Walden Davis Extended Essay FINAL · 2012-01-19 · Walden Jeffrey Davis—IB World Studies Extended Essay 2 UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS 1948 Article 3: Everyone has the

Walden Jeffrey Davis—IB World Studies Extended Essay

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TOPIC

WORLD STUDIES: PHOTOGRAPHY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

RESEARCH QUESTION

HOW DO PHOTOGRAPHERS OF VIOLENCE AND SUFFERING MAKE A FAIR, ACCURATE AND VISUALLY COMPELLING CASE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS?

APPROACH

An investigation of photographers and photographs of war, death and abuse in Lebanon. How does adherence to professional journalism standards help war photographers document human

rights abuses? When does attention to aesthetic concerns of form and content enhance the power of photographs to compel attention to human rights abuses?

WORD COUNT

3972

BY WALDEN J. DAVIS

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Melki, Jad. Civilian casualty, Bint Jbeil, Lebanon. 2006.

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UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

1948

Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or

punishment. Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes

freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. 1

—

BEN SHAHN, “THE SHAPE OF CONTENT” 1956

“Art arises from something stronger than stimulation or even inspiration… it may take fire from

something closer to provocation… it may at certain times be compelled by life.”2 —

AIDAN WHITE, “ETHICAL JOURNALISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS,” 2011

“Good journalism can remind us of moral responsibilities and reinforce our attachment to

acceptable standards of behavior and, in this sense, it is an ally of everyone striving for democracy and human rights protection.” 3


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ABSTRACT In this research essay I analyzed how war photographers’ adherence to professional journalism standards helps them to document human rights abuses. I also assessed when photographers’ attention to aesthetic concerns of form and content enhances the power of their photographs and compels attention to abuses. I began by researching how photographers understand their role as providers of news about conflict and suffering, drawing both from historical research and from interviews I conducted with eight Lebanese war photographers. I then researched journalism ethics and determined that photographers’ adherence to the core principles of accuracy and balance serve to highlight human rights abuses—even when the abuse is perpetrated by the photographer’s own “side”—because photographers are trained not to minimize or exaggerate what they see. That assessment led me to identify the distinction between “accuracy” and “objectivity.” My research and interviews suggested that although journalists agree that absolute “objectivity” is not possible, their interest in their own professional reputations reinforces adherence to professional ethics of accuracy and fairness. I then considered whether all photographs of violence, suffering and abuse are documents that in effect advocate for human rights, or whether only images of certain artistic and technical qualities make a human rights case. My research suggested that images that emotionally and clearly tell the human story and do not cross the line to showing gratuitous horror are most likely both to attract viewers and accurately document what has occurred. Finally I examined three categories of images—of destruction, of people caught amidst destruction, and of survivors alone. I independently examined three photographs of war in Lebanon and compared their form and content with iconic images from history. That examination supported the conclusion that artistically arresting photographs that accurately and fairly document a situation of conflict are likely to be strong advocates for human rights.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS EPIGRAPHS — P. 2 ABSTRACT — P. 3 INTRODUCTION — P. 5 PHOTOJOURNALISTS: THE TASK OF TRANSLATING EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY TO AUDIENCES — P. 6 “MAKE THE PHOTO TELL THE STORY” — P. 7 JOURNALISM ETHICS AND HUMAN RIGHTS STANDARDS: ACCURACY AND OBJECTIVITY — P. 9 WHAT MAKES A PHOTO ‘ATTRACTIVE’? TELLING THE HUMAN STORY — P. 11 USING A GRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPH: SHOW SUFFERING NOT GORE — P. 13 PRIORITIES OF COVERAGE: DESTRUCTION / AHMAD EL ITANI — P. 14 PRIORITIES OF COVERAGE: SURVIVORS & DESTRUCTION / RAMZI HAIDAR — P. 16 PRIORITIES OF COVERAGE: SURVIVORS / JAD MELKI — P. 18 CONCLUSION: HOW PHOTOGRAPHERS MAKE HUMAN RIGHTS DOCUMENTS ARE — P. 20 APPENDIX: THE TECHNOLOGY OF PHOTOGRAPHY — P. 21 ENDNOTES — P. 22 WORKS CITED — P. 26


