Tumblr Assignment Example - The Meaning of Photojournalism

Meryl Alper’s piece on the burden of photojournalism brought up a lot of interesting questions about access and democracy for me this week. Alper’s work focuses on the discourse surrounding the practice and ethics of posting photojournalism on social media, particularly on apps like Instagram which juxtapose potentially tragic, violent, or grim images with much more casual snapshots from people’s lives. One of Alper’s main concerns is that “aestheticizing” war may lead to “anesthetizing” war (1239) in that posting such serious images on such a casual forum will not inspire viewers to seriously consider the image and the message as they might in a newspaper, but instead to shrug off message due to the casualness of the medium. David Guttenfelder, one serious photojournalist who uses apps like Hipstamatic and Instagram, responds to similar critiques by simply stating “I [try] to create those kinds of real-life, non-newsy snapshots that marines might shoot for themselves” (Alper, 1242).

Is news that is purposefully “non-newsy” to be the future of photojournalism? It sounds almost facetious that a photojournalist would choose such self-inflammatory words, but it raises an interesting point about the potential democratic future of news. Guttenfelder’s comments recalled much from Tagg’s work on the democracy of an image, particularly as democracy relates to social media as well as power. As Tagg raises in his essay, the advent of photographic technologies- particularly ones that could be made available to the public – meant that the image was no longer the sole property the elite. Middle and working class people could not capture themselves – and soon their personal worlds – without having to pay for a painter or portrait maker (Tagg, 43). The image is power, and holds powerful potential and ability to assert the subject’s place in space and time. Photojournalism, in many ways, aligns with and understands this power, and seeks to use the image for good to assert the presence of subjects who could otherwise not tell their story as broadly.

It is my personal belief that news is no longer controlled by an institution, and has not been for some time. I instead think that news is much more a possession of humanity than it is the possession of the associated press. With the presence of social media who makes the news and what is news is greatly altered, and despite not being guided by the ethical principles of journalism the news is – for better or worse – now a largely democratic, grassroots process. As such, I completely disagree with Alper that the movement of war photojournalism to Instagram will render “the reality of conflict invisible” (1240). Instead, I think conflict has an arena on social media that will be vastly more revealing and allow for a much greater depth of understanding, visibility, and empathy for peoples of conflict zones across the world. Take, for instance, the Instagram account EverydayMiddleEast, which demonstrates the nuanced potential of representation and visibility on Instagram. This account – and countless other – puts faces behind the human conflict that spans the whole range of humanity. From joyous, to sad, to mundane, EverydayMiddleEast reframes an area of the world that has come to symbolize nothing but tragedy or tragic news with a place inhabited once more by real faces, real people, living lives simultaneously similar and radically different from our own. By disseminating these stories through social media, accounts like this are reaffirming the agency of subjects to become creators themselves, instead of a perpetual headline or story on page 3.

A post shared by Everyday Middle East (@everydaymiddleeast) on Aug 12, 2016 at 5:01am PDT