I was referred to the blog of David Campbell by the late Tim Hetherington and have a great deal of respect for Campbell as a scholar and a blogger. I cited some of his work in my capstone project for graduate school and I think he is asking a lot of good, tough questions. The problem is that many in the realm of photojournalism quickly become defensive when hearing Campbell’s thoughts.

Campbell stirred up quite a discussion this week with his critical analysis of famine coverage by photojournalists, a conversation Campbell has been part of for a while but a conversation that has new energy due to the current famine in East Africa. Campbell engaged with some the criticism of his original blog post in a second blog post. Have a look at these because it is an important conversation to be having. I’ve included a particularly important passage below, from his first blog post.

“We can easily lament the limitations of famine iconography, especially the way it homogenises, anthropomorphises, infantilises and impoverishes. But above all else we have to understand it is a visual sign of failure. The recourse to the stereotypes of famine is driven by the complex political circumstances photography has historically been unable to capture. This means that when we see the images of distressed people, feeding clinics and starving babies, we are seeing the end result of a collective inability to picture causes and context.” –David Campbell