“Our lives here are a movie that you watch and you can change the channel whenever you want. » These bitter words are those of Motaz Azaiza, one of the rare Palestinian photojournalists who documents the war from the Gaza Strip, and posts on his Instagram, Facebook or YouTube accounts. On social networks, the Hamas-Israel war is taking place almost live and images or videos (real or false) have flooded the platforms since October 7.
In this war, international journalists and photojournalists cannot go there to work: Israel prohibits access for security reasons, except for reports embarked with the Israeli army. Reporters Without Borders denounced the fact that Tel Aviv was “gradually stifling information in the Gaza Strip”, by killing or injuring journalists, destroying editorial offices and cutting off the Internet. Thirty-six reporters have been killed in this small territory since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7. The association demands protection for those who remain, as Motaz Azaiza also requested for himself on Instagram.
Those who remain remind us of the importance of informing. In a testimony published in The Economist on October 27, photojournalist Ali Jadallah, who lost four relatives in a bombing, recounts how he works with six other colleagues to cover the war. They go out in the morning to photograph the night’s bombings. “It’s dangerous outside, so I give them 7 minutes to take photos and come back to the hospital,” where they found refuge in the north of the Gaza Strip. “The most important thing now is to report what is happening,” he says. My team and I don’t really eat or sleep more than a few hours a night. »
“Social networks are saturated with millions of images”
How to tell and show the horror of war? Should you be present on social networks? Independent photojournalist Siegfried Modola, who won the Nikon Prize in October in the photo category at the Bayeux War Correspondents Festival, tries to stay as far away from the platforms as possible.
“My job is to raise awareness as a photojournalist,” he explains to 20 minutes, while he was in Afghanistan at the end of October. And social media is saturated with millions of images that can sometimes have an impact, but often they confuse the situation because they blur the truth. » Facebook, Instagram, », he regrets.
The search for credibility
The Italian-British photojournalist believes, however, that they play an important role when journalists are not in the field, but these videos or images must be put in context. “We immediately feel something when we look at an image on social media. And I believe that this is the danger, analyzes the one who has covered conflicts in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and South America. We need to check if what we see is true, if it comes from where the legend says it is. Because we have seen time and time again that propaganda is used in this way by states and different actors. »
This search for truth and credibility is also one of the fundamentals of photojournalism for Enric Marti, curator of the “Ukraine: Front Lines” exhibition in Bayeux. The Spanish photojournalist, who covered the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, then in the Middle East for the Associated Press, recalls that “everyone can call themselves a photographer today, because everyone can take a photo with their phone”. “The role of a photojournalist is to provide credibility,” he emphasizes to 20 minutes. We need to have professionals covering and documenting what is happening in an accurate manner. And it’s very difficult. »
A difficult path in Ukraine
Learning this professional path was taken hard by Vlada and Konstantyn Liberov, a Ukrainian photographer couple who took wedding photos before the war in Ukraine. The Russian invasion in February 2022 changed everything for them: their job, their vision of photography, their relationship with information. In Boutcha, a town where civilians were massacred, they wanted to take photos of the living to give hope, after the liberation of this town in April 2022. A desire which turned against them, because Russian propaganda used their images to affirm that there had been no massacre, they told 20 minutes during the war correspondents’ festival in Bayeux.
“We understood then that our photos are not intended to give hope or support people,” says Vlada Liberov, “but that they must show the truth. And if we know that what we show is completely true, then we are protected from those who use our photos in other ways. » This quest for truthfulness, they have ingrained it into their skin, by tattooing the word truth in Ukrainian on their wrist.
“You have to be able to talk to people”
Ensuring that one photo, among millions, has an impact requires knowing how to construct a story, having a context. “This is when we need our profession,” defends Siegfried Modola. In this field, it takes years of photography to become a good photojournalist. You have to be able to talk to people, put yourself in a situation, do research, know the story you’re working on. » He sees this as a big difference with social networks, in which a lot of images and opinions circulate, “but nothing is brought together in a concise way that can have a meaning and a narrative, a beginning and an end”, he pleads.
Since the 2021 coup in Myanmar, he has covered the little-publicized conflict in the Southeast Asian country, where he has visited three times. Winner of the Nikon Prize, his photo of Karenni rebellion soldiers taking refuge in a ditch as a mortar shell explodes nearby was taken on April 16, 2023, in the east of the country. She is striking with her gaze. “This image works, because we see the fear in the eyes of this very young man, the smoke emanating from the falling mortar, but we also understand what these young people of the rebellion are faced with every day,” underlines -he.
How to Photograph the Violence of War
The war photojournalist documents, provides context, constructs a story, but how far can we go in illustrating violence? Is there a limit? “Today, we are numbed by images of violence,” says Lorenzo Meloni. The Italian photojournalist worked in the Middle East and North Africa for ten years, notably on the fall of Gaddafi in Libya and the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
He tells us about his relationship with violence. “When I’m in the field, I don’t do any censorship, I don’t have a filter, I take photos of everything I can,” he recalls. If there are corpses, violent moments, I don’t stop. I’m in a moment where I don’t have time to think, it’s quite instinctive. » He then takes this time for reflection during editing, when he selects his photos, sees those that are not necessary and thinks about what he wants to show.
The limit for him is not to inspire disgust or repulsion. “I want us to connect with violence and look at the image, stop to ask questions, to understand and see,” he explains, indicating that he uses a certain aesthetic and distance yourself from the photographed subject. “I always try to take a step back, so that there is a context,” he continues. I don’t work on just one image. » For the photojournalists interviewed, their message is the opposite of an exaltation of this violence, “the only truth is that war should not be waged”, concludes Lorenzo Meloni.