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INTRODUCTION In 1956, artist and photographer Ben Shahn gave a series of lectures at Harvard that were collected into a small book called The Shape of Content. Shahn mused why artists create: “art arises from something stronger than stimulation or even inspiration… it may take fire from something closer to provocation… it may at certain times be compelled by life.”4 This essay, based on historical and theoretical research, as well as interviews of contemporary Lebanese photographers, argues that photojournalists in the Middle East are compelled to take the photographs they do. They try to capture visually striking images of war, death, suffering and abuse. In so doing, they remind a global public of its “moral responsibilities” and the human rights imperative to adhere to universally “acceptable standards of behavior.”5 Aidan White, the General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, wrote in a recent “Issue Paper for the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights”:

“When journalists aspire to tell stories based upon truth-telling, accuracy and fairness; when they seek to minimise harm; and when they make themselves accountable to peers and the wider community, they define the essential elements of what we might call journalism as a public good…. Good journalism can remind us of moral responsibilities and reinforce our attachment to acceptable standards of behaviour and, in this sense, it is an ally of everyone striving for democracy and human rights protection.”6

This essay argues that international norms of journalism ethics prompt photographers to cover violence and destruction accurately and fairly, serving to publicize atrocities no matter who is the perpetrator. This essay further argues that photographers apply aesthetic principles relating to form and angle of vision to create compelling images, all the while aware that their images should not be too sensationally graphic in content if they are going to attract an audience.


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HANNAH ARENDT — 1978 “As citizens, we must prevent wrong doing because the world in which we all live, wrong doer,

wrong sufferer, and spectator, is at stake; the City has been wronged.”7

PHOTOJOURNALISTS: THE TASK OF TRANSLATING EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY TO

AUDIENCES

“Photographers and journalists are eyewitnesses to what is happening around the world,” said Lebanese war photographer Ramzi Haidar. “They reflect what is happening so accurately, that when people see [their images], they feel as if time has stopped—they feel as if they’re there.”8 Photographers are witnesses to war, death and suffering; they are the observers who have the aesthetic eye to capture what they are seeing, and the technology to show those images to the world. 9 “Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness,” wrote Life magazine photographer W. Eugene Smith, known for taking images of wars and tragedies, such as the child victims of chemical pollution at Minamata, Japan in the photo above. 10 It is through the lenses of still photographers and videographers that audiences at home experience global events and come to care about what they see.

Smith, W. Eugene. Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath Minamata, Japan. 1972.


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JOHN DONNE — 1624 “Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.... by this consideration of

another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself.”11

“MAKE THE PHOTO TELL THE STORY”12 Eddie Adams took arguably the most famous 20th century photograph of a war crime: the summary execution of a suspected Viet Cong prisoner on the streets of Saigon during the Tet offensive in 1968 (below). Said Adams: “If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that's a good picture.”13

Photographers’ challenge in covering conflict, violence and abuse is the need to relay to an audience at home “a horrible situation that is happening thousands of miles away from them, in a country they don’t understand the culture of, they don’t understand the geography of, they might not even know the location of.” And what further complicates that “very difficult task,” said Lebanese photographer and videographer Jad Melki, is that “you can’t accurately reduce destruction into a

two-dimensional photo or a short segment of video.” As he explained, “there’s no one photo and no one sequence of images that is going to reflect to an audience the enormity of that destruction.”14 What to do? “You just have to open your eyes,” noted Lebanese photojournalist Ahmad El Itani. Photographers have to “have an idea about what they’re going to do”—they have to relate through pictures “where the story is happening, who the main people engaged in that story are, and what are they doing,” explained El Itani. 15 Photojournalists like myself, said Lebanese photographer Sami Awad, “look for things that relay the destruction as much as possible.” When photographing war, Awad has said, he instinctively wants to communicate to his audience “people are suffering, people are in misery.” “I know how to go film that,” he reflected. “You include details. You get a close shot for the face, close shot for the feet, establishing shot for the place, et cetera.”16

Adams, Eddie. Vietcong Execution, Saigon, Vietnam. 1968.


