byRona Marech
Damon Winter, a New York Times photographer, had a harrowing experience in Afghanistan when members of the U.S. Army battalion he was following found themselves in the middle of a minefield. A soldier in front of him stepped on an explosive, and, shortly after, a soldier behind him stepped on one, too.
“I’d never been in a situation like that, where I had a life-and-death decision to make about whether or not to keep working,” said Winter, whose work is showcased in “Pictures of the Year,” an exhibit at the Newseum that opened Friday. “I was dazed and confused, but after a few seconds, I realized the right course. ... I picked up my camera and documented the whole thing.”
The lengths to which photojournalists will go to tell important stories from treacherous places was underscored this week by the deaths of filmmaker and photographer Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, also a photographer, who were killed in Libya Wednesday while covering the conflict there. Such determination is very much on display at the Newseum show, which features nearly 70 winning images from the prestigious Pictures of the Year International contest. The show highlights big news stories from 2010 such as the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Gulf Coast oil spill, the floods in Pakistan, the earthquake in Haiti, mid-term elections and the Winter Olympics as well as lighter fare including images of a model slipping on the runway, penguins in Antarctica and Lady Gaga with sparks flying from her rocket ship-like bra.
But it’s the photographs of conflict, disaster and tragedy that, perhaps, loom largest in the show. Daniel Morel was in Haiti when the 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck and his photographs, which he posted on Twitter, were among the first the world saw. The image in the show depicts a dazed woman, covered in ash and debris, staring out with a deadened expression. In Athit Perawongmetha’s spot news photograph from Thailand, an anti-government protester — reflected in a gaping puddle — tosses a tire into a burning truck. Aboard a medical evacuation helicopter, Adam Dean shot a photo of two injured U.S. soldiers — one bandaged and bloodied beyond recognition by an explosive — grasping hands. In Charlie Riedel’s oil spill photograph, a seabird is transformed by oozing, brown oil into what looks like a primordial creature from a sci-fi horror film. Platon, whose regal portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi took top honors in the portrait category, smuggled film out of Burma, also known as Myanmar, in his sock.
Barbara Davidson, a Los Angeles Times photographer who also won a Pulitzer Prize on Monday, spent two years photographing victims of gang violence in Los Angeles. In one photograph, 10-year-old Erica Miranda, who was struck by three bullets while playing basketball outside her home, gazes from her hospital bed. Her crumpled shirt is lifted, revealing a long scar and a row of staples snaking up her side.
Fernando Moleres’s subject was the plight of children trapped in an adult justice system in Sierra Leone. His devastating cinematic photographs include an image of a 14-year-old boy holding his head in his hands after receiving a sentence — for marijuana possession— of three years in prison. The young teen would have to serve the term because he didn’t have enough money to pay the $23 fine.
“When those photographs came up on the big screen, I swear, it took my breath away,” said Mona Reeder, who served on one of the judging panels that met at the Missouri School of Journalism in February to pick the best photographs out of 45,000 entries in 44 categories.
Steve Winter spent five months in Kaziranga National Park in India shooting one-horned rhinos, elephants, tigers, buffalo, otters and other animals as well as the people who uneasily co-exist with them as protectors or neighbors. “I don’t want you to just go, ‘Awwww,’” said Winter, whose large-scale photograph of a tiger, taken with remote cameras, is hanging at the Newseum. “I want you to be disturbed…To ask questions.”
The exhibit has QR codes, which allow tech-savvy visitors with smartphones to access additional material written by the photographers. In his contribution, Adrees Latif tells the story behind a photograph of desperate flood survivors in Pakistan clinging to an army helicopter delivering relief supplies: “As we hovered two meters off the ground, the villagers charged forward, clawing at the helicopter in a desperate bid for food. I took one step toward the door and jumped.” Latif quickly snapped his pictures and then, worried that he, too, would get marooned, leapt back into the helicopter with the help of a villager and an airman who grabbed his wrist and dragged him into the cabin.
Damon Winter, winner of the newspaper photographer of the year award, spent long stretches of 2010 in Haiti and Afghanistan. In one of his images, a soldier about to leave on a year-long deployment holds his 6-month-old baby and breaks down in tears. A photograph from Haiti shows a man lying dead in a makeshift stretcher outside a hospital. “It was a tough year. I don’t know how many more of those I have in me,” Winter said from New York.
What he witnessed in Haiti in the death-filled days after the earthquake was so wretched, that “I just had to be thankful I was a photographer and had a camera to put between me and the reality I was experiencing. Otherwise, it would have been too horrific,” he said.
Winter unwittingly unleashed a mini-controversy when people learned that some of his winning photographs — including a couple at the Newseum — were taken on an iPhone using the Hipstamatic app, which uses filters to give photos a retro look. “What we knew as photojournalism at its purest form is over,” one alarmed photographer wrote on his blog.
Rick Shaw, the contest director, said rapidly advancing technology and the use of video, audio and interactive graphics are changing the competition. For example: The Washington Post won in the documentary project of the year category for “Coming Home a Different Person,” which employed a variety of media to tell the stories of soldiers and Marines returning from war with traumatic brain injuries. And one of the exhibit photographs, a picture of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform burning, was snapped by a worker on a nearby boat. Shaw views smartphones as simply another tool and said the issue inspired little debate among judges. “The integrity of the scene and intent of the moment are really what it is all about,” he said.
For Damon Winter, using the iPhone effectively captured some of the small moments in soldiers’ lives partly because it’s casual-seeming and discreet. Although it was slow — the six-second delays were agonizing — he occasionally felt it was the best way to tell a story.
“I think our readers were served well,” he said. “Anyone can take pleasant photos using apps. But it’s pretty clear when there is nothing more to the photo than the dressing of an app. A good photo is a good photo.”
“Pictures of the Year” will be on view through Oct. 31 at the Newseum. From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, the Newseum will hold a photo day with photographer talks, workshops and other activities for children and adults.
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