MetaChat - Photo That Will Break Your Heart

Smedley Butler would have known what to say at that funeral. Damn, that is sad.

posted by warbaby 08 December | 10:11

Yes, it does. And the sadness turns to rage.

posted by tr33hggr 08 December | 10:15

.

posted by sciurus 08 December | 10:32

So sad. As the mother of a kid who's soon going to be old enough to get killed in a war, these photos are hard to look at or think about.

I thought you were linking to this photo, which is the most gut-wrenching photo I've ever seen. No matter how many times I look at it, it causes such sadness and depression. No wonder the photographer ended up killing himself. Supposedly he watched this little girl struggle to crawl to a food shelter while a vulture stalked her. He took a bunch of photos of her, shooed the bird away, and left her there. He won a Pulitzer for it. More of the story here and here - it's haunting. I always meant to post it to Metafilter but never did.

posted by iconomy 08 December | 10:35

I read something the other day that referred to Bush as a "wartime President." My gut reaction was "Wartime?!" and then I remembered "Oh yeah, we are at war." I can never remember this. It sure as hell doesn't feel like we are "at war." Has it ever been thus in our history?

posted by Secret Life of Gravy 08 December | 10:46

wow, amberglow and WOW iconomy... those have just sent an icy chill down my spine... I'm going to sit here and stare off into space for a while

posted by papercake 08 December | 10:47

I would have swooped that girl up in my arms and ran as fast as I could to get help. My god...how could anyone have done otherwise?

posted by jrossi4r 08 December | 10:55

(disturbing warning)
Reminds me of a guy, who worked for a branch of the military, who couldn't "get over" the time he thought he stepped on a frog, but it wasn't a frog. Turned out to be the hand of a dead child sticking out of the rubble--
--and that's about all i wanna go on about that right now--

posted by ethylene 08 December | 11:18

.

photos by the excellent Todd Heisler

and yes, the Kevin Carter Africa shot is a really really shocking one. no wonder he committed suicide shortly after that. but great photojournalism is supposed to fuck your shit up -- one of the best around is Eugene Richards and his work is, well, crushingly sad. may God bless him.
in Don McCullin's words, Richards' work is

so penetrating that even I sometimes can't look, because it's so painful. He brings tremendous pain into his vision, and he makes you very aware of what you're looking at. You don't need a second look with Eugene. He's a very penetrating photographer. He's very dedicated. And he's a master. At the moment, he's possibly the best walking, living photographer in the world. He has a great deal of compassion in his work. He gets close to people. When you can get close to people, it's because they feel comfortable enough to let you get close. Once you get close, they've allowed you their trust. He's the kind of man who deserves their trust.

posted by matteo 08 December | 11:32

iconomy, that was very interesting (and you're right, the picture is unbearable.)

jrossi4r: Thinking about people that opt to bring something so terrible into the minds of millions of people, and questioning them for not instead stepping in and bringing off what might or might not have been an effectual 'rescue,' is an enviable position to be in. I'm glad I'm not the one deciding whether people all around the world are made aware of the horrors going on in front of me in the most concrete, undeniable way possible. The St. Petersburg Times called him 'another vulture on the scene.' For whatever reason, I have the feeling he had more meaningful motivations.

posted by rebirtha 08 December | 11:41

Both of those pictures are very difficult to look at. For some reason, the Marine guard standing there is what really gets me. What honor, what kindness.

I'm sure that Kevin Carter longed to step in and help, jrossi4r, but rebirtha's got a point: photojournalists have made the incredibly tough decision to serve as the means to document (sometimes) horrific images. I think it's necessary. Not something I could ever do, but necessary.

posted by Specklet 08 December | 12:49

'
I would have swooped that girl up in my arms and ran as fast as I could to get help. My god...how could anyone have done otherwise?
posted by jrossi4r 08 December | 10:55
'

because, according to his ethics, he is unable to do so. who do you think has it worse, you who can be angry that he didn't do anything, or the journalist who believes that he can't do anything?

at this point i can no longer understand why we are still fighting this war. i was talking to a tech guy we had down from ohio to work on a laser in the lab two days ago, and i told him that i'd nearly enlisted in the marines out of high school. i remember sitting in the recruiter's office at 7 or 8 pm one night with all the paperwork in front of me, and i didn't do it. and i've decided that was the right choice, because i'm not made of the right stuff. i couldn't ignore the stupidity of what i was being ordered to do. i'm not courageous enough to be able to serve my country regardless of what i think of the man the country chooses to represent it.

i hope this is over before we break the military.

posted by sam 08 December | 13:14

Thanks, Specklet, and I didn't mean to sound like such a self-righteous ass, either. I'm sorry about that. I genuinely do think that people who provide images like this to the world are giving up the personal ease of spirit that comes from knowing you did what you could to cure a situation in one moment in exchange for hoping you can make a statement that might cure it for more people, more times than one. I also think about the complicated motives that would drive a man to want to make a name for himself, seek out and embrace a flashy renown, and end his life most likely miserable and confused, plagued by the consequences of what he endured.

