Previous | Next :: Serb Fighters : War Photography is Abuse Discuss : Bosnia | January 13, 2012, 9:35 pm

I read this in the online Guardian..... a comment piece around the urinating Marines in Afghanistan:

"Right from the start, you could argue, war photography was disreputable, a dirty business, tainted by voyeurism. The desire to see the dead of battle was starkly served by Brady. Since then, war photography has become a profession, even an art, regulated unofficially by editors' decisions of what is and is not to be shown – but the voyeuristic impulse is still there in our appetite for photographs of war."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/12/urinating-marines-video-digital-age?CMP=twt_fd

This Guardian piece rather muddles war photography with urinating on dead Taliban fighters..... It's depressing....... Photographers need to be clear photography is not abuse.... yeah lets say it...... " It is not abuse to make photographs "....... It really is not ....... Opinion formers are making photography into abuse ...... even serious photojournalism ....... This article muddles the abuses that participants in wars are committing with the photography that photojournalists make during those wars .......... This is part of an ongoing trend that positions photography as abuse ....... this thought process is particularly developed in Britain ..... I think we should not join in with any of this ....... In fact, we should stand together against it ...... photographers should be less keen to denigrate paparazzi or TV crews and other media ... we only assist others to push their agenda that all photography is abuse .... how does that thing go? When they came for the paps I did nothing because I was not a pap....?

Cheers Jez XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

www.jezblog.com