PHOTOGRAPHY: Published Afghanistan War Photos Put Family Values In Opposition To The Public Quest For Truth

United States Marine Corps Sergeant Major Alan J. Kellogg Jr. - Retired, (wearing shirt, center) at a memorial service in Hawaii.

WAR AND A CONSTANT DIN OF NEWS

Whether they be NATO affiliated soldiers fighting in Afghanistan or innocent people caught in the crossfire somewhere else, soldiers and civilians will continue to lose their lives as the constant drumbeat of conflict rolls on in 2010.

The 24/7 news cycle continues to march alongside these occurrences, reporting events from the world's hotspots of the moment. Yet, Russian photojournalist Alexey Pivovarov, a member of GAIA Photos, reminds us with his photo reportage, Searching The Forests, that its been over 68 years since Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union in the early morning of June 22, 1941.

PHOTOGRAPHING EVIL ACTS OF MANKIND

Magnum Photographer Robert Capa once said, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you are not close enough.” What did he mean by that? Current official White House photographer Christopher Morris thinks perhaps Capa meant that, "This is the truth for good combat photography. I feel this statement was made for combat photographers, when they are trying to document the evil act of man trying to kill another man. To capture the true essence of this, you need to be close, very close."

Those thoughts by Christopher Morris beg the question; What good is trying to visually document "the evil act of man trying to kill another man" if no one sees the ultimate truth the photography tells us?

A SOLDIER'S DECISION

In war's heat of battle, there is little time for soldiers to ponder decisions. Reactions are the results of training and experience. This holds true for photojournalists documenting the chaos as well. When United States Marine Corps Sergeant Alan J. Kellogg Jr. threw himself on an unexploded grenade before it detonated in Quang Nam Province, Vietnam, on May 8, 1970, he had little time to ponder his decision. The US government, after thinking it over, awarded Mr. Kellogg with the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery, as his actions saved several of his comrade's lives.

I am among thousands of others who were fortunate to have received training from Mr. Kellogg. He was our mother and our father, but his brand of love was tough because it's a serious endeavor. There is no "glory" in war and he made sure we knew it. He never mentioned even once that he'd received America's highest honor. After completing his distinguished USMC career, he began devoting his life to assisting homeless American military veterans in Hawaii, USA where he lives today.

DEATH OF A MARINE

All of us probably have thoughts about the casualties of war. We also deserve the truth about the agony it inflicts upon the fallen, their families, those who survived, such as Mr. Kellogg, and even us, the global civilization.

How do we assign a weight to the truth of war's catastrophic consequences and compare it to an individual family's wish to set the tone of their loved ones eternal legacy?

A recent article that appeared on bxpnyc titled Death of a Marine describes why answering this question proves to be painful and difficult.

As the article states, "On August 14, 2009, US Marine Lance Corporal Joshua “Bernie” Bernard was fatally wounded in an ambush in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. In the failing evening light, Associated Press (AP) photographer Julie Jacobson, embedded with his unit, 2nd Battalion/3rd Marine Regiment, photographed the prone and bleeding Bernard flanked by two comrades. Mr. Bernard was immediately evacuated, but later died from his wounds at a field hospital. He was 21 years old."

Conflicting opinions subsequently arose as to whether the photo includes enough of Lance Corporal Bernard’s face to establish his identity.

According to the article, an AP reporter went to interview the Bernard family and discuss the photograph. Bernie Bernard's father beseeched the AP representative not to run the photo. Nevertheless, AP chose to do so, along with other photos, in a story titled “Death of a Marine: A Photographer’s Journal”, making it available to clients who receive its “hosted” service. Such stories are typically fed automatically to AP clients that include newspapers nationwide.

ASSOCIATED PRESS DEFENDS ITS DECISION

AP issued a written statement defending its decision and Santiago Lyon, AP’s director of photography, stated, "We feel it is our journalistic duty to show the reality of the war there, however unpleasant and brutal that sometimes is.”

THE EMBEDDED JOURNALIST'S AGREEMENT: WAS IT VIOLATED?

An excerpt from the US "embed" agreement reads as follows, “Casualties may be covered by embedded media as long as the service member’s identity and unit identification is protected from disclosure until [the Assistant Deputy of Defense for Public Affairs] has officially released the name. Photography from a respectful distance or from angles at which a casualty cannot be identified is permissible; however, no recording of ramp ceremonies or remains transfers is permitted."

