Tim Hetherington collection and Conflict Imagery Network

Mike Kamber: “My name is Mike Kamber, I'm the, the founder here at the BBC and we want to thank everybody for coming tonight. We're excited about the event. There'll be some people trickling in because I know a lot of people are coming after Work, so there'll be a few more people coming. And we're particularly, you know, gratified that everybody came tonight. Tim, Tim helped get this place going. Tim was my roommate back in the day, and he helped do a lot of the thinking and discussions around this place, and then his, his death in 2011 was actually the catalyst. We, Tim and I were saying, “Well, we don't have the money to start it,” you know, and then when he was killed, Jeremiah Zagar and a few other friends said, “Let's just get some volunteers and just get that place started up.” So that's, that's how the BBC started and that's why we're here today, so, yeah. 

[Applause]

OK. Real quick, we've got an exhibition Peter Van Agtmael is opening next week across the street. We've got a gallery about three times the size across the street, and then our students, we've got about 100 students in our after-school programme; they've got a big show in June, so I'll check that out and we've got our Latin American photo festival in July, so there's a lot, a lot coming up. 

We're back in person, nothing's on Zoom, so come on out please. So, I'm going to read the bios quickly and then we can get to it. We're pretty informal here, so if you have questions, you know this is always better when it's a real conversation instead of just people sitting here listening to, to folks go on, so please interject if there's something you want to know about. And I thought I'll read these bios and then I've got a clip of Tim, it's about two minutes long, it's an informal interview I did with him, me and Shoshanna, a bunch of years ago. And so, we'll roll that, and then we'll get into some questions real quick. So, I need my glasses.  So, this is my friend Sebastian. He is an American journalist, author and filmmaker. He's noted for his book, The Perfect Storm, True Story, Bet Against the Sea, creative non-fiction work which became a bestseller. He's also known for his documentary film, Restrepo and Korengal, which he filmed with Tim, with Tim Hetherington they were, they were filmmaking partners and just and best friends. He also wrote the book War, which was published in 2010. He’s been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and a special correspondent for ABC News. He's received both a National Magazine Award and a Peabody Award. Thank you Sebastian for coming up.

And Stephen Mayes is also an old friend. We were saying Stephen Mayes was here, that the night we opened up in 2011. It's great to have you here again. You've been here many times since then, of course.”

Stephen Mayes: “Absolutely.” 

Mike Kamber: “Stephen’s an American photographer. He's worked within the fields of photography, art and journalism since 1987. He was the vice president of Getty Images and the New York head of the VII Photo Agency. From 2004 to 2012 he was secretary to the jury of the World Press Photo Contest, and he is currently the head of the Tim Hetherington Trust, so, great to have you here, Stephen. 

Lauren Walsh teaches at the New School NYU, New York University, she's the director of the Gallatin Photojournalism Lab, which has actually sent us some tremendous people over the years and we're always grateful they come up here a lot and some of them volunteer.”

Lauren Walsh: “I’m glad to hear they’re doing well.” 

Mike Kamber: “She's also the director of Lost Roles America and National Archive of Photography and Memory. Walsh's newest book is ‘Through the Lens: The Pandemic’ and ‘Black Lives Matter’ was just published this year; great book, really worth looking at. Her other books include ‘Conversations on conflict photography from 2019’ and ‘Shadow of Memory’ from last year. She has also published widely in mainstream and academic journals and anthologies. So, thank you.

Ira Lupu is a photographer, multimedia artist and writer born in Odessa, Ukraine. She currently is based in New York City. She is a graduate of the New Media Narratives programme at ICP International Centre of Photography. She's also a graduate of Victor Marchenko's School of Photography in Kyiv. Her ongoing project on dreams and screens focuses on the experiences of six online sex workers in Ukraine and the US. It explores the place where an electronic body transitions into a real one. Initially supported by the, is it pronounced sibili?”

Ira Lupu: “Ability.”

Mike Kamber: “Typical American…Photography and Multimedia Museum. The project was published in the British Journal of Photography, Vogue Italia, ID and exhibited through Copenhagen Photo Festival. She's also been involved in the Bristol, Bristol Photo Festival, Verzasca Foto Festival and Odessa Photo Day Group. She'll be exhibited this year at the Rotterdam photo and Rotterdam artwork, Rotterdam, Rotterdam Art Week. So, I want to thank everybody for coming and we'll get rolling. Can we, Cynthia, can you help us out and just we'll see that first clip of Tim, it’s just a couple of minutes long.”

Tim Hetherington: “My parents always moved around when I was growing up. I lived all over the place in Britain. I never had a community life, I'm a chameleon and what I do now is, is a reflection of that. Images seems to be the most useful way to, to, to try and work out who I am and who, what is this? What is the world? My relationship to it and it and my place in it.

And so, the photographs act as both maps of the subjects that I photograph, but also of myself, they’re subjectively that way. And you know, my whole, my whole practise I think is about a journey to find the world and to find myself in the world.

I find that wire photography, I find people that do that really amazing because they can make very beautiful pictures all the time, and it's not the, the ability that I, I can make a beautiful picture, I think we all have the capacity to make beautiful pictures but what that tells me about the wire photographers is that they have the energy to do that day in day out and that I find increasingly that I can't, that for me photographs or images are emotional investments, and that I'm unwilling to go on the streets here in New York with a camera because it's making, I see something because even that action of making the photograph for me is a confrontation that takes emotional energy and so I’m not going to do it.

And increasingly for me, the worry with my work as I get older is that it, it takes my projects take so much emotional investment, I invest so much of myself emotionally into my work that it's completely exhausting and then as I get older I worry about, like how can I have a relationship or have a family and do this, and yet really, that's what my work’s about, it demands that, really.”

Interviewer: “I mean, how long can you do it for do you think? Another 10 years, 15 years?”
 

Tim Hetherington: “I have no idea. I try to get that out of my head. I kind of look into my work and what do I do and what do I give value to, and I give value by the emotional closeness that emotional closeness, I think. I can bring people connection to the subject matter in a way that a lot of image makers don't do that, I can do that. I often think about stopping work and just stopping it, I'm not interested, it's just too, too much, too much. I don’t want to have this in my life, this thing. 

Whenever the day comes where I die, whatever it is in terms of being hit by a bus or die peacefully when I’m older hopefully or whatever. I think that, like you know, I'll never, I'll never kind of think that I didn't have a, a real life full of experiences, I really kind of saw all kinds of stuff. It’s great, it’s very satisfying.” 

Mike Kamber: “Sorry to end on that note, and I think we'll just roll, this is just a group of photos that we've collected that, you know, were on Tim’s hard drive. There's work from Afghanistan, there's a lot of work from Libya that I know people have never seen because it has never been published. There's some of his Sleeping Soldiers stuff. So, we're just going to loop this and it's not in any particular order, it's not meant to correspond to any specific thing that somebody might be saying so, but it's just as a background reference, so. But it might also bring up questions and ideas for you in the audience. We'll go from there. So, one of the things that we really want to talk about tonight is the way things, the way the whole digital revolution has transformed, where we're at, where we're at today. And I was wondering if I could ask you, Lauren, about that. Tim shot a lot on film, and he shot a lot of long-term projects, and he did, you know, focus on conflict but things have in ten years, things have transitioned so much digitally, and there's just such a profusion of images, and I'm wondering if you, you have any thoughts on Tim’s work visually where we are today? I know that’s a very general question but...”

