How photography can shape history
[Music]
last year
over 1 trillion photographs were taken
1 trillion
that’s a pretty amazing number if you
think about it and many of you
contributed to that number with
photographs of your family of your
friends of your experiences
they all fill the digital world of
content
photographs of your favorite pets
perhaps your favorite lunch
all of those photographs
represent something to you
take a moment and think about an image
that means something to you
over the last 30 years
during my career i have focused on
raising awareness about human rights
i have photographed in over 100
countries
i have documented over 25 conflicts
when i’m asked
why do you do that
why do you think there’s value in
photographs why do you think there’s
value in risking your life to take
photographs
the questions are quite good the answers
are those that
form the foundation of why i do what i
do
and they’re also the reason why
i’m directing a film called biography of
a photo which examines the lives of two
of my photographs
so
to kind of step back a little bit and
help answer the questions i bring you
back to the year 1989
another period another world i’m a young
photographer working in new york
i want to be an international
photographer
i was photographing an event
and i see this photographer on the
street and he looks like the
quintessential international
photojournalist press credentials the
right cameras the very important
photojournalism scarf so i said okay
this is a guy i should talk to
i introduced myself his name was chris
morris
and i said chris
where are you going next
and chris said i’m going to panama
so chris that’s amazing i’m also going
to panama i didn’t know where panama was
i didn’t know what’s happening in panama
but if this guy was going to panama that
was the place to go if you wanted to be
an international photographer
the story in panama was that was being
run by a dictator named general manuel
noriega
his relationship with the united states
had faltered and he decided to hold
elections to prove to the world that he
was loved by his people
i got an assignment to go and cover the
story i was very excited i was on my way
to becoming an international
photographer
just before i about to buy my plane
ticket
my assignment was canceled and i was
crushed
i had been working as a bike messenger
driving an ice cream truck i wasn’t
really surviving as a photographer so i
couldn’t afford to buy a plane ticket
i ran into chris and amazingly he had
just bought his ticket and the airline
had a buy one get one free special like
a revolution special and chris said you
can have my extra ticket
i said thank you and off we went to
panama to document the election
i started by selling photographs fifty
dollars at a time to john’s france press
a french wire service
i encountered my first situations of
violence tear gas rubber bullets clashes
between the opposition and government
supporters it was an eye-opening
experience
the dictator noriega held the election
he lost the election he then nullified
the results of the election
and the would-be victors came out onto
the street to start an uprising
they were met with serious violence
i was following the vice president-elect
and his entourage as they drove through
the streets
at one point they got stopped by police
and soldiers
and there was a standoff
all of a sudden
a group of men known as the dignity
battalion a paramilitary unit supporting
the dictator came running towards them
it was complete chaos
they had bats they had pistols and i was
trying to photograph and look around and
do whatever i could do
then at one point a man walked over to a
vehicle took out a pistol and fired
a gun
into the car
a few moments went by the door
eventually opened
a man staggered out of the car
covered in blood it took me a moment to
realize who he was
it was the vice president-elect
guillermo billy ford
as i moved toward him to photograph i
heard somebody say compromiso in spanish
excuse me and the man stepped around me
and began to attack the vice president
the vice president defended himself and
within moments the whole thing was over
i brought my film back to the afp office
the film was processed and transmitted
around the world
and here look at this photograph
carefully you see
the vice president
on the left covered in blood being
beaten as a soldier stands behind and
watches and does nothing
by the next day the photograph was on
the front page of newspapers around the
world
and by the end of the week was on the
covers of newsweek u.s news and time
magazine all in the same week
a unique moment for a
photographer i thought this
photojournalism thing is pretty easy you
go places you take pictures you get
covers
i’m going to become famous i’m going to
make lots and lots of money not true at
all
and i was pretty
for the next seven months the united
states tried to oust through diplomacy
the noriega government
they started to use the time magazine
cover as one of the reasons why
noriega should be thrown out of power
diplomacy failed
and by december of that year the united
states invaded panama
president united states gave a speech to
the world
on the number of the justifications for
the invasion
you remember those horrible pictures of
