[LRflex] Re: Sick kids and comments


On Oct 28, 2007, at 8:10 AM, Ted Grant wrote:


KEITH LONGMORE offered:
Subject: [LRflex] Sick kids and comments

>>Folks
I read with some interest the comments from Ted and others about the
latest offerings from Steve B. I got to thinking, in the light of some other unrelated events. The comments that caused me to start thinking were:<<<<<<<
>>>it moves and impresses me how some people get a positive message from 
these images of resilient children, and others see only a frightful
and negative side to it...<<<<<


and what is your reaction to my photos Keith?
You like... you hate.... you are moved....you are unmoved... you cry... they are too powerful... they are not powerful enough.....you applaud.... you find them encouraging... you find them opportunistic... you find them an invasion of privacy...you applaud humanity more when you see my photos or when you watch the evening news ? 

I can't determine the answer to these questions and others...
these are images of children that I took care of, shed my own sweat and tears, and shared with them and their family a life threatening experience ...
I photographed these children and I have shared the photographic results, in some cases I am still in touch with them....
While I remain very concerned and compassionate about your other important concerns, what do my images and your reactions to them (whatever they may be) have to do with tragedies in the world at large, terrorism, nationalities, TV coverage, war, politics, other photographers... ? 

first things first....

Steve


Good morning Keith,
Some of what you say are ones feelings due to personal experience on both sides of the scene. Or having to photograph the scene as we find them. This doe not mean we are cold hearted photojournalists, it means we have a job to do, so get on with it. Trust me, you cry then or later, sometimes years later.
And hopefully the children are in excellent care, say in a modern Western world hospital and not lying on a plastic ground sheet in a fly infested tent somewhere in Darfor! 

>>>>and:
I am always afraid to look....it's too disturbing, it makes me cry so
I won't look...<<<<<<
I find people strange who will not, nor do not look at Dr. Steve’s pictures of well cared for children regardless of their complications. However, the same people will watch the 6 o’clock news and or other like minded telecasts of death and destruction around the world. And not bat an eye!
>>Isn’t it commonly the case, Ted, that the more graphic images that photojournos take are usually kept back from publication in the media, in case they upset someone?<<<
That’s usually a corporate management controlled editing choice, not the photojournalist who took the picture. Primarily because the bean counters don’t want the editorial folks upsetting ad space buying business people. Or public who may stop buying the paper. ERGO: Ad space drops and the paper looses money. 

>>>> This is very much the case here, where images of terrorism are
concerned, even on late-night news on TV.<,
As I say, generally that’s a management decision. Or in the case of the USA, the President’s dictum… “no flag draped coffin pictures!” 

>>>>Maybe there is also fear of sick voyeurism.<<<<<

Well there are some very weird people out in the cold cruel world.

>>>>But, you know, I can't help feeling that the impact of
man's cruelty and barbarism are both even more moving and the fortitude and positiveness that many of the victims of war and terrorists display 
even more cause for admiration and perhaps awe, again, even more than
kids like Steve's.<<<<<
Well suffering is suffering no matter what illness or as the in word of Iraq… “collateral damage” when referring to injured and dead children. At least when we see Dr. Steve Barbour’s pictures we know the child is under extremely fine care with an illness and not a “stray?” bullet.
>>>>I say this because whoever gets sick, young or old, that's an inevitable 
part of life;<<<<<
It is, but that isn’t what the pictures are about because they illustrate caring and “repaired children” and shouldn’t be taken as a “well that’s life everyone gets sick attitude.” I mean, after all cancer in a child can be just as destructive as a piece of shrapnel or bullet. And you still can’t show their inner feelings.
>>>but war and terrorism are entirely avoidable, and therefore, I believe, more disturbing, or whatever the right word is.<<<<<<<
Well the United Nations was supposed to eliminate war and violence along with pictures of the same. However it hasn’t stopped anything as long as you have leaders who attack another nation at a whim! No matter whomever that maybe.
Besides the human race is too full of demigods who wish to show their supposed strength and position of authority over everyone else. So war and destruction will always go on! And as long as it happens there will be photojournalist ready to photograph it no matter how visually disturbing to the viewer.
Some with the idealistic concept “their pictures will make a difference!” It doesn’t, other wise the world would be living in complete peace and harmony. Wont happen in the lifetime of anyone on this list or any other at the moment! 

