War photography and Photojournalism are an essential part of war reporting and have been in every conflict since the art of photo-taking was invented. As Susan Sontag notes in her seminal work Regarding The Pain of Others, ‘war-making and picture-making are congruent activities.’ But why do we have such a fascination with photos and footage of war? What is Photojournalism? And how has Photojournalism changed over the years? Let us first put photojournalism into context.
Chris Fray explains.
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima by Joe Rosenthal.
A photojournalist is a reporter who uses photos or film to tell a news story. Every war since the first photographed conflict - the Mexican-American War (1846-48) - has been photographed and recorded by images.(1) Images can have a decisive effect on public opinion and perceptions of war. A photograph is a snapshot of a memory, frozen in time, allowing those un-connected to the situation to view the conflict up close and personal.
I would like to take you on a journey spanning over a century, detailing the way in which Photojournalism has progressed and what this means for war photography and for us, the public. I will touch on photography in the major conflicts of the 20th and 21st Centuries, beginning with the First World War (1914-18). We will then explore the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), the Second World War (1939-45), Vietnam (1959-75), the Gulf War (1990-91) and finally the use of photojournalism is our own time using the devastating examples of the ongoing Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts.
First World War
At the start of the 20th Century, cameras were large and cumbersome. Immobility was an issue and the heavy camera required tripods. The fragile glass negative plates were easily broken and darkroom chemicals were required by the photographer to be immediately on hand in order to develop the negative quickly after exposure.(2) Obviously, this did not lend itself to conflict photography.
By the start of the First World War, however, handheld cameras such as the Vest Pocket Kodak were being produced, a favourite of soldiers in the First World War.(3) The quality of the images produced was poor and the camera was prone to blurring, but the negatives had much quicker exposure times than before and most importantly it was small enough to carry in an army pack. War photography was progressing at a fast pace yet the command structures of both sides of the conflict were suspicious of the technological progress.
Almost as soon as war was announced, both the Allies and Germany set hardline policies in place to limit photographer’s abilities to publish images related to conflict and access conflict zones. Each side were deeply concerned with the effect that photography could have on spy-work and espionage as well as domestic morale. Professional photographers were restricted from war zones and could only gain access with written and signed agreements of the war council although censorship was lightened later into the war. The images which were taken have had a lasting impact on the memory of the war and shows the value of photography as a means of mass communication- elements of which have been replicated in every conflict since.(4)
Servicemen were banned from owning or using cameras. But as we know, as soon as rules are made, there are those who are willing to break them. The pictures taken by servicemen on the front lines, in the trenches make up some of the most haunting and evocative photos of the First World War. Many photos show the horror of war in the trenches, soldiers staring up at the camera amongst the mud and barbed wire. Some pictures on the other hand depict daily life- soldiers making tea and playing cards showing that life went on as well, even under the rattle of machine gun and crack of artillery shells.
Spanish Civil War
It was only in the 1920s following the invention of small portable 35mm cameras such as the Leica and Ermanox that war photography fully developed (no pun intended). These cameras were faster and more compact, permitting exposure without a flash which allowed for night time and indoor photos to be taken.(5) With the technological developments of photographic equipment, quick, fast-paced snapshots of battle became possible, revolutionising photography. As a result, audiences were able to experience the heat of battle in their own living rooms.(6) Wireless transmissions of photos and the introduction of affordable, high quality printing paper also allowed photojournalists to have their work published in a matter of days. This quick turnaround was essential to the public relations effort for both sides.(7)
The Spanish Civil war, therefore took place at a turning point for modern photography. The impact of ‘in conflict’ photos on the audiences in Britain, France and the United States should not be understated. Action shots of war had rarely been seen and certainly not on a scale such as this. ‘Photographs of Spain became images not just of conflict but in conflict.’ This was a shocking statement and certainly caught the attention of the world.(8) The war also came at the height of the picture magazines of the 1930s, such as Vu, Life, Picture Post, Regards and Match. These magazines focused mainly on images and adverts. These magazines had an exceptionally far-reaching readership and all of them featured the civil war to some extent, making the Spanish Civil War the first war to be covered and photographed for a mass audience.(9)
Left leaning photojournalists such as Robert Capa, David Seymour and Augusti Centelles began to use their platforms as photographers in the picture magazines to influence readers in the UK, France and the USA to contribute to the Republican war effort. Photographs were becoming weapons of influence. A number of photographs taken during the Civil War have taken on iconic roles in representations of the fight against fascism. Possibly the most famous is Robert Capa’s ‘Fallen Soldier.’ It depicts a Republican soldier at the instant of death, as a bullet hits him in the head, knocking him backwards. It is a tragic depiction of the brutality of war, so close you can almost hear the fatal shot. By the end of the Civil War, war photography was firmly established and exceptionally popular. Due to the way in which Nationalism was progressing in Europe, however, many Europeans were to themselves face conflict, not only through the pages of a magazine but at their own front doors.
Second World War
Many of the Civil War photographers who had cut their teeth in the 1930s were seasoned photojournalists by the start of the Second World War in 1939, with strong links to well-read magazines. However now the scene of conflict was not just a single country, but now spanned across the whole world as photographers from Europe to Africa, Russia to Asia were capturing unbelievable pictures of worldwide conflict. With more people shifting between countries than ever before, war was now a global affair, and therefore so to was photography.
