Comments on: How Photographs Make Darfur Mean Something

By: Mohanad Elbalal

Mohanad Elbalal — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:22:02 +0000

This is an excellent post,I find it particularly interesting how the so called main stream media uses images to make their point. Publishing a picture of a baby clearly in distress is a less then subtle attempt to coerce the reader towards a particular view,but the reason why this message is conveyed through images and not words is because these papers want to preserve the pretence of impartiality. No person will process this picture for what it is an inoculation of a toddler naturally a person sees a suffering baby and will resent the person associated with that image,the case is made in the image not the article. Compare this to how the guardian would report on Iraq,the picture usually chosen to accompany these stories wont be an Iraqi child with three of his limbs missing,it would most likely be a picture of a British soldier confidently waveing cars past a check point,the choas and destruction in Iraq might be adequately portrayed but the Human suffering is never showen.
while the more right wing groups like Save Darfur who have long passed the realm of impartiality will combine pictures with words to make their point infact they will digitly add a streak of blood across a picture of a child just for good measure.

By: David Campbell

David Campbell — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:15:36 +0000

Thanks to Laura and Kate for the comments.

The story of Kevin Carter and the ‘girl/vulture’ famine picture has itself become iconic in a particular visualization of Sudan. Carter had a troubled life, and was deeply affected by the negative public response to his photograph, and eventually committed suicide. The fact that the public responded, not with outrage at the conditions in the Sahel in the early 1990s, but with condemnation of the photographer as inhuman, is revealing. Too often photographs themselves rather than the issues they are connected to become the issue. Part of that is brought on by the photographic community’s idea that ‘witnessing’ is an indispensable activity, but it also represents a misdirection of the viewers concern.

Indeed, as Kate suggests, multimedia format for photographic story telling offer significantly improved ways of narrating events and distributing the account. I am especially interested in these, and have started producing work in this format (see http://www.david-campbell.org/multimedia/). Of course, as with any article, essay, or report, the production of such narratives involves in the inclusion of some elements and the exclusion of others. We cannot escape constructed-ness, and claims of objectivity have always been misguided in relation to photography.

By: Kate Day

Kate Day — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:51:50 +0000

Thank you, a very interesting post.

I also wonder if the relationship between pictures and words is changed by new ways of telling stories online? Richer multi-media packages create very exciting possibilities for different ways to tell stories and add more context. But is there also a greater risk that the various parts of the story – or the gaps in the story – can amplify a particular meaning by association?

Journalists reach for some kind of objective truth but as soon as you have to decide what to leave out, you are making some kind of judgement about what is the most important part of the story. So while I also would urge photographers – and journalists working in all mediums – to find new ways to tell stories and to think about the message they are creating in its entirety, I’m not sure this objective window on the world has ever been possible in the purest sense.

By: Laura Mann

Laura Mann — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:20:03 +0000

I remember a Sudanese friend of mine telling me the story of Kevin Carter, the South African photographer who won the Pullitzer Prize for a photograph of a starving Sudanese baby and a vulture. Apparently when the photograph was published, readers asked whether he had helped the baby. He had not. He had just walked away.
The idea that “witnessing” suffering is a form of activism in itself is totally misleading. It simplifies suffering and obscures the meatier reasons behind conflict. Very good post….
But what kind of images can the news agencies use for these things?