Another Take on Big Mistake

I remember this photo. Itwas published in Austria and in Germany. This year a German photographer published a book named "War Porn" containing many of his rejected photographs.
 
I hope everybody reads this. If you think it is a little hard on editors, it actually skips over some of the incidents that would make them look worse. I presume that discretion was Ken’s choice when he was interviewed.

Harold Evans called it the best picture of the war. Ken is an old friend. (He lives in Montana, but we had a long phone conversation a few days ago.) The first time we saw this picture published in America was when the two of us were walking in the Village in NYC and saw it used as a poster for an English rock group. As this article points out, it was never published in America as a news shot.
 
It's all about "The Powers that Be, control what we see."

News as propaganda. Call it News, but only show them what will make them support our position.

Best,
-Tim
 
So what I understand from this piece is that war photography is a form of propaganda, and editing that photography is just another form of propaganda.

I think that part of the impact that photography had during the Vietnam war was the sheer number of images of this type that were coming through. To say that this photograph depicts the reality of the war in the Gulf may be stretching things a bit. The reality of that war seems better represented by the photo at the top. A line of loaded military trucks stretching off into a flat, featureless desert with a small pile of undecipherable junk burning alongside the road.

Maybe the photographer thought he had a Pullitzer prize winner and his chances were short circuited by the editor?
 
Pioneer said:
To say that this photograph depicts the reality of the war in the Gulf may be stretching things a bit. The reality of that war seems better represented by the photo at the top. A line of loaded military trucks stretching off into a flat, featureless desert with a small pile of undecipherable junk burning alongside the road.
Click to expand...

Perhaps it takes more than one photograph to depict the reality of a war.

But perhaps without such a photograph, it can't be done at all.
 
I saw TV coverage of the highway of death - In Canada, concurrent with the war. I don't recall details of the broadcast as to whether it was the BBC or a local station or a USA broadcast. I do recall that no one I talked to at the university I was at or on the BBS (bulletin board system) had seen it.
I was surprised and disturbed (I was young). I didn't hear about it again until months later when it became common knowledge.
I suspect that it was a foreign news feed that I had seen and some subsequent censorship hushed the coverage.
 
It was published. Iraqi column was retreating single file on road thru sand from Kuwait to home. Jets disabled first and last, common tactic, then went to work on the middle. Miles of vehicles needed replacing.

Sadam stayed out of Kuwait from then on.
 
Tim, thanks for posting that. I had not seen that incredible photo before, nor the interesting (if depressing) story behind it.

I know there was a lot of self-censorship during WW II, but from what I've read there was a sense of 'Don't let the folks back home see how horrible this is', there was less direct control ('embedding') of photographers and journalists.

Randy
 
Bill Pierce said:
Roger - By the time it was published in America, it was no longer news. It was published as an example of "good photography."
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Yes, it should be noted that the newspapers abroad that published it were prime and influential ones, as stated in the article: "The Observer in the United Kingdom and Libération in France both published it after the American media refused. Many months later, the photo also appeared in American Photo, where it stoked some controversy, but came too late to have a significant impact." Having passed on publishing the photo initially, it seems to me, US newspapers should have picked it up after it was published in the Observer and Libération.

However, the Atlantic also states, "other violent images—Nick Ut’s scene of child napalm victims and Eddie Adams’s photo of a Vietcong man's execution—won Pulitzer Prizes and had a tremendous impact on the outcome of the war." The latter two pictures have, of course, become iconic. While the Jarecke picture is gruesome, it simply does not work in the same visceral and graphic way that the Ut and Adams pictures do, which do not require a caption for their effect while the Jarecke one does. My feeling is — and I don't think I am being obtuse — that Jarecke's photograph could only have been as influential as the Ut and Adams pictures if it had the same graphic impact without a caption; and in that case appearing "late" in the US would not have mattered in terms of how influential it could have been.

What I take away from all this is that, yes, it would have been good, or perhaps even important, for Jarecke's picture to have been published by influential newspapers in the US, but it simply is in a different graphic category, and of a different impact, to have had the political effect of the Ut and Adams pictures, or Capa's iconic picture from the Spanish Civil War or McCullin's iconic picture of a shell shocked US marine in Vietnam, for that matter.

