Recent Technological Invention: Photography

The recent technological invention of cheap Smartphones with decent cameras, the availability of cheap and fast internet in the mobile phones and the social networking platforms allow almost everyone to become a “photojournalist”. We are able to capture and share images and videos of a newsworthy event even live. Furthermore, professional photographers are still covering newsworthy events. It is almost impossible not to find images of a newsworthy event in 2017.

However, the photographer’s interest for a meaningful story does not stop with the end of the event. With the end of the event, starts the Aftermath of it. In the Aftermath or Late Photography, the photographer tries to capture the effects of a disaster. The photographer does not only want to inform but also raise discussions and hopefully with the awareness to prevent these events, when possible to happen again. But is this possible? Can only photographs of catastrophic events change attitudes and policies? Can the view of socking images and the sad feelings raised from them, reduce the number of war crimes, wars, terror attacks? Can socking images like the ones from the fire in Grenfell Tower (BBC News, 2017b) change the way we build buildings etc?

Late Photography

A genre of photography (Faulker, 2014), (Campany, 2003) has emerged the last two decades in which images of the effects of historic and / or catastrophic events on landscapes, buildings, items and people has been captured. The photographer arrives late, walks around in places that something already happened and tries to capture its effects. These are images of what left behind after the ending of the event. This type of photography of the aftermath of the events was termed “Late Photography” by David Campany.

The earliest photos (Tello, 2014), (Johnstone 2015) of this type were photos of the Crimean War in the mid- nineteenth century by Roger Fenton and were taken around two months after the events. His photos still influence practitioners of the genre. However, Aftermath Photography as a genre did not emerge properly until the 2000s. Characteristic examples of this era’s Late Photography are the images taken by Joel Meyerowitz after the 9/11 attack at the World Trade Centre and photos of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by Paul Seawright (Seawright), Lyndell Brown and Charles Green (Brown, L., Green, C., Cattapan J., 2014). Meyerowitz (Phaidon, 2011) was the only photographer that has been granted access to the scene and the clean- up operation at the World Trade Centre.