Also, I am sorry for hijacking your thread, amberglow.

posted by rebirtha 08 December | 13:17

I think I hijacked it, rebirtha. Don't worry about it - this isn't metafilter. Threads get hijacked all the time here. If we have to start typing apologizies for derails here, jonmc's fingers are going to fall off ;)

posted by iconomy 08 December | 13:22

Threads don't get hijacked on MetaFilter? I must be reading the wrong version of the site.

posted by rebirtha 08 December | 13:46

Sure they get hijacked, but over there everyone gets their panties in a wad about it. Here, we don't wear any panties. See?

posted by iconomy 08 December | 13:50

Couldn't have said it better myself, iconomy!

posted by Specklet 08 December | 14:08

She's using a laptop to play the music.

NEEERD!!!

posted by delmoi 08 December | 15:24

The picture of the wife sprawled across her husband's coffin just completely broke me up.

posted by LeeJay 08 December | 18:18

I understand the absolute necessity of these kind of pictures. They are powerful tools against suffering. I also understand journalistic ethics. I just don't think it would have harmed the story or the field of journalism in general if, after taking the shot, he had found a way to help her. Even if he simply alerted someone else.

But you're right. I have no right to sit in my nice warm home and second guess someone who put himself on the front lines. It's all academic from this distance. Sorry for the kneejerk reaction.

posted by jrossi4r 08 December | 18:52

Yes, I think it's the marine standing at attention that adds a dimension of pain and sorrow to this image for me. Not only because he's standing guard over her, but because it's so easy to imagine what emotion must be hidden by his stoic face, how easy for him to imagine his lover on that bed weeping.

(iconomy, if you haven't read House of Leaves, you might be interested in doing so. That image of the girl with the vulture stalking her is a key element of the story.

Also, jrossi, the story explores the moral choice of that moment -- whether to give that dying girl a few moments of human warmth before she dies, or to record her suffering so that it isn't forgotten. I don't think you had a knee-jerk reaction, it was a deeply human one. I don't want to say more about it for those who haven't read it, but it's a book I'll never forget. It's dense, and it's flawed, but it really got under my skin.)

posted by melissa may 08 December | 20:22

i'm with you, jrossi---we'll never be photojournalists, and i do blame him--he could have taken shots and swooped in and scared the vulture away, or grabbed her and taken her to somewhere safe. Your humanity (and the responsibility we have towards each other) is not ever ever erased just because you have a job to do.

I wish all these pics were on the news and front pages to show what's going on, but i've totally lost faith in the big media.

posted by amberglow 08 December | 20:28

Wow, melissa may...really?? I never knew that. I'm definitely reading it...I'm ordering it right now. Thanks for that!

posted by iconomy 08 December | 21:24

He did scare the vulture away.

posted by knave 08 December | 21:32

that's something, at least.

posted by amberglow 08 December | 21:44

PBS

Fucking Lemurs.
Got to me again.
The plaintive calls of the mother ringtail,
Unanswerable.
The photographers capturing it all for me
Follow their prime directive
And do nothing.

And I think this must be what God's like,
Back in the trees, observing.
Crying as the baby lemurs fall to their deaths.
Afraid to intervene.
This makes sense to me,
And if I believed,
I'd hate him for it.

posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 08 December | 21:53

Not equating people to animals, you understand - it's just an old poem that expresses my feelings about the messy moral choices of witnesses and intervention. Seemed sadly appropriate to the conversation.

posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 08 December | 21:57

see, i do believe but i don't believe it's his/her job nor do i expect intervention that way--it's one of the reasons we are here.

posted by amberglow 08 December | 23:04

Yes, iconomy -- the connection's only really explored at the end of a very long read, and really I've come to think of it as the heart of all the other horrors of the story. It's such an odd, disorienting, and painful book, so I rarely just press it on people. But since that image's power and story got to you as it got to me, I thought I'd tell you about it.

posted by melissa may 08 December | 23:17

More thoughts on photojournalism ethics:

I want to point out that the girl in the photograph wasn't the only starving person around; I'm sure there were other people in the vicinity, perhaps hundreds. Thousands. How would he make the decision to help her rather than someone else? He should have alerted someone? Who? Taken her somewhere? Where? There are no resources. That's why she died.

I don't think it's a matter of moral choice: I'm sure that if he were able, he would have photgraphed her and helped her.

The very point of the picture, the whole point of him being a photojournalist, is to illustrate the human suffering that exists. The very fact that he was unable to do more for her than he did is the subject matter of the photograph.

I'm with amberglow: I don't understand why the media doesn't show images like this. I have no faith in big media.

posted by Specklet 09 December | 13:34

08 December 2005