A personal selection of what has caught my eye and why from the file this week
A new front opened up in Iraq as government
troops supported by Shi’ite Popular Mobilization forces started to try to
retake Tal Afar from Islamic State. I really like the strong composition of
this picture. The eye is led from the flags in the foreground through the
picture by a strong reversed S shape as armoured vehicles make their way
through the dust to the distant battle front.
Very much on the theme of strong
composition driving an image, I am drawn to this stark, grey picture from an
oil refinery in Bahrain. It works well for me because the lines of the picture
lead you to people who are so small in the frame that without this visual aid
they’d be almost invisible. The notion of people going for an evening stroll
among the refinery pipelines lifts this picture from something that would be
quite inanimate to something much more intriguing.
Residents are seen taking an evening walk
near the petroleum pipelines of fuel storage tanks of State-owned Bahrain
Petroleum Co (Bapco) refinery in Ma’ameer village south of Manama, Bahrain,
August 22, 2017. REUTERS/Hamad
I Mohammed
Hezbollah fighters walks near a military
tank in the western Qalamoun, Syria, August 23, 2017. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki
I think detail pictures are often some of
the most revealing images from a sequenced picture story. A close-up of an item
can explain so much when we can see every detail. Akintunde Akinleye’s well-observed
picture of a money changer’s tools of the trade is one such case. To me this
picture speaks of poverty but a determination to create wealth through trade.
Old and well thumbed notes are displayed on a very grubby plastic table top.
The coins that look like they may have been cast in a previous millennium
are scattered about or piled
neatly, no doubt according to their value. Lastly, the digital calculator,
which is probably used to haggle and squeeze the exchange rates, is left on a
pot of items that make no sense to me at all. The padlock is unlocked and the money box open and ready for
business. Just from these small details I feel I can almost see the face of the
money trader – can you?
Old Nigerian currency is seen on a ‘carpet’
in a local exchange shop in the old district of Nigeria’s northern city of
Kano, August 24, 2017.
REUTERS/Akintunde Akinleye
It would be wrong to avoid including images
from Yemen of victims being dug out of a housing complex after an air raid.
Again we have to struggle with the topic of showing the effects of war on
civilians, especially children. The pictures shot by Khaled Abdullah are as
powerful as they are distressing and as a professional news photographer
working in a conflict zone he is careful to photograph all he sees to tell the
story fairly and honestly. He presents the most brutal images of dead children,
their faces crushed, their broken bodies covered in dust, being carried away by
rescue workers, alongside pictures of a general view of mechanical earth movers
operating around the destroyed building. Editors must be given all this content
so they can choose what to publish, telling the news but treating their readers
with understanding. My view is that these images of death in conflict should be
published, but in an honest, factual and non-sensationalist way, and with no
hiding from what is going on. At the same time they should never be gratuitous
and should always display humanity. I believe that it’s the first glimpsed
moment of a picture that is burned into the mind forever. Publishers, and
anyone who uses social media -- Twitter, Instagram or Facebook -- is now a
publisher and should shoulder this responsibility. For myself, I added a notice
of graphic content to this post giving the reader the choice to see or not to
see, to know or not to know. I have also left on the graphic content warning on the caption that our clients see too. You may disagree, believing that all should be
seen, thrown into the reader’s face, those images burned into the mind forever,
and I have failed to show the real brutality what is happening. In the picture
I have chosen the child is alive but injured, the rescuers’ body language offering
hope. Others may feel that what I have posted is itself gratuitous, after all
who wants to see pictures of injured children? Khaled followed up on this girl's story and it can been seen here - GRAPHIC CONTENT.
A man carries an injured girl, rescued from the site of a Saudi-led air strike in Sanaa, Yemen August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
People search under rubble of a house destroyed by an air strike in Sanaa, Yemen August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Often it's timing that makes a simple picture a little bit special. Luc Gnago's picture of of a sick man waiting to attend church is one of these. The three figures are joined by a moment in time. You look up from the sick man's head along the covered leg of the man in the rear, his hand reaching forward to connect to the woman in the foreground, his orange scarf only just touching the blue of the woman's robe . Your eye is led back down the picture through her hand and back ti the sick mans head, the cycle complete. And all this in a picture that on the surface looks like two people just walking past someone who is lying sick on the ground.
Members of the Celestial Church of Christ walk next to a sick man before worship at the church in Abidjan, Ivory Coats, August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Luc Gnago
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