Solomonia Archive: 'i have been witness to the daily practice of directed shots'

Saturday, August 12, 2006

'i have been witness to the daily practice of directed shots'

i have been working in lebanon since all this started, and seeing the behavior of many of the lebanese wire service photographers has been a bit unsettling. while hajj has garnered a lot of attention for his doctoring of images digitally, whether guilty or not, i have been witness to the daily practice of directed shots, one case where a group of wire photogs were coreographing the unearthing of bodies, directing emergency workers here and there, asking them to position bodies just so, even remove bodies that have already been put in graves so that they can photograph them in peoples arms. these photographers have come away with powerful shots, that required no manipulation digitally, but instead, manipulation on a human level, and this itself is a bigger ethical problem.

whatever the case is—lack of training, a personal drive as a photographer to show what is happening to your country in as powerful a way as possible, or all out competitiveness, i think that the onus is on the wire services themselves, because they act as the employer/filter of their photogs work. standards should be in place or else the rest of us end up paying the price. and i’m not against the idea of local wire photographers, but after seeing it over and over for the past month, i think it is something that is worth addressing. while i walk away from a situation like that, one wire shooter sets up a situation, and the rest of them follow…..

...i have been covering beirut, and it was at numerous protest, evacuations as well as the israeli strikes in chiyeh, which unfortunately did not get that much coverage in the media—where i saw this behavior occur. i have also heard from friends of mine in lebanon, respected photographers, that this was not an isolated incident.

unfortunately in each of these cases, it was the lebanese wire photographers that started these situations...

[Via, where else, LGF]

Update: Allah has more.

Posted by Solomon at 6:53 PM on Saturday, Aug 12, 2006 | Comments (3)
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3 Comments

#1 Adam Holland | August 12, 2006 8:52 PM

I know that I'll be consdired naive for saying this, but I find this story to be incredibly shocking, and very important. This isn't just a par-for-the-course story of media bias, this is a much higher order of violation of professional and ethical standards.

Journalists as grave robbers! If I hadn't read this for myself, I would probably have said that this was inconceivable. To say that a complere investigation is called for understates the matter considerably.

#2 Adam Holland | August 12, 2006 8:53 PM

Journalists as grave robbers! If I hadn't read this for myself, I would probably have said that this was inconceivable. To say that a complete investigation is called for understates the matter considerably.

#3 ChillWinston | August 13, 2006 1:00 AM

Bit of a spate of dodgy media activity lately related to this conflict. Guess there's pressures to get the most emotional pic possible, damn the context of staging shots etc..
Then again, this is nothing new nor out of the ordinary.. But maybe if enough people slam the journalists for doing it there will be some sort of accountability and professionalism enforced.
Mucking around with dead bodies is pretty low though.. What's next: "Hey, we need more blood, can you smack the corpse around a bit or get some tomato sauce or something.."