open Democracy News Analysis - Kenya’s displaced people: a photo-essay, Anna Husarska - Comments

angstrom on "Kenya’s displaced people: a photo-essay"

angstrom — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:39:58 +0000

This is an important issue and Ms Husarska offers a number of insights from her first hand experience that you will not gain from watching New at Ten. It would be rewarding to read a longer piece about her work with the IRC.

As a professional photographer however, I have an issue with this being called a ‘photo essay’; it is no such thing. However experienced and dedicated Ms Husarska undoubtedly is, her job title is ‘senior policy adviser’, not ‘photographer’. The pictures are very poor, in some cases technically flawed, not even what one could call ‘good amateur photography’. They are pictures taken by someone who pointed a camera and pressed a button, no more.

Probably no one else reading this article is the slightest bit bothered. Surely the important thing is the message, the content … only a miserable pedant would bother complaining about the form.

This is why I believe the form is important:
1. As published, the piece wastes the opportunity for Ms Husarska to expand more fully on her important work as senior policy adviser. What exactly is the IRC policy in this situation, what are the issues surrounding aid and intervention etc. The policy issues, which are her expertise, are left largely unexplored.

2. The overall quality of the openDemocracy website is diminished. You would never publish an article by someone who could barely write, who had only the most basic grasp of grammar and syntax. And if for some obscure reason you did so, you certainly would not draw attention to its most mediocre aspect, in this case the photos. The quality of journalism offered here by people like Fred Halliday, Roger Scruton, Paul Rogers and others is world class. If you want to break up a text-heavy website with imagery, then get photography that does justice to the quality of the writing. Your masthead carries the words: “The best also costs …” Apparently this applies to writers but not photographers.

3. You hammer one more nail into the coffin of real photojournalism. Our industry is under siege from ‘citizen journalists’, sidewalk ‘reporters’ with camera phones, weekend wannabees who give their ‘work’ away for free just to see it published. This is too big an issue to discuss here; one quote from Marshall McLuhan will have to suffice: “Mass participation produces mass mediocrity”. Owning a camera does not make anyone a photographer, any more than owning a pencil makes me a novelist.

For anyone interested in professional photojournalistic coverage of the crisis in Kenya, I would refer them to the work of Marcus Bleasdale at http://www.viiphoto.com/

David Sutherland
London, UK

sarahsb on "Kenya’s displaced people: a photo-essay"

sarahsb — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 08:22:10 +0000

Thank you for this powerful photo-essay.

mikewhills on "Kenya’s displaced people: a photo-essay"

mikewhills — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 01:20:03 +0000

The obituary of Simiyu Barasa, written by himself:

http://www.kenyanpundit.com/?p=451

bevandavies on "Kenya’s displaced people: a photo-essay"

bevandavies — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:21:56 +0000

Africa is quickly becoming the forgotten continent, kept away from the eyes of the West except by stories and images like this one. Despite all the good works done by NGOs in the region - Medecins Sans Frontieres, The Red Cross, Oxfam, and others - the struggle seems impossibly difficult.

Ms. Husarska, thank you.

Bevan Davies
Kennebunk, ME
USA

Kenya’s displaced people: a photo-essay, Anna Husarska

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:46:16 +0000

Kenyan newspaper headlines

Anna Husarska is senior policy adviser at the International Rescue Committee Also by Anna Husarska in openDemocracy:

"Water problems in Somalia: a photo-essay" (9 October 2007)In Ukraine, peaceful demonstrations after contested elections in late 2004 forced the "winner" to organise a re-run in which his opponent was victorious. In Kenya, in the aftermath of the contested presidential election on 27 December 2007, neither the demonstrations were peaceful nor the police restrained. As a result, a country known as an oasis of stability in east Africa descended into an inferno. The newspapers carry headlines about "death", "violence" and "chaos", but inside they still offer a special insert on the African football cup, advertisements for Latin American TV soap operas and advice about "what to do when your child doesn't want to eat."

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