Photojournalism Presentation Script Slide: Presentation: Roadmap of our talk We will talk to you about what photojournalism is. First, we will present some of the ethical standards that are involved with the work and then present 5 photos from different countries that have been important to journalism in history. We will present the story behind the photos and why they have been important in journalism. 1st:The Migrant Mother (1936) 2nd: Napalm Girl (1972) 3rd: Afghan Girl (1984) 4th:Tsunami Japan (2011) 5th:The migrant crisis Alan Kurdi (2015) Slide: What is photojournalism? According to Oxford dictionaries, photojournalism means The practice of communicating news by photographs, especially in magazines. Photojournalism is a mixture of the word, photography, and journalism. Frank Luther Mott coined this term and it became familiar during the WWII. That is because of the technology advancement of photography at this time; the first 35mm camera was invented. It was then easier to take the photograph without a tripod and other heavy equipment. It is often used in magazine or newspaper. Slide: Ethics There are many different ethical guidelines for journalists working with videos or photographs, here are some of them: As any journalist, photojournalists should take careful notes of the time, date, location, circumstances and details of the photo that is being taken. A photojournalist needs to apply critical thinking to every story, to check details and be sure that the photo that is being taken represents the truth of the story Accuracy: Never stage a photo to make the story more interesting, a photojournalist's job is to report what actually happens. As a photographer, you should not focus on getting the sad, emotional pictures because it can exploit the victims to focus on them and not telling the story and cause behind the situation It is important to respect people s privacy and don t take and publish photo because you know it can boost your career. Slide: Editing Editing can change the whole meaning of the picture. This can include changing its colour. A darker colour can bring up sad emotions and fear. A colourful picture can be described as energetic. The main point of photojournalism is accuracy and not to influence how audiences see the story.
The good side of editing is that a photographer can change black and white historical pictures into coloured pictures so that we can estimate the real life situation of the picture. There was a case when a Lebanese freelance photographer working for Reuters used photoshop to exaggerate the smoke and the damage caused by a bomb. Slide: One side Sometimes, photography shows only one side of the story. Migrant Mother Slide 0: Title Slide 1: This picture was taken by Dorothea Lange in a pea pickers camp during the great depression. For those of you who don t know what the great depression is, it is the long lasting economic downturn in America which began after the stock market crash in October 1929. As a result, there was a lot of unemployment. Also, during the great depression, there was a dust bowl which is dust storm that destroyed crops and homes of farm workers so they immigrated to the agricultural field of California to find work, but the life was not much better there. This lady in the picture is one of them. Slide 2: It was the assignment by the RA/FSA to document the life of the migrant workers. Slide 3: She took 5 different pictures and this is 4 more of them. Slide 4: There is one picture that was edited. They retouched the thumb of the mother. It was removed because the thumb was quite distracting. Slide 5: After the picture was published in San Francisco News, the government sent food supply to the camp. Slide 6: Lange said that the mother seemed to know that the picture might help her so she helped Lange with the photo shoot. There is also a discussion whether this photoshoot was ethical or not, since the mother was actually posing for the photographer. They were not candid photographs. Slide 7: In 1978, the reporter found the mother and that was when she revealed her story. Her name was Florence Owen Thompson. Her picture was taken when she was just about to take off from the camp after she got her car fixed. Slide 8: From the interview with Florence and Lange, there is a contradiction between them. Lange said Yet they could not move on, so she had just sold the tires from her car to buy food However, Florence said that they did not speak to each other nor did she sell tires from her car. She also said that Lange might confuse her with another subject or she just want to create a better story.
