J. Sybylla Smith, In Conversation with Lauren Walsh
Episode #6 Summary:
NYU Professor Lauren Walsh’s Conversations on Conflict Photography offers a dynamic discussion on the intentions, goals and strategies of news organization and humanitarian aid agencies—laying bare the matrix which constitutes conflict photography.
Episode Notes
Walsh illuminates the issues confronting fair representation, including limitations caused by censorship, complacency, race and gender inequity. In compiled conversations with industry experts, Walsh investigates the layered meaning of conflict photography in an attempt to enlighten our sense of collective awareness and lessen the distance between us and them.
In this book group, Lauren discusses, among other things:
Defining photojournalism
Politics of representation
The impact of the historically Western, white, male gaze in documentary photography
Grief fatigue
Technology and war
Desensitization and public disengagement caused by a lack of empathy
Referenced in this episode
Everyday Africa/ Everyday Projects
Arab Fund for Arts and Culture
See my Fall 2020 review in ZEKE, The Magazine of Global Documentary, here.