Task 2 - Documentary Photographer

Brian Walski

Brian Walski WAS a staff photographer for the LA Times magazine. However on the 31^st March 2003, LA Times magazine published his photo of a British soldier directing Iraqi civilians to take cover from Iraqi fire in Basra.  After being published, it was noticed that several civilians could be seen twice in the photo which raised suspicions into the images credibility. Walski was telephoned whilst still in Iraq and he admitted to having used computer editing software to blend the two original images together, to create the one final image, taking the two moments apart to combine into an ‘improved’ image. The Times policy states news images cannot be edited and so he was fired.

Real Photos (Below):

Altered image (Below):

Above you can see the two top images are the originals and below the image that was created and published. You can see that on the left side of the COMBINED image you can see two civilians repeated in and around the soldiers legs.

Walski, in my opinion knew completely what he was doing and as you can see chose to create a much more aggressive and confrontational image, where the soldier appears to be warning the man off with his gun, however the man, clutching his child is running to him for help. What is actually happening is the man looks as though he is moving away from the tank that is approaching in the background whilst the soldier is simply directing people out of its way and to sit down and stay still.

Dorothea Lange

The next image I chose to analyze is ‘Migrant Mother’ by Dorothea Lange, a famous image and probably the most well known from the ‘Dust Bowl’ era. The image was shot in Nipomo, California in March 1963 and is a perfect example of how the art of post production has progressed from this to something like the above image of the soldier.

A lot of people are totally unaware that this image has ever been touched in terms of editing and I must admit I didn’t spot the editing at first glance. Heres the edited published image:

And now here is a crop showing the original image and the edited version:

As you can see it hasn’t been completely removed as it is quite hard when using traditional darkroom film processes, but is still removed enough to make it almost invisible. It is of understanding that Lange removed the thumb as it was a distraction to the viewer and she wanted the viewer to focus upon the emotion within the face of the mother and her children.