Eric Foss, Greg Kelly

Beyond Words: Photographers of War

Director	Eric Foss, Greg Kelly
Country of production:	Canada
Year of production:	2005
Duration:	68 min
Sound:	Eric Foss
Camera:	Eric Foss
Editing:	Tania White, Doug Earl
Music:	Laurence Stevenson
Production:	CBC News
Distribution:	CBC International Sales / www.cbc.ca/beyondwords

Film plot

Context
Name a conflict and it’s likely that a photo comes immediately to mind. Maybe it’s WWII and the flag-raising at Iwo Jima. Or Vietnam and a wounded, naked girl running in agony and fear. Or Iraq and Abu Ghraib. After Eddie Adams died last year, the media ran his photograph of a South Vietnamese colonel executing a Viet Cong prisoner at point blank range.  Adams’s photo was one of a few which became iconic of the Vietnam war itself, and emblematizes how the still photograph can have such profound impact on the public mind.  In fact, our understanding of conflict has been mediated through photojournalism ever since the Crimean and American Civil Wars. 

Yet we tend to hear very little from the photographers whose images shape our consciousness of warfare.  This documentary focuses on the world’s top war photojournalists, and attempts to turn the lens of attention onto them.  Many have been wounded.  Some have seen colleagues die.  All have been scarred by what they do: some become disillusioned, even ashamed of what they do, and leave the profession because they feel it’s pornographic.  Yet some remain charged by the excitement of it, and others committed to the idea that where there are no images, there is no sense of history.

The sheer spectrum of their reflections points to one central fact: that the payoffs and pitfalls of journalism are nowhere more concentrated and accelerated than in the lives and work of these photojournalists.

Focus:
The relationship which photographers have with their work is passionate, committed, complicated, troubling and often conflicted.  It’s this relationship in all its facets that we concentrate on.  We try to push past the received wisdom about why they do what they do: to bear witness, preserve history, etc.  We delve into the impact the work has had on them, on their worldview, on their personal relationships and their sense of themselves.

Structure:
The heart of the documentary is formed by 24 off-camera interviews with leading photojournalists from WWII to present.  The interviews can be compared to mosaic pieces, which when placed together, form a composite image of a life in photojournalism: starting out, first taste of war, and so on.  There’s no host, no over-arching narrator.  The images are theirs, photos taken by them, and in some cases, of them while in the field.  The documentary also features news video footage of various events discussed by the photographers.

 

Greg Kelly is an award-winning radio and television producer at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. His radio work includes: The Ring: Boxing and the Imagination, The Idea of the Noble Savage, and Dante: Poet of the Impossible. His television work includes: Deadline Iraq: Uncensored Stories of the War and Beyond Words: Photographers of War.

Eric Foss is an award winning television producer and documentary videographer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.  His previous work includes: Larry Towell: Profile, Guantanamo, Aids Through a New Lens: Zambia, Deadline Iraq: Uncensored Stories of the War and Beyond Words: Photographers of War. Eric is based in Toronto, Canada.