My Summer Lair Chapter #195: Who Are Some Of Your Favourite Photographers?
In a painting the artist will sign his work; same thing with comic book covers. However with photography while there are watermarks for the most part the artist’s signature is the framing; the composition. What the photographer specially captured and the story they wish to convey. In the hands of a great photographer photos are as distinct as handwriting because the stories are usually distinct.
That personal framing is how also how we receive journalism photos; often unsettling photos. Sometimes we see a war happening in real time…we’ve seen disturbing images of bloodshed since Vietnam. Sometimes we see the chaos and suffering following an event such as the earthquake in Haiti. Thanks in large part to the photos we see; we know many of the events yet we rarely know the photojournalists who snapped the images.
Welcome director Patrick Dell to the program; his documentary is Shooting War.
Shooting War reveals the stories of several photojournalists: the emotional, spiritual costs it took for them to shoot the photos we see. We tend to associate PTSD with the soilders on the frontlines but war impacts the people who shoot it as well.
Some of the photojournalists featured in the documentary are: Carol Guzy (the only photojournalist to have received four Pulitzer Prizes), Tim Page (an iconic Vietnam War photographer), David Guttenfelder (still in the field) and Joao Silva (I’ll let him tell his story in the documentary.)
And so now we can listen to their stories: the stories behind the photos and their stories of dealing with trauma and trying to reintegrate into society following this ugly events.
Oh and Shooting War is a feature length Globe and Mail documentary. Just as the NY Times is way more than a newspaer, Toronto’s Globe and Mail is expanding how they tell the stories they tell. Patrick explains more about that in this My Summer Lair episode.
Shooting War @ W • T • F
Host Sammy Younan
Recorded: Friday April 29, 2022 at 1:00 pm
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