Photojournalism

Getting Beyond the Headlines

By Susan Markisz

A multimedia interview with Photojournalist Ami Vitale for The Digital Journalist

Photojournalist Ami Vitale is on the road less traveled. Often unpaved, and at times dangerous, that road has taken her in the last three years, to places of surreal beauty and civil unrest. It has also taken her to places where there is extreme poverty and horrible destruction of life and property, and to villages where there is no running water or electricity, places she describes as “worlds apart.” But it is not the differences that have drawn Vitale to them; it is the commonality of human emotions and life experiences that have irrevocably bonded her with the people she has photographed in them.

Vitale’s photographs have appeared in Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report and The New York Times, among others and 2 stories, which she completed in 2001 in Guinea Bissau and Mauritania, placed first in the National Press Photographers Association Best of Photojournalism. In 2000, Vitale was the recipient of several grants, including one from the Alexia Foundation, which enabled her to travel to Africa to work on a story she called “Notes from a Mud Hut.” The story had germinated in 1995 while visiting her sister who had been living in Guinea Bissau while working for the Peace Corps.

After receiving the Alexia grant, she returned to Guinea Bissau in 2001, where she thought she would stay two or three months, but ended up staying six. “It helped me to realize what I wanted to do with my work,” said Vitale, “and that is to get beyond the headlines, to show how the majority of people live on this planet. As soon as you get off that paved road and into the villages, it’s a marvelous life,” not an easy one, she insists, but one that calls out for understanding and compassion, if for no other reason than to dispel misconceptions and to foster an awareness of distant cultures.

Initially she had intended to cover the effects of the war on the people of Guinea Bissau, but the idea changed dramatically once she arrived. “In fact, the people had adapted quite well, and the effects of it were almost impossible to see,” said Vitale. Instead, she lived in the village of Dembel Jumpora, in a mud-hut with a woman named Fama Jamanka and her children, photographing daily life, becoming intimately involved in the daily routines of the village and learning to speak rudimentary Pulaar. Far from the comforts of home, the bed she slept on was made of sticks and hay, and Dembel Jumpora had no running water. “It was pretty funny,” she remembered, “the kids asked me why I did not pull the water out of the well quickly. And then I had to explain that we just had to turn a switch to get water and they were amazed.”

Vitale’s photographs transcend the ordinary glance; they are filled with an intimacy and insight that does not come from simple observation. Amy Vitale is not the proverbial fly on the wall. She does not simply report her stories. She lives them. While the journalist Vitale likes taking pictures, she cherishes the life experiences as much as getting them on film. “It almost had less to do with photography; it was a whole other look at Guinea Bissau,” she said. “They taught me everything from learning to carry water in buckets on my head to laughing in the face of some terrible stuff.”

When Vitale wasn’t taking pictures, she was collecting such food staples as cashews and mangoes and water, washing clothes, playing with the children and going to ceremonies… “lots of things and nothing at the same time,” she said. “Much of life was ceremonial…every week there was a funeral, or a wedding, teenage weddings…and male and female circumcisions.” Her pictures of a female circumcision may make people shudder but she takes a different view. “At first I was horrified… but we take things out of cultural context. It is horrible, but I left with the understanding that we can’t go in and change these rituals. If you want to do something, start helping people by paying more for their crops. I think you have to start with bigger issues. I remember reading a WTO document on the cashew market and knowing before they did, that the cashews were going to fetch them half of what they got the year before. People were excited the cashew season was coming because it was the end of the dry season and there was no food left in the village. But it made my heart sink knowing they would be getting half of an already abysmal price for their hard work. They are in such a vulnerable situation and the odds are against them. In the end, it was terrible to watch how little they made for their perishable goods like mangoes, cassava, rice and cashews, and how much they had to pay for the things they need…like life saving medicines for curable diseases like malaria.”

Vitale believes that by spending time on a story, and by living with the people she photographs, it has helped her to get beneath the surface of a story. “You have to get into a culture to actually live there to understand things aren’t as sensational when you understand them in their context. I’ve jumped in, parachuted into a few places before and I didn’t like it. It’s very dangerous and I’ve felt like I wasn’t portraying things truthfully, or it was a different truth.”

Vitale began her career in photography after graduation from UNC with a degree in International Studies, by working as a picture editor for the Associated Press in New York and Washington, D.C. But it wasn’t long before she decided she wanted to start taking the kinds of photographs that were on her computer screen. “I can actually remember the day,” she said, “seeing some pictures coming in from the Balkans and being really moved.”