The Spanish Civil War photographers were taking photos and sharing with audiences as a call to action. Now war was first and foremost in the public mind. Western photographers were using their skills in support of the Allied mission against the evil Nazi threat. This was a war in which both sides would employ photography effectively as a propaganda tool; as General Dwight Eisenhower wrote, ‘Correspondents have a job in war as essential as the military personnel.’ Media and reporting had an enormous effect of public opinion, and ‘public opinion win wars.’
Censorship of photography was considered highly important and only certain photos were published in the press. Photos such as dead or dying Allied soldiers were considered bad for moral and suppressed for the majority of the war. It was only towards the end of the conflict that President Roosevelt, faced with strikes and opposition to Americans fighting and dying in Europe, decided to allow a clearer and more violent image of the war to be published. Real images of dead and wounded soldiers were shown to the public which roused US citizens to overwhelming support of the war.
In the 1940s, along with the advancement of weapon technology came the improvement of photographic technology. Long-range cargo planes could transport thousands of rolls of films and negatives between Europe and America, allowing the pictures to be shown in papers and magazines within days. Cameras in the 1930s which took 4 X 5 inch negatives were superseded by smaller and faster 35mm, 2 ¼ X 2 ¼ Rolleiflex, Contax rangefinder and Leica cameras. Not only this, but they could be fitted with telescopic lenses, allowing for close-up and zoom shots. More photographers than ever before were braving the battlefield to capture battlefield heroics. As Robert Capa famously remarked, “if your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”
Perhaps some of the most moving photos from the Second World war are those of Robert Capa’s landing on Omaha Beach in the first wave of troops. As the only photographer to land on the beach, we have direct and close-up documentation of the landings. The pictures are blurry, as Capa himself admits, because his hands were trembling so much with fear on the mortared beach.
Vietnam
At the end of the Second World War in 1946, around 8,000 American households owned a television set. By 1960, just under 45 million households had a television.(10) The war which raged in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos captured the public and was beamed to millions of households all over the world, giving the Vietnam war the epithet, ‘the living room war.’ The prominence of television had started to push the press photographers from their prime reporting position. Viewers were now able to see much more than a snapshot of conflict. They were able to see the true horror of the uncompromising cruelty of war, frame by frame in video.
As images of US soldiers fighting for freedom in the previous war had mustered public support, their portrayal in Vietnam had an entirely opposing effect. An American public, expecting images of democratic US Marines fighting Communists were faced with a continuous tirade of film and images showing the mud, squalor and death their sons and fathers encountered, every day on the news. Photographers and journalists were given such freedom in Vietnam never seen before, or since. There was little to no censorship. Instead, the US army command intended to recruit the press into sharing their own perspective of the war. However, as the war developed into the 1960s, more US servicemen were losing their lives in a decade long conflict which many at home found hard to relate to. A cultural and moral revolution in the USA swung much of the public towards peace and as the US high command rapidly lost control of the situation in Vietnam, conditions in the army worsened, professionalism laxed and this was all captured on camera.
Many have claimed that the media were responsible in some part for the defeat of the Vietnam war. One of the key photos in this debate is the Saigon street execution, taken by Eddie Adams in 1968. It shows a prisoner seconds away from a shot to the head, at point blank range. It sums up the lawless and brutal nature of the conflict, even away from the battlefield.
It was in the Vietnam conflict that the idea that war photography could have a harmful impact on the perceptions of war at home. The more advanced technology became and the more skilled the photographers became in depicting horror- the more the public came to view war as a sickness. In essence, war reporting moved too far for the public. It presented the tragic truth of conflict.
Falklands & The Gulf War
If Vietnam was over-reported, sickening the public with gore and grit and eventually ending in defeat, conflicts in the subsequent decades were decidedly, and intentionally, under-reported. As a leading member of Britain’s Ministry of Defence asked rhetorically on the announcement of the Falklands War, “are we going to let the television cameras loose on the battlefield?”(11) The Falklands war took place in the 10 weeks between April and June, 1982 in response to the invasion and occupation of the British islands in the South Atlantic by Argentinian forces.
The British Ministry of Defence exercised extreme control over coverage from the conflict. In polar opposition to Vietnam, the images and footage of the conflict hardly featured in British newspapers and only two of the 29 accredited media professionals were photographers. Governments were clearly learning lessons from Vietnam. By the time the conflict was over, only three batches of film had been returned to London.(12) Although by the 1980s, technology had dramatically improved, the press were unable to use it. In a 10-week conflict in which 255 Britons were killed, 777 wounded and an estimated 2,000 Argentine casualties, no images were released. This only fuelled the public’s suspicion of the Ministry of Defence.(13)
In a very similar vein and probably still scarred by the public reaction to the media surrounding Vietnam, when the Gulf War began in 1990, the utmost care was taken in photographic and film representations of the conflict. Subsequently to the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein, the US led a 42 Nation coalition intervention against Iraq. In the 1990s, photographic technology was incredibly advanced. The coverage of the war however was heavily sedated. Press focus was made on the mechanised technology of war, the enormous guns and steel cannisters, firing bullets and shells from slick fighter jets. Yet there was no indication of what damage these bullets and shells were doing upon impact. It was presented to the public as a ‘painless war of precision.’(14) For the first time a conflict was being told from the perspective not of soldiers, but of weapons.(15)
Reports and briefings from the war council were kept secret from reporters and although there were around 1,600 Western photographers and reporters in the area, they were all isolated from the conflict and supervised by public-affairs managers who made sure they saw only a sanitised view of the conflict. The pictures presented a white-washed version of war which distracted from the real brutalism involved in conflict. Removing the people from the pictures also removed the empathy for the casualties.
