Conflict Photography – Motivation and Consequence

On this episode of the B&H Photography Podcast, we welcome neuropsychiatrist Anthony Feinstein, and the Director of Editorial Content at Adobe, Santiago Lyon, to discuss Feinstein’s latest book Shooting War.

“What makes a person choose a profession in which they know that scores of their colleagues, some of them friends, will be killed each year, while hundreds of other colleagues will be arrested and some will go missing, never to be found? Why choose a profession that entails running toward grave danger while those around you flee from it? If you can answer these questions, you begin to gain insight into the complex world of frontline journalists.”

The above paragraph begins the profile of Santiago Lyon in Shooting War, and provides an apt summary for our own episode. We discuss the motivations that drive photographers to cover war, as well as the consequences to their physical, psychological, and emotional health they face. Feinstein brings his years of clinical work studying the effects of war on journalists and Lyon adds insight from his personal experiences as a conflict photographer and editor. Of course, we also discuss the research that went into the making of the book, and Feinstein relates the experiences of several of the photographers mentioned in his book.

Anthony Feinstein is professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He has authored a series of seminal studies exploring the psychological effects of conflict on journalists, including Journalists Under Fire and Battle Scarred, and is a Guggenheim fellow. The 2012 documentary, Under Fire, is based on his research and won a Peabody Award.

Prior to his position at Adobe, Lyon was Director of Photography at The Associate Press and a respected photojournalist who covered conflicts in Latin America, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Somalia. As an editor at AP, he led teams that earned Pulitzer Prizes on three different occasions. He is one of eighteen photographers profiled in Shooting War. Join us for this powerful episode.

Guests: Anthony Feinstein and Santiago Lyon

Photograph © Tim Hetherington/MAGNUM