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My post, Staring at Death, Photographing Haiti got a lot of attention. It was a simple format – an extensive collection of links to online photography coverage of Haiti. It was posted a week after the earthquake and very soon after was out of date.
It may have been apparent from my other posts on Haiti [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] that I appreciated words alongside images.
I was grateful for the interviews by the New York Times of Damon Winter, Maggie Steber and Daniel Morel.
Well, add Lynsey Addario to that list.
Even Orphanages Spawn Orphans in Haiti is the type of approach and reflexivity I admire in journalism. It is a great salve to the overly-anxious who worry that photojournalism has lost it’s soul.
Of course, I have a few buddies who’d insist that Haitian voices be heard also, so I don’t want to suggest that PJ audio interviews are the crowning point of crisis reporting – they obviously aren’t but they are a necessary component.
To hear the photojournalist’s voice and responses to their subject reminds us that photographers are not camera-wielding automatons operating in vacuums.
© Daniel Morel / Corbis
Amidst the all the coverage of Haiti, I have found the interviews and words of photojournalists (eg. Damon Winter; Melissa Lyttle) FAR more interesting and informing than the images.
What an essential privilege to hear Haitian photographer Daniel Morel speak about not only his placement during the earthquake, but also the behaviour of the media, the complaints of Haitians toward said media and where he and Haiti go from here.
If I am going to put weight on any opinion it is Morel‘s.
Prison Photography 