Lauren Walsh: “I mean, well first also, just thank you for having me here and thank you everyone. I think with regard to the question of how is the digital landscape transformed the field, a few things come to mind, and I think they have, there are positives and then there are negatives. And so, some of the positives would be that there is a greater ability for journalists, photojournalists around the globe to get their images out and seen whereas historically it was much harder if you were not, let's say, western, to get your images published widely. So, I think that's one of the positives.

I think one of the cons or at least things to be thinking about is as you're saying, if there's a kind of really crowded visual landscape, how do you get people to pay attention to your image? And I think there can often be a bit of a cut-throat race to make things more sensational because that will grab eyes but then, like, how far does that go? Like how, how much sensation do you have to create? And I think the other thing for me in terms of digital is that it in some regards means we get the information faster, but it also means that bad actors are more quickly responding to, let's say, the conflict photographer wherever they're based. It's easier to figure out who they are to try to track them or target them.”

Mike Kamber: “Can you say more about that in terms of target, targeting? You're, you're saying just because of purely because of the digital locations involved?”

Lauren Walsh: “Yeah, I mean, if you're publishing, let's say, in nearly real time, right, your location, even if broadly like they know where you are based broadly but we also now for the photojournalist who is in a conflict zone, if, if journalists are being targeted, they have to be really smart about cyber detection, right? And like turning off certain geolocations that they can't be picked up by anyone who's trying to monitor where they are.”

Mike Kamber: “Right. Yeah, that's something that Tim, Tim didn't have to think about 10 years ago. Opens up a whole line of, yeah. 

I've got a quick question for you, not a quick question, but you know I got to New York in 1986 or something and you know, I began to meet these older photographers and they were, you know, the whole their whole mantra was you know, photography is obsolete, photojournalism is dead, you know, and every 10 years like I hear this conversation. It's not relevant anymore, you know, you as a Ukrainian can you talk about how you feel in terms of how, has photography been central to public awareness?”
 

Ira Lupu: “Yeah, I think it's interesting how it's not only the tools that with which we produced photography changed. It's also in this, like, current like social media era, it's like even the way how we consume information about war and how we even because let's put it this way, I think this war is probably one of the first in the world that is being not just televised but like streamed. It's not the first one when we have social media, I think it's been like pretty like a lot of conflicts, but I think it's characteristic to Ukraine that even in poor areas, like almost every farmer would have like a smartphone. Also, for now we have like a quality of image it's kind of like good. So, for example, the way I've been consuming information about war and building my own movie of the war, which by the way, like every person now has like their own movie, right? Because we don't have a straightforward way to consume all of that. It's been mixed between the official information from the media, but also like as a Ukrainian like I track all the like telegram channels and like immediate information, air raid alerts and all that stuff. And of course, like I'm, and to every Ukrainian, is technically exposed to, like, enormous amounts of immediate information, yeah. And then maybe, like the most, the most I don't know, like bright or interesting or like sensational clips, of course, they get spread like further, but this is like immensely big part, like for viewing this war right now.”

Mike Kamber: “Right. It's amazing because when I started covering conflict in the 1980s and 90s until we got to the airport and got our film back to New York or Miami, there were no pictures coming out. So, it's completely, um…yeah…live feed. Yeah, it’s astonishing.”

Ira Lupu: “Yeah, there was just like a bombing the other day in Odessa, where, like, part of my family is. And it was like the first bombing, like, of this scale. It was infrastructural but still, you know, it's kind of like nerve-wracking, especially after months that nothing like was happening. And for me, you know, even though it's forbidden right now to be immediately publishing the consequences of bombings because it is said that it will help like Russian soldiers to kind of like, correct their targets and the next hit would be more efficient. But for me, it's like technically, of course, when it was like the first bombing and like one Western journalist immediately put everything out, he was extradited from the country already, and at least I was able to see I’m like, oh, it's not in my neighbourhood, but it's in the neighbourhood where, like, a lot of hospitals are and also my ex-boyfriend lives there. So that's good. Yeah. So, it's like a very different way, yeah. Consuming.” 

Mike Kamber: “And so that gives us a lot to talk about right there. Yeah, yeah. Steven, you, you knew Tim well and he was a friend of yours. How do you think he would, how do you think do you think he would be in Ukraine today if he was alive and how do you think he'd be approaching it? Because Tim never did what the press did; Tim was always doing something else.”

Stephen Mayes: “Some of my, my too much feared words are ‘Tim would’. We have no idea, he had no idea even, he had, he had strong ideas about how he wanted to get somewhere and not so much where he wanted to get to, I think. But yes, he would have taken intense interest I think that's, that's for sure whether we’ve been there or not. But I think it's it's, you know, Tim was what's one of the many fascinating things about Tim was that he was really, he wasn't really about the medium of photography; he used the medium of photography, that's not what drove him. He was really a curiosity and I think that's, you know, any discussion of photography starts, obviously with technology because it's a technological medium dating back to 1840, but I think it, it's, it shouldn't end with technology. Obviously the changes we're seeing at the moment in the media how it works, and everything are very technologically driven but I think just in the same way that photographers are likely to be the last people in the world to find out what's happening with the visual image because we're so mired in the history of photography and the practise of photography, there's almost other stuff happening around imagery we're not paying attention to. I think the same is true of the media in general. Like the last people, we need to ask about how to fix the media is the media. I think that the, the conversation really lined up here there should be psychologist, you know, expecting communication, there should be a gaming person that gets them to gamify, who understands how social, you know, how they socialised information. There needs to be a hacker, there need to be advertising person. I mean, these are the people who are actually really driving communications at the moment. The media is tagging along to doing what they can from yesterday's market but yeah, I think we're looking in the wrong place for our answers on this panel to be honest. Because it's this stuff is happening out there which is very fast, very live, technologically- driven, but what we forget in that is that there really isn’t an us and them situation. 

At this particular moment, you know, where, where information has become so politicised and polarised, there's a feeling of us and them. Like you know, I believe this and they believe that, truth is, we all work on the same psychology. And if I'm going to be critical of anyone for how they think, I have to go by that same criticism myself because we, we all boil in the same pot, you know, we're all humans. And I think that's really, really important to remember that there are no monsters out there, but people doing monstrous things. We, we're all cut from that same cloth, and I think that's really what we need to focus on rather than technology which separates us, you know, combines us, whatever or, or political attitudes, which obviously, very obviously separate at the moment. And particularly, you know, in Ukraine at the moment.  It's not really about the separations that has to be about any of the similarities and then figuring out how do we, how do, how is that affecting me and my reception of information, what do I do with that information? Rather than saying I'm sitting on some kind of high hill with no review of what's going on and see this, this and this. I'm part of that scene; we all are. We have to include ourselves in that.” 

Stephen Mayes: “Right. Yeah, very much so, yeah. Um, Sebastian, I was going to ask you, I mean, you've, you've written books on war, made, made, made movies about war, can you. what is your, what is your impression of, of what's happening in Ukraine through, through images and video?”

Sebastian Junger: “The first war I was in was Sarajevo was in Bosnia in 1993 and it reminds me a lot of that. I mean, first of all, you have a professional army, that's encircling, bombarding cities, trying to lay siege to them, yeah, using snipers to terrify the population to drive them out using it seems, it seems that they're using rape. So random execution, I mean all the things that made Bosnia sort of so newsworthy and horrifying when I was there, they, they seem to be doing it again. Kosovo was the same way, I was there as well and the power of the image to sort of shake the worlds morally and wake, wake the world up and get them, get the world to act is, I mean, had a huge impact on the war in Bosnia and it's and it still is today. 

