To answer this, the first thing to do is to define "objective". A quick google search brings back the following definition, which I agree is consistent with my general everyday understanding of the word: "not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts". This definition immediately poses problems though as it's hard to see how you could be objective and not emotive when photographing emergencies. By the very nature of photographing an emergency, you need to capture the essence of the emergency for the photograph to achieve a purpose (to inform the reader). At that point are you focused too much on detail and not on context?
Taking the example of Invisible War, which I commented on in a previous post, I think these are the most shocking and explicit "emergency" type images I've ever seen. It doesn't get worse than this for detail. Are they objective? Yes - the photographer captured an event and shown it for what it is. These are not posed photographs, they are not contrived, and were quite likely shot in a hurry (safety reasons) with little time to think about the frame. But did the photographer have an emotive reaction at the time - very likely yes, who wouldn't? And if a photographer is trying to highlight the atrocity of war, surely this is an emotive response. If war was acceptable, it wouldn't be newsworthy and we wouldn't need such a sharp wake up call as this one. I would consider these images emotive rather than objective. They may have been shot in an objective way, but the subsequent treatment and publication is emotive; the photographer wants to shock us into having a reaction.
I then had a look at BBC News to see if I could find a very recent image of an emergency. Well, the opening page was full of emergency type stories (of course, breaking news goes straight to the front), but not necessarily graphic emergency images. So I looked for images of the recent MH17 crash to see how that had been portrayed. I found the images objective - they told a story without being overly emotive - the captions however were more emotive. It would be interesting to see images that were less detailed on a wider scale to see the full range of the spread debris but again, that would have been objective. The absence of explicit images in this sequence reduces the emotive reaction, but I have seen previously photographs of the photographers themselves looking stunned.
Next, I asked my husband what he thought was the single-most shocking emergency-type picture he had ever seen. He recalled the 1989 British Midland air crash on the M1 at Kegworth. He remembered seeing a photograph of a dead girl (about 6 years old) still holding a toy. I haven't been able to find that image, but compared to the ones I did find (see link) above, I can imagine it to be significantly less objective, and much more emotive. Just seeing the wreckage is one thing, but anything to do with children and an attachment to a treasured toy with them in their last moments is deeply shocking.
After that, I thought about images by renowned photographers of emergencies that I had previously seen. One that I remembered instantly is an image by Steve McCurry that I had previously commented during my TAOP module (see Scrapbook link). The image in question is Camel and Oil Fields, Al Ahmadi, Kuwait, 1991 which depicts three camels in the burning Kuwaiti oilfields foraging for food; the camels are caught between the blackened sand and the smoke-filled sky. Objectively, this is a documentary photograph of the environmental casualties of war: animals. Emotively, this is a stunning photograph which fills you with horror and makes you ask lots of questions - like what are they breathing - is the ground painfully hot - where are they finding food? Was McCurry objective or emotive when he took it? Probably both - it's likely he took the photograph to document a side to war that we don't often think about, and emotive because he was responding to the plight of these poor creatures.
Finally, another documentary-style image of an emergency that I remembered having looked at previously was one I commented on in my review of Street Photography Now, Five More Found, by Joel Meyerowitz. Thinking about it now, I'm not sure why it was featured in Street Photography Now, as I would describe this as documentary rather than street photography. Is this image objective? Well, yes of course, it's a record of an event as it happened. But, it's also an event filled with emotion - the devastation of the twin towers attacks in New York 2001, followed by the relief that some survivors were found; an extreme case of bitter-sweet. What has Meyerowitz done in the shooting to make it emotive? Other than the stunning capture of light and colour, he's put the focus point right in the centre - straight to the point of the story. The wrecked buildings are details around the edges - what happens in this story is the rescue. And with the fire, oxygen equipment, helmets and so on - details that remind us of the fire-fighters bravery and commitment, we are reminded that this is a scene of drama.
To conclude, I don't think emergency documentary photographs are generally objective. I think they may start out being objective, as in the photographer doing his/her job to make a record of the event, but because the reader will have an emotional response, plus the details of the scene contribute to the image being emotive, it is actually impossible for emergency photographs to be objective. And I also think that adding strong contrasts of light and colour as in the case of McCurry and Meyerowitz, adds to the sense of drama and compels you to look.
References:
- Butet-Roch, L. (2014) Invisible War. British Journal of Photography 161 (7827), pp.62-65
- BBC News (2014) available from www.bbc.co.uk [accessed 9 August 2014]
- BBC News (2014) In pictures: Aftermath of MH17 Disaster available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28366355 [accessed 9 August 2014]
- BBC Radio Arts and Drama (2014) Front Row: Joel Meyerowitz - Aftermath: Five More Found available from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/frontrow/gallery_meyerowitz.shtml?select=02 [accessed 9 August 2014] - ITV News (2014) Why did British Midland plane crash on the M1 near Kegworth? available from http://www.itv.com/news/central/2014-01-08/why-did-british-midland-plane-crash-on-the-m1-near-kegworth/ [accessed 9 August 2014]
- Joel Meyerowitz (2014) available from http://www.joelmeyerowitz.com/ [accessed 9 August 2014]
- Steve McCurry (2014) available from http://stevemccurry.com/ [accessed 9 August 2014]
- Steve McCurry (2014) [online image] Camel and Oil Fields available from http://stevemccurry.photoshelter.com/image/I0000rV_5qZCjYH8 [accessed 9 August 2014]
- Adcock, A (2012) Steve McCurry. TAOP Blog Scrapbook [available online] http://jointheaascrapbook.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/steve-mccurry.html [accessed 9 August 2014]
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