YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE EYES OF A WAR PHOTOGRAPHER HAVE SEEN

The 2022 Press Photo Competition is a reflection of the war in Ukraine. This is inevitable, but no less a tragic realization because of it.

Within just a few days after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, many Estonian press photographers and journalists had to put on flak vests and protective helmets and rush to where the shells and rockets were exploding, where combatants and civilians were dying. Forced by circumstances, they became war correspondents, without most of them having any previous conflict experience.

The Press Photo Competition 2022 is, in a sense, Estonian press photographers’ report on how they have covered the ongoing war in Ukraine. But, of course, war is not something that can be easily covered. Capturing the war in photographs and videos always requires a difficult positioning of oneself, both in terms of the conflict itself and in terms of morality.

In the past, the debate about what kind of war atrocities and on what extent should or should not be shown to the readers has been sparked when war photographs captured by foreign press agencies have been published in Estonian publications. These debates are linked to discussions on morality and the position of the photographer. Is the photographer a neutral observer or an active participant in the conflict? Whose side is he or she on? Can he or she be on anyone’s side at all?

To understand how much war photography has changed in the last three quarters of a century, it is worth recalling the discreet black and white aesthetics of two famous war photographs: Robert Capa’s The Falling Soldier, taken in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War, and Max Alpert’s Kombat, ironically taken during World War II battles in Luhansk Oblast in 1942.

One of the most famous war photographers in the world today is the American James Nachtwey. He has covered countless wars and conflicts: in Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Kosovo, Chechnya, Israel. He describes himself as an anti-war photographer. His retrospective exhibition “Memoria” could also be seen in Tallinn in 2019.

At the time, I asked him how photographs capturing the horrors of war can do any good at all. Nachtwey replied: “Witnessing other people’s tragedies is always very difficult. Sometimes people think that war photographers are withdrawn because of this. But it’s quite the opposite - you must open yourself up and feel the pain you are witnessing. We must be sensitive if we want to show that all this is really happening. We present what is really happening, but we do it as compassionately as possible. We record, but we don’t censor or leave anything out.”

In 2022, at the request of The New Yorker magazine, he went to photograph the war in Ukraine. To the article he added his credo: “I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.”

If a war photographer does not look away, he serves a higher purpose - to convince the world that such things must never happen again.

Priit Hõbemägi Head of the jury of the Press Photo Competition Editor-in-chief of Postimees