And I mean one of, I mean this is rusty, my mind is rusty and this is a long time ago, but if I remember correctly, one of the things that sort of galvanised a direct NATO ultimatum and ultimately action was just another mortar round landed in a marketplace and killed a bunch of people but there happened to be a News Group right there and the footage was absolutely horrific and the, and, and it recorded like from the first, you know, wounded people dragging themselves towards the camera and just unthinkable things, things you can't unsee, you know. I mean, just awful.

And, and that, that affected the war on a military level, right, because the world, NATO was pushed basically like we can't, um, it presented the world with something that it couldn't live with, and obviously that has just happened in Ukraine. I mean, these ghastly executions and that seems to be the towns around Kyiv, um, that now all of a sudden, you know, Europe, the EU is talking about no more Russian coal, no more this and that. I mean, they have, it has real consequences and quite quickly. And I don't think, and you know, I mean, I'm a writer, right? And I believe in words, and they have enormous power in certain circumstances, but I don't believe an article about that would do the same thing. I don't think it would have the same effect, same information, etcetera, I don't think it had the same, there was something about those lonely bodies, like in the streets that just, you can't, you can't look at them, you can't accept it.” 

Mike Kamber: “Tim, Tim was also very interested in, you know, kind of the universality of war. And he, you know, he would talk about Homer and, you know, the Iliad and the Odyssey. And, you know, we would have these arguments and, and it's, it's interesting that they're saying, you're seeing the same dynamics play out today as, you know. And I was with you in in Monrovia when the capital was surrounded, being bombarded and the presence of the press helped to provoke a…”

Sebastian Junger: “Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah and Tim was, Tim was very interested in the self-image of combatants, right? So you know, in, in, in Liberia and even with American soldiers and certainly in north, in Libya, where he lost his life, the, you know, these young guys, mostly men, were very self, were aware of what they look like and they were aware that they, there was a way to look like what they thought a fighter looked like and that, that image was taken from Hollywood, which in turn took the image from reality, which then took it from Hollywood, you know, this sort of feedback loop. And so that there were fighters in Libya. And and I mean, you know this from West Africa where you just, you know it's clear that's coming right out of American media and either a kind of Rambo thing or a kind of rap that, you know, whatever gangster, you know, I mean whatever. It's a sort of like collage of American, American visuals for us, our ultra, ultra male, ultra-aggressive sort of image and, and Tim was fascinated by how that, that, that, that feedback loop of image and fighter and image and, um, well, you know. I’ll just sort of end with this; he was also quite interested in this, it's really interesting how in war is the, the combatants often adopt the style and the, and the clothing of the people they're fighting. So, American special forces are growing their beards out basically look like Afghans. And now the Taliban are doing everything they can to look like American soldiers with all the cast off uniforms and on the American frontier, I've written about this, on the American frontier it was a lot of cross- emulation going, you know, across the, the white native divide and, you know, pretty quickly, the, the, you know, on the frontier of the, you know, the, the Caucasians were carrying Tomahawks and scalping knives and, you know, not wearing pants, wearing breech clouds and moccasins and, and the native people were, you know, were wearing overcoats. And Tim was absolutely fascinated by that sort of like cultural exchange that happens, and particularly in the sort of visual level that happens in war.”

Mike Kamber: “Right, right. Lauren, I feel like some of what he said ties into some of what you've written about?”

Lauren Walsh: “I mean, I think because I also am seeing resonances with the Bosnian War, but I would have a slightly different spin on it because it's a nearly four-year war with a tonne of coverage and imagery and it wasn't really until after the Markale massacre, and also the Srebrenica massacre, where it was 8000 men and boys in the space of a few days were just rounded up and executed.

So, for all the images that were taken, including of concentration camps, we didn't militarily intervene for a really long time, and that's one of the biggest critiques. And then NATO essentially did air strikes and ended it very quickly. So, I think, I mean, I'm not, I am someone who maybe a little less questioning of the, I like asking the critical questions, but I also think that the journalism, the photojournalism is vital. And I think it's really important all the documentation we've been seeing out of Ukraine and it, it really, it has not pushed us yet, obviously, to do any military intervention, but I do think you're right in what you're saying that the images that are just coming out of Bucha have changed the conversation, right? And now, although we've been hearing descriptions of war crimes for close to two months, now we're seeing the war crimes and now it's, you know, the upping the sanctions, I think some European countries are, despite being part of NATO, are shifting from giving defence weaponry to giving offence, offensive weaponry, which is a shift in the stated goals at the beginning so, I think it remains to be seen are we really going to get militarily involved, I don't know. But the, the image is also if this rolls forward and if there is war crimes trials at the ICC the images will be incredibly important for that as well.”

Mike Kamber: “Yeah. Right, right.”

Audience member: “I have a question about that, actually.”

Mike Kamber: “Sure.” 

Because, I mean, who controls the meaning? 

Audience member: “I feel like the meaning gets more obliterated because of the fusion of the images of all this live stuff happening, but you see deep fakes and all types of manipulation going on, things that are happening or not happening. So, I feel like the idea of the meaning is looser, and then it's got to be corroborated by the news organisation that, who supported that news organisation in the first place, who’s making editorial decisions to go do. So, I feel like I'm losing meaning in what I'm seeing and what I'm understanding like never before and I feel for me, that side of the visual shift looking at you in this situation like you’ve been in, I think we’re having like an, almost like an ontological shift in what the meaning is of this journalism in war photography, for me.”

Mike Kamber: “Do you? Do you have anything, do you want to respond to that or?...”

Ira Lupu: “I think actually, one of the tools of propaganda is to make you think that you're going crazy a little bit. So, I think partially it is being used to maybe consciously, but also coming back to what Sebastian said about this image of a masculine soldier, I think it's also interesting how this is being consciously exploited by also like the Russian side now with the Chechen squad who, like it's been proven that they don't have any, like real military, not excuse, but like power, they don't really do anything at the battlefield, but they're like jolt up, dressed up. They are really like, they can say, like scary things, they are like scary looking, and they say that, like basically Ramzan Kadyrov has, like, he's now like a social media superstar; he's basically the social media manager of the Russian side of the war and we see how this imagery is like being, you know, exploited, um, consciously to breed this…”

Mike Kamber: “Right, information warfare is basically what you're talking about, right? Not sure that addressed exactly what you are?...”

Audience member: “Obviously I support Ukraine…(inaudible)…There's this manipulation going on, very potent, valuable, but it's manipulation, nonetheless, to present our society, you know, to let's give a speech at the Grammy Awards, which I found that a little surreal. I mean, these are not accents, this is a very intelligent approach to a very postmodern idea of what war is now. They're framing it and teaching us and showing us and, so that’s why I feel like, I don't know, just it's an experience watching unfold right now…”

Ira Lupu: “Yeah, yeah, Zelensky’s, like, has a vast experience of, like, video production. So, and his whole like…”

Audience member [Sandy]: “You know, can I ask something? Hi. My name is Sandy. This disinformation that you brought, propaganda, whatever word you used. I was there, you know, January 6th and I talked to people…”

Ira Lupu: “I was also there.”

Sandy: “Oh. I didn’t see you there.”

Ira Lupu: “Yeah, next time.” 

Sandy: “You talk to people and becoming the [inaudible] for like, five or six years now, video, and you talk to them, and I go, “Well, it was Antifa”, you know. And I was in Charlottesville. And how do you, I mean, how does anybody else deal with that? It makes me nuts and I think that's perfectly…”

Mike Kamber: “Are you saying the people that were there were explaining the violence was by Antifa?”

Sandy: “No, I was there. So, they, they claim it was a what do you call it? Well, not tourist, but they say it was a demonstration. Crisis actors, yeah, crisis actors a lot, yeah. And they were using that in, in Ukraine. They say that those are, those bodies aren't real they've been placed there.”

