War in Ukraine: Should news media publish photos depicting the faces of the dead?
A front-page story in The New York Times shows why news media should use extreme caution when publishing photos of dead people.
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This is where Serhiy Perebyinis’ family lost their lives. Shortly after Lynsey Addario took the photo that appeared on the front page of The New York Times, the bodies were covered with cloth.
Dead bodies lie in the rubble. Dust from collapsed buildings and ash from burned-out vehicles cover them. They lie in the mud and in the snow, on the road and beside it, shot up, crushed, battered. Some look like they are just sleeping, others are disfigured beyond recognition.
Death is at its ugliest in war, and is omnipresent on the fronts. Innocent people are not spared. The images are upsetting. At the same time, they can also help to counteract brutality – provided they are shown correctly.
The dignity of the dead
The handling of sensitive image material is an ongoing issue in the photo editing departments of major media outlets. Especially because it cannot be universally regulated. This was recently proven by a front-page picture in the The New York Times. On March 7, the newspaper featured a photograph by American photographer Lynsey Addario taken near Irpin, Ukraine. The picture was taken seconds after Russia shelled an escape route for civilians.
In the photo, a young man lies between Ukrainian soldiers. A black hood frames his pale, bloodied face. The soldiers kneeling over him feel his pulse. Behind him one can see the bodies of a woman and two children. «It looked like they were sleeping. It’s like everyone suddenly stopped and fell over,» Addario told the newspaper’s podcast, The Daily.
Usually, media refrain from publishing photographs in which the faces of dead people are recognizable, out of respect for the victims and their families. Addario was aware of this when she took the photo. She told The Daily: «We never show faces of dead people. And so I’m just shooting this as a document of war. I have to do this. I have to take this photo. And I felt guilty as I was taking it because I thought, it feels intrusive, of course. I’m documenting the moment of someone’s death. And this family will have other family.» For this reason, she thought the image would only flicker across the photo editor’s screens, Addario said, and would not be published.
On March 7, the front page of The New York Times featured Addario’s photo of civilian casualties in Irpin. The picture editors decided against the industry norm in handling of sensitive material and published the photo anyway.
But in this case, the photo editors from The New York Times decided otherwise. Against industry norms, they decided to release Addario’s photo – to show a particularly gruesome facet of the war. According to this thinking, the image depicts a possible war crime in a concrete way. It is unambiguous and direct. The newspaper recognized its iconographic value. That is why it published the photo on both its digital and print front pages. The photographer herself told various news media that she interpreted the decision as proof of the importance of journalism, which legitimizes itself by reporting facts, however brutal they may be.
The paper was too ambitious
Images of war are fragments, so the photos captured by the media also remain by their nature fragmented. This makes critical source and fact checking as well as contextualization all the more important. If these security measures are not taken, images can be quickly suspected of distorting truths or even spreading fictions. Berlin art historian Charlotte Klonk, who deals with images of war, their meaning and the danger they pose, has placed particular emphasis on this point.
In this case, The New York Times failed to live up to its own ambition, Klonk says. Before publishing such a picture, it is essential to clarify the circumstances, and most of all, the identity of the dead. In this case, however, that was done inadequately, Klonk says. As the photographer herself admitted, the people in her photo were not identified until after publication: «After the photo was published, I wanted to know who these people were. We didn’t know anything about their lives. And it just felt wrong,» Addario told The Daily.
The shock moment
The majority of people who saw Addario’s photo from Irpin in the media or on social networks probably reacted first with shock and then with compassion and empathy. But for Ukrainian Serhiy Perebyinis, the husband and father of the people in the image, it was shocking. He learned via a post on Twitter that the lifeless bodies of his wife and children were lying on the streets of Irpin, with a family friend next to them. The New York Times had wrongly assumed that the victims were a mother and father and their children. But the father was still alive.
Pure horror: Russian soldiers are deliberately killing Ukrainian civilians trying to flee. A mother & 2 children were killed and father wounded by a mortar shell as hundreds of civilians sought safety. @nytimes photographer Lynsey Addario witnessed it. https://t.co/aDdkZt321B pic.twitter.com/Byp3VSd2n6
— Edward Wong (@ewong) March 6, 2022
This journalistic misjudgment caused Perebyinis to learn of his family’s death via social media. Nevertheless, in an interview with The New York Times, he subsequently endorsed publication of the picture. He said it showed a war crime. «The whole world should know what is happening here,» he told the newspaper. However, Perebyinis’ sympathetic reaction should not necessarily be expected of everyone. The actions of the newspaper were journalistically negligent.
Room for contemplation
Ideally, the journalists in Irpin would have had the dead identified, located relatives, conducted interviews and written a report on Perebyinis’ family. This would not have run the risk of appearing disrespectful. But even then, the publication of images showing war victims is problematic. Klonk doubts that the visual transmission of horror actually offers added value in extreme cases. «Reports of maternity wards being shelled are enough for me to imagine what it means to have just given birth to a child, and at the same time have to fear for its life. It doesn’t need to be put in front of my eyes.»
However, to make a judgment about whether the use of Addario’s photo was right or wrong, the geographical distance between the American newsroom and the war in Ukraine must also be taken into account. It cannot be ruled out that the immediacy of war in Europe leads to greater sensitization and results in a more restrained use of explicit images. When viewers or readers are far away, such images are used to bring the events closer.
Death degenerates into a statistic in war. But if a photo editor succeeds in showing it with dignity, a space for contemplation is created. Smoke rises from behind graves in Vasylkiv.
Under no circumstances should a picture serve only as a means of depicting horror. But nor should such images be denied to readers, simply in order to avoid disturbing them in their peaceful lives while heinous crimes are happening elsewhere. Every person who lives in peace must decide whether they want to percieve the horrors of war and destruction. They can look the other way – but self-censorship should not be equated with a lack of compassion or respect. The same applies to photo editors.
For this reason, the NZZ photo editors sometimes show images of deceased people, but make decisions based on each individual case. This takes time. If photo editors succeed in presenting a photograph of a dead body in the right context, they can create space for contemplation. This is their mission: to give dignity and a face to death in a cruel environment, in order to preserve humanity. For this and for nothing less, death should have its place in journalism.
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