Photography, wrote Susan Sontag, is “the gentlest of predations.” But is photography necessarily a violation? What is actually involved in the work of documenting violence? To answer these questions, we surveyed photojournalists and conflict photographers from around the world this past spring. An edited selection of their responses appears below.
●
Ed Kashi, 67
Montclair, New Jersey
What kind of work do you do, and how did you start doing it?
Photojournalism, documentary photography, documentary filmmaking. I started by studying photojournalism in university and then freelancing for major magazines and producing books, films and exhibitions for the past 45 years.
What is the most interesting part of your job? The most challenging?
The most interesting part of my work is being able to observe life, from everyday events to historical moments, and intimately record them to create stories that have impact. The most challenging parts are the economics of production, the competitive nature of the profession, access to subjects and the physical and emotional risks of creating the work.
For most of its history, photography has been used to record violence. Is there a violence to photography?
There is a violence to photography on a few levels. Sometimes the moments of capture can be invasive and hurtful to the people involved, no matter how sensitively you work; the imagery you create can sometimes foment violence even if your intention is the opposite, and your work can be used by others as propaganda to create violence. To clarify, there is physical violence but also psychological and emotional violence inherent in this work.
What about photography as a form is suited to capturing the reality of violence? In what ways can it distort that reality?
The aesthetics of photography can work in both ways, to enhance the sense of violence, the harsh reality of violence, but it can also anesthetize the viewer to violence by making it look too beautiful, or due to the sheer volume of imagery in our world today.
What is the most affecting photograph or video you have seen lately, and why?
Impossible to answer. The images from Gaza are beyond comprehension, and leave one feeling helpless that so much violence and inhumanity can occur without anything changing. And that’s not even including Ukraine, Sudan, etc. I am affected on a daily basis by violent imagery. And as I write today, with the riots in LA and violent response by Trump, I worry that these images will only lead to more violence and give the administration an excuse to crack down and lead to martial law in some places in America.
Is there any instance or aspect of violence that you would not photograph?
Yes, I have not photographed scenes of death, accidents, small moments of agony. Those decisions have been few in the course of my career, but a handful of times I deemed in the moment, rightly or wrongly, that there was nothing good to come out of making an image at that time.
How has widespread access to cameras, and the subsequent growth of citizen journalism, changed photojournalism?
The trained photojournalist will never be replaced by citizen journalists, but the latter now has an important role to play in capturing facts, historical events, important moments and a version of truth that might otherwise not be documented and seen. This has not changed photojournalism, but augmented it.
What is photojournalism for?
To accurately and ethically capture historical events, important moments in people’s lives; shape our understanding of the world, cultures, people and events; and in the more in-depth and long-term work done by folks like myself, create bodies of work on important issues and subjects that can be viewed in the moment and for decades to come.
●
Mohammed Abed, 55
Gaza City, Palestine
What kind of work do you do, and how did you start doing it?
I am a photojournalist. I started doing it in 2000 as a freelance photographer, until I started working as a staff photographer for AFP in 2003. I also started to write reports for Al-Hayat al-Jadida newspaper, and sometimes used my own camera to take photos to include alongside my reporting. A few friends of mine who worked with agencies showed my pictures to them. Then they asked me to send some of these photos to be used by international agencies.
What is the most interesting part of your job? The most challenging?
Taking war photos in your own country is challenging because you must take photos under pressure. You are afraid for your family and sometimes you have to face the reality that your relatives and friends are being killed. The most interesting part of my job is that you have the chance to move and change reality with your photos—to let the world see it, to share real news with others, to let them follow the truth about what has happened in your country, with professional work and pictures full of meaning, news, art.
For most of its history, photography has been used to record violence. Is there a violence to photography?
The impact of photographing violence on the viewer, and on the photographer, is itself violence. This type of photography must be monitored ethically and treated with social responsibility.
What about photography as a form is suited to capturing the reality of violence? In what ways can it distort that reality?
