fuelled anti-US anger and undermined Washington’s claims to be bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East.

 

Migrant Mother

In 1936, Florence Thompson was 32, a widow and worked as a farm labourer. Her husband had died of tuberculosis, and she was the sole provider for her seven children. When her car broke down, she ended up out of work with other labourers on a pea-picking farm, selling her tyres to buy food. Her children were killing birds to survive, and eating frozen vegetables dug from the nearby field. Photographer Dorothea Lange asked to take her picture to illustrate the plight of the pea-pickers. The picture became a symbol of the human suffering in the Great Depression, and the federal government sent 20,000lb of food to California migrant workers.

Looking at this picture, it’s impossible not to imagine your own child – or any child you love … a paramilitary police officer carries Aylan Kurdi near the Turkish resort of Bodrum on Wednesday 2 September. Photograph: AP

What the Image of Aylan Kurdi Says About the Power of Photography

Photo editors and experts discuss their decision to publish an image that has shocked the world by Olivier Laurent in Time

“The reason we’re talking about this photograph is not because it’s been taken or not because it’s been circulated, but it’s because it’s been published by mainstream media,” says Hugh Pinney, vice president at Getty Images, a distributor of news images. “And the reason we’re talking about it after it’s been published is because it breaks a social taboo that has been in place in the press for decades: a picture of a dead child is one of the golden rules of what you never published.”

The last time a photograph of a dead child was widely published was in July of 2014 when New York Times photographer Tyler Hicks captured the mangled bodies of four Palestinian youths killed in an Israeli airstrike on a beach in Gaza. What is unique about this case, however, is that many news outlets’ decisions to publish the images followed a public outcry on social media. “We got to this point because individuals have had the balls to publish the pictures themselves on social media,” says Pinney. “I think that gave the mainstream media the courage and the conviction to publish this picture.” READ MORE HERE

Make a donation

Make a financial donation to a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that is doing related humanitarian work overseas. These could include:

● Save the Children: distributing essential items such as nappies, hygiene kits and food

● Red Cross Europe: providing emergency health services at central train stations

● Migrant Offshore Aid Station: dedicated to preventing migrant deaths at sea

● International Rescue Committee:  improving living conditions by setting up camps

● The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR): providing water, mosquito nets, tents, healthcare

● Refugee Action: advice about claiming asylum, the asylum process, asylum support

● World Vision: providing food, water, shelter, education and psychosocial care

● Médecins Sans Frontières: humanitarian agency which has three rescue ships in the Mediterranean

● Aylan Kurdi Fund: named in honour of the drowned child and set up within 24 hours of the horrific pictures circulating around the world. All proceeds are going to charity Hand In Hand For Syria

 

Photojournalists On War: The Untold Stories From Iraq

I watched the BBC program Imagine with the feature on Don McCullin recently,  a most touching and revealing documentary, which I implore you to watch if you can find it anywhere. In the BJP we find out about a book that merits further investigation. As with the earlier post about L1GHTB1TE the stories behind the pictures are often as important as the images themselves and give us an opportunity to understand more of the photographic process.

Photojournalists On War is the result of five years of interviews with some of the world’s leading photojournalists. However, it’s also the fruit of Michael Kamber’s frustration over the harrowing images that were never shown or published before

The longer that photojournalist Michael Kamber spent covering the war in Iraq, the more frustrated he became. His position on the frontline meant he and his colleagues were closer to the war than anyone, other than the soldiers and Iraqi civilians, yet the photos in the Western media didn’t reflect what he saw happening. “They look like sports pictures to me. It looks like a quarterback limping off the field, being helped by his buddy,” he says. “It’s not what these wars look like.”

 

With his commitment to accurate reporting shortchanged by what he saw as censorship, Kamber began working on Photojournalists On War: The Untold Stories From Iraq in 2008. The book is a compilation of interviews with 39 photojournalists from around the world, accompanied by some of their most poignant and definitive photos. The aim of the book, which will be released on 15 May in the US and later this year in the UK, is to tell the uncensored story to the general public, an audience that hasn’t been privy to much of what went on there.