newly elected vice president ford
covered head to toe with blood
beaten mercilessly by so-called dignity
battalions
when i heard that speech and saw the
action i realized this wasn’t about
covers it wasn’t about fame
it wasn’t about me
it was about what i was doing in terms
of providing work
providing imagery to be part of a chain
part of a conversation for information
to be put out there for people to make
decisions i was there as your eyes
and it wasn’t whether or not i agreed
with the invasion which was said to have
killed thousands of panamanians
it was just the understanding that the
work that i was choosing to do could
have impact on the world that’s what i
found incredibly interesting
now let’s jump ahead two years it’s
i read a story about this place called
yugoslavia a country in eastern europe
that everybody thought was going to make
this amazing transition in the
post-soviet world
but there were these rumblings of
nationalism violent nationalism and
nobody was exactly sure what was going
to happen
in fact
over the next five
sorry over the next 10 years i spent
more than five years on the ground
documenting the very brutal breakup of
that country
by 1992
i found myself in a small city in bosnia
on the border with serbia
there’s a town called bialina and when i
had arrived the town was already split
with muslim civilians on one side and
serbian civilians on the other and they
were fighting
the butcher was fighting against the
banker
the bookkeeper was fighting against the
policemen it was complete chaos and
civil society had broken down
violence escalated to a new level with
the arrival of arkhan
serbian warlord and his unit known as
the tigers i had worked with arkham
before and he gave me permission to work
with his troops he said he was there to
quote unquote cleanse the town of muslim
fundamentalists
we moved into the center of town
eventually arriving at a mosque
the soldiers went up to the mosque they
took down the islamic flag they posed
for a victory photo
right after this i started to hear some
shouting from across the street and i
walked outside
there was a house with a red brick wall
and a couple had been brought out
in front of the wall
the woman hamietta paigetti and her
husband abduraham were shouting at the
soldiers the soldiers were shouting at
them they were simultaneously shouting
at me don’t take any photographs
shots rang out and abduraham fell to the
ground
immediately this was obvious this was a
war crime what was striking to me was
that nobody cared that i was there with
the camera and it seemed to me at that
moment there was very little i could do
to stop anything that was happening
several months earlier i had been in a
very similar situation where somebody
was executed in front of me which i
couldn’t stop nor could i even document
for the evidence of the crime
i had vowed
never to let that happen again
so
i tried to figure out how to be able to
take a photograph of what was happening
and eventually i was able to photograph
hamietta as she tried to save abduvraham
as he lay there bleeding
moments later
hamieta was shot
a few moments later another woman aisha
shabanovich was brought out and she too
was shot
then a prisoner was brought out turned
out to be aisha’s son he tried to escape
they shot him again nothing i could do
to stop it and nothing i could do to
document it
then harush zabiri was brought out as a
prisoner for some reason
they let me photograph him
but i realized
that i needed an image of the soldiers
and the victims in the same frame
so that nobody could dispute
what was happening that the evidence was
there to prove everybody that this was a
war crime
and here you see in this photograph
the serbian paramilitaries the tigers
with their victims now look closely at
this photograph of the soldier on the
right
the cigarette in one hand sunglasses on
his head as he casually brings his boot
back
as the victims the pioneers and ayesha
shabbat actually dying on the street
this is a photograph that is called an
excess of violence
this is the documentation of ethnic
cleansing
the conversation in the world at the
time was that the bosnian war was about
to erupt unless there was intervention
from the west
i thought that this these photographs
which were published around the world
would be the evidence to push the west
into intervening
president bush who reacted to my panama
photographs earlier was still president
of the united states so for sure there
would be something there was no reaction
from anybody
the war started it lasted for almost
four years
thousands were killed millions more
became refugees
led to several more wars and today
bosnia is a dysfunctional country
it became apparent to me that the work
had failed
and i had to ask myself what was i doing
as a journalist
arkhan so angry that these photographs
were seen
had vowed quote unquote to look forward
to the day he would drink my blood and
he put me on a death list
so i had to decide should i keep working
what was the purpose and i realized
after some time that when the
photographs fell
in their attempt to sort of garner any
kind of change immediately they took on
another life they took on a life of
evidence
to hold people responsible for their