Ira Lupu: “Right, right.”

Sandy: “But it's like a cult of certainty that you can't break through and in, in many, and I was, you know, I've been in the front line with a lot of George Floyd and all, and then people go, “oh, that's not what happened” because they're watching TV and I say, “But I was there and I, I just don’t know. It's just a weird problem of these days that we're in.”

Audience member: “Which to Sandy's point and to your point is, is different than the confusion; it's a very different but very powerful part of the play.”

Ira Lupu: “Honestly, sometimes when I like spend like some time reading the Russian side and I'm like, you know, I feel like I start having doubts is very effective for...”

Mike Kamber: “Yeah, yeah, sure. They don't, they, they don't, you know, I mean, one of the famous truisms about propaganda is that it doesn't have to convince you, it just has to create doubt. Yeah, that’s a major issue. “

Stephen Mayes: “On the theme of performance and yeah, to see if images, pictures do change things, there's no doubt about that. And I just came across an example last week in fact from 1993, went way back from Bosnia of how, I was actually on a jury which made an award to, for the photograph of someone being rounded up at gunpoint and afterwards shot. And I read last week, all these years later is that he was just picked randomly from the crowd of already arrested people for $500 was paid to the police force and and, you know, serving cops who produced this person for performance, which then won a prize, which then influenced other photographers. And that picture itself was made in, in mimicry of a prize-winning picture. So, the, the, the impact of the picture is for real, who is copying it for why, of course, then becomes extremely questionable. And that notion of belief when we talk about cult of certainty, I'm equally in that cult, I'm very certain about what I believe.”

Sandy: “Oh, me too.” 

Stephen Mayes: “Exactly. So, I think that, you know, I have to identify myself on that same map, we should say…”
Sandy: “You said a really great day, I don’t want to hog the day, about the that we are all kind of the same. I mean, I tried to do this. I did this in Charlottesville and like I said, “If we don't start talking to each other, we are going to have a civil war and we’re all going to die.” We're going to have to, you know, when I talk to them I say, “Look, I’m not so bad this I'm the enemy, I'm the enemy of the people, right? “I’m liberal (inaudible) and if they get to experience of seeing that then and then I get, you know, but it's so hard.”

Stephen Mayes: “It is very hard. And I was interested in what you just you said that the imagery has that certainty we have and so maybe this in, in many ways playing into the hands of others who are trying to influence us. What we can do is talk about it. Well, respond as best we can.” 

Mike Kamber: “Lauren, can I ask you another question about, you know, I'm interested in this idea that that the gate, the gatekeepers have kind of broken down in a, in a certain way and this speaks to something you said also Maria. And actually, we should probably ask this of Alice and Elizabeth because they've been editors for decades. But, you know, there were when I was a kid, you know, I had to wait for time or Newsweek to arrive each week so that I had, that was the only photograph I might see, I mean there was a black and white photo on the cover of the Portland Press Herald, but that was it. Like, I didn't actually have access to images, you know? And now they're just coming, there's just this, you know, deluge, we don't, we don't know, we can't verify them, we don't know if they're real, we don't know if they're coming from. Do you have any thoughts on, on how, I mean, despite this, the images from Ukraine have been quite powerful. Do you have? I'm not sure that I have a question here, just a thought.” 

Lauren Walsh: “I mean, um, and maybe to the point that you were raising before about, like, meaning in context; I am seeing on social media a flood of extremely graphic images and they are not getting published in legacy media, right? There is a distinction between, some of them are, but there's some really graphic stuff by the photojournalists who I respect and it's going up on social media, and so that I do find at least something to think about in terms of my role as a professor, all of my students, like The New Yorker called this ‘the TikTok war’ and it absolutely is. That is where they are getting all of their information, it's from, it's, it's not like Instagram is like old; I’m old with Instagram, it’s TikTok.”

Stephen Mayes: “And I think that's really vital and we, we’re sitting here as though we’re some sort of mediators but that’s an historic role, we're not mediators really at all and, as has always been the case. But I think it's only becoming recognised now is that really the responsibility for the photograph lies with the viewer, not the photographer. And it's up to all of us to be looking and understanding, being very critical of what we're seeing. But we are now viewers as much as we are practitioners and I think that we have to adopt that and accept that role in ourselves as being ultimately important because, you know, the value of a picture is only ever valuable if it was responded to or somebody reacted to it. The media was somehow seemed to be the process, but it wasn’t, it was all about the viewer and now that's, that's more clear than it ever was. I don't want to let the evening pass without at least mentioning the content initiative…the content authority initiative.”

Lauren Walsh: “Authenticity.”

Stephen Mayes: “Authenticity and authority. Content authenticity initiative, which is initiated from Adobe and is now getting huge traction across the industry, and these are deeply problematic approach, but they are fundamentally trying very honestly to address this issue of what is credible in the picture you know, and at least they can set to identify who, what, where, when. The question is [inaudible] remain unanswered but there's something very important happening there, but what I, what I fear of that is that they're trying to talk the, the issue starts with technology and they try and  answer it with the technology and I don't think that, that can work; the technology takes a step forward and I think the, the effort that they’re making to introduce credibility into what we see is really important but it’s not in the technology that saves us it’s going to be us that saves us, if anyone.”

Mike Kamber: “Right, I could argue with you all night about this. I think, I run into people all the time, including relatively educated people, whatever that means, who don't know the difference between the New York Post and the New York Times or a Murdoch paper and, you know, the Marshall Project. I mean, literally, you know, I would like to tell the story about a woman I knew who was quite educated and she, she launched into this thing by how much Obama hated the environment and I was like, “Really”, and I said, “Where you getting this?”, and she sent me this kind of like conglomeration of just tidbits that she had put together off the internet, she had no idea where they were coming from; she didn't care. Some of them were actually extreme left, some were extreme right. You're talking about a level of media literacy that unfortunately I think should, I agree, it should, it's something it should be taught in schools, you know, it should be. It should be like the way they taught civics or something, you know, because it's crucial to our future.”

Lauren Walsh: “There are national campaigns towards that, actually. Towards bringing it into middle school and high school across the entire United States.”

Mike Kamber: “I’d love to…”

Lauren Walsh: “And actually the CAI is partnering on that.”

Stephen Mayes: “Great.”

Lauren Walsh: “Yeah.”

Mike Kamber: “Yeah, we need it.”

Lauren Walsh: “Yes, absolutely.”

Audience member: “Can I answer your question?”

Mike Kamber: “Yes, hi, thank you. Alice was the director of photography at Time for.”

Alice: “Acting would be accurate, for ten months. But I'm not a photo editor now at a publication, and I'm very happy not to be. I spent many years in the past, Bosnia being the first war that I worked on. Because I think with this, with Ukraine, it would be super, really incredibly hard if you have, with the kinds of budgets that magazines have where you have one photographer to put on assignment; who is that person? And I think we're at a time where, you know, like back in the ancient age of like the early 2000s or mid 2000s or you, you’d turn to Tim, what do you think? How do I do this at a news magazine? How do I get somebody who has a different eye? And with Ukraine, I feel like the wires actually are where my, where I am viscerally moved, like you, Kenny, Malika, and Miracle, that's just like incredible photojournalism, like really showing that photojournalism is essential. So, I do wonder, like with the very aesthetic kind of stylised photographers, what they can do in this cover of conflict. And also, I have another question, maybe one for you, Mike.”

Mike Kamber: “OK.”

Alice: “Why, I keep thinking about this, having worked for many years, covering Iraq and a little bit less of Afghanistan because we didn't touch Afghanistan as much. Why those pictures made people turn away? And why these pictures are making people pay attention?”

