It is a poor and disappointing response from Ron Haviv. It is completely meaningless. The Lockheed does not make humanitarian intervention, it sells weapons and help increase the level of violence in the world. It’s more a self-justification than an explanation.
Amorality: When confronted with war torn communities, if one’s first response is to take a photo rather than to drop the camera and try to help in the moment, then that shows a level of detachment that I would find hard to achieve, even for a greater good. Being able to detach like this might enable someone to detach from all moral responsibilities or cut off empathy with the subject, turning them into an object for better or for worse. For better, would be editorial/photo-journalism; for worse, is direct profit. Ron Haviv is simply morally blank, that’s all. So he can take photos of suffering and look at them only in terms of technically good photographs and then consider where in the world he can sell them. That he can see nothing wrong in this moral blankness is not surprising because he’s morally blank.
Propaganda: I wonder how journalists balance this. Is it horribly possible that the closer one gets to Ron Haviv’s position, the better one becomes as a journalist? And, if it’s okay to add smoke to a photo to make it say what you want it to say, how does anyone know if the Ron Havivs of this world aren’t also manipulating their editorial photos for greater effect… Surely not.
Discussion (6 Comments)
Phew…
That was a close one.
Someone else sold the photo, someone else added the graphics, someone else placed it proudly on his website to solicit more.
Hope he somehow managed to make a profit on it.
It is a poor and disappointing response from Ron Haviv. It is completely meaningless. The Lockheed does not make humanitarian intervention, it sells weapons and help increase the level of violence in the world. It’s more a self-justification than an explanation.
Dave, now that you’ve displayed a talent for moral policing in the PJ community, inquiring minds would like to know: who’s next?
Probably the next idiot selling the “noble witness” image through the front door, and guns through the back.
Amorality: When confronted with war torn communities, if one’s first response is to take a photo rather than to drop the camera and try to help in the moment, then that shows a level of detachment that I would find hard to achieve, even for a greater good. Being able to detach like this might enable someone to detach from all moral responsibilities or cut off empathy with the subject, turning them into an object for better or for worse. For better, would be editorial/photo-journalism; for worse, is direct profit. Ron Haviv is simply morally blank, that’s all. So he can take photos of suffering and look at them only in terms of technically good photographs and then consider where in the world he can sell them. That he can see nothing wrong in this moral blankness is not surprising because he’s morally blank.
Propaganda: I wonder how journalists balance this. Is it horribly possible that the closer one gets to Ron Haviv’s position, the better one becomes as a journalist? And, if it’s okay to add smoke to a photo to make it say what you want it to say, how does anyone know if the Ron Havivs of this world aren’t also manipulating their editorial photos for greater effect… Surely not.