What you see on the picture below is the poor rest of Sulukule, one of the neighborhoods with the longest history in Istanbul (some even consider it older than the city itself.). It was home of Roma community for hundreds of years. After a long fight to save this quarter it is lost now to a ‘gentrification’ project and the Roma were moved to outside neighborhoods. Sulukule was once famous for it’s music, culture and art.

One of the interesting things you could see on the picture are the metal fences that go through the whole area. There are likely three or four houses were still people live. You go through this long corridors to reach them and i can’t help but having this feeling of being in or outside a prison. Long walls, where you can’t look behind.

Istanbul is a city on the move in many ways and being the European Cultural Capital 2010 (with a budget around 500 million euros) might have paced up some processes even when no one really could tell me, where that is. “We have so many events here all the time that you can’t see a difference when there are some in the name of the Cultural Capital.”, one of the students from the project i was documenting the last days said. But at least it seems to me that many projects on the line and in the planning for a long time got through the Cultural Capital at least an extra push. And maybe it is not a surprise that Sulukule was finally poured down at the beginning of the year.

It is always a difficult conflict city-planning is in, keeping the old, the history, the culture, but at the same time modernize. For a long time (and still happening everywhere..) city-planning focused on creating something people afterwards can connect with. Nowadays participation is the way how to do it many say. But also here you have to get people together and actually talk about it. A process what i was told is hardly working in Istanbul.

In Sulukule no one asked the Roma families. And the Roma culture as in many other countries, seemed to be not something worth saving or keeping alive. One of the problems i was told is in this case also not only the rude city-planning that just planned to re-build the whole neighborhood, but also the lobby of the Roma that was weak. Part of the Roma are integrated fully into the islamic culture and consider themselves as such, the other part not, what makes the inner communication more difficult i was told.

In any way it maybe was a fight hard to win against financial interests, a strong islamic community that should become a new center there. We have seen things like that happening all over the world but the people without a voice, the poor and weak are the ones that lose at the end, no matter if it is in Mumbai, Nairobi or here in Istanbul. But here it is beside that also a culture slowly getting destroyed.

Some of the Roma families already came back to Sulukule, now living hidden in the ruins. The main reason is that they can’t afford the new houses they were moved to or the way into the city is to long.

Sidenote: I had planned to work on a little story on that, while i was in Istanbul, but my main assignment kept me busy so that i only had the chance to visit it once and talk to people there and some city planners i was working with on another project this week. So no pictures, but maybe this little insight gave you a glimpse of the story, even when there would be way more to write about it. If you are interested in more, check Ciara Lemming, who was attending the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop the week before and worked on a story about a Roma family. You can find her pictures here.

UPDATE: Ciara made a new tight edit of her work from Istanbul. You can find it here, also downloadable as a pdf. Great stuff!

I’m a big fan of the DSLRs with videofunction. Actually it was exactly what i was looking for for a long time as it now allows me to combine photography and video in one tool. For multimedia it is even better as i can mix video and photography with the same visual look. So i first see the advantages of that incredible tools. But i’m maybe also an exception in the way that i was always doing video and stills. In the time before the HDDSLRs i was carrying both DSLR and a videocamera with me most of the time, most of the time resulting in a lack of videoquality as i carried only a small cam. It is crazy to look at older films of mine like the Laos Diaries when it comes to the videoquality. The DSLRs nowadays allow me to shoot both in high quality. Right now a big market is coming up for all the tools that should help to make it actually usable for shooting video. There are limitations for sure, but i think even without big extra gear you can rack it up to something working also for many documentary shoots. I’ll post about that maybe at a subsequent date.

In the last months there was a discussion coming up over at the DSLRnewsshooter blog about this DSLRs being too cinematic. One of the major stones of contention was a short piece by Khalid Mohtaseb who covered the aftermath of the Haiti quake and in his spare time shot this very stylized footage with a 5D Mark II. Before i go on with my thoughts about it, here is the piece first.

When i first saw this montage i loved it right away. What i loved about it, beside beautiful pictures, so powerful? Mainly that this was at that time one of the first pieces that actually also showed a life beside dead bodies and looting where most media outlets focused on. This piece is in my opinion not a documentary, it is a montage of moments, a capture of atmosphere enpowered by the music. It points us in a certain direction, but this in a very powerful way. It lacks any story, but in my opinion at that time it was a great extension to what we have seen. And imagine that powerful pictures in a documentary with a powerful story. Wouldn’t it rise the level of the production? Critics pointed that this is a disaster zone, not some hollywood set. That this romanized the situation. But i think this is not the reality we could see in Haiti, but also the disaster porn we could see for the first two weeks. Journalism is for me all about balance and trying to tell a story right. I always saw that piece not standing alone, but as part of a bigger picture that was created at that time. And it was for sure some of the most powerful footage i saw as it was powerful without the drama of the disaster porn and suffering that we saw for weeks.

