“She captured a humanity that I feel escapes us today and perhaps is not so readily captured,” says Kathy Gannon to the Phoblographer in an interview about late photojournalist Anja Niedringhaus. “Anja’s images allow us to see the people, their heart, their souls, and not just the conflict. That in itself is an extraordinary accomplishment and not one that many photojournalists accomplish.” She and Anja worked together, and she’s now one of the curators of an exhibit closing soon at the Bronx Documentary Center.
Images by Anja Niedringhaus. Used with permission from Bronx Documentary Center. The exhibit closes on May 5th.
Photojournalist Anja Niedringhaus was a German photographer who worked for the Associated Press. She passed 10 years ago, and she was remembered by CNN in a special retrospective. Anja was shot and killed in Afghanistan while covering presidential polls. Her images documented some of the most difficult times for photojournalists while also trying to tell the stories of the people there.
The humanity of the people can be felt in the images; which are often ones that we didn’t see as much of around the time of Anja’s death. Instead, much of the imagery in the media is often focused on the people making the war instead of the everyday person. In more recent times, this has seemed to change. In fact, it’s changed massively since COVID happened. This year’s World Press Photo Award winner is a heartbreaking moment that wasn’t circulated enough around the world.
The exhibition at the Bronx Documentary Center accompanies a new book, which together works to remind us of the big sacrifices photojournalists make to tell the stories they do. For many, it’s only getting worse.
“In conflict reporting, often the greatest danger is physical, and a great deal of effort goes into mitigating that danger — understanding the environment, knowing the people with whom you are traveling, knowing the culture, terrain, and history,” says Kathy to us. “There are also the dangers presented by the authorities, including false arrests, even actual targeting of journalists by the authorities.” We’ve seen lots of this in many recent wars.
A bigger problem, however, is that news outlets tend to not show the more raw images — which truly need to be seen by the American public to understand what’s happening out there. And according to Kathy, this has been ongoing since the Vietnam War. This problem goes hand in hand with the dopamine drive fueled by the attention economy served by social media. In journalism, there was the idea that we’re entertaining ourselves to death, and it’s quite true.
If you end up heading to the Bronx Documentary Center, we encourage bringing someone with you who has never seen images like this before.