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Photojournalism: How Far is Too Far?
In today's world the ways in which to communicate and tell a story are endless. Be it through print media, television, radio, or social media, if you have a story there is always a way to get it out there. Some creative outlets are of course more influential than others and seem to have a greater impact on society as a whole. For me, the use of photojournalism is what really hits me every time. Without words or sounds an entire story is told from beginning to end. There are no instructions that come with it and the viewer is left only with his own thoughts and interpretations to decipher the meaning of the image.
I find photojournalism to be quite beautiful and powerful, however, I also think that sometimes it goes too far. I can appreciate the fact that some photojournalistic images encourage and promote change in certain countries or among certain situations but I also think that sometimes the photographers who are taking these photos should sometimes leave their cameras behind and take action in the situation that they have found themselves in. One man's photo-op is another man's nightmare. Take the following image into consideration:
This image by photojournalist Kevin Carter was taken in 1994 and won the Pulitzer Prize. While this photo is very powerful and sends the message that there are many starving children, such as this one, in Africa, I have to wonder if this is going too far. This child is clearly suffering and all Carter can do is snap photos of the little boy as he curls up in pain. According to the website Multimedia Seattle, "The picture depicts a famine stricken child being stalked by a vulture. The child is crawling towards a United Nations food camp, a kilometer away. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer, who left the scene as soon as the photo was taken. He later confided to friends that he wished he had intervened" (Multimedia Seattle 2010). Wishing and doing are two very different things. That is all fine and dandy that Carter wishes he could go back and help but the fact is, he can't. Carter could have easily picked the child up or at least taken his hand and led him to the UN food camp. Instead he just got his photo and walked away. How somebody can take such heart wrenching photos and not get involved is beyond me. Just looking at the photo makes me want to cry.
I can appreciate the fact that photojournalism raises awareness in countries such as ours, where the majority of society is more focused on what Britney Spears had to eat for breakfast than things such as famine in distant lands. What I cannot understand is the lengths that these people will go to in order to get a photo, and for what? So that they can win a prize while someone else slowly dies? I am torn between my thoughts with regards to photojournalism. On one hand I absolutely love it and am always amazed at the photos that are produced each year. On the other hand I sometimes have to question the code of ethics that is implemented when it comes to taking pictures. In society today, how far is too far?
I find photojournalism to be quite beautiful and powerful, however, I also think that sometimes it goes too far. I can appreciate the fact that some photojournalistic images encourage and promote change in certain countries or among certain situations but I also think that sometimes the photographers who are taking these photos should sometimes leave their cameras behind and take action in the situation that they have found themselves in. One man's photo-op is another man's nightmare. Take the following image into consideration:
This image by photojournalist Kevin Carter was taken in 1994 and won the Pulitzer Prize. While this photo is very powerful and sends the message that there are many starving children, such as this one, in Africa, I have to wonder if this is going too far. This child is clearly suffering and all Carter can do is snap photos of the little boy as he curls up in pain. According to the website Multimedia Seattle, "The picture depicts a famine stricken child being stalked by a vulture. The child is crawling towards a United Nations food camp, a kilometer away. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer, who left the scene as soon as the photo was taken. He later confided to friends that he wished he had intervened" (Multimedia Seattle 2010). Wishing and doing are two very different things. That is all fine and dandy that Carter wishes he could go back and help but the fact is, he can't. Carter could have easily picked the child up or at least taken his hand and led him to the UN food camp. Instead he just got his photo and walked away. How somebody can take such heart wrenching photos and not get involved is beyond me. Just looking at the photo makes me want to cry.
I can appreciate the fact that photojournalism raises awareness in countries such as ours, where the majority of society is more focused on what Britney Spears had to eat for breakfast than things such as famine in distant lands. What I cannot understand is the lengths that these people will go to in order to get a photo, and for what? So that they can win a prize while someone else slowly dies? I am torn between my thoughts with regards to photojournalism. On one hand I absolutely love it and am always amazed at the photos that are produced each year. On the other hand I sometimes have to question the code of ethics that is implemented when it comes to taking pictures. In society today, how far is too far?
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Comment by David Aparicio on April 11, 2011 at 15:32 -
See this video. In spanish.
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2011/02/18/comunicacion/1298054483.html
Two Spanish journalists showed another reality quite different. Despite
I said and repeated a thousand times, the vultures were not in the village
Sudan die waiting for malnourished children.
Scavengers flocked there because he was a dunghill
where waste and was pulling people defecating, including
children in the pictures. One received the Pulitzer because it sold like
time before being devoured by the vulture, the other reflects the harsh
reality.
In mid-March 1993 Kevin Carter traveled with a photographer
Joao Silva on Sudan to do a report on the famine in that country.
In the town of Ayod, Carter would be the photograph that would change
life.
A malnourished girl prostrate on the floor and a vulture approaching. A
bombing, he must have thought Carter, who had the nerve to avoid being
carried away and waited twenty minutes to open the scavenger
wings so that the photograph had more impact.
At the end did not happen and Carter had to settle with the picture
would take to win the Pulitzer. From there began his ordeal. It
then said a lot about Carter's performance, even you
has come to compare with the vulture, but the reality is quite different.
A few months after Carter immortalized famine, a
Spanish journalists arrived in the town of Ayod. It was José Maria Davilla and Luis Arenzalla,who had not even seen the Carter Photography.
In the village, Davilla did his job and took photographs of the famine
place. Among his photographs, was one of a child with a vulture
at his side. But the reality seemed another.
Davilla explains himself to Digital Journalist, one morning he
Pepe Arenzana took him and to Ayod, where they were almost all
time in a feeding center where locals go.
At one end of the enclosure, which was pulling a manure pit
waste and people going to defecate. As these children are so
weak and malnourished head is giving them the feeling that they are
dead. As part of the fauna are vultures who go for these remains.
So if you catching a telephoto crush the child's perspective
foreground and background and it seems that the vultures will eat it,
but that's an absolute hoax, perhaps the animal is at 20 meters.
Whether Carter cheated or not? Davilla is cautious:
The photographer is not cheating, the use of a telephoto lens
optical resource is part of the camera technology. You
taking reality, cheating would have put the vulture on the side.
Arenzana, meanwhile, is not as restrained as his colleague and recognizes
being "tired" of everything that was said about the picture of Carter.
It is true that photography is such an impact that leaves no one
indifferent, but many people did stupid questions raised.
If you cut a piece of reality and can be isolated or not
expressing real things. And in this case, which expresses the photo is
pretty good reflection of what happened and is happening there, in Sudan. Acts
with an enormous power over the audience and this is how it must be
to reflect that grim reality.
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