There is a belief that over saturating the public with images of death and destruction will ultimately dull society into accepting these images as the norm, gradually shocking less and less until they are ignored altogether. However as Torie Rose DeGhett says, never showing these images at all absolutely guarantees that understanding of the images will never develop. (16)
Syria & Ukraine
So where does this leave us now? Are we able to trust the photographs we see of conflict? With the invention in the past 20 years of social media and camera phones in every pocket, it could easily be argued that each person recording and sharing material could be considered a photojournalist. The process of free un-filtered, un-sanitised and un-censored material being captured by millions per day in various perspectives, angles and mediums provides an overwhelming change to what was previously considered photojournalism. Of course, photojournalists still exist and provide the world with moving images of conflict and pain all around the world. However, the range of material is so large now, that photojournalists are a tiny proportion of those on the ground, experiencing war.
When the Syrian conflict began in March 2011 and turned into a full blown Civil War in 2012 to 2013, foreign photographers and journalists were banned from entering the country. The danger was exceedingly high following the deaths of several foreign reporters including Marie Colvin of The Sunday Times and so the images and footage which was released was shot by local people. Amateur photographers and the average person- anyone with a camera-phone, expressing themselves through photography and film and appealing to the wider world for help. This produced a revolution in photojournalism, with minute by minute live-reporting of conflict via Facebook and Twitter. This is something which was never before possible.
Is this a positive outcome for war journalism? We might be tempted to say, yes. The wider the audience, the more likely the world is to see and connect with the pain of those living through war. However as Swiss photographer, Mattias Bruggmann has said, lack of journalists and increased use of public media opened the floodgates to propagandism from every side in Syria. “Every opposition group and every rebel battalion set up its own unit to produce photographs and videos.”(17)
The most recent and equally harrowing world conflict, the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces in February 2022 has also produced a tidal wave of images and videos. Again, as technology improves, so does the capacity for ordinary people and individual soldiers on the ground to document their own personal perspective of the conflict. Courageous acts of covert filming of Russian soldiers and troop movements by occupied Ukrainians are being used by the Ukrainian military in some cases and shared on social media, giving the conflict the epitaph, ‘the first tik-tok war.’
The nature of this is certainly not as fun as it sounds. Given the brutalness of this current invasion and the overwhelming number of alleged war crimes committed, organisations such as the United Nations are already compiling photographs by renowned photographers, military footage, local amateur photographers and footage from social media to be used as evidence for prosecuting these crimes in the future.
Throughout its history, war photography has contributed to a truly humanitarian mission. Photographs stand as a testament to conflict. A snapshot of History which says, “this happened,” and “this cannot be forgotten.” It holds those in the wrong, accountable and has always provided a voice to those who are unable to provide their testament. It is the hope of many organisations that these photos will result one day in the prosecution of the perpetrators of war crimes, providing justice for those who were at the receiving end and for the families of those who died. Photos are therefore an essential element, not just to war reporting but to justice and humanity.
What do you think of war photography in different periods? Let us know below.
References
1 Payne, Carol and Brandon, Laura. Guest Editors’ Introduction: Photography at War. P.1.
2 Griffin, Michael. ‘The Great War Photographers: Constructing Myths of History and Photojournalism.’ P.135.
3 https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/the-vest-pocket-kodak-was-the-soldiers-camera/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20first%20and,years%20ago%2C%20in%20April%201912.&text=The%20Vest%20Pocket%20Kodak%20camera,model%20was%20discontinued%20in%201926.
4 https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/photography
5 Brothers, Caroline. War Photography: A Cultural History. P.6
6 Payne, Carol and Brandon, Laura. P.3.
7 Faber, Sebastiaan. Memory Battles of the Spanish Civil War: History, Fiction, and Photography. (2018). p.16-17.
8 Brothers. p.2.
9 Brothers, Caroline. p.2.
10 https://www.elon.edu/u/imagining/time-capsule/150-years/back-1920-1960/#:~:text=Approximately%208%2C000%20U.S.%20households%20had,million%20had%20them%20by%201960.
11 Brothers, p.205
12 Brothers, p.206
13 Brothers, p.209
14 Brothers. p.211
15 Bruce. H. Franklin, ‘From Realism to Virtual Reality.’ P.110
16 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/the-war-photo-no-one-would-publish/375762/
17 https://newlinesmag.com/photo-essays/shooting-the-war-in-syria/