The visual quality of this DSLR footage is amazing, why shouldn’t we start to use it for documentaries and journalism? It is like saying you can build the house by hand instead of using tools. It is a development in the tools and at the end it will give us more possibilities to tell the stories than we had before. New visual language, new possibilities because of it’s size. Maybe a bit less unmotivated usage of a slider than here. But at the end it is all about using it to tell the story. 70% story, 20% craft, 10% tools – something like that. It is about the story. All the rest is only about how we are able to tell it in the best way. And when that DSLR is the best tool for what we wanna tell (what is not always the case of course), why not use it?

One of my driving forces in my development in photography and film always have been personal projects. One of the biggest struggles in creativity and also in finding out what you want to do with that, is the time and freedom to develop. I’m not talking about the technical part, what might also be  a struggle in itself, i’m talking about the vision and a form of personal language you bring into your work. Normally you start with that early, way before you start working professionally, so you do more or less only personal projects. And you learn with that, also how to get the organization behind it done, like contact work and so on.

But also later, when you have grown in what you do, personal projects can be a driving force to try out new stuff. Clients have normally a special need and you need to fullfil that need with your vision. So you work with a special need. Or you want to sell certain stories to magazines or newspapers what also has special needs and approches. Anyway is limiting you in experimenting with stuff. Maybe you have for a long time this idea of doing this HDR documentary project or the story about this guy hunting frogs in southern france is something you want to tell for a long time. Personal projects give you the freedom back to try out things, not with the pressure of doing it for a specific reason, but doing it out of your own curiosity.

Personal projects are for me an important driving force in my inspiration, my creativity and is a constant chance to turn ideas into reality that normally would not happen as they might not find the funding. For me i’m always searching for a reason for what i do and a personal project is a great reason for trying out new things. And i feel like that especially this personal projects help me a lot to grow in what i do and they are quite often also bringing me to new levels and give me new power. They also make me curious and help me to forget about a normal routine that might come in from time to time, what also helps me at the end to develop a different point of view to other projects that i do for clients. It takes of course time and energy, but it is a great way to keep this eyes of a small child on what you do and never stop learning. Personal projects are my way to stay out of routines and develop as a person and an artist (even when i do not like this word for what i do), also in the way that they allow me to approach a story exactly in the way i think is right.

So here is my tip for you today: Get yourself a personal project. Design a project you are motivated for, what maybe also gets you out of your comfort zone. Something what makes you produce something regularly and makes you try out new stuff. It helps you to work on something frequently, when it’s a bigger project. Small client work could be nice and brings the money, but long term projects help me way more to develop something and also tell a bigger picture of the story then a small project could do. Some of my personal projects got commissoned afterwards, but that that is not the motivation behind it. The motivation is pure curiosity and creativity.

So get out and get a project. Or do you maybe already have one?

“In moments of crisis, I myself have never greatly trusted words” – Laurens van der Post

As photographers we sometimes like to think about our pictures as art or at least as something with a high value. Or something very important, when it is about telling stories. And thinking in a commercial way, the value of the photograph that is used for an ad campain is high, without a doubt. Reason number one: It reaches a big audience that hopefully will react on the advertising. But what is the value of our pictures when we do documentary work? When we take pictures of lifes and areas in crisis? It is important and i think everyone who is doing this job is first of all believing in that this is important and no one is doing it for the money that in the business, as there is not much of it. This is not getting a ground discussion of the meaning of photojournalism and documentary photography, this are some thoughts of what value we bring to NGOs, as potential clients, with our work.

Let’s switch a bit between the perspective of a photographer and of an NGO. What are their motivations and why is visual media in general a good way to communicate? A NGO has normally one major goal: It wants to help people in one way or another. For that they normally also have a true motivation to create awareness for the issues, as more awareness means more people that might donate or support the efforts in other ways. And this is the part where the media comes in. I always think about my work as a form of communication. I don’t consider myself an artist in the classical way. I try to create something aesthetic to attract and move as many people as possible. I want to tell the stories, but if you want to reach people the aesthetics is one major part beside others. NGOs want to tell the stories, about the people’s situations (to create awareness that there is a need to help), about their projects (to show what is done) and what is achieved (to show that it actually works). How can photography help there? It is quite obvious that there is a big chance that pictures reach people more directly as most people learn visually. Another reason is for visual media as a form of communication are the high-paced times we live in. Most people will barely read a long report from projects or crisis (especially not on the internet), and if, it might be way harder the emotionally reach them. Helping someone is first of all highly emotional. Politicians might support countries for rational reasons, but what is the rational reason for a single person for supporting a godchild somewhere in Africa? Pictures or video have the power to give people the understanding of a situation they could only imagine when they read about it. It is more direct and therefore maybe also more emotional. So we as photographers seem to be on the right side. There should be a high value in commissioning a photographer to document projects or crisis a NGO is working in. But why isn’t it like that? Why are many NGO are barely paying for photography?

