Do you have to be "embedded"?
I'm asking, because I don't know.
Does a photographer have to be 'embedded' with a group? Is there something stopping a photographer from arriving on their own and taking photos. I don't mean right at the front lines but back a bit. Are you able to take photos of tanks rolling along or is everything locked down.
I've never been a war correspondent, so I have no personal experience. But from what I've read, it seems it varies depending on the war, the combatant, and the period. Wondering around on a battlefield own your on seems suicidal although some correspondents and photographers have done that and some have paid the price. Being embedded gets you to the front lines surrounded by some protection of the troops. But they're still shooting at you.
I suppose if you stay in your hotel in a capitol drinking Martinis, and just pass along information that the government is feeding you, it's safer. But then you're just regurgitating the government propaganda, something I think we're getting a lot of in the current Ukrainian-Russian conflict. Of course, that's how governments control war news to their advantage. As far as censorship, the American manual I posted in my earlier post regarding news censorship was issued during WWII. Obviously things changed in Vietnam and were way more open and then again in Persian Gulf wars. So times change.
But it's still a dangerous profession. Besides getting shot, governments can arrest you as happened to the Wall Street Journal reporter in Russia a few days ago. They called him a spy. But who knows? It's a chancy profession and you have to like excitement. Are you interested in doing it Rob?
I don't want to go to the front line but would be interested in photographing everyday people living while the war is happening around them.
Do you have to be "embedded"?
I'm asking, because I don't know.
Does a photographer have to be 'embedded' with a group? Is there something stopping a photographer from arriving on their own and taking photos. I don't mean right at the front lines but back a bit. Are you able to take photos of tanks rolling along or is everything locked down.
100% correct! It is for this reason that if you are not built into the group and even without being at the front, it will be difficult for you to photograph. You will constantly arouse suspicion among both the locals and the police. In Vietnam and the Persian Gulf there was no concept of "Geolocation", in Afghanistan it did not matter much. Perhaps this is the first such war when, having indicated your geolocation, you can expect a blow to this place in a few minutes. During the winter, the Russians shelled the electrical infrastructure. If the locals would see in any way a person who photographs transformer substations, then the photographer would have big problemsI guess this may be part of the reason why there isn't more reporting from the front lines, but I think practical military considerations are far more important: photographed positions can easily be geolocated and targeted.
Ukrainian documentary photographer Oleksandr Glyadyelov
My question: Are there enough outlets to encourage photojournalism? Life, Look, Time and Newsweek
Wow! But here everything is simple! In order to see the killed Ukrainian soldiers, you need to be either on Russian territory or directly on the battle line. There are a lot of cars with white crosses around me, these cars are transporting the dead. I just returned home, I sent packages to the USA and at the bus stop I saw the car of the On the Shield organization, which is evacuating the dead. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who died. Everyone understands and sees this. And Oleksandr Glyadelov's video ends with shots from a huge cemetery and the words "They will be avenged for them"Here's a photo essay in the NY Times. Don't take this the wrong way but it supports my previous discussion about censorship. There are photos of dead Russian soldiers but not dead Ukrainian soldiers.
It seems to me there are plenty of competent professional photographers covering the Ukraine war these days, but the probability of seeing the work of any one individual is really quite small.
While forty or fifty years ago there was a limited number of international periodicals or channels where the work of photojournalists would be published, today there are many hundreds of thousands of outlets, so it's no wonder that selected images don't get seen by everybody all at once. In addition, contemporary social media completely bypass the traditional mass media pathways, so anybody with a smartphone can be their own reporter, photographer, editor, publisher and worldwide broadcaster all at once. This is a huge shift. The very concept of what it means to be "professional" has to be recalibrated for the internet era.
Wow! But here everything is simple! In order to see the killed Ukrainian soldiers, you need to be either on Russian territory or directly on the battle line. There are a lot of cars with white crosses around me, these cars are transporting the dead. I just returned home, I sent packages to the USA and at the bus stop I saw the car of the On the Shield organization, which is evacuating the dead. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who died. Everyone understands and sees this. And Oleksandr Glyadelov's video ends with shots from a huge cemetery and the words "They will be avenged for them"
This is farewell to Da Vinci on the Maidan. No one is trying to hide and hide from reality. We honor the memory of our Heroes and understand that this can happen to absolutely anyone
Oh no no! I didn't mean disrespect! Forgive me if I gave reason to suspect this! I talked about what I see every day. I want to say that even when I see this car transporting the dead, I cannot force myself and get a camera out of my backpack in order to take pictures. I can only put it into words. And yes, I understand that in different countries the selection of photos for demonstration can take place in different ways.I meant no disrespect. Please forgive me if it came across like that. I was referring to a foreign photo essay in America in the New York Times. People here are not seeing what you see only what is reported in these pictures. So while your views of the situation include everything, we get a particular view of actual events caused by censorship in Ukraine and bias on the part of NY Times photo editors who choose which photos to publish. That's the point I was trying to make about war photos.