The photographs in the book are at once stunning and arrestingly graphic. In one shot, by Eros Hoagland, the severed head of a suicide bomber lies in the middle of the frame, surrounded by the crumpled bodies of doves. Other images show the bodies of American contractors strung from a bridge across the Euphrates, children maimed and bleeding, or grieving and covered in the blood of their family members. Until now, many of these images had never reached the general public. 

Read more here

NY Times 2007

NY Times 2007

Read more: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/report/2262550/photojournalists-on-war-the-untold-stories-from-iraq#ixzz2ebOUxUBz
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Conflict Photography Workshop

One area of photography that we over here at OSP Towers have no experience in is conflict or more accurately war photography and I honestly hope we never will gain that experience. So we can’t teach a course in staying alive (cue Bee Gees) but there is such a workshop running and here are the details

The main aim of Conflict Photography Workshop is to familiarize the participants who may be considering going to work in hostile environments, specifically war zones with the various threats they may encounter and to educate them on how do deal with these dangers and to work with a higher degree of safety and security.

No professional soldier is sent to war without extensive training. Photographers who operate in exactly the same battle space without any training, experience or proper preparation put themselves in increased danger and potentially put others around them at risk also.

Even basic training and forward planning can minimize the risks hugely.

Instances of extreme danger often last only seconds or minutes and can arrive without warning. Ones chances of surviving are multiplied if one has already properly prepared themselves for the danger and has a preplanned course of action ready.

The team of instructors have a combined experience of more than 60 years spent working in many of the most dangerous places on earth including Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, Chechnya, Syria etc… Not only has their work appeared in every major publication in the world and they have received numerous awards for the work including multiple World Press, POYi and the Pulitzer but most importantly they also have real time, first hand knowledge of dealing with the multiple threats and extreme risk associated with working in these war zones. 

Over six days participants will receive both theoretical and practical training in everything from Battle Field First Aid Drills and IED awareness through to editing, captioning and ethical behavior as well as how to work, survive and maintain themselves and their equipment in the field whilst covering combat operations. 

This workshop will not ‘qualify’ you to work in a conflict zone nor are we actively encouraging people to enter dangerous situations but we do guarantee that by the end of this unique course you will be far better equipped and prepared for doing so.

THE COURSE WILL RUN FROM 6TH – 12TH NOVEMBER 2013

Further information here

Tom Stoddart’s retrospective comes to London’s South Bank

In the BJP we read about a retrospective of the work of Tom Stoddart

A child plays with pigeons among the ruins of Bhachau, India, one of the worst hit towns after the earthquake of 2001 struck the region of Gujarat. Image © Tom Stoddart/Getty Images.

Perspectives, a retrospective of Tom Stoddart’s career, will be shown on the South Bank throughout the Olympic and Paralympic Games, from 25 July to 11 September.

Eimear Kelly speaks to Stoddart

“I thought it was a really good opportunity to have an exhibition when lots and lots of people are visiting the capital, and the idea was to put it in a place where there would be a huge footfall of people,” Stoddart tells BJP.

 More London on the South Bank will display 78 of Stoddart’s black and white images, where his Eyewitness exhibition was held eight years ago.

Open 25 July – 11 September, throughout the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Seventy-eight of Stoddart’s signature black and white pictures will form a free, open-air display at More London Riverside, between City Hall and HMS Belfast.During his distinguished career Stoddart has travelled to more than 50 countries and documented such historic events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Siege of Sarajevo and the election of Nelson Mandela as South Africa’s first black president.His acclaimed in-depth work on the HIV/AIDS pandemic blighting sub-Saharan Africa won the POY World Understanding Award in 2003. In the same year his pictures of British Royal Marines in combat, during hostilities in Iraq, was awarded the Larry Burrows Award for Exceptional War Photography. A year later his book iWITNESS was honoured as the best photography book published in the USA.Now established as one of the world’s most respected photojournalists, Stoddart works closely with Getty Images to produce features on serious world issues.He said,

”The world’s nations will soon be joined together in a wonderful sporting festival whose motto is ‘swifter, higher, stronger’. I hope that people visiting the exhibition will leave with a greater determination to understand and help those with little access to clean water, food and medicines who, through no fault of their own, cannot run more swiftly, jump higher or be stronger”.

