…….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

 

Giles Duley: ‘I lost three limbs in Afghanistan, but had to go back … ‘

Photographer Giles Duley was nearly killed after stepping on a landmine in Afghanistan. Back home, fighting for his life in hospital, he made himself a promise: to return to Kabul to complete his mission of documenting the savage toll that war takes on civilians……..

This is his story. From The Guardian

A few months earlier, I sat in the searing heat of Sudan with Gino Strada, the charismatic chainsmoking surgeon who set up the Italian NGO Emergency, discussing the plight of civilians caught in the Afghan conflict. I was visiting their project in Khartoum, documenting their groundbreaking Salam Cardiac Centre. Over dinner, Gino told me about the work Emergency was doing in Kabul. I had shied away from Afghanistan because I felt so many great photographers were already working there. I’ve always said that if I get somewhere and there’s another photographer there already, I’m in the wrong place. My main interest has been the untold stories of human suffering around the world. However, as Gino explained, with his typical Italian passion, about the plight of civilians caught up in the years of conflict, I realised it was a story I had heard little of. So I resolved at that point to go and document Emergency’s work there, and I made that promise to Gino……….

Seven-year-old Ataqullah at the Red Cross limb-fitting centre in Kabul. A year before, while walking to school, he’d stepped on a landmine, losing an arm and leg. Photograph: Giles Duley

While on this embed, one cold morning in February 2011, I stepped on an IED (improvised explosive device), which had me fighting for my life in intensive care for the next two months and left me a triple amputee with only one arm intact……….

Giles Duley with Afghan boy Sediqullah at the Emergency hospital, Kabul. Sediqullah’s hands were damaged when he played with an unexploded fuse. Photograph: Neil Bonner/Minnow films

Read all of this moving and powerful story here If you can’t read there will be a documentary on the tv Walking Wounded: Return to the Frontline will be shown on Channel 4 at 10pm on 21 February

Visa Pour l’Image’s Jean-François Leroy discusses photojournalism past and present

Olivier Laurent in the BJP interviews Jean-Francois Leroy about the past and future of phot-journalism

Athens, October 20, 2011. A demonstrator fleeing tear gas. Image © Aris Messinis / AFP.

Visa Pour l’Image, the world’s largest photojournalism festival, is coming back to Perpignan for its 24th edition. Its director, Jean-François Leroy, speaks with Olivier Laurent about this year’s programme and the state of the market……..

In less than two months, thousands of photojournalists will converge on Perpignan for the 24th edition of Visa Pour l’Image. Olivier Laurent speaks with festival director Jean-François Leroy about the future of photojournalism, photojournalists past and present, and drawing inspiration from photography.

Olivier Laurent: Let’s start with the exhibitions. What’s the overall theme of this year’s festival?

Jean-François Leroy: As always, there’s no actual theme. For this edition, we’re following this year’s news agenda, which wasn’t as heavy as last year’s. But even without Fukushima and the start of the Arab Spring, we still had the withdrawal of US troops in Iraq, Gaddafi’s fall and Syria, which started as an uprising and is now a mass grave for journalists and civilians. And let’s not forget the Sudan, Nigeria and Mexico. There’s a lot happening, unfortunately. On the other hand, and to add something a bit more amusing, we have the French elections.

Read more: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/interview/2190873/an-interview-with-visa-pour-limages-jeanfran-ois-leroy#ixzz20Pg7QLjI
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Photos: The Conflict in Sudan

From the excellent Denver Post pblogs

“Sudan’s president has threatened to topple the government of South Sudan during a visit to an oil-rich border town that has sparked a recent surge in violence between the two countries.

Omar al-Bashir’s comments Monday were the latest in a war of words against Sudan’s southern neighbors.

The two countries disagree over where the border between them lies and ownership of oil resources in the region.

This latest outbreak of violence threatens to escalate into a full-scale war.

Al-Bashir vowed during his visit to Heglig to press ahead with his military campaign until, according to him, all southern troops or affiliated forces are chased out of the north.

His forces bombed a major town inside South Sudan Monday. (AP)”

Sudanese jet planes bombed near the bridge in Bentiu, South Sudan, on April 14, 2012. The attack killed at least four civilians. (Alan Boswell/MCT)

A Sudanese soldier rides a bicycle during a patrol following clashes between the army and South Sudan’s forces in the town of Talodi in South Kordofan, about 50 kms (30 miles) from the disputed frontier with South Sudan, on April 12, 2012. The leaders of Sudan and South Sudan accused each other of wanting war, with each denying the other’s charge, as Sudanese war planes bombed a bridge in the South after days of fighting in a contested border region. (ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP/Getty Images)

This photo of Sunday, April 15, 2012, shows a soldier from the Darfuri rebel group Justice and Equality Movement at a South Sudanese position in Heglig, South Sudan. Sudan has accused South Sudan of fighting alongside the rebel group in the recent clashes along the disputed border. Two Sudanese Sukhoi fighters dropped 6 bombs in the Bentiu area, killing five and wounding four others. (AP Photo/Michael Onyiego)

A picture taken on April 14, 2012 shows Peter Yien Chuol, a local farmer, waiting for treatment at the Bentiu Hospital after being injured by a bomb in Bentiu. A Sudanese plane bombed Bentiu, capital of South Sudan’s oil-rich border state of Unity, on April 14, killing five civilians and wounding six, a local government spokesman said. Gideon Gatfan, spokesman of the Unity state government, said one bomb fell beside a car market near a bridge which was the target of the raid. (ADRIANE OHANESIAN/AFP/Getty Images)

See the rest of these moving pictures here

Wilfred Theisger at The Pitt River’s Museum Oxford

Sir Wilfred Thesiger took nearly 40,000 photographs during his eight decades of travels throughout Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Now, to mark 100 years since his birth, Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum is displaying some of his most striking images.

 

Wilfred Thesiger in Africa: A Centenary Exhibition
4 June 2010 – 5 June 2011

Marking the centenary of the renowned British traveller and writer Wilfred Thesiger’s birth in Ethiopia, this major new exhibition is the first to explore his lifelong relationship with Africa. Photographs from Ethiopia, Sudan, Morocco, Tanzania and Kenya are accompanied by a selection of objects collected by Thesiger in Ethiopia and later donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum. The exhibition is accompanied by a major new publication, Wilfred Thesiger in Africa, which includes a wide selection of his African photographs, and essays by a number of contributors, such as Alexander Maitland and David Attenborough