Category: War

Mythical power: Understanding photojournalism in the Vietnam War

Mythical power: Understanding photojournalism in the Vietnam War – David Campbell

Photojournalism in the Vietnam War is often said to have had the power to change the course of the conflict. But this power is mythical.

via David Campbell: http://www.david-campbell.org/2013/01/31/mythical-power-understanding-photojournalism-in-vietnam-war/

“This is significant for photojournalism’s understanding of its historical role and potential power. Many of the visual icons we now associate with the war – the photographs of Larry Burrows, Philip Jones Griffiths, Don McCullin and others – were either rejected by the American media, published after the event, or were simply unrepresentative of the majority coverage.
“

January 31, 2013
I Feel it Would be Wrong Not to Stop and Take Note of this Photo from Aleppo

I Feel it Would be Wrong Not to Stop and Take Note of this Photo from Aleppo – Reading The Pictures

Yesterday’s scene from that Aleppo canal.

via Reading The Pictures: http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2013/01/i-feel-it-would-be-wrong-not-to-stop-and-take-note-of-this-photo-from-aleppo/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Bagnewsnotes+%28BAGnewsNotes%29

Practically though, can you imagine if 100 corpses had been deposited in one continuous stretch along the High Line in New York City? What’s so shocking here, what’s so perverse is how the scene of these bodies revels in its blatancy

January 30, 2013
Lynsey Addario’s Photographs of Women in Combat

Women Shooting on the Front Lines

Years before the Pentagon’s official lifting of the ban on women in combat, Lynsey Addario saw the rapidly evolving role of female soldiers in Afghanistan.

via Lens Blog: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/women-shooting-on-the-front-lines-2/

“Lynsey Addario, a photographer for The New York Times, has extensively covered the war in Afghanistan, often focusing on female soldiers. She spoke with James Estrin about the Pentagon’s recent lifting of the ban on women in combat”

January 28, 2013
The Conflict in Mali

The Conflict in Mali

via The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/01/the-conflict-in-mali/100446/

Two weeks ago, the French military launched Operation Serval, intervening in a complicated, months-old conflict in northern Mali.

January 25, 2013
Pete Muller Covering the War in Mali

Link: Pete Muller Covering the War in Mali » Prime Collective

Prime photographer Pete Muller shares thoughts and images from his recent coverage of the war in Mali.

January 25, 2013
Would you Die For a Photo – Erie War Photos from War Zones

Would you Die For a Photo – Erie War Photos from War Zones

Photos from some of the best war photographers in history help answer the question: Why are willing to die for a photo? James Nachtwey, Larry Burrows and João Silva featured.

via Chase Jarvis Photography: http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2013/01/would-you-die-for-the-photo-a-look-at-war-photography/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ChaseJarvis+%28Chase+Jarvis+Blog%29

I’ve been asked before if I’d consider taking pictures in the line of fire and my answer is simple: Hell No. I just do not have the balls. Hang me out a chopper, put me on the side of a rock wall or a mountain face, I’m game. Guns and bombs aimed at you? I’m out

January 24, 2013
Bored, Lonely Japanese Man Becomes a ‘War Tourist’ in Syria

Bored, Lonely Japanese Man Becomes a ‘War Tourist’ in Syria

Calling himself “a combination of samurai and kamikaze,” a Japanese truck driver is so bored with life at home that takes vacations in Syria, photographing the war from the front lines.

via The Atlantic: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/01/bored-lonely-japanese-man-becomes-war-tourist-syria/60531/

“Calling himself ‘a combination of samurai and kamikaze,’ a Japanese truck driver, Toshifumi Fujimoto, is so bored with life at home that takes vacations in Syria, photographing the war from the front lines”

January 3, 2013
Overexposed: A Photographer’s War With PTSD

Overexposed: A Photographer’s War With PTSD

“One of the truly great things about war … is that all you have to do is survive.”

via The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/overexposed-a-photographers-war-with-ptsd/266468/1/

“‘I don’t think you can go into the most traumatic situations that arise on earth, voluntarily, and come back unchanged,’ said Ashley Gilbertson, who admits that his experience in Iraq is never far from thought.

Eight years after Gilbertson and Dexter Filkins climbed those steps, those perilous moments on the step have followed Gilbertson.

‘A 22-year-old kid was killed because Ashley needed a photograph,’ Filkins said. ‘He’s tormented by that.’”

December 20, 2012
Syria’s Agony: The Photographs That Moved Them Most

LightBox | Time

Read the latest stories about LightBox on Time

via Time: http://lightbox.time.com/2012/12/10/photographing-syrias-agony-the-images-that-moved-them-most/#1

“Syria has always been a tough place to cover as a journalist. Confidently authoritarian with a ruthlessly formidable security and intelligence apparatus, Syria has long been one of the most policed of Arab police states. And so, when some Syrians defied their government to take to the streets in the southern city of Daraa in mid-March 2011, the temptation to cover the story was overwhelming for many, including myself.

“

December 10, 2012
Using War as Cover to Target Journalists

Using War as Cover to Target Journalists

Journalists who dig into dangerous corners of the world have grown accustomed to being threatened, but now some governments have decided shooting the messenger is a viable option.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/business/media/using-war-as-cover-to-target-journalists.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

three employees of news organizations were killed in Gaza by Israeli missiles. Rather than suggesting it was a mistake, or denying responsibility, an Israeli Defense Forces spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, told The Associated Press, “The targets are people who have relevance to terror activity.”