She saved money by working overtime at AP on the desk until 1997, when she moved to the Czech Republic where she began traveling throughout Eastern Europe and Africa. “I saved money, am single, have no family, no responsibilities, so I tried doing little feature stories, writing and trying to sell photo packages to newspapers, just to break even. In Angola, nobody was interested in the ongoing war, so I found little sidebar stories like the oil expats [sic] and a bunch of French surfers living in a war zone… anything to break even.” Although she says has difficulty editing her own work, she adds “it was great to begin editing because it allowed me to understand how the industry works and what editors in New York and Paris were looking for.”

Now 31 and based in Kashmir, India, she is working under contract for Getty Images and also does work for several NGOs, which have also supported her work on the kinds of stories she is passionate about in places like Kashmir and Gujarat which are very meaningful for her. Her often lush and compelling images of Kashmir belie the tensions and violence that are just beneath the surface. While the United Nations calls Kashmir the most dangerous place on earth, Vitale says it’s a misconception. “The people are warm and wonderful. The majority are not militants; the majority of people are not terrorists; they’re just trying to have a life. What’s happening there is very sad; they’re caught between something that is much bigger than they are. Sadly, journalists love it there. You go to these places, it’s not St. Tropez, but the people are great, they want to be heard, they want the terror to stop.”

Vitale gets very emotional about the violence and bloodshed that she witnessed this year in India’s riot torn western state of Gujarat, a conflict borne out of religious hatred between Hindus and Muslims. But she feels that it is an example of how the media can effect positive change. “The media really influenced the government to take action and stop the violence which was brutal. It hasn’t gone away, but the government has taken steps that they never would have without media attention.” Vitale feels it is important for journalists to think about the implications of their images, how they are being used, and to make sure they are not sensationalizing things. “To be honest,” she says, “the more I do this, the less I do it for photography’s sake. I love photography, but it’s more about what’s happening. I wish I were a better writer, or poet or musician, to use some other way to use my experience to move people. We’re at a crucial time in the world, so polarized, with such a lack of understanding. The pictures themselves have power, but I don’t want to do it to make nice pictures.”

Vitale feels that it’s important to bridge cultural gaps and although she can understand why someone in Kansas City might have little interest in what’s happening halfway around the world, she thinks it is important.

“In my personal viewpoint, I feel like even though you can’t see it, everything is really connected. I see a ripple effect…for example, people are paying $8.00 a pound of coffee and yet in Kenya people are going into debt that are producing it. And the violence…all of these things affect us. People feel hopeless like they can’t do anything about it, but they can do a lot by understanding, by reading through the headlines, by being a little more compassionate.”

To young photojournalists who are concerned that these kinds of stories can’t be done, or that there is no interest, Vitale’s response is to “keep going.” I hear people saying ‘don’t go there, nobody cares about it; can’t be done.’ Maybe it won’t be in National Geographic, but save some money, find a niche; research a story and if anything you’re going to get so much out of it. The experience is great. I want to be a more positive voice for the industry. I truly believe that everybody has a voice; everybody has something to say. We all do this for personal reasons,” says Vitale. Of her experience in Guinea Bissau, she says she is grateful. “I miss the simple ways and how they look at life. I think of them often, every time I see a full moon, it makes me think of my last night there when they asked if we had a moon in America. I loved that I noticed time moving by the moon and the seasons. There was no future for me, just day to day. I think it helped me see things and my life in a radically different way. I don’t know if it’s possible to get to a truth, but I’m searching for that.”

© 2003 Susan B. Markisz, Contributing Editor/The Digital Journalist

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Putting the Media in Soldiers' Shoes

By Susan Markisz

A comprehensive look at the Pentagon-sponsored embedding of media during the Iraq war, from the perspectives of the Pentagon, media outlets and independent photographers.

It was a daring experiment. Embedding journalists with troops during the war in Iraq is not the first time the United States government capitalized on the American media to try and influence public perception. But for the first time in history, the Pentagon hammered out an ambitious agreement with media bureau chiefs representing national and international media, designed to give journalists unprecedented access to daily combat operations in Iraq, with minimal restrictions.

In a telephone interview on May 6, Bryan Whitman, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, and one of the co-authors of the plan, addressed the motivations for the embedded journalists plan.

“As the potential for military action increased, there was a conflict on the horizon,” he said. “We were getting information from media managers and reporters that they wanted to cover alongside the troops, up close and personal and we needed to find a way to bridge that gap while protecting our position.”

One of the factors that ultimately motivated the Pentagon to allow embedded journalists was Saddam Hussein himself. “Our potential adversary was a practiced liar, who used deception to fool the world community and what he was up to. The question was how to mitigate,” said Whitman. “We believed by putting a trained observer in the field---which I think is the definition of a reporter---to report in near real time, we could counter some of the disinformation coming out of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.”