Photography is the language of writing with light. It is primarily an artistic language, an expression of beauty. Photographing wars and violence is one of the most important categories of photography but it distorts the soul and makes it psychologically ill. Violence is a language completely opposed to the language of light, but the camera that captures all of it is the same. The psychological harm is first done to the photographer who documents these events. This is reflected in his life and the life of his family—no matter how strong he is, these scenes affect him and make him suffer.
What is the most affecting photograph or video you have seen lately, and why?
The images of our journalist colleagues being martyred—the journalist Hassan Eslayeh is one example, along with the images of children and women rushing to receive food in Gaza—are among the scenes that have most exhausted me psychologically. My son, who works as a journalist, and my mother, brother and sister are there in Gaza. I am afraid to hear the news of my son being killed because he is covering the Israeli violence and genocide there. My mother, who is ninety years old, does not have food or medicine, she feels daily anxiety. My nieces and nephews go to the free food distribution places to bring food so that my mother and the families of my brothers and sisters can eat.
Is there any instance or aspect of violence that you would not photograph?
I don’t want to photograph the funerals of my fellow journalists who were martyred in the field in Gaza, or any of their families, or even their homes that were destroyed by the Israeli occupation. I don’t want to photograph any of my relatives or friends who were injured or harmed by the army. I feel that my duty here is to offer my condolences to them, not to photograph them. I feel that my family could be in their place one day. I don’t want to photograph them. There are many scenes that make you lose the desire to photograph, especially if you are filming in your country and you have to convey the image to the world.
How has widespread access to cameras, and the subsequent growth of citizen journalism, changed photojournalism?
Citizen journalism does not understand the concept of journalism, its ethics and principles. The development of social media and the emergence of public news pages has forced international media to follow and broadcast all violent events, reducing the importance of social media responsibility. This also forces photographers on the ground to photograph instances of violence of all kinds. This only increases the problem and causes harm to the photographer and the citizen, as a result of their exposure to this violence.
What is photojournalism for?
The benefits of photojournalism are many. They used to say that a picture is worth a thousand words. A picture is the eye of truth. A picture sometimes stops wars. A picture is the mirror of the world that does not lie.
●
Matthew Hatcher, 34
Philadephia, Pennsylvania
What kind of work do you do, and how did you start doing it?
I work as a freelance photojournalist with a focus on breaking news and stories related to conflict. I started out shooting for local papers after college and eventually landed a staff job for a few years focusing on community news at a small newspaper in Ohio. In 2017 I left my job at the newspaper and began freelancing full time for news wire services and news publications.
What is the most interesting part of your job? The most challenging?
I’d say the most interesting part of my job is where it takes me and the people I get to meet and form connections with, who trust me with their stories. I’ve gotten to meet a lot of interesting people—professional wrestlers, soldiers on the front lines in Ukraine, pilots, musicians, all kinds of people from all walks of life. I have a chance to learn from all these people about their lives, their stories, their expertise on all kinds of subjects. The most challenging is covering the harder news stories: shootings, funerals, stories of loss.
For most of its history, photography has been used to record violence. Is there a violence to photography?
Many of the things we have deemed worthy of recording have pertained to violence; art has long portrayed wars and other violent acts. Still, I do not think that there is a violence to capturing a moment. I think there can be implications as to how the image is used, or how the photographer approached the subject, or the intention behind the making of a photograph, but the simple action of taking a photograph I do not see as violent.
What about photography as a form is suited to capturing the reality of violence? In what ways can it distort that reality?
Photographs capture the actual realities/actions/consequences of violence. They are not reproductions of or impressions or interpretations of moments; they are moments. Pictures from Gaza, or Grozny, Bakhmut, Mosul, Monrovia, show the reality on the ground, an undeniable reality in the lens of a photojournalist. These photographs make the viewer a witness to the horrors of violence and its consequences.
What is the most affecting photograph or video you have seen lately, and why?
