Or would you like to put the camera aside and try to save his life by all means?Forgive the violence of the subject, but I needed to draw your attention to a reality that many people who engage in photojournalism experience every day in the first. Person.
You’re coming with me.
- If your answer to my initial question was.
- What the hell!Of course.
- I’d stop photographing.
- Would you help that person first?So my next question is.
- Always.
- Would you always do that.
- Unconditionally.
- Even if you were.
- For example?War reporter?.
I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Javier Arcenillas, winner of last year’s World Press Photo. His exhibition of photographs, winner in the category “Long Term Projects”, does not leave you indifferent. Through our television or in print and online media, we are used to seeing very crude images of wars and human rights violations, but when you look at an exhibition of this nature or talk to one of these photojournalists, you feel that you are looking at that photograph in the exposure and moving to the On the other hand, it gives you the feeling of being there, instead of the action, next to the reporter, looking behind his shoulder.
You realize that these images do not come to us like this, these photographs are not taken by a robot without emotions, these images come to us because the work of someone is to live surrounded by those scenes, daily, capture them and transmit them. them to us.
Let’s say you’re that photojournalist. You were sent to a country in conflict. You land and the first day you see people of all conditions and ages die in front of you. At first you think, “Look at it with photojournalism, I’ll lend a hand to this dying,” but after a very short time, confusion begins to overwhelm him.
I have to save this person’s life. Photojournalism is a second priority. Do people come first? You think, very decidedly at first.
“Yes, but what if this man we put here on the ground was the leader of the clan of the wicked, or the bloodiest of murderers?Who knows what he’s done?” answers your other self.
So what? If she’s a person, you have to help her, too. Regardless of its good or bad condition, answer yourself.
“Okay, but what if I try to help him, all these rebels are throwing themselves at you, smartass?Ask your other self, challenger.
Is that all right? I don’t know, ahmmm . . . See. . . I’m not going to let the guy bleed to death in front of me, and I’m happily taking pictures of him, am I?I won’t stand by, answer yourself in a nonconformist voice.
“You’re not a man!” Yell at your other self pointing at the camera that hangs from your neck. “Your arms are very busy photographing these atrocities, conveying to the whole world a faithful portrait of the horrible reality that the citizens of this country are. Your work can help give visibility to what’s happening here and change the reality of this place forever and for the better.
“Yes, but if I don’t intervene?” perplexed murmurs
“You can’t intervene,” your other self insists. Your noble mission as a photojournalist makes a lot of sense whenever you go unnoticed, as long as you are considered impartial, you have access to these places and you cannot tell the world what happens to your photos while you stay outside, as you remain invisible and transparent. The moment you take the SLR camera off your neck?You go on with your other self, put her on the floor and get ready for it?Intervening, at this very moment you lose your journalistic immunity, you become a visible person, an easy target. You lose your photojournalist armor or protective suit.
We’ll take a break at this point in our history, fortunately fictional for you and me, I wanted us to do this little exercise in empathy with people who, camera in hand, have to put their lives (and sometimes their mental integrity) at risk of telling us what’s happening in remote parts of the world.
No money in the world can pay for such an exchange
Photojournalism is one of the professions I admire most, beyond the danger to which the photographer is exposed, which is not a small thing, the psychological stress and ethical debate that these professionals must live within are brutal.
The photojournalist prepares his suitcase and takes the plane to a destination with a clear and unequivocal mission: document, represent, describe, photograph, capture, transmit, it seems like a simple mission: I arrive, I take pictures and that is it.
But once on the ground, what the photojournalist has to document are often massacres, deaths, human rights violations, delicate situations that stun anyone.
Often times, the photojournalist has to make critical decisions that test their entire value system, and they must make them in a fraction of a second. To carry out your job? Documentalist? Several times, the photojournalist must do? From lace to spindles? Ethically and philosophically to square everything, to be able to return to the hotel at the end of the day with a memory card full of stories to share with the world and, above all, to be able to fall asleep and thus be able to get up the next day to continue fulfilling their mission.
Whenever a hard photo we see the light, the mortals who contemplate life in the comfort of our sofa, soft and soft to the touch, we impose ourselves as a moral authority, we believe we have strong and unwavering convictions, and without the slightest trace of empathy We present the attitude of the photojournalist on duty who photographed an agonizing person by verbal lynching and moral stoning , in the purest style of the Holy Inquisition.
To convey the idea of this article, I had to use a somewhat extreme example, of course there will be situations in which the photojournalist can help a person without compromising their integrity, without that conflict with their journalistic mission, but there is nothing. to debate there because I think we would all respond to human duty there without hesitation.
Today I wanted to focus on the “less obvious” situations, those that involve an internal moral conflict in the head of the photojournalist, those in which the professional must make a decision in a thousandth of a second, and where a bad decision can end with the career of the photojournalist, with his life, or even the end of the impartiality (and immunity) of the profession of photojournalist as a whole and forever.
In places of war, conflict and where the hum of bullets is part of everyday life, there are two types of vests that can save your life: the bulletproof vest and the thin cloth vest, which bears the word PRESS. (Press ) on the back.
Wearing a press vest puts you out of conflict, gives you (some) guarantee of staying alive, at least in theory, it allows you to do your job in the field without being gunned down.
This vest is only effective as long as the person strictly exercises photojournalism, provided that he merely “photographs” the scene. At the time the journalist decides to intervene? And annoying, one way or another, the vest loses its immunity.
Should the photojournalist intervene in the reality he photographs, even if it alters this reality, even if it endangers his life and his continuity as a photojournalist, or do he think he would divert to photojournalism?
Tell me what you think
I couldn’t dedicate my life to photojournalism if I didn’t think a photograph has the power to influence.