Imagine spending years inside of a cage-like cell that was built to hold prisoners for only 72-hours maximum. In El Salvador, 30 or more MS-13 and M18 gang members are being jammed into these cells behind the prison (segregated accordingly), in which photographer Giles Clarke has recently exposed for the world to see. The photographs display the prisoners-many of them shirtless-standing behind the bars where articles of clothing hang from all directions to be used as beds.

According to writer John Hall of Independent, the men live in these crowded conditions due to the “long-term prison system,” which causes the prisons to become overcrowded throughout the country. In the Vice article “Prison Pit,” Clarke writes a first-person account of his encounter with the men, where he discusses how many of them go without meals as well as suffer in diseased conditions: “During most of [my] discussions [with the police captain], he brought up that there wasn’t even a budget for the inmates’ most basic necessities, like food, the cramped conditions, and the prisoners’ frequent health problems.”

Clarke originally came to El Salvador to expose the prevalent gang violence that is heavily taking place throughout the country. Both gangs were founded in Los Angeles consisting of mostly immigrants who had escaped their country’s civil war. Then, after it had ended, many of the MS-13 and M-18 gangs were deported back to El Salvador.

This was the truth Clarke had intentions of uncovering, however, after spending time with the police captain who had taken Clarke on patrols to show the gang impacted areas, Clarke was offered to see the cages. In the first-person account, Clarke quoted the captain’s hope for the potential of the photographs: “‘We need a full-time doctor here,” he said. “These cages are full and many are sick. Maybe your pictures can help in some way?'”

His words prove that any photograph that can tell a story and make a difference is worth snapping, because there is no better way of spreading the word other than through an image. This series sends a very powerful message of not only the poor living conditions, but troubled lives these men have experienced. Sure, some of the prisoners are murders, however, they are still human beings. Clarke’s series forces the viewer to put the blame elsewhere, and not just on these men who seem like senseless criminals. It evokes a sense of empathy, and empathy can be a powerful tool when there needs to be change.

When I first began this blog, I had intentions of discussing the ethics of photojournalism. I discovered after several weeks of posting that it was going to be difficult, because there are so many times one can mention if a photograph is good or bad. What eventually became clear to me was that there are more benefits to a controversial photo than there are drawbacks.

Even if an image is hugely disputed like Jonathan Hobin’s series of children reenacting tragedies, it is generating talk. And, talk is good. It is making people think about an issue they most likely have never thought about before. Not to say that image of the photoshopped missile belong in the world, but I do think we somehow benefit by learning what not to do. Whether it is an image of a heroin addict “shooting up” or the biased description of a photograph in a publication, we are influenced by it all.

In the end, what matters is that it is there, and is educating the public:

Declining standards

(Umar Abbasi)

The idea of photographs being oriented for “sensational and celebrity” value, is certainly a downside of global media effects. Throughout several of my posts, I discussed the line of ethics regarding the choice of camera angles, choice to lower the camera, as well as the editorial decision of whether the photo should appear in a publication or not.

However, I wouldn’t go as far to say that the standards are “declining,” because in a lot of those blog posts, there was a wide debate of whether the photograph should have ever existed. Obviously, the public’s scrutiny of the photographs is enough proof that there isn’t necessarily a “declining standard,” because if there were, there wouldn’t be any debate.

 

Poor nations lag in the information age

(Kevin Carter)

To “lag” in the age of information and new technology can take on multiple meanings. The book points out how poor countries don’t have access to the kinds of media that western civilizations do, and how that is marginalizing the nations. While that is true, it is also marginalizing the efforts to educate the public on what is happening inside the country.

Because of poor conditions in locations like Somalia, southern Sudan and El Salvador, the act of sharing information about what is taking place inside the country is lacking. It seems throughout several of my posts that many photojournalists were from other countries attempting to expose the ugly truths that were not being shared by the people of their own country.

According to Dying to Tell the Story, Dan Eldon and a few other photojournalists were the only ones to educate the world on the conditions of the country through their photographs. Access to this information age is imperative to the poorer nations in order to become a better educated, more literate society. Meanwhile, journalists and photojournalists alike will have to visit these countries in order to inform the world of what is happening there.

Vast audiences for global events 

(George Kochaniec)

The book discusses how when great events take place, it attracts a “vast global audience.” Of course, this is all because of the advancements in technology, and how convenient it is for people to obtain information. The smart phone makes it easier for the average citizen to report news by simply clicking “share,” so that someone from a million miles away can “reblog” or “retweet” it.