MITCH ALLAND/Potomac, MD
Do You Know What is Really Real?
Download link for PDF file of 15-shot portfolio
 
War is hell. I for one don't like staring at macabre bodies, body parts, bodies transfigured by flying steel and roaring flame. What's the point of that picture? That Iraqis died? Yeah, they did. Did you ever realize how many thousands of soldiers were killed in just a day or two in WWI? Millions overall. Some in very senseless, brutal ways. Sometimes entire towns were rounded up and executed in WWII, strung up from the telephone poles as examples. The Iraqi shot didn't need to be published, the majority decided. If the photog loved it so much, he could publish it himself, and go on a personal campaign about it....wait, that's what he's doing.

Come on, the US went to Kuwait to help them, and to keep world oil flowing. That was a good reason. When the US leadership saw that we were pummeling the Iraqi columns that were regrouping, they got soft and stopped the war immediately. That was honorable too. Retreat is a funny word in war. This was a fighting retreat, regrouping for more warfare. The US took them out. Normal stuff. Flanking and encircling movements often cut off large enemy groups (like the 750,000 Germans in Russia in 1944 that were never seen again), and air power always harries them behind the lines.

This article seems disjointed, and doesn't really make any strong points. "it went unpublished in the United States, not because of military obstruction but because of editorial choices." Well, yeah, different news and journalism outlets make choices. If they all independently chose not to show a crispy critter body picture, what does that tell you? It was too macabre, and didn't tell any story everyone didn't already know - war is hell. He tries to make a point that the public was then not "empathetic" enough. Look at it this way, the public in war has to take sides. Should they emphasize with their own sons and fathers, or some nameless enemy?

Yes, eventually some, most, realize the futility of war, and ends it. It just depends on how long that takes. WWI took 35 million bodies like this photograph. WWII a lot more. What body picture was more important then, piles of Auschwitz victims, or piles of Japanese Banzai chargers? The article photo was un-needed, America had already decided after this convoy to stop the attack. Unfortunately, almost 25 years later, brutal, vicious ISIS thugs are now beheading Christians or telling them to "convert or die." Where is the reporting on that?
 
On a bit of a different note. Was talking with my wife this morning, about the sorry state of affairs in the photojournalism business, and after reading many articles about the recent coverage in Gaza, and what the photojournalists are paid who are literally putting their lives on the line, I realized that they are being paid pretty much the same amount I'm being paid for covering sports. That is ridiculous. I may get rained on, snowed on, and overheated, but I'm certainly not in any danger while I'm shooting. These guys could get killed at any minute.

Just shows you what a warped sense of priority we put on what is really important. When someone covering sports is paid basically the same thing as someone covering a war, because sports coverage generates more income for the publications than war coverage, it's really sad.

Best,
-Tim
 
goamules said:
Should they emphasize with their own sons and fathers, or some nameless enemy?
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That depends.

Shall our thoughts on human affairs be governed by the rankest, most simplistic tribalism, or by remembering that we are all in this together, in some sense or another, all god's children?

Shall we cede our ethical authority and code of behavior to the lowest common denominator among our enemies (real or perceived), or shall we attempt to live up to the highest ideals of our own ethical and political traditions?

Shall we imagine that the crimes of ISIS thugs are really qualitatively worse than events in our own, not-so-distant national history, or shall we affirm that upholding something that we might call civilization depends on recognizing and redirecting our own most savage impulses?

Those are the questions that you raise, whether you choose to recognize them, or not.
 
Corpus Delecti

Corpus Delecti

My crime was switching lanes in front of State Patrolman without the proper distance between our bumpers.

Instead of a $500 fine, the State offered me a reduced fee and expungement of my record if I attended traffic school classes.

Those classes consisted of not stop slide presentations of folks killed and, or, mutilated in traffic accidents.

There were truck drivers implaled with re-bar rod from their load shifting, garbage collection employees sandwiched in the auto loader of their truck, motorcyclists with brains exposed and blood streaks on the highway like the best novel cuisine.

No children or women, just men young and old.

The gore of war is no different. It's display is entirely the prerogative of the publisher or state, and for purposes known only them.

As far as the photographer goes, his praise or responsibility is nil until he is the bearer of bad news when the publisher, or the state, wants to disavow credit for the image.
 
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