Seemingly everyone from US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, to bloggers on sites such as Captain’s Journal, a conservative blog devoted to military affairs, "hammered AP" according to the article. In fact, Gates wrote a letter to AP’s president saying, "Why your organization would purposefully defy the family’s wishes knowing full well that it will lead to more anguish is beyond me. Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple American newspapers is appalling."

However, as Stars and Stripes reported in August, 2009, journalists seeking to be embedded with Western forces in Afghanistan may be vetted to determine if their past work was favorable to US forces. The newspaper published an example of a profile showing a pie chart indicating whether a particular reporter's stories were positive, neutral or negative.

The profiles are generated by The Rendon Group, a Washington-based public relations firm, as part of a $1.5 million Pentagon contract. Stars and Stripes did not name any of the journalists who had been profiled, or say whether photographers were included. The International Federation of Journalists condemned the practice, saying it "compromises the independence of media." Read more at Editor & Publisher.

Please continue reading about US Marine Lance Corporal Joshua “Bernie” Bernard

WHAT IS THE ANSWER?

So what is the answer here? Do we seek the truth about war's hardship by perusing anecdotal evidence witnesses such as Alan J. Kellogg Jr. and people like him may or may not choose to provide after their return to civilian status?

Should media people such as Julie Jacobson, recent Pulitzer Prize winner Tyler Hicks and their organizations be allowed to show us the facts no matter how harsh the realty of war is or should people such as Bernie Bernard's father, as bereaved as he is, set the agenda regarding what we all learn?

Although I have experiences with people from "both sides of the fence", I realize that my opinion regarding these events don't matter to you and why should they for who am I to inject my own moral certitude into such a perplexing and serious affair? How would Mr. Morris, Mr. Pivovarov, Mr. Kellogg, Bernie Bernard or any of you weigh in? I have no idea.

Rather than opine, allow me to admonish all governments and warring factions by telling them to stop putting all of us between a rock and a hard place. I'm sure most of us will agree about that in 2010.

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Thoughts On Robert Capa, His Fake Photograph And Citizen Journalism

Article © Periodico

Awhile back Alissa Quart stated in an essay she wrote for On Photography:

"Despite all the critics who have claimed photos are "a grammar," images are more like a half-language (as John Berger, the critic who wrote Ways of Seeing, said), always both objective and freighted with meanings that even the photographer and her audience only sometimes understand. Good photography somehow can tell more, with its pulp and its present-ness."

She goes on to say, "That combination of directness and mysteriousness that is part of being a half-language must be preserved into the future. Despite the fact that amateurs have made iconic images in the past—the famed 1970 image The Picture From Kent State was taken by a student working in the college's photo lab—there have been many more iconic images that are actually extremely professional." and cites

Eddie Adams's General Nguyn Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon, from Vietnam

and

Robert Capa's Death of a Loyalist Soldier from the Spanish Civil War

But wait a minute! Morten Svenningsen has uncovered a bit of information from "Periodico" newspaper about Capa's photo and says on his blog:

"The photo established Capa has a heroic, top war photographer, it was used over and over as a prime example of great timing and of “Capa’s Rule”: “If your photo ain’t good enough, you ain’t close enough!”

He continues, "But the thing is, the photo has always been suspected of being staged. I vaguely remember first time I saw this photo, before I became a photojournalist, and just thinking “something ain’t right here”. (Also remember thinking “what’s with the hat?”) Well, if there ever was a set of rules in photojournalism, number one would be; You don’t stage a news photo and then claim it was a spontaneous event!"

Please continue reading about Capa's photo on Morten's blog

If one of photojournalism's most revered practitioners has been revealed as a fraud, do you think citizen journalists will try the same? According to Quart, "Photojournalists also question the journalistic reliability of the images of their amateur rivals."

Thirty-nine-year-old Magnum photographer Chris Anderson, a well known conflict photographer, wonders about the lack of "vetting" of the millions of images that are supposed to be carrying the truth to readers.

"There's a case already of an iReporter whose photos were bullshit," says Anderson, speaking of media companies publishing the work of amateur photographers. "News organizations will get burned by photographers they don't know and blur the lines between what is credible information and what isn't." And so it has been for over 70 years, whether the photographer is "known" or not.

After all, Robert Capa was a Magnum photographer.