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Photojournalists want their audiences to stop and stare and engage with their images so they will engage with the subject being pictured. They want their audiences “to jump from their seats.” They want “to make you cry,” and they want “to make you smile.” And if the photographers haven’t managed that, then they “have not done a very good job,” El Itani said. “If the photo doesn’t speak to you, if it doesn’t have any effect, well then it’s worthless.”17


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JOURNALISM ETHICS AND HUMAN RIGHTS STANDARDS: ACCURACY AND OBJECTIVITY

For many photojournalists their profession of taking images defines “who” they are. As a result, the best of those on the frontlines of photography have internalized journalism’s ethical values. It’s not that there are not temptations to “cheat” or that there are not individuals who succumb to manipulating images, it’s that the best photographers recognize that there are international and universal principles that not only need to be, but must be adhered to in order for their work to be credible and have impact. First among those universal principles18 is that of accuracy; photojournalists in the Middle East aspire to be “accurate in terms of relaying” their stories and to be “accurate in terms of not intentionally misleading” their viewers. Communication can be “incredibly difficult in overwhelming situations,” but photographers from Lebanon feel obliged to convey what they’re observing “with the utmost accuracy” and “with the utmost faithfulness to an audience that is not there,” as Melki noted. 19 Being accurate means that photographers “should never change the facts,” agreed Sami Awad. “If the picture is there,” he asserted, “I will try my best to bring it. If I cannot bring it, I cannot bring it. It's very simple.”20 Ramzi Haidar agreed. “I never even think of doctoring an image or editing it in a way that would exaggerate or not accurately reflect what was happening.”21 In journalism “accuracy” is imperative—however, accuracy is distinct from “objectivity.” Being accurate is a core principle, being objective is a goal. A photograph, Susan Sontag wrote, “cannot be simply a transparency of something that happened. It is always the image that someone chose; to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude.”22 Although the best Middle Eastern photojournalists insist on accuracy and preach objectivity, Sami Awad has noted, “You cannot be 100 percent unbiased. Nobody, never.”23 Yet all the photojournalists I interviewed were in agreement: violations of human rights must be covered fully and fairly. “I don’t want to be unfair to someone or miss a part of the story that totally changes the whole picture,” Melki said. Melki admiringly told the account of an Israeli

photographer “who took photos of Israeli kids writing messages on [missile] shells” that were going to be fired during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. 24 The Associated Press photographer, Sebastian Scheiner, took those photos, noted Melki, “despite Israel being [Lebanon’s] enemy,” and despite the fact that the images “negatively affected [Israel’s] interests.”25

Scheiner, Sebastian. Israeli girls write messages on a shell at a heavy artillery position near Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel. 2006.


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No matter your politics or affiliation, to be partisan when covering violence and suffering is a crime, said Ahmad El Itani: “You might as well plant the bomb yourself.”26 Perhaps especially given the divisive politics of the region, Ramzi Haidar noted that he was “professionally and ethically committed to objectivity. It’s my credibility on the line…. If I don’t accurately and fairly represent all those suffering from horror, those abused by the violence of war, then I’m not a photojournalist, I’m a guy with a camera.”27


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WHAT MAKES A PHOTO ‘ATTRACTIVE’? TELLING THE HUMAN STORY

When Nick Ut photographed 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc running down a road in June of 1972, her naked body seared with napalm, her face distorted in pain, he “let the world see how horrible wars can be.” Said Kim Phuc in 2000 when she met with the Queen of England: Nick Ut “didn't only do his job… he [was] a human being helping another.”28 Photojournalists agree with Kim Phuc: compelling photos of

tragedy better communicate the suffering and abuse of those who are denied their human rights. Photojournalists, however, disagree about what makes a photo attractive to viewers in the first place. To some photojournalists, such as Jad Melki, “attractive” photos are those that communicate their messages most effectively, in fact the making of them is “like writing a lead for an article…You are communicating a message in an accurate way, trying to be as balanced as possible, trying to communicate what is in front of you.”29 Other photojournalists, such as Ahmad El Itani and Ramzi Haidar, more self-consciously strive to create aesthetically powerful photographs. Oftentimes, El Itani said, the photos “others” take are “dull.” What “makes front page,” he said, is when a photographer drifts away from the pack to seek his own vision. 30 “I do just the opposite of what many photographers do,” agreed Haidar. “I don’t follow any path,”31 but I do “think very carefully about where I’m going to position myself to take this photo, what I’m actually taking, and where the story is.”32 What attracts viewers are pictures with an “odd or fresh perspective,” observed El Itani, photos that use “different angles” in a “tasteful” and “artistic” way to “speak to you.” A great photo has “that spark, that light, that sensational feeling” and it employs all of that to tell “the story as it is.” You cannot have “a good photo” that “is not artistic.” El Itani said slamming the table in an interview. “Then it’s not a photograph—it’s just a snapshot!” 33

Ut, Huyng Cong Nick. Kim Phuc, severely burned, fleeing her village in Trang Bang, Vietnam, after a napalm attack. 1972.