My colleague Nicole Hester, who is a staff photographer at the Tennessean, took a photograph in 2023 of the aftermath of a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee. The photograph was of a little girl looking out of a school bus and crying. The photo was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Nicole spent the next year documenting the aftermath of the shooting in the community and the struggles the families faced in the wake of the tragedy. The image is striking because the young girl crying is looking directly out the bus window at the viewer, as if asking why these school shootings have to happen, a question we should all ask ourselves in this country. It lays bare the impact that such events have on those who had no stake in the violence.
Is there any instance or aspect of violence that you would not photograph?
I have been in situations where I felt my presence and having a camera has started to influence what is happening. People, during a riot or something similar, have started posing for the cameras or doing things to try and look a certain way in front of the cameras, and when that happens, I stop photographing and step back from the situation. As a photojournalist my job is to try to document these moments as they are unfolding and not to influence or be involved.
What is photojournalism for?
Photojournalism uses photography to document or tell a story while adhering to the strict ethical standards of journalism. It serves to present irrefutable visual information, photographs of an event, place, person, that are unbiased and truthful.
●
Ali Arkady, 42
France
What kind of work do you do, and how did you start doing it?
I am a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker, focusing my work on documenting the effects of organized violence and prolonged wars on individuals and communities, especially in Iraq and Syria. I started photographing in 1999, when we were displaced to Kurdistan. I used a small 8mm tape camera to document what was happening to us. After 2003, I traveled to Baghdad, Mosul, Diyala and areas where violence returned under the names “liberation” or “counterterrorism.” My work is not images of battles. It is about the violence practiced in the shadows: on people’s faces, in bureaucratic details and on tortured bodies.
What is the most interesting part of your job? The most challenging?
The most interesting aspect is being a witness to what usually remains untold. In Mosul, I was photographing both the moment a shell fell and what happened afterward: the small rooms where men were cramped and tortured, the humidity, the smell of mold, the blood on the walls and the fear drawn in their eyes.
The biggest challenge is living with this violence without detaching or cooling off from it. Trying to understand and document without emptying the tragedy of its meaning or turning it into fleeting “journalistic content.”
For most of its history, photography has been used to record violence. Is there a violence to photography?
Yes, there is a kind of violence in pointing the camera at a fragile body or a moment of collapse. Sometimes the camera can be like a knife cutting without saving.
What is the most affecting photograph or video you have seen lately, and why?
A photo I took this year on board the ship Ocean Viking with the organization SOS Méditerranée, where a family had been rescued from the sea, but their seven-year-old daughter, Rahaf, suddenly stopped breathing. The medical team tried to resuscitate her for over an hour, but to no avail.
Her mother was screaming her name: “Rahaf! Rahaf! Don’t die!” At that moment, I wasn’t photographing a child’s body, but a living memory of violence, and what death can mean after survival. These images are unforgettable.
Is there any instance or aspect of violence that you would not photograph?
I refuse to photograph moments of direct death or complete collapse, especially when privacy is at risk or when the image becomes a form of voyeurism or humiliation.
When I documented war crimes in Mosul, my presence in the images was intentional and necessary. It was not only about capturing evidence but also about taking an ethical stance showing that I stand with the victims and that this is not just journalism for consumption but a form of witness to injustice. This act of appearing in the media with the evidence I gathered gives weight to the story and highlights the seriousness of the situation.
I refuse to photograph children in moments of loss unless the image has a clear impact on achieving justice or giving voice. Sometimes, refusing to photograph is an act of respect and resistance at the same time.
How has widespread access to cameras, and the subsequent growth of citizen journalism, changed photojournalism?
Everyone can now document events instantly, which is important for quickly exposing violations. The main difference lies in what happens after taking the image: how we tell the story and connect it to context, and how we return to it years later.
What is photojournalism for?
To prevent forgetting. To preserve faces, details and voices that are meant to be erased. To link the image to the system that produced the tragedy. To be truthful witnesses, not mere spectators or profiteers of pain. Journalism requires that you are a human being before you are a photographer.
Image credit: Frank Hurley, Battle of Zonnebeke, Belgium, 1917. Composite photograph. Collection of the State Library of New South Wales.
