Photographing suffering

Learning goal

You will be able to build questions that help you think about where you should stop when taking photos in the middle of a disaster, a war, an illness or a loss. You will weigh together how showing suffering can serve the public interest, that is, making an event visible and gathering help, and how the same frame can damage a person's dignity. You will discuss the duty to assist first, that help must come before the photo when someone's life is in danger, through a world-famous frame documented by sources. You will think separately about the consent of the people photographed, especially the situation of children and of people in crisis, and look for ways to tell their story in their own voice. You will question how constantly showing suffering through people from certain regions and of certain skin tones feeds a stereotyped gaze, and recognize that the photographer who witnesses suffering can also be affected themselves, that is, secondary trauma. What is offered here isn't rules, but questions a photographer can ask themselves.

The question

At the club's table a phone passes from hand to hand. On the screen is a small child sitting in tears on the stones of a house that collapsed after the quake. The frame was used in donation campaigns and led many people to help. Another member, however, asks softly: what will that child feel when they see this photo on the internet years later? Were they asked whether they wanted this frame taken and spread around the world?

Your friend thinks about what they would do with their camera if there were a flood or a fire in their own city. Should they press the shutter, lower the camera and rush to help, or do both? Where should the photographer stop?

Context

While examining the masters of light and nature we talked about the criticism that turning suffering into a beautiful image can distance the viewer (Lesson 26.3). In the street and privacy lesson you saw the questions to ask before publishing vulnerable people (Lesson 29.3). In the manipulation lesson, too, we talked about how staging and a wrong caption mislead the viewer without touching a single pixel (Lesson 29.4).

This lesson looks at one of photography's hardest questions. Photos showing suffering have throughout history helped stop wars, gather help and make ignored events visible. The same photos have opened the most fragile moments of the people photographed to the world, without permission and permanently. This tension has no single right answer; every photographer and every situation looks for its own balance.

Simple explanation

Why can showing suffering be necessary?

Public interest is the publication of a photo serving society to know about, understand or act against an event. Frames showing the scale of a disaster, the effect of a war on civilians or an injustice can let people see a faraway suffering and help. A suffering that is never photographed is often forgotten as if it had never happened.

Human dignity, on the other hand, is a person's right to be seen as a person even at their hardest moment, without being reduced to a symbol of suffering. If a photo uses a person's face at their most helpless moment, without a name and a story, only to stir a feeling, it can damage their dignity even if it carries public interest. The two values often face each other in the same frame; when the photographer decides which frame will be published, with what framing and in what context, they weigh these two together. The same event can be told with a frame showing a face up close at its most helpless moment, or with a frame showing in a wide framing people holding on to each other. Which is chosen depends on whether you want to convey the event to the viewer or only a feeling; between the two there is not a rule, but a decision the photographer makes with their conscience.

Help or photo?

The duty to assist first is the principle that when someone's life or health is under urgent danger, the photographer must first help or call for help, and the photo can only come after that. One of the examples where this principle is most debated is the frame photographer Kevin Carter took during the famine in Sudan, published in the New York Times on March 26, 1993: a very thin child slumped on the ground, and a vulture waiting a few meters away. The frame drew the world's attention to the famine and won the photographer the Pulitzer Prize in 1994. At the same time it drew harsh criticism: many people questioned whether the photographer waited for the frame instead of helping the child and didn't follow up on what happened to the child. Carter lost his life in the summer of that same year. Some reports published years later claimed the child had survived that famine; but the debate continued as a question about the photographer's responsibility.

This example doesn't give a single answer, but it sharpens a question: the photographer is both a witness and a human being. Many photographers working in a disaster zone make it their principle first not to hinder the rescue teams' work, to lower the camera and help when needed, and to shoot only when it is safe.

How are the people photographed and the photographer protected?

The subject's own voice means the people living through suffering taking part in how their photos will be used and telling their story in their own words. Before sharing, asking the person in the photo, or their family if it is a child, and giving their name and what they said together with the photo, shows the person not only as a victim but as a subject facing what they lived through. Getting permission in a moment of crisis may not always be possible; but reaching the person later and showing them the photo is often possible.