A major event like a war is going to skim off the most elite photojournalists. Elite news organizations that still use photojournalists like the New York Times will send staff there. Dramatic and excellent photos are coming out. This may superficially resemble what happened in WW 2 and Vietnam. But the exceptional circumstances may belie the reality that the context for photojournalism has drastically changed.
For one thing, the audience has changed. When I taught college classes I would ask my students how they learned about current events. Not one of them said they read a newspaper, watched television news or used any traditional news media. Some said they used comedy shows like The Daily Show, or radio talk shows. Some said they used social media. Some said they relied on friends to fill them in. A good chunk of them said they did nothing, they made no effort to learn about what was happening in the world.
This is very different than in the past when huge numbers of people read newspapers and Life Magazine and later watched TV news. In the past news media used pro-journalists. Many of you know the story that the first photos published of grim allied causalities in WW 2 taken by E. Smith and others had to be approved at the highest levels of government. But a lot of people saw those photos and it had a big effect on them.
Now, if the average person sees photographs of a war at all, it is just as likely to be amateur pic's randomly seen on social media. Yes, there are still elite war photographers that are doing great work. But their work, at least in the US, will disproportionally be seen by elite readers. The importance and centrality of journalism and photojournalism is far less in the US than it has been in the past. This raises the question of how much of a new generation of photojournalists can be sustained over time in this changed scenario.
Crime photos as well as war photos are censored on the evening news and newspapers "to protect the viewers' sensitivities". I think this is a mistake. People should see and understand the violence in all its blood. Only then could they possibly gain a true understanding of these things. Whitewashing and eliminating the maim and mayhem only diminishes our caring about it.
"Next."
It depends on how you look at that. The most graphic of crime and war photos may not be shared in the news. But news media is anything free of accounts of maythem, disasters, murders, wars, which are depicted with disturbing detail. The news is drenched with violent, traumatic, disturbing events. One study showed that over 80% of newstories in US on a issue were negative. The BBC coverage was only around 50% negative on the same subject. One could say they are just objectively depicting how the world is. But that's not remotely true. They ignore countless things that are more positive and important to understand current events. It presents, at best, a limited and distorted view of the world.
There is the rule that, "If dog bites man it's not news. But if man bites dog, that's news." This means the stories that are prioritized are ones that are both disturbing and odd. If a man kills his stepmother and grinds her body up in the disposal, news editors will say, "Perfect, that's our lead feature!" The story will disturb consumers, but is it useful to them to know about such a rare and peculiar event? Not really, it just upsets them to no purpose.
The problem is that for most media outlets, their goal is not to give consumers an objective understanding of the world. They have convinced themselves that sensationalism pays and brings in the most revenue. From their viewpoint, they are mostly in the business of entertainment, not education. There are indications that it is not true that sensationalism is good for business. Polls show that young people are abandoning traditional news media in droves. A major reason, they say, is because it is so negative and depressing.
As an example, my area of Oregon has experienced major forest fires that threatened populated areas in recent years. There were important things for citizens to know about fires such as whether it was approaching their area. But the TV news had features on fires six times a day, usually covering the same traumatic aspects over and over, like a little crying because her pony had burned up. This was overkill, there was no functional reason for people to be oversaturated with all that stuff. But the minute the fires ended, there was not one mention of them in the news. But there should have been because the fire threat was going to recur. There needed to be discussions all year about how to prevent fires in the future. But they won't do those stories because it isn't sensational enough. I finally saw one story on Public Television where they discussed strategies to address the root cause of fires, like excess fuels in the forests. That was one out of thousands of sensational reports.
People have a finite capacity to absorb traumatic stories. The media maxs that out largely on pointless subjects so that when there is something like Ukraine where they should know about it and feel empathy and try to help by donating to relief drives or something, they have nothing left. When people are overloaded, they become numb, and eventually, instead of feeling empathy, they are pissed to hear about the misery of others. When people are maxed out, even showing the most graphic war photos will not make them more empathetic or interested. It may do the opposite. You can blame the public for being apathetic and heartless, but they have been engineered to be that way by the media. In general, it can be stressful to have someone tell of their dire problems but have no way to help. It is the same with the news. If we show the public horrific images of Ukraine, there also ought information on how they can help, how they can actively support solutions and not just be a passive dumping site for sensational trauma.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?