One of the reasons is that especially photography was easy to reach for them. Photojournalists were paid by magazines and could offer some of their pictures and/or time for free. That is today barley the fact. So why pay for something a lot of money when you could get it for free? That is especially for the bigger NGOs the case, i think, as they also have more contacts to photographers, could offer them access to areas and things like that. One Question in that is still if this photographs they might get for free always perfectly work, when they are just part of another assignment that is not specific about the NGO or their work.

NGOs have in general a hard position when it comes to spending money for something else than their projects, for something else than what they are set out to do: Help people. No one wants to donate money for a photographer, but to help people. How to give people the feeling that their money is actually helping and is not getting lost in a big machinery of office costs, advertising, events. That is in my perception another reason why NGOs try to keep that costs as low as possible. It is difficult to communicate especially when you are not sure that it will bring back the money you spent. And at the end it is the wrong thought to think that someone, a NGO (or a company) is paying for something where there are not sure if it will bring back the money they spent on it or create the awarness the campain should reach. And as said a NGO might be even more sensible for everything outside their direct projects.

From my experience so far (working together with smaller NGOs) it seems like that one other reason is that many NGOs do not know how to use the photography, what means it has no value. To bring up the beginning thought about the value of commercial photography again, what brings the value is coming with the same. The value is only there when it is reaching people, when you get people involved in the issue and projects, when they donate money. So thinking of a small NGO with few staff, no real marketing or public relations, some volunteer people donateing some time now and then, the major problem is to use the photography or video they should pay you for, when they have no channels to actually bring it to enough people to bring back the costs for it. And when no one is experienced with photography, the value of good pictures compared to some medicore pictures shot in the field, how should you tell them that they should pay you a flight and a dayrate for some pictures they use on their website afterwards? There is not enough value in this. Especially when the website is also done in the same style as the pictures were used to be. Also great pictures will not reach their value when it is presented in a not attracting way.

So do NGOs need photographers or visual media in general? Of course, but they need more than that. Everytime i worked with NGOs they asked me also for help to bring the stories out afterwards, to reach people. And if not, the stuff just got lost somewhere on their website without being recogniced at all. Maybe NGOs (especially smaller ones) need not only someone who is taking great pictures, great video, great multimedia, does great storytelling, maybe what they really need is someone who could offer them concepts. Who not stops after delivering the pictures, video or multimedia piece, who has a vision how to tell the stories that it works for the NGO, who could help to reach people, who knows a bit about marketing, about channels to reach people, about the possibilities of the use of different forms of media. Who brings in not only his abbility to shot great imagery, but also his knowledge how to get the audience. Someone who knows how to squezze the highest value for the NGO out of the assignment.

I want to tell stories that i think are important to tell. This is why i use video, photography, audio and words, because each medium has weaknesses and strengths. And i want that they are told direct and honest. And of course i want to reach as many people as possible with my stories. And i think that is the case for many who work in that field. So shouldn’t we be experts in what  i wrote before anyway? And isn’t it also not part of our job that we educate NGO staff about the value of visual media, not only to send us to the places in need (and pay for it), but also to get with a few steps more out of the staff pictures to rise the quality of visual communication on the average? Not for every issue there is the need for a photographer, sometimes the pictures of staff could be even more direct, when they are presented with personal stories for instance, but they will only reach people when they are good enough to tell the stories and when there are enough possibilities to communicate it to a bigger audience.

It is a quite difficult topic in any way and my thoughts in one or another direction are far from being thought to the end. But maybe there are also other important thoughts that i’m missing?

One of the main goals of my work is to bring also the normal parts of life into my stories. And my experience was that every situation has this normal parts, no matter if you are in Europe or in the DR Congo (where i got one of the best cakes of my life for instance). There is more than the news hitting sad & horrific stories.  My impression is that the human being is like that, highly adaptable and finding the ‘normal’ in everything. There might be differences in the situation, in the culture and there is nothing what makes war and poverty less horrific, but this is one side of it. It might be the part that influences life to a big extend and many other things are like that because of this, but it seems like that everyone is searching for the normality in the state of emergency, if you could call it like that. And the refugee in Congo without a home and the fear to get raped or killed by rebels or die because of some disease might be more in this state as the poor mother of three living somewhere in the Kibera slum in Nairobi.