For example, in my post about the mall shooting in Kenya, I discussed the ethics of Sunday Nation’s choice of a cover photo. Without the internet, I never would have known that such a tragic image was plastered onto the front page. Because websites like Buzzfeed allow anyone with a social media account to share the link, I can educate myself and others about the subject. That particular post received 484 recommendations on Facebook, which is probably only a small portion of the people who actually saw it. So, the global audience tends to be huge, especially during an event where the news coverage lasts for hours on end. All it takes is a photograph with a powerful message, posting it online, and sharing it for the world to see.

Photojournalist purpose

Being a photojournalist certainly isn’t as easy as pressing the shutter on a camera. Exposing the harsh realities throughout the globe for photographers like Dan Eldon and Kevin Carter, have caused them to lose their lives. However, the timelessness of their photographs will continue live on and set the bar for photojournalists around the world.

We have to take a moment and look through the eye of the photographer, rather than the eye of the critic. Understand why the photo was taken, why it’s needed in the world, and what it is going to do for the future. There is so much to the photo than just telling a story. What we’ve seen throughout my blog is that a single photograph is powerful enough to change the life of millions, even the photographer himself.

Athens, Greece, when we imagined it years ago we saw large columned buildings,  sparkling, white beaches, and wealthy, prospering citizens. While there is still beauty in the beaches and aging buildings, the people and city of Athens is slowly diminishing. As the stock market continues to fall with each day, the crime rates begin to increase significantly, and the ideal vacation spot has become somewhat of a hazard.

Albanian photojournalist Enri Canaj moved to Athens while the city was still the glimmering hope that it was. Now, he has a series of photographs depicting all of the suffering the people of the city are enduring. In an interview with Canaj, he discusses how the series is a based on the every day life of the citizens on some of the “used to be” busy areas of the city: “These are places that were once the city’s busiest districts and now rot in abandonment. People creep through the streets like shadows, heads down, stiff shoulders, sealed lips. While the stock market falls, suicide is on a steady rise. Each photograph depicts a person with a story to tell.” The images are in black in white, which gives the series quite the somber appearance. It tells more of a story, rather than the photos being in color. It creates a sense of drama, which is entirely appropriate.

 The series is powerful. In one image, a man with plastic gloves stands over an elderly women laying on a pile of rubble while covering herself with plastic to seemingly keep warm. The photos are eye opening, and they successfully shed light on a matter that people across the globe might be entirely unaware of. This kind of photojournalism is very informative, and reveals a truth that deserves to be seen. People can talk about the devastation in Athens, but it’s just one of those things that needs to be seen to truly be understood. Canaj’s photographs have been featured in Time magazine this year, and will continue to circulate throughout the world. Read more about the photos through Canaj’s website.

Photographer Tony Fouhse took four years out of his life to photograph addicts on the streets of downtown Ottawa, Canada. In his book Live Through This, he documents the timeline of “getting clean” for Stephanie Macdonald, a heroin addict. A Vice article features a few of the photos that range from a bony Macdonald shooting heroin into her neck to a healthier, fuller Macdonald lying in bed a few years sober. Writer Stephanie Mercier Voyer discusses how “the photos challenge the conventions and ethics of photojournalism, while offering up a powerful portrayal of her addiction.”

The photographs are based on true events, but Fouhse admits to them being “staged.” For most photojournalists this might make the meaning behind the image seem false, but personally I believe this a rare circumstance where setting up the situation is entirely applicable. Because Fouhse is documenting Macdonald’s path to becoming sober again, it makes sense that there were times a pose had to be held for a moment longer. Since she was changing each day, he might never have had that chance to capture that moment again.

The series of photographs send a message that a lot of people would turn away from on the street. Sure, the mere thought of an addict is both sad and repulsive, but there are people out there who want help – they just need to find it. This is an example of photojournalism that gives an inside look to something most people are very unfamiliar with. The process of getting clean is not easy, and Fouhse manages to create a sense of empathy that a quick glance on the street could not possibly do.

Another Canadian photographer, Jonathan Hobin, released a series of photographs called In the Playroom a couple of years ago that got people talking. The photographic series displays several children dressed up and playing with toys, while reenacting some of the most horrific news stories of the generation. Two boys, one wearing a fire hat and the other wearing a green hood, sit before two towers made a blocks with army men jumping out of the fiery buildings. Though all of the children had permission be photographed, Hobin explained how he was surprised at the amount of backlash he received. People sent hate mail and even death treats.

