Soldier Photography/War Photography

This is a special entry for John Schott over at Camera|Iraq and an update to "Iraqian Frontline: Images from Moblogging Soldiers VII/ Soldier Photography vs. War Images from Professional Photojournalists"

From all the images moblogging US soldiers have shown at Yafro (1; 2)
it turned out that 95% of those images which have a photographic value and meaning beyond the day and were presented here -- were simply stolen. From all these images the images at the bottom (post continuation) MIGHT not have been stolen.

If a soldier shows 20 images on his website and 18 of them are stolen, you simply cannot trust the other 2 images -- stolen or not. Some images even show up on more than one moblog under different names and with different texts (does a soldier maintain more than one moblog? Does the napster generation share private war pix, mixing them with images from other people?)

Not to be misunderstood: that a soldier grabs pictures from a professional photojournalist to add his personal remarks, thoughts and feelings to create some kind of a personal diary, that is understandable and it appears for him to be a legal behaviour, given the special circumstances of his situation.

But now - regarding some good shots a talented soldier photographer might also take --it is impossible to draw the fine line of distinction: What is Soldier Photography? What is War Photography by professional photojournalists? The origin of most photos is very, very doubful.

("This was taken a while ago. They had Udai's Ferrari at the MCU police station so we decided to get a pic.")

(http://sigepdebo.yafro.com, URL lost, pix is not online anymore)

("this was taken at camp anaconda in baghdad i was swimming in saddams pool it was taken last summer yes i peed in it")
[This is a very good example for the difficulty to judge. At first sight it seems to be a private pix taken by a soldier. But we´ve seen similiar images from professional photojournalists: same scenery, same swimmingpool. The pix is from the site of the TiredAnDirtySoldier at Yafro, where earlier 90% of all images shown were stolen, so the probability that this image is not stolen is very, very small.]

("Yes, of course I take photos of myself. How else could I prove all of this! It could all be a big hoax you know! (gee, I wish!)")

("heh heh i havent seen grass sence i left the U.S.A. but this is my wishful thinking (perhaps insanity) thats all forr today its bed time for me more tomarrow night")

("side shot of a HMMWV that was hit with 3 Rocket propelled grenades")