Photography, wrote Susan Sontag, is “the gentlest of predations.” But is photography necessarily a violation? What is actually involved in the work of documenting violence? To answer these questions, we surveyed photojournalists and conflict photographers from around the world this past spring. An edited selection of their responses appears below.
●
Ed Kashi, 67
Montclair, New Jersey
What kind of work do you do, and how did you start doing it?
Photojournalism, documentary photography, documentary filmmaking. I started by studying photojournalism in university and then freelancing for major magazines and producing books, films and exhibitions for the past 45 years.
What is the most interesting part of your job? The most challenging?
The most interesting part of my work is being able to observe life, from everyday events to historical moments, and intimately record them to create stories that have impact. The most challenging parts are the economics of production, the competitive nature of the profession, access to subjects and the physical and emotional risks of creating the work.
For most of its history, photography has been used to record violence. Is there a violence to photography?
There is a violence to photography on a few levels. Sometimes the moments of capture can be invasive and hurtful to the people involved, no matter how sensitively you work; the imagery you create can sometimes foment violence even if your intention is the opposite, and your work can be used by others as propaganda to create violence. To clarify, there is physical violence but also psychological and emotional violence inherent in this work.
What about photography as a form is suited to capturing the reality of violence? In what ways can it distort that reality?
The aesthetics of photography can work in both ways, to enhance the sense of violence, the harsh reality of violence, but it can also anesthetize the viewer to violence by making it look too beautiful, or due to the sheer volume of imagery in our world today.
What is the most affecting photograph or video you have seen lately, and why?
Impossible to answer. The images from Gaza are beyond comprehension, and leave one feeling helpless that so much violence and inhumanity can occur without anything changing. And that’s not even including Ukraine, Sudan, etc. I am affected on a daily basis by violent imagery. And as I write today, with the riots in LA and violent response by Trump, I worry that these images will only lead to more violence and give the administration an excuse to crack down and lead to martial law in some places in America.
Is there any instance or aspect of violence that you would not photograph?
Yes, I have not photographed scenes of death, accidents, small moments of agony. Those decisions have been few in the course of my career, but a handful of times I deemed in the moment, rightly or wrongly, that there was nothing good to come out of making an image at that time.
How has widespread access to cameras, and the subsequent growth of citizen journalism, changed photojournalism?
The trained photojournalist will never be replaced by citizen journalists, but the latter now has an important role to play in capturing facts, historical events, important moments and a version of truth that might otherwise not be documented and seen. This has not changed photojournalism, but augmented it.
What is photojournalism for?
To accurately and ethically capture historical events, important moments in people’s lives; shape our understanding of the world, cultures, people and events; and in the more in-depth and long-term work done by folks like myself, create bodies of work on important issues and subjects that can be viewed in the moment and for decades to come.
●
Mohammed Abed, 55
Gaza City, Palestine
What kind of work do you do, and how did you start doing it?
I am a photojournalist. I started doing it in 2000 as a freelance photographer, until I started working as a staff photographer for AFP in 2003. I also started to write reports for Al-Hayat al-Jadida newspaper, and sometimes used my own camera to take photos to include alongside my reporting. A few friends of mine who worked with agencies showed my pictures to them. Then they asked me to send some of these photos to be used by international agencies.
What is the most interesting part of your job? The most challenging?
Taking war photos in your own country is challenging because you must take photos under pressure. You are afraid for your family and sometimes you have to face the reality that your relatives and friends are being killed. The most interesting part of my job is that you have the chance to move and change reality with your photos—to let the world see it, to share real news with others, to let them follow the truth about what has happened in your country, with professional work and pictures full of meaning, news, art.
For most of its history, photography has been used to record violence. Is there a violence to photography?
The impact of photographing violence on the viewer, and on the photographer, is itself violence. This type of photography must be monitored ethically and treated with social responsibility.
What about photography as a form is suited to capturing the reality of violence? In what ways can it distort that reality?