In a Vice interview with Hobin, he notes out that the photographs are “Canadian commentary on the American media.” Like we know in the states, when there is a tragedy the news  sensationalizes it until the subject is bone dry. This is a point that people missed when looking at the images of children reenacting sensitive subject matter. Regardless of who you are, it is uncomfortable.

However, Hobin makes a great point when he discusses how children play on a daily basis: “The funny thing is, kids play games where they kill each other all the time. Whenever a kid plays with a water pistol they’re pretending to kill someone. It’s something we see constantly. I’m directly referencing where kids might be learning to do those things and that makes people very uncomfortable.”

So, in other words, as we sit at a desk writing hate mail to Hobin, our children are playing “war” with their army men in another room. People are so quick to judge and get offended, before they take a moment to step back and look at the bigger picture. No matter how much we think we’re “censoring” the kids of today, we’re not. As long as the TV is turned on and we’re talking about it at the dinner table, kids will undoubtably grow up having an idea of what’s going on in the world.

 On November 14, the French newspaper Libération released a special issue in honor of Paris’s photo opening, but instead of it being full of photos, there are white blanks where images should have been. Words float around the empty frames as though someone had made a design error, but it was all intentional.

With print media steadily declining, journalists, especially photojournalists, are being laid off, while freelancers are becoming more popular. So, in response, Libération has taken a shot at proving to the world the importance of a publication’s photographer.

Because of the advancements in Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr, news publications are becoming slightly more reliant on the idea of the citizen journalist as well as more dependent on the idea of anyone having the ability to take a photograph. According to Han Peng of CCTV Headquarters, “The world of news is changing. You don’t have to be a professional to become a journalist. All you need is this, a smartphone, and you can report anything that happens around you.”

While this is true, the smartphone does not make one a professional and it does not mean that the average citizen is always going to have a something to submit. Sure, anyone can snap a photo and tweet a happening, but that does not guarantee it will always be there and be correct. It seems like a sloppy, lazy way of slapping a newspaper together, and that just seems scary.

Omitting the photos in Libération suggests that the photojournalist is just as important as the writer. There is a spread in the paper that shows what the newspaper would have looked like with the photos, but without the words. Being a professional in something doesn’t just mean spending money for a publication, it means having the skill necessary to create something good, neat, and correct.

Like I’ve expressed in previous posts, taking a physical photograph for a publication can be, at times, an uphill battle of ethics. However, that is only one half of the process. A new set of right and wrong comes into play when the editing begins. In many cases, photoshop as an editing tool is debated. It is especially questioned when the photo is altered by adding and subtracting the content of an image.

In 2008, when the Iranian government issued a missile test, there was a photograph that circulated on the Sepah News website that was very controversial. The photograph features four missiles being launched. The kicker isn’t that the missiles were being launched, but the number of missiles. Three of them were launched, not four. So, the question is why would the media pose four missiles instead of three? It’s borderline Cold War.

There is a photograph comparison on the NYTimes website that shows the third missile image side-by-side with the fourth one. It’s obvious that the point of the photoshopped image was created to strengthen the threat of power. 

There is a time and place for photoshop, and this is not it. Situated beside the original image, the photoshopped picture is obviously a lie and was done in poor taste. Here, there is no other explanation other than it being edited to intimidate.

Artistically, photoshop can aid in conveying a message. Whether the message is a positive or negative one, it is generally done where the audience understands that it has been altered. In many advertisements of food, the picture is made to look better than the actual product. Of course, some people find this to be misleading, however, there should be an understanding that the advertisement is an advertisement and that it is supposed to attract consumers – not deter them. There is a great example of this in the McDonalds video of how a Quarter Pounder is photographed and edited. All of the same exact ingredients are used, it’s just photographed to look desirable. So, it’s going to taste the same, but it’s not going to look the same.

The unethical use of photoshop comes down whether it is being used to hide the truth. The image with the missiles is unethical because it was altered for the purpose of no one finding out, and is is therefore a lie. 

In Kenya last month, 72 people died after a massive shooting at Westgate shopping mall. Bloody as it was, journalists were there to tell the story through words and visuals.

Meanwhile, the Kenyan newspaper Sunday Nation – which Rebecca posted a few weeks ago – published an image of a bleeding victim on the front page. There was an almost immediate backlash regarding the content of the photograph causing the CEO of the publication to issue an apology for the editorial decision.

