This is a update to these stories:
"Iraqian Frontline: Images from Moblogging Soldiers II"
"WHO DELIVERS THE ICONIC WAR IMAGES - PROS OR AMATEURS?"
"Iraqian Frontline: Images from Moblogging Soldiers"
“Digital cameras change history in Iraq” (The Modern Trinity of Enlightenment)
Update? Why? We casually discovered the websites of the moblogging US soldiers from Iraq for the first time about 18 days ago.
The moment we saw the images it was clear that this is adding another kind of "telling a story" with a whole new meaning to annal-writing than there had been before. Sounds too pathetic? We guess not.
This is some kind of "P2P-History". Telling what is going on and what will become history. P2P-History told by some ephemeral human beings to some other ephemeral human beings. All without the big medias, no need of a chief editor, a bunch of veryvery important journalists, newspapers, tv stations (and frankly speaking, no need of some sort of A-Class bloggers with their "uhm" and "might I suggest"). This kind of telling stories and news is not better or more important or whatever than the traditional big medias: it´s simply different, a new view with formerly unseen images.
Update? Why? Because some of the images simply disappeared very quick. It might have been a soldier replacing some images. It might have been someone else (but no paranoia on this topic please).
When we revisited the sites of some soldiers over the last weeks, more and more pictures had simply disappeared. Luckily we had downloaded some of them before, not all images we downloaded initially are shown here ("Iraqian Frontline: Images from Moblogging Soldiers II") and here as our small selection.
So we are storing some of the (what we think) best images here as a kind of security backup. We don´t sell them, we don´t deal with them, we don´t email or FTP them to anyone. And the copyright belongs in any case to the appropriate soldier.
Thanks to the features of Typepad it is possible to store the images here and to present them in a way no newspaper or magazin can do. You can quickly get an overview and decide to enlarge a specific image (just click directly on the image).
After the images shown here and here we decided to pick up some other images separately in the next post. Finally we hope that these images won´t disappear. And if - here is a backup for some of them.
If you expect that we will show the hard core images some soldiers have taken - no. "Vestigia terrent" and that´s enough. And no, we won´t show any images of Tami Silicio, Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib prison or Nick Berg.
This selection should encourage you to discover this moblogging world of the soldiers by our own. This selection reflects just our small point of view. Other people might choose other images. And of course, the "doing a selection" reflects classical journalistic attributes. This is the other side of this kind of moblogging and P2P-History: if there is no control and reflection what these soldiers are moblogging, the probability of abuse arises. If the delivered content changes, the thinking of the observer might change. To come clean: in the last days the moblogging of the soldiers was mainly about "we love you all, we like ourselves" (see the first image of this entry: "Rumsfeld won´t be happy: THE TIRED AND DIRTY SOLDIER is back").
And now the next topic.
Try to compare these pictures of amateurs to pictures of real professional photographers like for example Stephanie Sinclair (Pulitzer Price in 2001; Press Photo Award 2003 ). Imagine you would have to write/illustrate a huge history book or huge newspaper article covering the war in Iraq. Which pictures would you select? What is happening? Images from amateurs in history books - yes or no? And finally you have to answer to the question "WHO DELIVERS THE ICONIC WAR IMAGES - PROS OR AMATEURS?".
Anyway, the time will come when a soldier in a tank fighting for the country ABC in a specific location moblogs his images/videos and at the same time another soldier in a tank fighting for the country XYZ in the same specific location moblogs his images/videos and at the same time in the same specific location the civilians (we) suffering from what is called collateral damages are mo-/videoblogging and at the same time in the same specific location photojournalists etc. etc. -- all attendants equipped with high resolution cameraphones for imagery and videos. And at the same time you and your neighbour in country ABC and in country XYZ will watch -- instantly.
Thus in the end moblogging might become a power against war. And a power against the prime time news on tv presenting the prime time speech of the leaders of country ABC and country XYZ with the prime time lies and the "I-told-you-so"-speeches. Moblogging might become a political power, a weapon of contemporaneity, ubiquitousness and simultaneity.
We will put the images separately in the next post. Thanx to Metafilter for mentioning a site that has started 6 or 7 weeks ago.
[Update July 10, 2004: It turned out that finally some/most of the images presented by one or more moblogging soldier at Yafro as an image taken by himself/themselves, were probably stolen; very often from professional photojournalists. Explanation here. We tried to assign a proper copyright to all photos of doubtful origin.]