Shaping Public Perception
In its official policy, posted on the Department of Defense website, The Pentagon acknowledged that “media coverage of future operations will to a large extent, shape public perception of the national security environment now and in the years ahead.” (www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2003/d20030228.pdf) (Note this Pentagon link is no longer live)

While the embedment process offered narrow coverage from a particular vantage point, it offered reporters the opportunity to develop close relationships with the troops and therefore the ability to report in depth from that position. “We are proud and confident in the professionalism and experience of our forces; how well-trained, equipped they are; and the dedication and care used to execute their duties to avoid collateral damage,” emphasized Whitman. “It was a good way to let Americans and the world community witness what our troops do. In our experience it is inescapable that after spending some time with our troops, reporters would see their professionalism and determination.”

On the surface, the results of this broad experiment appear to be a win-win situation for all concerned. But further review may yet determine whether agreement to restrictions in the Pentagon policy hindered journalists or compromised their objectivity, whether the embedding process lived up to expectations of journalists and their media affiliations, and whether accredited unilateral journalists encountered difficulties because of the choices they made.

From a content perspective, what resulted from embedded photojournalists was no less than a riveting portrait of the U.S. military during combat in the war in Iraq, with journalists reporting and photographing alongside troops as they advanced on Umm Qasr, Nasiriya, Basra and Baghdad. There were spectacular images from journalists representing many media organizations. David Leeson and Cheryl Diaz Meyer, staff photographers with the Dallas Morning News, were embedded with the Third Infantry Division and the U.S. Marines of the Second Tank Battalion respectively. New York Times staff photographer Vincent Laforet, embedded on the USS Abraham Lincoln, produced stunning images of night time sorties, life on the flight deck, and feature stories below decks, reproduced in the New York Times 16 page daily Nation at War section, with some images running 24 inches across the page. Todd Maisel, of the New York Daily News, embedded with the Seabees, spent most of his six week assignment in a waiting game, laden with NBC gear, 3 cameras, lenses and laptop, for a combat assignment that never happened, photographing instead, Seabees engaged in a variety of humanitarian and support activities. There was no provision in place for a journalist to switch to another unit, to go off in pursuit of another story and return to their unit, something that would have been highly impractical, given the logistics involved, but it might have made the idea more palatable for those who wished to have a little more flexibility in their reporting.

According to Navy Chief Petty Officer Diane Perry of the Defense Department, there was a broad range of media representation. “The Department of Defense issued invites for more than 800 embedded media positions, of which more than 600 were deployed from 220 media organizations,” she said. “70% of media allocations were slated for domestic national print and electronic media, 20% for international media representing more than 60 countries in Europe, Asia and South America, including news agencies such as Sky News and Al Jazeera, and the remaining 10% of the embedded positions were allocated to local and regional media.”

The experiment could have gone horribly wrong for both media and military, had the outcome not been swift and casualty numbers low. But a quick glance at some of the headlines in the Nation at War section of The New York Times, revealed that the story of embedded media covering the war in Iraq was almost as big as the story of the war itself:

Reporters Respond Eagerly to Pentagon Welcome Mat; In Europe, War Coverage is Everywhere, All the Time: Page B3 March 23, 2003; Television Producers are Struggling to Keep Track of War’s Progress, or the Lack of It, Page B14, March 26, 2003; Hot Disputes over Images of POW’s Held on Each Side, Page B6, March 26, 2003; Reporters New Battlefield: Access Has Its Risks as Well as Its Rewards, Page B2, March 31, 2003; News Organizations Remove Some Reporters from Units – Reassigned to Begin Reporting Independent of Military Oversight, Page B12, April 11, 2003.

Embargoes vs. Deadlines
Largely credited to Victoria Clarke, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Bryan Whitman, and other service chiefs of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps units in the Pentagon, and approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the embedment process required journalists to agree to certain restrictions or risk termination of their placement. Restrictions included an embargo on time sensitive operations and locations that could possibly compromise troop movements, classified material and a rule prohibiting “photographs or other visual media showing an enemy prisoner of war or detainees’ recognizable face, nametag or other identifying feature,” citing provisions of the Geneva conventions of 1949. “The Geneva convention is a legal document,” said Whitman, “There are different interpretations. But our lawyers felt that it was the basis for a ground rule that established guidelines for photographing epws from a distance, so we had to strike a balance while trying to provide an appropriate level of access.”

The Defense Department was serious about following through on consequences for journalists who did not abide by the rules. Whitman said that only a handful of embedded journalists, including one or two unilaterals, were pulled from their positions. “It was rare,” he said, “and [it was] mainly for rules protecting operational security.” But a compelling close-up image of an Iraqi detainee being strip searched by marines, taken by Cheryl Diaz Meyer, of the Dallas Morning News, ultimately led to the loss of her embedded position with the Marines Second Tank Battalion. The image ran 2 columns by 3 inches in the Dallas Morning News on April 10, and on the same day, it ran as the lead photo on the front page of the New York Times Nation at War section and was seen by an unhappy Pentagon.