Why i’m writing all this? Because i think it is important to think about that from time to time. That it is important to also get the other sides. From journalists you often hear that they are searching for the truth. And they might find this, but in many news stories it is about the state of emergency and not about what is existing beside or in that. One part of the truth is that we follow each other, that we are influenced by eachother. I was writing recently about redundancy in the coverage from Haiti. This is part of the story. Maybe it is important to step beside the obvious path from time to time. To get off the beaten track and search for something different than what you are used to. Find the stories beside the stereotypes we are seeing and reactivating on and on again. Why that is important, beside treating the people you photograph with the sensibility and respect they deserve? It is also important for all the people in Europe or the US that might be interested in that and see it. Just because it is important for the understanding of situations. In my mind, part of the job is also to educate people in the way, that you deliver knowledge and impressions. And when we want to step out of the stereotype way, tell stories differently, we have to find the other stories, to bring a deeper and brighter understanding of situations. That there is life, normal life, that a slum for instance is not a unorganized space of lawlessness, but that the people there are organized as well, that they organize their lifes, that there are structures and daily routines, that the informal sector is making it possible, that they sell drinks or fruits in a slum as well, that there are shops. That it is not a lost space, but actually a place where a lot of energy of many big cities in Africa is coming from. They might not have running water or electricity, what makes the situation hard and also brings many problems and dangers for their lifes, criminality might be a problem, but it is only one part of it. The biggest part is still the normal life, the daily routines and all that. And it is important to bring the other sides to attention, because we can’t understand to a situation as long as we can’t relate to it. The horror is the thing what brings up our attention for a short period of time, but in the moment something becomes more diverse, it also has the chance to get more interesting. And i really think that this should be the starting point for most coverage, no matter if it’s in Europe, Afganisthan, Thailand or the DRC, to make people interested beyond the point of sensationalism. Only then we bring something the attention it needs to make a long-term difference. Not in the way to help people, but first to understand them a little bit better and bring them closer.

Sometimes this stories do not have to be far away from the classic story. Sometimes it is enough to change the perspective a little bit. For instance many people have to live in IDP camps in DR Congo. We know that because we see all the pictures of people fleeing or standing in long rows waiting for food. But is that daily life in a refugee camp? Maybe not. Who knows how a refugee camp is organized or what the daily habits in of the people living there are? To be honest, many of this situations are quite different to what we have experienced ourselves and hopefully will never experience. But it is about perspective. And about respect. At least to try to understand it.

]]> http://www.simonsticker.com/2010/03/11/eating-cakes-in-congo/feed/ 0 http://www.simonsticker.com/2010/02/08/does-haiti-need-photojournalism-workshops/ http://www.simonsticker.com/2010/02/08/does-haiti-need-photojournalism-workshops/#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:42:40 +0000 admin http://www.simonsticker.com/?p=1814

Shortly after the earthquake in Haiti some photojournalism workshops were announced to be held in Haiti. The reactions on lightstalkers, duckrabbit and so on were, let’s say, harsh. One of the difficulties of discussions like that is that it pretty fast gets personal and in my opinion is in many ways missing the point and is creating just a lot of noise at some point, not really making any criticim useful at all.

Let’s have a short look in what was offered, before further thinking. The start was made by Andy Levin, who offered a ‚Photo Aid’ workshop in Haiti (which is running right now.). They not only want to teach a small group of students but also bring supplies. The second workshop was offered by Zoriah, bringing four students to cover the aftermath of the disaster with subjects like „working in disaster zones and other difficult and dangerous situations, survival and logistics in difficult environments, photograph people, working with NGO’s (Non Governmental Organizations) and aid organizations, editing and digital darkroom technique and marketing and making your stories available for the world to see.“ The whole thing was offered for 4000 $.

The idea to make a workshop in an enviroment where the last thing right now is to have more photographers in the country, especially unexperienced ones who might never have exposed themselves to an enviroment close to that before, might be hilarious in itself, but my thoughts go in different directions. The discussions were most of the time focusing on the aspect that they want to do money out of the disaster, using the tragedy of people to make money out of it. Especially Zoriah’s 4000$ was often criticized, even to the point that he is not worth the money and all that. The reply was often that all the other media was doing money out of it too. And that is right to some point. The question is in my mind is not if it is alright to make money with it. This discussion is existing as long as journalism exists. The big difference is that the media is bringing their work out to a big audience as the people in the workshop are doing it for their own sake without even seeing something published. Obviously that is nothing new as workshops are in first hand for a learning experience. And that brings me to my main concern. In my mind it is not really important if they do money with their workshops, it is also not a question if 4000$ is worth it or not for what is offered. This is just a thing if you are willing to pay that and when you pay that it is fine. It might feel shameless to do money in an area like that, totally destroyed with hundreds of thousands of people suffering. It really puts this ‚making money with the suffereing of others’ to a new level, but from an inside perspective they offer something where they want to get paid for. The question is for me way more if they bring something in what really helps the people, something more than the chance for the students to have some ‚disaster porn’ in their portfolios afterwards. Haiti right now needs all help that it could get to help the people build up their houses again, get the infrastructure running again, get oportunities to get education, jobs, all that. And for sure it also needs people who document that. It needs long-term projects that show that, keep the attention up for it. But offering a workshop for some guys that leave after a week again with some crazy stuff in mind and on their memory cards, is that in any way helping and sustainable? Why for instance not offer that workshops also to local journalists (for free!) to join the group and in that way maybe create the chance to let them tell the stories with new learned abbilities?

