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Essay on your photojournalism and society
The importance of photojournalism
The importance of photojournalism
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This essay discusses Linfield’s claim that “photojournalists are responsible for the ethics of showing, but we are responsible for the ethics of seeing” (2011, p. 60). It firstly defines contemporary photojournalism in the context of photographic seeing and our “postphotographic” age. Then, it argues that as part of their role in reporting truth back to their audiences, photojournalists have an ethical responsibility to show injustice. Photojournalists’ portrayal of injustice is further examined through an analysis Salgado’s ‘Sahel: The End of The Road’ (2004), where it is asserted that beautiful depictions of suffering are not inherently unethical, but are sometimes actually more respectful of their subjects’ humanity. Next, it is argued …show more content…
As Kaldor and Linfield note, photojournalism grants viewers the opportunity to expand their ethical, political, and intellectual consciousness (Kaldor 2009; Linfield 2011, p. 46). Consequently, audiences have a moral obligation to look at injustice and acknowledge those who are suffering. Seeing injustice, however, does not necessarily translate to caring about, or acting on it; as rational, independent beings, viewers themselves need to make the mental leaps between seeing an image, changing modes of thought, and then motivating action (Kennedy 2015, p. 163). Therefore, photojournalism must be disburdened from the expectation that it alone can enact social change. As Taylor argues, “If photographs fail to induce action, the fault lies not with photography but with the larger system [that marginalizes and punishes victims of injustice]” (2000, p. 138). Ergo, photojournalists are responsible for the ethics of showing, while we are responsible for the ethics of seeing and acting (Linfield 2011, p. …show more content…
As mentioned previously, audiences expect photojournalists to accurately depict the truth (Bruining 2017; Lamble 2016; Taylor 2000). Since they hold significant influence over viewership, photojournalists should therefore take some moral responsibility when their inaccurate reporting leads their audience to misconceive the world. One notorious instance where photojournalists violated audience trust was in the ‘Children Overboard’ affair of 2001, where tabloid and broadsheet newspapers circulated photographs of a child in the sea and claimed that asylum seekers were throwing their children overboard to coerce entry into Australia (Bruining 2017; Macken- Horarik 2003; Phillips 2006). These images were taken from a high angle and cropped to only show three adults and a child in water. What the pictures did not reveal, however, was that a large boat had sank, leaving the passengers stranded (Macken- Horarik 2003; Maclellan 2002). Unfortunately, the cropped images dominated the news cycle, with publications such as the Daily Telegraph proclaiming them as “Proof that boat people threw children overboard” (Macken- Horarik 2003, p. 293). These claims largely went unchallenged due to the public’s assumption that news photography is factual and objective (Bruining 2017; Macken- Horarik 2003). Thus, the power of photojournalism was abused to mislead
While Ephron argued that photos of death and war should be published just because it happened, but those photos do have some purpose. They are to preserve history, accurately record events, and be able to convey strong messages to readers. Photojournalism should be able to open minds of readers because the stories do not necessarily have to be told in a picture. Stories of war and death must be respected and honored, so these kinds of stories should not be unmentioned nor censored. They should be remembered. Also, photojournalism should not be abused in any sort to keep the integrity of the stories being captured. Ephron had said, “photojournalism is often more powerful than written journalism,” because it can cause a quicker response. Photojournalism is not only a piece of news, but it is also art. Works of art have the right to be expressed and shown to the
Born of Irish immigrants in 1823 in a little place called Warren County, New York; Mathew Brady is known as “The Father of Photojournalism.” While a student of Samuel Morse and a friend of Louis Daguerre (inventor of the “Daguerreotype,” a method of photography that the image is developed straight onto a metal coated surface), in which he had met while under the study of Morse, Brady took up his interest in photography in the year of 1839, while only seventeen years of age. Brady took what he had learned from these two talented and intellectual men to America where he furthered his interest in the then-growing art of photography.
It’s his compassion for his subjects and his commitment to them that surpasses the act of making a pretty picture. Spending days with his subjects in the slums of Harlem or the hardly developed mountains of West Virginia, he immerses himself into the frequently bitter life of his next award-winning photo. Often including word for word text of testimonials recorded by junkies and destitute farmers, Richards is able to provide an unbiased portrayal. All he has done is to select and make us look at the faces of the ignored, opinions and reactions left to be made by the viewer. Have you ever been at the beach safely shielded by a dark pair of sunglasses and just watched?
In 1998 a man named James Byrd was drug from a pickup truck in Texas and dismembered. Ashraf Rushdy wrote an essay to examine the moral authority of photography and the effect it has upon a population’s view of a tragedy. Rushdy’s argument is that in 1955 when Emmett Till was murdered his mother allowed photographs of her son’s mutilated corpse to be shown across the nation. These photographs had a significant effect upon the course of the civil rights movement. Rushdy asks why the photographs of James Byrd were never displayed to the public and provides a compelling answer to this question. He provides the answer through the use of persuasive appeals, diction, and the visual effects provided through the use of photographs throughout the essay.
