P
hotographs are not just about publication, exhibition and about awards they win . There has to be something more to them than just that.
This article makes me think again about photographers who believe that photos do not change anything. On their own, documentary photographs probably have not done much. And they won't. Not unless and until they become part of a larger political strategy. A part of a sustained political pressure to actually change things and become an answer to what the photographed subjects really want.
As Ramzy Baroud puts it -" All the photos of all dying children will not alone alter even a single footnote in the US’s ‘unconditional support’ of Israel doctrine. These images must be coupled with passionate political activism, decided, public pressure, legal action and numerous other methods to hold Israel accountable for the gory images, and the US accountable for allowing Israel free hand to murder Palestinians.
A photo, on its own, no matter how artistic, compelling, captivating, even incensing, is not enough, if not combined or followed by a series of solid action and a clear strategy, to ensure that someday no such tragic contexts exist for photographer to freeze them in time and place."
Photographing Tragedy: What the Victims Actually Want
Feb 20 2013 / 8:22 pm
Faces of Gaza victims. (Photo: Johnny Barber)
What is the use of a journalist photo, when human conscious has grown numb, enough to barely appreciate the artistic expression of the photo, but not the moral and political crisis it represents?
These thoughts and more occupied my mind when Paul Hansen, a Swedish photographer, from the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, convincingly won, on Feb. 15, The World Press Photo of the Year 2012, which is, according to Reuters “the world’s largest annual press photography contest.”
The winning photo documented an event that has been repeated hundreds of times in Gaza in the last few years, bereaved families and neighbors, filled with pain and despair, carrying the frail bodies of little children who died in one Israeli strike on another. They walk in the alleyways of their towns or refugee camps, shoulder to shoulder, weeping, chanting and praying to God to send their little ones to Paradise. Photographers snap numerous shots, selected ones get published, and the most prized win awards. Sadly, even then, nothing changes the persistently agonizing reality.
An almost trademark demand that most victims have is for the world to know of their plight. There is a pervading impression that when the “world” know, the “world” will not allow injustice to perpetuate. Of course, it is not so simple, especially in the case of the Palestinians.
Of course, it is not exactly the responsibility of the photojournalist nor that of the photography awards judges to ensure that the meaning of the photo is diffused in such ways as to affect political and humanitarian outcomes. It is still disturbing however, that those painful conflicts are reduced to photos, footage and sound bites, and eventually appreciated for something other than the urgent and utter need to compel whatever action needed to bring people’s suffering to an end.
Starting most noticeably with the First Palestinian Intifada in 1987, Palestine offered incredible photo opportunities for journalists. It was not exactly common that a whole nation take to the street, youth battling well-equipped soldiers with sling shots and empty fists for several years nonstop. Even a random photo that involves barefooted children at war against Israeli tanks would have many ‘contrasts’ and artistic worth. Then, many Palestinians were convinced that once these images reach world publics, the tide will turn in favor of Palestinian rights. In fact, to a degree, it did, as if it was suddenly discovered that Palestinians do exist beyond whatever stereotypes Israel has managed to concoct of them through its media influence, control or savvy. However, the barrier between public sentiments and government action remained erect. It would have made little difference whether US officials viewed Intifada photos or not, for the US government position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was never determined by such values as human rights, freedom and the right to self-determination. All the photos of all dying children will not alone alter even a single footnote in the US’s ‘unconditional support’ of Israel doctrine. These images must be coupled with passionate political activism, decided, public pressure, legal action and numerous other methods to hold Israel accountable for the gory images, and the US accountable for allowing Israel free hand to murder Palestinians.
A photo, on its own, no matter how artistic, compelling, captivating, even incensing, is not enough, if not combined or followed by a series of solid action and a clear strategy, to ensure that someday no such tragic contexts exist for photographer to freeze them in time and place.
Palestinians – and Syrians – are not mere opportunities for award-winning photos to be snapped. “My people are not animals in a zoo”, is the famous quote of Palestinian novelist and intellectual, Ghassan Kanafani to a Danish journalist, who later became his wife, as she requested to visit refugee camps in Lebanon. “You must have a good background about them before you go and visit”, he said. Kanafani was assassinated in an Israeli Mossad bomb blast, along with his niece, in July 1972, but his words endure.
Palestinians, as other peoples who are undergoing protracted tragedies are neither ‘animals in zoos’, nor mere subjects of artistic expressions, no matter how noble, or human experiments of any forms. Their tragedies, no matter how long-lasting, deserve resolutions and tangible remedies. All that victims in photos hope to achieve is for their oppression to end, not for the victimization itself to become such an accepted state of affair, and end in itself, detached from any serious political dynamics that could propel change.
http://palestinechronicle.com/photographing-tragedy-what-the-victims-actually-want/
Email
