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 the most tragic stories that happend to get into the media from the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake was the story of Fabienne, a 15-year-old girl that was shot dead by the police on January 19th. Her death got a lot of attention through different media outlets also because heaps of photographers where there at the time she was shot. Some even thought she might become a symbol for the earthquake it it’s aftermath, what is problematic in my opinion. The problem is when a tragic event like Fabienne’s death would become a symbol for the earthquake, it would also be a symbol for many stereotypes and the focus the media has put on single stories in the aftermath. On the other hand, it is disturbing to read that the day after no one was there to talk to the family. But build your own opinion.

Photographer Nathan Weber was also there and captured the tragic moments on video (what you can see to the left). Pete Brook over at Prison Photography has made a full account on Fabienne’s story with interviews with many of the eyewitnesses. Read it here to get the full picture.

I went to Paris for a meeting with Jean-Marie Theodat on Monday after a short weekend in the snow with some climbing in Fontainebleau (I’ll post some pictures later.). Jean-Marie is a professor in geography and came to France 30 years ago from Haiti. He is one of the few who actually did profund research on Haiti. The main task for our meeting was a conference about Haiti and some bigger projects that will start in the summer. He is going back to Haiti soon in order to do research about the biggest needs and ways to build a sustainable future for the country. One part of this will be a documentary project we started working on these days, what might also bring me to Haiti in the summer for some time. On the long run helping to build a working education system for the country might become his biggest and most important project.

Before i left to get back to Germany in order to pack my stuff for going back to Copenhagen on Saturday, we found some time to sit down and Jean-Marie gave me a short interview about Haiti’s history, geographical influences, Port au Prince, problems and possible ways to build a sustainable future. I think it is really important for all future concepts that intend to help Haiti for a sustainable future to get as much understanding for the country as possible with it’s history, culture, social and geographical structure. So Jean-Marie Theodat might be a good start to listen to someone who knows about all that. Here is the Interview:

Part I: Introduction…..Part II: History…..Part III: Port-au-Prince…..Part IV: The Problem of Brain Drain…..Part V: The Earthquake…..Part VI: A Path for the Future

(click on the links to get to the films)

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/2010/01/14/haiti/ http://www.simonsticker.com/2010/01/14/haiti/#comments Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:23:18 +0000 Simon Sticker http://www.simonsticker.com/?p=1531

As there are no words for the nightmare that hit Haiti two days ago, a country which was even before the earthquake lacking proper medical care and is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. I only wanna show you this short piece by Oxfam and encourage you to donate to one of the following organisations you could find here. Thank you! For the most actual updates check this list on twitter.