See also "WHO DELIVERS THE ICONIC WAR IMAGES - PROS OR AMATEURS?""At one time, the most notable picture of this war was of jubilant Iraqis pulling down the statue of Saddam Hussein."
How long is that ago? Does anyone remember?
Tom Jarriel, former correspondent for ABC News; William Stewart, former war correspondent for “Time magazine”; Ralph Graves, who was a managing editor at "Life magazine,"; Sydney Schanberg, a former war correspondent for “The New York Times; Ed Wakin, author of “How TV Changed America’s Mind”: they discussed the three iconic images of this war - the photo of the flag-drapped coffins, the photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse, and the video of Nick Berg’s beheading - unless no new catastrophes occur. [MSNBC: "Worth a thousand words - Three sets of controversial photos have defined this war so far"]
Do you remember the iconic images of the wars of the recent decade (Rwanda, Bosnia ...)? The images were taken by professional photojornalists using conventional film like "The Unseen Gulf War" by Peter Turnley. Now it´s everybody with a digicam or phonecam anywhere anytime (1; 2; 3).
"These events were recorded by participants or bystanders. The images were posted on the internet, making them directly, freely and immediately accessible around the world. In other words, journalists played no part in recording or interpreting the images. No editor intervened on how the pictures should be handled, or even published, on the grounds of taste. Government censors and spin doctors were impotent" ["How the digital revolution is reshaping news"]
"Unseen" simply does not exist anymore.
"We're in the middle of an information revolution," says Howe, a former combat photographer who covered wars in Northern Ireland and El Salvador [Editor of the book "Shooting Under Fire: The World of the War Photographer"]. "Digital technology, in the form of digital cameras, and being able to use the Internet as a platform for their distribution, has completely altered everything. Now, ordinary people -- people with very little photographic skills or training -- can actually take publishable, quality photographs and distribute them over a wide area with no controls whatsoever." ["War images and digital technology"]
"We live in an age when people can download scenes of war on their cell phones as they ride a bus or stand on a street corner. During the Civil War, photographers couldn't get good shots of battle because their cameras didn't record images fast enough. During the Vietnam War, photographers and TV journalists had to send their images home on airplanes that took at least a day to get their destination." ["War images and digital technology"]
"Today, everything is instantaneous -- both the photos and the reaction to them." ["War images and digital technology"]
[Related to the topic if you like to continue:
"Visualizing War & Disaster"
"Amateurs have opened door to horrifying views of war"
"Creating a New Picture of War, Pixel by Pixel"
"WHO DELIVERS THE ICONIC WAR IMAGES - PROS OR AMATEURS?"]
[The Seattle Times]
[The Washington Post]
[Addendum]
Read also: "The icons of this war..." (Zone Zero, by Pedro Meyer)
I don't think it's too far fetched to assume that the main icons of this second US war in Iraq in 2004, still in process, will be the amateur digital pictures of the tortures performed on Iraqui detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
In spite of the tens of thousands of pictures produced by professional photographers during this war, these amateur images are the ones that I believe will mark this period in history.[...]
It will then have turned out to be that digital cameras became for the Bush administration what the tape recorder was for the Nixon White House. [...]
If the most emblematic images from this war were photographed by amateurs, if agencies are able to send out people to take photographs who have never taken pictures, but have access to certain places, and if we are into a tidal wave of imagery coming in from all the digital cameras that are flooding the world; I am sure that traditional photojournalism as is being taught today in schools all over the world, better have a second look at reality and be prepared to tell their students that things are no longer how they used to be and therefore need to adjust their expectations.
The same thing might also prove to be of interest to all those active photojournalists today, who are seeing their bread and butter documentary images being displaced by pictures of celebrities and movie stars.
