Photographic perspective & subjective distortion in the editing of photojournalist war correspondent work….  I believe this photo expertly illustrates that photo manipulation is dangerously causing confirmation bias and selective perception across multiple news organizations. Just my two cents. I hadn’t known the provenance of the photo, and hadn’t assumed it to be have been in a major publication. I had been speaking with my Nat Geo photojournalist friend yesterday, and she was talking about how she’s basically just looking at how the photos impact the subjects upon the reader’s viewing of them, versus worrying about the readers and getting a great photo.  The impact of her intrusion and resulting effect is more important than blindly doing whatever it takes to get and sell a shot…. but she’s an outlier. Can’t wait for you to meet her. Awesome lady.  But she’s a professor and teaches stuff like this at Duke and CU, and I thought of this photo when she was talking about perspectives, etc.  I had just seen it on imgur / reddit / interwebz. More here:  https://ivymosquito.wordpress.com/tag/war-journalism/ https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/perspective/   photgraphic perspective in war journalism photography

 

It’s really about that fine line… isn’t it?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2544662/Pulitzer-Prize-winning-photographer-fired-admitting-doctored-Syrian-war-rebel-picture-photoshopping-camera-original-image.html   

But chatting with my friend… versus the adrenalin junkie war seeking nutjob trying to get that one shot that makes him a hero……

it was a refreshing point of view.. not the “sell photos and get a pulitzer prize and cutthroat try and get to top” mentality, but like Behar’s Vulnerable Observor, that the lines between subject and photographer aren’t easily drawn, nor the impact of that photo…. ie a photo that can change the world can also significantly impact the subject…. and unlike the adrenlin junkie “I’m trying to get that hero shot”, to have perspective as to your impact and relationship to the before, during, and after is AWESOME. 

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/posing-questions-of-photographic-ethics/?_r=0

I would kill to visit the Bronx Documentary Center on this exhibit which poses questions about photographic ethics.

In the end, it’s not even the “iffy” photojournalist that is the concern, because post-digital manipulation makes the subjectivity of a photo even more complex (as it was before), and now it comes down to who is editing the photo, what is their intent, and methodology or ethics in relating it to a reader, and why.

It’s frightening to think it’s a flawed human with an agenda, or a cold algorithm just robotically spurting out content….  

About Uncle Fishbits

I'm.. just this guy, you know?

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