Ken Geiger, Director of Photography of the Dallas Morning News said that most of the requests in the Pentagon’s policy on media coverage were reasonable and the arrangement worked out well for The Dallas Morning News, allowing them to cover the war from positions they otherwise might not have been able to cover unilaterally. “We signed the agreement that if we embed, we’ll abide by the rules as set down by the embedment process,” he said in a telephone interview earlier this week. “We had a long debate on whether to show faces. We told our photographers that if there was a question, to shoot it and we would examine them later on a case by case basis.”

The image in question of an Iraqi, who, according to Geiger, was later released, was a haunting and compelling image of the Iraqi opposition, contrasting with the hundreds of photos that were being transmitted by photographers across Iraq, of American soldiers beating a path to Baghdad’s door. The Pentagon responded on April 11 by advising the Washington office of the Dallas Morning News that Diaz Meyer would lose her position with the Marines of the Second Tank Battalion, a position she had reported from since the beginning of the war in Iraq. Geiger says it was the one restriction that was “hard to swallow.”

“We broke the rules,” said Geiger. “In our haste to share images as Baghdad fell, we were wrapped up in the bigger picture and we lost sight of our agreement. We should not have published it. We should have been better gatekeepers, given our agreement with the military.”

Ultimately the Dallas Morning News sent a request to the wire services and the New York Times to kill the photo, and DMN editors pulled Diaz Meyer from her embedded position prior to her being terminated, and reassigned her to Baghdad to pursue other stories independently.

Geiger says he has heard the argument from the larger newspapers about the objectivity issue with embedded journalists, but says the price of having someone working unilaterally on the outside, for the Dallas Morning News, who had four embedded positions, was enormous. “We don’t have the deep pockets like other larger newspapers,” he said. “We had an opportunity to tell the story from one perspective and we used other means to tell the other side of the story. It is a finite way of saying that our photographic staff didn’t tell the whole story, but our newspaper did.”

The Reporter and the "Poncho Queen"
Although Diaz Meyer was not the first female photojournalist to cover the front lines in war, her photographs and dispatches, sent to family, friends and colleagues via email throughout her assignment, offer a poignant account of the marines of the Second Tank Battalion. They add a humorous and uniquely female perspective of what it was like to be surrounded by hundreds of Marines in battle, living in close quarters. In World War II, 127 American women had secured official military accreditation as war correspondents, some of whom had managed to get to the front lines. But there is little evidence of the level of adversity faced by photographers like Diaz Meyer, 1 of 60 female journalists embedded in Iraq, whose nom de plume was either The Reporter or The Poncho Queen, depending on whether she was transmitting pictures, or taking care of personal business.

Vincent Laforet, a staff photographer with the New York Times acknowledged that although the embed process was largely positive, it did not go well at first. Personnel aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln were initially wary of journalists, subjecting them to unannounced blackouts, resulting in some missed deadlines in the early stages of the war, 24/7 Public Affairs Officer escorts, rules, which were eventually relaxed. “I have been able to tell the story of the 5,500 men and women on this ship with relatively little interference by the Navy,” he said in his photo essay “The Carrier,” published on The Digital Journalist last month. But, he added,

“One thing had become clear in terms of the embedment process, this is NOT a place where one can be expected to release breaking news.”

Transcripts of meetings between Victoria Clarke, Bryan Whitman, Service Chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps Units, with media bureau chiefs on January 14 and February 27, 2003, and posted on the DOD website revealed that the blackout restrictions for Navy embeds were conveyed up front to media managers. (http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2003/t02282003_t0227bc.html). (Note this Pentagon link is no longer live).

In a humorous exchange, Rear Admiral Steve Pietropaoli, Navy Chief of Information who was at the Feb. 27th meeting acknowledged that the Navy was going to impose the “arbitrary and capricious reporting windows rule” as military action began and that in all likelihood, there would initially be blackouts in order to maintain an element of tactical surprise. “You guys would like to be able to go live 24/7 and we would like to be able to control your timing,” he said.

Todd Maisel of the Daily News, embedded with the Seabees, expressed frustration as members from his unit left him behind at Camp Fox during their early missions, citing safety reasons. Rule 3G of the Pentagon rules governing embeds states that “commanders will ensure the media are provided every opportunity to observe actual combat operations. The personal safety of correspondents is not a reason to exclude them from combat areas.” But not all embedded journalists saw combat, though the Pentagon’s intentions were to allow them the opportunity if possible. Maisel spent nearly five weeks at Al Jaber Air Base in Kuwait waiting for deployment orders with his unit, and when they came, the Seabees headed to Umm Qasr where Maisel photographed them building roads, removing explosive water mines and building a park for local Iraqi children, in addition to sending email for many of the Seabees in his unit. While the embedment process fell short of his expectations to be part of the advance on Baghdad, Maisel said being assigned to cover the war in Iraq was a highlight of his career.