>>>In the context of this forum, and noting the comments that Steve
captures the essence of these kids in his photos, I can honestly say
that I have never seen any photographer genuinely capture the trauma of 
war as it affects the victims.<<<<
Well I have to disagree completely. And I say this with experience of assignments and books published on medical staff in hospitals and covering a couple of wars. Because Dr. Steve’s photographs have time after time shown the child in various forms of recovery and recovered going home. These are physical things we can see. Or in the case of war, we see the travesty of dead children and adults lying about or in over worked hospitals.
Is this not showing the trauma of war or a child in a western hospital?
However, if you mean the “mental trauma,” as inside the victim’s mind or inward feelings, then that kind of “feeling isn’t possible to photograph. Nor is it possible to photograph the actual feelings of any injured person because it’s inside. The torn body? Now that’s a piece of cake, gut wrenching, but easy to photograph.
Is it the mental image of human verses physical image what you mean when you say: >>>> I have never seen any photographer genuinely capture the trauma of war as it affects the victims.<<<< 

>>>> I wonder: has anyone here seen Ernst
Friedrich's 1924 anti-war book 'Krieg dem Kriege'?  Or the photographs
of victims of the Japanese atrocities at Nanking or Harbin? Or the
survivors of, for example, the bombing of Hamburg? Those images
certainly capture the awful ghastly horror of man's predilection for
killing and maiming and other excesses; but do they capture the effects 
on the victims who survived?<<<<<<<
I would think that’s a rather difficult question to answer due to most of the horror we see from your locations listed, the “victims are dead!” You might ask the survivors of Hiroshima, Nagasaki or the folks who survived Hamburg. They can tell you, but you can’t photograph what the image is in their mind. 

>>>>Or the fear and pain of the victims who
succumbed?  I don't think so, and as I said, I have yet to see the
photographer who can even get close to really bringing it home to
his/her audience.<<<<<<<<
Well in this case you are talking about the inner feelings of people and that’s not a recordable photo image.
>>>>How do you capture the soul of say one of the soldiers in Friedrich's book, most of his face missing, having to be fed by tube for the rest of his life, unable to exist outside of an institution; of the consequences 
of shell-chock, like the old man who used to roam Coventry city centre
every day in the 50s and 60s, dressed like a soldier, wearing white
gloves, marching his imaginary squad up and down, directing traffic,
oblivious to the real world around him;<<<<
My point above. It’s impossible to show their feelings. You can show the physical aspect, but I don’t believe there’s a camera … IE: the kind we use, film or digital, that can record what you are describing. 

>>>of one of my work colleagues
many years back, who went to war as a Jack-the-lad type, reached Lt
Commander in the Royal Navy, and came back unable to 'say boo to a
goose' for the rest of his life? What about Simon Weston, horrifically 
burned in the Falklands War, yet having the guts to turn it into
something positive, to go on TV, to schools, etc.,, without hiding his
injuries, and campaigning for various military-related causes?<<<<
More of the same, other than Simon Weston whom you say uses his war damaged face to teach and show the physical effects of war. However, that still doesn’t show his “inner feelings” in a photograph.
>>>>Could any of us really show - really, truly show - what such people feel and represent? Could you, Steve? Could you Ted? Somehow, I doubt it. 
And if you did, what of the media?  Would they respect it?  Would they
show it to the world? I doubt that, too. Reality, in all seriousness, 
is not for the masses.<<<<<
Keith about now I think you are beating on a dead horse simply because you are talking about two things: the physical damage to see. The other? Inner feelings and impossible to photograph.
>>>Sorry if this sounds a bit maudlin, but I felt I had to make the point.<<<<
I don’t know about “sounds maudlin,” but it sure as hell sounds very confusing. Besides this is a round table beer in hand topic discussion and not an online type with days between answers and questions. 

ted











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