Slide 9: So why is this picture important? It is a symbol of difficulty and the rough time that the migrant farm workers had to face during the great depression. As you can see, her facial expression and her hand show anxiety and fear. This picture and its story also represent the faith of American to overcome despair and devastation Napalm Girl Slide 2: This picture was taken in 1972, 8 June on the Vietnamese highway, by Nick ut, the Vietnamese AP photographer, right after the Vietnamese plane dropped napalm on the Trang Bang village. Slide 3: In the picture, Kim Phuc is the person who runs naked because she tore off the burning clothes that were caused by the bomb. Slide 4: After Kim Phuc ran passed Nick Ut, he saw her skin peeling off her back, he just put his camera down and went to help her immediately. This represents a good ethics action. He doesn t only care about just taking a photo to send to his boss but he also care about people's life behind the photo as well. Slide 5: Kim Phuc said that it was a horrible day in her life and when this photo was released she hated the photo. It embarrassed and represented the disfiguration of her body. However, after the long struggle, she realized that she couldn't escape this picture so she wanted to work with that picture for peace. Kim Phuc started a charity that helps children suffering from the war which is called the Kim Foundation International. Slide 6: A war zone is a dangerous place for working, especially in a job like journalism. It is a hard job to go out and work in a war zone. It s a voluntary job because being in there is not easy and you need to deal with the situation there such as risk your life for taking a photo, seeing wounded or dead people. Slide 7: For example, Nick Ut was injured three times. First, during his time in the Vietnam war. His leg got hurt by an explosion of a rocket propelled grenade when he went to visit Kim Phuc at her house. The other two injuries were in Cambodia. One of them almost killed him, when a rocket exploded and injured his stomach. Slide 9: On the left hand side is the cropped photo of Napalm girl posted by New York Times on the front page. By comparing both pictures, the right hand side, which is the original version, raises more questions of why the soldier that stand next to the screaming girl doesn't even seem to care about them, or why no one goes to help them? Slide 10: This photographic is a memorable picture of the Vietnam war. It sparked anti war protests all over the world and made people realize how horrible it was in the Vietnam war. Six months later the war stopped.
Afghan Girl Slide 1: Introduction The Afghan Girl" ran on the cover of National Geographic in June of 1985. This most renowned photo was taken in June 1984 by Steve McCurry in the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan. Slide 2: on the Presentation slide In 1984, She became famous and well known from National Geographic as the Afghan girl, but for 17 years no one knew her name. In January 2002, McCurry and his team went back to Afghanistan to search for the girl with green eyes. Eventually, they found her. Sharbat Gula is her actual name. Sharbat shared her real life story which she had to survive during the wartime. Slide 3: Background and quote McCurry was visiting the sprawling refugee camps along the Afghan Pakistan border during the Soviet invasion. All that mixture of sadness and fear was reflected in the afghan girl face, eternalized by this one particular girl who had this really kind of haunted look in her eyes. and he knew that this amazing shot was going to be a powerful portrait which becomes a world iconic photograph. Slide 4: McCurry or photographer s aspect As Steve McCurry said Her look kind of summed up the horror, because her village had been bombed and her relatives had been killed, and she d had to make this two week walking through the mountains to the refugee camp. Slide 5: Example of choosing a photo which more attractive Compare 2 photos ===The media usually prefers photos that provoke scandals. 1st,she put her hands [up to] cover her face and the viewer or audiences cant see her haunted look, to compare with 2nd, she had an incredible look, a penetrating gaze in them you can read a message of fear, which the 2 nd photo may more easy to seize the world attention. The media usually prefers photos that may provoke scandals. Moreover, beauty also sells and gives influence to a mass media Slide 6: Effect and photojournalism In this photograph, haunted green eyes in a red headscarf looking intently at the camera is able to send a message of Afghan refugee s fear to the world citizens and in them you can read and indicated the tragedy and violence of the a land drained by war. Effect : "Afghan Girl",is also brought a huge attention to the world and the National Geographic set up the Afghan Fund, a charitable organization with the goal of educating for Afghan children.
