The Subtlest Cut

It’s difficult to know how to react to this rather strange piece of writing that appeared in a recent issue of Time magazine. Written by the photojournalist James Nacthwey, and titled Haiti: Out of the Ruins, it is a remarkable exercise in historical amnesia and imperial erasure. Nacthwey, a man who has a long history white-washing American wars and violence, claims that: 

They [the Haitians] continue to endure their history — a crescendo of privation and hardship, matched by strength, pride and dignity. Their nation was born in the conquest of slavery; it has been shaped by poverty, struggle and faith.

No, not quite.

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Published on February 10, 2010 3:30 pm.
Filed under: American And Her Wars, Journalism Tags: ,

To Hear Or See An Haitian Once The Party Has Died Down

There is something terribly indecent about it and we have to be honest and acknowledge it. The hoards of photographers and wanna-be photographers, most eyeing each other and copying each other so that they may not get ‘left behind’, that have descended on Haiti since the devastating earthquake there remind me why I have felt so alienated and disconnected from this entire craft. The specious justifications of ‘bearing witness’ or that ‘…news pictures help drive a response of aid’, just no longer ring true.

Rarely have so many people used so many clichés so repetitively to justify an act (the news photograph) so lacking in engagement for so long. Decades since photographers started using the language of ‘concerned photographer’, a new generation continues to parrot the same language, and continues to hide its real motivations – determined more by careerism, a pursuit of awards, or just plain bravado, behind a veil of moral, and messianic language of ‘bearing witness’, and ‘in the hope that it will change things’. I am hearing it all over again in Haiti and its driving me nuts!

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Published on February 6, 2010 2:15 am.
Filed under: Journalism, Musings On Confusions Tags: ,