An Ebola burial team loads the body of a woman, 54, onto a truck for cremation in the New Kru Town suburb on October 10, 2014 of Monrovia, Liberia. The World Health Organization says the Ebola epidemic has now killed more than 4,000 people in West Africa. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) October 10, 201420 Years of Ebola: And How the Photography Has Changed
An outbreak of the Ebola virus: Ambulance workers have to wear protective clothing and dare not touch victims. Their job is to transport the sick and bury the dead. The virus causes massive hemorrhaging, and is highly infectious. There is no cure, and it kills around half the people infected. World Press Year2000 PhotographerJodi Bieber NationalitySouth Africa Organization / PublicationNetwork Photographers for The New York Times Magazine CategoryPeople in the News stories Prize3rd prize Date00-11-2000 CountryUganda
With all the visual focus on Ebola, I was interested in looking at media photos of the outbreak today as compared to how the news photos of the story have looked over the past two decades. Although this was much more a quick excursion than a grand tour, what was as much or more interesting about the exercise however was the realization and appreciation of how much news photos have changed.
One thing to mention — because knowledge of history is so low and hysteria is always so high — is that Ebola isn’t either new or unusual. As mic.com points out, “there have been at least 33 outbreaks of Ebola since its discovery in 1976″ and “on average, an outbreak of the actual Ebola virus occurs nearly every year.”
The first thing I learned, but which won’t surprise anyone, is captured in the set above. ( The first one taken by John Moore in Liberia on October 10th and the other, ) What is plain to see is how much the news photo has become more artful, more abstract. More Dramatic. More theatrical. Through processing techniques, these (digital?) images apply lighting, contrast and toning for a crisper, sharper and more artistic effect.
I guess we could also say, if we’re looking for a downside, that it makes the practical or more utilitarian aspect of the photo more of a challenge. Both the Bieber and the Moore photo are about the removal of a body, but visual language in the Moore shot takes the liberty of adding more poetry and spiritual symbolism, as if the corpse is ascending to the sky. Whereas the thatched roofs in Bieber’s shots more descriptive of person and place, more utilitarian, Moore’s shot (you can see buildings on the side) is less interested in anchoring the image to place, or to that much context. (Can we be so bold as to say this is true of most news photos today?) It’s more about the darkness and the etherial balance in that cloud, the silvery effect on the white suits, the way that orange plastic pops and the light shimmer off it.
Here are my other takeaways:
EBOLA HAEMORRAGIC FEVER EPIDEMIC IN ZAIRE Stock Photo ID:0000307330-010 Date Photographed:May 19, 1995 Model Released:No Release Property Released:No Release Photographer:Patrick Robert Credit:© Patrick Robert/Sygma/CORBIS
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U.S. Navy microbiologist Lt. Jimmy Regeimbal prepares to test blood samples for Ebola at the U.S. Navy mobile laboratory of on October 7, 2014 near Gbarnga in Bong County of central Liberia. The U.S. now operates 4 mobile laboratories in Liberia as part of the American response to the Ebola epidemic. The disease has killed more than 3,400 people in West Africa, according to the World Health Organization. (October 6, 2014 – Source: John Moore/Getty Images Europe)
It’s interesting looking at this pairing in the Facebook and the selfie age. Looking at various portraits in the more historical Getty, Corbis and World Press edits I drew most heavily on, there were a good share of portraits but they seemed decidedly different than the current standard. How so? It seemed there was much less focus and absorption on the individual as a personality and, instead, a much higher premium on that individual’s role or function. (You can see that especially in these Corbis portraits from DATE/PLACE
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where the subject is photographed for his particular function (seems Warhol was spot on about everyone’s 15 minutes), the intent of the photo so much more interested in his tools and role that he’s not even looking in the camera.
More glorification of the individual and the bestowing of personal notoriety. In these Corbis shots from
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3. Black-and-white
EPIDEMIC STARTED BY THE EBOLA VIRUS IN ZAIRE May 14, 1995 Model Released:No Release Property Released:No Release Photographer:Patrick Robert Credit:© Patrick Robert/Sygma/CORBIS
A Red Cross burial team retrieved the body of Mr. Jerry’s wife, Edwina Doryen. When she got sick, he took her to a local clinic, where they were told she had a chest cold. Finally, with Edwina unable to walk and bleeding from the mouth, Mark carried her on his back and put her in a taxi to the hospital. Turned away for lack of beds, she was taken to an Ebola holding center, where she died Aug. 27.<\/p>”,”short”:”A Red Cross burial team retrieved the body of Mr. Jerry\u2019s wife, Edwina Doryen.”},”credit”:”Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times
I believe all the scenes of protective clothing has more of a symbolic effect than people realize.