November 26, 2012
An Unvarnished View of War, Perched on a Helmet

An Unvarnished View of War, Perched on a Helmet

Helmet-camera videos exemplify how technology has enabled and sustained the flow of information from the world’s war zones.

via At War Blog: http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/21/an-unvarnished-view-of-war-perched-on-a-helmet/

Battlefield helmet cameras aren’t new; some units even provide them to their troops, and we will continue to see a proliferation of their material as the tools steadily grow cheaper and smaller. Beyond the Internet, we will also see more of this perspective in the media

November 22, 2012
Skirmishes in the Israel-Palestine battle over photos of dead children

Skirmishes in the Israel-Palestine battle over photos of dead children

Why are activists on both sides of the conflict so eager to debate the question of whose munition killed a young Gaza boy?

via Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/20/skirmishes-in-the-israel-palestine-battle-over-photos-of-killed-children/?wprss=rss_world

“The latest controversy on Israel-Palestine blogs and social media is over a widely reported photo of Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil leaning over the body of a Palestinian boy who was killed in fighting Friday.
“

November 20, 2012
The Instagram War: Gaza & Israel, 2012

The Instagram War: Gaza & Israel, 2012

…welcome to a media space in which we are consuming hostility and processing raw data and raw propaganda almost as quickly as the war correspondent, the fighter pilot, the governments, the diplomats and the antagonists themselves. –Michael Shaw * * * U

via John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History: http://johnedwinmason.typepad.com/john_edwin_mason_photogra/2012/11/instagram-war-gaza.html

Propaganda has been a part of every war that history knows anything about, and creating and disseminating it has largely been the job of professionals — war doctors, priests, reporters, photographers, politicians, bureaucrats.

Social media and smart phones have let amateurs in on the action

November 19, 2012
The Israeli-Palestinian politics of a bloodied child’s photo

The Israeli-Palestinian politics of a bloodied child’s photo

The heated conversations around images of children wounded or killed in fighting between Israel and Gaza are a reminder of the mistrust and entrenched attitudes in the larger conflict.

via Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/16/the-israeli-palestinian-politics-of-a-bloodied-childs-photo/?wprss=rss_world

The old arguments of the Middle East are so entrenched that the photos, for all their emotional power, were almost immediately pressed into the service of one side or another.

November 16, 2012
Israel, Hamas Draw Us Literally into War in Game Change for Social Media, Media and Photography

Game Change for Social Media, Media and Photography: Israel, Hamas Draw Us Literally into War – Reading The Pictures

We can hardly begin to understand how much the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Hamas (and the apparently greater range of the Palestinian’s missiles) have, overnight, changed the waging of war.

via Reading The Pictures: http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2012/11/israel-hamas-draw-us-literally-into-war-in-game-change-for-social-media-media-and-photography/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Bagnewsnotes+%28BAGnewsNotes%29

We can hardly begin to understand how much the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Hamas (and the apparently greater range of the Palestinian’s missiles) have, overnight, changed the waging of war

November 16, 2012
The story behind the photo: Journalist’s 11-month-old son killed in Gaza strikes

The story behind the photo: Journalist’s 11-month-old son killed in Gaza strikes

The BBC’s Jihad Misharawi was in his Gaza home when a round killed his young son and sister-in-law.

via Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/15/the-story-behind-the-photo-journalists-11-month-old-son-killed-in-gaza-strikes/?wprss=rss_world

Jihad Misharawi, a BBC Arabic journalist who lives in Gaza, carries the body of his 11-month old son, Omar, through al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

November 15, 2012
Israeli military releases video of Gaza strike on Hamas leader

Israeli military releases video of Gaza strike on Hamas leader

Here’s the Israeli strike that killed Ahmed Jabari in Gaza.

via Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/14/israeli-military-releases-video-of-gaza-strike-on-hamas-leader/?wprss=rss_world

the recent failure of crowd-sourced news photos of Hurricane Sandy, and the shortage of coverage of other climate change-fueled disasters around the world, demonstrate how far we are from truly democratizing the medium of photography

November 14, 2012
Syria in Ruins

Syria in Ruins

via The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/11/syria-in-ruins/100402/

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad remains defiant, stating in an interview with Russia Today that he planned “live and die in Syria,” adding, “I am tougher than Gaddafi.” Collected here are images of this bloody conflict from just the past few weeks

November 8, 2012
Two Americans killed in unusual gunfight involving several Afghan soldiers

Two Americans killed in unusual gunfight involving several Afghan soldiers

Unlike most insider attacks, the weekend incident involved more than one Afghan soldier. Two Americans were killed.

via Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/two-americans-killed-in-unusual-gunfight-involving-several-afghans/2012/10/01/23b93464-0bff-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_story.html?wprss=rss_world

“What sets this apart is that there were multiple attackers from multiple positions and there was zero provocation,” said the official, who had access to the report but was not authorized to speak for the record. “Typically we are talking about a single gunman who acted in a somewhat rogue fashion, but in this case we are talking about an entire Afghan army unit and a large loss of life on both sides.”

October 3, 2012
150 Years after Antietam: Photographs by Alexander Gardner

LightBox | Time

Read the latest stories about LightBox on Time

via Time: http://lightbox.time.com/2012/09/17/150-years-later-picturing-the-battle-of-antietam/#1

After the Battle of Antietam, photographer Matthew Brady tacked a sign to the door of his New York City photo studio that read, simply, “The Dead of Antietam.” Inside, he exhibited the work that his assistant, Alexander Gardner, made in the aftermath of the inconceivably bloody fighting at Antietam Creek. The show drew a large crowd.

September 17, 2012