Two photographers were killed in Libya a few days ago (their death has been abundantly covered in the media; if you read this post months or years after the fact, and don't remember their names, you can refresh your memory here). They died in an apparent mortar attack, as they attempted to document the unrest - as they were, in a very real sense, "bearing witness".
Although "Bearing Witness" is also the title of my blog, and the main reason why I write, I have the luxury of remaining away from the front lines. My novel is about World War II - I don't have to travel to dangerous places if I want to do research; the library will do. Yet a topic I am exploring in the book is the small choices people make that, little by little, lead them dangerously close to - and sometimes over - the ethical line, and also the big decisions others take to stay on firm moral ground. (And yet sometimes the moral ground collapses under them due to others' actions, but you'll have to read my book to understand this sentence, unless I change the ending.)
Those two photographers, and more broadly the community of war photographers, made the choice of going to dangerous places so that we would be made aware of what was happening, so that we would not turn the other way. From the NYT article: "They endangered themselves so that others might see what was happening in a small port city on the coast of North Africa, a city few had heard of until they showed it to us, until it claimed their lives."
After World War II, citizens accused of collaboration defended themselves by saying they did not know about concentration camps or other atrocities (even when the concentration camp was nearby, and the smell was atrocious). Without these pictures of Libya, we would again be able to claim ignorance. But we can't. We can't, because of the sacrifice these photographers made. As much as I hope words can stir emotion, their force pales in comparison to the punch packed by the picture of a wounded child, a destroyed house, a dead body in the street. Too often we forget the risks photographers take to educate us in spite of ourselves, when we'd prefer watching reality TV shows in the comfort of our homes. They took pictures to make us feel. And cry. They just hadn't expected that they would, in the end, make us cry about themselves too.
Writers, (documentary) filmmakers, photojournalists - we all share the goal of shining a light on little-known facts, helping others seeing the world in ways they had not thought of before. But there is no question in my mind that war reporters and photographers deserve much more credit because of the risks they take.
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