20 or so years ago, health workers didn’t have the masks and the technological suits that they do today. In general, there were more photos that showed people’s skin. This may sound ridiculous, but I’ve had the opportunity over the last month or two to talk to quite a few people about this, and the pervasive whiteness (and the high tech quality) of these suits seems to have a telling, if unintended effect.
Even if, looking around the edges of the suit, you see the health worker is black, it still reads to viewers like the responders are white, and thus the response has the sense of whites and the west coming to the rescue.
(caption….)
This photo by John Moore that circulated widely (last month?) is a powerful example. The way the “Africans” are portrayed in the background, in the shadow (pick up text from my Photoville notes), including the technological, the photo almost forces a consideration of color as a symbol of race, culture and power. If it seems to overwhelm the dialogue here, what’s also significant is how much other photographs play the theme even stronger, raising the question or the issue of black-and-white, the relationship between the lighter skinned people and the dark continent, about good and evil to increasing levels of abstraction.
// I believe the protective suit has more of a symbolic effect than people realize. In its technology and pervasiveness whiteness, the photos almost forces a consideration of the high tech protective suit as an allusion to race, culture and power. //
Case in point, we have this image by Benedicte Kurzen, the patient’s face almost too dark to be distinguishable, the Red Cross worker almost a ghost.
Benedicte Kurzen, September 2014./ Noor
“From early morning till late in the afternoon, we followed the Liberian Red Cross. They have a list of people who died and they go to their communities to collect the bodies. Every time the Red Cross workers do the same thing: they wear protective clothing, interview the family, spray the perimeter and the room, and the body. They carefully open the body bag, carry the body outside for pick up — sprayers and volunteers facing each other — and later remove their protective clothing as carefully as they can. Their work is measured, slow: any direct contact with the dead person’s body can be dangerous. In this photo, it is all about the gesture. In this chlorinated, silent corridor, there is little else that can convey humanity besides this gesture. This is one human helping another.”
Read more: Meet the Photographers Covering Ebola – LightBox http://lightbox.time.com/2014/10/02/inside-the-ebola-crisis-the-images-that-moved-them-most/#ixzz3JJQrkr5e
and this photo by Kieran Kesner which literally frames the dichotomy in black and white.
Kieran Kesner, Aug. 28, 2014. Monrovia, Liberia. Kieran Kesner—The Wall Street Journal
“This is a photograph of the first person I saw who had died from the Ebola virus in West Point, Monrovia. After the Liberian government mandated all schools be shut down in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus, the empty rooms of this school were converted into a temporary Ebola holding center. I entered the building alone and photographed the woman from a distance. I began to make my way closer to her, being careful to avoid the puddles of vomit and other pools of still liquid on the cement floor. Standing over her, I noticed the unbroken beads of sweat that remained on her face and realized the woman had only died a few hours before. I took a few steps back as a body removal team entered the room.
Up until this point, to me, Ebola deaths seemed like statistics, but suddenly it had become real. I became enveloped in fear: fear of the invisible killer in the room, fear that I might have made a mistake, fear that I wouldn’t know for days whether or not I was sick, and fear that I would infect my family and loved ones. I desperately wanted to leave the room, to leave the country, to be home, but I couldn’t. I continued to photograph. I watched as the men burdened with the task of removing her body, clad all in angel white, lifted the woman from her mattress and placed her in a body bag on the floor. I photographed as they sprayed her one last time with disinfectant and zipped it shut.”
Read more: Meet the Photographers Covering Ebola – LightBox http://lightbox.time.com/2014/10/02/inside-the-ebola-crisis-the-images-that-moved-them-most/#ixzz3JJQUHAm2
3. Scenes were just stiffer, more formal, less intimate.
Year2000 PhotographerJodi Bieber NationalitySouth Africa Organization / PublicationNetwork Photographers for The New York Times Magazine World Pres Photo CategoryPeople in the News stories Prize3rd prize Date00-11-2000 CountryUganda Place CaptionAn outbreak of the Ebola virus: A woman hands over her child to the ambulance team. The virus causes massive hemorrhaging, and is highly infectious. There is no cure, and it kills around half the people infected.
A health worker carries Benson, 2 months, to a re-opened Ebola holding center in the West Point neighborhood on October 17, 2014 in Monrovia, Liberia. The baby, her mother and grandmother were all taken to the center after an Ebola tracing coordinator checked their temperature and found they all had fever. A family member living in the home had died only the day before from Ebola. The West Point holding center was re-opened this week with community support, two months after a mob overran the facility and looted it’s contents, many denying the presence of Ebola in their community. The World Health Organization says that more than 4,500 people have died due to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa with a 70 percent mortality rate for those infected with the virus. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
Today, images are more dramatic than static. In the past, the scenes were stiffer, more formal, and seemed to concern and limit itself to specific facts. Today, still situational but as interested in spring boarding of the specific details in a suggestive and evocative way, less to inform than to stimulate and engage the imagination.
