Visualising truths: Rethinking war imagery in the digital era
2 July 2012
'Media @ Sydney' presents
'Visualising truths: Rethinking war imagery in the digital era'
Professor Stuart Allan (Bournemouth, UK)
Visual imagery of warfare is a routine, everyday feature of our news media. For the photographer confronted with the challenge of bearing witness to conflict on our behalf, the effort to record its human consequences raises important issues of interpretation. This paper seeks to show how familiar assumptions about photojournalism's capacity to represent violence in an impartial manner are being decisively recast by the 'digital revolution' in photographic technologies. In examining 'our camera-mediated knowledge of war,' to use Susan Sontag's phrase, it explores a number of questions confronting the photojournalist - both professional and amateur alike - committed to 'making real' the horrors of human suffering. Evidence is drawn from several case studies in order to assess the implications of digitalization for the future of photojournalism in wartime, with particular attention devoted to photojournalism's moral responsibilities where visual truth-telling is concerned.
About the presenter:
Stuart Allan is Professor of Journalism in the Media School, Bournemouth University, where is also Director of the Centre for Journalism and Communication Research. He is the author or editor of sixteen books, including Digital War Reporting (co-authored with D. Matheson, Polity, 2009), Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives (co-edited with E. Thorsen, Peter Lang, 2009), The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism (2010) and Journalism After September 11 (co-edited with B. Zelizer, second edition, Routledge, 2011). His most recent book, Citizen Witnessing: Revisioning Journalism in Times of Crisis, will be published by Polity later this year.
Media @ Sydney is presented by the Department of Media and Communications, University of Sydney: For further information, contact Lukasz Swiatek (lukasz.swiatek@sydney.edu.au) or Tim Dwyer (timothy.dwyer@sydney.edu.au).
Time: 11am-12:30pm
Location: Rogers Room, Woolley Building (A20), University of Sydney
Cost: FREE
Contact: Lukasz Swiatek
Email: 3f1e2536351444020108253a111a