Tom Stoddart

Tom Stoddart

Tom Stoddart began his photographic career with a provincial newspaper in his native North East of England.

In 1978 he moved to London and, working freelance, started to regularly supply national newspapers and magazines. In the eighties he worked extensively for the Sunday Times newspaper.

Stoddart was in Beirut in 1982 when the Israeli forces bombed Yasser Arafat’s besieged PLO base and again in 1987 shooting a world exclusive on the horrific conditions inside the
Palestinian camp of Bourj el Barajneh, where Dr. Pauline Cutting was trapped.

Later he spent time aboard the Greenpeace ship ‘Rainbow Warrior’ where he shot a widely published story about the environmentalists’ efforts to stop the Canadian cull of baby seals in the Gulf of St Lawrence.

Stoddart has witnessed many international events including the Romanian Revolution and the massing of alliance troops in the Middle East for the Desert Storm conflict with Iraq. He has subsequently spent time with British Royal Marines on more recent operations in Iraq.

In July 1991, he travelled to Sarajevo to document the civil war that was engulfing Yugoslavia.

His work from there was published around the world. Returning a year later for The Sunday Times Magazine, he was seriously injured in heavy fighting around the Bosnian Parliament buildings.

After a year of recovery, Stoddart threw himself back into photojournalism, producing a powerful feature on the aftermath of the Mississippi floods and, later that year, an award-winning photo-essay on the harsh regime for the training of Chinese Olympic Child Gymnasts.

In December 1993 he returned to Sarajevo to report on the hardship of life in the city during a freezing winter under siege. This trip confirmed his fascination with a place that he was to return to on a dozen different occasions up until the Dayton Peace Accord in 1995. Earlier this year he revisited the city, on the 20th Anniversary of the lifting of the siege.

In 1997 Tony Blair gave Tom Stoddart exclusive access for three months to document his election campaign as Labour swept to victory after 18 years of Conservative government. He was later give access to Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and David Cameron.

Now established as one of the world’s most respected photojournalists, Tom Stoddart is represented by, and works closely with Getty Images, to produce campaigning photographic projects on the serious world issues of our time.

http://www.TomStoddart.com

The highs and lows of life as a documentary photographer

In the Guardian…..

On the road for six months of the year, covering everything from the Iraq war to Agent Orange, Ed Kashi writes home to his wife

Taken 13.04.09

Aleppo, Syria (above)

“Today in Aleppo, it’s a brilliant, crisp sunny day, after a night of thunder and rain. I’m always coming and going from home. This constant state of flux creates the sense of being suspended between worlds and always feeling isolated on some level, since I can’t ever get grounded or fully connected either at home or on the road. One of the issues at home is how distracted everyone is, whether from your work or the digital gadgets and friends of the kids. And, of course, you all must live your own lives, so you are not in sync with my rhythms and moods.”

Zululand, Africa

Taken 21.09.97“I am once again facing the demons of a tough fixer, the loneliness of the road and less than perfect conditions. But my problems pale when I think about our new baby on the way. It was a shock when I first got the news but now I’m jumping out of my skin with excitement. Who knows what we’ll have? I know you want a girl this time. I just want a healthy baby.

Today we went out at dusk to photograph the cane fields being burned. It was exciting, and I had a near miss. Hot embers were flying everywhere and they had these Zulu workers armed with big sticks to bat the embers down as they tried to fly to an adjacent field not ready for burning. That would be devastating for the farmers. I was on the fire break road that separates the fields, trying to photograph the worker swinging at the embers, when a bunch of them fell on me. They burned holes in my clothes, caught my forearm and left a small mark.

Every night I go to sleep thinking of your swollen belly and all the magic that’s inside. I can’t wait to meet our new child. Only a few months left.