The issue featured a woman screaming in pain as blood streaks her face. Here, is a time when I undoubtably believe the apology was appropriate.

On the subject of traumatic events, let’s backtrack to the post I made about Columbine. If we put George Kochaniec’s controversial image beside the Sunday Nation‘s we’ll see how the two starkly contrast one another. Though, both images were taken from a tragedy, it becomes evident good photojournalism looks more like Kochaniec’s photograph than the front page of the Sunday Nation.

While I do agree that the graphic nature of the Sunday Nation’s photo was a bad editing choice, I also believe there was an even worse choice on the photographer’s part to snap the photo in the first place. Imagining this woman looking upwards at a bloodless, unharmed photographer pointing a camera in her face while she screaming for help is just appalling. Sure, Kochaniec might shoot a photo of two women grieving, but those women can’t be helped to grieve – only time can heal that. If someone stands before you screaming in pain, you don’t hoover over them like it’s a freaks show. You help them.

I feel as though it was less about telling the story and more about winning a popularity contest, which they did, but for all the wrong reasons.

At the end of last year, a friend of a friend, Joanna Branson, created a kickstarter to raise enough money to help her travel the world in order to assist women who wanted to escape from sex trafficking.

Branson worked with many different organizations whose goal was to help women not only escape sex trafficking, but also focus on helping them escape it mentally.

Taking these women from one environment and throwing them into another is not a smooth transition. So, one portion of the project was helping the women improve their self-image through creative therapy, while Branson’s part was telling the stories of victims through the use of film photography. Her method provides society with a tangible image of these women and lifestyles. It sheds light on an issue that is easy to turn away from. Anyone can raise awareness through the distribution of door-to-door flyers or weekly meetings, but telling the story through stills, personalizes the situation and allows society to see the faces of real women who have had experiences that go beyond being a victim of something so destructive.

Throughout most of southeast Asia, Branson traveled to tell these stories.

What a lot of people don’t know about sex trafficking, is that it is the third largest criminal industry in the world. It’s everywhere – not just in the movie Taken. You don’t have to go on a fancy trip abroad, sex trafficking is in your own backyard.

There is a lot of good that comes from this form of photojournalism. Its purpose to educate as well as personalize the situation engages the audience and helps to spread the word effectively. She’s not exposing people in any disturbing light, she is exposing the aftermath of a very explicit crime.

More than 14 years ago, the Columbine High School massacre went down as one of the deadliest school shootings in history. Like in all tragedies, media coverage is extensive and lingers for quite some time – and where there is coverage of a tragedy, there are toes to be stepped on. Journalists, especially photojournalists, received criticism for “doing whatever it took” to cover the story.

The documentary Covering Columbine discusses the adversity journalists of the Denver Rocky Mountain News faced while covering the event as well as their success. Though they won the the Pulitzer for their outstanding work, they still fought a year-long battle with what was right and what was wrong.

George Kochaniec was the first still photographer at the makeshift triage scene outside of the school as the shootings were taking place. He captured images of people embracing one another in tears. Many of these photos were widely circulated, and some seemed to cross a sensitive line of ethics for victims and their families. Of course, this wasn’t the intent of  Kochaniec. Though critics might see this as a thoughtless jab, Kochaniec sees it differently. He explains that what was seen in print and on television wasn’t a matter of intensifying the pain for loved ones, but merely part of the job description:

You don’t want to inflict anymore pain on people [with the images], but that’s the nature of our job … We have to sometimes photograph things that are not pleasant. Our emotions say one thing, and our professional ethics tells we still have to try and do our job.

Across the globe, this same notion is supported by photojournalists like Kochaniec.

In the film, Dying to Tell the Story, Amy Eldon discusses the death of her brother, Dan Eldon. A photojournalist in Somalia, Dan died at 22 through his work as a photographer. His death proves that when it comes to telling such a vital story, photojournalists aren’t simply trying to obtain the next Pulitzer for the “best” photo – they are trying to create a legacy by bringing about hope and saving lives through a single photograph. Though the image may be difficult to view, it is important that it is there rather than not at all.

It seems the general consensus is that photography provides a better sense of reality and truth through a visual for both the reader and viewer. In other words, denying the public a chance to see the photo or the story is denying them the possibility to experience something they may never have the opportunity of seeing again.

I would like to believe that it is society who deserves to have this information – or photographs- readily available, and whether someone wants to take advantage of it or not, at least it is there to be looked at.