Mike Kamber: “Yeah, that's a tough question.”

Alice: “So, whoever could answer that.”

Mike Kamber: “Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, I can, I mean I worked in Iraq for years, you know, off and on for nine years and I think. You know, I used to talk to Joel Silva, you know my buddy, we would always go in together when we could and um, you know, at one, one point I said, you know, “Are we, when is somebody going to take that one photo like the Eddie Adams photo that turned people against Vietnam?” You know, it's a bit of a myth, but there was some truth to it or, or, you know, the Napalm girl photo, you know, Nick Ut. And Joel said, “The problem is that we haven't taken the photo, the problem is we've taken too many.”

Alice: “That's what I think. It was the beginning of streaming. Although you're saying that this is the streaming war, I feel like Iraq was a way in which, and there was no gatekeepers really on online galleries and that's where people were looking at pictures, but there are pictures that are in my mind, like Stefan Zach from the, the Reader, the soldier lying on the kitchen, blood streaming that are not remembered as iconic because of that thing they were talking about.”

Stephen Mayes: “Let's not forget that Eddie Adams was a pro-war photographer, was horrified when anti-war got hold of that image.”

Mike Kamber: “Yeah, he hated that his photo had become an anti-war image, yeah. Yeah, he was I think he was a former U.S. Marine, and he was very, very pro-war, yeah. I knew him, I knew him a bit when I got to New York. But I, I think you know, again I think, I mean with the spring of 2003 I think, you know, I really think that was the last gasp of kind of traditional journalism. I mean, everybody went, everybody went to Iraq. There were hundreds of photographers there, at least through the summer of ‘03 and I think there was, you know, amazing work done and just thousands and thousands of images coming back. And it continued for a long while and I think, I also think it was a very complex war and people don't like complexity. You know, I think people like, I wouldn’t say they like Ukraine, but I would say Ukraine is good versus evil and that's the way it's seen. I don't want to get into the politics of it, but it's these are people, I mean, it's hard not to take a side, you know, these are, these are people going about their lives being, you know, murdered while riding their bikes while you know, in a basement taking shelter, you know, I mean, just to pour artillery down on a non-military target, this is unbelievable. This hasn't, we haven't seen it on this scale. Iraq was a super complex war, you know? We did a lot of things I could talk about it for hours, but it was a very complex war. We unleashed a civil war, there was a conflict between Sunni and Shia, Iran was involved. I mean, the US policy kept evolving. I mean, it was, it was complex in a way that people didn't want to deal with. And Ukraine and Russia is something that we can, there's a guy with a black hat and a guy with a white hat.”

Audience member: “But also can I just jump in…they look like us.”

Mike Kamber: “Of course.”

Audience member: “Syria.”

Mike Kamber: “But Syria is a super complex war. I mean, look, there's so many different fractions in Syria.”

Audience member: “I think it's powerful that, that could be me.”

Mike Kamber: “Yeah. They're Europeans, I mean.”

Ira Lupu: “Neighbours, it's technically us, right?”

Audience member: “Yeah, it's familiar.”

Alice: “I think the Iraq and Afghanistan also made Americans feel incredibly guilty. Because what was the high percentage of Americans supported those wars? And then when you’re watching people getting killed, you just want to play Nintendo instead of looking at what you supported.”

Mike Kamber: “But they were both. I mean, again, I don't want to go in too, too long, but they were both wars where there were no good answers. We unleashed some holy shit and then we were stuck. We couldn't get out because it would get worse, and we couldn't stay because it kept getting worse. We were totally fucked. So, I feel like, you know, I'm not excusing it. I mean, I remember, you know, Dexter Filkins this was like 2000, the war had been going on 2005, 2006, and he came back to Baghdad, and he had, he just been home on leave in Miami. And people said, you know, what you been doing said, oh, I'm in, I'm in Baghdad, you know, for the New York Times. And people said, “Oh is there a war still going on?” People completely turned it out and it only took a couple of years. So, but you know, I want to ask, oh, I'm sorry…”

Ira Lupu: “Yeah, it's just a small element that actually this is also something that happened with the Ukrainian war, because we actually had war for like 8 years going on in a different, in a different way but still it was like, we were like almost offended because it’s like, it's Europe's forgetting war.”

Mike Kamber: “Nobody was paying attention.”

Ira Lupu: “Yeah.”

Amy: “Well, that's what I wonder with, you know, if the war is taking, is going to continue in Donbas.”

Ira Lupu: “Mm-hmm.”

Amy: “Will people start to turn off? Because it's another, it's about other rights.”

Lauren Walsh: “It's going to depend if Zelensky accepts that as an agreement for neutrality. And then I think we're already starting to hit a bit of a fatigue. I think people are, like for, for what like five weeks straight it was the only headline and then Will Smith slaps Chris Rock and that's dominant. So, I think there is, I think we're hitting the turn.”

Mike Kamber: “Stephen, I had a question for you and I'm afraid of. Your answer but…”

[Laughter]

I know we're going to disagree on this but you always have good things to say. The New York Times, I don’t know if everybody saw my friend Lindsey took a really powerful photo of the dead family who had been killed and hit by a mortar shell and the New York Times did a daily piece about it, where they interviewed her and I think about half of the piece was given over to justifying that if they had asked permission, the family would have given permission and it struck me that this was never a conversation that we had 10-15 years ago when I was working as a photojournalist. You saw it, you published it and people said, “great, it's evidence, it's there.” But you could see that the New York Times, in my opinion at least, should probably cut the tape on this was, was terrified that we've used these people's image in a disrespectful way without their permission. And that's a relatively new conversation. Can, can you tell me how you feel about that?”

Stephen Mayes: “And, and, and that, that, that fear was led by Lindsey, you know, who made the picture. 
 
She was there, she had to make it, she responded, but then felt very ambivalent about its application. And the application of the picture is, is really important here, it's not the making of the picture, it’s how it's used, of course, then becomes the key. 

But I, I feel very difficult about asking people's consent because it's, you know, I don't want to be misrepresented by some idiot with the camera doesn't know they're doing and all the rest of it. At the same time, I'm not sure it's entirely healthy for information that I should approve the image either. And you know it takes an extreme, I mean you, you work in the White House also, it's, it's, if every image is approved, you end up with political imagery. You can't have it otherwise. So, you know, consent, knowing consent is really important, but I don't think, I don't think you have, I don’t think you have information in that sense, driven by the, the subjects of the pictures or we are now taking the pictures…It's a really complex weave of, of what's going on, but consent can't be the answer, I think it has to be a factor in consideration but it can’t be it.” 

Mike Kamber: “Right. Did you have something to say about that, Lauren?”

Lauren Walsh: “No, just um, I completely agree actually with what Stephen is saying. I think one of the things that in terms of let's say the us often finding out about the journalists who have been killed in Ukraine is notified, family notification has held information a little bit and then it goes out like a day later, which isn't the same as getting consent, but it's another aspect of thinking about and I, I say that because it was very dramatic to me when, I'm not sure if it was in the Daily Podcast or if I just read it in one of the articles. But to learn that the father who survived that mortar shell found out, found out on Twitter that his family had been killed.”

Mike Kamber: “Right.”

Lauren Walsh: “So it's it's, I mean it kind of goes back to your first question, the update of the digital landscape and what does it mean for the movement of images and the reception of images.”

