Framing Atrocity: Photography and Humanitarianism

Twomey, Christina

doi:10.1080/03087298.2012.669933

Cited by 31 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…During a devastating famine in India in 1876-1878, a British military official took a series of photographs depicting extremely emaciated men, women, and children. Newspapers did not have the technology to print these photographs, but missionary magazines and illustrated journals reproduced them as engravings and sketches, and they had a profound impact on the way British elites and audiences mobilized and responded to the famine (Twomey, 2015). Twomey argues that this crisis introduced the practice of displaying shocking images to "evidence" bodily suffering and deprivation in order to prompt humanitarian action (2015, p. 52).…”

Section: The Evolution Of Humanitarian Journalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Humanitarian Journalism

Bunce¹,

Scott²,

Wright³

2019

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication

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Humanitarian journalism can be defined, very broadly, as the production of factual accounts about crises and issues that affect human welfare. This can be broken down into two broad approaches: “traditional” reporting about humanitarian crises and issues, and advocacy journalism that aims to improve humanitarian outcomes. In practice, there is overlap between the two approaches. Mainstream journalists have long helped to raise awareness and funds for humanitarian crises, as well as provide early emergency warnings and monitor the treatment of citizens. Meanwhile, aid agencies and humanitarian campaigners frequently subsidize or directly provide journalistic content. There is a large research literature on humanitarian journalism. The most common focus of this research is the content of international reporting about humanitarian crises. These studies show that a small number of “high-profile” crises take up the vast majority of news coverage, leaving others marginalized and hidden. The quantity of coverage is not strongly correlated to the severity of a crisis or the number of people affected but, rather, its geopolitical significance and cultural proximity to the audience. Humanitarian journalism also tends to highlight international rescue efforts, fails to provide context about the causes of a crisis, and operates to erase the agency of local response teams and victims. Communication theorists have argued that this reporting prevents an empathetic and equal encounter between the audience and those affected by distant suffering. However, there are few empirical studies of the mechanisms through which news content influences audiences or policymakers. There are also very few production studies of the news organizations and journalists who produce humanitarian journalism. The research that does exist focuses heavily on news organizations based in the Global North/West.

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Section: The Evolution Of Humanitarian Journalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Humanitarian Journalism

Bunce¹,

Scott²,

Wright³

2019

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication

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“…Hooper’s famine photography was more than likely motivated by commercial intent: he worked with albumen prints that were favored by commercial photographers; the cabinet print size suggests photographs taken with the intent of making images that could be displayed in drawing rooms and parlors as well as collected in albums; particularly, the placement of Madras famine photographs in a red, gilt-edged album, entitled Secunderabad: Scenes of the Madras Famine (in J Paul Getty Collections), suggests that Hooper saw the famine and those affected by it, much like tiger hunts and executions, as visual curiosities to be captured by the photographic medium. 5 These photographs, however, were also subsequently used by Indian Famine Relief Committees in England, Scotland, and Australia; they were reproduced as engravings in newspapers, missionary magazines, and illustrated journals, exhibited in meeting spaces, and sold to disseminate information and raise funds (Fehrenbach and Rodogno, 2015: 168; Twomey, 2012 : 10).…”

Section: Famine Objectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Witnessing famine: the testimonial work of famine photographs and anti-colonial spectatorship

Ghosh¹

2019

Journal of Visual Culture

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The scholarly discussions of photo-documentation as a human rights practice have typically regarded images as a means of making suffering public and provoking affective responses as well as remedial actions. Overwhelmingly, however, liberal humanitarian images have affirmed the cultural imaginary of the isolated subject–victim and the sympathetic, yet privileged, spectator. This article attempts to complicate our understanding of the trajectory of humanitarian photodocumentation by considering the famine photographs of WW Hooper and Sunil Janah taken during the 1870s Madras famine and the 1940s Bengal famine, respectively. The author argues that, in contrast to Hooper’s photographs, which function as the genealogical predecessor to liberal humanitarian photojournalism, Janah’s photographs allow the possibility of witnessing as activism and model anti-colonial ways of seeing.

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“…Photographs in the black American press did much to reinforce the perceived link between American slavery, chain gang labor in the U.S. South, labor management in regional Australia, and the lives of Aboriginal Australians. In using them, editors continued a tradition in humanitarianism of relying on shocking imagery to elicit sympathy from readers (Lydon, , ; Twomey, ). In 1931, for example, two black American newspapers reproduced “a photo of some black Australian natives in chains, being held captive by two white men standing over them with guns” (Calvin, , p. A2).…”

Section: Australian Labor In the African American Pressmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black Internationalism's Shifting Alliances: African American Newspapers, the White Australia Policy, and Indigenous Australians, 1919–1948

Corbould

2017

History Compass

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African American newspapers frequently ran reports and stories about Indigenous Australians and Australia's racial governance between 1919 and 1948, except for the years during World War II when thousands of African American servicemen were stationed in Australia. The black American press was extremely critical of “White Australia.” African American newspaper writers used the phrase “White Australia” to refer both to the famed or notorious Australian immigration laws and to prevailing race relations in labor management. When they reported on Indigenous Australians, they took careful note of conditions that were akin to American slavery and its aftermath and remarked upon the similar regimes of racial governance. As far as the black American press was concerned, Indigenous Australians were one of the many nodes that comprised a worldwide alliance of colonized people; black internationalism included them, too. From 1942 to 1944, however, the press placed that alliance on hold. Newspapers instead focused on the surprisingly benign treatment they said black American troops received from white Australians. As it became clear that the Allies were likely to triumph, black American newspapers returned to criticism of “White Australia” and to an abstract bond with Aboriginal Australians, as they pressed forward with claims to universal human rights and with agitation to end all colonization as part of the worldwide return to peace.

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Framing Atrocity: Photography and Humanitarianism

Cited by 31 publications

References 0 publications

Humanitarian Journalism

Humanitarian Journalism

Witnessing famine: the testimonial work of famine photographs and anti-colonial spectatorship

Black Internationalism's Shifting Alliances: African American Newspapers, the White Australia Policy, and Indigenous Australians, 1919–1948

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