Photo-power in war!

Photographs are interesting communication objects. They keep the memories alive. One look at them and you would feel as though you were back in that good ol' times, or maybe some, not so good.

In a radio transcript from ABC Radio National on 'The power of the photograph' (2007), Sonja Heizmann shared about the photo gallery in Dubrovnik that was showcasing war photographs of Lebanon and Israel. Nonetheless, the city of Dubrovnik itself has had suffered much war in the early 1990s and like Funnell (2007) says, "... most of the locals would rather forget the war. But a photographic gallery in the city's centre is trying to keep the memory alive."

The gallery's curator, Wade Goddard, said that Dubrovnik was an appropriate place to hold the exhibition because it had suffered one of the worst wars in the century (cited in Funnell 2007). He probably figured that the people of Dubrovnik could related to the victims of war because they had experienced it once before.


(Source: Sinclair 2006)
This picture showed a relative of the Lebanon-Israel war victim holding pictures of her loved ones in a mass funeral.

This supports one of Schriver's (1997, p. 365) theory that 'individuals share an incredible variety of connections between signs and meanings'. Thus, reading and understanding the photographs become a social act that depends on the shared meanings between the Dubrovnik community and the victims of war.

(Source: Morris 1991)

Caption: Serbian soldiers ducking shots from Croatian fire

Besides that, Wade Goddard made an interesting point when he said that photographers were the ones at the scene while editors and publishers, who were not, schemed up ideological ways to tell the story (cited in Funnell 2007). There is always the issue of reporting objectively, accurately and completely. However, in a study by Renita Coleman (2006, p. 835), it was discovered that the effects of photographs improved ethical reasoning of decision makers in journalism. She said that images could cause people to become aroused and thus, to generate more thoughts and evidently, these emotion-evoking images would stimulate people to think more rationally (Coleman 2006, p. 836-837).

Photographs do leave big impacts and impressions on their viewers. Sometimes, they can't simply be judged at face value as they can speak more than words can say. The next time we look at a picture, let us not only think about what it is trying to tell us, but also to relate it socially. And as journalists (though I am not one... yet), allow these photographs to help us make conscientious decisions in our reporting.



References:

Coleman, R 2006, 'The effects of visuals on ethical reasoning: what's a photograph worth to journalists making moral decisions?', J&MC Quarterly, vol. 83, no. 4, pp. 835, 850.

Funnell, A 2008, 'The power of the photograph', ABC Radio National, viewed 14 November 2009, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2051819.htm>.

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, viewed 14 November 2009, <http://www.library.unisa.edu.au/webservices/fedoraldap/default.aspx?bibid=556340>.