Mike Kamber: “Right, right. Sebastian, I had a quick question for you; maybe not so quick, but you know curious, do you remember conversations with Tim around Restrepo? Because Restrepo, you know, when I saw it really kind of changed the way I thought about Afghanistan. It focused on the soldiers in a way that was sympathetic, but it also showed them killing civilians by accident. It showed them in these completely hopeless situations, you know, a small group of guys controlling a valley like, you know, the size of Delaware. I mean, it was just, you could kind of see the pointless insanity.”

Sebastian Junger: “When Tim came into the projects, I, I'd already taken a trip out there and I had sort of formulated this idea in my mind. Like I want to, I want to primarily write but I was also shooting video in the hopes that maybe I could figure out how to make a documentary. I wanted to, I wanted to portray a platoon in combat as they experienced it. So, the soldiers were not interviewing generals about their own war, they weren't talking to ambassadors, there was no big picture for them, it was very much what, you know, like their reality and that's it. And, and of course, soldiers are totally subjective because what they have and they have a very intense agenda, which is to not get not get killed and go home and complete their mission, right?

So, they're totally subjective; they're not trying to be fair and balanced about the Taliban, right? And so that was the project that I conceived of. Tim came in and in a few months into the deployment and we immediately hit it of, and I sort of explained what I was trying to do and you know, Tim was, Tim immediately fell in love with the project. I immediately fell in love with Tim. I mean, you know, we were just such a good, were such a good pair journalistically, and we, you know, we really, we became best, best friends and embarked on this and the conversation was, you know, basically, we're not reporters, like, we're documenting something and we, we're not only are we're not trying to be objective, we're actively trying to be subjective. We're trying to get as close as we can to these soldiers and see the war through their eyes. One of the things that, and had these guys done something morally reprehensible, because we really liked those guys, and they liked us and our survival depended on them. I mean, there was all the things that would cloud someone's objectivity was going on. And had they done something morally reprehensible, it would have been extremely hard for me psychologically, emotionally, to deal with it. The civilians that were killed, you know, were killed, it was an air strike, you know, they're not, you know, whatever, these, that's just completely above their pay grade. And, you know, they're Rifleman basically. And. But had they done something that occasionally happens in war, even with U.S. forces that kind of revenge killing or clearly, you know, not being careful with civilians and or even gloating. I mean there was, the one thing that got uncomfortable was that they, one guy they gloated about, they killed the guy on the other side of the hill that was shooting at them, you know? But they, they killed him like pretty intensely and they were sort of, they could see it through the, sort of this sort of optical device and they were sort of whooping, you know, really like whooping, yeah, you know, whatever. saying some ugly stuff. 

And, and I asked the, and it just made my skin crawl, and it made Tim’s skin crawl, right. And I asked the one of the guys I was like, “What is that about? Because it was kind of ugly what you guys were saying about that guy who got killed.” And he's like, “Listen, I know, but for us it’s one less guy who’s going to kill our buddy. One less guy out there who might kill our buddy. So that's what we were cheering about.” And when he said that it's like, “Yeah, OK, I got it, you know.”

Mike Kamber: “Life reduced down to its most basic level.”

Sebastian Junger: “Yeah, yeah.”

Audience member: “Maybe also kind of something, it was like an ‘othering’ as well, like an additional layer of like, I don’t know, a dehumanising a bit to as a coping skill as a coping because it's a horrific. Even though the guy was shooting at them but ultimately, just like, you know, ended someone’s life,, so maybe it's about that a little bit.”

Sebastian Junger: “Yeah, yeah, I mean and it's the result of that thinking, right. I mean, soldiers dehumanise the enemy because otherwise they have the moral burden of killing humans. Right. And these, these aren’t decisions they're making, right. This the decisions that we're making as a country to have this war and the soldiers are carrying it out so that dehumanisation is psychologically necessary. Yeah.”

Mike Kamber: “One of the things that fascinated me about, fascinated me about Restrepo; I talked to some people. I mean, if you haven't seen it, you should see it; It's really a great film. I talked to some people who are like, “God, that's the most powerful anti-war film I've ever seen.” And also, Republicans and soldiers love the film. They thought it was a pro-war film.”

Sebastian Junger: “Yeah, yeah, I mean, I get that like when I give talks and stuff some, some guy come up to me and said: “I joined the, I joined the service because I saw Restrepo.” And I Just really wanted to, you know, and I I've heard that over and over and over again, yeah. And equally I've heard over and over and over again, you know, it's like the ultimate critique of the war and of course, everyone wants to know. How did we mean it? And Tim and I were very united in that like, look, we're, we're journalists, we're not or against anything really, you know in, in that political sense. And but we want to show you, want to show you the world so that you can make your own decisions. My wife said something really, really smart about, about theatre, which I realise is also about journalism, she said, “Theatre or journalism doesn't tell you what to think; it tells you what to think about.” And that's such a, I mean, that's just like a tool, it's like a Leatherman tool for opening, opening complex questions about, about, about journalism like, yeah, what to think about. And then it's your job, you know, then now you have to do the work.”

Mike Kamber: “Right. I also, one other thing I wanted to ask and I don't know if anybody wants to respond to this, but we've seen some of the Sleeping Soldiers series tonight and you know, Tim was living in, in, in the, you know, in the bunkers with these guys and he would kind of crawl around when they were sleeping and, and take their picture. And I remember you saying, you know. You know, you were like, “Tim, what the fuck are you doing? Don't you get it? You know, this is, this is how their mothers, you know, think of them.”

Sebastian Junger: “Their mothers see them.”

Mike Kamber: “Yeah. I wonder if there would be like the, the room for the complexity of photos like that today. Or if, do you think that the landscape is so instantaneous and so because those are photos that…”

Ira Lupu: “I think actually something like that is happening already. For example, there is like really popular, I would not say trend, but it definitely got this like meme quality to it is like pictures of Ukrainian soldiers with cats or animals. It's like a separate trend, let's put it this way. And honestly, like even myself, like when I see it, I feel very, like, emotionally invested into it. Yeah, so I think this is something that is already happening.”

Audience member: “And it gets used as a tool, too, because…” 

Ira Lupu: “Exactly.”

Audience member: “We've all seen this Russian soldier photos that the propaganda machine is pushing. They're just lambs, you know? So, I mean, it's a complicated equation.”

Ira Lupu: “And the destroyed shelters and everything. But also to Sebastian's point about, I, I really wanted like to bring up this aspect of that today actually there is also even an opportunity to be kind of like involved in this moment of cheering, of killing the enemy because there is also like a lot of footage released from [inaudible] and you can actually like even here, like the soldiers, like, cheering when they hit the target.”

Mike Kamber: “Right. Yeah.”

Ira Lupu: “And you can't help but you also like feel kind of like, you know, happy or sad if you’re Russian so…”

Mike Kamber: “Right. And you know the, the famous, the famous Saigon execution that Eddie Adams photo from Vietnam was so shocking because we had never really seen the moment of death. And now it's actually quite routine.”

Ira Lupu: “Yeah, yeah. And I, I think this is one of the reasons like all this, like consistent footage and media and all types of different media is why young, more and more young people keep signing up to their militaries. Like, every day I get to like news about like, some of my friends, like signing up who like normally I would never think is like a person to go to the war, so.”

Stephen Mayes: “There is an intrinsic issue with photography which is about the aestheticization of just putting a frame on somebody; you can't make a picture without an aesthetic judgement. And in the last week of his journalling before he died, Tim was thinking about this. He was talking about the smell of burning flesh. And yet he was having to make his pictures to be able to look at. And he had to make these beautiful pictures of this horror with this truth. And the conflict between reporting and truth is very, very stark; is that if you report the full horror of it no-one’s going to look at the photograph without turning away, and what's the point if you show something so horrific you can't look at? That was a very interesting point you made about this; actually, we've started looking at it now and what is that difference? But there is, there is an intrinsic thing with photography which is that you have to make an aesthetic judgement and you have to make it appealing.”

