Asim Rafiqui’s “The Spinning Head” blog remains one of my favorite places for analysis of contemporary photojournalism. One of his latest pieces, “Offering Silence To The Oppressed Or How Photography Can Become A Weapon Of Repression,” offers up an important counterpoint to the praise lately heaped on the recently opened London exhibition of Israeli and Palestinian photographers, Beware the Cost of War (more at 100eyes). The exhibition presents images of conflict without captions or credits. Rafiqui’s central points, buoyed by John Barger’s visual-philosophical framework, are that:

• The exhibition removes context, so that we never know who is the occupier, and who the occupied…
• The exhibition removes chronology, so that we never know whether the act occurred this year…
• The exhibition removes history, so that we never know what it is that violence represents…
• The exhibition removes the ugliest of constant and material facts…

Well worth a read.

Edit: To be clear, both 100eyes and Lens’ presentations of the work include captions of the pictures. The captions remain separate from the pictures, but exist nonetheless. Also, Conscientious Redux continues the conversation.

Just hitting the airwaves, the Noorderlicht Photography Festival, one of the great photojournalism events of the year, has been forced to remove an essay curated by Magnum’s Stuart Franklin. The festival’s press release (warning: pdf) states, in part,

The Associated Press does not object to the exhibition as such, but to the content of Franklin’s accompanying essay. This essay acknowledged that criminal acts were committed by both sides [Palestinian and Israeli], but assigned the principle responsibility for the extent of the bloodshed to Israel. Both Franklin and Noorderlicht believe this conclusion is justified by the critical reports [regarding the matter] from Amnesty International and the United Nations…”

The AP believed Franklin’s text expressed a political statement, and further that having AP photos in the exhibition, the essay associated a political statement with AP’s photos, which violates Associated Press guidelines. Whatever the case, this is the first time in Noorderlicht’s twenty years that an essay has been removed due to potential legal threats.

(via Conscientious)

I saw this Friday on the (duly praised) Foreign Policy Passport Blog, who wins with another photo-related post. I haven’t seen anyone else mention it so I’ll ‘bump’ it along. “Orthodox paper photoshops women out of Israeli cabinet”.

Quoting the FP piece, “The Israeli ultra-Orthodox newspaper Yated Neeman reached new levels of Stalin-esque photoshop audacity by doctoring photos of Israel’s new government to remove female ministers Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver and replacing them with male ministers.”

The Stalin reference is a little out there but this is a pretty strange thing to see. Editing current events rather than whitewashing history? Is this a new development? Really, how will this work?

The above video of CNN’s Rick Sanchez lambasting Joe the Plumber’s ridiculous opinion that the media should stop reporting is wonderful. Joe isn’t a journalist, but he’s recently been reporting from Israel on the recent conflict. He isn’t a licensed plumber and his name isn’t Joe, either, but that hasn’t stopped him. When asked how he would deal with the danger of conflict reporting, he appealed to god. “Being a Christian, I’m pretty well protected by God I believe,” he said. “That’s not saying he’s going to stop a mortar for me, but you gotta take the chance.” Now, it turns out, he’s decided the media “should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting.” I don’t want to give this idiot any more publicity, but his opinions are becoming dangerous.

Sanchez’s comments on CNN work well as a response to any recent criticism of the so-called Main Stream Media (MSM) or newspapers in general. A free press is a foundation of democracy and the erosion of the media’s institutions and traditions, whether through ideology (as is the case here) or the profiteering that’s been destroying small-town newspapers over the past few years, is a danger to our country’s well-being.

It’s no laughing matter that Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro has recently introduced legislation asking for the government to intervene on behalf of struggling newspapers in his constituency. The US would do well to have a media that’s not beholden to profits and who actively investigate local and national government and corporations on behalf of the citizenry. That’s a pie in the sky, unfortunately…