So with my eagerness to travel and the impossibility of it is this climate, I shoot the R.N.L.I on their many crew nights, launches and returns. Again with everything I document I find it great that these guys Volunteer to do this.
Most of the crew are Firefighters, Police and Ambulance Services in their day jobs but when they have 5 minutes and there bleeper blares at 3 in the morning they get to the boathouse to suit up and rescue some drunk fool on the rocks, or in the worse scenario a lost child in the sea. Either way it is an honour to be allowed the privilege of documenting an on going project on the men and women of Morecambe Lifeboat Station.
Is it ethical to photograph the dead? The dying? The families of those? Maybe, maybe not. Ashley Gilbertson gives an insight about confronting the family of a marine shot dead in Iraq, he photographed him being carried to a black hawk. Its a series of 6 videos and some very powerful stuff, some horrific tales of a photojournalist out there.
So how do I do this? The government has a stranglehold on what the public sees, which is propaganda. Sending an embedded journalist with a Kevlar jacket into a patrol unit in the green zone of Baghdad isn’t really news worthy. I stand by the fact that the Iraq war is the least reported we’ve had our eyes open for. There are millions of other wars being engaged right now, but the death toll is lower (does that matter?). Vietnam was the central explosion of photojournalism on the front line, it was a free reign…which in fact stopped the Vietnam war because so many of these harrowing images were coming back to the public, who called for a stop..among other things. The troops returned and were hounded out by the public because of what they saw. Do you really think America or the UK would allow that to happen again? That images could change their foreign policy like Somalia or Vietnam? I don’t think so, so until then there will be restrictions on images, journalists will be told what to shoot or say, by they way they are embedded with the troops or from a safe distance on top of a luxury media hotel in the suburbs of the green zone. If images do get out…the mass public wont see them, just a select few like myself. Look at the AbuGarib images that were splashed all over the papers? Old news now..nothing changed. Who cares about some Iraqi getting pissed on and humiliated….focus on the hundreds and thousands who were carpet bombed, images of those families and children in the street! It wont happen because it could stop the war that was built…and we can’t let terrorists win can we. Or are they just defending their fucking own homes? I would if the U.S came invading my town.
Head Publisher for Demotix. Photojournalist, Conflict & NGO documentarian. Gonzo participator in journalism. Humanitarian. Occasional Skydiver. Black coffee, two sugars. Views my own.