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Great photos can be of the rubble of destruction, of people’s faces, or of something else altogether. The topic by itself doesn’t dictate whether the photograph is attractive to viewers; the quality of the photograph does. “There is no doubt” that “there is art in” horror, mused Sami Awad. You can have “a good picture, even if it’s of death, if it’s of massacres.”34 “Regardless of what the image is, if it’s not beautiful, if people are not interested in the story … they usually won’t be published,” noted Ramzi Haidar. “On the other hand, … if there is interest in the story or the topic, of course the more aesthetic or more beautiful images will be more published and will have more influence and have people involved.”35 Beautiful, high-quality photographs help to sell stories, but taking aesthetically pleasing images is not always possible. Content comes first. Just getting the photo matters most—at least then a photographer and news outlet has a visual document of the abuse or tragedy. “As a photographer you strive to get the best quality,” Jad Melki said, “whether aesthetic or technical quality…but when you’re in a situation of war or violence,” sometimes you “can’t even think about that.” You “have luxury, if you have the time to think about quality.”36 In war zones, photojournalists’ primary concern is to take the image and get back safely. “Getting the picture,” however, can lead to situations where photojournalists have to shoot while running and “record without thinking—without putting an eye to the viewfinder,” as Melki explained. 37 “When all hell breaks loose,” agreed Ahmad El Itani, “and there is no supervision, all photographers capture everything.” What can happen in such situations is that the images that are captured “can’t be put on the air or published in newspapers or anything because they were too graphical. Blood, hearts, brains, eyes,” recalled El Itani. 38 The photographers I interviewed all said that after the crisis is over and there is time to reflect, one should not publish such images. “Death pornography hijacks a story which might have real merit,” said Melki, “and transforms it into something that looks very disgusting, or very horrifying.”39


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USING A GRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPH: SHOW SUFFERING, NOT GORE

Lebanese photographers, many of whom have been witness to atrocities, believe that photographers and editors “can only judge” whether to take and use graphic images on a case-by-case basis. There are few institutional guidelines on graphic photography because there are such different gradations of graphic photography. Not all graphic images are inappropriate to show to an audience. There is a “threshold,” however, even for those who “push the limits” as Melki admitted he has done. He might, for example, take an “image of a child crying over the body of his dead mother,” but he has refrained from taking images for shock value—such as those of “mutilated bodies…that are so disfigured that they don’t even look like humans anymore”—or that appear to be staged. “An image of a child with half his head blown off does not communicate the story, or generate the emotion that you want to impregnate in the reader; instead it communicates disgust, and in most cases people would turn away.” It is better to show suffering rather than gore, he believes, because such images communicate a “humanistic message that we are” all “the same” and that “we all suffer the same kind of pain…. Whether we’re children or adults, males or females, Arabs or Americans, Christians or Muslims or Jews; it’s the same suffering that we all feel” and that we “all relate to” and “feel sorry for.”40 During the July 2006 war with Israel, for example, Melki said he encountered an ambulance that contained “four dead children between the ages of 1 and 3…stacked like firewood.” The driver “grabbed a child” by its “leg and pulled it up” such that the infant was swinging in the air. “I didn’t even pull my camera up,” Melki said. While “it’s a horrifying story,” it did not communicate, “the senseless targeting of civilians in that village.” And the fact that the child was “grabbed like a slaughtered lamb” made the scene “too artificial,” Melki said. “Those were kids, but there was no human connection, no emotion communicated there…this is not a scene that is newsworthy…there [was] no journalistic value.”41 “Professional photographers…look for the photo that accurately reflects the story—what is happening—in a way that is less graphic,” said Ramzi Haidar, in part because that way the image will be “more published.” In addition, he observed, “Hyper-sensationalized images and videos are actually counter productive and backfire… I don’t want to subject people to … really graphic and bothersome images. They might flip the page without really even looking at it, so an important story might be harmed and go unread just because of the foreboding, glaring repulsive image overhead.”42


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PRIORITIES OF COVERAGE: DESTRUCTION

“You don’t have to show something that shows people blown to little bits and pieces.” — Ahmad El Itani43

Historically, relatively few images of war have shown the dead. Artists and photographers have used simple images of destruction of places to serve as testament to the violence that occurred. From the cannon balls in the photograph of the “Valley of the Shadow of Death” in 1855 by the Crimean War photographer Roger Fenton, (left) to the drawing of the cannon peering out on the blasted