Isn’t the main question right now, if what you do in Haiti helps the people? And when you can’t answer this question with ‚Yes, it helps them’, isn’t it then maybe a better way to find other ways to support them? Like doing workshops somewhere else, but still donating money to the people (what Zoriah changed after some time from his original post, now donating 2000$ of each student). Does it need to be in Haiti, where the destruction is so big? Where the media coverage is so big? And where you might be in the way or more disturbing than anything else?

I would like to end with a short film produced by Cine Institute. They support young Haitian students with education in filming, postproduction and so on. I think that programs like that could be a way for developing countries to get a voice with using the internet and the alternatives that cheap decent cameras offer nowadays. Like we also did with our ‚With our own eyes’ workshop in Rwanda. To do a step away from the outside perspective of foreign journalists, but giving the voice to the ones that did not had the chance to speak out in that way before. These film was produced by Haitians directly after the earthquake, documenting their country, their losses and their suffering. Raw and unfiltered. Something we could learn from.

„I have a mission. It is to grab my camera and record the people’s suffering, all their sufferings, all their miseries and show it to other people in order for them to see and live what they had lived themselves.“

You can find more films on their Vimeo account here.

Two weeks ago the earthquake hit Haiti and destroyed more or less a whole country in seconds. What we saw in the direct aftermath was a media coverage close to painful in many ways. Now, not even two weeks after the earthquake, the topic does not even make the headlines of most newspapers anymore, the twitter feeds are getting more and more silent. Some might say, not surprising and yes, they are right. That is how it is in our world. Still i believe it could be different and still i think there are many things that could have been done differently (aka better?). This is a selection of my thougts to it. I’ve not been to Haiti in that time neither have i ever covered such a high media event like this. So this are my perceptions and thoughts of the coverage and i’m happy, when i’m proofed wrong or this leads to some discussion about the topic. Here are some of my points.

REDUNDANCY

This point is something what was discussed a couple of times in the last weeks. Foto8 pointed out that the huge amount of redundancy of pictures leads on the one hand to a point that many pictures are looking quite similar, but also that it takes away a huge amount of potential for stories to be told. Maybe it is normal, that in the first days in the whole chaos, where no one really has a clue where to go, how to get to places and what acually happened where, that the different media outlets are hitting the same spots. But does that mean that they should cover the same stories? In the first days we saw mainly one thing: A wild coverage of the devastation in many ways plus when ever someone was pulled out of a building. Like an overview of what happended. Quite understandable in this chaos, i guess, and maybe also the right thing to do. But isn’t a disaster like that, what is so wide spread, so total, the perfect situation to step away from the other, to find unique places, stories and pictures. It should have not been difficult to find horrific spectacular stories without the need of redundancy in that amount.

My concerns with that is not only that it leads to similar pictures. One of the problems i see is that a group of journalists covering the same events (more to that later.), also means that it will not help the relief teams in any way. There were many people who complained about the huge amount of journalists, being everywhere and not seldom just being in the way. So less redundancy means for some situations also more help for the actual relief crews on the ground.

STORIES

After the first days i expected to get bigger stories, like coverage of families for some days, their daily struggle in the situation. Less emergency snapshots, more deeper into the situation. I expected more single stories on certain situations, but at least my feeling was that the coverage never really stepped into that. My feeling was that most photographers were running around, still searching for the most dramatic picture they could find and at the point the bodies were mostly removed they went on to cover the ‘crimes’ that happen now. The ‘looting’ and so on (i mean, think about it for a second, what you would do, when you starve for days. Wouldn’t you try to get some food and water, even when it’s illegal?). The more dramatic the better. The other part of photographers embeded themselves in all the NGOs now taking slowly over after the first days and covering the relief they brought to the people. Also here many complained that the huge coverage of this was far away from reality and that the amount of coverage had nothing to do with the amount of relief that actually reached the people. That as many pointed out, the relief was reaching the people way slowlier than we might have thought, but at the same time the situation was beside exceptions most of the time calm and peaceful, was not what you got out of the media.