Vince Laforet sums up his embed experience:

“In the end my challenge has been to try and tell the story of the people on this carrier accurately and objectively, to show the incredible sacrifices these men and women put in every day, while not forgetting that this is all about what happens when those bombs are released. I do find solace in knowing that I am part of a team and that my colleagues at the New York Times are on the ground in Iraq and will be able to complete the circle and present a full report.”

Photojournlist Peter Turnley, who covered the Gulf War in 1991 outside of the pool system, chose not to embed with a military unit during the current war, preferring instead to cover it as a unilateral journalist in search of a broader view. In a telephone interview on May 7, Turnley said he entered Iraq from Kuwait in the first days of the coalition force invasion, and spent a little over three weeks in southern Iraq covering the siege of Basra by the British military, heading north to Baghdad where he witnessed the fall of the city and its aftermath.

“My choice to work unilaterally was a personal one, and I make no judgment about anyone else’s choice to work in any other way. I have the impression that many of my colleagues did extremely important work as embedded photojournalists,” he said, adding “I do think, though, that it is essential that in the coverage of war, that there is a group of journalists and photojournalists that work independently of being attached to a military unit, enabling a greater opportunity to often linger and witness the full effects of war on people in the country involved.”

Turnley, whose photographs offer a different perspective outside the confines of being embedded in a military unit, says there were some difficulties that he encountered as a unilateral. “I have the impression since returning from Iraq, that much of the public is not aware that officially, it was very difficult for unilateral journalists to work in Iraq. The military, both British and U.S. military officials and the Kuwaiti officials did not officially allow journalists carrying unilateral accreditation to cross the border from Kuwait to Iraq freely. It was more or less the official military position of the coalition forces that unilateral journalists did not have a place covering this most recent war in Iraq. I feel strongly that the unilateral coverage of this war and all future wars is essential for the public to have the full picture of what transpires in conflict.”

Given Americans’ concern for human life, and the military’s determination to avoid unnecessary loss of life and collateral damage, it will be interesting to observe whether the Pentagon will incorporate this thinking into their after-action review and lessons learned, and will make provisions – or allowances, for journalists wishing to work independently of the military in the future.

For now, perhaps one of the greatest benefits of the embedding program has been an altered perception of the media by many in the Pentagon. “Although I’ve always viewed the media as hard-working,” said Whitman, “it gave many military members and commanders newfound respect for their dedication and willingness to assume risks and put their lives on the line.”

November 1, 2000

© Susan Markisz, Contributing Editor/The Digital Journalist

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You Don't Win a Pulitzer by Accident

A multimedia interview produced by Susan Markisz

Photojournalism has resurfaced in at the corner of Court Street and University Avenue in Newark, New Jersey.

On the eve of the Millennium, the fledgling photo department of The Star-Ledger found itself in the middle of a renaissance. Fifteen minutes into the New Year, on January 1, 2000, photographer Matt Rainey began digitally transmitting his photos of the New Year’s celebration in Times Square, commencing with an “Auld Lang Sine” to the past, and a nod to the paper’s emergence as a major player in newsgathering and image making in the 21st Century.

Despite the gloomy forecast about the demise of photojournalism, The Star-Ledger has ignored the rumor mill and instead, has concentrated on reinventing its photo department.

In the waning hours of 1999, Rainey had been employed, not as a staff photographer of The Star-Ledger, but as an employee of the independent New Jersey Newsphotos, where he had worked for five years. The sub-contractor had provided coverage for the 406,000 daily circulation paper (605,000 Sunday) for forty years. That relationship was destined for change in October 1999, when James P. Willse, Editor in chief of the Star-Ledger and Pim Van Hemmen, Director of Photography, decided to create an in-house photo department that would become operational as the ball dropped in Times Square on January 1, 2000.

According to Van Hemmen, who was named Assistant Managing Editor for Photography last year, photography was not a high priority under the old arrangement. “Historically, the Star-Ledger did not have a photo department. It was a necessary evil,” he said, referring to the second rate nature of the relationship of photos to the newspaper. Photo requests were electronically transmitted to New Jersey Newsphotos. Once photographers had completed their assignments, film was processed and technicians at New Jersey Newsphotos, located several miles away, transmitted photographs over a T1 line to the paper. There was never any dialogue between photographers and editors. In fact, said Van Hemmen, “picture editors and photographers were discouraged from talking to one another, which was an impediment to doing business. I – and others – felt that we needed more interaction among photographers, reporters, and photo editors, for the paper to get top quality photography.”