Franco-Prussian War landscape in the 1870 lithograph of Honoré Daumier, (right) artists have used the detritus of war to stand in for the destruction of people and civilization. Susan Sontag noted that “There is beauty in ruins.” Sometimes artists see in that field of devastation a glimmer of beauty and hope—as Sontag noted of the images taken of Ground Zero: “Photographs tend to transform, whatever their subject; and as an image something may be beautiful—or terrifying, or unbearable, or quite bearable—as it is not in real life.”44 An angle of vision can turn a steel girder rising out of concrete rubble into a cross, for example as seen in an image of a devastated New York City, photographed in the aftermath of 9/11 (next page, above). Or the random throw of a tank trap can appear to be a

Fenton, Roger. Valley of the Shadow of Death. 1855.

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Daumier, Honoré. Postwar landscape (lithograph). 1870.


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cross in a photograph by Ahmad El Itani of a blasted street in the Naher el-Bared refugee camp (this page, below).

In the bottom photograph, photojournalist Ahmad El Itani sought to make visual the civilians’ experience of violence in a Palestinian refugee camp. He simply captured the tangle of barbed wire and debris. In the midst of the Israeli-Hezbollah war, El Itani could have taken sensationalized images of civilians killed and eviscerated by bombs and mortar attacks. “Photos can be graphic and sensational,” he noted. But “sensational” photos shock viewers. “A beautiful photo that’s artistic” can “move you. It doesn’t always have to be graphic.... You don’t have to show something that shows people blown to little bits and pieces. Why? It’s not evidence for the people, it’s not useful, that’s what I mean.”45

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Bybee, Anne. Cross at Ground Zero, New York City. 2001.

El Itani, Ahmad. Street scene in the Naher el-Bared refugee camp. 2006.


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PRIORITIES OF COVERAGE: SURVIVORS & DESTRUCTION

“I always try to take photos of the people who are still alive.” — Ramzi Haidar46

The tragedy of war can be powerfully communicated through images of individuals in the midst of destruction. At least since Francisco Goya’s series of engravings titled The Disasters of War (left) drawn in protest against the atrocities of the Napoleonic War of 1808–14, artists have tried to do justice to the anguish of survivors when the world around them is overturned. Goya’s aquatint “Sad presentiments of what must come to pass,” highlighted a figure against a nightmarish blackened background, hashmarked with visions of corpses and skeletons.

One hundred and twenty years later, in 1937, Pablo Picasso created his impassioned outcry against the Fascist bombing of the Basque town of Guernica. Among the figures in his mural is a keening woman, (right) hands outstretched, crying her distress, her light arms and face vivid against dark, burning buildings.

Seventy years later, in 2007, the Lebanese Army invaded the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp to find members of Fatah al-Islam, an Islamist militant group that had hidden there. Photographer Ramzi Haidar, working for Agence France Presse (AFP), made repeated trips into the camps to

Goya, Francisco. Sad presentiments of what must come to pass,” Disasters of War (engraving). 1808-14.

Picasso, Pablo. Guernica (section of painting). 1937.

Haidar, Ramzi. An old woman cries in front of her house in ashes after the intercommunal clashes that have once again touched Lebanon.

2008.


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record the abuses during the 18-months of battle. “As a photographer I see things that people don’t necessarily want or need to see,” he said. 47

“Indiscriminate shelling” and the establishment of “armed positions” “inside the camp,” Amnesty International said, led to the deaths of “42 civilians,” and “the displacement of 27,000 Palestinian refugees.”48 But Haidar’s most poignant images of the conflict were not “gruesome images.”49 He took several pictures of an elderly woman in her destroyed home. The photo (previous page),50 the one that AFP circulated the most widely, freezes the motion of the woman’s extended arm. Her hand points to the burnt remnants of her house, but the diagonal line of her arm leads the viewer’s eyes as well to the

pain of loss etched on her face. The blood-red object in her right hand, together with her outstretched left hand and her distraught face create a triangle of focus. “I always try to take photos of the people who are still alive,” Haidar said. 51 He believes that photos of survivors offer hope to those who see them; they suggest that something can still be done for those victims of human rights abuses.

Haidar, Ramzi. An old woman in front of her house in ashes after the intercommunal clashes that have once again touched

Lebanon. 2008.


