Censoring War Photographers

Photograph © Zoriah Miller-All Rights Reserved
The New York Times features a slideshow and accompanying article on the increasing control (aka censorship) by the American military on graphic images from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both slideshow and article make reference to Zoriah Miller, the photographer who posted images of marines killed in a June 26 suicide attack in Iraq on his Web site. Miller was subsequently forbidden to work in Marine Corps-controlled areas of the country. (For background on this, I've posted a Zoriah Miller slideshow on TTP just a week ago).

The thrust of the article is that photographers increasingly say the military allows them to embed but keeps them away from combat. Many say that they've been repeatedly thwarted by the military when they try to get to the front lines. I'm surprised at this since if we are to believe the news reports from Iraq, the so-called surge is working, and according to the Republican nominee for President, we are succeeding...so why keep away photographers from the battles? Shouldn't we enjoy seeing what our military might has caused?

The NY Times article is well worth a careful read, especially since it was co-authored by Michael Kamber, a war photographer himself (he recently published a scathing report on the Leica M8's performance) and based in Iraq.

The American military's argument is that it's protecting the sensibilities of families of the dead soldiers. Let's accept that this could be a valid argument to a certain extent, but let's also recognize that the American military's increasing censorship has more to do with preventing further erosion of public support to this unnecessary war than being "sensitive" than being attuned to the sensibilities of bereaved families. Sanitizing the horrors of war is what this is all about.

In the British newspaper The Guardian, Robert Fox penned an article titled Truth And Other Casualties of War, and refers to the Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner which graphically depicts a dead British soldier, and which was considered an outrage when it was unveiled in 1925, and he ends his article by saying this:

"It is a fitting testament to the dead of that war – as Miller's pictures are of his war in Iraq."

Richard Vogel: Photojournalism

Photograph © Richard Vogel-All Rights Reserved
Richard Vogel is chief photographer and photo editor for the Associated Press (AP) in Vietnam for the past 8 years. He's responsible for covering news events, developing feature stories, and providing assignments to photographers, and editing their work. He also photographs, edits, scans, and transmits final images to AP for worldwide distribution. He also worked as a photo editor in India which included coverage of the Indian/Pakistani standoff in Kashmir.

His web portfolio consists of 105 photographs made over the course of his career, mainly in South and South East Asia. In my view, his work is that of the consummate photojournalist; work that doesn't rely on sensationalism to be effective...work well worth of studying and appreciating.