EVENTS

It was interesting to see how the coverage happend. For the first days after the earthquake i had no television, but could check the internet. So what i saw in this days was mainly pictures. Good pictures have in events like that a calm deep power to bring it close to you. With all the problems that the coverage itself might have, the pictures did the right job, also because they left out many things. Like a situation of a woman being pulled out from under a house and then seeing the picture of the same situation with six, seven photographers surrounding this two guys from the relief crew who just pulled out a woman from under a broken down house was more than bizzare and it was maybe the first time i really thought something is wrong here. Then, five days into the disaster, i watched CNN for the first time. I switched on the tele and the first thing i saw were two journalists, or better call it commentators, in nice studio light talking about the crazy stuff that happens all day in Haiti. They were obviously standing somewhere a bit higher, looking down in the back on a camp with displaced people. At that point i felt ashamed. It felt like it had become another event to report from. The commentators were looking on the situation without real contact to it, at least it felt like that. This might be wrong and maybe the nice light (wasn’t there a problem with power and stuff?) they were standing in, made it more bizarre. There is no doubt about it that a disaster like that needs te highest amount of coverage possible, but also or just because of that should the journalist not behave more from a listening point of view than shouting it out in the world how horrific and unbelievable the situation is without even trying to really understand it? Shouldn’t journalists not work together and spread out to cover as many different occasions as possible? And shouldn’t they talk with the Haitians to get an understanding what it really means for them, even better let them tell their stories?

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

I was looking for it all the time: That they start reporting not only on two things, the international help and the chaos, but start reporting what the people are going through. That they get deeper in the situations. Where are the stories following the people? Where are the stories about all the Haitians who pulled out way more people than any relief crew? Where are the stories of the Haitians who describe the situation and tell their perspective on it? Where are those stories that step out of the stereotype that a failed state like Haiti can do nothing right without the help of the western world? Isn’t it time that we learn that this is not reality, even when we would like to believe it? There is no doubt that every relief that comes these days to Haiti is good, that every help that really helps the people is good. But isn’t there another side of the story? We should stop to show them only as victims without a voice when we want to understand their situation. Without doing this we just swim in the same stereotype we are swimming in for way too long: The poor black people, not able to get anything running by themselves, but luckily the big western world comes and helps. We have to get into that when we really want to help on a long run and make Haiti something what could last longer than the glimpse of two weeks. When we not only want to bring the relief that billions of donations and the power of international help finally made it good, so we can forget about it again. When we want to keep the attention for the problems and potentials for a longer time and help, we have to understand it. And that is only done with the help of the Haitians. When we do not evolve a interest in their stories, Haiti will become just another goodwill story where no one feels bad about, because we stood together and donated some money, but also a story forgotten in some weeks.

WHAT COULD WE LEARN?

The problem of redundancy and with that the missing deeper stories and photoessays might not be solved in the first days of a disaster like that, but wouldn’t it be an idea as get cooperations running, like big media outlets working together, sending photographers to different places, with clear stories to cover, not this a little bit of everything? That would allow to dig deeper into stories, take more time for these. In times of the internet it could also be easily made accessable. Just think of twitter (a great resource of photography from Haiti these days…) What when photographers operating in a crisis area like that would upload their pictures and then tweet this with a certain hashtag (like Haitiphoto for instance). It would allow a good overview on what happens and the newspapers could pick out the stories they would like to take. This is just an idea and for sure there are some needs in the back to organize that, but it would also allow a bigger freedom to report and dig into stories.

Where are the Haitian photographers? Why were the first groups of journalists or NGOs not coming full with bags of cameras to equip the local photographers that might have lost their stuff, to get them back into the story? They know the place, they speak the language, they have passed through all this, so they have all the sensibility and understanding to cover it, a understanding of the situation that no one else will get close to in a short amount of time. Why not support them in any way possible? I’m not saying they should cover it alone, there is for sure a big need for the best photographers in the world to be there and cover it, but not only! And a big plus with local photographers is also that they could be the ones to cover the long-run stories when the crowd of war(event?)photographers had left for a long time. And it would be the right step to give the people more respect and act from a less voyeuristic point of view. What do you think, how a local photographer or journalist would have told the story of people looting? Without getting deeper into that discussion, would he have called it like that?

Maybe, that is my feeling, reporting from a crisis like that needs less shouting out, but more listening sometimes. And more power to the people, more trying to get their stories if we do not want to end it as a story of the western world intervening in a developing country to help, where we get out with the feeling of ‘just another crisis’ that could have taken place everywhere, more precise in every developing country.

At the end the media is also just a big business, so the amount of really caring for a situation like that might be low, especially when they go with the flow and report 24/7 on it till the point people get tired of it. For sure that is what brings for a short amount of time, when the story is hot, high TV ratings and good selling newspapers, but shouldn’t there be a little bit more sense of duty to do it right and with respect? And this way maybe create an interest for it that lasts longer than two weeks?