actions so obviously the soldiers and
the photographs those that gave them the
orders and so on to be held responsible
but more importantly i thought
to hold people responsible for their
inaction
for the leaders that saw these
photographs and did nothing they
witnessed a war crime and said nothing
they are also responsible and by
extension
what does that mean for all of us the
ones that put these people in power
the ones that did not take to the
streets to protest
what happens today when we look at
photographs from various places and we
don’t react so with those sort of twin
foundations of photojournalism
i move forward continuing to do this
work
so i started working with my co-director
dr lauren walsh on biography of a photo
we started to discover
that the photograph from panama and the
photograph from bosnia
lived
on and on most news photographs last a
day or two and disappear
most of you look at an instagram photo
you swipe it you like it you forget
about it 15 minutes later
these photographs continue to have
impact months years
later it’s very unusual for work
and the photographs as we look at their
biographies they weave this narrative
that show how the history the memory and
cultural fabric of each area is formed
so let’s look at the photograph from
panama
shortly after it was taken the
dictatorship declared it illegal
but it gave hope to the opposition
that people were actually paying
attention to what was going on
the vice president
elect guillermo billy ford said quote
the photograph saved his life
it made him into an international figure
that couldn’t be touched
an opposition leader said
my friends died for democracy
the photo changed everything it renewed
our courage to stand up and fight
with the photograph from bosnia even
though it found on an international
level was quickly made into a recruiting
poster for people to come over and
volunteer to fight to protect their
muslim brethren it was seen around the
islamic world the photograph was
continuously published in newspapers
both inside and outside bosnia
artists did their own versions of the
photograph as a protest to the war
the french filmmaker jean-luc godard did
a short film on the photograph
as a voiceover meditates on man’s
inhumanity to man and the lack of
intervention in the bosnian war
with the formation of the inter
international criminal tribunal for the
former yugoslavia in the hague
during the opening day speech the
photograph was said to be one of the
inspirations for the creation of the
court
the image was used to indict and convict
war criminals as recently as just a few
months ago these are civilians i assume
i always assume
and they are being
killed executed in the most brutal
manner by a beast not by a human being
by a beast so
you can imagine what that means and why
the tribunal has used it you’re aware
that these photos were published and
distributed essentially worldwide and
roughly at the time and and since well
you know it doesn’t take much to go to
the website called iconic photographs
which means photographs that are
particularly famous
in the world of education
where neither conflict is taught in each
country
multiple
generations know the work and understand
the history through
the photographs
in panama each year they mark the
anniversary of the us invasion
many panamanians consider that invasion
a war crime and they connect it directly
to the photo
recently when filming one of the
demonstrations a man recognized me and
became so incensed that i was the
photographer that he tried to get a mob
to attack me
but not all panamanians feel the same
way former panamanian president varela
said quote the photograph gave panama
back its democracy
which is a pretty amazing thing to say
about a photograph
this is just a few of the ways that the
photos have played a role in shaping the
histories
of the places where they were taken
and then as we kept working on the film
and biography of a photo we found that
for each photograph there was somebody
who was personally connected
to each image in the events of the day
in panama we have manuel guerra whose
brother alexis guerra was the bodyguard
who was assigned to protect vice
president ford
the blood that you see on ford’s shirt
is of the bodyguards
and then we have alma pekovic whose
mother aisha shibanovic is dying in the
photograph
they’re both on a personal quest for
justice
the images are famous but their family
members the little people the
working-class bodyguard and civilian
bystander are in danger of being
forgotten by history
they want justice for their relatives
manuel is fighting for his brother’s
remembrance he wants us connected to the
photograph that represents the democracy
of panama
and alma wants something simpler form of
justice she wants the soldiers in the
photograph to be indicted and convicted
of war crimes a charge that nobody has
been given up until this point
[Music]
so photographs have the opportunity to
inform and influence
sometimes under the guidance in the
media and sometimes they travel the
world on their own
hopefully having some impact wherever
they are seen
i hope this gives you all a new way of
thinking about photos those that you see
and those that you take
thank you very much
you