War in Syria: Audiences losing interest after 6 years of gruelling images

LONDON: Returning from a recent trip to Rukban, the lawless border camp between Syria and Jordan where an estimated 50,000 refugees live in bleak conditions, photojournalist Edward Jonkler remembers “vibrating with shock.”
It is something he often experiences after focusing his lens on scenes of intense suffering, but in this instance the pictures depicting severely underweight children were “so upsetting” that he deleted them.
Having spent the past three years visiting refugee camps in the Middle East and Europe, he is now hanging up his camera for a while, unconvinced that images like these are the most effective way for him to help.
“When you take these photos, you are taking something from people, an element of their dignity, and the trade-off is whether it’s going to make any difference to their situation.”
“Crouching down to get eye level with some kid who’s so thin their bones stick out to take a photo — it’s only worth doing if enough people see it and are moved to action,” Jonkler said.
He is quick to acknowledge that, with the right platform and a large enough audience, some photographs can have a powerful impact.
The picture by Nilüfer Demir of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler whose body washed onto a beach in Turkey, made global headlines when it was published in 2015.
Russell Boyce, Middle East & Africa Editor, Reuters Pictures, believes this image provoked a shift in the dialogue around refugees coming to Europe. “Before, it was ‘illegal immigrants,’ but after the picture was published the language was that of refugees fleeing conflict.”
“Some people’s minds are never going to be changed, no matter what they see or read. But most can be drawn into a subject, often by a powerful picture, to make them read on,” he told Arab News.
But Rosie-Lyse Thompson, a multimedia journalist who has spent the past four years covering the humanitarian consequences of the Syrian conflict, is concerned audiences are losing interest after six years of gruelling images from the crisis.
“People are tired of hearing about others’ suffering and it’s only when an extreme situation happens regarding an innocent victim, like the death of Alan Kurdi, that people feel compassion and yet that is still short-lived.”
“I often come across incredibly moving stories and feel they are important to tell, and most of the time editors agree, but the problem is they are bound by the appetite of their audience,” said Thompson, whose work has been featured by Thompson Reuters Foundation and The New York Times, among other international outlets.
Boyce said audience demand is fueled more by images of news that they can trust than a desire to see scenes of conflict. “This has never been truer than now, as an antidote to all the fake news that is so readily available on social media,” he said.
Reuters recently published a selection of some of the strongest images taken by photojournalists in 2017, the majority of which depicted forms of violence and suffering.
“Good photojournalism from conflict-affected regions prevents compassion fatigue as different picture stories are used to tell the story.”
“It’s up to the photographer to think about the subject matter to ensure the story is being told fairly and honestly in a way that their images will be seen.”
Florian Seriex, a former photojournalist who now works as Middle East communications adviser for Médecins Sans Frontières, said he too is questioning the scope of his images to stir audiences accustomed to pictures of suffering in faraway places.
“I’m currently editing pictures of war-wounded from Iraq who are at our rehabilitation center — and the shots are quite good, but what will last after that … how can we make an impact out of it? To be honest, I don’t know.”
He has found another way to use photography to empower people — handing out cameras in Iraqi refugee camps so people can document their lives. “It gives them a little bit of freedom,” he said.
He describes working at refugee camps around Mosul on days when dozens of reporters are clamouring for images and interviews with civilians. “These are typically the days I don’t want to take any pictures,” he said.
“There’s a fine line between providing information as a photojournalist and encroaching on people’s private sphere … It’s very important that we as journalists and photographers avoid forgetting that because we completely overlook the core purpose of our work in doing so.”
At times, said Jonkler, whose images were recently featured in a solo exhibition entitled Lost Men of Syria at London’s Saatchi Gallery, photographing people at their most downtrodden and vulnerable feels “fundamentally exploitative.”
In a recent Facebook post he wrote: “Having an exhibition at a big gallery was what I thought I always wanted … but I just felt guilty that any recognition was due to the people photographed, who stay in their tents and squats and are stuck in their unbearable situations when I come home. It has to be really, really worth it to take these sort of photos — not for the photographer but the subjects too.”