The Bang Cam Club
29 July 2005. Inspired by my new mobile phone.
"There’s a really cruel, gore-wallowing streak in some people that technology and situation sometimes colludes to enable."
I know I already linked to Charles Arthur's thoughts on phonecam snaps, but recent events have increased my desire to drop in my tupponeth.
These are unprecedented times for the image. We suddenly have in our pockets the means to create reproducible, shareable images with sufficient quality to be of interest both to the authorities and the media. For the first time, eye-witnesses are beginning to lend us their eyes.
It's not always a pleasant prospect. Nowadays, those who slow down to stare at car crashes may do so with phones held aloft. We shouldn't be surprised or shocked - fascination with gore and death is inherently human. As is repulsion at the same. They're both natural reactions, because sudden, unexpected confrontation with mortality creates an adrenaline rush, and that can affect people in ways that they don't expect. Some will step back. Others will push forward.
Each time in the last five years that one of the terrible, history-making events of recent years has occurred, I have reacted in a way that sickens my rational self - as soon as I know that loved ones are safe, I get a buzz out of following the news, hearing rumour and counter rumour, seeing the phonecam images as they appear, staying on top of the news, aggregating it for myself.
On 7 July, for example, I was constantly refreshing the flickr feed, the Guardian newsblog, the Londonist. Of course, I was passively consuming - I would not (at least I hope I would not) either risk impeding the emergency services or remove the dignity of the injured and dying by thrusting a telephone in their face in the name of trying to record history. Surely that cannot help anyone.
Or can it? We're getting mixed messages. The inquest of Jean Charles de Menezes is desperately calling for witnesses. If some gore-happy person had photographed the shooting with their phone, I wouldn't want to see the image but perhaps his family would be more likely to get justice. Even though that wouldn't be the reason that the person did the snapping. But maybe it would be in a country where injustices happen more often (or CCTV isn't so prevalent), and evidence is much harder to come by.
The front pages on 8 June were covered with images similar to Adam Stacey's. In this case, use of the image seems legitimate - the photo helps us imagine what it must have been like down there in a way that words simply couldn't.
But, by mentally placing ourselves at the scene, we should put ourselves behind as well as in front of that phone. If you had been there, would you have snapped an image? Hundreds of people, some presumably with phonecams, didn't. What goes through your head when you remember your phone in that situation? Was Adam thinking of posterity when he snapped it? Recording history? Selling an image on to the media? Placing a potential clue for investigators in case they didn't make it out of there? Something to show incredulous friends and family? Perhaps a combination of all of that, or something else entirely. Certainly the publication of the image means that this will happen more and more. One more question: should someone in a desperate, yet newsworthy situation keep their hands free, helping others instead of taking a photograph with their phone?
Of course, it depends entirely on the situation, but the question will be raised in some context soon, if it hasn't been already. And, truth be told, none of these moral questions are new. Kevin Carter won the Pulitzer but was equally at the receiving end of accusations that he should have helped the child being stalked by the vulture. Eventually he claimed he had, but his initial silence on the matter left many sceptical.
Don McCullin felt guilt more than once at his role as chronicler of the dead and dying. He described one such incident in psychologist Halla Beloff's book Camera Culture: "It's not important that I record every tragedy that goes on in the world. But I decided to try a couple of shots. And I did something despicable. I wound the car window down and took the photographs from inside. Then I hated myself for not having the decency and courage to at least get out and do something."
"It's not always easy to stand aside and be unable to do anything except record the sufferings around one" said Robert Capa, whose photograph 'Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death', assuming its verity, is as blurred as a cameraphone shot.
Of course, this is different. These are professional photojournalists, who have taken the decision previously to act as witnesses to horror, in the name of telling the world. They are editorialising what they see, trying, as Charles Arthur said, to change things.
Or is it so different? Certainly, the measured decision to place themselves at the scene sets them apart from the cameraphone voyeurs. The professionalism makes the images stronger, the inner narrative more formed than someone who spontaneously pulls out their Nokia. But what happens next seems very familiar.
I'm not claiming that cameraphones make everyone photojournalists - see previous arguments on bloggers/journalists, and do a find/replace. It's the difference between stories and the wider picture, just being there and knowing how to report on it when you are, and so forth. But what we are witnessing with the democratisation of the creation of the image, much more than when bloggers are compared with front-line professionals, is a similar way of thinking in the heat of the moment.
Journalists on the front line are often accused of being adrenaline junkies. They often are. The rush of blood, the desire to get that bit closer, to capture what is in front of them - as Capa said, "if your photos aren't good enough, you're not close enough."
These people know what they're getting themselves into, and have learnt how they react when the moment arrives. Sometimes they're sickened by it. Sometimes it helps them remember that they're alive - and that energy cannot be found anywhere else. To them, the camera lens can act a protective window as reassuring as plate glass, a way to shield themselves from what is happening around of them.
For everyone else, we simply do not know how we will react when the front line unexpectedly arrives on our morning commute. Who is to say if our psyche has a lot in common with that of James Nachtwey, of Robert Capa, of war photographers past and present? Some of us, when we know we're ok, might feel that giddy buzz of survival that comes from being close to something momentous and dramatic, and making it out alive. And perhaps we too want to be able to protect ourselves from the reality by turning it from moving horror to still image, by holding up the camera lens as a barrier and not as a magnifying glass. Post-traumatic stress mixes with adrenaline. It could have been me. It wasn't. What now?
"Once [a writer] starts writing, he seems to observe the world through a filter," said Irwin Shaw. Sometimes we need that filter. Cameraphones seem to me to be a plausible way that people can find them. Now we're all potential front page reporters, not victims. I know which would help me cope better in the sudden stress of being there, no matter how repulsive the thought is.
Some images taken in these circumstances will certainly be repulsive. Some perhaps snapped by those without the excuse of adrenaline, inspired by nothing more than a disturbing liking for gore. But perhaps not all those with their phones held aloft had only perversion and tabloid millions in mind. The problem is coming, however, as it did in photojournalism - the overwhelming desire to chronicle leading to unnecessary risks. The fellow who filmed yesterday's tornado in Birmingham on his phone, standing outside to get a better shot, will be the first of many to step out further than he should, because the image capturing ability goaded him into it. Again, photojournalists have seen it all before.
Margaret Bourke White (1904-71) was one of the world's first female photojournalists. In her autobiography Portrait of Myself, she wrote: "We are in a privileged and sometimes happy position. We see a great deal of the world. Our obligation is to pass it on to others." Travel, technology and times have all changed. Now that we all see a great deal of the world, and carry the means in our pockets to pass it on via satellite in a matter of moments, is our obligation very different?