Mike Kamber: “Yeah.”

Stephen Mayes: “To look at and what you’re photographing is not appealing in the slightest. So, there's a there's a grind there, I’m sure.”

Mike Kamber: “There is. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's at the heart of a lot of, you know, Larry Burroughs photos from Vietnam and a lot of people that just take these stunningly. Yeah, they almost look like theatre sets. But you know they’re real, they're so beautiful. Yeah, I, in Iraq, I went out, I mean, probably the worst photos ever took; the sun was just coming up, there was this beautiful golden light illuminating, you know, the bodies and the helicopter and the smoke. It was just, it's like being in this amazing, so beautiful. And there was just no way to make it ugly, really. You know, I mean, I took some ugly photos, but the New York Times didn’t print those, but anyway. That’s another story. Do we have any? Yeah.”

Audience member: “Yeah, I really, I'm curious what your sense is on who’s photographs you’re actually seeing. I'm working as a photo editor now and I would see thousands of photos a day and something that I've noticed looking through all this stuff that some of the most lasting affecting images for me are from Ukrainian photographers were getting picked up like flyers. And at the same time with a lot of legacy media organisations, and this is not everybody, but they're relying on a lot of the same photographers who have defined conflict coverage over the last 10 years, say, and I think we need that balance of perspectives. But we're, we're really seeing like an uplifting of folks who are from there and we're making a proximity to maybe lost from Western eyes.”

Ira Lupu: “Yeah, exactly. But on the other hand, like yesterday, I looked on the front page of New York Times like digitally and there was like, you know, like 15 pictures, just like, you know, scrolling.

Like just what’s the word.”

Audience member: “Slideshow?”

Ira Lupu: “Slideshow, exactly. And all the 15 photographs were taken by Western photographers on the front page and only one was taking like I was actually trying to Google this person. Seemingly, he's like Russian AP photographer, he’s mostly doing like the…yeah…”

Lauren Walsh: “And those are really interestingly captioned as the People's Republic of Donetsk. That's how AP is referring to his pictures now.”

Ira Lupu: “Alexei.”

Lauren Walsh: “Yeah, Alexei. I forget his last name.”

Audience member: “You know, also I have a bunch of young photographer friends, very talented, but haven't really made it, you know yet. And they are self-funded, they're funded there. They're there now they've come back and return. And they're, they're taking some extraordinary pictures that are so moving. So, they look like reverends, you know, and it gives them an opportunity, it's kind of like a democratic, social media is giving it like a democratic playing field, right where you could, you don't have to be like the top of the field guys.”

Mike Kamber: “Yeah. For better. For worse. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.”

Lauren Walsh: “Well, it might be democratised in that sense, but if they're self-funding, they don't have a security detail with them, they're not in an armoured vehicle like it's really, really expensive.”

Audience member: “Oh no, I know. I know, but they're doing it, they're risking their lives. They're going to move. They're going, I don't know if you can. You know, it's just, it's fascinating to watch, you know, you know, they're my colleagues, and you know what I do. And they just had to go there but they're, they're being all of a sudden, this stuff is being seen and they're being recognised for the great photographers I know them to be.”

Mike Kamber: “Yeah, Egypt. You know, I could be wrong about this, but you know, I did a story for the Times way back, and Egypt was really, I think the first conflict where people were just taking cell phones and just getting a bus ticket and going. It was the first time I’d ever heard of that 18/19/20 years old and they were like, “I want to be a photojournalist, I've got a cell phone and I'm going to Egypt.” And that wasn't that long ago. Yeah, sorry. You had a question and then Alice? Can…”

Audience member: “Yeah. I had a question similar to the photo editor. We never see anything coming from Yemen. When was the last conflict photography we saw coming out of there? …[inaudible]… showing us the devastation that's been going on there.”

Lauren Walsh: “It's one of the most dangerous countries on the face of the earth for journalists. So, local journalists will be…”

Audience member: “But not even local people, I've not even seen…”

Lauren Walsh: “No, no, I mean the local, they will be targeted and arrested, harassed, possibly killed. So, it's a very dangerous place for journalists. And then again for the, like on the finances, it's really hard to get outside journalists because it's very expensive for,  I mean there was a lot of coverage in 2018, which is now a number of years back. I believe is the largest humanitarian crisis on the face of the earth; the famine there. So yeah, the, the question is absolutely correct. But why is Ukraine?..”

Audience member: “They have smartphones, I mean, right? And people have smartphones, people are communicating with each other. So, where do we see these images that are being taken?”

Lauren Walsh: “It's probably very dangerous for them to put those images out, but I do think you're right that there could be more report. I mean, it's not a major American headline.”

Mike Kamber: “Yeah. Good question. Alice, did you?..”

Alice: “Well, um, similar to kind of that question of…recently on Twitter I saw someone post young photographers should not go if you don't have to, you know, stay home, this is inappropriate  and I just wondered how many of you feel about this, this you know the balance between the people going, who do harm as photo journalists and the importance of photojournalism.” 

Mike Kamber: “Yeah, that's a tough one, yeah. It's a tough one, I mean.”

Audience member: “Could you elaborate on do harm?”

Alice: “Well, I think in recent years there's, there's, you know, conversation, scrutiny about, about photojournalism really causing harm as you pointed out, places can be targeted.”

Mike Kamber: “Right.”

Alice: “Now because of whatever…”

Stephen Mayes: “I think that links into what was said earlier about the performance, because it, there's, there's a, a romance and a mythology associated with being on the front line, which is attractive from a distance.”

Mike Kamber: “Right, yeah. Robert Kappa really set the standard. You really suffer for everybody.”

Lauren Walsh: “I hate that saying it's so it's so dangerous.”

Mike Kamber: “Yeah, I mean you. In the 1930s, he was just so dashing and so charismatic and so handsome, and he had a beautiful girlfriend and, and they went to Spain and, you know, people have been following them for 100 years now. Yeah, but you know, I will say I went to, you know, I went to Haiti in my early 20s to cover an election; I didn't expect violence. I didn't go there to make a name or anything. But I suppose I did. I mean, it was, it was an opportunity to go and cover an election. And I did have an assignment, but I was 23 years old or something, you know, and I was in the, I ended up in the middle of a bloodbath, you know, children being hacked to death with machetes and such.

And, you know, I don't, I, it's hard to say what makes that different from somebody today who's 23 years old and has a cell phone or something is going in, you know. I think, I think it was certainly much harder for me to get my images out. I mean, it took me weeks to get back and develop my film and take prints to editors and such. But I don't know that that makes me any more, really better than somebody today who is 23 and has a cell phone and wants to go. I think the question is, are you endangering other people? For me, that's really, like, one of the key questions. And you frequently are if you don't know what you're doing and you're, you're hiring a driver, you're going around with local people, whatever, on a, on a shoestring, you're endangering everybody around you, yeah.”

Alice: “And putting it up on Twitter, to your point, I know, I know guys, I just know, and they'll just put stuff out on Twitter and really endanger lives saying this people are here in need. Great, send your bombs, you know.” 

Mike Kamber: “Exactly, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Question?”

Audience member: “Yeah, I was wondering who are the types of people that should be going out and like producing and bringing in this media? Because as a person I rely a lot on social media, a lot of the influx that I see with imagery and specials with Ukraine and the war in Ukraine it's a lot of things that I don't feel, like they don't carry a lot of meaning, especially because a lot of the media that I see is first hand experiences from people that are my age or slightly older. So, who are the types of people that should be reporting to media and who are the types of people that should be bringing it in and talking about it inside of this kind of…”

Mike Kamber: “Does anybody want to tackle that?”