3a. Seems that photojournalism today is also actively seeking more intimacy and emotion. Question is how much that emotion is tapped in service of the content and the information, how much its using the subject matter as a springboard, and in what instances — such as this powerful image by Glenna Gordon — does the image do both, speaking, in this case, to the intensity, tragedy and the witnessing of harrowing suffering and grief that these aid workers endure.
Five health workers, dressed in head-to-toe ‘Ebola suits’ leave in a pick-up truck 09 April 2005 in Uige, about 300km north of the capital, Luanda, to collect a man dying from haemorrhagic fever. Uige, a town devastated by years of civil war is the epicentre of an outbreak of the killer Marburg virus which has claimed 180 lives so far. AFP PHOTO FLORENCE PANOUSSIAN
We can contrast this AFP photo, taken in April 2005 in ?, expressing the fraternity of aid workers with this photograph by Glenna Gordon taken in Monrovia at the end of September.
Glenna Gordon, Sept. 29, 2014. Monrovia, Liberia.
“Ebola is a disease that divides husband and wife, mother and child, doctor and patient. Health care workers in protective gear that look like space suits attend to patients. Men with chlorine spray-cans take away bodies. Families aren’t given the chance to say goodbye to their loved ones. Because the virus is transmitted through touch, it overrides the basic human need for contact and connection. In this picture, health care workers hold hands and pray before doing the risky work of entering an Ebola isolation ward. They find a way to connect despite the layers of latex. No one wants to be alone when facing Ebola. I’m not a religious person. At times like this though, there’s little to do but hold hands and pray for each other.”
Read more: Meet the Photographers Covering Ebola – LightBox http://lightbox.time.com/2014/10/02/inside-the-ebola-crisis-the-images-that-moved-them-most/#ixzz3JJLuk025
purpose that emotion is generated to bring
4. Still, sense of modern vs. primitive? Overseeing. Overarching. would ring out.
But there’s one thing that still hasn’t changed which are images that symbolically cast the African as the stricken patient and the white westerner as the benefactor or savior.
Military. Link?
(Moore’s picture of the kid.)
Year2000 PhotographerJodi Bieber NationalitySouth Africa Organization / PublicationNetwork Photographers for The New York Times Magazine CategoryPeople in the News stories Prize3rd prize Date00-11-2000 CountryUganda Place CaptionAn outbreak of the Ebola virus: The virus causes massive hemorrhaging, and is highly infectious. There is no cure, and it kills around half the people infected.
Lack of institutions. Somewhat less interest in politics and institutions. More on pain, suffering, dramatic imagery. Lot more focus in Corbis, for example, on role of the church. (Nuns.)
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Institutional section:
Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko (3rd L), under heavy security talks to the press 17 May in the capital of Kinshasa as US evangelical minister Pat Robertson (R) looks on. Robertson brought medical supplies for use in the control of the deadly Ebola virus to Zaire. Seko said it was impossible to prevent people from leaving the city of Kikwit where the disease is concentrated. AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read CORINNE DUFKA/AFP/Getty Images)
Kenyatta National Hospital Consultant on Infectious diseases, Dr Masika Wafula, addresses the journalist outside the emergency wing — A 29-year-old woman died of suspected a Ebola attack at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi where she had been rushed for emergency treatment. Nairobi, Kenya. 22nd December 2011 December 22, 2011 Model Released:No Release Property Released:No Release Photographer:TOM MARUKO / Demotix Location:Nairobi, Kenya Corbis http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/42-31328080/ebola-case-suspected-in-nairobi-a?popup=1
1. There’s actually a country there with it’s own institutions and response.
Pictures then seemed to display more signs of institutional structure. Officials, health workers, clergy all mobilized. Today, the photos make it unclear how much the response is coming from inside the country, from the west or from NGOs.
Maybe it has to do with the amount of coherence and autonomy in the different countries, Zaire in this Getty edit from 1995, for example, as opposed to Liberia today. On the other hand, I’m wondering if photojournalists tend to bypass these more institutional trappings which, as a consequence, makes the population seem for helpless and the country more inept.
NYT Magazine People are barred from entering a certain section of Gulu hospital where there are two wards operating: one for people suspected of having the disease and one for patients certified to have the disease. Photograph by Jodi Bieber/Network Photographers
Table of Contents December 24, 2000
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back up notes/links:
All outbreaks: http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/history/summaries.html
New – portraiture. More intimate. Also, people recovering. Not complete death sentence.
Drama of photos. More cinematic. Bieber burning vs. Moore’s.
Politics – Sirleaf ??