Quality photography is exactly what they got, with an immediate return on publisher Donald Newhouse’s investment in the new photo department, and his now in-house staff of 30 photographers. Nineteen days into the new year, photographer Matt Rainey, who had symbolically brought The Star-Ledger into the new millennium with his New Year’s Eve front page picture, embarked on an eight month photographic project, resulting in the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography, only a year after the photo department’s rebirth.

Rainey’s work produced a compelling black and white documentary photo essay of the aftermath of the Seton Hall University dormitory fire, which claimed three students’ lives and injured more than sixty others, some critically. The 34-year-old photographer spent eight months with critically injured students Alvaro Llanos, Jr. and Shawn Simons, documenting their painful rehabilitation and recovery in the burn unit of St. Barnabas Medical Center.

The resources that the department devoted to the project went beyond the scope of what Van Hemmen initially thought would be necessary. “I figured maybe he [Rainey] would spend one or two days a week on it, but after working every day for a month, I realized he was going to have to work on it pretty much full time till we published it,” said Van Hemmen. With Rainey pulled off daily assignments, working virtually full time on documentation of Llanos’ and Simons’ recovery, publication did not happen until eight months later.“Eight months was a pretty bold commitment considering we had just started the department, but I wasn’t concerned about it,” adds Van Hemmen. “In order to get great photographs, you have to give people the time to do the job, to maximize the time they have in the field.” Van Hemmen’s philosophy is “to produce the best pictures possible on a given day.” But he also feels that the paper should be producing larger scale projects as well, “with greater scope and depth that give the reader a sense of what life is like for others.”

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the average person is visually oriented, emphasizes Van Hemmen, referring to the World Wide Web, MTV and television. He nevertheless is surprised by the fact that there are fewer photographs in newspapers these days and insists, “21st Century visual journalism is what people are interested in.”

“We have to be careful about how much newsprint we consume,” adds Van Hemmen, “that is a reality, but it just means we have to pick our opportunities more carefully.”

Van Hemmen is forward thinking about other opportunities. “I want to make sure that we are on the cutting edge using both still and video on the World Wide Web and we should look for more ways to find markets for still photography. Some of it will depend on technology and bandwidth,” he adds. Van Hemmen is also looking into other more traditional outlets like art exhibits, books, and art shows. A first ever calendar will be for sale in the near future.

Maximizing the allocation of resources is a challenge in any business but with diminishing advertising revenues and the cost of newsprint, editorial space is at a premium now more than ever, if one believes what is being said in photo departments throughout the country. Even before managers started complaining about ad revenues, environmental portraits and the celebrity portrait “du jour” had become the default picture worth a thousand words in many publications. Few photographers can argue with the veracity of at least some of management’s claims. But with a shrinking news hole, staff reductions and photographic coverage reduced to an “after the fact” consideration, morale among photojournalists who care about the future of their craft, has been low for years. At a time when photo coverage has been truncated at many papers, Star-Ledger Editor Jim Willse’s vision and commitment to build a new photo department, has raised the bar for photography, and is welcome news to those who have predicted the demise of photojournalism.

“I got to the paper six years ago, and found the eccentricity that the paper did not have its own photographers,” recalls Willse. “I can’t think of another big paper that essentially outsourced its photography.” With the photo staff “physically in another building and spiritually somewhere else,” the arrangement with the subcontractor was not conducive to producing great work. Willse’s plan envisioned producing exceptional work by the photo department, and both he and Van Hemmen were determined to bring in a Pulitzer Prize within three years of the new photography department’s inception.

Although it took another four years before Willse and Van Hemmen had a redesigned space to house a new department, once they were able to implement their blueprint for an in-house photo staff, their commitment to serious photojournalism became paramount to the growth of the paper. And they beat their own projection for a Pulitzer by two years.

More importantly, perhaps, for the future, they have created and nurtured a team of dynamic photojournalists. Although some projects are still shot on film (like Rainey’s black and white “After the Fire”), all photographers are fully digital, with two Nikon D1’s, lenses and lighting kits, and laptops. The enthusiasm that permeates the newsroom seems to come from the feeling of being an equal part of the news gathering team.

“It is our philosophy that we are trying to become a complete publication where the words and the pictures, from the outset, from the start of an idea to the time of publication, are a synchronous whole,” Willse says. “Photographers are journalists; a paper can’t just give lip service to photography; you have to give them the resources, spend money, send them places where they can get good pictures. You have to do it like you mean it.”