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PRIORITIES OF COVERAGE: SURVIVORS “An amazing story of human survival.”— Jad Melki52

Throughout history, artists and photographers of war have portrayed the ravages of war on individuals. Consider the blank stares on the faces in Kathe Köllwitz’s 1922 drawing “The Survivors.” 53 (left) Today the symptoms that Kollwitz captured are called PTSD, for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. But in conflicts past, those who suffered were simply considered to have “that front-line face,” as Michael Herr wrote in his Vietnam book Dispatches.54 More simply, the phenomenon was known as “shell shock,” as photographer Don

McCullin captioned a photograph he took of a Marine in Hue, Vietnam in 1968 (left).55 Those who are caught in the midst of war have the horrors imprinted on them. Almost 40 years later, during the July 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War, Human Rights

Watch (HRW) stated that the Israel Defense

Forces (IDF) killed an “estimated 500 people, the vast majority of them civilians,” between “July 12 and July 27, 2006, and on July 30.” These IDF attacks, said HRW’s report, “violat[ed] international humanitarian law (the laws of war).”56 Photojournalist Jad Melki covered the conflict from the Lebanon side of the border and saw the human destruction. Among the photos Melki took that July were images of a man who survived

Köllwitz, Kathe. The Survivors (drawing). 1922.

McCullin, Don. Shell shock (A Marine in Hue, Vietnam). 1968.

Melki, Jad. Civilian casualty, Bint Jbeil, Lebanon. 2006.


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an attack. As he described the scene: “When we were heading to Bint Jbeil, there were two families coming out…. One of the guys was totally bloodied, [but] he was alive and was able to walk with the help of his wife….” His wife told Melki what happened: “We ran out of the house and he was still there and the house collapsed on him, and me and my children 13 and 14 years old pulled him out of the house. He was knocked unconscious, but he survived.”57 In the photo (previous page, above right), the injured civilian, swaddled in white, leans on his right hand. The horror of war is imprinted on his face: his downcast eyes stare into middle distance. Whereas McCullin’s Vietnam photo has a soldier loosely grasping a gun, Melki shows the injured man’s wife loosely covering her husband’s hand with her own. The wife’s hand reminds viewers that the wounded man in a civilian, even if he appears oblivious to his wife’s presence. Melki cropped her face out of the shot; this is a photograph about the one who has been injured. Said Melki, audiences often best relate to the “violence of war” through simple photos that depict “individual suffering.” Photographs of people suffering attract an audience because “the human element” is inherent and obvious. 58


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CONCLUSION: HOW PHOTOGRAPHERS MAKE HUMAN RIGHTS DOCUMENTS

War photographers are eyewitnesses to extraordinary suffering and tragedy. As individuals they are compelled to take photos of what they see as accurately, as fairly and as aesthetically powerfully as possible. These vivid records of events serve as evidence of death and destruction, agony and abuse, and it is the accumulation of such records that ultimately teaches a global audience that the rights of everyone need to be protected: children, the elderly, women, men, citizens of Lebanon, citizens of Israel, Christians, Muslims, Jews. The history of art has long noted the powerful advocacy of war artists such as Goya, Daumier, Köllwitz and Picasso. Drawing from historical research, from interviews I conducted and from an examination of iconic images, I conclude that photographs of violence and suffering by photographers such as Adams, Ut, El Itani, Haider and Melki, also inevitably become compelling documents for human rights.


