[Leica] War Photographers

[benedenia at gmail.com (Marty Deveney)]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 2:38 PM, EPL <manolito at videotron.ca> wrote:
> So let's all boycott war photography. Just ignore it. Encourage
> photographers to photograph love and beauty and to bombard our every senses
> and our hours with just that, as much as possible.
> It's the only antidote.

Pretending that only nice things happen in the world doesn't help
anyone, and it can make things worse.  Documentation makes it harder
to pretend in the future that bad things didn't happen, they can
sometimes be used to aid in restitution or bringing war criminals to
justice, and some of us _do_ want to see it, not out of any ghoulish
or prurient desires, but out of a need to be informed.  I have no love
for war but am familiar enough with it not to find realistic coverage
shocking or entertaining.  But I also want to know.

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 2:09 PM, Phil Forrest
<photo.forrest at earthlink.net> wrote:
> I think they either have a lust for danger and a
> deathwish OR they have spent too much time in video games and movies
> where one can simply reset the game or stop the movie if it gets too
> bad.

I am deeply respectful of your experiences Phil, but here I disagree.
Maybe those who want to be combat photographers but haven't done it
yet are like this.  I'd also bet that very few of them actually ever
get there - it's hard, as well as horrible and dangerous.  There are
noteworthily few civilian war photographers.  I've met a lot of people
who regularly work photographing in conflict zones and none of them is
anything like this.  Mostly they believe that documentation is
necessary, and that telling the stories of people affected by conflict
mean something to the people, the photographer and some of the
photographer's audience.

I'm glad we still have you, and Ted, and I'm awfully sorry for the
loss that we suffer whenever there is a conflict, but I'm also glad
there are people who are willing to document it for us, so we can form
some opinions of our own.  To me a flawed set of information is better
than a vacuum.

Marty