Willse came to The Star-Ledger in 1995 from the Daily News, where he was Editor and Publisher until its sale in the early 90’s. As a boy, he was raised on a daily diet of pictures from “New York’s Picture Newspaper,” and recalls vividly the mini photo essay that was once, but no longer is, a staple in the Daily News centerfold every day. “So when I got to a place where I could actually influence what a publication could do with photography,” he said, “that was what was rooted in my head.”

Making good on his promise, Willse wholeheartedly supported Fisher and Rainey’s full-time commitment to the project. Both writer and photographer gave up weekends and evenings with their own families to spend time at the St. Barnabas burn unit as the boys underwent painful skin grafts for their injuries. Initially, the boys were in a coma and were unable to give consent to the project, but the families decided to allow the story to go forward with the condition that if the boys objected, nothing would be published. Once Llanos and Simons emerged from their comas, they were onboard, due in no small part to Rainey’s deep commitment to their story.

The process of integration of text and photographs proved to be a complex issue for the paper from the perspective of a timeline. “A very interesting dynamic took place about the relationship of the words and the pictures,” said Willse. “We found ourselves having intensely great images with no place to go because we weren’t going to publish for months down the road with a story that hadn’t been written yet. We had to find a way that there was not a dislocation between the immediacy of the pictures and the subsequent writing of the story.”

With a need to be “inside the imagery of the story,” Fisher set up shop in what was essentially a broom closet, where Rainey’s work prints were papered in chronological order on the walls. “When it came time to edit the pictures for publication,” said Willse, “the closeness of the words and pictures was that much greater than you would expect if there was that intermission between the moment of the picture and the writing.”

Willse is bullish on photography and writing as teamwork. Picking up a folder with a list of upcoming projects, Willse notes: “Each one says ‘Author’ and ‘Photographer.’ It doesn’t just say ‘Author.’” At the daily 3:30 editorial staff meeting when the front-page stories and pictures are chosen, a screen emerges, the room goes dark, and images for the day’s stories are projected in a slide presentation. “The photo desk has a great responsibility here…they can’t just say, ‘we have great art, just trust me’… we’ve got to see it,” he emphasizes. “We try to build a day around seeing the pictures, and making sure before we leave that room, that we have made some decision about how to use them.”

It is not the olfactory sensation of darkroom chemistry that gets the blood circulating at The Star-Ledger. Instead, it is a palpable sense of energy, camaraderie and teamwork that permeates the photo department. Matt Rainey rushes into the photographers’ Great Room, a spacious and well appointed room with light tables, caption machines and scanners, located just outside the conference room. The Great Room, also known as “Studio 54,” so nicknamed in a contest held between Van Hemmen and his photo staff, houses 15 workstations, with two designated photographers per station. “I had pitched the nickname ‘Heaven,’” says Rainey, laughing, “but it didn’t stick.”

Although some of the daily assignment photographs are transmitted by photographers on the road, The Great Room serves as a place where photographers not only work, but they also hang around and talk shop, trading stories about their assignments. Egos are checked at the door.

On his way into the office for his shift, Rainey has encountered an overturned truck on the Garden State Parkway, which has closed the road for hours. He has managed to get photos of the accident and begins to download his photos onto his laptop. Editor Donna Wallace walks in and asks what he’s got.

Rainey and Wallace go over his pictures; Wallace makes some notes and she moves on to chat with photographer Julie Pena who is at her first job out of college.

“Donna’s great!” says Rainey of their photo assignment editor, who had worked at New Jersey Newsphotos as head technician before trying out for the position at the Ledger. “Donna’s the best; she always keeps her cool even in the wackiest, most intense situations; she’ll say: ‘It’s OK babe, we’ll work it out. She understands that different photographers have different strengths and will try to accommodate you when she can.”

Donna Wallace is everywhere. Back at her desk in the newsroom, she is on the phone, pulling one photographer off of a story that isn’t happening, assigning another, minutes later, she’s back in the Great Room giving photographers feedback as they edit their pictures. “Beautiful photograph,” she says. “OK, maybe you could have come in a little tighter on that other shot, maybe you could have used another lens, but this shot is nice, very nice.”

Photographers are hungry for someone like Donna to be in their corner. Donna is the glue that holds the department together.

Rainey, meanwhile, has finished editing his spot news photos and is off on an assignment to photograph pediatrics patients working on murals on ceiling tiles and canvases at Hackensack Medical Center.

Although en route to a feature assignment, Rainey is loaded for bear. With a D-1 camera and an 80-200 lens cradled in his lap, he is not taking any chances. He tells the story of a woman a few years back, who had been driving by Newark Airport along the NJ Turnpike at 2:30 in the morning. She had gotten a picture of the ball of flame, as a FedEx plane flipped over a couple of times right in front of her, with her point and shoot camera. “I’d hate to be driving up the road, see something like that happen and have the cameras in the trunk,” he said. “I think I would kill myself if a plane crashed right in front of me and I missed it.”