Addition The image is of a young woman with haunted green eyes in a red headscarf looking intently at the camera and in them you can read the tragedy and violence of the a land drained by war. Japan Tsunami 3.11 Slide 1: On the 11th of March 2011, Japan suffered from an unexpected earthquake of 8.9 magnitude followed by a huge tsunami wave that hit the Japanese coastline. According to the National Police Agency of Japan in 2016, there are more than 2,561 people missing and 15,894 deaths has been confirmed. Most people died by drowning. Slide 2: In this picture, we can see a woman, with a big blanket covering her body. From her eyes and her facial expression, we can feel the fear and loneliness inside her. We can assume that this is not the end of the story, and sometimes, you want to know the real story that was hidden in the picture. Slide 3: Her name is Ms. Yoko Sugimoto, 28 year old, she is a normal housewife. 2 days after the Tsunami, she and her husband went to look for their son in different evacuation centers in the City of Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture, but as they ran out of fuel, they had to find their son by walking to different places. As the communication network went down they could not locate where their son was. Slide 4: Mr. Tadashi Okubo, a photographer from Yomiuri Shinbun captured this scene in the morning of 13th March 2011. The picture also won the 3rd Prize in The 8th DAYS JAPAN International Photojournalism Award 2012. It then became one of the iconic pictures that were used by different media around the world to show how tragic the event of the tsunami was. One year later, Mr. Toru Yamanaka and a team of editors for Agence France Presse revisited different places that were affected by the Tsunami in 2011. They had to take a picture from the same perspective as the original photographer, to illustrate how the place has changed. Mr. Ugarte, the Agence France Presse photo director for Asia and the Pacific commented on the original picture that That was quite an iconic image You imagine that that s the end of the story, right if there is not a follow up This project spent about 10 days of shooting, one photographer per place. The local people helped them find places for shooting. After they finished shooting they would transfer the files into the computer and make a comparison between the pictures. In order to get a collection of photos, the photographers have to work in a team to get what they were aiming for. The migrant crisis Alan Kurdi Slide 1: The migrant crisis was the main story of the world in 2015 and this photo of Alan Kurdi is seen as one of the best and most important in journalism last year. The photo illustrated the migrant crisis in a way that words in articles couldn t.
Slide 2: Alan Kurdi, was a 3 year old boy who drowned in the Mediterranean sea in September 2015 while fleeing the Syrian civil war, trying to get to safety in Europe with his family. His dead body washed ashore in Bodrum in Turkey where Nilüfer Demir, a Turkish photographer working for Dogan News Agency, took this photo. Her mission for the news agency was to cover the migration crisis. She posted the picture on twitter. Minutes after she published the photo it was shared by a Human Rights Watch worker on social media and it immediately went viral. (Ask if everyone knows about HRW? NGO, human rights professionals, lawyers, journalists.they work with fact finding and releases reports on the human right situation in countries) (Ask if everyone knows the term viral? Definition: an image, video, or link that spreads rapidly through a population by being frequently shared with a number of individuals has 'gone viral'.) This is an example of how important social media is as a platform for spreading news, without necessarily involving publishing a story in a newspaper. Slide 3 Quotes: The photographer has said in an interview that she was paralyzed by what she saw on the beach but: I did what my duty requires me to do, and my job is to mirror their lives, their sufferings and the challenges they re facing during the journey. When she was asked about the ethical aspect of the photo she said: If the picture makes Europe change its attitudes towards refugees, then it was right to publish it. I have taken many photographs of the refugee drama and none had such an effect on the public consciousness Slide 4 The ethical aspect: Publishing a photo of a dead child is seen as a social taboo in media. The photo, therefore, started a debate on newspapers on whether they should publish the photo or not. Some decided not to, to protect the boy s integrity and for respect for his mourning family. And some decided to publish it because they felt the story needed to be told, to raise awareness about the migrant crisis because it was in the public s interest. But even if newspapers decided to publish it or not, the photo was already circulating on mainstream media which shows what a great impact it had on people. Slide 5 The political aspect: More than 3770 migrants died in the Mediterranean sea in 2015.
Alan, his 5 year old brother, and their mother are only a few of all who has lost their lives trying to get to safety in Europe. This photo humanized the refugee crisis and made it much more real to the world. It changed the international debate to focus on the results of the policies in Europe that made situations like this possible. This is an example of the effect that photos can have in journalism reporting.