I love you so dearly and deeply”.…..MORE at the Guardian

 

 

Denver Post’s Craig Walker wins the Pulitzer Prize

One of my favourite sites for photo-journalism is The Denver Post, this series of images and story are a testament to the quality they produce. Excellent news that Craig Walker has won the Pulitzer Prize for his work

“Denver Post photojournalist Craig F. Walker, who chronicled in intimate, affecting detail a young man’s journey from a high school student in Lakewood to a soldier fighting in Iraq and then back home, won the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography Monday.”

See the full article and pictures here

Between his high school graduation and the bus ride that would begin his journey to basic training, Ian Fisher reveled once more in the civilian life that was defined by his buddies, his girlfriend and his family. But the long good-bye slowly segued into the reality of his enlistment and the difficult road ahead. June 1, 2007. 2:03 p.m. Ian returns a phone call to Sgt. 1st Class Gavino Barron, the commander at Ian’s Army recruiting office. Barron was making sure Ian was on track for enlistment. When he was 17, Ian had joined the Army’s Future Soldier Training Program, which prepares recruits for the enlistment process. Barron recalls his initial impression of Ian: “He wasn’t in it for the money. He was only in it for God and country. That’s the reason most infantrymen join.” #

June 20, 2007. 12:41 p.m. “I want to go home. It makes me feel like I have an excuse. I’ve been thinking about everyone,” Ian says. He waits to speak with Sgt. 1st Class Robert Russell, the recruiting command liaison, to outline his injury and make a new claim: A drill sergeant mistreated him for not seeking permission when he got an X-ray the night before. #

Sept. 15, 2007. 3:22 p.m. Following a long day – on top of a long week – and suffering from heat rash, Ian finds himself back at his tent, bowing his head in prayer. He explains later: “I’ve been praying that God takes this stuff off my back.” #

Dec. 10, 2008. 8:20 p.m. Ian, center, and Buthmann pull security detail for a meeting between a psychological operations team and some local residents who were near the site of a rocket attack two nights earlier. The meeting is over quickly; the team doesn’t find what it is looking for. #

See all the images and read the stories here

 

Pictures from the insides of deposed dictators palaces after the dictators have been ousted.

This is revealing and oddly addictive, some of the images are a bit expected but the majority have the ability to surprise. Pictures from the insides of deposed dictators palaces after the dictators have been ousted. You will not learn a lot about photography here but you will learn something.…more

A US Army soldier from the 1-22 Battalion of the 4th Infantry Division (Task Force Ironhorse) shoots the ball during a basketball game inside one of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s former palaces along the banks of the Tigris river in Tikrit, 180km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, 23 November 2003. With their marble interiors, domed roofs and intricate arabesque stucco, the headquarters of the 4th ID look more like a vision from a Middle Eastern fairy tale than a military camp. The resort-like series of palaces now called Forward Base Ironhorse used to be a favorite resting place of Saddam before US-led coalition forces ousted him in April. AFP PHOTO/Mauricio LIMA (Photo credit should read MAURICIO LIMA/AFP/Getty Images) #

US Army Sergeant Craig Zentkovich from Connecticut belonging to the 1st Brigade Combat Team photographs a pink bedroom at Saddam Hussein’s presidential palace 13 April 2003. The palace is located in a vast military compound near the airport southwest of the capital. AFP PHOTO/Romeo GACAD (Photo credit should read ROMEO GACAD/AFP/Getty Images) #

U.S. Army soldiers Spc. Daniel Andrews of Lynchburg, Va., left, and Pvt. Robert Knott of Fort Hood, Tex., both from Alfa Company-588 swim in an indoor pool at one of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s palaces, now a U.S. Army base, in Tikrit, Iraq, Monday Sept. 1, 2003. U.S. soldiers stationed here in this riverside palace complex that once belonged to Saddam Hussein face constant danger from Iraqi insurgents whenever they leave the base. But once inside, they are getting to kick back inincreasing style. (AP Photo/Murad Sezer) #