Photography is the language of writing with light. It is primarily an artistic language, an expression of beauty. Photographing wars and violence is one of the most important categories of photography but it distorts the soul and makes it psychologically ill. Violence is a language completely opposed to the language of light, but the camera that captures all of it is the same. The psychological harm is first done to the photographer who documents these events. This is reflected in his life and the life of his family—no matter how strong he is, these scenes affect him and make him suffer.
What is the most affecting photograph or video you have seen lately, and why?
The images of our journalist colleagues being martyred—the journalist Hassan Eslayeh is one example, along with the images of children and women rushing to receive food in Gaza—are among the scenes that have most exhausted me psychologically. My son, who works as a journalist, and my mother, brother and sister are there in Gaza. I am afraid to hear the news of my son being killed because he is covering the Israeli violence and genocide there. My mother, who is ninety years old, does not have food or medicine, she feels daily anxiety. My nieces and nephews go to the free food distribution places to bring food so that my mother and the families of my brothers and sisters can eat.
Is there any instance or aspect of violence that you would not photograph?
I don’t want to photograph the funerals of my fellow journalists who were martyred in the field in Gaza, or any of their families, or even their homes that were destroyed by the Israeli occupation. I don’t want to photograph any of my relatives or friends who were injured or harmed by the army. I feel that my duty here is to offer my condolences to them, not to photograph them. I feel that my family could be in their place one day. I don’t want to photograph them. There are many scenes that make you lose the desire to photograph, especially if you are filming in your country and you have to convey the image to the world.
How has widespread access to cameras, and the subsequent growth of citizen journalism, changed photojournalism?
Citizen journalism does not understand the concept of journalism, its ethics and principles. The development of social media and the emergence of public news pages has forced international media to follow and broadcast all violent events, reducing the importance of social media responsibility. This also forces photographers on the ground to photograph instances of violence of all kinds. This only increases the problem and causes harm to the photographer and the citizen, as a result of their exposure to this violence.
What is photojournalism for?
The benefits of photojournalism are many. They used to say that a picture is worth a thousand words. A picture is the eye of truth. A picture sometimes stops wars. A picture is the mirror of the world that does not lie.
●
Matthew Hatcher, 34
Philadephia, Pennsylvania
What kind of work do you do, and how did you start doing it?
I work as a freelance photojournalist with a focus on breaking news and stories related to conflict. I started out shooting for local papers after college and eventually landed a staff job for a few years focusing on community news at a small newspaper in Ohio. In 2017 I left my job at the newspaper and began freelancing full time for news wire services and news publications.
What is the most interesting part of your job? The most challenging?
I’d say the most interesting part of my job is where it takes me and the people I get to meet and form connections with, who trust me with their stories. I’ve gotten to meet a lot of interesting people—professional wrestlers, soldiers on the front lines in Ukraine, pilots, musicians, all kinds of people from all walks of life. I have a chance to learn from all these people about their lives, their stories, their expertise on all kinds of subjects. The most challenging is covering the harder news stories: shootings, funerals, stories of loss.
For most of its history, photography has been used to record violence. Is there a violence to photography?
Many of the things we have deemed worthy of recording have pertained to violence; art has long portrayed wars and other violent acts. Still, I do not think that there is a violence to capturing a moment. I think there can be implications as to how the image is used, or how the photographer approached the subject, or the intention behind the making of a photograph, but the simple action of taking a photograph I do not see as violent.
What about photography as a form is suited to capturing the reality of violence? In what ways can it distort that reality?
Photographs capture the actual realities/actions/consequences of violence. They are not reproductions of or impressions or interpretations of moments; they are moments. Pictures from Gaza, or Grozny, Bakhmut, Mosul, Monrovia, show the reality on the ground, an undeniable reality in the lens of a photojournalist. These photographs make the viewer a witness to the horrors of violence and its consequences.
What is the most affecting photograph or video you have seen lately, and why?