5 Light, Ken. Tremain, Kerry. Witness in our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000.
An image has the explicit power of telling a story without saying any words, that’s the power behind a photo. A photo tends to comes with many sides to a story, it has the ability to manipulate and tell something differently. There is a tendency in America, where explicit photos of war or anything gruesome occurring in the world are censored for the public view. This censorship hides the reality of our world. In “The War Photo No One Would Publish” Torie DeGhett centers her argument on censorship, detailing the account of graphic Gulf War photo the American press refused to publish. (73) DeGhett argues that the American public shouldn’t be restrained from viewing graphic content of the war occurring around the world. She believes that incomplete
...W. (2011), ‘Any one of these boat people could be a terrorist for all we know!’ Media representations and public perceptions of ‘boat people’ arrivals in Australia’, Journalism, vol. 12, no. 5, pp. 607-626.
Cameras are everywhere. More people died while taking selfies than were killed by sharks in 2015. On the British television show Black Mirror, one episode called “White Bear” was a satire of how these cameras on our phones, computers, and buildings affected our society. The premise hinges on a woman who passively filmed her boyfriend torturing a young girl they kidnapped. Although it may seem that cameras are causing us to become a passive and voyeuristic society, they actually have done more good than harm. “White Bear” does not show the reality of these situations, documentation of horrible events has led to a better understanding of history and public action.
“The documentary tradition as a continually developing “record” that is made in so many ways, with different voices and vision, intents and concerns, and with each contributor, finally, needing to meet a personal text” (Coles 218). Coles writes “The Tradition: Fact and Fiction” and describes the process of documenting, and what it is to be a documentarian. He clearly explains through many examples and across disciplines that there is no “fact or fiction” but it is intertwined, all in the eye of the maker. The documentarian shows human actuality; they each design their own work to their own standards based on personal opinion, values, interest and whom they want the art to appeal to. Coles uses famous, well-known photographers such as Dorthea Lange and Walker Evans, who show the political angle in their documentations and the method of cropping in the process of making the photo capture exactly what the photographer wants the audience to view. In this paper I will use outside sources that support and expand on Coles ideas with focus on human actuality, the interiority of a photograph, and the emotional impact of cropping.
Thesis: Lewis Hine took social responsibility by using his skill in photography to expose dangerous working conditions and the lack of rights of children and women. His photographs led to greater awareness and new laws. Hine once said
“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.” (Albert Einstein). “Flavio’s Home,” written by Gordon Parks, can be considered one of Parks’ most memorable photography works. Parks’, enduring much hardship of his own as a teenager, turned his struggles around and used it as inspiration for others. His article tells of a twelve-year old boy and his family, stricken by poverty. Through an acutely informative and subtly persuasive article, Parks adequately uses pathos, diction, syntax, and imagery to tell his readers about why and how poverty “is the most savage of all human afflictions.” Speaking to his Life Magazine readers, Parks’ purpose for writing this article is to first
Journalism is considered by many to essential in maintaining a democracy and the trust of the people within it. The public relies on journalism and media, to close the distance between current events and the public to facilitate immediate attention. The use of photojournalism in times of war is depended on, in order to create a type of vicarious experience for the reade;, so they in some way can experience the conflict themselves without physically being there. However, I have come to notice an issue within the way media is proposed. It is true that a photograph can speak a thousand words, but it can leave many words unspoken. It creates an essential question: What is not being show and what are we unable to see? Does this information present the event in its entirety? After reading the Atlantic’s photo-essay, titled: “In Focus: Afghanistan October 2011,” The complexity of portraying war in photojournalism began to present itself. A gap exists; a missing perspective within the narrative of photojournalism and this gap has the ability to manipulate the very public its meant to inform.
The article Regime-Made Disaster: On the Possibility of Nongovernmental Viewing collected from the book Sensible Politics: The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Activism, New York, NY: Zone Books, 2012. The author Ariella Azoulay who is an art curator, filmmaker, and theorist of photography and visual culture, currently she is working as an assistant professor at Brown University. However, her study discloses a detail view how the Israeli regime turns the photography of their invasion on Palestinians to benevolent photographs of Palestinian refugees.
(Wang, 1999) A great example of the power and persuasiveness of photo voice is the film by Zana Briski, “Born into Brothels. That piece of work, which won an Academy Award, an Emmy and thirty other awards, was the result of her engagement with children of the sex workers in Calcutta, who were given the cameras to document their lives and the world around them. She has spent ten years working with those kids what, further on, inspired her to create the projects Kids with Camera and Kids with Destiny aiming to change the lives of such kids. (Zana Briski,
In extreme situations, journalists choose the angle they can find, tick the boxes to the news worthiness, but never having a stand. According to Kempf, journalists fulfill certain criteria of newsworthiness and fake empirical evidence, which implements propaganda and in the journalists’ defense “that it did not matter the pictures were faked since they only showed what people already ‘knew’ and since they served the goal of opening the eyes of the public” (Kempf 2002, p. 60). Various examples from the War on Terror, where journalists and reporters would fake evidence just to gain more audiences but examples like this could elevate the issues, and it is as if this responsibility of Journalism of Attachment only adds fuel to the fire and this is done in the name of peace (Kempf 2002).