]]> http://www.simonsticker.com/2010/01/25/haiti-a-learningful-experience/feed/ 1 http://www.simonsticker.com/2009/12/01/with-our-own-eyes-workshop-a-roundup/ http://www.simonsticker.com/2009/12/01/with-our-own-eyes-workshop-a-roundup/#comments Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:00:19 +0000 admin http://www.simonsticker.com/?p=1361

The mainbuilding of the university of Butare is huge, white with a beautiful green inner quard. It is one of the places what show the reasons behind the project we started earlier this year, called ‚With our own eyes’. Rwanda has been for a long time in the collective mind of most people outside Africa a country tortured by the brutal genocide what killed more than 800.000 people in 100 days and maybe not much less in the after conflict clashes in nearby Congo. When you ask people what they think of Rwanda, most will come up with words like genocide, war and thoughts about a devasted country. The present, 15 years after, looks different and Rwanda has become one of the most emerging countrys in the region.

Earlier this year i came to Rwanda for the first time with the same brutal pictures in my mind. How is life in a country what has gone through all that? How is life today? It totally changed my perspective and even when the genocide is a topic omnipresent in the private lifes, the normal life seems not too much being effected by it. At the same time the Rwandans now have the chance to show their daily life, their conflicts and lovely moment with pictures. More or less everyone has a cellphone and many have cameras in their cellphones or even small digital cameras. Together with the possibilities of the internet, what is better than ever to connect with people and show what you are up to through all the social media plattforms, there is a great chance that the people of Rwanda could share their thoughts, ideas and life with other people around the world. For free, without  any extra money or fancy equipment.

The classroom for the first day of the workshop reminds me of my old classroom i had my physics classes in school in. And i’m quite excited to start with the workshop. The students who attend are studying on pretty diverse topics here at the university. From biologie to cityplanning to IT to journalism. My hope is that through that the ideas of what they wanna tell is as diverse as their interests.

We start the first morning with some classic teaching about photography itself. Not based on the equipment, but focused on what you photograph and what makes a picture more interesting. The point of view, wideangle, close-up, the light, the moment. All the basic stuff, i learned and still improve about in my photographic life. The students take that input and try all the theoretical stuff i teach them out in exercises. It’s great to see that same excitment in their eyes as i had when i grabed a camera for the first time to photograph and not just flick some pictures.

The lunchbreak in the nearby cantina is short. To much to try out and still there is the part about storytelling with pictures left. Coming from the picture itself, how do you tell stories with it? How do you arrange objects to tell the story? How do we look at pictures? What is a photoessay? All those questions seem sometimes to be a bit abstract, but also quite interesting to the students. And it also the key to the last part of our todays workshop day -  the brainstorming for ideas for stories. After that the students will head out to shoot for three days in small groups of two or three photoessays of the stories.

Maybe it was a bit unclear, what is possible in three days and what is possible with pictures when you have never done that before. At least, after the brainstorming, i’m facing stories bigger and more difficult to cover than everything i thought about. Infant mortality for instance, a great topic, but how to photograph without a clear vision. Health in Rwanda. Quite the same. For the next hour we discuss about the different ideas and try to bring them down on a possible level. I don’t know what i expected, but at least less serious stories. At the end they head out to cover topics like poverty, the plans of the goverment to rebuild more or less whole Butare ort he streetkids.

For the next three days the students are out, photographing, gaining information about their topics, all to put together a photoessy of ten to twelve pictures at the end. We meet in the evenings for discussing what they have done so far, what might be missing and how to maybe inprove on the pictures. And the interest in the feedback is huge and some seem to get more and more in their stories. Thoughts of helping the poor family one of the groups visits over the day rise, ideas what aspects might also be intersting for the story. And even when i’m a bit sceptical sometimes if i don’t want a bit too much, something what might not be possible after one day of workshop, they show me something different.

The last day of the workshop starts with a little delay. The projector is at a conference and only available from 5 pm. An hour running around and we have another one. One of the great things in Rwanda is that there is always a way. We had that in the preparation sometimes and even when we back home in Europe where getting nervous, at the end our local coordinator Chris arranged everything, most of the time with no costs. Thanks for that again, mate!

In the meanwhile the students started with putting together their stories. Choosing the pictures and ordering them, making descriptions. All that takes time and as some used the possibilities of digital photography quite intensively, they had sometimes more than 200 pictures to choose from. The lunch break has to get prosponed a couple of times, but at the end all groups have their essays ready to present.

But before the final presentation in the afternoon we come together for on last hour to talk about social media and how to use it. An overview on the different plattforms, the possibilities and how to use the project website are the topics, following the thought that where is the need for great stories and pictures, if no one sees them.

At three, with a couple of more spectators, we start with the final presentation of the essays. I’m quite happy, how deep soem groups dived in the stories and their encouraging talking about the pictures show that. The group covering a story about a poor family won the first price at the end, spending three intensive days with the family, seeing the first moments of the mother coming home from the hospital with her newborn child, photographing the different aspects of their life in the small hut.

