“I can’t take this photo. I must take this photo.” - Part One: Ukraine
History-defining photos and the brave hearts behind the lens.
Over the coming weeks I will be publishing a series called “I can’t take this photo. I must take this photo.”
As we witness the calamities in Ukraine and reflect on the human cost of this war, this series seeks to shine a light on photojournalism, photojournalists, and equip us to look with courage and a critical eye.
In memory of the photojournalists who died whilst reporting in Ukraine in the last few weeks: Pierre Zakrzewski, Oleksandra Kuvshynova and Brent Renaud.
This is Part One: Ukraine.
Barely two weeks ago, photojournalist Lynsey Addario watched a mother, her two children and an adult companion attempt to run across a bridge that spanned the Irpin River. A Russian mortar hit just as the family made it over, into Kyiv. Addario took the above photo of their four bodies splayed in the street.
The words running through Addario’s mind right before she took this photo were, “I can’t take this photo. I must take this photo.”
The image she took, as seen above, swiftly became a defining war photo.
Photojournalist Robert Capa once said: “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” Whether Capa was talking about distance or empathy, the photojournalists documenting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could not be closer in either regard.
“Lens to her eye, Addario is an artist of empathy, a witness not to grand ideas about human sacrifice and suffering, but to human beings, simply being.”
— Boston Globe
Lynsey Addario and Tyler Hicks are known globally as courageous chroniclers of the human cost of war. They are among countless war photojournalists who risk their lives to capture these images. I have had the privilege of exhibiting their work on several occasions, and to be deeply humbled by their courageous work.
For the last month, they have been on the ground in Ukraine, capturing the scenes and sharing these images with the world via Instagram and The New York Times.
These images are hard to look at. Being able to watch, through the photojournalist’s lens, as the conflict unfolds and the Ukrainian people fight to the death for their freedom, we understand that what we are looking at is not only news but also the fate of societies. Just like Steve McCurry’s 1984 image Afghan Girl, these are images that will never be erased.
Much like Lynsey has confronted the impossibility of taking these images, you might have found yourself other side bracing yourself to receive them. “I can’t look at this photo. I must look at this photo.”
Editors historically have been uncomfortable showing faces of the dead or severely injured, including graphic photos showing blood. Early photos of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, looked almost like paintings done entirely in a beige pallet showing sand dunes and tanks. Not a splash of red blood or a body to be seen. Photos like these sanitise the horrors of war and make the privacy argument less persuasive. Photographers have the courage to show us exactly what’s happening in these fraught and dangerous situations. And newsrooms must have the courage to publish them.”
— Karen List, professor in the journalism
The images we are seeing are devastating, graphic, heart wrenching. But it is through the lens that Lynsey and her colleagues are telling us this story.
While Lynsey’s photos have a distinctive aesthetic quality, they nevertheless contain and convey the unsettling closeness of the journalist herself. She does not use flash, and her work always has a renaissance sense in composition and colour. However, there is nothing premeditated about them.
Lynsey’s images are stunningly cinematic, strange, and evocative. But they are not sensationalist. These images are not shot through the photojournalist’s camera as if it were a gun. Rather, the lens is a keyhole looking into a concurrent reality, the stories of our fellow human beings. These images are humanity, caught — miraculously, impossibly — in all its fragility.
Who to follow
Lynsey Addorio @lynseyaddario
Emilio Morenatti @emilio_morenatti
Wolfgang Schwan @wolfgang_schwan
Aris Messinis @aris.messinis
Chris McGrath @cmcgrath_photo
Erin Trieb @erintrieb
Mstyslav Chernov @mstyslav.chernov
Mikhail Palinchak @mpalinchakphoto