Through whom suffering is shown is also a question. In aid campaigns and news, people from certain regions and dark-skinned people always being shown helpless, poor or in suffering creates, in some critics' words, a kind of poverty spectacle and leads to those people not being seen in any other state. Showing the same people resisting, helping each other or rebuilding their lives offers the viewer a more complete picture.

Secondary trauma is someone who constantly witnesses others' suffering being affected psychologically, even if they aren't directly harmed themselves. For photographers working in disaster and conflict zones this is a real risk. Resting, finding people they can share their experiences with and, when needed, turning to a therapist or psychologist are part of the photographer protecting themselves.

Visual evidence

One night an apartment fire breaks out in your friend's city. When your friend arrives at the scene the fire brigade is at work. First they stay outside the cordon the firefighters set up and ask an officer whether they can help; they are only asked to keep the road clear.

Then they take photos, but instead of shooting a mother and her child who came out to the street in blankets in close-up, they choose a frame showing them in a wide framing, together with the tea and blankets the neighbors brought. The next day they find the family; they show the mother the photos and ask whether they can be published. The mother allows only the frame showing the neighbors' help; she doesn't want the frames in which her own face is visible.

Your friend respects these decisions and publishes the story together with what the mother said. That week they struggle to sleep for a few nights and talk about what they went through with the older member.

Common mistakes

Summary

Photos showing suffering can serve the public interest, make events visible and gather help; but the same frames can damage a person's dignity by reducing them at their most fragile moment to a nameless symbol. When a life is in danger, help comes before the photo; the frame Kevin Carter took in 1993, which won the Pulitzer in 1994, is among the most debated examples of this question. The permission and own voice of the people photographed are sought, showing suffering always through the same regions and skin tones is questioned, and the photographer also takes their own secondary trauma seriously.

Mini assignment

In this assignment you will write your own principles for a situation involving suffering.

1. Think about the situation of taking photos at the moment of a disaster, an accident or a loss; prepare a five-item list of principles stating what you will do first, in which situation you will lower the camera and when you will shoot.
2. Choose a photo involving suffering from a news site; write a paragraph assessing it in terms of public interest and the dignity of the person photographed.
3. Write three frame ideas that would show the same event with people not only in helplessness, but helping each other or rebuilding their lives.
4. Write a short note on how you will include the voice of the person photographed, that is, how you will get their permission and convey their words. Also add in one sentence how you will protect yourself after a hard shoot.

Check yourself

• Can you explain the tension between public interest and human dignity with an example?
• Can you explain the duty to assist first in your own words?
• Can you notice a gaze that always shows suffering through the same people?

Glossary

Mini quiz

1. In which case can a photo showing suffering serve the public interest?

• A) When it makes an event visible and moves people to act
• B) Only when it wins a competition
• C) When the person's name is hidden
• D) In no case

2. What does the duty to assist first say?

• A) First getting the best frame
• B) Never taking photos
• C) First helping or calling for help when a life is in danger
• D) Only shooting from a distance

3. Why was the frame Kevin Carter took in Sudan in 1993 debated?

• A) Because it was in color
• B) Because it was questioned whether the photographer helped the child and followed up on the child
• C) Because it was never published
• D) Because it was proven to be staged

4. What can a photographer do against secondary trauma?

• A) Try to feel nothing
• B) Go to more shoots
• C) Share what they went through with no one
• D) Rest, share what they went through and ask for professional support when needed

Answers

1. A — A disaster or an injustice becoming visible can let society act against it.
2. C — Witnessing matters but doesn't replace the effort to save a life.
3. B — The frame made the famine visible, but started a harsh debate about the photographer's responsibility.
4. D — Witnessing others' suffering leaves a mark; getting support is part of the photographer protecting themselves.

Summary card

• Weigh public interest and human dignity together.
• If a life is in danger, help first, then the photo.
• Get permission; let people have their name and their own words.
• Don't always show suffering through the same regions and skin tones.
• Take what you live through seriously; rest and get support.

Bridge to the next lesson

After the fire story, your friend sees another frame on a news site: a family waiting on a roof in a flood. The frame was widely shared, but a few days later it turns out it isn't a real photo, but an image produced with an AI tool. At the club a member says that soon no one will need a camera, that any image wanted can be produced with a few words. Your friend thinks about what separates the frame the mother allowed in the fire from such an image. Will AI replace photographers? The next lesson takes up the difference between a generated image and a photograph that bears witness.