We finished the workshop with seven photoessays at the end, covering different stories from poverty to leasure time at campus. All the stories can be seen on the project website, so don’t hesitate to dive into some stories from todays Rwanda.

Chicago is one of the first big cities in the world without a printed daily newspaper. What sounds surprising is just the peak of a crisis journalism in total is coming in right now. There is maybe no newspaper in the world who is not suffering from the lack of advertisments and the new fast ways to share information through the internet. And no one has a concept yet how to make money with providing news in the internet. For sure, journalism in total is at a tipping point. Are journalists the pro bloggers of the future? And who should pay for this at the end? No one seems to have an answer about that right now. But what are the main problems?

The existence of journalism in my mind is based on three main points. The first one is simply: Journalists are at places where others don’t have access to. They provide news from places you would otherwise not even hear about, and that could be in the backroom of a politician or in warzones. The second point is knowledge about the topics, others could not provide. And the third one is the natural filter and the way to put together the important information.

All these three are not existing anymore or at least not to the extend it was. The internet changed the way we get information dramatically. One example is the micro-blogging service twitter. The first information from the plane crash in the Hudson river was found there- by someone sitting in the plane. The after-election clashes in Iran was mostly published through Twitter, Youtube and the likes. And with journalists not allowed to go on the streets, it was for days more or less the only information about it. So coming back to point one, the information going out by anyone, everywhere. We live in a time of total exposure. When politicians start to twitter, to blog the background information only the journalists got before is losing it’s weight. And why doing an interview with a scientist, when he is posting all this through the internet? So is the proper knowledge about the topic still needed by a journalist to do an interview? And what about a filter, one of the things i consider one of the most important points in journalism? Where is the filter when online news magazines do live writing online from press conferences or events, nothing else than a live blog? Journalism is in a crisis for sure.

But what does that mean for photojournalism? Who will fund that if the most powerful pictures are sometimes done with handycams from eyewittnesses of the event? It’s getting more difficult as well, even when the power of pictures will last longer in my opinion and powerful pictures from events and crisis are important and will always be needed. Maybe the question is if photojournalism or journalism in total trys to speed up with the rest and trys not to get lost in this or it will change to more telling long term stories, getting away from focusing on news events to telling stories and putting things in perspective. Deep long term stories might be the future of photojournalism, combining the three points mentioned before again. Good times i’d say! There is a big chance in this changes for sure.

The last point is about the presentation of the content. With the internet getting more and more important and playing a bigger and bigger role, there also has to be found new ways to present the stories. And also in this there is a big chance living in that. For the first time the combination of film and pictures and orginal voices of the people who’s stories you tell makes really sense as a way to provide the stories to a big visual-orientated audience. And the new technical improvements on photocameras support that with HD-Video in most new cameras, allowing to bring together high-quality pictures and high-quality film with one device. Good times!

The Bombay Flying Club, a group of enthusiast photojournalists from Denmark and Canada, made exactly this. They combined film and pictures with orginal sounds and interviews, stepping far back in there role as journalists, letting the people tell their story directly. Film has the big possibility to filter the information on the one hand, but at the same time let the people directly tell their stories. Wasteland is a stunning piece, combining the new possibilities in a great way. The future of photojournalism?

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When you look to Rwanda these days you will see the yearly time of mourning about the genocide of 1994. Only 15 years ago one of the darkest chapters in human history happend in this little country in East Africa with the world looking away. 100 days of killings, 800.000 people dead, killed in the most brutal ways you can imagine with the most primitive weapons like clubs or machetes. And the killings only stopped when the rebels invaded from the north and fought the Hutu militias to flee into nearby Tanzania or Congo, where many of them died shortly afterwards because of starvation and cholera. While the international community stood by and watched at the time the genocide happend, shortly afterwards everyone said only one sentence: Never again!

Rwanda today on the surface feels like a really peaceful country. Nothing what reminds you of the horrific things happend here only 15 years ago, but under this surface you will find a lack of psychological processing. Most of the money which came into Rwanda after the genocide was used to build up infrastructure and get the country going. Where there are no social injustices there is no hate was the thought of the new goverment. And they made great work to fix a country which was so much divided. But under the surface the people tried to forget something which could not be forgotten. It is part of our history, but not part of our future is what you’ll hear when you talk to the people, but after some time you will also hear that they have to suffer about it and some will even say that there is a possibility that something like that could happen again. A example for that is what happend yesterday near Butare, where three survivors of the genocide were killed brutaly, with mutilating their faces. A suspicion is that it was done by one of the many prisoners, responsible for the genocide and now coming out of jail slowly. Maybe it’s the act of a few, maybe it’s a sign which should not be forgotten.

When we remember the people today who died in 1994, we should also think about what is going on in Darfur right now. We should think about what was said after the genocide: Never again! And how the international community fails again… We should also as an act of respect to the people who died, let this truthfully never happen again!

Pictures here.