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APPENDIX: THE TECHNOLOGY OF PHOTOGRAPHY When shooting suffering, death, destruction and abuse, “it doesn’t matter what kind of camera you have,” said Jad Melki. The actual technology is subservient to what the photographers want to shoot. There is better and worse equipment to own, but advances in digital technology have leveled the proverbial playing field so that even freelance photographers, buying their own cameras, can get images sufficiently good in quality. What’s more important than the equipment itself is being able to instinctively and at a second’s notice call up how to work all the gear to get the needed shot. Photographers and cameramen must have a “list” inscribed in their heads that they can unconsciously call upon. “It’s like getting in a car,” said Melki. “You open the door, you get in a car, you sit down, you put the key in, you turn the key, you switch gears, you put your hands on the wheel… it’s automatic. You put your hands on the steering wheel and you drive, you stop thinking about it after a while.” As a photographer, you have to be able to do versions of all these things with your gear: “You focus the camera on the object or the person you’re trying to shoot, you put the cameras at eyelevel, you frame the picture properly. The first shot is usually an establishing shot of the environment—a long shot. Then you take a medium shot, and then you would zoom in with a close up.” 59 A great photograph or video package does more, however, than merely describe a situation in long, medium and close-up shots. To truly grab an audience’s attention, to be compelling, photographic images have to uniquely communicate what’s happening. They have to have an angle of vision. “I try to get different angles, new angles, exciting angles—it’s all about angles,” says Ahmad El Itani. “Shooting from a new perspective adds aesthetic twist to the photo.” New perspectives also need to be supplemented by attention to lighting and focus—both of which help direct a viewer’s attention to what matters. Photographers need to learn how to manage “the white balance” in an image—and to try and keep the image as truthful as possible, many photojournalists try to use natural lighting as much as possible. Photographer Ahmad El Itani, for example, never uses flash in the traditional way—to illuminate a dark or night-time scene—rather he uses it to balance lighting, or to accent details in the foreground that otherwise might be drowned out in the shadows. Similarly, El Itani pays close attention to the focus of an image, preferring to use “shadow and deep depth” to simplify the amount of information available to viewers, directing them, visually, to what he believes is the story. He wants his viewers to immediately understand “what I want to say, what I want to tell.” 60


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ENDNOTES

1. “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Web. 20 Oct. 2011.

2. Shahn, Ben. The Shape of Content. Print.

3. “White, Aiden, “ Ethical journalism and human rights.” Issue Paper commissioned and

published by Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights.” Web. 10 Oct.

2011.

4. Shahn, Ben. The Shape of Content. Print.

5. “Commissioner for Human Rights - Ethical journalism and human rights. Issue Paper

commissioned and published by Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human

Rights.” Web. 10 Oct. 2011.

6. “Commissioner for Human Rights - Ethical journalism and human rights. Issue Paper

commissioned and published by Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human

Rights.” Web. 10 Oct. 2011.

My own engagement with this topic comes from my experience over the past two years while I

have been a student fellow and intern at the Newseum in Washington, DC. Every day at work, I

walk by the two-story-high Journalists Memorial where the names of over 2,000 reporters,

photographers and broadcasters from around the world are etched in soaring glass panels in a

tribute to those who have died reporting the news.

7. Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind Vol. 1 & 2. Print.

8. Haidar, Ramzi. Personal Interview. 20 July 2011.

9. As Lebanese photographer and videographer Jad Melki noted, photographers may not “always

know the truth or what is happening,”. “Truth is a very big word for journalism.” But photographers

must be “there” to get the shot. As Melki said: “I’m relating the story that I’m witnessing.” Melki, Jad.

Personal Interview. 22 July 2011.


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10. Trustees of Dartmouth College. “A SPACE FOR DIALOGUE 50th: Fresh Perspectives on the

Permanant Collection form Dartmouth’s Students.” 9 Apr. 2009.

11. Donne, John. “Meditation XVII.” Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. First. the University

of Michigan Press, 1959. 108-109. Web. 10 Oct. 2011.

12. El Itani, Ahmad. Personal Interview. 22 July 2011.

13. Newseum. Pulitzer Prize Gallery. Print.

14. Melki, Jad. Personal Interview. 22 July 2011.


16. Awad, Sami. Personal Interview. 19 July 2011.


18. “Ethics Codes | Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ).” Web. 10 Oct. 2011. And

“Principles of Journalism | Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ).” Web. 10 Oct. 2011.

19. Melki, Jad. Personal Interview. 22 July 2011



22. Sontag, Susan. “A Critic at Large: Looking at War: Photography’s view of devastation and

death.” The New Yorker 9 Dec. 2002 : 82-98.


24. For more background on the story of the signing of the missiles, see:

Mark Oliver, “An explosive image in Lebanon conflict”, July 20, 2006,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2006/jul/20/missilespostin.

Columbia Journalism Review, “About Those Photos of Little Girls and Artillery Shells”, July 20, 2006,

http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/about_those_photos_of_little_g.php.

Lisa Goldman, “Putting things in perspective”, July 20, 2006,

http://ontheface.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/7/20/2142505.html



24



28. Horst Faas and Marianne Fulton, “Kim Phuc Talks About the Incident of June 8, 1972”, n.d.,

http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0008/ng3.htm.
















44. Sontag, Susan. “A Critic at Large: Looking at War: Photography’s view of devastation and

death.” The New Yorker 9 Dec. 2002 : 82-98.




