{"id":1352,"date":"2011-07-06T10:02:47","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T10:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=1352"},"modified":"2011-07-06T10:02:47","modified_gmt":"2011-07-06T10:02:47","slug":"war-over-war-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=1352","title":{"rendered":"War Over War Photography"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not a war photographer, and probably I panic far too easily ever to have made a good one. The worst thing I’ve been hit by taking pictures is paint, though there have been some near misses from bricks, bottles, bags of flour, shoes and other handy urban missiles and over the years I’ve received numerous and sometimes all too convincing threats of violence both at close range and occasionally on-line by people who “know where you live<\/em>.”\u00a0 And a few rather nasty moments, as when when guy was dragged back by his BNP mates after promising to do something totally anatomically impossible to me with my camera.<\/p>\n

Like most photographers who cover demonstrations I’ve been hit, pushed and punched and spat at, mainly by the police,* but occasionally by the rabid right or fringe anarchists or even bulky men with Northern Irish accents and dark glasses. But usually when trouble starts I like to try and cover it from the sidelines rather than get stuck in, to think carefully about whether I want to go there.<\/p>\n

Unlike most other photographers now covering such events in the UK I refuse to carry or wear a helmet, a decision that would not be tenable in most other countries, but then I only work in England, and seldom even outside London.<\/p>\n

But though I don’t do it, anyone with an interest in the history and practice of photography has to have an interest in what has been an important strand in our medium, at least since Roger Fenton<\/em> went to the Crimea. As well as Fenton, I’ve written in the past about a number of the great war photographers – Robert Capa, Gene Smith, Don McCullin, Stanley Greene<\/em> are just a few that come immediately to mind.<\/p>\n

So I’ve been following with great interest the controversy aroused by the ‘The War Photographers biggest story: themselves<\/a>‘, a controversial point of view posted on the Duckrabbit <\/em>blog on July 1, and in particular the responses to this from a variety of points of view. A follow-up post on July 4, with the improbably long title\u00a0 Christopher Morris, \u0091Shut up, stop thinking for yourself and kneel before the almighty war photographer\u0092s pictures\u0092. Rafiqui., \u0091Err, maybe not tonight Chris\u0092<\/a> highlights a perhaps rather tetchy and perhaps ill-thought out comment to the first piece by the one of our leading current war photographers, Christopher Morris<\/a> of VII, and a response to that by Asim Rafiqui<\/a>. Again interesting reading, with a growing string of comments. Really quite a war!<\/p>\n

Duckrabbit <\/em>truly has form in raising interesting questions about photojournalism, for example with\u00a0\u00a0 Faking it \u0096 how to win a World Press Award but get banned from a wildlife comp for life<\/a> last February, and radio documentary producer Benjamin Chesterton<\/em> and photojournalist David White<\/em> have produced some great work. As well as the blog, their website also has some fine features, for example The Other (side of Sweden)<\/a><\/span><\/span> which shows the work of photographer Joseph Rodriguez with young Muslims growing up in the city of Malmo.<\/p>\n

\n

* I take that back – the police have yet to spit at me.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not a war photographer, and probably I panic far too easily ever to have made a good one. The worst thing I’ve been hit by taking pictures is paint, though there have been some near misses from bricks, bottles, bags of flour, shoes and other handy urban missiles and over the years I’ve received … Continue reading War Over War Photography<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photo-issues","category-photographers","category-political-issues"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}