WAR PHOTOGRAPHER TEACHING IDEAS

Pre-reading:

From newspaper & magazine box - 10 mins max to find a photo of a war scene or a suffering scene.

Then:

Describe what's portrayed in your picture.

Describe the scene the photographer must have watched.

How would you have felt as the photographer?

How intrusive? Private grief ? or public knowledge? Diana funeral etc. Would you like this to be you or your parents/child?

How moral is it to be paid to take pictures like these? Is it exploitation or telling the world what's happening? What good could come of it?

Write own poem, expressing feelings about the photo in some way, stick photo onto written up poem. cf Exclusive Pictures by Steve Turner - get them to notice irony!

Read and discuss Duffy poem.

More ideas for activities:

Debate/ discussion/make speech on morals of photography in the media??

Discursive essay/ article on topic?

Formal Letter to a broadsheet, arguing that such photos are intrusive + reply from photographer?

EXCLUSIVE PICTURES by Steve Turner

Give us good pictures
of the human torch
which show the skin
burnt like chicken,
bursting like grapes.

It will teach us
to avoid flames.

Give us good film
of the lady on the ledge
as she leaps open mouthed
and hits the streets
like a suicide.

It will teach us
to use stairways.

Give us sharp colour
coverage of the African
troubles. Show us
interesting wounds,
craters in fat and flesh.

It will teach us
not to point guns.

Give us five page spreads
of the airliner that fell
like a pigeon to the ground.
And make sure you get there
before the victims are pulled out.

It will teach
engines to function.

Don't give us
any of that shaky
hand-held stuff
where the trapped children
are smoke-like shapes
and their screams barely audible
beneath the wailing sirens.
Get in there with your lenses
and your appetite for danger
and your hard newshead
and give us what we're after.
Make us informed.
Make us feel we're really there.
Provide us with education.
Broaden our backgrounds.
We live in a democracy
and we need to know.