My colleague Nicole Hester, who is a staff photographer at the Tennessean, took a photograph in 2023 of the aftermath of a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee. The photograph was of a little girl looking out of a school bus and crying. The photo was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Nicole spent the next year documenting the aftermath of the shooting in the community and the struggles the families faced in the wake of the tragedy. The image is striking because the young girl crying is looking directly out the bus window at the viewer, as if asking why these school shootings have to happen, a question we should all ask ourselves in this country. It lays bare the impact that such events have on those who had no stake in the violence.
Is there any instance or aspect of violence that you would not photograph?
I have been in situations where I felt my presence and having a camera has started to influence what is happening. People, during a riot or something similar, have started posing for the cameras or doing things to try and look a certain way in front of the cameras, and when that happens, I stop photographing and step back from the situation. As a photojournalist my job is to try to document these moments as they are unfolding and not to influence or be involved.
What is photojournalism for?
Photojournalism uses photography to document or tell a story while adhering to the strict ethical standards of journalism. It serves to present irrefutable visual information, photographs of an event, place, person, that are unbiased and truthful.
●
Ali Arkady, 42
France
What kind of work do you do, and how did you start doing it?
I am a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker, focusing my work on documenting the effects of organized violence and prolonged wars on individuals and communities, especially in Iraq and Syria. I started photographing in 1999, when we were displaced to Kurdistan. I used a small 8mm tape camera to document what was happening to us. After 2003, I traveled to Baghdad, Mosul, Diyala and areas where violence returned under the names “liberation” or “counterterrorism.” My work is not images of battles. It is about the violence practiced in the shadows: on people’s faces, in bureaucratic details and on tortured bodies.
What is the most interesting part of your job? The most challenging?
The most interesting aspect is being a witness to what usually remains untold. In Mosul, I was photographing both the moment a shell fell and what happened afterward: the small rooms where men were cramped and tortured, the humidity, the smell of mold, the blood on the walls and the fear drawn in their eyes.
The biggest challenge is living with this violence without detaching or cooling off from it. Trying to understand and document without emptying the tragedy of its meaning or turning it into fleeting “journalistic content.”
For most of its history, photography has been used to record violence. Is there a violence to photography?
Yes, there is a kind of violence in pointing the camera at a fragile body or a moment of collapse. Sometimes the camera can be like a knife cutting without saving.
What is the most affecting photograph or video you have seen lately, and why?
A photo I took this year on board the ship Ocean Viking with the organization SOS Méditerranée, where a family had been rescued from the sea, but their seven-year-old daughter, Rahaf, suddenly stopped breathing. The medical team tried to resuscitate her for over an hour, but to no avail.
Her mother was screaming her name: “Rahaf! Rahaf! Don’t die!” At that moment, I wasn’t photographing a child’s body, but a living memory of violence, and what death can mean after survival. These images are unforgettable.
Is there any instance or aspect of violence that you would not photograph?
I refuse to photograph moments of direct death or complete collapse, especially when privacy is at risk or when the image becomes a form of voyeurism or humiliation.
When I documented war crimes in Mosul, my presence in the images was intentional and necessary. It was not only about capturing evidence but also about taking an ethical stance showing that I stand with the victims and that this is not just journalism for consumption but a form of witness to injustice. This act of appearing in the media with the evidence I gathered gives weight to the story and highlights the seriousness of the situation.
I refuse to photograph children in moments of loss unless the image has a clear impact on achieving justice or giving voice. Sometimes, refusing to photograph is an act of respect and resistance at the same time.
How has widespread access to cameras, and the subsequent growth of citizen journalism, changed photojournalism?
Everyone can now document events instantly, which is important for quickly exposing violations. The main difference lies in what happens after taking the image: how we tell the story and connect it to context, and how we return to it years later.
What is photojournalism for?
To prevent forgetting. To preserve faces, details and voices that are meant to be erased. To link the image to the system that produced the tragedy. To be truthful witnesses, not mere spectators or profiteers of pain. Journalism requires that you are a human being before you are a photographer.
Image credit: Frank Hurley, Battle of Zonnebeke, Belgium, 1917. Composite photograph. Collection of the State Library of New South Wales.
If you liked this essay, you’ll love reading The Point in print.