Stephen Mayes: “It’s a great question.”
 

Lauren Walsh: “I mean, I think it depends on what the intention is, right? So, if you're there as the journalist, you have one intention. If you're there as the civilian who's documenting, you have another intention, if you're there, as the forensics expert collecting information for a war crimes trial you have another intention. But I think this maybe comes back to the, the media literacy, whoever raised it first right, like kind of asking the critical questions and understanding the context and thinking through all of that.” 

Audience member: “Well, I was just wondering because a lot of the issue now is the desensitisation of these images and how they don't carry deep meaning because we see so many of them because it's so often we see people being wounded on the streets and like bodies being shown on camera like it's. I feel like my question is more catered to, like, what are the types of people that we feel like do have the credentials to produce this type of media and then talk about it versus like bringing out, like I remember you talking about younger photographers going and how it's not necessarily a younger person's job to go out and produce this type of photography, even though young people can produce that type of photography. So, I don't know. I was, it's an open question.”

Mike Kamber: “Yeah, but I don’t think it's age. I mean, I think if you look at, you know, Catherine Leroy who went into Vietnam in 1966; I think she was 21 years old or 22 years old. She became a legend; she just did decades of amazing work. I don't think it's the age, you know, I don't. I think it's, you know, as you say, it's, it's the intention. Are you there? Are you serious about it? Sure, you had a question?”

Audience member: “Yeah, I just, I, I guess picking up on like the mental makeup. I mean for everybody you're exposed to so much to the images, you know, like the PTSD aspect. And there's the art shield in some way, you know, inevitably seeing because your life is in danger, you're as close as you could be to without, like, pulling the trigger in some of these instances? So like, what's the psychology behind that? Does that separate some of the greats like this or?”

Ira Lupu: “Tim has a good movie about it right? The diary…”

Mike Kamber: “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Sebastian Junger: “You know, for me. I mean, just from shooting video and for recording words, like, it, it didn't insulate me later, like in the moment maybe but later it didn't even incurred a kind of feeling of sort of moral debt. Like there's a lot of different ways of looking at this profession, but one, one way to look at it is you are making a living off of the suffering of the world. And God forbid we live in a world where suffering goes unrecorded. So, I'm not saying it's even a bad thing, but there's a kind of moral conversation that has to happen that comes from doing work there. And I have a very good friend, Scott Anderson's older brother, Sean Lee Anderson. The pair of them are, you know, well known journalists. They've been a lot of wars and, and Scott, this is worth actually looking up and it's online. He wrote an article that came out in the mid-90s called Prisoner of war about the emotional consequences of covering war, wars for years, and I just remember this one sentence, he said. It's about the sense of guilt, he said, “I should be, I should be punished for some of the things I've seen.” You know. And the rest of the article is just as profound.

And so for me, PTSD as a, you know, sort of diagnostic sense. For me, like the consequences of almost getting killed, which has happened to me a couple of times are minimal compared to the consequences of seeing other people harmed, other people killed, particularly children. Like that, that, those images, those moments in my life, are still there, they are almost unchanged in me and can bring me to tears in moments if I'm not careful. And risking my life is, is like it's it doesn't touch it.” 

Stephen Mayes: “We we're talking here in absolutes about the role, the purpose. It's important also to remember that there is no single reason for any of this and that we, we've been focusing on journalism the, the manufacture of imagery and distribution of imagery for its current application. But of course, it's got an historic role as well. It's different and some people’s motive for being in a place won't stop them from doing something good or bad in a completely different mental state in that same place. You know, we, we all fulfil many roles at the same time and it's, it's not, you know, they might have happened that [inaudible]…all the good guys are bad and all the bad guys are good at different times in our lives.”

Mike Kamber: “Right. Yeah. To, to just, you know, comment on, on that question again, you know, Joel Sola, who has always been a fountain of wisdom for me said you know, he used to say, you know, “The days that we're winning the prizes and getting these front pages”, he said, “that's the worst day somebody ever had in their whole life.” And he used to repeat that all the time, “That's the worst day someone ever had, and we photographed it.”

Sebastian Junger: “Could, could I say something about Tim, sort of in that in that context? So, he won the World Press Photo Award for a shot that he took out at Restrepo on his first trip, which was September of ‘07. And I sort of already knew those guys a little bit and, and Tim was new there and immediately where, you know, like it, it went off. Like, there was a huge amount of combat almost every day and it's an amazing photo of a soldier guy named Olsen sort of with his hand here sort of exhausted at the end of the day of fighting. And it really captured the futility of the war, I think in a lot of people's minds. 

Anyway, when we went back there in January or in the spring. So, Tim had to write his acceptance speech, right. And we were at Camp Blessing, waiting to go into the Korengal, and he had to write his speech. And, you know, Tim was a very smart guy and sometimes could be a little bit, I think, too abstract. And so, he, so like, he was writing his speech and, and I was, I was bored out of my mind because we were stuck there for days, and I was dying to play chess with him. And I was like, “Is your speech done yet? Come on, man, just play a game of chess.” [laughter] Like, I was so bored I started playing myself in chess [laughter] like, so. Anyway, he worked and worked and worked on this thing.

And he finally, finally finished. He's like, “I think I've done it”. And I said, “Oh, I'd love to hear it.” So, he started reading it, it was so smart and complex and abstract. I literally, I had no idea what he was talking about. He was completely theoretical, right? And I was like, “Tim, man, I don't know, like maybe you should think about maybe start again and think about, think about what it feels like to be sort of awarded this high honour for a situation which is so also so incredibly painful for so many people, including you, like, what's that feel like?”

And he was like, “OK, got it. I'll try.” And so, then he can he, you know, he, he went back to work; ‘clack, clack, clack’, he had his laptop and I played more chess with myself, you know, and a couple of hours later he said, “OK, I think I've done it.” And I said, “Great, I'd love to hear it.” And he started reading and within, before he got to the end of the first sentence he was crying so hard he couldn't finish. And I had to read it. Um, that's, that's one of the consequences of doing this work and doing it in a real way, right?

And if you don't, and we talked a lot about this because it was, it was exciting as hell out there, right? It was intense. It was incredible. We were making our careers. Yeah, I mean, all these things, right? And Tim, the end of the day, we had this talk about it and we sort of realised, and I wrote about this as well, it's like, war is all those things, to claim it's not, you're just a liar, right? It is all those things but it's also incredibly sad. And when you get to that point of it, how sad it is. And Tim, Tim got there before I did. When you get and, that's where he got when he wrote that essay. When you get to that place of in, in addition to everything else, also how incredibly sad it is that this is happening there's a very good chance you want to never have anything to do with it again. 

And when we finished all that out there, that was where both, both of us kind of were. And then the Arab Spring started, and it was so compelling, and we were going to go on assignment there. I couldn't go the last minute. And Tim was very much like, you know, I'm interested in what's happening culturally, I'm not interested in the war per se. And but of course, we all were interested in the war per say, you know, and as was he when he got there. And so just to say that there's, like, these this emotional complexity, which it's like it's a hall of mirrors. I mean, just it you it recedes, it keeps receding to infinity.”

Mike Kamber: “Absolutely, yeah. Can, can we, can we leave this here? And I think you guys will stick around for a few minutes. We've got some food, everybody's welcome to stay. You can talk amongst yourself, but we've been going for a little over an hour so, I want to thank. You guys, thank you, this is. Thank you.”

[Applause]