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A subject that I’ve been itching to discuss regarding photography is the controversy behind several infamous photographs. Here are two that I find fascinating in particular:

1. Walski War-Photo

Top: Altered composition. Bottom left: Original photo 1. Bottom right: Original photo 2.

April 2003: This digital composite of a British soldier in Basra, gesturing to Iraqi civilians urging them to seek cover, appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times shortly after the U.S. led invasion of Iraq. Brian Walski, a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times and a 30-year veteran of the news business, was fired after his editors discovered that he had combined two of his photographs to “improve” the composition.

A quote from Walski:

“Great photographers who can compose pictures under that kind of intensity–I’m amazed by how they can do it. Things are happening so fast. You have to watch out for yourself, and look what’s going on to be able to compose pictures. I had ten frames of soldier totally cut off. At some point I must have zoomed out. When that guy came up with the baby, I shot off ten more frames. I had just one where you could see the soldier’s face. The others he was turned away. I put four pictures on my laptop. I was going back and forth. There was no reason to do [what I did]. I was playing around a little bit. I said, ‘that looks good.’ I worked it and sent it….I wasn’t debating the ethics of it when I was doing it. I was looking for a better image. It was a 14 hour day and I was tired. It was probably ten at night. I was looking to make a picture. Why I chose this course is something I’ll go over and over in my head for a long time. I certainly wasn’t thinking of the ramifications.”

This photograph and the controversy surrounding it has always interested me because I spend an inordinate amount of time fiddling with photographs on Photoshop mixing and matching things for posters and other graphic design-related things, and I had never really considered the ethics of photography. Something about this goes back to the adages that “one picture is worth a thousand words” and how that is certainly true in many cases (making cinema convey…the most?).

The altered photograph is a very visually striking and emotional image. It speaks volumes, showing a British soldier and civilians under fire in Basra. The combination of the soldier’s gesture and the desperate look of the man with a child in his arms creates a very powerful composition.

To me this whole fiasco just emphasizes how the art of photography is so dependent on chance: the right actions at the right moments in time. It reminded me most of all (unsurprisingly) of a scene from the thriller One Hour Photo where Robin Williams’ character is a photo technician who says: “I’m sure my customers never think about it, but these snapshots are their little stands against the flow of time. The shutter is clicked, the flash goes off, and they’ve stopped time, if just for the blink of an eye. And if these pictures have anything important to say to future generations, it’s this: ‘I was here’. ‘I existed’.”

 

2. Vietnam Execution Photo

Last class we talked a lot about death and how the Chaudhary photograph depicted the aftermath of violence with the ruins and the skulls strewn all over the foreground. This next photo is an infamous depiction of that moment of death.

Man with gun: Nguyen Ngoc Loan     Man being executed: Nguyen Van Lem

This photograph by Eddie Adams was taken the split second after Ngoc Loan pulled the trigger that sent a bullet into Van Lem’s head. Van Lem’s expression is a death grimace of pain as the bullet entered his skull. According to sources, a closer examination of the picture reveals the bullet actually exiting Van Lem’s skull.

The controversy over this photograph is extremely fascinating. It won the Pulitzer in 1969 for how it created “an immediate revulsion at a seemingly gratuitous act of savagery that was widely seen as emblematic of a seemingly gratuitous war”. (NY Times) Yet most viewers of this photograph don’t know the story behind it, which is vital to understanding the image. Photographer Eddie Adams is quoted as saying: “Two people died in that photograph: the recipient of the bullet and General Nguyen Ngoc Loan”. Ngoc Loan, the executioner, was forced to retire and as his reputation was sullied by misinterpretation of the photograph, since everyone ignorant of the story behind the famous photo demonized him and his action.

With North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive beginning, Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam’s national police chief, was doing all he could to keep Viet Cong guerrillas from Saigon. As Loan executed a prisoner who was said to be a Viet Cong captain, AP photographer Eddie Adams opened the shutter. Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for a picture that, as much as any, turned public opinion against the war. Adams felt that many misinterpreted the scene, and when told in 1998 that the immigrant Loan had died of cancer at his home in Burke, Va., he said, “The guy was a hero. America should be crying. I just hate to see him go this way, without people knowing anything about him.”

Adams later told Time: “The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths … What the photograph didn’t say was, ‘What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?

General Loan was what you would call a real warrior, admired by his troops. I’m not saying what he did was right, but you have to put yourself in his position…This picture really messed up his life. He never blamed me. He told me if I hadn’t taken the picture, someone else would have, but I’ve felt bad for him and his family for a long time. I had kept in contact with him; the last time we spoke was about six months ago, when he was very ill. I sent flowers when I heard that he had died and wrote, “I’m sorry. There are tears in my eyes.”

Impartially, there is no real right and wrong. It’s wrong to take another person’s life, but what does that mean in the context of war? Technically we don’t even know the “full” story since everything from Adams is biased from his point of view. But in any case it is still jarring to realize how one photograph can ruin someone’s life forever.