Rainey is serious about his picture taking, but he is also, not without a sense of humor. “Man, I wake up every single day and thank God I am where I am,” he said. “But I told Pim [Van Hemmen] a couple of months ago if you ever hear me complain, punch me in the face because I have absolutely nothing to complain about.” Rainey credits his wife Bernadette and the photo staff at the paper for their support, which enabled him to devote 100% of his efforts to telling the story of Llanos and Simons. He describes his fellow staff photographers and photo editors as a great group of storytellers, all with a vested interest in visual communication.

While a single picture is important in photojournalism, he regards single pictures more like “the wire way” of telling stories. “It is incredibly important to be able to visually weave a blanket, to tell a story in many different pictures,” he says, and the staff of photo editors is very supportive, “with ideas continually bouncing back and forth at the paper.”

At the medical center, kids are painting on large canvases on the floor. Rainey is confronted with dozens of colorful photo opportunities. Although events like this can sometimes be static, he says, “you just go with it, things begin to gel…and there are great little moments.”

Although Rainey shot “After the Fire” with a Nikon on color negative film, most of his daily assignments are made with the D1. “The impact [of digital] is the immediacy of the news cycle, which shortens and becomes news of the minute,” says Rainey. “For photographers it becomes a much smarter way of working.” He feels that photographers will ultimately be able to digitally make the kind of pictures they used to make on film, with more improvements in digital technology. The danger is that a digital camera can make a lazy photographer out of someone too dependent on the LCD screen. “Well, I know I have the picture, so I can get a couple more shots and then I’m outta here,” he says. “The real picture can appear at any time, and if your guard is down, you’re going to miss it.”

While getting captions for his assignment, Rainey spends some time speaking to the father of one of the girls he has photographed, who asks him about his Pulitzer. Rainey tells him: “Some of the Pulitzer prize winning pictures from Vietnam changed the way people thought about the war. When we came out with the fire story, all the Home Depots and Walmarts in New Jersey sold out of all the fire safety apparatus during the week of the project. And New Jersey changed their fire safety laws, requiring structures that had been grandfathered in since 1956, to have sprinkler systems.” Effecting change and raising social consciousness is an admirable achievement, but for the thoughtful, sensitive Rainey, the emotional investment was huge.

“The most significant thing that happened to me during the shooting of “After the Fire” was the emotional impact. I spent my trips home from St. Barnabas the first eight weeks in tears and we became heavily invested in the boys, as they did for us,” he says. Although he feels that photographers must remain pure in their storytelling, he rejects the taboo of intimacy in journalism. “Building relationships through a journalistic endeavor is an ok thing to do. The most intimate pictures can come from intimate relationships, which can help the body of work,” he insists.

Of the Pulitzer, Rainey says: “Doing what you love is why you do it; then to have this happen, it validates everything.”

Readers’ initial reaction to the story, perhaps not surprisingly, was mostly negative. Responses (in phone calls to the paper) at first ranged from feelings that the paper was being intrusive, to imagery that was too strong. From the third day to the fifth day of coverage, there was an “eerie silence” with no reaction from readers, according to Willse. When the paper skipped a day before the final installment, they began to receive calls asking when the next part of the story would run. When the final installment ran, along with an editorial acknowledging readers’ reactions, the paper received over 1,000 phone calls, all supportive, indicating that they felt the pictures were strong but necessary for the integrity of the story.

Jim Willse credits publisher Don Newhouse for laying the foundation for a first rate photo department, which produced great photojournalism by the entire staff, in its first year of operation. “I think the whole paper felt buoyed long before the Pulitzer,” says Willse. “We loved winning the Pulitzer…we want to do it again, it’s really a lot of fun…it gives you a great reason to go out and drink beer, and we would have been very disappointed if we had not won. But even if we had not won, the feeling that we could do a project like that put the bar higher, and we will do it again.”

Willse is sanguine about the future of photojournalism.

“In a time-starved society, when newspapers are wringing their hands trying to find ways to shorten stories, the readers said [about “After the Fire”]: ‘I changed my life to make time for that story. I got up early, I took it to work, I read it at lunch…I called my sister, I gave it to my kids.’ They were changing their lives because the story had grabbed them, and the lesson for us, and any other newspaper that will hear it is, by all means, do everything to be streamlined and efficient, but remember: a good story is still a good story, and people will find some way to connect with it.”

September 1, 2001
© Susan B. Markisz, Contributing Editor/The Digital Journalist
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Susan Markisz is a New York based freelance photographer, and is a 2000 graduate of the Platypus Workshop