48. Amnesty International condemned the attacks, saying that during the three months of “intense”

fighting in the last spring and summer, the camp of 30,000 was “largely destroyed” by “both sides,” said


25

Amnesty. “The camp remained off-limits to the media and local human rights organizations,” contrary to

the resolutions set forth in Articles 5 and 19 of the UDHR. “Lebanon - Amnesty International Report

2008 | Amnesty International”, n.d., http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/lebanon/report-2008.


50. Photo circulated by Agence France Presse on June 24, 2008, was captioned: “Le Liban à feu

et à sang: Une vieille femme pleure devant sa maison en cendres après les affrontements

intercommunautaires qui ont une nouvelle fois touché le Liban.” (“Lebanon of fire and of blood: An old

woman cries in front of her house in ashes after the intercommunal clashes that have once again touched

Lebanon.”) “Le Liban à feu et à sang - LExpress.fr”, n.d., http://www.lexpress.fr/24henimage/le-liban-a-

feu-et-a-sang_516079.html.



53. “Drawing by Käthe Kollwitz”, n.d., http://www.greatwar.nl/kollwitz/kollwitzkaart.html.

54. Herr, Michael. Dispatches. 1977: 237.

55. “Hue, Vietnam, February 1968: A US marine suffering severe shell shock waits to be

evacuated from the battle zone,” “From Beirut to Biafra: Don McCullin’s war photographs go on show |

Art and design | guardian.co.uk”, n.d., http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2010/feb/07/don-

mccullin-war-photographs?intcmp=239#/?picture=358984551&index=1.

56. “Fatal Strikes | Human Rights Watch”, n.d., http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2006/08/02/fatal-

strikes.






26

WORKS CITED AFP. “Le Liban à feu et à sang - LExpress.fr”, n.d., http://www.lexpress.fr/24henimage/le-liban-a-feu-et-a-sang_516079.html. Amnesty International. “Lebanon - Amnesty International Report 2008 | Amnesty International”, n.d., http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/lebanon/report-2008. Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind Vol. 1 & 2. Print. Awad, Sami. Personal Interview. 19 July 2011. Columbia Journalism Review. “About Those Photos of Little Girls and Artillery Shells”, July 20, 2006, http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/about_those_photos_of_little_g.php. Donne, John. “Meditation XVII.” Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. First. the University of Michigan Press, 1959. 108-109. Web. 10 Oct. 2011. El Itani, Ahmad. Personal Interview. 22 July 2011. Fass, Horst and Fulton, Marianne .“Kim Phuc Talks About the Incident of June 8, 1972”, n.d., http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0008/ng3.htm. Goldman, Lisa. “Putting things in perspective”, July 20, 2006, http://ontheface.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/7/20/2142505.html The Guardian. “From Beirut to Biafra: Don McCullin’s war photographs go on show | Art and design | guardian.co.uk”, n.d., http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2010/feb/07/don-mccullin-war-photographs?intcmp=239#/?picture=358984551&index=1. Haidar, Ramzi. Personal Interview. 20 July 2011. Herr, Michael. Dispatches. NY: Vintage. 1977 Human Rights Watch (HRW). “Fatal Strikes | Human Rights Watch”, n.d., http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2006/08/02/fatal-strikes. Käthe Kollwitz. “Survivor,” (drawing) n.d., http://www.greatwar.nl/kollwitz/kollwitzkaart.html. Melki, Jad. Personal Interview. 22 July 2011. Newseum. Pulitzer Prize Gallery. Print. Oliver, Mark. “An explosive image in Lebanon conflict”, July 20, 2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2006/jul/20/missilespostin. Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ). “Ethics Codes | Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ).” Web. 10 Oct. 2011.

— “Principles of Journalism | Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ).” Web. 10 Oct. 2011.


27

Shahn, Ben. The Shape of Content. Print. Sontag, Susan. “A Critic at Large: Looking at War: Photography’s view of devastation and death.” The New Yorker 9 Dec. 2002 : 82-98. “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Web. 20 Oct. 2011. Trustees of Dartmouth College. “A SPACE FOR DIALOGUE 50th: Fresh Perspectives on the Permanant Collection form Dartmouth’s Students.” 9 Apr. 2009. White, Aidan. “Commissioner for Human Rights - Ethical journalism and human rights. Issue Paper commissioned and published by Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights.” Web. 10 Oct. 2011.

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