Nevertheless, I agree with Anderson regarding the authenticity of images rushed to the public by news organizations. Rather than relying on photojournalists / journalists to provide the context in which events occur, news outlets seem to be making it up as they go along.

I recently received an email from a woman who was helping rebuild in Sri Lanka. She is a private American citizen who has no interest in photojournalism / journalism but she is the type of person news organizations are seeking out these days.

She stated, "I shoot a lot of video on my camera and everyone always asks for it for free which of course I do but CNN or someone could make a little donation to the cause."

What this means is that rather than being an impartial observer, she had "a cause" in Sri Lanka, but apparently that fact matters little to CNN.

Maybe Robert Capa had a cause too.

John Brown Photojournalist On LIGHTSTALKERS
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Has LIFE and Photojournalism Changed In 44 Years?

How much has life changed in 44 years? For the type of men depicted in a photograph that graced the April 16th 1965 cover of Life Magazine probably not much. Apart from advanced weaponry, new medical technology and evacuation techniques, a warrior is still a warrior. Although a draft existed in America and today's troops are "all volunteers", they were all sent by the US government to far away places to "defend" the American way of life. In addition, despite the current state of affairs in the US, that way of life is rather good.

What about the people producing the photography? Has life changed for them? Well I suppose you would have to ask one who captured imagery in Vietnam and still covers conflicts today. There aren't' too many of them left to offer us a comparative analysis.

During the war in Indochina, photographers came from all stripes. Some men were already renowned such as Robert Capa who lost his life after stepping on a landmine in Vietnam in 1954, and others never had even one shot published. One, Sean Flynn who disappeared in Cambodia, even had a famous father who knew a bit about film himself.

What Can We Compare?

Photography gear heads will be able to address the technical aspects of digital vs. film etc., but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about what today's conflict photojournalists can get access to these days. If photojournalism is "about the work", does the work look different to you? To me the imagery from the war in Iraq seems different from the imagery captured in Vietnam, but I'm not sure we get to see it all.

My fellow MONDO Library contributor, Zoriah Miller, was asked to leave Iraq by military commanders after posting photos on his Warshooters blog last year. He was told that the Marine Corps would not allow even the pants or shoes of an injured or killed Marine to be depicted in images.

According to a report filed from Baghdad by Michael Kamber, himself a photojournalist for the New York Times,

"On the morning of June 26, Mr. Miller, 32, was embedded with Company E of the Second Battalion, Third Marine Regiment in Garma, in Anbar Province. The photographer declined a Marine request to attend a city council meeting, and instead accompanied a unit on foot patrol nearby.
When a suicide bomber detonated his vest inside the council meeting, killing 20 people, including 3 marines, Mr. Miller was one of the first to arrive.

His photos show a scene of horror, with body parts littering the ground and heaps of eviscerated corpses. Mr. Miller was able to photograph for less than 10 minutes, he said, before being escorted from the scene.
Mr. Miller said he spent three days on a remote Marine base editing his photos, which he then showed to the Company E marines.

When they said they could not identify the dead marines, he believed he was within embed rules, which forbid showing identifiable soldiers killed in action before their families have been notified. According to records Mr. Miller provided, he posted his photos on his Web site the night of June 30, three days after the families had been notified."

Mr. Miller offered a statement:

Please know that my intent is to show the true nature of the horrors of war in hopes that this will deter others from committing or accepting senseless acts of violence.

So what is going on here? Did Larry Burrows have such concerns when he took the Life Magazine photo (above) depicting a wounded US soldier and a mate with a jammed M-60 when he was flying in that helicopter? Are today's photojournalists allowed to "tell it like it is" or does censorship exist on many levels.

When the New York Times showed four American contractors hanging on a bridge in Falluja 5 years ago on its front page it was rather painful but it showed the paper's courage and commitment to the truth regarding the incident. In fact, I felt the impact a bit more personally perhaps since one of the victims hailed from Honokaa, Hawaii, a small town where some of my relatives once lived and I enjoyed visiting. It brought the war in Iraq home to me. It seems to me that few media outlets in America have the bravery to publish such photos today. Photographs of Slumdog Millionaires are more in vogue.

Whatever the case, we all owe those who have risked their lives to tell us the truth with their cameras a debt of gratitude. One-hundred-thirty-five photojournalists lost their lives between 1945 and 1975 in Indochina and the count is still running in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Philippines and elsewhere.

The question is, does anyone care?

John Brown Photojournalist On LIGHTSTALKERS
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