Yes, there are definitely streets in Haiti not in chaos. Many parts of the country were hardly affected by the earthquake.
This is something we talk about and think about all the time. A photographer was telling me the other day that he spent all morning with a US food distribution truck. Most of the drops were perfectly peaceful and civilised; at one of them, though, things got out of hand and there was some serious rioting. He filed maybe 50 shots of the day: guess which ones everyone bought.
What do you do about this? You have to remember that we are not the ones shaping the product you actually see. And that does affect the way you work, because it can be frustrating spending time creating something only to find that broadcasters are not interested in it.
So the first point is that it's naive to pretend this isn't a commercial thing, and there is nothing wrong with that as far as it goes. Another point though is just more practical: it's very hard to tell a story about somewhere quiet and uneventful. It could be done if you could find an interesting story to tell - let's say a quiet Haitian town with very little money where residents are nevertheless raising funds to help out those in a nearby town destroyed by the earthquake. I don't know if that's happened, but that's an example of an interesting story which would allow you to go somewhere and show pictures of a more peaceful side of Haiti. But you need SOMETHING to say, do you see what I mean?
At the end of the day I have to rely on other parts of the media to give people the full context for something - the news itself is there for a very specific job. This year I made six films about normal, peaceful cultural life in Botswana. The reason for that is that if there is an earthquake in Botswana tomorrow, I can cover it and know that I as a journalist, or let's say AFP as a company, has in the long term balanced their news coverage with lifestyle pieces as well. Whether broadcasters choose to use it or not is something I can't do anything about. But you can't do everything at once. The problem with Haiti, perhaps, is that so few journalists ever went there before this disaster.
There is also a personal side to it. People are being raped and killed next-door to my hotel, and there's no way I'm fucking off to the leafy suburbs as long as that's happening.
This is something we talk about and think about all the time. A photographer was telling me the other day that he spent all morning with a US food distribution truck. Most of the drops were perfectly peaceful and civilised; at one of them, though, things got out of hand and there was some serious rioting. He filed maybe 50 shots of the day: guess which ones everyone bought.
What do you do about this? You have to remember that we are not the ones shaping the product you actually see. And that does affect the way you work, because it can be frustrating spending time creating something only to find that broadcasters are not interested in it.
So the first point is that it's naive to pretend this isn't a commercial thing, and there is nothing wrong with that as far as it goes. Another point though is just more practical: it's very hard to tell a story about somewhere quiet and uneventful. It could be done if you could find an interesting story to tell - let's say a quiet Haitian town with very little money where residents are nevertheless raising funds to help out those in a nearby town destroyed by the earthquake. I don't know if that's happened, but that's an example of an interesting story which would allow you to go somewhere and show pictures of a more peaceful side of Haiti. But you need SOMETHING to say, do you see what I mean?
At the end of the day I have to rely on other parts of the media to give people the full context for something - the news itself is there for a very specific job. This year I made six films about normal, peaceful cultural life in Botswana. The reason for that is that if there is an earthquake in Botswana tomorrow, I can cover it and know that I as a journalist, or let's say AFP as a company, has in the long term balanced their news coverage with lifestyle pieces as well. Whether broadcasters choose to use it or not is something I can't do anything about. But you can't do everything at once. The problem with Haiti, perhaps, is that so few journalists ever went there before this disaster.
There is also a personal side to it. People are being raped and killed next-door to my hotel, and there's no way I'm fucking off to the leafy suburbs as long as that's happening.
Reply
Leave a comment